kis123 said:
When you marry, you promise monogomy. What I don't understand is if a person wants multiple lovers, why even marry in the first place? That just makes things messy to me.
What about STDs? Condoms don't fix everything-I worked on an AIDS floor for years and many of them wore condoms.
My bottom line is this-I don't see the point in traditional marriage because people cheat, plain and simple. Why get married when fifty percent of the time, people are going to divorce and even higher percentages cheat on their spouses? Maybe there's something to the concept of polyamory after all.
Howdy folks,
I'm late to this thread, and I'd like to thank Mimi, Redmage and Lindyhopper for speaking about this subject so correctly and with such intelligence and eloquence. You three said much of what real poly is about
.
To answer the original question: since the definitions I've seen always state that adultery interferes with the marriage, poly doesn't fit the bill. True poly folk's marriages are only enhanced by the increase of love and devotion that naturally occurs. And yes, as many of you know I'm speaking from long term experience. I quoted Kis because she brought up a few very good points that I've heard many, many times in such conversations, that I'd like to take a moment to address.
On commitment: while there are tons of people who automatically promise monogamy when they marry, many of us have standards by which we define commitment that have nothing to do with sex, and so we didn't promise monogamy when we wed. For us, commitment means
staying together and being there for each other no matter what, and keeping each other happy, safe, loved and secure for the rest of our lives. And we're most definitely keeping those vows. Frankly, sex isn't a factor; we feel that other displays of loyalty and faithfulness are far, far more important than physical acts. Ironically, many of us with more than one partner feel that there's too much importance placed on sex in relationships.
Why marry if you want multiple partners? Simple. The man I married is the one with whom I wanted to do all of the traditionally marriage-oriented life activities. He's the father of my babies, the one with whom I share a home and dental plan. He's the one who's last name I carry with honor, because I've never loved anyone the way that I love him. He would do ANYTHING for me or for our babies. And he's shown me that over and over and over in the last 14 yrs. If you ask him, he'll tell you he married me because from the moment he fell for me he wanted us 'on the same team facing the world'
. That's corny as hell but it makes my heart skip a beat. We each have others whom we love very much and are welcome additions to our lives, but we each hold the other in the highest place in our hearts. Thus, we're married.
And I've said this before: when you have someone who
*willingly works insane hours so that you can work at home on your dreams and to give you the retirement plan he thinks you deserve,
*lets you basically break his hand squeezing it through 20 hours of
hard labor and then gets up every night for months to bring you that baby for nursing,
*never lets the sun go down without telling you he loves you
*treats you like a queen when you're sick or hurting and does the same for your children
*is never ever ever too busy to listen or to hold you no matter what
*would die before calling you names or hurting your feelings no matter how intense the argument
*is dedicated to doing everything in his power to keep a smile on your face for the next 50 yrs and proves it every single day
it's just kinda hard to think about sex as a factor in how devoted he is. Especially when his other partner is your best friend and you're the one that put them together. But that's another post
😀 .
As far as multiple partners making things messy, I imagine it can, but not in my experience. It takes a bit of planning so that you know who's spending time together and when, but that's a factor whatever your social life is like. The reality is that most poly folk are
poly-fidelitous, meaning we have ONE, possibly two other partners, and those partners are long term. It's not hard at all to arrange things or to be safe STD-wise. The amount of love, support, and deeply intimate bonding we receive from our other relationships greatly make any extra responsibilities worth the effort. Hey, having more than one child made life a little crazier and more complex, but we wouldn't change it for the world. Our other parters fall under that category as well
😉
Personally, I don't see marriage remaining the way it is now. Not because people can't commit, we most certainly can. I just believe that the ways by which we define commitment are going to increasingly change, more and more openly, as people realize that we don't have to continue using blanket definitions and groundrules that don't work for so many of us and aren't necessary for stable, happy unions. Time will tell.
bella
