Polyamory Community Group
A place to discuss living a polyamorous lifestyle - the joys, the challenges and everything in between. Polyamory (a hybrid word -poly is Greek for many and amor is Latin for love - coined by among others Neopagan poet, author, lecturer, and priestess Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart) means "The practice, state or ability of having more than one sexual loving relationship at...
Hey everyone, this is a shared account between me and my wife. I have been poly for a long time, but I haven't really practiced since I've been with her. She's starting to be more open to the idea but she's not quite understanding. She wants to talk with other poly people to get a better understanding of how it works and get more info about it. She's both excited and scared to try new things. I've done all that I can to reassure her my feelings haven't changed for her. Maybe someone on here can help us out with a better understanding
Not everyone likes the results — but if we're to be as true to ourselves as possible, sometimes that's the way the ball bounces, and the first issue I see in your opening post is that you and your wife obviously consider yourself married. If that is a typical Western legal marriage, it will likely be defined in your jurisdiction in terms that make your relationship exclusive to one another.
If that's the case, then it's no small thing — NOT simply "just a piece of paper". It means you both signed-up for monogamy as witnessed by the state, your friends, and perhaps a church congregation and whatever God you might believe in,
That's supposed to matter ( a lot ). Consequently, you should be aware that for your marriage to be uncompromised, you have to resist the temptation to get romantically involved with other partners, and that to do otherwise is likely grounds for a legal divorce.
Whether or not you both agree to breach your marriage contract is beside the point. That's just being self-servingly dishonest with yourselves. If you're legally married, unless your jurisdiction defines it in non-exclusive terms, you need to get yourselves legally out of your marriage before going down this path. Otherwise it's clearly unethical. So now you have two choices:
1. To go the non-ethical route and live with the hypocrisy.
2. Go with what's called "ethical non-monogamy"
Now — all that might not be an issue if you're not legally married. If you're just calling each other husband and wife for convenience and have your own malleable understanding of how you both relate to that situation, you're in a far better position to venture out into the world of ethical non-monogamy.
I'll just leave it at that for now. Hopefully I'll get a less critical response than others I've had in the past ( I never said you'd like it — just that it would be true ).
At least that's the way it is in most Western versions of legal marriages. So please don't conflate other people's definitions with my "personal opinions". They're entirely separate things. If it's your choice to ignore those facts, then that's entirely your call, but if that's how you choose to proceed, then why does anyone else's information matter? Just ignore the wider "ethical" components of non-monogamy and go with what feels right for you.
Personally — I won't get involved with married people for exactly this reason. Plus it creates a power imbalance with anyone else you get involved with who is outside your marriage. I'm not alone in these sentiments. But then again, you don't want my personal view, and you don't seem to want to face the objective facts either. So there's no way to proceed from here other than to say you'll have to figure it out for yourselves — best of luck.