"Eskimo brothers"?

No. I'm disallowing that phrase.

Fuck, I'm jealous of this guy, and he's not even macking on my wife.

Dan's advice is right, but the flip side is that after telling your gf your concerns, you give her space to come to her own conclusions.

If you still want to talk about him, try asking her what she likes about him and listening.

(sidenote to seandr: you made a point of asking me to read your post in the Mayo thread. Ball's in your court.)

The letter writer should end this relationship and enroll in a composition class immediately.

Sleeping with a lot of people doesn't say anything about his sexual prowess. He might be hot and charming, so he can GET women into bed with him, but it doesn't sound like he gets many coming back for seconds.

My hat's off to poly folk -- even the letters from happy poly people sound absolutely exhausting. This letter makes me want a giant cup of Stumptown.

@EricaP: ☹

Poly: Bonne chance.

Peace

@wxPDX: I know, right? Makes me nostalgic for the old days when rivalries like this were settled by racing for pink slips.

I think it's perfectly okay to say to your girlfriend, "Hey, I don't like this guy." Heck, I think that if two people are permanent, it's okay for one to veto a partner/potential partner of the other. Even if it's over jealousy, as long as you're honest about that.

If you veto two in a row, though, time to talk things over.

"Hey honey, it bothers me when you hook up with this guy because I think he's a jerk. Would it be too much of a thing for you to not include him in your circle of physically intimate friends?"

And then she says either, "Sure, honey, it's no big deal" or "Wow, let's talk about your feelings." Because lots of chicks like to have long talks about their relationship.

Polyamorous relationships are in inherently narcissistic because it demands the other partner(s) accommodate their jealousy.

"Eskimo brothers"? Seriously? At least "pussy partners" isn't racist.

@13 FTW. If I were in a poly relationship, that's how I'd prefer to hear my primary partner's concern.

I am acquainted with some of the stars of Showtime's "Married and Dating" and have friends closer to the poly crowd. Dan, you were actually pretty much on the mark here. Any successful poly relationship requires a good deal of "processing" and it needs to happen frequently (though some pods boast of being able to get a weeks worth of processing done in less than an hour most of the time)

@15 then all relationships are inherently narcissistic because people are narcissistic. If you don't have to cope with your partner's other partner, you still have to cope with your partner's other priorities in life, whether that means time spent on the children, friends, job or hobbies...

@11: I tried three times to read your post but all I got was a headache.

Poly is too pronoun-intensive.

Polyamory is, to coin a phrase, a varsity level relationship and it requires more communication on more awkward topics than people expect. And given how adroit we all are at dating just one person at a time, it's scary as hell. I know, I've been in an open relationship for a decade now and those first few years consisted of some weird and brutally honest conversations that I never imagined having: "I'm happy for you and your relationship with [other partner] but..."

15, your post makes sense only so long as you assume that jealousy is inherent to every relationship. It may be the case w/ you, where you're a jealous person and you like to hang around other jealous people to make you feel comfortable about it. The truth of the matter is that humans can and do go beyond restrictive, crippling, immature emotions, and can live w/o jealousy, rage, bitterness, resentment. The LW, while not being perfect, is at least trying to grow beyond jealousy, instead of simply accepting it. Because it really screws up your view of others when you do that, always seeing the negative in them while assuming yourself as blameless. In fact, you could almost describe wallowing in negative emotions as..... narcissistic.

My partner likes to hook up with women he meets online for BDSM playdates. I have whatever access I want to his emails/texts with them and every once in a while once strikes me as a potential problem for him, me, or both. I can't imagine not being able to say, "The cray-cray is strong with this one, Luke," for example and have that be some kind of problem. For us, successful slutting around involves us being able to make uncensored, intuition-driven statements about the other partner's hook-ups. I'm concerned at the thought that there's some pressure on the LW to not speak up.

I'm also concerned that I'm a bad proofreader: I can't imagine saying, "The cray-cray is strong with this one, Luke," and having that be some kind of problem.

@16: "Eskimo" is not a race.

