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jmed comments on Polyhacking - Less Wrong
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Not at all.
Yes. No one should be as important to my partner as I am.
If you modify your scenario to involve an asexual male who likes to cuddle (or a gay male or a straight female, easier for me to imagine than a purely asexual male, although I know those folks do exist) and that that person is important to my partner but not as important as I am, then I would not have a problem with their cuddling at all, or being emotionally close.
That is very interesting, thank you for taking my hypotheticals seriously, and answering honestly.
What you are asking your partner to give up is not the "swinging lifestyle" as you thought: you're also asking your partner to give up having anyone they consider as important as they consider you.
I hope you can now understand why people make such a big distinction between swinging (where they have other sexual partners, who aren't as important as their romantic partner) and polyamory (where they have multiple romantic partners, who may not be sexual, but can be equally important to each other)
I knew about the distinction before, I just didn't realize how much polyamorous people disliked being associated with swingers, and phrased poorly as a result.
There still seems to be more overlap (more poly folks who permit one-night stands in swinger-ish manner than monogamous folks who permit it). Do you find this not to be the case? Most poly partnerships keep their sexuality limited to the 3 or 4 or 6 of them, and would look down on a partner having sex with people they didn't intend to add to the long-term group?
How common is it in your experience for the polyamorous to have non-sexual romantic partners?
Hmmm, I'm not entirely sure. In my social circle far more monoamorous people #PRACTICE# one night stands (in a swingerish manner) than polyamorous people. The polyamorous people may #allow# it; but when you can date whoever you want, and aren't forced to limit it to a one-night stand, why would you limit it?
My social circle is, however, distinctly atypical, and so cannot really be construed as evidence of much.
Groups suggest a closed loop, which is uncommon. However many poly people I know are uninterested in having sex with anyone who they don't feel a romantic bond with, simply because they have far more satisfying alternatives available.
Maybe 10%, or so. Not massively common, but certainly not unheard of. Far more would be open to non-sexual romance, just haven't had one.
The association with swingers is a problem due to the fact it leads to people, such as yourself, failing to recognise the differences, and making factually incorrect statements.
I'll answer your questions shortly in a seperate post; but I have a point I feel I may have failed to make, so I'll make it here:
The post I first replied to contained this line that I quoted:
You have since revealed that there is a level of emotional and intellectual connection that you consider line crossing. This is an important change in your position, so I think it is important that you put those two beliefs together, and realise that one of them must be wrong.
Work out which one is wrong, and remove it; that is the purpose of this whole site :-)
It's not a change; there was no explicit comparison between connection to others and connection to me in that statement, so I didn't address it there.
So, to clarify: My partner can have any level of emotional/intellectual connection with friends and family, as long as it remains non-sexual and I remain most important / without equal.
In the previous post your only restriction was that they not have sex with others. You have now stated that you have two restrictions*: that is a contradiction of your previous position.
*and the restriction requiring that they give up anyone that is of equal importance to you is a massive one, far larger, to me and many polyamorous people, than the sexual restriction.
That my partner would have anyone equally important to me in the first place is highly unlikely, because we are not poly. How would such a high importance relationship form against a monoamorous backdrop? So it's really not a big deal in practice.
But you were talking about the hypothetical situation in which you were being courted by a polyamorous person, saying that you'd be upset about their unwillingness to give up their "swinging lifestyle"*, and therefore wouldn't date them.
*(a description that was extremely inaccurate)
Had you forgotten that that was the root of this conversation?
No, I wasn't. I think I see where that miscommunication happened.
I mentioned that it is pretty easy not to have multiple partners (which I wrongly lumped, off-handedly, under the non-term-of-art "swinging"), and so that someone being unwilling to not pursue multiple partners would make me feel replaceable.
I think you read my statement as "the person already has multiple partners, and I demand they give them up to date me." I didn't mean it that way. If someone already has a partner (or partners) that is (are) more important than me, I wouldn't be pursuing them or demanding anything of them in the first place.
Aside: I mentioned earlier that I shouldn't have used the term "swing*", but you still seem hung up on it. Can we move past that? Apologies, again; I hadn't realized it would be so offensive to the poly crowd.
The term itself is not the problem. The problem was that your original post claimed that the only bit you objected to was the sexual aspect. Clearly, this is not the case, but, for reasons I am uncertain of, you still seem to be standing by your original statement as an accurate one.
I am trying to make it clear to you that what you are asking them to give up is NOT just about the sex. What you are asking them to give up is the option to LOVE other people. Which is very different from just asking them to give up the option to FUCK other people.