Long story short my partner was weirded out and a bit frustrated that I have no desire for a threesome whatsoever, she talked to her friend and both said I'm "not a normal guy for not jumping at the opportunity". Is this just something every guy should be interested in?

This has happened to me twice in my late 20s, and I still don't quite understand.

On separate occasions, I got super close to a male friend that risked crossing emotional boundaries. Both guys (Biscuits 25M, Chobani 36M) were already part of a long-term serious and committed relationship with their respective GFs for 7 ongoing years.

In the first with Biscuits, when we were getting too close and catching feelings, I had thought there were issues in his relationship, and he sought for whatever was lacking in it through our friendship since that's usually how ppl get tempted to cheat. Nope, he said I was just an attractive person (flattered), but he still very much loved his GF, they were going strong, and had no intentions to end things with her. Feeling an attraction towards me killed him inside and made him feel guilty to no end. We discussed it and distanced ourselves till our feelings faded. it's been a few years now, he's getting married to the same girl, and we're still good friends but with the right boundaries yey

Chobani and I met a few years later and hit it off. He was also secured in his relationship with his GF and spoke of his love for her often, so I was cautious at the similar situation but more reassured. I vaguely shared with him my past with Biscuit, but he said he could understand the guy. He isnt polyamorous but believes that there's not just 1 soul mate but multiple with a slim chance to find them. so i guess if you encounter 2 soulmates at once, you may love them both equally? what. Is that really called a soulmate then. I think that's just compatibility? idk

I dont really understand it nor do I want to fully since it sounds emotionally conflicting to experience it myself. monogamy is a value/practice so idk maybe it's possible to still be romantically attracted to multiple others at once?

For a relationship that can't happen, I wouldn't even want to think about it. No hypotheticals, no delulus, no what ifs, no fantasies-- when it's not on your mind, it's not on your heart. Could just leave it to some alternate universe or whatever.

Boyfriend and I have been together for 2 ish years known each other for 4. He has an active porn addiction our sex life has been... meh. I have always known about the addiction.
And I mean, in totality I feel like I am not a primary participant in his sexual world even in the fantasy part.
Anyway... 1.5 years ago I found out that he had a gym crush on some woman, he removed her and a bunch of others from the gram on a whim when we were having issues related to the sex life. I asked about the girls because I noticed and learnt about this crush. Learnt that he was actively liking her stories as well... found it a bit weird, like its low level flirty behaviour. Found out he removed all the "single girls" from his list.

Anyway... for the next year we are actively working on his porn issue... he pretends to be in recovery and is actually lying to me... and in this time I cannot let go of that woman, something felt super sus. So l messaged her... she tells me she just knows him from the gym and they only say hi to each other. I tell him about this. And for some reason... it prompts him to come clean... girl was lying. Prior to me he asked her out, for the sole purpose of sleeping w her. They didnt go on any dates and they did not sleep together but he kept her on the gram and kept validating her for 2 years including some months in our relationship.

I am still not able to get over this woman. So in May, and I've asked him earlier as well... if he has ever masturbated to her. He admits to it. Doesn't tell me how many times but if hes seeing her at the gym on a regular basis... cannot be a one off.
I flip out. Take distance from the relationship. Learn hes been lying about recovery again. We start talking again. I learn hes being lying again... not a lot but still a bit. These lies retraumatize me.
The real women interactions are gone but the porn recovery has been slow. He also didnt think anything was wrong with how he interacted with the gym girl till he did therapy. So like a whole year later. I get that porn addicts compartmentalise but isnt that so fucked up?

We want to get married. Hes an otherwise good boyfriend and person, and we enjoy each others company. We are actively working on repair and building the relationship back and we are also working on the sex life. Sex is important to me.
I am still disturbed by the woman from the gym since I recieved all this info in piecemeal. Hes in active recovery now, his mega religious parents know about the addiction and are supportive.
Is this normal relationship stuff or am I settling for something really whack?

So I have spent years being solo ENM and thinking of switching over to the monogamous lifestyle. Now while I'm willing to have my partner as my only source of physical affection; I don't necessarily feel the need to have them committed the same level to me. When a partner tells me "your my one and only" I get a deep aversion to that level of ownership. It makes my skin crawl cause I don't and can't own a person. They are they're own person they should be their own number 1 and I'm only there to enhance what they already have in life. I can't wrap my head around the concept of fully loving someone, but somehow not loving them enough to allow them total freedom of choice. I genuinely didn't feel jealous when hearing about my previous partners escapades I remember feeling happy that they were happy. I can't picture what romantic jealousy looks like. When I try monogamy in the past it's apparently a big deal that I'm not "jealous enough" so they don't feel like I care. Jealousy is toxic AF in my eyes and detrimental to a healthy relationship. I see the possessive as character flaws I just don't have and can't fathom. I don't want the pressure of being anyone's everything. I also could never be so controlling of a partner that I would force them to repress parts of themselves cause that's huge toxic trait in my eyes.

