Quote:
Originally Posted by rdy46227  A belated reply to the original question... Two groups of people fall into poly much easier than the general population.
People who enter the Swinger Lifestyle can easily (maybe immediately) adopt poly when they see it as a way to enhance growth and experience.
People in the Single Lifestyle can easily adopt poly to get more quality in their often fluid relationships.
I started expanding on this, and decided to put up a separate post for each. |
Ongoing Singles
Some people live in circles where attachment is acknowledged as transitory. They are generally single, often know a lot of similar people, and clusters of them function as extended family that are care-providers in urgent or extreme need. They know where most former lovers are and what they are doing. Their community is dynamic built around a long term core group
Relationships come and go and sometimes return. These people don't expect them to last, even if they want them to last. They often break up over issues of cheating, or loss of interest. The breakups seldom start the extreme fighting which traditionally divorces can spawn; moving on has become habitual, and no longer sleeping together doesn't mean breaking contact.
While the idea of marring "happily ever after" into exclusivity hasn't been forgotten, they've become accustom to and now often prefer living as non-married. They expect to have new sexual partners, and may be keeping an environment where adding or changing partners is easier. The lifestyle allows them to easily change focus or make radical goal changes.
And since long-term partner loyalty is rare, long-term exclusivity isn't a big expectation. You don't forget anyone you know; you try to keep them part of your larger extended family. In fact, have a larger "extended family" increases the pool of future partners for when the current relationship (unfortunately) ends.
In this context, the idea of holding on to a relationship while having another makes sense, if nothing more than providing an overlap. It reduces the turnover rate of relationships (ending relationships can be hard no matter who you are), and cuts drama in the extended family members.
A good example comes as the book "The Ethical Slut" relates how one of the authors (Dossie Easton, Catherine A. Liszt), living in a San Francisco singles community, discovered how well poly works in that environment. Poly empowered her by the support combined from her several relationships.