this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
394 points (97.4% liked)
Curated Tumblr
3729 readers
707 users here now
For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.
Image descriptions and plain text captions of written content are expected of all screenshots. Here are some image text extractors (I looked these up quick and will gladly take FOSS recommendations):
-web
-iOS
Please begin copied raw text posts (lacking a screenshot that makes it apparent it is from Tumblr) with:
# This has been reposted here to Lemmy as part of the "Curated Tumblr Project."
I made the icon using multiple creative commons svg resources, the banner is this.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I was poly for years and my ex and I designated each other as primary just to help ensure our priorities matched. We'd seen couples that just "free loved" it and it frequently led to a lot of drama and hurt feelings.
One person "demoted" her fiance to just a side relationship because she was encouraging her boyfriends to be competitive. It was gross. The idea of making love or sexuality a competition is just gross. These people are gross.
I have had times where people treat “non-hierarchical” as “you should immediately consider me equal to your other partners”. When no, trust takes time and effort to grow. In that sense, the partner that I live with does have some level of primacy over my other partners, because I trust her enough to build a home together. However we don’t share a room, we have our own spaces, and we schedule sleepovers just the same as I would with any other partner.
That is indeed ridiculously gross. She completely missed the memo on the “ethical” part of “ethical non-monogamy”. I think I would agonise for weeks if I was thinking about making the decision to no longer live with my nestmate. Months if I was planning on moving straight in with a different partner. I would need to figure out how to communicate that it wasn’t due to any transgressions on their part, that it wasn’t a punishment. That I just, didn’t feel that living together was right for our relationship or either of us as individuals. Especially if the end goal was to continue to be together. I can’t imagine being so careless with someone’s emotions like that.
Yeah. I loved the idea of non hierarchical poly early on, but there’s a resounding practicality in my relationship hierarchy. My wife comes first. We live together and are married, of course she does.
It’s so disgusting to make this a competition when it should just be a cooperative pursuit of happiness