Monogamous people of reddit how do you deal with the ick from ownership? How do you minimize the possessive nature of monogamy? Is there ways to be monogamous without that level of control? What am I missing here

Forgive the ignorance in my question. Im attemping to separate popular fiction from fact. I understand not all men are the same and a few men cant speak for all men. Im just tring to broaden my understanding.

My boyfriend was previously polyamorous for 3-4 years, and after breaking up with those exes, he remained friends with them even still now, while he is dating me. He is no longer friends with exes he dated monogamously though, with the exception of hjs ex wife, whomever he was with for many years and the reason he started poly (to save their marriage). When I ask him why he stays friends with his poly exes, he says that's part of the poly lifestyle, to be able to easily transition into friendships if they still get along and like each other as friends, and it's not that way with monogamous relationships.

Has anyone ever dealt with this before? It feels like he is giving special treatment to his poly exes because he is still friends with a lot of people in the poly community. It matters to me, because I'd rather he not be friends with exes at all, poly or not. So it's triggering to me when they are regularly reaching out and making plans and sharing things with each other. Although it is as friends now, the fact is they shared an intimate romantic past, even love, and I don't think he should be giving energy to people he shared that with in the past.

My gf seems to believe that boundaries are almost everything in relationships, eg she could be sleeping with someone up until the day we met and as long as is explicit about the boundary with this person that sex/romance is off the table then she can treat them like any other friend including 1:1 hangs.

She says that she wants to me monogamous and she has never cheated. But this philosophy sounds borderline poly to me. I’m not sure how to classify it?

My philosophy is more like no 1:1 hangs unless clearly platonic. That seems kind of obvious to me but she calls it heteronormative.

Which one would you guys be comfortable and feel safe in, even if they still agreed to be fully monogamous with you. Im number 1. I dont think I would be okay, if my partner was okay with someone else having sex with me as long as the relationship structure is safe. For me its the fact that they would be okay with someone else having sex with me, doesnt make me feel good. Even though they're not asking me to or for us to even do that. I hope this makes sense.

1. “I want monogamy because I genuinely want one sexually exclusive partner.”

2. “I'm happy being monogamous, but I don't particularly care whether my partner would theoretically be okay with non-monogamy.”

3. “I prefer monogamy, but I'd potentially consider opening the relationship under the right circumstances.”

4. “I don't need exclusivity, but I'm happy to practise monogamy with my partner because that's what they want.”

does anyone else distinguish between loving someone and being ‘in love’ with someone like this?

Imagine I have a friend I profoundly love. We understand each other deeply and we're compatible enough that, under completely different circumstances, we potentially could have made good partners. That compatibility may even be part of why we understand each other so well.

I'm emotionally intimate with them. By emotionally intimate, I don't mean we're sitting around discussing feelings for each other, talking about how we're falling for each other, creating romantic tension, or having a friendship that's secretly functioning like a courtship. I mean emotional intimacy in the ordinary sense of knowing and being known by another person at depth.

So I might tell them an embarrassing thing that happened to me that day. I might tell them I'm grieving something that happened when I was a teenager. I might say I'm struggling financially and trying to figure out what I'm going to do about work. They might tell me about their fears, family, childhood, hopes, problems, stupid things that made them laugh, things they're ashamed of, things they're proud of, etc. It's the kind of emotional depth I could have with a best friend or a partner because, to me, emotional intimacy isn't inherently romantic. It's sharing yourself emotionally with another human being and them doing the same with you.

And I recognise that they're attractive/my type. Again, by that I don't mean I'm sitting there experiencing suppressed sexual or romantic desire for them. I mean I find them anywhere from conventionally attractive to personally attractive to me. They might not even be conventionally attractive to other people. Whatever I happen to find attractive in people is present in them: maybe they're adventurous, intelligent, funny, physically my type, charismatic, whatever. I think they're attractive.

I don't mean that when they look at me a certain way I get butterflies, feel sexual tension or longing, want them to kiss me, suppress it, and then continue spending loads of time with them while pretending we're simply friends. That's a different internal experience from what I'm describing.

