The Journal Of The InnKeeper

New TransFlag Phoenix Design Available at www.PolyTees.com

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 19:19:02 GMT

New for Pride month! Our exclusive Trans Flag Phoenix design on dozens of t-shirts and other products!

Visit the revamped & updated Poly Tees to find many of our old favorite t-shirt designs now reinstated and a whole bunch of new slogans recently added.

Plus, only 3 more days left to get 15% off your entire purchase!

Almost all of our designs are customizable too! You can choose from a wide range of products for each design, many products are available in different colors, AND if you go to the product detail page for most of our designs and click on the "edit" or "pencil" icon below the image, you can even change the design color and print type!

Also keep checking back with us because new designs are being added all the time.

Visit www.PolyTees.com for all our new inventory and sales!

I have been working for MONTHS to get this site back up!

Several years ago, my shirt printer decided to get rid of all text-based designs, which were the vast majority of my designs. It was such an overwhelming process to put them all back in that I kept putting it off.

Well, I finally got most of them back up (the ones I could remember, anyway, and the ones that the printer's moderators aren't currently holding "in review") and I added a whole ton more, just in time for Pride month.

If you see a design that you like but it's not on a product you want, or you almost like it but want it tweaked in some way (like my "Independently Owned & Operated Since 1977" shirt and you want your own year), or even if you have a totally new idea for a design, please let me know either through email or comment or PM on any social media you can find me on and I'm happy to make those customizations where I can for no extra charge.

So please visit the shop and like & share the links and pages with others! Income from this store is partly how I am able to survive when my industry dries up for the summer and (how I hope to survive once I finally leave this hellhole of a state and don't have a job waiting for me) and thanks to all my designs getting purged, I haven't had this income in several years now. So your likes, thumbs up, positive reviews, comments, engagement with the page, and shares are SUPER helpful!

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What Can Make Even A #Poly Person Jealous? #polyamory #polyamorous

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 18:33:13 GMT

Q. What can make even a poly person jealous?

A. The same things that make non-poly people jealous. Because, here’s a secret … you ready?

Poly people are people.

That’s right, we’re just regular old human beings like everyone else. We are not emotionless sociopaths, we are not aliens, we are not relationship wizards. We’re just people. We have all the same emotions as you do, and we fuck up our relationships just like you do.

The only real difference is that we have a culture that prioritizes curiosity, authenticity, and autonomy. That doesn’t mean that individual monogamous people don’t prioritize those things and it doesn’t mean that individual poly people are necessarily *good* at those things. It means that we like to *say* that those things are important to us.

So we are pressured, from our culture and from our own internal sense of morality, to respect our partners’ right to make choices about their own bodies and emotions, and we are pressured to constantly inquire within ourselves about what the signal light on our dashboards is trying to tell us, and then to solve the actual problem.

Because that’s what jealousy is - it’s a signal light telling you that something is wrong. That’s all. Sometimes that signal is trying to tell you that you’re in a relationship with someone who is not respecting *your* autonomy, or your boundaries, or whatever. Sometimes that signal light is trying to tell you that you have unresolved issues to deal with that aren’t your partners’ fault.

Some people don’t like signal lights. They’re annoying. So they put a post-it note over their dashboard and try to pretend like the light isn’t on at all. That’s the culture that most people come from, including most poly people. It’s the culture that tells us that if you see a signal light, if you feel jealousy, you need to make the thing that’s lighting up your dashboard go dark - you need to stop the activity that’s making you feel jealous. Doesn’t matter *why* you feel jealous, just stop the feeling whatever the cost. Take out that light.

Poly culture tells us to pop the fucking hood and get your hands dirty trying to figure out why the damn light is on in the first place, and then fix. the. problem.

Unfortunately for us poly people, none of us are born mechanics. We’re all learning this shit as we go too. So our signal lights go on for the same reasons everyone else’s do. We all got the shitty factory programming.

But *some* of us stop the car, get underneath it, and shine flashlights around until we find the problem. Some monogamous people do that too. Because we’re all just people.

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Reminder: Lots Of Polyamorous People Never "Opened Up" A Relationship

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 22:21:49 GMT

Reminder: A very large portion of poly people did not come to polyamory through "opening up a relationship". There are more than one avenue to discovering polyamory. If you never "opened up" a relationship, you are not alone, and not even a tiny minority.

I know it seems like it, because "couples who open up" are the only ones who ever get any air time, but I promise that you are part of a very large segment of the community. I am one of them. I never "opened up" a relationship. I discovered my own internal desire for ethical non-monogamy when I didn't have any romantic or sexual partners at all and every relationship I got into after that point was deliberately non-monogamous from the moment I entered into it. My partner, Franklin, has just never had a monogamous relationship in his life.

There are so many of us that we have a diverse collection of stories of how our relationships look. My non-monogamous history looks very different from Franklin's history, even though neither of us tried to "open up" a previously monogamous relationship. We are not a small segment of the poly community, NYT articles to the contrary.

Also, not all people who discovered polyamory for themselves while not in a couple ultimately become solo poly. Solo poly is not synonymous with "single". Just FYI.

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Malicious & Benevolent Hierarchy Are Two Sides Of The Same Dehumanizing Coin

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 16:50:07 GMT

"My marriage is permanent! We place the relationship above the people in it! All other relationships are expendable as long as the marriage lasts forever!"

"Wow, that's not cool. Anyone my spouse and I date will automatically become an equal member of our triad! They're not expendable, they're exactly as permanent as the marriage!"

*sigh*

OK, so, I suppose it's a step up that you don't consider other people to be disposable or expendable. Yay? But you're still making the relationship more important than the happiness of the people in the relationship and you're still removing people's agency by deciding ahead of time what each relationship *will* look like, whether the people in those relationship want it that way or not.

I know it's really hard to see, because benevolent sexism is also really hard to see, and these are analogous things, but this is still problematic.

Benevolent sexism is where we switch from thinking that women are money-grubbing sluts who can't do math and shouldn't vote or talk in public and should be stoned to death for showing their ankles to unrelated men, to thinking that women are goddesses and need to be coddled and revered and pampered and who are better at nurturing and domestic tasks than men.

"But wait, isn't it a good thing to treat people well and to compliment their skills?"

Well, yes and no. it's a good thing to treat individual *people* well, but "well" depends on the recipient's definition, not yours. And it's not a "compliment on their skills" to say that "women" as a group are better at things when we all have different levels of ability and interest and especially when those things are things that society doesn't value highly and certainly doesn't pay for the way that we pay for everything else that requires specialized skills.

Malevolent sexism and benevolent sexism are two sides of the same coin - both versions put all women into a box and all women are required to fit into that box whether they actually do or not. And, especially in the case of benevolent sexism, if they don't fit into that box, they are punished for it. So women are still hindered, limited. A gilded cage is still a cage and my wings are still clipped even while sitting on a padded swing.

Plus, studies have shown that benevolent sexism is very strongly correlated to malevolent sexism - meaning that the society that has one also has the other. So just because a single person might think that women are "goddesses", that attitude only exists in a culture where someone else thinks women are "demons". So the benevolent sexist has to contribute to the overall culture of sexism that ultimately harms the women he claims to love (assuming he doesn't directly harm women as well by punishing women for not behaving goddess-like).

This "our third is an equal" attitude is basically the same thing as benevolent sexism. It might *seem* like it's a compliment or benefiting that "third", but it's still putting people into boxes and still expecting them to conform to an externally imposed role. A more ethical way of doing things is to just meet people, see how you click, and then talk to everyone involved to see what each person wants out of each relationship and allow each relationship the freedom to develop however it wants to.

My relationship with Franklin has always wanted to be what I used to call "emotionally primary" (before I dropped all ranking terms entirely, because I learned that even "descriptive primary" still contributes to this whole problem), meaning that our relationship has always pulled us towards stronger emotional connections with each other. But our lives have pulled us physically apart. If we had given up on the relationship just because it didn't meet our preset expectations of what a relationship with strong emotional connections *should* look like, we would have had to break up more than a decade ago.

But then I would have missed out on the last 15 years of a very emotionally nourishing relationship and I would be missing out on the very exciting future that we are trying to plan now.

I wish we would just erase this whole "equal" language from our poly vocabulary because people don't understand how to use it ethically. "Equal" is more often used as a blunt object to bludgeon people into predetermined roles, than out of any sense of equality or egalitarian values.

I am not "equal" to Franklin's other partners and they are not "equal" to me. I am equal to FRANKLIN. He and I have the same amount of power in our relationship to negotiate our own personal boundaries and the direction of our relationship, and *only* he and I have the power to negotiate our own boundaries and the direction of our relationship.

I cannot determine how his relationships go with anyone else, he can't determine how my relationships with others go, and nobody we are dating can determine how mine and his relationship together can go. This is what is meant by "equal".

