And? The only human societies throughout history that have had widespread polygamy (which was usually the men having harems, and women being stoned to death if anyone so much as accused them of infidelity) were ones where women had virtually no rights and were looked upon as mostly chattel. In other words, where no true love existed. Maybe in 100 years, everyone's psychology will change drastically enough to where successful, loving, open relationships will be relatively commonplace. Right now, from personal observation, most people's emotions and natural reactions aren't wired that way for someone they care about. I'd be interested to read what someone like scootah (who is an outlier in terms of mindset, definitely) or SavageHenry think about this from their own experiences.
Dude, I've gotta ask: 1. Why is this SO offensive to you? You're painting everything with very, very broad strokes ("No true love exists in these relationships") and spewing a lot of judgement for this to simply be an issue you aren't passionate about in some way, shape, or form. 2. This is the second time you've mentioned Scootah's intellect. Granted, the man is very intelligent...but what does that have to do with whether or not these types of relationships can be successful? The obvious implication is that everyone else supporting open relationships in this thread is unintelligent and thus not worthy of being taken seriously. I would like to think that isn't the case about your mindset, but I'm not sure. Also, while I see kind of where you were coming from with your "harem and stoning" example, it's not quite accurate. It's understandably hard to see "true love" existing in a romantic dynamic when one party (historically, the woman) is treated as chattel and less than man--I get that. Our evolved, modern mindset is repulsed by the idea of such blatant gender inequality and social enslavement! Looking at those types of marriages from my socially-conscious lens, I can totally get how you wouldn't be able to see "true love"--since the definition of "true love" has evolved since then as surely as society has. But the subjugation of woman to man has been happening for centuries, in non-polygamous relationships as well as polygamous relationships. Women were treated as chattel (dowries, anyone?) in the medieval ages, Victorian era, and even up to the early 20th century. Since that was the socially accepted standard of behavior, relationships were formed within those social norms. Lovers got married, couples fell deeply in love, and they all thought (women included) that the female in the relationship had to abide by the rules the man set for their relationship. But I'll bet they also would've defended their love (men and women alike) to the death as being real, valid, and true. Does this gender inequality make their love any less "true"? Of course not. By your reasoning, any blatant gender inequality renders the love between two people null and void (even though you conveniently only referred to women in polygamous marriages as being chattel....sneaky, sneaky!). That's silly. It makes their relationship distasteful to others, sure. But true love may still exist. By your same reasoning, having sexual intercourse with someone other than the one you love makes your love less than true. And that, sir, is equally ridiculous.
Since you asked for my opinion on the matter, I'll give it. I understand this is a highly, highly subjective area to speak about, so I can only speak for myself. Keeping that in mind, I don't necessarily judge people who have this kind of thing work for them, although I think it does indicate some psychological issues they have. Based on my own experiences, I think you've hit the nail on the head, KIMaster. I didn't always think this way, though. I once had a smoking hot girlfriend we'll call Katie, for that is her name. Katie was bisexual, and announced proudly to me to me once that "I am a very sexual person." Ever since then, when I hear that, my brain translates that into "I am an abuse survivor, bipolar on a manic phase, sexually addicted, have intimacy issues, or some combination of the above. Get ready for some crazy, four fingers in the ass and fifteen toys and straps sex." I have yet to be wrong about this, by the way. Anyway, after dating for about six months, we decided to get a girlfriend. I'm a fairly open and accepting person, and what guy doesn't want to have a threesome whenever he feels like it? I thought my jealousy would be mitigated by the shared intimacy, and to a great extent it was. Things went fairly well for awhile, and we all got closer. We all moved into my apartment and started playing house. Things went to shit from there. It became even worse after the girls' menstrual cycles synchronized. There was fighting over the household chores, there was jealousy when people's schedules conflicted, there was jealousy when one person's sexual needs were more easily satisfied by another partner, and jealousy over any flirting/sex that left out the third partner. What started out as any young man's fantasy turned into a hell for me. I hated it so much that I moved out of the apartment and broke up with them. They stayed together for a few more months, until they started hating each other. It is comical how much shit they still talk about each other. Here are some things I noticed that during this experience (and since with other friends that have tried this): -There is no way to predict how you'll feel about your loved one bumping uglies with someone else until you see it/hear about it. If you're the kind of guy who gets a pit in your stomach when you hear your ex has hooked up with a new guy, DO NOT TRY IT. There are some things you can never un-see, and there are some things that will stay with you forever. -I think a lot of people get into polygamous relationships because of intimacy problems. If they are raised/abused into seeing sex a certain way, they can't achieve sexual satisfaction with a "good" person. They see sex as "bad", and therefore lose desire/have unsatisfying sex with their "good" partner. Open relationships seem like a good stop-gap solution to this - they can build a stable, satisfying life with a "good" person less the sex. They can then seek satisfying sex with someone they're not emotionally intimate with, or that wouldn't make a good life partner. In addition, an open relationship postpones indefinitely the question of commitment - you never have to go cheerily into the sunset of "this person and no one else, until I die". There's always that bit of strange over the horizon. From my point of view, it looks like avoidance behavior, but I'm not using that in a pejorative sense. If it floats your boat, more power to you. - Some people have been through things that have burned them out a bit. Whether that's a string of step-dads that think fucking their step-daughters is a good thing to do, drug addiction, or whatever - they're unable to be happy with just one partner. They need the novelty of multiple partners to keep interested in sex. Anyway, I tried it, found it wasn't for me, and have since retreated to a cave in the mountains. I no longer spill my seed, as I don't want to weaken my Warrior Heart.