Slit porn. Just sad. Very sad.

Again, I guess slit porn isn't so sad for teh str8 guys. My apologies to the streh guys.

@26 if the other two partners aren't a problem for the LW, F.A., then it's not a problem. If the way their relationship is structured usually works for them, good for them. She's his girlfriend, no quotes, because he says she is, & they have a relationship. It might not be your kind of relationship, but it is one nonetheless. He gets to play around too, y'know. Don't see any judgement about that.

His problem isn't w/ it being a poly relationship; his problem is this one guy who feels like a creeper to him, which is complicated by the fact that the LW might actually be a little jealous.

I read it until the phrase "Eskimo brothers" and everything after was white noise. Literally.

My wife and I are poly and fairly slutty to boot, so we've had a lot of experience with this.
First we subscribe to Mistress Matisse's advice that the only veto you really have in any relationship is the one that you exercise on yourself. You can tell someone all you want to not do something and they will decide whether or not they're gonna listen to you. If they decide to ignore you then you can decide if you still want to be in that relationship. Believing you have any absolute power over someone is just deluding yourself.

That said, you can-influence- people. If my wife meets/hooks up with a guy that sets my hair on end, I tell her. It's a simple statement. "He's a bore." Or "He's kind of a douche." or something like that. If she asks me why I think that I'll tell her. 9 times out of 10 I just have to say the one sentence and the guy is already a distant memory. But to get to this point I had to generate credibility. The first couple of guys who set me off, I told her and she didn't listen. I turned out to be right. I also don't express that opinion lightly. I've really gotta truly dislike the guy before I say anything because I know that if I decide every guy out there is a choad then she's not going to think I have any basis of comparison. She gives weight to my opinion because she trusts that I'm looking out for her, not to protect my own ego.
This system may not work for you, but it might not hurt to consider it or give it a try.

I'm so unfamiliar with the term "Eskimo brothers" that I can't even tell if it's racist.

Straight men ought to get used to the obvious idea that hot, erotically competent, and sexually available men have a certain appeal to women, even when those men have not yet fully realized their Buddha-nature. Just like the other way around.

@34: Obviously it's racist as fuck.

[BJ] This LW apparently fears that her girlfriend is vulnerable to Mr Rock Star's super-intense brand of heterosexuality. She should take comfort in the idea that it is almost always a pose; imagining him in an intimate moment with a male groupie, and herself in possession of incriminating photographs she could sell to the tabloids - a sideways equivalent of Marcia Brady envisioning her driving test examiner in his underwear.

[non-BJ]

It seems that people are somewhat coddling the LW. Now, I admit that my first impulse would be to require all people who begin a sentence with, "Me and my X," as the subject only to marry or boink or even associate with each other - and, in a letter, this is less forgivable than in a telephone call to a radio host. And we have racialism in the mix as well (along with my usual dinging of LWs who insist on calling women girls, though I accept that others don't think this ding-worthy) - this all adds up to one of the least appealing representatives of a reasonable cause.

The big answer is that yes, there should be open and honest communication about concerns. Mr(?) Zrob's system of established trust seems quite sound. But I don't think this LW is up to such a system, or, frankly, deserves it.

Small answer: Pot, meet Kettle - only a rather superiour brand of Kettle.

Maybe I'm ignorant or guilty of the dreaded 'you're not doing it right' but this strikes me more as young twenty-somethings playing poly rather than actually being polyamorous. It sounds more like being with this woman means being in an open relationship and occasionally hanging out with her fuck buddies. Maybe I'm hung up on semantics or my opinion is being overly clouded by a monogamous lense but I have trouble seeing this as a serious relationship. It seems that navigating open/poly relationships requires greater commitment and communication than is going on here. Something about the LW's situation reminds me of middle school/early high school when my group of friends was constantly dating within the group, breaking up, dating another person in the group, breaking up, dating person A again, breaking up, dating person C, etc. while we all continued hanging out together. But who knows maybe I'm wrong and they'll all live happily ever after.

sounds like he likes the hipness of a poly relationship without the problems of a poly relationship.

