TechnoMom

Monogamous and Polyamorous People in Relationship

It is pos­si­ble for monog­a­mous and polyamorous peo­ple to have suc­cess­ful long-term rela­tion­ships. It takes major work on both sides. If a cou­ple in a com­mit­ted rela­tion­ship can­not come to a true con­sen­sus about their agree­ments, there are sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems. Con­sen­sus deci­sion-mak­ing takes more time, more ener­gy, and bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion than com­pro­mis­es, but it is well worth the effort.

One thing that’s com­mon in the sit­u­a­tion, but that I per­son­al­ly think can­not have any place in any healthy rela­tion­ship is a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) agree­ment. That’s just a way of enabling denial on the part of the monog­a­mous partner.

Some­times there is no real way to rec­on­cile two peo­ple’s con­flict­ing needs. If Frankie needs a monog­a­mous com­mit­ment from their spouse but Mor­gan is not will­ing or able to be monog­a­mous, they need to end their mar­riage as ami­ca­bly as pos­si­ble. If Frankie can ful­ly accept that Mor­gan is active­ly polyamorous, they will also be able to accept hear­ing about Mor­gan’s OSOs from time to time. In fact, some peo­ple find it nat­ur­al that they would want to not only hear about those OSOs but to meet them because they are impor­tant to Morgan.

I’m a polyamorous woman in a rela­tion­ship with a monog­a­mous man. We are cur­rent­ly monog­a­mous. If at any time I do not feel that I can con­tin­ue to be monog­a­mous, I will rene­go­ti­ate things with him hon­est­ly, in a spir­it of love. He knows that and trusts me to do so. I have been in monog­a­mous and polyamorous rela­tion­ships in the past and was active­ly polyamorous when we met (and total­ly hon­est about it). I chose to stop dat­ing oth­er peo­ple because I no longer had the time or ener­gy to devote to those rela­tion­ships. My part­ner did­n’t demand any­thing. (If he had made such a demand, I would prob­a­bly have react­ed bad­ly to it.)

If your rela­tion­ship is impor­tant to you, take your time, and cre­ate sus­tain­able agree­ments with your part­ner. Both of you must iden­ti­fy what you need, want, and can tru­ly accept. There is no rea­son that you can­not both have your needs met, but you may need to be cre­ative in find­ing ways to meet those needs.

4 thoughts on “Monogamous and Polyamorous People in Relationship”

  1. I would still be mar­ried to my hus­band if he and his girl­friends had been able to respect my desire to not know them and what they do togeth­er. You stat­ed, “That’s just a way of enabling denial on the part of the monog­a­mous part­ner.” I respect­ful­ly dis­agree. It’s not about denial. I was ful­ly aware there were oth­ers, and that they were more than like­ly hav­ing sex. I just did­n’t want it flaunt­ed in front of me or have my nose rubbed in it. Part of Franklin Veaux’s Rela­tion­ship Bill of Rights cov­ers a per­son­’s right to decide what lev­el of involve­ment they are com­fort­able with, phys­i­cal­ly, men­tal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly. I chose no to lim­it­ed involve­ment, my hus­band and his girl­friends could­n’t respect my choice. Appar­ent­ly, only poly peo­ple have rights in poly rela­tion­ships; if the monog­a­mous per­son asserts rights that aren’t accept­able to the poly peo­ple, they can just tram­ple them. I nev­er put lim­its on who my hus­band saw or what they did togeth­er, nev­er asked for veto. All I asked was for a lit­tle respect and com­pas­sion, nei­ther of which were afford­ed to me.

    Reply

    1. Appar­ent­ly you and your hus­band could­n’t come to con­sen­sus regard­ing bound­aries and rela­tion­ship agree­ments. That’s unfor­tu­nate. I’ve nev­er said that was a good thing, but that con­sen­sus is vital.

      Reply

  2. I am try­ing to under­stand polyamory. My hus­band told me last month that he is poly — we mar­ried four years ago as monog­a­mous. We are both in our 60’s. There has been cheat­ing on his part (Inter­net) that I dis­cov­ered short­ly before our first anniver­sary so we have huge trust issues that we haven’t dealt with in healthy ways. What does it mean when you say with­in your cur­rent rela­tion­ship that there are times that you feel that you can­not be monog­a­mous? Does this mean that a cur­rent friend­ship is going deep­er or does this mean that you feel the need to find a deep­er friendship/relationship with some­one? I am not judg­ing — just try­ing to understand.

    Reply

    1. Hi Deb. Thank you for reach­ing out. I’m sure this is a dif­fi­cult time. 

      I’m curi­ous — did your hus­band just “dis­cov­er” that he’s polyamorous, or did he know before and not tell you? 

      Might I rec­om­mend that you read a friend’s arti­cle on rebuild­ing trust?

      The only per­son who can tru­ly answer your ques­tions is your hus­band, because what he means by that state­ment and what I would mean might be whol­ly dif­fer­ent. How­ev­er, if I were to say that there were times when I felt that I could­n’t be monog­a­mous, it would mean that I was feel­ing a need to rene­go­ti­ate the rela­tion­ship agree­ments. It would­n’t be about a spe­cif­ic friend­ship, but about a desire to explore oth­er rela­tion­ships in general. 

      I need to update this arti­cle, as there are some excel­lent new resources for mono-poly rela­tion­ships. I’m going to link to some of them here. I would strong­ly sug­gest two books, though — Open­ing Up: A Guide to Cre­at­ing and Sus­tain­ing Open Rela­tion­ships by Tris­tan Taormi­no and More Than Two: A Prac­ti­cal Guide to Eth­i­cal Polyamory by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rick­ert. Both of them have great infor­ma­tion about polyamory, and I would actu­al­ly rec­om­mend More Than Two for any­one inter­est­ed in healthy rela­tion­ships in general.

      I hope some­thing here is use­ful to you. If not, let me know and I’ll try again 🙂

      Reply

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.

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

Back To Top