People who talk about "equal" in this prescripted sort of way, much like people who defend hierarchy, tend to mix up all sorts of elements into the word "equal". The criticisms are almost exclusively about power structures. But these defenders want to throw in strength of emotional connection, time / attention priorities, and financial obligations.

Our relationships with other people are too *different* to be ranked as above, below, or equal to another. Franklin and I both care about our other partners very deeply and we cannot quantify our emotions to say who we care about "most".

So that's the emotions part that most people who talk about "equal" usually get confused about. I think it's foolish, at best, to even bother trying to rank how much you "love" each person, and at worst, it leads to the mindset that allows you to think of people as "disposable" and "expendable" because you don't "love" someone as much as someone else.

Priorities like time and attention are all different because we are all different people. Trying to make everyone "equal" is to dismiss their individuality, which dismisses their very humanity. Even identical twins are still unique individuals. We all want different things, and we all place importance on different things.

And there are *so many* things to account for here! My "quality time" isn't going to be the same as your "quality time" - it depends on our Love Languages, our preferences, our interests, and even our mood at any given moment. Spending time on the couch watching TV together might count as "quality time" most of the time, unless there's some other issue in our relationship that's coloring the experience for us, and then it won't "count".

There are just so many variables and so many unpredictable things to account for, that to even attempt to tally all things up and make them "equal" is an exercise in futility. And, in my observation, usually just tends to make the insecurities about priority worse when you start micromanaging relationships to make them "equal".

Financial obligations are pretty much the same thing - too many variables. People like to winnow it all down to "we have a mortgage and kids", but there are so many different things to consider like income disparity, cultural power differentials between gender and economic class, tax breaks, unpaid emotional labor, other relationship status, other support networks, other dependents ... there's a reason the US tax code is basically inscrutable without a degree in accounting. Finances are complicated.

To start ranking a relationship's importance based on only a few financial criteria is to ignore the impact that all these other criteria have on a relationship. Which is basically how we got to the point of women complaining about emotional labor in the first place.

A relationship between people who share a mortgage shouldn't be automatically more "important" than other sorts of relationships, just make sure that one obligation is cared for, like all the other obligations. That doesn't mean that the relationship overall deserves a higher ranking, or that one who doesn't share a mortgage deserves a lesser ranking. Relationships that don't involve mortgages can be every bit as "serious" and "committed" and "entangled" as those that do.

Just ... stop with the "disposable" shit and stop with the "equal to my other partners" shit. We. Are. Different. Each person is a unique individual, and consequently each *relationship* is a unique entity because the people in them are unique. Even *you* are a different person in the context of one relationship vs. another relationship. Pretty similar, sure, but that relationship influences who you are, which changes who you are.

Which relates back to a recent post I made about how you can't "add a third to our existing relationship" because that relationship no longer exists, having been permanently altered by the change in status. You have created all new relationships, including with your preexisting partner. *Everything* is different now - your relationships and the people in them.

They. Can't. Be. Quantified. Or. Ranked. Without. Dehumanizing. Or. Objectifying. Them.

Which is why even insisting that "our third will be equal in all things" is just the other side of the coin of the "disposable" perspective. It's a prettier side, to be sure. It feels kinder, it feels fluffier, it feels nicer. It even feels more ethical. I remember the first relationship I was in that espoused this canard, and I remember feeling valued at the time. And then I learned the dark side of what this actually means.

Because it comes from the same place - disregarding the uniqueness, the individuality, and the agency of the people in the relationships and valuing the relationship itself over the people in them.

For more discussion on this topic, here is the FB thread that sparked it.

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Polyamory & The Prisoner's Dilemma (And Some Gender Role Bullshit In Poly)

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 23:06:38 GMT

www.morethantwo.com/polyprisonersdilemma.html

I wrote a rant a while back about my observation of a gender-based set of tendencies in the poly community. This is basically what I was talking about - People socialized as men have a higher tendency to start out defensively while people socialized as women have a higher tendency to start out cooperatively. But I don't mean that in the emotional sense, because often there is no clear gender line between people who feel *emotionally* cooperative and people who feel *emotionally* defensive.

So, let me expand a bit on what I mean there.

"I tend to see a lot of people in poly relationships who are very uncomfortable with the idea of meeting a lover’s other lovers. This is one of the most common sources of angst I’ve noticed for people who are polyamorous, especially if they’re fairly new to polyamory.

Meeting a lover’s other lover presents a host of opportunity for cooperation or defection. You can reach out to the other person and try to make that person feel welcome; you can be closed up and defensive to that person; you can even be actively hostile to that person. And, of course, your lover’s lover has similar choices."

When it comes to people who think about the idea of metamours, and who feel uncomfortable with the idea of meeting the metamours, I, personally, have not noticed any gender differences. Newbies, generally speaking, feel all kinds of anxiety about meeting metamours - should they or shouldn't they? How should they meet? When? Under what circumstances? Etc.

But when it comes to *actually* meeting, I've observed that, in heteronormative relationships (regardless of the gender or orientation of the participants, these are relationships that fall into heteronormative traits, habits, patterns, can take advantage of hetero privileges, etc.), it usually falls to the women to making it happen. Women are the ones encouraging the men to meet each other, and women are the ones voluntarily reaching out to other women to meet (or ask in the forums how to go about doing so).

Not without trepidation, not without playing dominance games, not without anxiety. But actually *doing* the emotional labor in poly relationships, I see more women doing more of the work.

In my observations, men have a tendency to just wait around until their women partners instigate or organize some kind of event that will bring the men into proximity with each other. Where they might bother to chat, if they happen to be near enough to hear each other, but unless they find some kind of common interest that sparks curiosity and enthusiasm, men have a tendency to just leave it at that and not put forth much effort to go uphill trying to build connection that takes some effort and doesn't happen spontaneously and easily. And if the men are the pivot points, they just sit back and let the women meet or not meet.

But women as the pivots have a tendency, in my observation, to keep talking and prodding their men partners to meet. They're the ones who schedule the dinner date, or host a party, or set up Skype for the men to meet each other. And if the women are the metamours, they are less likely to wait for their pivot man to insist on meeting and they'll send an email to their women metamours, introducing themselves and arranging a coffee date, or whatever.

These observations are not related to how each person *feels* about meeting metamours and not related to the *strategies* each person employs in meeting the metamours. I've seen people of all genders play out dominance games or pull rank or be passive aggressive, and I've seen people of all genders have excellent communication skills and get along well with metamours.

It's the *labor* that's involved that I had noticed often falls along gender lines and that's what I was ranting about in that post. And it has been my observation and experience that, when the women do all this early emotional labor involved in reaching out and establishing contact, then shit gets done because the groundwork has been laid.

Sometimes the "shit" that's getting done is productive. The women build friendships and a level of trust that enables them to weather turbulence in relationships because they built a foundation to have faith that trouble will eventually be worked out. That foundation gives them a sense of resiliency that makes the metamour relationships more likely to be successful and closer-knit.

And sometimes the "shit" that's getting done is not productive, including hierarchical primaries laying foundations for rank-pulling and place-setting and generally undermining the relationship between their partner and metamour. This is when the traps for hierarchy are set for future snapping shut on the poor secondaries and when cuckoos get the eggs in place to push out of the nest.

My point was that "shit gets done" because they start the work early.

But when men, generally speaking, just kind of passively allow their women partners to take the lead, they end up not having these sorts of foundations with their metamours. And then if a conflict ends up happening (which it doesn't always, but if it does), then the men don't have that connection, that trust that they will find a solution together through collaboration. They see themselves as on an island with their woman partner, who sometimes sails over to another island and stuff just kinda happens over there, and then she comes back. They don't see themselves as really *part* of their metamours.

And when men passively allow their women partners to do all the emotional labor in facilitating their own metamour relationships, that adds to the anxiety and stress and *effort* of the women maintaining those metamour relationships. Regardless of whether they all start out cooperating or not, the women metamours in this scenario are doing it all on their own while the men pivots just sit back and let them hash things out. The women carry the burden of maintaining both their romantic relationships and the metamour networks.

I generally have good metamour relationships. Not without their bumps, but pretty healthy and collaborative. But I'm an introvert and managing a lot of emotional relationships is fucking *exhausting*. It would be nice to have a little help facilitating, especially in the beginning when I don't know my metamour very well and we haven't yet found our common paths.

Add to that, the effort I have to put in to maintain *other people's* metamour relationships, because without me poking and prodding, none of my men partners have ever reached out on their own to meet each other.

I take that back - Sterling often reached out without me prodding him. He would often ask me if it was OK to contact one of my other partners and he would reach out to them. But he's the most social extrovert I've ever dated and has none of the social anxiety or concern that people might find his reaching out to be intrusive.

