I'm a 27-year-old male who has been recently submerging myself in the poly lifestyle. I've been maintaining multiple relationships with various degrees of seriousness. Some of my partners are people in the local kink scene that I play with at parties. One of them is a recurring playmate I have over to my house to tie up and consensually torture. I was even seriously dating a married poly person who was a lifestyle slave to her husband, but wanted to explore topping.

Recently though, I've started chatting with a person I met at one of the kink parties. We've been calling each other for hours at night, exchanging messages all the time, etc. However, despite the fact that we both enjoy roughly the same things, she claims to not be poly, where I do. We've discussed this, and it seems we practice roughly the same thing.

I consider being tied up and beaten a form of sex, because mentally it's every bit as stimulating and that's what matters to me. She does not. So while I maintain only one fluid-bonded partner at a time for STI-risk-management purposes, I don't really consider this practice monogamy. She, however, only considers penetrative sex to be sex, and thinks that play parties at the local dungeon don't count against monogamy.

Should I be worried about the semantics here? I'm not sure which counts more for compatibility: our practices or our beliefs. Is this fundamental disagreement something that should preclude us pursuing a relationship?

Polyamorous In Theory

Here's an idea: keep having this woman over for bondage and consensual/erotic "torture" scenes—but stuff the ball gag in your own mouth, PIT, at least when you feel the need to discuss mono vs. poly.

You consider yourself poly (because you have a broad definition of sex), she considers herself monogamous (because she has a narrower definition of sex). I'm with you, PIT, as I think all sorts of non-penetrative stuff counts as sex. But I don't see why you're so invested in persuading this woman, a woman who's just as casual play partner, that her definition of monogamy is all wrong isn't the same as yours. If you browbeat her into recognizing kink play as one form of sex—and I'm not suggesting that you are browbeating her, PIT, only that you may have to start if you're gonna convince her that She's Wrong and You're Right—there's no detectable upside for you. She's not going to play with you twice as much or twice as hard if she embraces the poly label. And there's a definite potential downside to browbeating her in to accepting your definition of monogamy: she might stop seeing you due to the browbeating—she doesn't come to you to get her brows beat—or she might stop seeing you because being monogamous is more important to her than playing with her kinky not-actually-fucking fuckbuddy.

Here's a better plan: you agree to disagree, you go right on identifying as poly, she goes right on identifying as monogamous, PIT, and you keep playing and having fun and respecting each other's limits, definitions, safe words, boundaries, sexual identities, and self-conceptions.