Wicked Wednesdays No 19 “On Polyamory”
Welcome to “Wicked Wednesdays” a weekly podcast about my experience as an amateur porn actor and producer. I’ll be sharing my insights into the process of making porn, how we got started and lots of candid talk about sex and and relationships with and emphasis BDSM, Kink and Polyamorous Relationships. Obviously this will not be a kid safe podcast, so discretion is advised.
In this episode I answer a listener's question about Polyamory and BDSM and address some common misconceptions about Polyamory and ethical non-monogamy. This will be the first in a series about Poly and how poly and BDSM overlap, as well as some poly relationship advice. I also talk about the dangers of assuming that monogamy works for everyone and the problems with trying to force everyone into lifelong monogamous relationships. We will be returning to our BDSM 101 Series next week. Full show notes can be found at:
https://www.patreon.com/wickedfellow
On Polyamory
I’ve always mentioned that I’d talk about poly on this podcast and have only mentioned it tangentially but a question I received this week gives me a good segue into the topic.
“Is there room for people in BDSM who aren’t poly? It seems that all the Doms I meet are poly and that is never something I’ve tried. I feel like I’m pretty monogamous and I’m afraid I’ll get hurt if I do this.”
So yes, a large proportion of the people I know in the kink community are poly, there is considerable overlap in the Poly/Kink Venn diagram, but its not absolute and I know kinky people who are strictly monogamous and poly people who have no interest in being kinky.
First lets talk about what “poly” is. Polyamory is also called ethical non-monogamy and the fact that it has to be differentiated from “non-ethical-non-monogamy” should give you an idea of how strong the bias is towards monogamy in almost all modern cultures.
At its simplest Polyamory means having more than one romantic partner concurrently. Most people practice serial monogamy and will have several romantic partners over their lifetime, poly folks have multiple romantic partners at the same time. I’m going to structure this around common questions I get when talking to people about poly.
"So Poly is just sleeping around?”
No, at least not by the majority of people who practice this form of relationship. Much like BDSM there is no international board of standards for Polyamory and there are many different ways to practice ethical non-monogamy. Polyamory meaning “many loves” implies that you have actual relationships with more than one person, those relationships are usually more durable than a one night stand. The line between hooking up, friends with benefits and dating can be blurry, just like in monogamous relationships, but overall in poly someone isn’t your “partner” unless you would consider them “Dating” in the mono word.
“So it’s just like friends with benefits right?”
No, not anymore than dating someone is “friends with benefits.” I think the misunderstanding is the depth of the relationships. So people would define dating as seeing someone regularly, possibly living together, and sharing more of your life than just sex. If you are only seeing someone for sex but you never hang out, you never go shopping together or share any day to day activities, I don’t think people would see that as dating. (There is nothing wrong with a strictly sexual relationship, I only use this to illustrate the difference.)
Poly is dating more than one person, having a fully realized relationship with more than one person. It’s not just hooking up with them on occasion, at least by my definition of polyamory.
“So everyone in a poly relationship sleeps together?”
No, not usually anyway. When you are poly your partners partners are called your “metamores” So if Jack is dating Jill and Jill has a partner named John, Jack and John are metamores. Some polyamours relationships do overlap and sometimes all the members of a poly group are romantically involved with each other, (If there are three people involved that is called a Triad, four is a Quartet, five is… who knows, I’ve never encountered a true Poly group of five who were all romantically involved)
But it is much more common that metamores are not romantically involved with each other. Sometimes they don’t even know each other or have never met. But I feel like a big part of the “ethical” in ethical non-monogamy is that all the parties involved at least know about each other.
Some poly groups practice something called “Kitchen Table” poly, which means that all the parties in a group are comfortable hanging out together and being social even if that doesn’t not involve sex. So I could say “I'm getting dinner tonight with my girlfriend and her boyfriend and his partner” Which may sound confusing to someone outside of poly but would be pretty common in the poly word. Some people insist on kitchen table and some don’t do it at all.
Personally I’m somewhere in-between. I want my poly partners to at least meet at some point when they are comfortable. I encourage friendships between them but I do not insist upon it. I’ve learned the hard way that some people just will not get along no matter how well intentioned they are and you cannot force friendships. But I do have a strict policy on “don’t ask don’t tell.
Don’t ask don’t tell, is a form of poly where one of the parties is only comfortable with the situation if they never have to face it, hear about it ect. I’ve never met a “Don’t ask Don’t Tell” poly person who was actually poly. Its an unfortunate situation where they find themselves involved with a poly person and they value that relationship enough to allow that person to continue their poly lifestyle, but they can only handle it if they are not confronted by it. Unfortunately in my experience it never works out in the long run.