I've dated other extroverts before (and, in fact, I prefer to date extroverts to compensate for my own introversion), but they were either too concerned with pushing themselves on people, they gave up after a lack of reciprocation, or they were simply too passive and content to spend their energy on their own friends and partners.

And I see this *all the time* in other people's relationships too. Once I started seeing the gender split, I couldn't unsee it and it makes me very frustrated at how poor men's communication and collaboration skills are, especially initiating.

But all of that is a side-step to the point of this link. This link is focusing more on the things that people actually *do* to or for their metamours, not the more abstract application of, basically, using the cooperation / defection as a filter through which I see emotional labor.

"In a very literal sense, you make the social environment you live in. People take their cues from you. Even in a world of people who adopt a hostile, defecting strategy, it is possible to do well. On your first move, cooperate. Open yourself. Invite this other person into your life. Only if it is not reciprocated—only then do you become defensive, and stay that way only for as long as the other person is defensive."

"It turns out that even in complex situations, the simplest strategies tend to work the best. In fact, consistently, the programs that were most successful were nice, meaning they never defected before the opponent; retaliating, meaning they would defect if the opponent did, but only to the extent that the opponent did; forgiving, meaning they cooperated and forgave if the opposing program stopped defecting; and non-envious, meaning they did not attempt to score greater gains than the other program."

The bottom line is to start out being nice to someone, start out hopeful and optimistic and see your metamour as an opportunity instead of a threat. If you do that, they are more likely to do it in return. Couples keep asking how to get their potential "thirds" and "secondaries" to "respect" the primary relationship? The only way to do that is to start out by respecting your secondary and their other relationships.

You *have* to give first. But unicorn hunters never want to hear that answer. They *think* that they *are* respecting their secondaries, but the very act of wondering how to *make* someone "respect" a preexisting relationship is an act of disrespecting the other person. You get respect for giving it.

And then, you have to let them fuck up at least once first. That's the Tit For Two Tats strategy that this link mentions at the end. Start out being nice. Then, when they fuck up, assume good intentions and continue being nice. Only after they show a pattern of operating in bad faith do you start reacting defensively, not before.

Intimate relationships are not a medieval war game. If you try to put up battlements first to "protect the primary relationship" from this interloper that you're hoping will "respect" you, you will lose.

War strategies are basically methods for how powerful people fight each other to stalemates - both sides shore up their own walls first and then warily eye each other over the spikes in the walls and promise to cooperate as little as they can possibly get away with before the opposing side decides to retaliate. It's a game of how much can you optimize your own wins before you lose them in a battle when your opponent gets pissed off at your optimization.

Intimate relationships are the opposite. It's a trust fall. You have to open yourself up to vulnerability and you have to be willing to be hurt for the potential greater payoff in the future. Because you WILL be hurt. Your partners and your metamours will fuck up and your tender side will be exposed. That's the nature of the relationship.

But the goal here isn't to optimize our own gains *in spite* of an opposing force. The goal here is to build a cooperative structure where sometimes one side loses a little but sometimes the other side looses a little too and it all balances out in the end where both sides come out further ahead together than they would have alone. This takes them out of opposing sides and puts everyone on the same side.

The goal is to get out of the Prisoner's Dilemma entirely and build up systems where cooperation is always in everyone's best interest, and voluntarily taking turns conceding is in everyone's best interest because it'll payoff in the next round, and everyone is on the same team.

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Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire - Escaping Abuse & Leaping Into Relationships In Polyamory

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 21:01:58 GMT

OTG don't start a relationship with someone who is in the process of leaving an abusive partner! And for fuck's sake, don't get upset when they act inconsistent or seem to reconcile or "go back" to said abusive partner.  Abuse does all kinds of fucked up shit to a person's head and they really need to find their own identity before beginning a new relationship.

Escaping one abusive partner into the arms of another creates a coercive dynamic because of the fucked up shit going on inside the victim's head, *even if you try very hard not to be coercive*.  The key part here is the loss of identity. Abuse wipes out victims' identities, and without a clear sense of who they are as an individual person, they are unable to create healthy boundaries for themselves in other relationships *which makes those other relationships coercive by nature*.

You cannot force someone out of an abusive relationship before they're ready, and you SHOULD not encourage them to leap straight from the abusive relationship to a new relationship, poly or otherwise.

Be "on call" for them to go pick them or their stuff up at a moment's notice, field or facilitate the finding of a new place to live so that their abuser doesn't find out about it, believe them and give them space, and most importantly, don't take it as a personal rejection or blame them when they inevitably backslide in some way including going back to their abuser.

Abuse does all kinds of fucked up shit to a person's head. If you can't be a proper support system for a victim, which includes not pushing them into leaving before they're ready and not complaining about how hurt you feel or that they "used" you or "played you" or "ditched" you when they end up not leaving or they gradually stop talking to you or they go back to their abuser, then back the fuck out of their lives. Otherwise, you risk making things worse for them.

For a better idea on how to be a "proper support system" for a victim, check out the resources in the back of Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft which includes books on how to be the loved one of an abuse victim.

This was in response to a "couple" who wanted advice on how to start a relationship with "a third" who was trying to escape an abusive partner. Other people's responses were ... abhorrent. Some of them argued for this couple to "just go get her out of there" and a few suggested that it's not the best idea but you can be careful or otherwise not treat this like an actual life or death situation that it could become.

To that, I must give a reminder: escaping from an abuser is the most dangerous time for a victim. This is the time abusers are most likely to escalate the violence to murder.

This is not only dangerous for her, it's dangerous for everyone around her. She doesn't need to escape into your home, she needs to escape to a place that knows how to keep her safe from an escalating, now pissed off abuser and that fully understands the situation she is in.  Every time you hear about some woman and her kids or her parents or her new boyfriend being murdered by an ex, it's almost always during the time she is trying to escape the ex. Everyone around the victim becomes a target for an enraged abuser.

What do you think an abusive ex, hell bent on power and control and now extra pissed off that his little punching bag is leaving, is going to think of the new boyfriend *and girlfriend* who "stole her away"?  He's going to *blame* the couple and polyamory as being a bad influence on his girlfriend and believe that he needs to teach everyone a lesson and reassert his authority. This is the time when previously emotional-only abusers escalate to physical violence too.

I can't stress enough what a dangerous time this is for her and why the concern needs to be what's in her best interest, not what's in your pants. That's also why you can't force her to leave if she's not ready. Only she understands the extent of the danger she is in, and if her mind has to rationalize why she stays in order to keep herself safe, then that's what she needs to do.

Please, everyone, read Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. This is so much more serious than most people who haven't been there really understand.

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But Don't You Feel Alone With His Girlfriends With Nobody There For You?

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 03:43:26 GMT

"You were with your partner and all of his other girlfriends? Did you feel ... I dunno, alone without anyone there for YOU?"

I wasn't there alone without anyone there for me. I had plenty of people there "for me". My partners' other partners are not on "his side". We don't face off like some weird poly West Side Story. My metamours are MY metamours, not just his partners. My metamours are my family. Even the ones I'm less close to. We've built our own intimacy together, our own relationships, our own bonds. Between the strength of our ties and the length of time we have been together, "his side" is also "my side".

Because we're in this together.

After all my past breakups, I typically have 2 outcomes (with few exceptions I'll get to in a minute) when it comes to metamours: 1) I was socially friendly with my metamours while we were together but not really intimate, so when we broke up, my metamours and I remained socially friendly because the poly community is small and we continued to cross social paths. Some have faded out over the years, but no real drama.

Or 2) my ties to my metamours got even stronger and, in many cases, both of us lost all contact with the guy who brought us together but became even closer post-breakup, turning them into metafores. The term "metafore" is a portmanteau of "metamour" and "before". It means a former metamour whose emotional bonds are still close after the breakup so that they still feel like a "metamour" even though they are technically no longer.

Not all former metamours become metafores - only those who still feel like "family" so that you still want to call them by a familial name. Metamours who don't remain that close but who are still friendly and metamours who lose ties completely don't have a special title - friends or "former metamour" is usually used.

One exception to these two outcomes was when my relationship to an abuser ended and I had to cut off contact with his entire side of the network in order to prevent them from passing along information to the abuser that would help him keep tabs on his victim (a former metamour of mine) with whom I was still in contact.

But even then, even knowing that they were enabling an abuser, the loss of that family was devastating. The loss of my entire support group was even worse for me than the breakup with the boyfriend itself. Other exceptions were when the relationship between the mutual partner and his ex was so toxic that she and I either also split apart because of the breakup or we were never close to begin with.

