I personally am in a phenomenally stable polyamorous relationship. I’ve been married to my wife for 12 years, and she has had the same boyfriend for about half of that time. It’s a really fulfilling arrangement for all of us in various ways. We’re all genuinely happy and satisfied. I’m kind of casually looking for a boyfriend of my own.
But I feel like I only hear negative stories about other poly experiences. It’s always unstable people and situations. It’s always two out of three people happy at most. Surely there are other success stories out there, and I just hear the disasters because they’re more memorable and fun to tell. Does anyone else have or know a polyamory success story?
EDIT: This blew up a little while I was asleep. I promise I’m at least reading every comment.
EDIT 2.0: ngl I did not expect the trope of polyamory to fix a struggling relationship would be so real. We did just the opposite and are both baffled. Don’t use volitility to fight the volitility.
My wife and I have been poly for going on a decade now and my girlfriend has been part of the equation since damn near the beginning.
My wife, girlfriend & I all jointly own our home together and things have been great!
I (male, cis-het) don’t date outside the two of them (I don’t have that kind of time!) … both of the ladies have other partners though, mostly with the goal of them being long term, but like most relationships (poly or mono) they generally fizzle out for one reason or another. Wife has a partner that’s been pretty stable for almost a year though and girlfriend has a LDR that’s been strong for 5ish years.
We’ve all “come out” to our family and friends long ago, mostly with no blowback. I am not close with people at my current job, so they don’t know, but, I also use the words ‘wife’ and ‘girlfriend’ so if they haven’t picked up on it, it’s not because I’m omitting, I’m just not telling people that don’t need to know about my personal life the specifics about my personal life.
If you were to judge monogamy by the shit that pops up in relationship advice threads, people would have a bad impression of it as well!
That’s the truth.
My day job is FinTech/tax adjacent, so I have to give you collectively (and your collective web of relationships) credit for making the home ownership work. The overwhelming majority of humans can’t make tenants in common between two people work.
Personally, I’'m not particularly close with my family for other reasons, so being ‘out’ isn’t a real concern - given a wife and girlfriend in that long-term context, I’d write the requisite will / medical POA to be fair, and to ensure that blood relatives aren’t executing either.
I’m somewhat close with folks at work, but I WFH for a company that’s fairly progressive. One of the people I started with recently asked us to address them in a specific way, and I couldn’t be happier for them. If I called my boss “Joe,” and they asked me to call them “Mr. Smith”, that’s no different.
I very much like your strategy of “truthful but no obvious” There isn’t a need at work for a full-fledged explanation of my home life, but I also work with good people who don’t blink at the miscellaneous terms I (or they) use to describe the people who are important to us. That’s how it’s supposed to work - we all share what we feel comfortable with, and other people share in our joys/sorrows regarding the same. Only the level of detail changes, really.
I’m curious about the sleeping arrangement. Do you sleep in the same bed with one more than the other? Or different beds? No judgment, just curious.
I switch between the two beds. We’ll occasionally all pile into one King size bed, but, at least one person doesn’t get a good night’s sleep when we do, so, it’s not an all the time kind of thing for us.