Can true love really exist between people who don't see themselves as equals? I love my pets, but I don't respect them as I've respected the women I've been in love with.
This right here is the truth - an open relationship is based on the idea that love and sex can be made mutually exclusive. What is not realized is the there are huge amounts of emotions placed into sex. Women particularity I feel get off the emotions associated with sex far more then physical pleasure. So after a while a woman will crazy the emotions of sex which are hard to experience without the love being there. Anyone who has ever been in love I feel knows how amazing sex can be vs just a random fuck.
Not only do I not find it offensive, I don't care either way. If anything, open relationships mean more available women for me. However, I'm making my judgments based on life experience and observation (where, as in Savage Henry's case, it quickly lead to disaster because one party got jealous), and the fact that for the past 7,000+ years, the majority of human society has been monogamous (and woman in relationships have always been), although in terms of evolutionary fitness or even economics, there is no compelling reason for this. That's not what I meant. I meant "intellect" not as strictly intelligence, but as "life outlook/internal psychology". scootah was completely unique in the way he perceived the world (in part because he had Asperger's), and the way his emotions work are not the way they would work for 95 plus percent of the world, myself included. He stated before that he has absolutely zero concept of jealousy in the sense most human beings do. So good look in attempting an open relationship. Maybe you and your boyfriend are among those rare outliers who can witness a romantic love having sex with others and not get hurt over it. That's just highly unlikely.
I think this quote sums up the basic problem some of you seem to have understanding how an open relationship works. You are describing a situation where YOU allow another guy to have sex with YOUR girlfriend. Given the implied possessive nature of that scenario it's no wonder you might have a problem with it. It's like saying you're prepared to give some guy permission to walk into YOUR house and take all YOUR stuff. But that isn't an open relationship. It's a relationship where the man regards the woman as his property to have or give away as he sees fit. In an open relationship you are not ALLOWING her to fuck another guy, You accept that she might want to and agree that it is her decision ( or yours if the situation is reversed and you fancy another girl ) It's not about dominance and control it's about mutuality. A successful open relationship is a hell of a lot tougher than just telling your girlfriend she can fuck other guys. You have to go further than that and actually relinquish control of your partner and realise that it's not your decision whether she does or doesn't Most guys have a hard enough time relinquishing control of the TV remote let alone their girlfriends vagina. It’s no wonder you have a problem with the whole thing if you feel the weight of permission is on your shoulders alone.
I have only tried the friends with benefits thing but I wanted it to be more. (Not initially, I didn't go with it with the idea to try to change him, I thought I would try it out because I thought I might like it and I wasn't attached to him.) I told him I got attached as soon as I did, and he said he'd give me time but he never gave me more than a week because he thinks with his dick and I was available. He always contacted me first, I never initiated it because I was unhappy with it, but I was infatuated so it took a really long time to have the strength to say "No." All the not exclusive aspect did was make me feel like I was directly competing with every attractive woman in the environment because personality and intimacy were not factors in what he was looking for (and that's fine, that's what he wants and he should be true to that). On dates he asked if he could hit on servers and get their numbers and I said OK because we weren't committed and it's what he wanted to do so why stop him? He was looking for attractiveness and sex appeal and novelty, and that hurt because there will always be someone hotter and newer. I realized I can't separate physical and emotional intimacy so I would have to be damn secure in that the person cares about me and understands me and is honest and open (at least we had the honesty, which is partly why I put up with it for that long). If I get the feeling that this just a way for them to avoid settling for me and/or seeing if there's anything out there better for them then I'm done. If they're not confident in their feelings for being with me then that is the indicator that we should just break up instead. That said, I think I'm too jealous and possessive for it to work out longterm, but I would still try it. Clearly, I like making my own mistakes.