Although, interestingly, one metafore relationship really only developed long after I had broken up with our mutual partner AND as *they* were going through their own breakup a couple years later. He had begun dating her too close to the end of our relationship for us to have the opportunity to get to know each other while we were both still metamours, but we became friendly after my breakup with him, and then when they broke up, she and I bonded and became close. So really, our mutual relationship with him was practically incidental to becoming friends with each other.

I do not develop the same level of close intimacy with all of my metamours. I and some of my partners over the years have been ... let's say popular. I have not been able to keep up with everyone that my partners have dated, especially when you add in the short-term relationships that never really took off. And even with some of the longer-term relationships, we didn't always have a lot of depth to our friendly and genuinely caring feelings.

But when I think of all the times I have spent in the company of the amazing people that my partners have liked and loved over the years, it's never felt like two "sides" squaring up. I've felt that way when I was monogamous and I met a partner's family-of-origin for the first time, but not when I was poly, and I've occasionally felt that way when meeting a partner's *friends* when the social group is not also made of polys.

But hanging out with his other partners? Not that I can ever recall. I've never felt out of place, isolated, alone, overwhelmed, or ganged up on. In the kind of poly that we do, I've always felt like we were all our own individual bodies, weaving in and out of each other's lives, and their presence adds to my own tapestry of life.

And honestly? My luck and skill with choosing partners has been way less successful than my luck and skill at forging healthy, supportive metamour relationships. It's kind of ironic, given my former Chill Girl "I just don't get along with women" status. I mean, I have some good relationships with exes and some not so good, but the majority of my ex-metamour relationships are, at worst, fade-outs and not blow-outs while many transitioned to metafores.

So no, when we all get together, it's never "don't you feel alone without anyone there for you?" It's more like feeling that we are all there for each other and all there as individuals, not on anyone's "side".

It's more like coming home.

#MetamoursAreTheTrueTestOfPoly #AmorphousSquiggle #InternationalPolyJusticeLeague #IPJL #MetamoursMakeTheFamily #gratitude

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Why White Men Decided Dancing Is Unmasculine I'll Never Know

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 18:29:59 GMT

*sigh* Met a really cute NASA engineer who is also a very good swing dancer, and who has taken it upon himself to learn other styles of partner dance. I knew it would be too much to hope for that he was poly, but he *does* come from an area where another dancer recently came out as poly, so it might not have been *that* big of a fantasy.

Except he's ULTRA Christian.

Reason #46 why I hate living in Florida - unlike other similarly-sized metropolitan areas, the partner dance scene is conservative and religious so I can never hope to find potential dating partners who also know how to dance. At best, I might meet guys who are open to me teaching them some basic dance steps. Which is fine, I enjoy teaching and I enjoy sharing my passion.

But what it usually means in practice is that we end up breaking up before they ever get proficient at dancing and I don't have anyone to challenge *me* to get better; I never get to play the student so I never progress above my current level, which is advanced-beginner or maybe beginning-intermediate.

I have only ever dated one person who is as good (technically, he was better) of a dancer as I am, and we only danced maybe 3 times while dating.

Dancing is such a strong passion of mine that I feel a distinct black hole in my life that I don't have a romantic partner to share it with. I *did* have a couple of partners who were actively working on learning how to dance while we were dating, but for logistical reasons like distance, I never actually got to dance with them and, as I said, I don't have the opportunity to challenge myself.

Of all the things that white men could have decided wasn't "masculine" enough, they had to choose dancing. Y'know, that hobby that has strict gender roles where the man is in control and athletic and gets to hold women in his arms, and requires a good sense of rhythm and is guaranteed to attract the attention of just about every woman in the room? Yeah, that's not "masculine" enough for white dudes, so for generations, we dumped dancing as a culture until most white men are convinced that they can't dance and never developed an interest in it.

Yay fragile white masculinity.

However, in some religious circles, partner dancing is still encouraged. Mormons and that weird "progressive-conservative" southern Christian type still partner dance, so in this backwards superficially-progressive state if I want to dance, it's with people who have a strong religious faith. Which is fine for dancing, but pretty much rules them out as a potential dating pool.

"Orlando is really just a small southern town with delusions of grandeur." ~Joreth Innkeeper

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Our Metamour Relationship Is Our Relationship, Not Our Mutual Partner's Responsibility

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 17:37:25 GMT

I have written about the benefits of metamour relationships before, and I recently wrote about my frustration with feeling burdened by the default responsibility to maintain metamour relationships, and I'm also working on the section of my breakup book regarding the metamour's role in a breakup. So this subject in general is on my mind.

I just want to make it clear to any current, former, and future metamours that, regardless of what happens between myself and any partner, our metamour relationship is on its own merits. If we find value in a connection, I will maintain that connection independent of what is happening between myself and the person who brought us together.

If we have largely unrelated orbits, I will not force a connection between us no matter what is happening between myself and the person who brought us together.

Our connection is our connection. We may not have been brought into each other's circles if it hadn't been for a mutual partner, but the size of those circles and how we maintain them is between us. Our connection may be *influenced* by what's going on between either of us and our mutual partner, because, as I said before, we are not islands.

But you are not my friend, or my distant acquaintance, or even someone I don't connect with, *because* of our mutual partner. You were *introduced* to me because of that mutual partner, but what we are together is because of who you and I are as people.

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Um, I'm Poly.

Sat, 09 Jul 2022 16:48:19 GMT

"So, do you and your partner..."
Um, I'm poly.

"OK, but which one is your main one?"
Um, I'm poly.

"Sure, but who do you love?"
Um, I'm poly.

"Who do you spend the most time with?"
Um, I'm poly.

"What is your favorite book?"
Um, I'm poly.

"What is your favorite movie?"
Um, I'm poly.

"What's your favorite food?"
Um, I'm poly.

"What about just favorite *type* of food?"
Um, I'm poly.

"Surely you have a favorite ..."
Um, I'm poly.

"If your house was burning and you could only save ..."
Um, I'm poly.

"No, but if you could only save your partner..."
Um, I'm poly.

"Listen! Your partner or your cat? Which would..."
My cats. Plural. Remember? I'm poly.

#polyamory #poly #polyamorous #FeelingSnarky #UnlessHeIsPassedOutHeCanSaveHimselfBetterThanMyPetsCanAndICanAtLeastCarryMyPets #AllTheCats #UhIAmPoly

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Metamours Are Poly In-Laws. Stop Reinventing The Wheel.

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 02:14:16 GMT

From a comment I made in another thread about the lesson I learned about metamours:

I am generally friends with my metamours and some of them are closer to me than our mutual partner. 2 of my closest friends are metafores (a metamour from before) where that metamour relationship lasted longer and is closer than the mutual partner who brought us together.

All that said, if I have a metamour who is "a drama starter", that is not a problem between her and me, that is a problem between my partner and me because he would think that it's acceptable to be involved with someone like that.

All relationships bring conflict. I have conflicted with every metamour I've ever had at one time or another. Occasionally the personality conflict is big enough that we choose to merely coexist. The rest of the time, the conflict is like any other - we work it out and get through it.

Think of metamour relationships like in-laws. You don't have a choice who your in-laws are - they come with your partner. If your partner keeps a relationship with them, that's because they see value in those relationships even if you don't have the same value system. You can try to befriend them or you can largely ignore them, whatever you think is appropriate for in-law relationships, but they *will* affect your romantic relationship one way or another depending on how close your partner is to them.

And if you have a problem with your in-laws, then you really have a problem with that partner for choosing to remain connected to them. If the problem is not about how they're influencing your relationship but just about personality differences, then you work through it with them directly until you find a balance you can both live with.

Poly people like to think we're inventing the wheel, that no one has ever done anything like what we do before. But most of the skills necessary to navigate poly relationships are available to us through our other relationships and our other practices.

Metamours are basically in-laws. You can't make your partner choose your in-laws based on your preferences without overriding agency and utilizing coercion so you learn to deal or you recognize that the problem is between you and your partner for having incompatible relationship goals.

"Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

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Hey, I Heard Of You!

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:44:57 GMT

Me: One of my boyfriends ...

Him: Wait a minute, did you say"one of", as in former or plural?

Me: Plural.

Him: Is that, whaddya call it, poly ... amorous?

Me: Yes! I'm impressed you know the word!

Him: Well, a friend was telling me about this girl he knows ... Wait, what's your name?

Me: [gives real name]

Him: Yeah! My friend [name] was telling me about you!

Me: Yep I know him!

#MyReputationPrecedesMe #RealConversationsIHave #AtLeastTheseRumorsWereTrue

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Even Casual Relationships Still Hurt, And Even When You're Poly

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 21:35:03 GMT

From April 30, 2019

Y'know what? Breakups are not any easier when you're poly, and not even when you have casual hookups.

I knew before we started that my FWB and I had an expiration date. I knew that it was always going to be literally good friends with some extra and then back to friends. I "knew the deal going in" and it was always a lower emotional involvement than other relationships.