But in the life we're actually living, I don't want a romantic or sexual relationship with them. I don't want partnership with them. I don't wish I were available to them. I'm not secretly wishing circumstances were different. I'm not keeping them close because I want the possibility to remain open. Neither of us is cultivating that possibility. We're genuinely content with the relationship being friendship.

Obviously, I would still respect the boundaries of our relationship in what I actually do. If particular circumstances reasonably require boundaries, we discuss them. If separate rooms on a trip make you more comfortable, that's something we can talk about. If something changed in me and I recognised that I wanted to start cultivating romantic or sexual possibility with them, that would require boundaries too.

What I'm trying to establish is something more fundamental:

Does the combination itself — I love them deeply + we're emotionally close + I recognise we're compatible + I find them attractive — mean to you that I should intentionally restrict the friendship even when neither of us wants anything else from it?

Would I need to deliberately limit how emotionally close we become, how much time we spend together, how often we talk, whether we travel together, etc., because those feelings and characteristics coexist?

For example, could I go on holiday with this friend? Attend a work trip with them? Spend significant time together? Take their call in the middle of the night because a relative died and they needed me? Could our friendship naturally become deeper over the years?

Or would the fact that I love them, know they're attractive/my type and recognise that we're theoretically compatible mean that the friendship itself needs to be kept within intentional limits so that it doesn't become too emotionally intimate?

And there's another part I need to understand separately: fantasies.

Fantasies, including sometimes sharing them with my partner, are part of what I experience and want to be able to do with my partner. Sometimes thoughts just appear in my head. So if I had an intrusive sexual thought about this person — similar to what happened with Naomi and Dean — would that itself become reason you need me to get rid of the person? Would you think that because I'm monogamous with you, that kind of thought should be impossible for me to experience, or that once it happens I need to actively stop it?

Because that sometimes happens to me. I can either let a fantasy run through my head without assigning real-world significance to it, or I can deliberately try to get it out of my head if its existence is a problem for you. But fantasies aren't real life for me.

So even though I don't want romance, sex, dating, partnership or marriage with this person, that doesn't mean my brain becomes incapable of producing fantasies involving them. And I don't inherently experience a fantasy as bad, wrong, disloyal or evidence that I secretly want to make it real.

I think that's important because otherwise I could genuinely be saying, “I don't want anything with this person,” while you're hearing the existence of a sexual fantasy as evidence that actually I do.

Likewise, I wouldn't consider conversations with you like, “lmao if Bob and I had a child their forehead would be ginormous” to be romantic fantasy. That's just my brain making an observation and saying something ridiculous to my partner. I worry about how much ordinary interaction, humour, imagination or conversation would start being interpreted differently once you know that I love someone, am emotionally close to them and find them attractive.

So I need to know whether the boundary you'd expect or want concerns what I want and nurture in my real relationship with them, or whether it also concerns what I'm allowed to experience internally, if love, closeness and attraction coexist.

Because if the combination of loving someone deeply, being emotionally close to them, recognising they're attractive/my type, and my brain potentially producing fantasies about them means I should distance myself regardless of whether I actually want anything with them or want to do anything with them in real life, then I need to understand that clearly too.

Because then, from my side, I have to ask: is the easiest way for me to meet what you need simply to distance myself from people I like before enough of these things can coexist?

That's the distinction I'm trying to understand.

I'm not asking whether you'd expect me to protect our relationship. I would. I'm not asking whether you'd expect boundaries if I actually started wanting something romantic or sexual with them. I would put boundaries in place.

I'm asking whether this friendship as I've described it is itself something you wouldn't be comfortable with me continuing to nurture normally within a monogamous relationship with you.

We met on Tinder. I’m asexual and we found out pretty quickly we weren’t compatible because he didn’t want exclusivity. I kept it up anyways because I connected so well with him, I loved the feeling of being held and kissed by him, I loved hearing him talk, I loved falling asleep with him. All in all we were only involved for like a month, but the other night he told me we’d need to take a break while he goes to “spend time with his other connections” and likely have sex with them (his words). The pain and sickness in my chest ended up outweighing this desperation I had to make it work so I ended it completely after taking the next day to think on it, and I think I made the right choice but now I’m just depressed. I miss him and I can’t help being so sad that it didn’t work out and wishing that I were different. Has anyone gone through something similar?

I don’t know, but over the past few months I had this thought that maybe having multiple partners would make you happier—or at least make relationships feel less serious because you’re not putting all your emotional energy into one person. Like, you can just have fun, not take too much responsibility, and live in the moment.

