Honesty and Polyamory

Three times in the recent past, I’ve had strangers ask me to give them an opin­ion on some sit­u­a­tion touch­ing polyamory. Each time, they nev­er com­mu­ni­cat­ed with me again after I did so. I find that rather rude.

But in each case, I was utter­ly hon­est. I don’t think it’s healthy to tip­toe around issues or pre­tend they aren’t there, no mat­ter how uncom­fort­able it is to talk about them. 

Today I post­ed a mes­sage to a poly list that is like­ly to piss off a lot of peo­ple and real­ized that there is a theme that con­nects it to those oth­er three situations.

In each case, the sit­u­a­tions come down to a fail­ure (or refusal) to be com­plete­ly hon­est. Play­ing word games is dis­hon­est. Claim­ing that you want a friend­ship with some­one when all you want is sex is dis­hon­est (by any def­i­n­i­tion of “friend” I’d rec­og­nize). Refus­ing to dis­cuss sex­u­al desires and needs with your spouse is dishonest.

Why is there such a cul­tur­al bias against being whol­ly honest?

Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
Posts created 4259

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Posts

Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.

Back To Top