By mutual decision and a calm discussion, it still fucking hurts to lose a relationship. Having existing partners, having a really good date recently with a new person and feeling some NRE and hope about its potential, knowing ahead of time that the end was coming, knowing ahead of time that it was always temporary ... none of this stops it from hurting.

Poly people are still people. Loss isn't any less painful just because we have other partners. Loss also isn't any less painful just because we accepted the price when we accepted the deal.

I'm fine. I'll heal. But today I'm going to be sad.

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Is There Commitment In A Polyamorous Relationship?

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 17:06:29 GMT

www.quora.com/Is-there-commitment-in-a-polyamorous-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Is there commitment in a polyamorous relationship?

A. I always find it weird and disturbing that people seem to think that sexual exclusivity is the ONLY thing people can commit to, when it's is CLEARLY not the only thing that they commit to in their own relationships.

If you have any question at all about how polyamorous people commit to each other without sexual exclusivity, I have to wonder what your monogamous relationships look like. Did your wedding vows consist entirely of "I promise to never let anyone else see or touch my genitals" and nothing else? Does your relationship not have any sort of promises or agreements or desires to be there for each other, support each other, encourage each other, through sickness and in health, richer or poorer, good times and bad?

Can you honestly not think of a single thing that people can commit to each other that doesn't have to do with sex?

I've written an entire page detailing all the kinds of things that I commit to in my relationships. It's true, some of them may not be the kinds of things that you would commit to, maybe haven’t even thought about it, or maybe you choose to commit to other things that I don't. I’m not saying that every single person commits to exactly the same things as every other person.

I'm saying that the notion that sexually non-exclusive people can’t be "committed" to each other because of that lack of sexual exclusivity is either a shocking lack of imagination on your part or you are being disingenuous.

Because if I turn the question around to you, and ask you what could you possibly commit to that isn't sexual exclusivity, I know that you will have some answers of things that you commit to in your relationships that don't involve your genitals. So you KNOW there are other things to commit to.

You’re just not applying them to us. But we're people too, and our relationships are every bit as real as yours.

www.TheInnBetween.net/polycommitments.html

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How To Find A Discreet, Suitable Man For My Wife

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 20:29:52 GMT

www.quora.com/What-is-the-safest-most-discreet-way-to-find-a-suitable-man-for-my-wife-to-have-sex-with-We-are-new-to-this-type-of-open-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is the safest, most discreet way to find a suitable man for my wife to have sex with? We are new to this type of open relationship.

A. For the love of whatever you find holy, don't "find a suitable man for [your] wife". She is an adult woman. She has her own preferences, desires, opinions, needs, wants, and boundaries. And since it's her body and her experiences that'll be involved here, none of those things have anything at all to do with you.

I know, I know, "but she's my wife! What happens to her affects me!" Sorry, but in this case, it has nothing to do with you. She is the sole arbiter of her. Only she should have any say at all in what she does with her body, mind, emotions, and time. If she loves you, she'll take into consideration how her actions with another affect you, but ultimately, this is something that is happening *to her*. It's something that *she* is experiencing, not you. You are not relevant in this equation.

Therefore, you should not insert yourself into this experience for her - not to "find a suitable man" for her, not to control or dictate the encounter, not for anything. This is all about her, not you. Stay the fuck out of it.

As for "safe" and "discreet", several online dating apps are adequate for people looking for hookups. Your wife (and her alone) can create a profile sharing what she (and only she) is looking for, and she can be a grown up and do her own homework on vetting potential partners.
She chose you, didn't she? Either she is capable of finding her own partners that are good enough for her, or she isn't. If she isn't, that says something about you. If she is, then let her go about her business and trust that she loves you enough to take care of her relationship with you.

Relevant:

You Can't Be Trusted - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/294586.html

Before We Open Up, Let's Discuss Some Boundaries - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/359151.html

It's Not All About You - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/313759.html

Don't I Get A Say In Their Relationship? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/311860.html

But We NEED Rules To Keep People From Lying To Us! - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/310810.html

What Kind Of Partner Will You Be When Your Partner Wants To Do Something Scary? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/371654.html

How do you bring a healthy third person into an existing marriage? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/368069.html

It Is Never OK To Restrict Someone Else Even If They "Agree" To It - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/363349.html

On Autonomy And Agreements And "Boundaries" In Poly Relationships - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/359626.html

I Love You, Just Don't Disrupt Anything - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/275094.html

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This History & Meaning Of The Term "Open Relationship" Is Not What You Think

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 17:42:02 GMT

Q. What is a open marriage?

A. The term "open marriage" was coined by Nena and George O'Neill, and they intended it to mean a partnership between two equal individuals that fostered and encouraged personal growth through the development of a complex network of interpersonal relationships outside of the marriage. They felt (and the research supports) that interpersonal relationships were healthier when the individuality of each person in the relationship was maintained and celebrated and ties to other people were welcomed.

The context in which the concept was developed was post WWII when women had spent time in the work force, being independent and heads of their own households while the men were at war, and now the men were coming home and pushing the women back in the kitchen.

In order to convince women that their place was in the home, the US started a campaign to make marriage the cornerstone of the family, and to make one's marriage be one's everything - friend, lover, soulmate, confidante, the person who could satisfy your every single need, to supersede all other relationships with extended family and even with religion and community. This way, it was thought, women wouldn't be tempted to go outside of the home and take jobs away from men or congregate in public where men were used to going.

This turned out to lead to some extremely dysfunctional and deeply unsatisfying relationships. The O'Neills believed that spouses needed to retain their individuality and their independence by maintaining close relationships with other people in order to come together as partners, who could then bring their best selves to the partnership to build resilience into the partnership.

All subsequent research into romantic relationships supports this theory. People who have a strong emotional support network outside of their romantic partner report more satisfaction within their romantic relationships, better conflict resolution skills, stronger bonds during both good times and bad, and more resilience when it comes to breakups and the death of a loved one.

Gender studies that show women having better social support networks vs. men maintaining only superficial ties to other men (leaving their spouse to be their sole source of emotional support) reveal that these women who experience the death of their spouse are better able to live fulfilling lives after their widowhood and they live longer than their male counterparts, for instance. This is thought to be a contributing factor to the difference in mortality rate between the genders.

In the O'Neill's book, they mentioned in one little section deep in the middle that having a romantic relationship in which both partners are open and honest with each other about who they are, what they think, what they feel, and what they want, and in which the partners support and encourage each other's personal growth, just might possibly maybe potentially allow room for extramarital sexual relationships, perhaps.

Because sex sells, this is the one thing that everyone remembered about the book, and now "open marriage" is synonymous with "extramarital sexual relationships". The O'Neills hated this and Nena O'Neill wrote a follow-up book where she backtracked and tried to put that genie back in the bottle. But it was too late. Now everyone thinks it means a married couple that has sex with other people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Marriage_(book)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201101/open-marriage-healthy-marriage
https://people.com/archive/george-and-nena-oneill-helped-to-open-marriage-now-theyd-like-to-close-it-a-little-vol-8-no-25

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What's The Most Challenging Part Of Open Relationships For You?

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 17:28:26 GMT

www.quora.com/Are-you-in-an-open-relationship-If-so-what-is-the-most-challenging-part-for-you/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Are you in an open relationship? If so, what is the most challenging part for you?

A. Having to constantly answer questions about how “difficult” my relationships are, or people wondering how I deal with jealousy or scheduling … basically dealing with other people thinking that I’m doing anything at all different in my relationships than they’re doing.

I have relationships, just like everyone else. Some of them are effortless, some of them take work, some of them are totally wrong for me, some of them are bliss, pretty much all of them are some combination of the above, just like everyone else.

The only difference is that I have more than one romantic relationship at a time. Everyone has more than one relationship at a time - you all have parents, siblings, friends, coworkers, in-laws, relatives, exes, co-parents, etc. You all have to manage and juggle multiple important people in your lives. Those relationships are all different from each other, even when they have similarities.

We are having all the same relationships and they feel the same way to all of us. I’m just overlapping my romantic ones, that’s all. There’s nothing more or less challenging about my multiple romantic relationships than about any of my other relationships or about other people’s relationships.

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Feel Your Feelings Then Choose The Relationship To Match

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 17:20:35 GMT

Answering that last question about casual sex without feelings verbalized something that I felt but hadn't quite brought to the forefront of my brain yet.

I have always been confused by people who ask things like how to have casual sex without developing feelings. And I think it's because they're coming at it from literally the opposite direction as I do.

I don't have casual sex and then try to make my feelings match. I have casual sex BECAUSE CASUAL ARE MY FEELINGS.

They're choosing the structure and then trying to shoehorn the feelings in to match the structure.

I'm looking at my feelings and going "what structure works best with these feelings?" and then I have that kind of relationship.