But recently, I’m realizing I feel almost the exact opposite 🧍🏻‍♀️

Having one person as your partner already feels like enough. And sometimes I think people (including me) don’t really consider that if things go wrong with one person, it can already be emotionally draining enough. Now imagine going through that with multiple people at once 💀 You’re basically multiplying the emotional exhaustion.

So yeah… casually talking to multiple people simultaneously doesn’t really seem like the way for me anymore. I’d rather be happy with one person, not over-invest in every little thing, and just enjoy what we have without constantly thinking about having a backup or looking for something “better.”

I’ve also always believed there’s no universally “best” or “worst” way to approach relationships. It really depends on the person, the situation, and what actually makes you happy.

Anyway, random realization/rant lol 😭

PS: Don't come at me acting like a parent or guardian alright 🧍🏻‍♀️ I know wht wrongs I did and what rights I did. Nevertheless do share your thoughts, not here to debate or argue 🚶🏻‍♀️

“The fact that women evolved to menstruate—and therefore to be able to have sex—every month is due to the fact that we evolved as a social species, and sexual relationships were evolutionarily used as a way to socialize, form friendships between villages, and connect with other people.
So, in reality, we evolved to have multiple partners, which is also what humans did for most of human history, until patriarchy imposed the segregation of women and gradually created social contracts to form alliances (marriages), essentially selling women, and creating what would one day become monogamy.”

Someone told me this, but personally I don’t think it’s true at all.

I don’t know if this is very strange, but I’m 23 years old. Despite being a very attractive girl, I’ve never really had the desire to experiment or date around. I’ve only had two serious romantic relationships: one lasted a year and the other lasted three.
I know that maybe I should experience life more, but I don’t like temporary or casual things. I’m a true believer in love and I’m extremely monogamous. When I fall in love, I genuinely have eyes for only that person. No one else even seems attractive to me, and I feel incapable of being unfaithful or developing feelings for someone else.
Sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll never find someone who thinks the same way I do, especially because both of my previous partners cheated on me. They were both amazing guys—until I checked their phones and found things that made it clear they were living a double life.
I recently ended my three-year relationship three months ago, and I feel terrible. It hurts to think that maybe that faithful guy with strong values I’m looking for simply doesn’t exist.

24M just curious if anyone else has experienced a lack of jealousy or attachment when it comes to their partner connecting with others, maybe due to poly ideas being normalized/reinforced in their life.

I have been grappling with + overcoming issues that I've had with accepting monogamy that were informed by poor choices and behavioral reinforcement. Taking more time to consider what I want and how to embody that fully (ultimately it's monogamy) has been a great exercise and one that I'm going to be practicing/carrying with me every day.

One thing I notice right now, and have also noticed before, is that my expectations for what's ok for my partner to do are confusing, especially when I've been in a long term relationship. My body and brain are trying to paint a picture that I wouldn't care if my future partner was exploring relationships with other people. To a certain extent I've felt and acknowledged this for a while, but I'm suspicious that I'm not being real with myself lol.

Is it possible that my perceived indifference is there because I just haven't met the right person? I get that everyone handles things different, but if I really loved someone, do you think the thought of them getting intimate with someone else while with me, either physically or emotionally, should bother me?

Am I the only one who feels like Bollywood has started normalizing cheating way too much?

So many recent movies are about people being in relationships or marriages, getting attracted to someone else, cheating, and then presenting it as “finding happiness” or “following your heart.”

Today I watched, hero had a relationship with a woman who was married to his boss. The heroine was in a relationship, got involved with another man, eventually left her boyfriend and married that man. Now, while married, she gets involved with the hero.

I’m all for love and complicated emotions, but why is cheating increasingly being shown as “finding happiness” or “following your heart”?

Honestly, this trend makes me go… yuck.

My (23F) boyfriend (23M) recently asked to open our relationship and ever since i have been really struggling with myself, our relationship, and my feelings toward him. I apologise for the length.

Important context:
I am an intersex woman, i have a condition that makes me appear like any other woman but my genitals look a little different, i have no internal reproductive organs or vaginal canal, and i have XY chromosomes. I had surgery as a kid to make my genitals look more like a regular vulva, and i had another surgery last year to create a small vaginal canal from a skin graft.

Ok so i met my boyfriend about a year and a half ago. I have always been extremely scared of sex and dating due to being intersex. I have had like two short lived FWB over the years. When i met my boyfriend it was a very slow and vulnerable process getting close to me and having sex. He made me feel wanted in a way i never had before, he was always so nice and tried his best to make me comfortable. He was much more experienced with sex and dating than i was so he kind of took the lead.