Poly sounds like so much more work than it is worth to me just to maybe see some other sets of genitals @_@

It sounds to me like he really wants to be with this girl, and that she said "OK, but I'm poly, so if you want to be with me you'll have to be poly too." He does not seem very interested in the other girl he occasionally "hooks up with" - he just has one "girlfriend" - but he needs to be "poly" to date the girl he wants. It also does not sound like his girlfriend really wants to be with him - he's OK as a boyfriend for the moment, but if she needed to replace him she wouldn't lose any sleep over it. And I'm guessing the guy who's the issue is very good looking, and a jerk to people lower on the pecking order than him, such as the LW.

@39: Do you also ding people who call men "guys"? "Girl" is the feminine of "guy" as well as "boy".

@39 should be @37. My bad.

@38: I just heard the term wiener cousins.

Sounds like 'Eskimo Brothers' would make a good band or team name.

He seems manipulative, he uses superficial charm to get away with a lot of shit that would get anyone else labeled and asshole.

Like casually dropping racist phrases? GF might have a type...

@16: Though it's pretty reductively objectifying; in fact, using even the original phrase is fucking sexist, too, as it takes the women out of the picture except as a means to relate two men (POLY could instead have simply omitted the phrase - the previous sentences already establish this guy has slept with a lot of women in the area). POLY perhaps feels threatened because he sees this guy as a less insecure/more sexually experienced version of himself (or perhaps POLY is entirely projecting).

I'm all for poly relationships, but I think they should really include veto power. So long as those in the relationship are on equal footing and no one is abusing their veto, I think an, "I'm really not comfortable with you doing this" should be enough.

Like abortions, the veto should be rare but readily available to those that need it.

@25: A distinction without a difference. If I talked about "some Cherocunt" when talking about a Cherokee then that'd be pretty damned racist even though Cherokees aren't a race, either. "Eskimo" is apparently still academically okay, but most people in Canada wouldn't use it because of the (academically questioned) belief that it has its origins in a derogatory term used by their Indian neighbours to the south.

M? Crow - You're omitting "gal" (I give both "guy" and "gal" the FTWL.... treatment; I don't use either word myself), there are connotations specific to the UK, and it's not half so infantilizing - therefore, not really, though stylistically I dislike it about as much as I dislike the substance of the other.

This is a particular irritant for me living in the a college basketball state. With only three championships of eleven (if my math is right; I don't follow team sports but they keep closing my street for parades), it would make much more sense if the members of the lesser team were generally called boys, but they never are.

Regarding substitutes for the perfectly acceptable word "women": fifty weeks out of the year, though, I am much harder on the L word, as almost nobody who ever uses the L word uses the corresponding G word in an equivalent quantity and context (save during The Fortnight now nearing its conclusion). I make potential allowance for those given to Hyacinth Bucket-like turns of alliteration, but otherwise I am always ready to request that the user provide the distinction that makes a difference. Seriously, I gave up watching figure skating (one of the worst offenders) over this.

@venominion Well, to implement a system of trust would take a certain amount of maturity and self reflection...if the LW were able to do that then they might at that time deserve it.

@49 a veto system can work within limited time frames. X and Y are in a relationship and Y takes an interest in Z. X vetoes Z. That's okay, because Z hasn't invested anything yet.

If X then vetos the next candidates A, B, C, D, and L, M, N, O, and P ... and never finds anyone acceptable, then X and Y might want to reevaluate their poly understanding.

But the problem comes when X tries to exercise a veto after several months or years of an established outside relationship. That would be like a president vetoing a bill after it has already been implemented and people have made life decisions based on the new law. X can certainly try to veto Y's happy other relationship, but often gets dumped over it.

I think you can apply neutral chi to this problem! Do nothing.

If he really is the village bicycle, why not let your girlfriend have her ride? It's not likely to last long, so I honestly think waiting it out is an option.

You don't have to pretend to like him while you wait. You can just say, "Well, he's not my cup of tea, but have fun, honey."