And it occurs to me that this is exactly the same problem as the Unicorn Hunters and like every poly newbie ever. They're all picking a structure first and then interviewing people for a job position that requires a mandatory suite of emotions.

Whether it's casual sex or emotionally intimate partnerships, I have the feelings first, and then pick the structure to match. If a person is simply not prone to high sexual attraction / low emotional attachment, then by having the feelings first and choosing a matching structure, they will, just by the "signal flow" if you will, rarely or never have casual sex.

If a person tends to have high sexual attraction for people without a strong emotional attachment, and they have the feelings first and pick the structure to match, then they will just naturally have lots of casual sex without "catching feelings".

But if a person picks the structure first, and either they pick a structure that runs contrary to their natural tendencies of sexual attraction vs. emotional attachment or they are the sort of person that is capable of a variety of mixtures of those two things, then they try to fit people into the structure, they are likely to wind up having the "wrong" feelings for the type of relationships they are in.

And then, if that person has any sense of entitlement or lack of respect for their partners' agency, they are likely to use that relationship structure to coerce their partners into something they don't want.

This is being girlfriendzoned. This is when someone sabotages condoms to get someone pregnant to keep them around. This is when they dismiss the other person's feelings with "you knew the rules when you signed up". This is cowboying and cuckooing.

We, as a culture, pick our relationship structures first and then try to fit people in them. We do this with friends, with intimate partnerships, and with fuckbuddies.

Don't do that.

Feel your feelings, and then pick the relationship structure to match. If you don't have casual-sex-feelings, then don't get into a casual sex relationship. That's how this works. It doesn't work by getting into a casual sex relationship first and then trying to prevent yourself from developing feelings other than casual-sex-feelings.

I don't worry about "catching feelings" for my casual sex partners because the whole reason they are casual sex partners is because the feelings I have for them are casual-sex-feelings. I'm not going to "catch feelings" because I already HAVE feelings. The feelings I have are casual sex ones. I have high sexual attraction + low emotional connection feelings. That's why it's a casual sex relationship.

This doesn't mean that my feelings absolutely won't change over time, but that's a different discussion. All relationships metamorphose over time. My point is that the reason why people have such a hard time with the concept of casual sex and how to handle "catching feelings" is the same reason why certain types of poly people try to prescript their relationships into equilateral triads or whatever - they pick the structure first and then try to find people to fit.

You will have much more success in all your relationships if you have your feelings first and then pick the relationship to match. And "casual-sex-feelings" are valid feelings. There is no need to prevent "catching feelings" in the event of a casual sex relationship if the feelings you have are the ones that match.

Image at www.instagram.com/p/BVOHz8YhnWU/

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How Do You Deal With Jealousy In Your Open Relationship?

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 15:26:55 GMT

www.quora.com/How-do-I-decrease-jealousy-to-a-minimum-when-in-an-open-relationschip/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. How do you personally deal with jealousy in your open relationship?

A. The same way I deal with any negative emotion - by introspecting and talking it out until I find the root cause, and then I address the root cause.

Honestly, it’s like people think jealousy is some magical mystery compulsion that comes over people from out of nowhere and totally takes them over like a brain-eating parasite or something.

Jealousy is just an emotion. So is anger. So is sadness. It’s not magic, it’s not a curse, it’s not a parasite or a disease, it’s just an emotion. We have emotions, we deal with them. Monogamy never prevented anyone from feeling jealousy either, I just don’t try to control my partners when I feel something negative. I look at it head-on and actually solve the problem.

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What If You And Your Best Friend Like The Same Person?

Sun, 05 Sep 2021 00:15:36 GMT

www.quora.com/What-should-I-do-if-my-best-friend-and-I-like-the-same-guy/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What would you do when you and your best friend like the same person?

A. The same thing that I do when anyone and I like the same person - find out what the other person wants. Their input is kinda important here, and really the deciding factor. If the other person likes us both, then we both date him. If he only likes one of us, then he dates one of us. If he isn’t interested in either of us, then neither of us date him.

His consent makes any potential conflict pretty much irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how much I like someone, they have to want to be with me in order for me to be with them. If they don’t want to be with me, then no amount of my feelings for them will change that fact (short of overriding their agency). His relationships with other people are not my business to control or dictate. He can have relationships with whomever he wants and manage them however he wants.

If what he wants or how he does the things that he does conflicts with my value system, resulting in a loss of respect for him, then I can choose to remove myself from the situation. If what he wants or how he does the things that he does infringes or imposes (negatively) in any way on the well-being of my body, mind, emotions, finances, or anything else that belongs to me, I can choose to remove myself from the situation.

But him just liking someone else? Him dating someone else? Him being romantic or sexual with someone else? None of that has anything to do with me, so if I and my best friend happen to like the same guy, well, there’s nothing TO be done about that. I do what I do with the people who consent to doing those things with me, my friends do what they do with the people who consent to doing those things with them.

It’s like asking me “what do you do when you and your friend both like the same restaurant?” Uh, we both eat there whenever we feel like eating there (sometimes together, most of the time apart) as long as the restaurant is open and catering to our business. Whether my friend likes that restaurant or not has nothing to do with what I do about liking the restaurant, except if my friend doesn’t like it, I probably won’t invite them to eat there with me.

I actually find that a lot of my friends’ exes or current partners make good dating partners for me too. Not always, but often. As I like to say, polyamorous people come with references! If my friend likes someone, then at the very least, he’s probably a pretty decent human being, and then I get the bonus of having metamours that I already know I like and get along with.

Of course, we don’t always have the same taste in partners. I’m straight, for instance, and most of my friends are bi or pan. And just because someone is a decent human being, it doesn’t necessarily translate to romantic or sexual interest. A lot of my friends’ other partners are great people to be around, but I’m not interested in dating them. That’s OK too.

The point is, who my friends are interested in is irrelevant to how I handle being interested in someone myself. The person I’m interested in has the deciding vote in what happens there - without his consent, it’s a non-starter. With his consent, we can negotiate the kind of relationship we want to have with each other, and whether anyone else is interested in him has fuck-all to do with what he and I negotiate between ourselves. That’s between them.

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Have You Ever Seen An Open Relationships Work?

Sat, 04 Sep 2021 22:57:17 GMT

www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-be-in-an-open-relationship/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Have you ever been in or seen an open relationship that worked?

A. These are always such weird questions. Even though the divorce rate for monogamy is around 50% (for first marriages, it’s way higher for second and third marriages) and basically 100% for every relationship prior to the marriage, and even though abuse runs rampant in monogamous relationships, and we all know and have all been in relationships that ended and that the people came away with regretting ever getting into, nobody asks “have you ever been in or seen a closed or monogamous relationship that worked?”

And, as someone else already pointed out, you have to define what you mean by “worked”. Some people think that the only marker for a “successful” relationship is if somebody dies. Personally, I think that’s rather gruesome, but some people seem to think that one person outliving the other, no matter how happy or unhappy the people were before death claimed one of them, makes a relationship “successful”.

I’m of the camp that thinks any relationship that makes the participants feel content or satisfied with the relationship for the majority of the time together and/or accomplishes the goals they set out together, is a successful relationship, no matter how long it lasted. As the saying goes - sometimes people come together for a reason or a season in addition to those that happen for a lifetime.

If I have a relationship with someone and we have certain goals or purposes for our relationship, and we accomplish them and then go our separate ways, happy with the outcome, that relationship would be successful to me. If I have a relationship with someone that lasts only for a short time, and life then takes us in different directions, but we were happy and satisfied with our relationship while we were in it and content with the way that it ended even if we are also saddened by the separation, that would also count as a successful relationship to me.

By those measures, I’d say about half of my relationships since I started having polyamorous relationships have been successful, including the relationship I have with my spouse, who I’ve been with for over 14 years now (and in an openly poly relationship from the beginning). One of my former romantic partners has transitioned to a platonic friend and business partner and we are writing a book together on how to break up ethically. I’d say my relationship with him is one of my greater successes, as we’ve managed to find a way to make our relationship work for us through a bunch of different life stages and different needs from each other in ways that we are both happy with.

I’d say that’s also a pretty average track record for all of the poly relationships of all the people I’ve known in all my years as a community organizer in the poly community (which means I’ve known a TON of poly people). Considering poly people have the potential to have more partners than monogamists do (unless someone is a *very* active serial monogamist) since we can overlap them, having a 50% or better success rate is pretty good.

However, since most monogamous people I know consider the mere act of ending a relationship to make it a failure, I’d say that, of all the monogamous people I’ve ever known (and since this is mostly still a monogamous society, I have also known a TON of mono people), the vast, vast, vast majority of monogamous relationships I’ve ever seen have not worked (using their own definition for “worked” or “worked out” or “successful”). 50% success vs. way more than 50% failure might imply that open relationships are probably more successful than monogamous ones.