“Don’t ask Don’t tell” is also a very common way of non-ethical non-monogamy aka “Cheating”. “
“Oh my wife is fine with me Dating, she just can never meet you, hear about you, or know in anyway that you exist.” While it is not impossible that somewhere that is true, in my experience 99% of the time that means the person is cheating.
So for me, I will not be in a DADT relationship. I fully understand if my partners partners don’t want to hang out and eat dinner together, but I don’t think secrecy works in Poly.
“Can poly people cheat?”
Sure. Like most relationship poly groups have rules and expectations, and secrecy may be one of them. My partners can date whoever they want, that is much of what poly is about, but they would be cheating if they did it secretly and never told me about it. Some poly groups have fairly extensive rules some are very simple. Personally my rule for poly is “Be Considerate” and everything else falls under that rule. I may get into our rules a bit more later, but yes people in poly relationships can cheat and its especially hurtful as by its nature you don’t have to cheat in poly.
“So like, why? Why would I share my partner with someone else?”
Not everyone is monogamous by nature. There is a lot of fascinating research into human evolution, mate selection, various pairings and the durability of those pairings a topic I will probably address in full sometime, but it should not be surprising to you that humans have only recently been strictly monogamous, and not all contemporary humans practice monogamy.
It is true that like most other mammals polygamy is the most common form or non-monogamy, though polyandry is not unheard of in humans or other primates. However you come to it, it is clear that our current monomaniacal culture is a product of religious teachings and societal norms; which should be enough to deflate anyones idea that monogamy is hard wired into humanity as the religious and moral backing for monogamy is, shall we say, problematic. Nowhere in the old or new testament, the ur source from where most people will say we draw our moral and legal codes, will you find a prohibition against polygamy. In fact you will find multiple commandments requiring polygamy.
“But poly just feels wrong to me!”
I'm the first to admit that some people are naturally monogamous. They would have been monogamous even if society hadn’t drilled into them from a very early age that monogamy wasn't just the right way but the only way. However do you really feel that such a one size fits all rule actually works for all of humanity?
It’s finally been accepted by most western peoples that heterosexuality isn’t for everyone, though you will still find plenty of people and cultures where it is still taboo. It’s acknowledged that about 10% of people are not heterosexual, I do not know the percentage of people who are hardwired for monogamy vs polyamory but I do believe that as more and more people reject social, religious, and moral norms that have been laid on them by previous generations you will see more people being comfortable with the idea that not everyone is made for monogamy.
If it doesn't feel right to you that is fine, no one can force you to practice this relationship style (at least not the ethical variety) but I would encourage you to ask yourself why. Why does it feel wrong to you? Is it fear? Jealousy? Are you falling into what you have been taught? I was taught without any shadow of a doubt that homosexuality was wrong, an abomination to god and all the gays were going straight to hell. The problem with that belief is that once you start to pull on the threads the whole thing falls apart.
At the end of the day you have to make your own choices, and that is fine, but before you decide what is right for someone else be sure to ask yourself if you want them deciding what is right for you.
There is still heavy stigmatization surrounding poly. It is not socially acceptable, it is not accepted legally, and people who practice polyamory are subject to significant pressure and castigation from their friends and family.
“I should be enough”
The problem with this attitude in relationships is that you are placing huge demands on yourself and your partner. You don’t go to the same shop to get you teeth fixed, your muffler replaced and your weekly therapy appointment. But you are expecting one person to be everything for you, everything you need in your social relationships, all the time, for the rest of your life. One person, and that means that that person can never change, they cannot learn and grow, they have to be the person you met and decided to be with, unchanged for all time.
Are you still with your first boyfriend or girlfriend? No? Why not? Some people can answer that with yes, and some spectacular lucky people can say that not only are they still together with their first date but that they are still very happy together.
For those people I'm genuinely happy, but expecting everyone to be so fortunate is like expecting to live the rest of your life successive lottery winnings.
It happens so rarely that there are news articles about “Couple happily married for 50 years” But we live in a society that demands we try and do exactly that. And a marriage that doesn't last till death we do part is a “failed marriage”
I believe we are looking at the telescope through the wrong end. In my experience there is no such thing as Mr. or Mrs. Right, there is only Mr right now. I don’t mean that to sound flippant, but the truth is people grow, or at least they should. Are you the same person you were at 18? People are much like trees, That change and growth is especially rapid in the earlier part of your life, and I believe it slows as you grow older. Visit a sapling you planted in a couple years and you will be amazed at the difference, but a 50 year old oak changes very little decade by decade. We are much the same. Growth may slow as we age but it never really stops.
But we’ve superimposed this rigid monogamous culture over a natural and unpredictable process and we wonder why it doesn’t work. People are expected to pair up in their early 20’s and remain together forever. Anything less is a failure. Rubbish, and believe more and more people realize this. But while serial monogamy is widely accepted, polyamory is not and that is interesting to me.
