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Partners
The other day, I’m sitting with Lima at our fave mid-morning haunt. She says she’s met the perfect man. He’s a roguish gentleman with the sex skills of a Tantric god, she says.
They get along like a house of fire, she says. All three of them.
Oh sorry, I forgot to mention: Mr Sex God is married and his wife is only one of his sexual partners – his PRIMARY sexual partner, of course, but one of four. She has two other partners I think.
I lost track of the people involved in their polyamorous set-up.
Let me clear this up for you in case you’re not aware. Polyamory is the practise of having more than one sexual, love relationship at a time, with the full knowledge and consent of all the parties involved.
Note the words ‘love’ and ‘consent’. It’s not technically the same as an ‘open relationship’ because in that set-up, there’s no real agreement for everyone to be 100% open and honest with each other about who’s sleeping with who and, in my experience, it’s usually just about the sex.
Though, in my humble opine, I’m not sure how much of polyamory isn’t mostly about sex.
With integrity and love of course, but still mostly sex. Otherwise they’d all just be friends right? So polyamory is really just like an open relationship with emotional accountability. Which is more than one can say for some monogamous relationships.
Anyway.
Lima is the new addition to la familia and as she counts off the partners in this love nonagon, I struggle to keep my jaw off the coffee table. A: Because I grapple to find ONE lover at a time that I’m really into and care about, and B: Where do they find the time and energy (especially if they have kids)?! How do their genitals not spontaneously combust with that all that action?
I really need to keep up, because polyamory is the Next Big Thing: Unless you’re gay, marriage is so last Dark Ages and monogamy has become the ugly duckling in the farmyard of human relationships.
It’s hip to be poly. So get with the programme prude face.
Look, I’m just being facetious. Fact is, I’m not sure I’d be emotionally equipped to manage more than one love-sex partner. I find a single-serving Mr Man emotionally taxing, I’d probably be a wreck with two.
I’d like to think that I’m totes over stuff like jealousy; that I’m 100% capable of sharing the love without a hint of kindergarten stinge; that my capacity to share significant others and their genitals without a frown would be as abundant as a laughing Buddha generously sowing the seeds of love; that I’m never gonna hold you back and make you cry. Or something.
But I’m not. My comfortable relationship model still sits somewhere in the mostly monogamish zone of primary partnerships that play together.
And the truth is, it’s not like polyamorists never experience insecurity, jealousy and feelings of sexual or emotional ownership, they just face it full on and deal with the issues instead of hiding behind a smokescreen of pretend fidelity.
Maybe there’s something there. Because in the longer we live and the more conversations open up, is it fair to expect one partner to be ‘enough’ over the long, long term? Wouldn’t it make more sense to choose your ‘one’ as your primary partner and invite others to play with for a while to stimulate and revive ideas, conversations and inspiration?
It’s not like marriage or monogamy stops anyone ignoring their partner or cheating. And surely we should be adult enough to deal with our playpen insecurities?
Sigh. It just seems like a lot of hard work. But I’ll never say never. There might be something to this poly lifestyle yet.
Maybe Lima might be able to get me in with Mr Sex God and the missus.