The truth is, that all relationships work or don’t work because of the people in them, not because of the structure. Some people are compatible together, many people aren’t, some people are compatible only in certain kinds of relationships (while many of those kinds of relationships are prohibited by the culture around them so they often don’t even get to try the one where they might actually “work” out), and some people are compatible together for a while and then less compatible as they grow and change over the course of their lives.

It’s never the structure of the relationship that makes it “work” or not “work”. It’s the people in the relationship.

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Unicorn Hunter Bait And Switch Power Counter-Move

Sat, 04 Sep 2021 20:12:14 GMT

I just heard this amazing power counter-move that I propose ought to become Standard Operating Procedure for polys:

You meet someone through some kind of online sphere, probably a dating service or social media of some kind. It progresses to plans for a "date".
After the date has been made but before the date happens, they spring "btw, my pre-existing other partner is coming too" on you. You did not know they had a pre-existing other partner and/or they only have the one pre-existing other partner and/or you have not established your own romantic / sexual interest in said other partner.
You immediately invite a minimum of 2 other people who are special or important to you - preferably romantic / sexual partners, but any 2+ people who are important will do. Bonus points if at least one of them is cismale.

It doesn't matter if you are open to the possibility of being involved with two parts of a couple under the right circumstances. If someone pulls the Unicorn Hunter Bait & Switch on you by making a date with you and giving you the impression that it's a date between the two of you, and then "invites" their existing partner along after the plan has been made, you should "invite" someone else along too.

But it ought to be at least 2 other people. If it's just one other person, it could turn into a swingers Bait & Switch. While most UHers are not comfortable with the thought of their unicorn having any other partners, wife-swapping is still a thing that people know about, and so may be familiar *enough* for a UHer doing this predatory maneuver to counter-move against your counter-move.

And if you invite only one other partner who is a woman or presents as a woman or is perceived as a woman, this could just amp up a predatory man in a UH couple to attempt a foursome fantasy of multiple "women" all doting on him and doing Hot Bi Babe stuff for his pleasure.

Having 2+ other partners along distributes the numbers unevenly in your favor, re-imbalancing the power distribution that they are counting on having with their 2-on-1. This is very unsettling for people who are deliberately setting up situations to disempower their dates, as a Bait & Switch suggests they are attempting to do (even if subconsciously).

If they're not doing this to disempower anyone (again, whether they recognize they are doing it for this reason or not), then the thought of their date inviting their other partners when they invited their own other partner ought not to feel threatening or unbalanced to them.

I tend to invite people I'm interested in to public or social events first, especially if I will have a partner or two there. This gets the whole "meeting the other partners" out of the way early and I basically throw them in the deep end by seeing how they respond right up front to me having to share my attention among several people at once. Plus, how we behave in front of our friends is often different than how we behave on a first date with someone we're hoping to impress. So if they invite their other partners to a party or club or whatever I invited them to, I would think that's great!

But then again, I wouldn't be doing a Bait & Switch. I would say right there in the invitation "I'm going to a friend's party and several of my partners will be there. You're welcome to meet me there, and also to bring guests!" People who decline to meet me in public settings tend to get rejected pretty soon, so it's kind of a litmus test for me as to how poly they are. But now I'm digressing.

Odds are, you will get a last minute cancellation from your "date". In which case, you now have plans with 2 of your partners / friends / family! Go out and have a good time!

BONUS MOVE:

They reschedule supposedly just the two of you, but pull the Bait & Switch a second time, leading you to believe it's a 2-person date and only after the date has been arranged, they mention bringing their "other".
You invite your 2+ guests again but don't mention it to them this time, so that when the couple shows up (which they will this time because), they are not expecting 3+ people.

It is not necessary to lie about inviting your 2+ guests, just don't mention them when they pull the Bait & Switch on you. I am not normally in favor of lies even of omission, but I do think, in this particular set of circumstances, it's not unreasonable to assume that they will assume that if they invite a partner, you will invite 2+ partners *because that is how it already happened*.

Now, if they have the gall to say "btw, my partner is coming along, but could you not invite your other partners this time? We want it to be just the 3 of us", well, I won't advocate deliberately lying about inviting them, that's your call to make. I, personally, would probably just end the game right there by calling them on their hypocrisy and predatory behaviour before blocking them. But it's an option one could take.

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Have You Ever Invited Another Person Into Your Marriage?

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 21:51:26 GMT

www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-invited-another-person-into-your-marriage-If-so-what-was-the-outcome/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Have you ever invited another person into your marriage? If so, what was the outcome?

A. No, because it’s not possible.

People seem to think that they can build a house (a relationship) with someone, get it just the way they like it, then decide that they want it a little bit bigger, and merely add on a rumpus room to the back with no extra muss or fuss so that the house is mostly unchanged, just a little bit bigger and with little inconvenience to those who already lived there.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

Each relationship is its own thing, and requires nurturing in order to thrive. Even when 3 or more people are all romantically involved with each other, it’s not the same house just with more rooms. It’s more houses, perhaps all on the same property but sometimes not even that.

The more successful open relationships (and I define success by the happiness and satisfaction of the participants both during and after a relationship, not the longevity) operate on principles of individuality and respect for agency. Only when people who are partnered can see themselves as whole people, not halves of a whole, not partial people, not a relationship construct, are those people capable of having dynamic, vibrant, healthy, nuanced, 3-dimensional relationships with other people.

The people you get involved with deserve to be involved with a whole person, not a construct. They are not “joining your marriage”, they are relating to *you*, a human being, and anyone else they are getting involved with as well. That’s multiple relationships to maintain, not one giant relationship blob that just gets larger and subsumes everyone in its path.

I was polyamorous before I met my now-spouse. We got into a relationship as poly people and the relationship was polyamorous from the start. He and I have always had other partners and we had other partners when we started dating. Since we are both straight, the odds of us both dating the same person are almost nil.

However, one of his other girlfriends and I have a queerplatonic relationship that basically looks like a romantic relationship in all respects except for the sex. She was not “invited into our marriage”. He met her years ago at a kink convention that he and I and his other girlfriend attended. They hit it off. They began dating. She and I knew of each other through online poly communities, but after they started dating, we became very close and will remain “family” even if one or both of us ends our relationship with our mutual partner.

She is not a part of “our marriage”. She has her own relationship with him and her own relationship with me. Same as all of his other partners and he does the same with my other partners. Most of the metamours and metametamours (a metamour is one’s partner’s other partner) know each other and have friendships or other kinds of independent relationships with each other, so we have a large family dynamic together.

But each dyad, each partnership is its own relationship. And that’s the only way that each relationship can remain healthy.

Read these articles:

The Most Skipped Step[s] When "Opening A Relationship" + 1 - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/376186.html
Triads Are Advanced Polyamory Not The Beginner Starter Poly Package for Just Opening Up n00bs - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/390353.html
You Cannot "Add Someone To Your Relationship". Stop Saying That - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/364636.html
"Opening Up" A Relationship Doesn't Work, Try This Method Instead - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/375573.html
Honey, Let's Add On A New Girlfriend To Our Existing Relationship! - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/334953.html
How Impact Bias Affects Polyamory, Poly n00bs, And Couples Wanting To "Open Up" - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/384668.html
How do you bring a healthy third person into an existing marriage? - https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/368069.html

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What Does Commitment Mean In Polyamory?

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 02:30:53 GMT

https://www.quora.com/What-does-committed-relationship-mean-in-terms-of-polyamory/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What does "committed relationship" mean in terms of polyamory?

A. There is an atheist saying: “I contend that we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you”. It means that everyone lacks belief in gods, so when you ask what it’s like to not believe in *your* gods, it’s much like what it’s like when you don’t believe in other gods.

Commitment in polyamory is much the same thing. Everyone commits to a variety of things in their relationships. Polys just don’t commit to sexual exclusivity. Otherwise, we commit to many of the same things. When you took your wedding vows (or when people do, if you, reader, personally haven’t gotten married), there were all kinds of commitments in those vows, and I’d wager that none of them were “I promise never to let my genitals touch anyone else’s genitals”.

For instance, these are my wedding vows. I’d bet some of them sound pretty similar to a lot of your monogamous wedding vows:

I commit myself to you
As your spouse
To learn and grow with,
To explore and adventure with,
To build and create with,
To support you and respect you
In everything as an equal partner,
In the foreknowledge of joy and pain,
Strength and weariness,
Direction and doubt,
For as long as the love shall last.
We exchange these rings
To symbolize our connection to one another.
They represent a commitment
To honor and respect one another
And to recognize
The agency and essential humanity of each of us.

See? Nothing in there about genitals or sex. All we did, really, was leave out the parts about forsaking all others and the part about forever, but the rest is pretty similar to monogamous vows.