I said she had another boyfriend, I never said she was cheating on him. He knew about me just as well as I knew about him. We don't talk anymore because she moved. It's kind of hard to have sex with someone when they live several thousand miles away from you. I wasn't refuting your point. The point I was making was there was no rhyme or reason for any of the relationships I've personally been in. Sometimes there was small pangs of jealousy, sometimes there wasn't. Sometimes love was present, sometimes it wasn't. From the sound of things maybe I do have a twisted and unique mindset that I was not aware of. I've just always thought of myself as open minded.
The differences between, say, ancient Aztec civilization and modern society are of such great magnitude and number so as to make this comparison meaningless insofar as it applies to open relationships. You're comparing apples to oranges, and then using the bad qualities of the apple to talk about oranges. You're also making the mistake of confusing correlation and causation. There's no way you actually believe this. You're smarter than that. Look dude. I don't actualy disagree with a lot of what you said. Go back and look at my first post here. I said that I thought that the overwhelming majority of people are not psychologically equipped for open relationships to be successful. I might even agree with the part about "abnormal psychology," although that phrase is often used in a derogatory/clinical sense (as in, schizophrenics have "abnormal psychology"). It certainly is not a normal behavior or mindset, insofar as the word 'normal' means within usual societal expectations and patterns. What I don't get is where you make the leap from a positive to a normative statement, and where the term twisted comes from.
See kids? So many "attractive [women] in the environment," why get locked down with one vagina? Especially when girls incentivize you to do exactly the opposite. I fucking love the sexy son hypothesis. Not to ridicule you, Etel, and it's great that you're honest and cognizant of what was going on--but this is common female behavior. Instead bitching about it, guys should accept it for what it is and take advantage of it. Actually they shouldn't, because that would mean more competition for guys like me.
Also, Savage Henry, isn't your experience a little different from the topic being discussed? Obviously, there are a lot of parallels, but an open relationship is a bit different from polyamory. What you described was the latter, not the former.
Has been monogamous, or has tried to be or appeared to be monogamous? Confusing paternity via extra-pair copulation has been a means by which females have been extracting extra resources from males for millions of years in the animal kingdom. This is still practiced by extant non-human primates as well. And there would be a compelling reason for monogamy if you look at natural selection at the group level instead of the individual level. Monogamy divides women more equally among men, which limits inter-male competition and thus intra-group violence, increasing their reproductive fitness as a group.
Could you elaborate on how this is common female behaviour? I don't see how I'm giving him incentive to do the opposite. I can see how he-man behaviour evolved through that sexy son hypothesis, but I don't see how I'm perpetuating it individually, especially since I got tired of it. He's admitted a lot of women not calling him back, not every girl goes for this, especially if she's experienced it already.
It doesn't matter what I do anyway to him or any other "common female behaviour" because populations evolve, not individuals. That sexy son hypothesis might explain why there are men evolved like that now due to its fitness in propagation, but at the individual level my, or any other female behaviour, doesn't incentivize that. Maybe I am misreading what you wrote.
The one time I actually considered an open relationship, or rather considered discussing the possibility with my significant other, was when I had fallen out of love with him. I realized that I didn't really love him the way I used to, that I was honestly no longer interested in the way he saw our lives going, the direction our relationship was going in, and the effect we were having on one another, and that was the main reason for my interest in opening the relationship. At that point what's the point in staying together? Is someone going to come into our relationship, fuck me or him and then magically that's going to make us love each other again? I doubt that's what would have happened. Mainly because, the way I usually look at a relationship with sex involved is that, if you want to put it in me, you better not be putting it in someone else.
