After yesterday’s post on polyamory by Confession of a POFer, I thought I’d add my views and take on it. When I first met my husband almost 7 years ago I had the feeling there were good chances of us staying together for many decades if not a lifetime (don’t we all feel that way when we fall in love?), sex was great, and I mean really knock your socks off kind of great, but we both knew that chances are that a day would come when we would fancy another person or just want to experience that thrill of the chase, the butterflies in your stomach (or hard on in your trousers, if you’re a man) when you first kiss somebody, the arousing anticipation of the first sexual encounter – that is if you don’t skip all these steps and go straight to the point after drunkenly meeting the other person during a night out, which is good too.

We discussed quite early on in our relationship the possibility of being open to having sex with other people; we had two rules, admittedly mostly imposed by me, which meant that we couldn’t have a romantic relationship outside our own, just sex, and we had veto power on each other’s flings. These were because not-so-deep down I was scared that he’d find a nicer, hotter, kinkier girl than me and leave me for her, in hindsight I find this quite funny as neither of those rules, nor monogamy, can prevent such thing from happening. We experimented a bit but not much as we were still quite in love and fulfilling each other’s needs.

Then things changed. Fast forward 3 years and we now have 2 children; the stress of becoming parents, money issues, me not having interest in anything more than fairly vanilla sex and him feeling a bit crushed by it all took their toll and we separated quite a few months ago. After many ups and downs we realised that we still really love each other, we want to be together but monogamy is most definitely not for us. At this point I almost accidentally stumbled upon a Polyamory group on Facebook and I feel like a wonderful world has opened up, silly restrictions and often unrealistic expectations that are present in our society suddenly ripped down.

I had many reservations to start with, especially having children that need a safe and stable environment, but now I feel like laughing at them. Polyamory has many forms (in polyamory groups you will commonly hear people say “your poly is not my poly”) and I guess if it wasn’t for the children I would tend towards relationship anarchy and I personally don’t like the definitions of primary and secondary relationships that some people use, mostly because really, would you like to be the ‘second’ one? However, realistically my husband is the father of my children and as such he will always have a special place, so to speak. Same goes for situations where a triad, a quad or even a community live together under the same roof, I don’t think that will work for us due to the children.

That said… now we’re free. My husband is free to flirt and look for girls, when he feels like it he tells me about it (and I find it a bit of a turn on to hear about his sexual encounters), I can chat to other men and who knows, I could have a play partner, especially as I’m warming up to trying some BDSM or even D/s – Dominant/submissive relationship – fun, or just a casual boyfriend to hang out with every now and then. Whatever.

We don’t have any expectations and certainly no rules, should either of us be unhappy about something we will talk about it and decide what to do. Jealousy? Yes, a little bit, but it’s down to my own insecurities of him leaving or him finding somebody who’s better than me, but there is no better or worse. He might find a girl who’s better at giving blowjobs than I am (good for him!) but that doesn’t make her better, we all have strong points and weaknesses. The only thing that we really value is honesty and communication – which doesn’t mean that we have to share all the details but that there are no lies or purposely hidden things.

Have we opened a can of worms? Maybe. Although in all honesty I know of very few people who haven’t cheated at some point in their lives, some repeatedly (the thrill of the chase is just irresistible for some), often breaking down a relationship, a marriage, a family. So monogamy doesn’t really work that well either.

Currently on my reading list are Sex at Dawn and The Ethical Slut, both going more in depth about polyamory. You can also look for groups on Facebook, they are very welcoming, open and inspiring.

You’ve got so much love (and sex!) to give, why stop at one person? And the more you give the more you get, everyone wins…