A friend of mine once said that being poly is kind of like being vegetarian, where people find out that she doesn’t eat meat, so they ask “OMG what do you even eat then?!” as if the absence of meat means that, literally, the majority of foodstuffs on the planet don’t exist. There’s so much more to eat besides beef, chicken, lettuce and Wonder bread, and if you thought about it, you’d realize that you eat a lot of the same things that vegetarians do too, they just don’t eat meat.

Because polys have to think a little more deliberately about the kinds of things we commit to, since there isn’t really a social template to follow and we can’t just do things by default, some of us probably have come up with some commitments that monogamous people don’t make. I’m not saying we’re *identical* to monogamy only without sexual exclusivity.

In fact, I’d even bet that *monogamists* aren’t identical to each other and y’all make some commitments amongst yourselves that are unique, or at least not common or that not everyone else makes too.

I’m also childfree by choice and solo poly, which means that in addition to not being sexually exclusive, I also don’t make commitments to things like co-parenting or cohabiting. So, I’m sure that some of my personal commitments are things that other people don’t make in their relationships. But they’re still normal sorts of things to commit to that even mono relationships could benefit from.

And a lot of them are things that a lot of people do commit to, but so much of monogamy is by default and by implicit assumption. So, if pressed, a lot of people could probably admit to some of them being values they also hold, they just never really thought about it or said it out loud like a vow.

I have so many things that I commit to in relationships, that I wrote a whole page on my website that I managed to get more than 20 blog pieces out of when I broke it down by each commitment that I make in my relationships:

www.TheInnBetween.net/polycommitments.html

The full explanation of each point is on that page. The bullet list is:

I am committed to respecting my partners' autonomy, agency, and personal sovereignty - that is, respecting their right to make informed, un-coerced decisions and to be responsible for their own decisions, their right to act according to their own free will, and their right to own their body and control what happens to it.
I am committed to respecting my partners’ right to make their own life choices.
I am committed to doing my best to practice flexibility and compassion with regards to the paths my partners may take in life.
I am committed to respecting the roles that other people play in my partners’ lives.
I am committed to allowing my metamour relationships to find their own structure and direction without forcing them into a predetermined shape.
I am committed to considering my metamours as "family" regardless of the structure or emotional closeness of our individual metamour relationships and to treat them accordingly.
I am committed to working through problems with my partners starting with the assumption that we love and cherish each other and are therefore really on the same side.
I am committed to supporting my partners in being the best version of themselves that they can be.
I am committed to taking care of myself so that I can be the best partner I can be.
I am committed to protecting the safety of myself and my partners through informed consent and risk-benefit analysis of behaviour, prioritizing evidence-based reason above emotional justification.
I am committed to addressing issues early in order to prevent them from becoming too big to handle.
I am committed to prioritizing situations, not partners, because all my partners are a priority.
I am committed to including my partners on the higher ring of priorities in my life (partners / work / pets / family emergencies / etc.) and to not passing them over in favor of other events or people too often.
I am committed to accepting assistance from my partners when needed, and sometimes just when it would be nice.
I am committed to limiting my actions and words which have the intent or goal of harming my partners, although I acknowledge that some decisions I may make for the benefit of myself or my relationships may result in hurt as a consequence, unintentional or not.
I am committed to be as clear about my expectations as possible, both with myself and with my partners.
I am committed to choosing the Path of Greatest Courage by always being honest with myself and my partners while simultaneously allowing compassion to dictate the delivery of my honesty.
I am committed to prioritizing the happiness of the individuals over the longevity of the group if / when those two values are in conflict.
I am committed to discussing harm reduction plans and contingency plans for when bad things happen, because I understand that we can’t always prevent them from happening.
I am committed to allowing the relationship to find its own structure and direction without forcing it into a predetermined shape and to considering alternate structures and directions before automatically resorting to breaking up when situations and priorities change.
I am committed to becoming a friendly ex should a breakup occur and the situation is such that it would not be harmful to remain in contact, with the understanding that “friendly ex” is a statement on my own actions, not the structure of the post-breakup relationship.
I am committed to choosing partners who share my values so that they also make similar commitments to themselves, to me and our relationship, and by extension, my other partners (their metamours).
I am committed to not expecting anyone to live up to the Perfect Poly standard, including myself.
I am committed to allowing myself and my partners the forgiveness and the freedom to be flawed, to have bad days, and to occasionally fail to live up to expectations or commitments, providing that the bad times do not outnumber the good times in either frequency or emotional weight and the commitment to prioritizing individual happiness over longevity still holds.

Honestly, the frequency with which monogamous people ask polys incredulously about what we could possibly commit to if sexual exclusivity is off the table kinda makes *me* want to question *them* about the kinds of things *they* commit to, since they can’t seem to come up with what else we might commit to on their own.

“But what do you commit to if not sexual exclusivity?”

“Wait a minute, what do *you* commit to? Is sexual exclusivity really the only possible relationship commitment you can come up with? Is that really the only part of your relationship that makes it stand out as something special? That elevates this relationship above all others? Is this really the only difference between your marriage and all your other relationships? That you have sex with just this one person? What happens if one of you gets sick and you can’t have sex with them anymore? Is that the only thing holding your relationship together? If you can’t have sex, does your relationship fall apart because you have no other commitments to each other? What do YOU commit to besides sexual exclusivity?”

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Would You Be The 4th Female?

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 02:11:20 GMT

www.quora.com/For-women-would-you-move-into-a-house-with-a-couple-that-share-a-3rd-female-and-that-would-make-you-the-4th-female-All-share-a-bed-and-have-sex-with-each-other-Why-or-why-not/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. For women, would you move into a house with a couple that share a 3rd female and that would make you the 4th female? All share a bed and have sex with each other. Why or why not?

A.

I could not live with people who “share” other human beings like they’re a milkshake to be shared on a date. I could not trust them to treat *me* as a human being, because they have clearly shown they are willing to dehumanize people for their own gratification.
I could not live with people who call women “females”. There’s a whole body of literature on what’s wrong with that term.
I could not live with people who assume that cohabiting automatically means “would make you the 4th female”. The question assumes that “move into a house” necessarily implies a polyfidelitious arrangement. I’m not sure what kind of houses y’all have been living in, but I’ve had a number of roommates and housemates, some of whom were also romantically involved with each other, and never was simply “move into a house” defined as “would make you the 4th female”. In order for that to happen, there would have to be an invitation to join their polyfidelitious relationship, not just live under their roof.
I am straight. I am not sexually attracted to women.
I have autonomy. To require me to have sex with anyone, even if they were the gender of my orientation, is coercive. Even when I do enter into a romantic and sexual relationship, I still retain the ability to give and revoke consent at any time. Sex is never a *requirement*. If, at any time, someone is required to have sex with anyone in order to maintain their housing, that is deeply coercive indeed. Certainly I would never get into a relationship with someone where sex with *other people* is required in order to maintain the relationships I want. That’s really fucked up.
Even though I do enjoy group sex, I do not enjoy it all the time. Every relationship needs to be nurtured on its own, which means that each of the 4 people in that house needs to be able to explore their individual relationships with each other person independently and each of those relationships needs to be able to grow in whatever ways that relationship wants to grow. Forcing all of the relationships to be the “same” is also coercive and codependent. So even assuming my orientation matched *and* I was interested in a sexual relationship with each person, I still wouldn’t join a group that expected group sex all the time.

I was actually in a relationship that did that in a defacto way. It was quite toxic and insidious. They never said that group sex was expected or required, but they all insisted on spending so much group time together that nobody ever really got any alone-time with each other, and every time someone had sex without the others present, somebody would have some kind of emotional crisis about being “left out” or “abandoned” and it took weeks of tears and arguments to make everyone feel better again. It was so bad that I eventually lost interest in sex completely because it was a minefield.
I have several sleep disorders. I do not co-sleep well. I always have my own bedroom for my own health and sanity.

In short, there is absolutely nothing about that scenario that is appealing and everything about it is a red flag for an abusive situation. And I say this as someone who has a spouse that is a straight man who has (at least) 2 other partners where the 4 of us get together and have some kind of kinky group sex.

The difference is that there is no cohabitation, no expectations or requirements of co-sleeping, definitely no coercion where everyone is required to all have sex together (the 3 of us women are not actually in direct sexual relationships with each other, we are just all in a relationship with him), and none of us are treated as objects to be “shared”. We all respect each other’s autonomy and see each other as human beings, not “female” animals, sex objects, need fulfillment machines, nannies, bang-maids, harem members, or possessions.

Every word in this question drips with entitlement, assumptions, misogyny, and co-dependence. I wouldn’t enter into a scenario like this if I was homeless and desperately needed a place to stay for survival.

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