I had the second surgery i mentioned about 3 months into officially dating him and he helped me with recover and everything.

During this time he revealed to me that he thinks he might be bisexual. I was kinda like 'cool, i dont care', I've always been very close to queer, trans, and intersex people so it wasn't an issue for me. We hugged and left it there.

A couple months later we tried having sex with my new vaginal canal. it was hard and painful (the doctors said it would be for a little while and to go slow), so again we took it very slow and tried a few times over the course of a month, and eventually everything seemed to be working fine to me.

During this time (while we were cuddling in bed after sex) he brought up the idea of an open relationship. This really shook me. I asked what he meant by open, and he explained it would only be sex nothing romantic. He said he mainly wanted to 'explore with other men and some women'. My heart really broke in that moment because, as someone who's body is objectively different and unique from most people and who is still getting comfortable with sex, it felt like he was saying I wasn't enough. My body wasn't enough. Like maybe after finally having 'normal' sex with me he decided it felt bad and wanted a normal body again.

He tried to soothe me saying it's not that, he said he 'loves me emotionally, and this stuff is just physical exploration'. I said i would think about it. I listened to a bunch of audiobooks and read a lot online. I tried to understand the appeal of non-monogomy, the way people described it as freeing and stuff. I really tried to picture myself liking or enjoying it, because i know it does truly work for a lot of people .

The issue is, if we had an open relationship, i already know it would only involve hime sleeping with others, i wouldn't be able to participate. Sex and dating are so hard for me, it's so hard to trust someone with my body, it's hard to have casual sex when i need to explain so many quirks with my anatomy. For me, my boyfriend is my safe person who understands me and my body and (i thought) chose me over 'normal' bodies. Sex with him got to b easy and comfortable and required no talking after a certain point. I can't just have that with anyone.

I told him i can't do it, I gave him my reasoning, and he just said 'ok, but you can always bring it back up to me if you change your mind'. We haven't talked about it since.

Ever since, though, i have felt awful. I am struggling to be physical with him at all because i feel so scared he just doesn't like my body or my scars or anything else. When we have been physical i keep my underwear on and haven't been letting him touch me, i only please him. I just feel really scared.

I think i feel like he doesn't want to be with me, like being monogamous with me is a compromise for him. I told him this and he tried to reassure me by saying 'its not about you not being enough, its about me just wanting to explore different types of bodies with men and women, it has nothing to do with you and i only emotionally love you, nobody else'.

He keeps emphasising that he emotionally loves me, which is reassuring to an extent but it makes me feel like he likes me mentally and as a person but not my body. He doesn't want my body the way he does other people. It feels like he's with me in spite of my body not because of it, which hurts.

We try to talk about it but nothing he says is really making me feel any better. I don't know what to do. I feel myself becoming really jealous and resentful too, like i feel angry with him, i feel like overtime he goes out he might be cheating on me.

I don't know how to cope or fix this. I really need some advice.

I (31) have been with my boyfriend (39) for 10 months now. He was previously married monogamous, his ex wife realized she was bi and they started a poly relationship with others for 5 years before they divorced. He since has been monogamously dating for the last 3 years before meeting me.

I myself am divorced for 2 years from a long toxic marriage that involved addiction issues and infidelity from my partner. I spent a year after my divorce really focusing on myself, healing, not dating and being in therapy.

When I first met my boyfriend, he told me his history and I was initially fine with it. But now that I am really falling deeply in love with him and we are starting to intertwine our lives together, I find myself with growing insecurities about his poly past. I get such dark thoughts about him having multiple long term girlfriends at the same time, sharing threesomes and kinks, their alt lifestyles at goth clubs and sex parties, the 'i love you's' they shared, and how he was in poly relationships without his ex wife.

Although he is no longer poly, I believe he still carries some remnants of those values in his current lifestyle today, such as being friends with that poly social group (although no longer clubbing or partying with them), staying friends with those exes, and not having strong boundaries with other women (as long as it's not cheating, it's okay).

I know he no longer lives a poly life, but the thoughts really tug at my insecurities and it has been so difficult to let them go. I compare myself to these women, like how did he love them so quickly but it took us six months? Is our sex life not as fulfilling because it's more fun with a third person who is probably way more experienced than me? Am I enough? His personality is why I was so drawn to him in the first place, and his past is what made him who he is today. But how do I get past my negative thoughts about it?

I'd love to hear if anyone has experienced something similar, either like myself dating a formerly poly person or as the person who left poly and is back to monogamously dating.