Are You Looking for a Unicorn?

I was one of sev­er­al peo­ple who start­ed the first major poly group in Atlanta, Poly South­east. I start­ed the web­site, anoth­er guy ran the main mail­ing list, I got a PSE per­son­als list going, etc. Alto­geth­er there were few­er than ten peo­ple to whom we loose­ly referred as “the Poly South­east Coun­cil.” After maybe 15–20 years, Atlanta Polyamory grew out of what we had started.

Over time, we saw lots and lots of peo­ple come and go. And there was one type of per­son (or cou­ple or oth­er units) who some came to refer to as “seek­ing the uni­corn.” The intro­duc­to­ry post usu­al­ly read some­thing like this: “Hap­pi­ly mar­ried cou­ple seeks bi female to join our fam­i­ly, 20–30 years old, height/weight pro­por­tion­al.” Fre­quent­ly, these peo­ple want­ed some­one to help raise their kids but who did­n’t have/want any of her own. I still see the same uni­corn seek­ers today in poly fora everywhere.

Guess what? Just know­ing that a cou­ple is specif­i­cal­ly look­ing for a bi female to be with them sex­u­al­ly is enough to send most sin­gle bisex­u­al females run­ning. Do you know why? Because there are too damned many peo­ple out there want­i­ng a ménage á trois fan­ta­sy that would be bet­ter ful­filled by hir­ing a sex work­er. They just want some bi female, any bi female—they aren’t inter­est­ed in a par­tic­u­lar woman because of who she is. They want a female to have sex­u­al expe­ri­ences with. That’s it. Bi female as a sex toy, there ya go.

This is not a flat­ter­ing thought, just in case any­one was won­der­ing. While I imag­ine there might be some­one who would be hap­py to sim­ply be used to kick­start some­one’s sex life, it isn’t what any­one I have ever known is seek­ing in a rela­tion­ship. And polyamory is about relationships—not just sex.

What I find even more offen­sive is when a guy is look­ing for a bisex­u­al woman to have sex with his wife, and it sounds like his wife prob­a­bly isn’t even involved with this process. I have, in fact, seen some­one who was cer­tain that his wife would real­ly like hav­ing sex with anoth­er woman, even though she did­n’t want to do so, and want­ed anoth­er woman to come in to ful­fill his fan­ta­sy of see­ing her with anoth­er female! You know, I have nev­er once encoun­tered a woman seek­ing a man to intro­duce her hus­band to the joys of man-on-man sex. Now I won­der why that is? It could­n’t be the abun­dance of girl-girl depic­tions in pornog­ra­phy, could it?

If you actu­al­ly want to find some­one with whom to have a rela­tion­ship, stop focus­ing on the “bi female” part. Think about the kind of per­son who would be com­pat­i­ble with you and your lifestyle. What do you enjoy? What do you believe? What do you want to share with this per­son? Give up the assump­tion that you’ll find one per­son who will fit with both mem­bers of a cou­ple. It might hap­pen, it might not. If you’re look­ing for a seri­ous rela­tion­ship, falling for both of you real­ly should­n’t be a require­ment. If a straight man and a bisex­u­al or bicu­ri­ous woman are look­ing for oth­er part­ners for polyamorous rela­tion­ships, pre­sum­ably het­ero­sex­u­al, bisex­u­al, and les­bian women, as well as het­ero­sex­u­al and bisex­u­al men, would be rea­son­able can­di­dates, now would­n’t they?

If you’re look­ing for a real live sex toy or an inter­change­able, face­less part­ner, hire a pro­fes­sion­al. You might also try check­ing out swingers groups instead of poly groups if sex is your pri­ma­ry goal. Uni­corns are rare, and hon­est­ly, most of those you find in polyamorous groups are not inter­est­ed in what you’re offering.