I attempted to answer that earlier, but upon re-reading the post I think I failed. New attempt: In today's post-sexual revolution society.....no. Equality in a relationship is now the norm, so any relationship where one person is viewed as inherently unequal today would indicate self-esteem/worth/human value issues. Since I'm a firm believer in the idea that you cannot truly love someone else if you don't love and respect yourself, I think that indicates a lack of self-love and thus a lack of true love for another. But here's the flaw in the "true love can't happen between unequals" argument: Until very, very recently, women and men were unequal. In all aspects of life. Couldn't vote, couldn't have bank accounts in their name, were regarded as nothing more than baby factories by society, etc etc. The social norm was one of inherent inequality between genders. By the "true love can't happen between inequals" argument, that means that true love cannot have existed.....ever.....at all.....prior to the Sexual Revolution. That makes "true love" NONEXISTANT for all of our great-grandparents, ancestors, everyone throughout history? No one actually truly loved each other throughout history...at all.....? See how that's silly? Certainly true love existed prior to the sexual revolution! It just looks different (and looks unpalatable to me, personally) than what true love has become due to societal evolution of norms and values. The point I was trying to make with my unclear post earlier was that it's damn near impossible for me to see the blatant inequality between men and women from generations past and picture myself being truly in love were I to have that sort of relationship. I couldn't do it...I like my social equality too much. But, logically, I know that just because I cannot grasp a concept/know it doesn't work for me...that does NOT mean it didn't happen & it couldn't work for others. Kind of like........(you get my drift here, don't you?) Good point. A lot of terms are getting tossed around in this argument, and it's hard to understand who is talking about what. Hell, I defended polygamy earlier.....blegh. Relationships without monogamy are not all the same. There is polygamy, polyamory (like SH's example), open relationships, cuckholdry, etc. etc. Not everyone who supports non-monogamous relationships is okay with practicing certain types of non-monogamous relationships. I would kill myself if I had to be one of a harem and wasn't allowed to make my own male harem, but I'm totally down with having a live-in girlfriend, boyfriend, and husband. I'm going to make an offensive generalization here, but you won't catch a twink from Chelsea topping a bear from Montana. Yeah, they both support being gay (and are gay) but that type of relationship just wouldn't work for them. Plus, the geographical distance would wreak havoc on their sex life. There you go again, generalizing behaviors and making statements for an entire gender that isn't your own. You should really stop doing that--not only is it inaccurate, but it makes you look like an asshole. And I'm sure everyone posting in this thread understands the wonderful sex that comes with being truly in love with another person. We're adults. We get it (I get it regularly, but I digress). But the disagreement is that exclusive sex with the one you love isn't the be-all, end-all for some of us. I like steak, and I like hamburgers. I also like vegetarian tacos. I don't think I should limit my diet to the lovely steak just because society says that's normal.
I guess it is about time for someone with a positive experience to put in another perspective. I am non-monogamous/polyamorous. Right now we are a family of 3. He and I have been together for almost 4 and a half years, although I have known him for 7. He has also been with her for almost 5 as well. We couldn't be happier with the way things are. I love him truly and he loves us. She and I are not together but we get along very well. People have come and gone in all our lives over the years, but the three of us have been a consistancy. There have been people that we were all sorry to see leave. There were also some that got into things either thinking that they could handle it and they couldn't, or they thought in the back of their mind that I would leave the relationship for them exclusively. They were disappointed and went on their way. Currently he is with both of us, with someone that might possibly come in, she is with one other person, and right now I am only with him. There has been a shortage of non-monogamous people (or tolerant of it) that I have met recently. I'm looking forward to getting to know the new girl if it comes to anything. The situation is actually a lot more in depth but it would take a really long time to explain. If anyone is absolutely dying of curiosity feel free to PM and ask I agree completely that monogamy is not for everyone by any means. It involves a lot of trust and security in the relationship. You talk and discuss things if there is an issue, because if you let things fester and stew it not only hurts the two of you, but everyone. You can't just consider how things affect you, but how it affects everyone in the group. The only time I ever get a little nervous is when a new person comes in because there is always the possibility of someone I really care about getting hurt. It especially sucks when someone comes into our lives for a while and I get very attached to them, and then they leave. There are times that things are complicated for sure. Right now our locations are far and wide because of school and various circumstances. Even though the distance can be rough at times we visit as much as possible and are in daily contact. Somewhat recently the three of us were together for his birthday which was fantastic. Honestly it is the best relationship that I have ever been in.
I think I struggle with the "open relationship" thing because I know how much it would hurt my husband, even though he tells me he could handle it. I feel like if I cheated and he never found out about it, it would be better than him knowing that I am going out to fuck and enjoy someone else, even with his blessing. I know that most of that twisted take on it comes from the years of the societal stereotypes I have bought into, but I can't shake it. I have to agree that some people are just naturally inclined to polygamy, the same way that some people are naturally attracted to members of their own sex. Society has created a monster, and some of the comments on this thread cement that. We are products of gender and sexual stereotypes.
You are absolutely right, and I stand corrected. I think I posted that because that relationship is absolutely one of the most painful things I've ever been through and it leaps to the forefront of my mind whenever the subject of monogamy comes up. I am a monogamous person to the bone (Pun-tastic!). Hooker, what do you mean by this: