Love this article. Terry Gross saying "You can't be serious". Esther Perel actually talks in her book The State of the Affair how LGBTQ people are much better than heterosexuals about discussing this and dealing with it.

Blazing trails is hard work

It's easy to have sex outside of marriage when you're not in one. Just sayin'.

@ 3 - Alan Cumming and Dan are both married. Just sayin'.

Cheating will always be skanky behavior though.

Just because there are other ways to betray doesn't make adultery any less shitty or toxic.

Knowing that some people will make mistakes is not the same as saying; 'why even try' and planning to betray.

Sure, adultery is more accepted now but that is (another) marker for how low the civilization has descended.

Normalization of adultery and a president with the morals of Trump are two sides of the same coin.

We really aren't skipping, anymore; we are in a full run toward Gomorrah.....

Straight people have known how to have sex outside of marriage for thousands of years.

If you don't like the ways they're going about it in a particular geographic area, at a particular moment in history, then that's your problem, not theirs.

@6 - yeah, let's criminalize it again, or have them stoned to death. Those were the good old days when civilization was great! They still do that in some Arab states. Move there if you think our civilization has sunk so low. And by our civilization I'm imagining that you meant USA civilization, since sex outside of marriage in France and other countries is not greeted with such moral judgements.

@7 Right on.

@ 6 - Give us one valid reason why monogamy should be considered any more "moral" than ethical non-monogamy.

Alan Cumming is simply amazing. I know he's not into women but his accent makes me swoon. So much talent and a wonderful person as well. Big fan. Totally agree with the sentiment.

At pre-school my daughter has classes on emotions and relationships. Why can't these classes continue into adulthood? Why doesn't sex ed include navigating the emotional aspects of sexual relationships? When are we going to get emotionally-healthy non-monogamous people in soap operas?

Btmom @ 10 - Alan Cumming is very openly bisexual.

Maybe a trade,
Gays can teach straights whatever Cumming is going on about and straights can teach gays how to have sex without STD epidemics.

@ 14 - Straights are pretty good at getting and spreading STDs themselves. Aids is mainly a heterosexual problem around the world. But let's not let facts get in the way of our prejudices, right?

15
Why don't you bop over to the CDC website and educate yourself about STD rates among MSM.
We'll wait.......

@ 16 - There's nothing I said that implies that men who have sex with men do not get STDs, just that straights get them too. I'll wait until you learn to read.

And blip has a good point @ 17 that might explain those rates (and also why you're so pathetically bitter).

18
You didn't look at the CDC site.

@ 19 - I did. First, it's all about the US, which is not particularly interesting for non-Americans. Second, it confirms what I say.

As I said, I'll wait until you learn to read.

20
You didn't either.,

21
Please share.
What are the rates for MSM, compared to other demographics?

@ 23 - You are awfully thick. Have a nice evening alone in your mom's basement.

24
You didn't look at the CDC site.

@25, Ricardo did, and I did too, what he says is correct. Enjoy your day.

Now girls, it's not about us.
At all.
You are very persistent at avoiding the topic at hand.
Don't be afraid.
The Truth will set you free.

29
That's funny.
Tragically ignorant, but funny.

29
Besides, everyone knows gays get their STDs from the toilet seat because they sit down to pee.

I don't see why infidelity and non monogamy have to be lumped together.

Wow, so many of you are missing the point here. If you discuss with your SO about sex outside of marriage, and you get a blessing and a green light, it isn't a betrayal by anyone. It is a loving gesture to help avoid sexual frustration in your partner. As long as you are not neglecting and lying and hiding things, it can still be a loving and wonderful relationship. I am much kinkier than my husband. He is uncomfortable taking care of my kink. He has given me the go ahead to scratch my itch outside of marriage. I would never leave or betray or stop loving my husband, I find him amazing and wonderful and have enjoyed our vanilla sex for 15 years, and still do. But the gift he is giving me is a beautiful thing. When I meet the right man and get the final approval from my husband, how is that in any way a betrayal? It is a completely loving gesture from him towards me. I have told him that he is free to consider sex with someone else as well. We are now going to our first FetLife local group meeting together very soon. We are really looking forward to it, and I find I love my husband even more for allowing me to be so honest with him about it all. This has in no way hurt my marriage, instead, it has solidified it.

35

If your husband was unwilling/unable to give you this wonderful gift what would you do?
Cheat and take what you want anyway?
Stew and be resentful?

Did you tell him before you were married you would be wanting to get some on the side?
Or did that revelation come after.
Do you have kids? (Don't have any (more)...)

You have made him aware that you have wants he is uncomfortable with;
after that revelation exactly what options did he have?

When you meet the right man and he scratches your itch and you become more attracted to him than your husband what will you do?

It's all so giddy and floating-on-air to begin,
but it gets real soon,
real complicated and real ugly, usually.

@36 Wahlburg: I would NEVER cheat on my husband or go outside of my marriage without his permission. My marriage is a precious beautiful thing. I would absolutely not be resentful about it if he decided that this didn't work for him. It takes two of us to make a marriage work. And in our marriage, sex is not the glue that binds us to each other, love and respect are.

I'm going to address your questions even though it is frankly none of your business how I live my life and conduct my marriage. Why do you get to be the authority on it anyway? If you are happy with your spouse and staying monogamous, great! Why can't my husband and I do something different?

Did I tell him I wanted to have sex outside of the marriage when we got married? No, because at the time my husband and I were different people. We have been together for 20 years and we grow and evolve. Ours is not a static marriage, and we are not static individuals. Instead we change and discover new things about each other and ourselves over time. We are human and we change. We have been monogamous since we started having sex and I was unaware of my kink. I did not know I enjoyed the things I did. My husband and I over the past decade or so have tried different things in the bedroom occasionally and oh my! One of those things made my body and brain explode with a need for more more more. I had no idea I would like that, let alone that much. So while my husband indulges me once in a blue moon, I would like to have it much more often.

Yes we have kids. Again, not your business if we choose to have them and raise them in a manner we see fit. Not relevant to this conversation at all. If we choose to have more, again not relevant and not your call to make. (What is it about telling people not to have kids on the comments?)

Of course he is aware of my kink and it wasn't something that I came to him with after secretly harboring this thing. He is aware of and attuned to my likes and dislikes because he loves me, pays attention to me, and cares for me. WE COMMUNICATE. We always have. We do not hide things and keep secrets from each other. That would only serve to break down trust and create instability. In fact, he is the one that suggested maybe I go outside the marriage. Before that, it had never occurred to me to do so. Guess what, he sometimes indulges in porn and even tells me about it! Oh my! And no crumbling of marriage has resulted from that. But it would if he had chosen to hide it and keep it secret.

We have not yet committed to this course of non-monogamy and we are only exploring it. Talking about it. Looking at it. Mulling it over. Etc... But the key here is that we are doing it together. The moment he says no, we stop. End of story. If we do meet a man willing to indulge me and I find I have an attraction to physically, we will see if I am truly comfortable taking that step. But why do you assume that I would be more attracted to him than my husband? Am I supposed to suddenly swoon and fall in love with him because he takes care of my kink? Sometimes sex is just sex you know. I had a friend with benefits in college and never fell in love with him.

And yes it is exciting! It is making both of us giddy! It is fun to explore new things and my vanilla sex life with my husband is still great and beautiful. I can see how much he really loves me to allow me to find further happiness in this area of my life. I would gladly do the same for him. We are committed to each other. Happy with each other. Want the best for each other. If that means another man indulging me and my husband is happy with that, then our choice of non-monogamy is not cheating. And no one else's business.

I do not understand why we can help and push our spouses to grow in so many other areas of our lives except for our sex lives. What is so different about sex that makes it such a sensitive topic for so many? There is so much more to marriage than sex. If there isn't, then it is a sad state of "affairs" indeed.

I can't not say it. This well-written article's promotion of sex that goes beyond monogamy is primarily from gay men. The sexual practices of gay men--and I have dear friends in that category--was the driving agent of the AIDS illness becoming a horrifying national epidemic. While I hear you, that non-monogamy may be beneficial . . . I'm pressed by history to feel concern.

The driving agent that almost made AIDS an epidemic was Reagan. If you pretend you don’t know what the disease is or how it’s spread because it’s only killing gay men so you pull funding, you go down in history as THAT President.

It's remarkable how Mr Savage can take a position with which I am in almost total agreement and make it extremely unpleasant. I can recall saying in the 1980's that I'd never demand monogamy of a partner, but I'd never say that around Mr Savage because he'd immediately deem me a cuckold, which would send me right to LMB. And I can't imagine he'd ever permit anyone to find non-monogamy good for some individual couples without proclaiming it a general good. Maybe if he ever loses the snark that invites the inference that there's something wrong with anyone he thinks ought to be monogamous, there could be common ground.

39

Wow.
That's a pretty toxic level of deluded denial.

You know, we knew how to stop AIDS before there ever was AIDS.
Actually Reagan had the most insightful comment on AIDS, ever;
''After all, when it comes to preventing AIDS, don't medicine and morality teach the same lessons?'' he said.

The CDC (Science!) tells us that abstinence then monogamy is the best way to prevent STDs.
Where have we heard that before?
Was Moses an epidemiologists?

No, Reagan wasn't the driving agent.
Treating AIDS as a Civil Rights issue instead of a medical epidemic was a driving agent.
Hedonistic behavior choices was a driving agent.
(you actually had to work pretty hard at it to get AIDS,
pretty persistently engaging in behaviors that society already knew to be unhealthy...)

Behavior choices that 40 years of education and outreach haven't put a dent in;
behavior choices that keep HIV levels high among some enlightened demographics
(come on boys, teach us all about non-monagamy...)
that push levels of other STDs (gonorrhea, syphilis anybody?) higher,
and breed antibiotic resistant strains.

But you don't want to hear any of this.
You just want a pill that lets you keep doing what you've been doing.

Reagan is not your problem.
Never was.

@33. Dadddy. I agree with a lot of what you say, maybe all the first two paragraphs, but not all the last where you imply women place a lower value on sex because, in broad terms, they have lower testosterone.

The key audience to convince in 'non-monogamy can be better' are straight women. To me, though, the reasons why most (I would say) straight women have a preference for committed monogamous relationships / marriage have to do with non-sexual, or not narrowly sexual, symbolic and practical benefits associated with this form of partnership. Practical--their partner is less likely to run off leaving them holding the baby, partly because he will attract social stigma--he will pay a higher cost--for doing so. There's financial support. Shared work and parenting routines. Symbolic--marriage confers enormous social acceptability. It’s deeply written into narratives of what it is to lead a happy, worthwhile, 'normal' life as a woman. My suspicion would be that some of the characteristically cis het female emotions represented as attaching to monogamy--only loving one person, only wanting to do it with one person, not responding in a sexually full or satisfying way to more than one person--respond to these social pressures, rather than--for sure--being a matter of hardwired biology.

37

Sure, none of our business;
but you are the one here telling us all about your kinks and your husbands discomfort with them and how adultery is such a loving beautiful thing that is going to make your marriage even more awesome.....

How you raise your kids is everyone's business because at some point you will turn them loose on society. Some lifestyle choices predispose to family breakup and chaos and that is hell on kids. Will no one think of the children?...

(We will leave the advice giving to Dan but if your husband hiding porn would crumble your marriage you might consider that the fire you are giddy to play with is way hotter than sneaking some porn in. Buyer beware...)

Good Luck.

@38. Scott. It was gay men that pressed for sex education in the face of heteronormative inertia (an inertia motivated by, at the best, aversive distaste).

It’s not promiscuity that leads to STI transmissions. It’s unsafe sex.

Perhaps you could campaign for safe sex education, including for anal as well as vaginal forms of penetrative intercourse (and for lots of information about non-penetrative forms of sex), in schools and outreach work, and then express concern among epidemics. Or worry about bigger killers like road accidents, environmental pollution and guns....

Dadddy @33 and Harriet @42: I'll hop in here and say that although yes, testosterone is a real thing and not to be omitted in these discussions--there's also the large factor of social pressure on women to not be sluts. We (society) tell each other that men want variety and women want one good man; accordingly, men are encouraged to go for lots of partners, and women are encouraged not to. If you believe the original premise, maybe that's works, but personally, I don't. Not that I have a huge sample size, but among my friends, I think the women are just as interested in sexual variety as the men. (And a good chunk of us are in nontraditional relationship structures.) So I suspect that in your more "traditional" marriage (the type that becomes stereotypically unhappy, sexually) there's a lot of subliminal stuff going on with the woman--thinking that yes, one partner is all she wants, and feeling good about getting a guy to marry her, and a few years in when things are winding down, thinking that means she "just isn't feeling sexual" anymore instead of meaning she wants some variety.

(I realize I'm just doing a variation on what Harriet said.)

Dadddy, like Harriet, I agree with your first two paragraphs. But then, in the lop-sided sex-drive situations that we might think of as "average," maybe that works out, as the guy is willing to put in more effort for it, since it means more to him?

In either case, I think lifting some of the stigma can only be a win-win. There will be lop-sidedness, yes, but there will also be more women who realize it's okay to want more/different sex, and allow that desire in their partners as well.

@37. Chrysla. Good luck at the FetLife meetup and in finding someone with whom to explore your kink.

Your answers to Wahlberg are perfect. Your marriage is modeling respect and loving attentiveness to your kids--implicitly, as well, in a private part of your life you do NOT have to sacrifice on the altar of some restrictive, punitive ideal of exclusivity. It is good, in broad terms, that your children know their parents love each other, and that they can pick up on how you are lovingly able to make accommodations to each other.

@40. Venn. On the contrary; I find Dan's capacity for empathetic identification with emotionally normative cishets little short of heroic!

@45. ciods. We're very much in agreement.

Maybe a bit more than you, I think we have to take a straight woman's saying 'I only want to be with one man' at face value. Yes--there are reasons for thinking it partly conditioning or socialization, good feminist reasons--but I don't think I'd say that to an interlocutor's face. Rather the first step would be getting her to agree there are no moral problems in principle with ethical, painstakingly negotiated sluttery.

Dadddy @33 wrote: >> In the heterosexual market, "dick is abundant and low value", whereas pussy is comparatively precious and scarce. Getting laid as a het male takes a significant investment of time and energy, even more so if you're offering no possibility of a relationship. >>

If non-monogamy in hetero marriages were about casual sex, then, yes, women would have an easier time of it. But most non-monogamous women don't find casual sex satisfying; they want connection and intimacy with their sexual adventures.

And once you build in a desire for connection & intimacy as well as sex, women have no dating advantage over their non-monogamous partners. You also suggest the non-monogamous man can't offer new women a relationship, but I have a real relationship with each of my two partners (and they have real relationships with their other partners as well).

Harriet_by_the_bulrushes @42 -- in discussing the practical benefits of monogamy, you refer to:
>> their partner is less likely to run off leaving them holding the baby... financial support. Shared work and parenting routines.>>

But in fact Mr. P is less likely to leave me "holding the baby" because he gets to have me and sexual variety as well. So the practical side there tilts towards non-monogamy. (Also state laws protect the children from abandonment, so that helps too.)

In the polyamorous networks I see around me, a lot of people live with a spouse or spouse-equivalent and date others as they see fit. That doesn't mean it's always sunshine & kittens: sometimes one person wants to get entangled and their partner doesn't want that -- but that's true with monogamy as well.

So from a practical perspective, non-monogamy works just as well as monogamy, if not better (I don't worry about getting replaced, since Mr. P doesn't need to choose between me and another partner).

Yes and yes to EricaP's posts.

Chrysla @37, joining in with those wishing you a great time at the FetLife meetup!

>> at the time my husband and I were different people. We have been together for 20 years and we grow and evolve. >>

Exactly! Mr. P and I were monogamous for the first 14 years of our marriage, and then we opened up. That was eight years ago, and our marriage is stronger than it has ever been, as we each have seen the other one able to adapt to change, as long as those changes are flagged and happen slowly.

Baby steps like the ones you guys are taking are great!

Tell any potential new partners that the two of you are newbies to non-monogamy, and still learning what works for you. Not everyone wants to sign up to be dropped the moment the established partner says stop, but some people will accept that risk and other emotional risks that come with the first steps away from monogamy. So - baby steps and, as you say, a ton of communication.

For the record, gay men have more STDs (on average) than heterosexuals in the US because:

1) On average, gay men have more partners
2) It's a lot easier to transmit some STDs, especially HIV, through anal sex than it is vaginal sex.

Heterosexuals might be able to "teach" gay men how to have less partners, but the anal sex things is immutable biology.

@50. Erica P. Exactly, yes. Non-monogamy offers big practical benefits to mothers in terms of the security of their family. 'Society's' supposition is that mothers care about this more than fathers; but this is sexist, and is something that people like you and your partner have had strength to resist. The notion that, in indulging his interest in sexual variety, a man is prepared to jeopardise his children's wellbeing is a baleful one. Many people instinctively entertain it, in my view; and it's an obstacle to the acceptance of poly.

The benefits of poly are open to you (in raising kids, as otherwise) because you have been able patiently to negotiate your sexual expectations (and so entitlements) with your partner. This is surely hard for people. Surely hard especially for straight women.... It bucks the narrative of what most people take as a woman's life-course. Maybe it takes not just a notably open-minded woman, for someone of my pre-millenial generation (born late 60s/early 70s), but also someone unusually free, or exempt, from family and broader societal pressures--to work out, that is, a self-scripted relationship on this basis. Did you, for instance, have to explain to your mother that your relationship / partnership would be poly? Is your polyamory something that you would expect your employer to acknowledge or entertain (say, in accepting some other chaperone than your 'husband'/Mr P. at some works do)?

I'm not sure what you say in @49 over straight/bi women having no 'dating advantage' over the same categories of men in poly settings. Don't they have the advantage, simply, of an excess of demand over supply? Yes, sure, I will grant that the number of straight men wanting casual poly relationships is greater than the number wanting emotionally genuine and durable and nurturing relationships. But isn't the number of men wanting genuine poly relationships with women still greater than the number of women in this market?

Harriet_by_the_bulrushes @54 - We may come out to our family & employers, etc. at some point, but that hasn't yet seemed worth doing.

That said, we go out in public with our non-entangled partners, holding hands, looking affectionate, so even though we're not announcing it, we're also not paranoid about getting caught.

Coming out explicitly tends to be more an issue with triads, where three people live together and one of the partners needs to be assured that they're a full partner by being invited to family gatherings, weddings, holiday work parties, etc.

I will note that my employer doesn't see my husband as my "chaperone" when he comes to an event with me. Did you mean "date"?

>> But isn't the number of men wanting genuine poly relationships with women still greater than the number of women in this market? >>

No, it isn't. The numbers are roughly equivalent and a larger factor in marital imbalances turns on which person is more outgoing and good at dating. And even that can be compensated for by giving the other person some extra room in the budget or extra flexibility with regard to scheduling.

Now -- it is true that non-monogamous folks may have to be flexible about age ranges, especially if they're drawn to women who are just at the point of wanting to settle down and raise children. Women in their late 20s and 30s tend to be nesting, which makes them harder to date non-monogamously. But from what I can see there are as many women in their 40s and 50s as men interested in intimate, durable, non-monogamous relationships.

Dadddy @55 "how few women are interested in happily married men."

On what grounds do you make that claim? My husband and my other partner don't have any trouble finding other women to date, nor do the other polyamorous men I know. Is it hard to find a solid connection? Yes, just as hard as for monogamous folks. Dating is hard. But it's not especially hard for happily married non-monogamous men.

@Dadddy @55:
> in most cases, they understand that extramarital sex would severely
> destabilize their relationship, largely due to the imbalance in sexual power.
I'm not clear on which imbalance you mean?

It's odd, of course I do think there are risks associated with ethical nonmonogamy. What's interesting to me is the assumption (on some people's part, not meaning anyone here) that those risks don't exist in monogamous relationships. My romantic/sexual history may be unusual, but I have both left partners and been left by partners because of an emerging outside sexual interest--and those were my monogamous relationships. It's interesting to me to wonder if those relationships would have failed anyway if they involved ethical nonmonogamy. I suspect some would, but it would be the same ones that I look back at and think "Those relationships should have ended anyway."

As for this:
> [re: the story that women want one man only]
> Some people still tell this story ... but in my neck of the urban archipelago,
> this folk wisdom has been largely abandoned.
As it has been in my primary social circle as well. That said, I'm trying to be more aware that my social circle is not representative of most of the country/world. As an example, my most recent new sexual partner is from a more blue-collar context, and it was eye-opening for him that people might ever be ethically nonmonogamous, and especially that women might want to. His background and current social circle definitely still tell that story. As another example, I think my parents are still deeply embedded in that narrative.

Oh, and Dadddy, I don't mean to disagree that finding outside partners will be hard for a guy with a family and a job and all that. Probably harder than for a girl even if you factor in the level of relationship she might want with outside partners. The question is, will the imbalance be so frustrating to the guy that he'd prefer to close the primary relationship again? Or is having the possibility worth it? Presumably there's a tipping point, which will vary from person to person.

Dadddy @58 -- well, but if men are willing to date outside that range, there are plenty of women in their 40s who appreciate the energy and stamina of a younger man -- assuming he's willing to treat her as a girlfriend and not as a fuckbuddy.

Dan, I too used to feel very lonely in my views that beautiful and strong and intimate relationships do not need to revolve around the obsession for the exclusive control of our loved one's genitalia. Finding your column some 12 years ago helped me feel less lonely - thank you!

@56. Erica. I'll start with the disclaimer that I've never dated women. I've had sex with a few queer women in a 'grouping' context and in other informally negotiated arrangements. So I only have an anecdotal idea of the numbers of straight/straight-ish male and female potential participants on the poly scene.

What you say about 'equal numbers' interests me. I've no reason to doubt it. There _is_ a smidgen of suspicion in my mind that more men in decade-old-plus marriages would like to be poly, to have other substantially important and non-exclusive relationships, than women, but are not able to convince their partners of this, or don't dare voice this leaning, and so don't appear on the scene. But this could be flat-out wrong, and my idea could just be misogynistic. (Another kind of feminist might say that it's right; and that this is, across a wide distribution, an average difference between male and female attachment styles).

Yes, by 'chaperone' I meant 'date'. Obviously I don't think your employer thinks you need a man's blessing to e.g. 'press this button' if you're an engineer, or 'prescribe these meds' if you're a doctor or 'write that check' if you're a banker. 'Consort' and 'escort' as words would have had comparable problems. As a gay man, once you've come out--which may be very difficult--it's almost as if you can get away with any Gomorrah-style behavior; and then you have (in my case) another whole level of coming-out and reassurance of family and self-justification to get through when you're in your first serious relationship. This is especially so if you're bi (maybe it's 'was bi in the late 80s/90s') and can present as straight. (Not that I can present as straight...).

@55. Dadddy. You have an a) and a b) reason for wives not wanting more to bust out of their sexually jaded marriages when they could be reenergized by a new sexual partner. a) is that they are able to give sex comparatively little importance, and b) they are on the wrong end of a power 'imbalance' in an intimate context. Though, like ciods, I wasn't quite sure what this meant, I took it to suggest something like 'they fear their husband will hit or rape them or brutalize them or just cold-shoulder them if they say they want sex with another man'.

My reasons would be all c) reasons i.e. (to a large degree) straight married wives have internalised the expectation that monogamous sex should satisfy them. Sex with the guy bringing home the paycheck should be the most satisfying sex. Very often it's not; and I think this should be faced honestly and destigmatised.

Harriet_by_the_bulrushes @63 -- It's hard to know how many people think wistfully about non-monogamy but are too scared to bring it up. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more men in that situation. I'm just saying that among the people I know who are *openly* polyamorous, men and women have roughly the same amount of difficulty finding committed, non-exclusive partners.

@Dadddy I've known a number of men who were very easily able to get laid by multiple partners but still preferred to cheat rather than pursuing open relationships because they couldn't tolerate the idea of their SO's also having outside partners. I'm sure this is true of many women who cheat, as well, but I'm addressing your comment about the imbalance in open relationships being a disincentive to men. I wonder if the greater disincentive is that moving to a more ethically open model removes the perceived advantages of the more one-sided model of cheating or upsets the traditional thinking of men desiring/needing variety and women desiring/needing monogamy.

@EricaP - I love what you said about some people needing connection with sex and how that can influence potential volume of partners in an open or poly relationship. That does seem more common among women, though not exclusive to women. It makes me wonder if open and poly relationships would have opposite ratios in that regard, considering many open relationships have rules around emotional attachments that many poly relationships do not.

@65. Erica. I wouldn't call myself 'poly' but am in a 'realistic' gay relationship without being an 'old fool'. I would be an 'old fool' if I allowed myself to suppose that I was my partner's hottest fuck.

One thing I have seen, in brushing against a slightly different and younger crowd, is that some participants in the poly scene are now women in their late 20s/early 30s, who intend to 'nest' in atypical relationship figurations (I know these people as activists, not as lovers). To me, this is a very good and promising thing, and something coming about, in part, through the influence of free-thinking media like _Savage Love_.

Women often (not always) get less pleasure from a casual one-time or very short term fling. So while men can just fuck in a casual thing and usually get off, women usually need a bit more passion or familiarity with their bodies. I don't know how much this has to do with testosterone and how much it just has to do with the mechanics. Most dicks, if you provide them with friction and rhythm, will get off. It's not as simple with women. Then you add to that the power dynamics and the risk (which yes men face too but not nearly in the same proportion) and then the lopsided risk regarding STIs (women get them from men more easily than men do from women) plus other factors like hormones and pregnancy, childrearing especially in the earlier years, etc. And the whole thing becomes complicated.

Myself, I agree that non-monogamy can work with straight people and also that it might be better as a norm for most people, but it's not ever going to look the way it looks among gay men, and personally I wish gay men would mostly shut the fuck up about it and let straight people lead the conversation about straight non-monogamy.

@Harriet 63

As neither of us have research on this topic to cite, we can only speculate and talk about our own experiences of the world. I also think it's probably true that there are more men in that age range in long marriages who would like to have sex outside the marriage than there are women who would like the same. However, that is different from saying that these same men would be comfortable with their wives fucking other men (and the wives might feel the same way about the husbands). So it's not just a matter of who wants to fuck outside the marriage- it's also about who wants to let the other do the same.

futurecatlady @66 -- from what I've seen, either
a) both people in the open relationship enjoy casual sex in which case restrictions on emotional attachments are straightforward and unproblematic, or
b) someone tends more toward emotional involvement, and either their partner accepts that and moves towards polyamory, or their partner insists all outside sex be casual -- and the other person resents the restriction.

Harriet_by_the_bulrushes @67 -- yes, I agree. There's still the fact that the sleep deprivation that goes with raising young children tends to make one less interested in adding new partners, but having the support of one's non-normative relationships would definitely be a plus during that hard stage of life.

As for who is the "hottest fuck" -- I'm Zen enough not to see it as a ranking. I see myself as a good fuck, and I don't need to think about how I compare to other people my partners fuck, because they're not choosing a winner. Though maybe I'll start thinking of myself as "an oldie but a goodie" :)

Erica, have you seen non-normative relationships that help out with small children outside of a poly setting? Because my experience is that parents of small children usually only have support of parents of other small children, and single non-parents who are interested in sexual or romantic relationships are extremely unlikely to want to spend their free time babysitting someone else's kids- there are much easier ways to get sex.

Within a poly relationship, perhaps, but that's only one way to be non-monogamous and it's probably the one that is also the most relationship-intensive in terms of how much energy/time it takes to maintain.

Women helping each other raise children in a community that is ostensibly about free love and cooperation is not new to young women in their 20s. This has literally been going on for centuries around the world, it's just that supposedly counter-culture women in the West rediscover it each generation and pretend they are doing something radical. And usually it does not last very long as the women find what women in this situation have found for centuries- it usually ends up being women doing a bunch of children rearing and housework while men get to fuck a lot of people. I might be old and jaded here, but when I see starry eyed 20 somethings talk about communal living and free love child-rearing, I want to tell them to talk to their grandmas who did the same thing in the 70s and see how that worked out. Or literally any woman in parts of the world where this is a norm.

EmmaLiz @68 -- "personally I wish gay men would mostly shut the fuck up about it"

Well, but Alan Cumming is bisexual, not gay, and I personally would listen to him talk at length about anything he wants to talk about. Or he could show me "How To Have Sex Outside of Marriage" and that would also be hot. :)

lol Erica I googled him when you said that, and he's totally not my type. But I do appreciate the sentiment.

I'm being cranky, but I do think that people who talk about non-monogamy in straight marriages should be straight people, not gay people or bi people. Even if he's bi, it's a different dynamic.

Daddy touches on some good points though I disagree with implications of his supply-demand talk. I do think the hormones matter, but I think it's simplistic to talk about testosterone only.

Adding MSM sex to the mix does change things. Alan can talk about bi non-monogamy all he wants, but I'm not so interested in hearing what he has to say about straight non-monogamy. Likewise, our conversations around child-rearing and non-monogamy within straight child-rearing couples.

I mean, I think it's informative for people to say stuff like, here's something that works in X type of relationship. But it's not helpful at all to say X group should learn to be more about Y. Obviously they are going to be different because they are.

EmmaLiz @71 -- I personally know two women in poly V's raising young children (ie, the mother has a husband and a boyfriend) and they seem happy. The non-parent doesn't do childcare but provides emotional support to the mom. Not sure if the men have other partners too.

Online, I have seen posts from people in triads or quads who say they are happy, and I have no reason to dispute their presentation of the situation. I've heard of low-libido moms who are grateful to their husband's gf for keeping him sexually satisfied -- not sure how well that works out in the long run.

Certainly, lots of couples think that finding a sexy unicorn to help with the rent, housework & childcare is a great idea and *that* doesn't usually work out well.

I wouldn't tell starry eyed 20 somethings that they should accept anything they don't want to accept, including mononormative relationships. I would, however, advise them not to make decisions about having children or moving people into the household while experiencing NRE.

And I'd advise them to focus on treating people well (and assessing whether they treat you well) rather than on setting up a pre-existing vision of how you want your life to look.

@65. Erica. Yes. Equally, though, I think an awful lot of long-married straight men are also long-suppressed cucks.

I think that a younger, a richer (selected examples only), and a more psychically/intellectually confused person than me (ditto) is highly likely to be a hotter fuck than me for a long-term partner....

@68. Emma: 'personally I wish gay men would mostly shut the fuck up about it and let straight people lead the conversation about straight non-monogamy'.

And thereby put a freeze on gender roles--put a freeze on the things you mentioned: the distribution of risk between the genders; the power dynamics of 'casual' or infrequent poly sex; the likelihood of STD infections (isn't this related anyways, principally, to protection, and, second, to specific sex acts and also e.g. the ratio of penetrative to other forms of intercourse?); the likelihood of pregnancy, and degree of jeopardy experienced by both partners, and so on. People embrace poly because they've rejected these stale gender expectations--'as a woman I need an emotional connection' etc. In trying to turn the page on oppressive gender norms, they're also going to be open to seeing bodies as things that are susceptible to revision and intervention in principle e.g. a condom, a dental dam...

I don't see how having more input from straight people in non-normative relationships about how straight people could have non-normative relationships instead of from gay/bi people would put a freeze on gender roles unless you think the variety in gender roles around the world historically and the changes even in the US in the recent decades are all because of the opinions/experiences of gay people?

BTW Harriet, I was not talking exclusively about poly which as I said is only one way to have an open-marriage and also the one that requires the greatest commitment of time/energy into the arrangement which is fine for people who want that, but is far less likely to be the choice of most people who want to fuck outside of their marriage.

And regardless of what we can do about it (we can do a lot with correct mindset and practice), women get STIs from men at much higher rates than men do from women, and ridiculously higher than women do from other women. Adjust it with whatever correct practices you want, the fact remains that women do carry higher risks from sex with men than men do from sex with women- and this extends beyond STIs as I said- and this is coupled with the fact that they are also less likely to orgasm from a first-time casual encounter with a man than a man is from the same with a woman. This is before we consider social dynamics and the reality of hormones.

So yes, for all of these reasons, I believe that the people driving the conversation around non-monogamy in straight couples should be straight couples. Not gay and bi men.

@75 Erica- I've seen it work for a few years and then fall apart, usually with drama. But that is absolutely the truth for a ton of traditional straight marriages too, so that shouldn't be a reason to avoid it!

Anyway my crankiness is more along the idea that people have stumbled upon some radical new way of living instead of something that people have been doing for centuries. The reason this is important is because the same oppressive gender dynamics (and work distribution around the household) can still exist even in a poly relationship just like it can in a coupled relationship. Or not. The two things (whether or not you have a traditional American relationship and whether or not you have some gender equality in child-rearing and sex) actually have nothing to do with one another. Any straight relationship with children is going to involve addressing these issues head on, and being poly or nonmonogamous or traditional in itself is not a solution to any of them. So I get annoyed with people who think they are going to avoid these pitfalls just by changing how many people they fuck. But I think Americans in general are pretty clueless about child-rearing until they find themselves in the middle of it. We don't have support structures in place that exist in other cultures and Americans don't seem to understand how much it alters their lifestyle. Leaping to the assumption that having additional lovers help raise kids is just naive, not to mention the fact that this would only work for someone interested in poly living in the first place, as we agree, as there is unlikely to be a large pool of non-parents seeking sexual relationships who want to babysit their lover's kids or do their lovers' chores in their free time.

I think your advice for young people in those situations is very good and more understanding than my own.

@55 Daddy

I mostly agree with what you've said here, even though I think Ciods is correct too.

The only thing I'd add is that you keep talking about the real effects of male testosterone. I agree with that, and when judged by the same standards, there are differences in male and female sex drives. But I think that's an issue only when judged by the same standards- as I think you explained pretty well in this post. Women's sex drive manifests differently (which is why I think non-monogamy can work for straight people, just not in the same way it does for gay men) but what troubles me is the comparison of testosterone to no testosterone rather than to the complicated hormones of women, which fluctuate not just throughout the month but also over the course of a lifetime and cause women to have varying experiences of raging horny sex drives and also no sex drive at all, as well as actually causing physical problems that prevent some women from enjoying sex (as we've seen a lot of LWs here discuss).

So I'm not disagreeing with you- I'm just saying that the female sexual experience is its own thing, not simple a not-male experience, so we should stop comparing it to the male experience and instead understand it for what it is, which I think based on your other posts, you do in your own sex life.

Anyway, the reason I'm saying this is it's exactly what is so wrong with gay men leading this conversation- it's like they are expecting straight relationships to be like gay ones and they never will be because women are not going to have sex lives like men. This doesn't mean they have to be monogamous by all means!

@78. EmmaLiz. On one point I think we're just at cross-purposes and on another we have a respectful (I hope) disagreement.

The cross-purposes point is that I guess you're thinking about straight marriages and the terms on which they can be opened up (e.g. open relationships, poly)--and further reflecting on the balance of pleasures and pains (or risks and efforts) for the man and woman, respectively. This wasn't really what I was talking about, initially--which was women who aren't married, don't yet have kids and are more open-minded than an older generation (or a smattering of them are) on the question whether they'll default to nuclear-family monogamy.

The (very broad) issue on which we disagree is whether entertaining poly represents, in principle, a rejection of stifling, even oppressive forms of patriarchy. I think it does--the conception of marriage as akin to ownership; the ideology of separate spheres; the association of women with childrearing, and isolation of the parenting couple from the world--all of these are challenged (challenged at least). But, as far as I understand you, you're not sold on this somewhat utopian rhetoric. You suspect that poly is a license for men to fuck around when women--mothers--are left thanklessly holding the baby. You don't see any theoretical or practical differences--if I can state what I take as your view strongly--between the possibly exploitative 'free love' communes of the 60s/70s and the emotionally arduous forms of ethical polyamory prescribed for couples by Peter Benson and Deborah Anatol. You don't seem to think poly husbands are sincere in orienting themselves by these ideas in aiming for genuine multiple relationships--rather than, say, using them as justification in wanting to get themselves some strange.

I'm not criticising your comment 'the female sexual experience is its own thing' from a gay male perspective ... if I'm criticising it at all, it's from a feminist perspective. 'A woman will always have more on the line in having sex with a man not her husband than the other way round...'. You would seem to agree with this. But why? Why should she have more at stake? Because she, not he, will get pregnant? There's contraception. Because she will raise the child? This is where you're left with an essentialist or traditionalist concept of gender roles. Can't we imagine a world where men and women raise children equally? Where small children are understood to be as much the responsibility, practically and ethically, of the father as of the mother?

"The (very broad) issue on which we disagree is whether entertaining poly represents, in principle, a rejection of stifling, even oppressive forms of patriarchy. "

Yes we disagree entirely here. And I can cite centuries of history in which women in poly arrangements were in fact deeply patriarchal. If we are misunderstanding one another, it's this: I'm not saying that poly arrangements are more or less prone to being patriarchal. The flip side of this is also true: nuclear family relationships are likewise not more or less prone to it. I'm saying that these relationships have nothing whatsoever to do with the extent to which a woman raising children will find herself in a patriarchal situation. It depends on the intentions and mindfulness of the individuals. Poly arrangements are not a solution to the problem of patriarchy in childrearing. Neither is traditional marriage. What I'm opposing is presenting them as flip sides to a coin with one being somehow inherently more about equality. This is naive, and it's a little insulting as well as poly was not invented by Westerners playing around with "non traditional" family arrangements. In fact for centuries and for many places in the world now, it is the norm, and it is mostly deeply also a matter of patriarchy.

Marriage might have a component of property to it- for most of time and for most cultures it was in fact a huge part of marriage. But it was also a way to protect women and children and the elderly within social arrangements that would otherwise allow more "free" people (especially young men) from running about irresponsibly enjoying themselves. I agree that birth control has been an amazing thing, probably the greatest invention in human history in the sense that it potentially liberates most of society from the bondage of family and marriage if that's not something they choose to do with their lives. But it doesn't entirely solve the problem, and we are still left with figuring out how to balance our desires as individuals against our responsibilities as parents (even by choice) and caretakers to the elderly. And try as we might to bolster up economic systems and incomes that allow us to just pay others to do these things for us, we are still going to have to grapple with the disproportionate way that those responsibilities are distributed throughout society, and yes, the burden still tends to fall mostly on poorer people and women. Within that context, mindful couples who care about these things can learn to balance their own responsibilities with their own desires in a way that's respectful to everyone- but there is no reason that poly arrangements are more likely to do this than coupled ones (or vice versa). This bias amongst Westerners that it's somehow a radical solution to this problem which is liberating to non-normative folks is a bunch of bullshit. You are poly because you want to be, and that's fine, and you will still be dealing with these issues just like everyone else. Being poly does not give you a work around.

Don't tell me what I think, unless what you are doing is asking. As I said above, I think a poly arrangement can take these considerations into mind and work out, but a person has to enter into that with these as priorities in the first place, in which case they'd probably do so in any arrangement. It's the PEOPLE that make the difference, not the arrangement or the existence of others. And my generalizations about the reality of most historic poly practices is not made up. While I have no doubt there are plenty of conscientious people who have worked it out in a good way, I cannot think of a single example of a culture that has made it a norm without it becoming deeply patriarchal- and that includes places where it is religious and cultural as well as situations in which it is supposedly radically counter-culture which is why I included examples of hippie communes.

'A woman will always have more on the line in having sex with a man not her husband than the other way round...'.

I did not say that and I don't know why you'd attribute it to me. I said nothing about comparing a woman having sex with her husband vs another man.

I answered all your final questions already, so please go back and read them. Also I'm fine to discuss these things with you here on this forum, but the fact that we are spending time on the last few of these questions is EXACTLY why I think the conversation around straight non-monogamous families should be led by straight non-monogamous couples with children.

@82. Emma. Well, there is one thing you say I absolutely agree with: that whether a mother is supported or tendentially oppressed (oppressed by sexism and sexist assumptions) in raising small kids 'depends on the intention and mindfulness of the individual[ parents]'. Of course--being poly is not a get-out card for Dads to be negligent or theorize away their wandering eyes. If the idea is that polyamory inherently rips up gender norms and is liberatory without men having to put in the yards ... then there's the capacity for parents of both genders to deceive themselves.

I'm happy to say we have a lot of common ground and are both concerned with the question, what sexual and 'relationship' arrangements might work best for a mother and her under-five(s)? Still, the sense does remain with me that, to you, it's a slamdunk what (or who) 'straight non-monogamous couples with children' are ... because it's not ambiguous to you what a 'man' is or what a 'woman' is. Taking account of trans and of gender fluidity is not an essential part (as I see it) of your feminism. This is the fundamental difference in position between us re the 'politics of poly' (as I see it, again).

As I understand, neither of us have personal skin in the game any more (or could so have). I'm 50; my relationship is gay/queer, open, closely negotiated and very happy. The kind of sex outside of my main relationship that truly excites me involves women, but often as spectators (of any sex act I get up to), not only as participants. I would have been happy to have discovered these scenes, partly kinky and poly scenes, in my late 20s/30s; but thinking of my life at the time both practically and in its internal weather, it wouldn't really have been possible. My understanding, too, is that you are my generation or older, not at the stage yourself of wondering whom to nest with, and in what relationship configuration. So we are both talking in loosely advisory terms to people at least a generation younger than us: me, saying 'poly queries patriarchy', and you, 'don't suppose that poly queries patriarchy'.

The young people practising poly 'want something better', are 'trying to build something better', and they will make mistakes, will inevitably lapse back into the old patterns they fought to shed. But to want something better than nuclear monogamy, you have to imagine it, to be extremely open-minded (perhaps) in rejecting its assumptions, not knowing what forms of stability and regularity, in terms of gender role, will attach to the arrangements that replace it. In claiming poly sits remarkably easily with patriarchy, you point to 'centuries' of history. Taormino's _Opening Up_ was written in 2008. Easson's _The Ethical Slut_, 2009. Do these books not say something new to you? Do you think people simply hypocritical in trying to follow something like them? Not sincere at all? It seems to be a weary 'nothing new under the sun' line.... Then there would be nothing new under the sun. Every generation of feminist struggles takes something from the mothers and grandmothers--fourth-generation from second-generation; second-generation from the wartime release of women into the workplace; post-WWII from suffragism; first-generation feminism from movements around temperance and Evangelical religion in the 1850-80s; that from the 'Vindication of the Rights of Women'. If we are unable to recognise historical specificity, we won't be able to distinguish our moment from that of Mary Wollstonecraft.

Incidentally, I don't know whether you think or not that a woman is fated to have more on the line in having sex with an outside, non-monogamous partner than a man. You say you've answered these questions, but your answers to me are too diffuse for me to be able to specify (and engage with) quite what you think.

Harriet, I'm going to let this go, but I've asked you at least twice how you identify, you've said each time that it as a man who sometimes takes a femme form more similar to drag than trans and that you've never been in a relationship with a woman. And yes, your comments on these topics do indicate an unfamiliarity with those experiences.

And yes, I've grown up in a family that includes poly people only it is called plural marriage, and I have raised children (though not biologically mine) as well as cared for elders in my home, and I've done all that within a straight marriage that was non monogamous for over a decade (and happily so) and included an extended community of other straight and gay families with small children. There is nothing liberating about any of these arrangements in and of themselves- poly is neither radical nor gender-bending- it is simply a way to arrange a family and relationships. If someone makes it that way for themselves, that's great- they could do so in any relationship.

We have sidetracked this conversation into poly and patriarchy by going off in the weeds here- it's not what my original posts were about and non monogamy does not equal poly.

Harriet_by_the_bulrushes @83, just wanted to note that The Ethical Slut was originally published in 1997, by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, who used the pseudonym Catherine A. Liszt for that first edition.

For what it's worth, I don't think non-monogamy itself leads necessarily in progressive directions, but I do think that rethinking one's approach to gender norms, institutional racism, bodily autonomy and property rights can lead one away from monogamy. So to me, a lot depends on the path which led to non-monogamy.

@86. Erica. I kind-of knew that, but didn't read the book myself until ten years ago. I wish I had read it earlier. Thank you for the heads-up.

@84. Emma. My 'identification' would be as a woman and the fact of my gender assignment would make me a man. I would see myself as genderqueer, 'passing' or, more accurately, going about en femme about 10%? (or 15%?) of the time at work and 30-35% of the time at home. My being GQ or non-binary or bigendered would be unavoidable for my partners, though more occasional partners might see me another way e.g. as a camp 'bottom'. I would feel more (or less) female at different times and in different contexts, depending on the 'politics' of appropriating that status, but wouldn't really use the word 'drag' to describe my presentation.

Why do you want to know all this anyways? I don't feel that being a man, if that's what you want to view me as, disqualifies me from having views about feminism, or what might work--in the abstract--for young women ... any more than being one-to-two generations older would disqualify you....

@85. Emma. I can't see this as a debate where our identities, or our locus standi in being able to speak of the subject at hand, are on the line. In very general terms, we're discussing 'non-monogamy: good for women or not?'. I'd think we could have an interesting exchange of views without thinking each other wrong 'because of X', where X is some supposed personal feature or mark of group membership.

Your initial comment, @68, began by saying that a man could have sex without emotional involvement, while a woman tended to want something more humanly integral. I think it was that comment that had me thinking your line was (in fact) potentially anti-trans, androphobic or even misogynistic. It was too much of a generalisation for me....

Like EricaP, I think that it's not that ethical nonmonogamy by itself is going to produce more equitable scenarios--I know monogamous people who make that work just fine--but that often, if someone has been willing to think about what they want enough to buck convention at that level, they're more likely to have worked out what they need from other aspects of relationships as well.

Emma, your experience sounds interesting. And you're right that historically every sort of arrangement has been tried! That said, I do think that given our current cultural setup, where the vast majority of people do a given thing, variations such as poly qualify as a bit radical.

You brought up identity and our various experiences, Harriet, not me. I was responding. And yes, I think it matters to the conversation, and as I've said a couple times now, I was not trying to talk about poly exclusively (it is only one way of being non-monogamous and also the one as I said in the very beginning that requires the most commitment of time and energy and is therefore probably the least common form- it is you who keeps focusing on it exclusively) and I don't think I even mentioned feminism until you did. I'm talking about how non-monogamy can work for straight couples and how that is different from how it works with gay and bi men. You keep responding to what I'm saying by going off about other things and asking other questions which are perhaps interesting and there is some crossover, but for the most part, they lead away from topics that might be more about what straight couples (especially with children) will experience when dealing with non-monogamy and more towards what you imagine those things to be or what they are like from your experience- being a genderqueer person who sleeps with men who has never had a relationship with a woman and who (the last two times I asked) identified as a man all the time except occassionally when dressed in what you called drag. I do not mean to misgender your or identify you the wrong way, and if you identify now as a woman, then I will refer to you as one, but I must admit to being extremely confused about it since this contradicts what you said before. Although if that confusion is mine, then I'll own it as the topic often confuses me. But yet again, let me point out that the majority of straight couples are not in fact genderqueer people where one only identifies as a woman 10% of the time, and so while there is obviously a place in this conversation for those people and I welcome those voices, I still believe that gay and bi men should not be leading this conversation because then it ends up revolving around the perspectives of gay and bi men and digressing into conversations like the one we just had, rather than the very interesting and (far more common) issues that Daddy raised which are obviously born of experiences from being in relations with women or that Erica has raised in terms of how she balances her childrearing within the context of a on-going sub/dom relationship etc. And the reason I'm responding harshly is that you started this conversation (way up thread) with the statement that "it's the women we need to convince". No listening or understanding- just you must convince women that nonmonogamy will work for them. And why? Best I can tell from your subsequent comments, it's because you like to watch them fuck in group sex sometimes. Though now I realize that I'm being unfair and that some of your other comments are more nuanced and interesting, but I did try initially to set my first impressions aside and engage with those, but when you started then lecturing me about feminism and telling me that neither of us have skin in this game as we are in the same boat, nope that just became too much.

And no, in my original comment, I did not say jack fucking shit about emotional attachments. I said that it's mechnically easier for a man to have an orgasm than it is for a woman which means that one-time casual encounters are often more pleasurable for a man. This does not have anything to do with emotions and I did not use those words. YOU read them into what I said and went off on tangents about husbands vs sex outside of marriage and stuff about my regressive views of feminisim when I'm literally talking about simply what it takes to help a woman have an orgasm- usually experience with her individual body is more a factor than it is for men. You don't have to have emotions to have experience with someone's body, but it does mean that hookups in the grindr cruising way are never going to be as popular among women as they are among some (not all) gay men. (As well as several other factors.) I'm literally talking about fucking here, and YOU ran off talking about emotions.

Also I'll probably feel bad about being so bitchy in these last two responses, but sometimes I'm just exasperated.

Ciods, I think it's definitely non-normative, but generally yes I agree. I'm using the term "radical" in its political way and maybe that's the source of confusion here. A "radical" approach is something that attempts to disrupt the structure of a system. Assuming that in the conversation above, we were talking about gender roles or patriarchy as the system, I don't see why a poly arrangement is more radical than a coupled one. Both can co-exist without presenting any challenges to those system. They are both compatible with existing gender roles and patriarchy. In both cases, the people involved might choose to not adhere to existing gender roles and patriarchy, but that's not something inherent to the arrangement. I wasn't using "radical" to simply mean, "different from the norm". I think people identifying as nonbinary, for example, could be radical. Likewise, the invention of birth control was radical. Being poly, however, is just non-normative. Not that you can't both be poly and radical- you can, just like you can be poly and perpetuate patriarchy.

None of this is really relevant to the larger conversation- about how straight people might be non-monogamous, but it seems we got off in the weeds here. This is probably partially because of my bias with one set of grandparents who were in fact in a plural marriage that was in fact happy and functional best I can tell and was also deeply patriarchal and traditional. So sometimes I get a little annoyed with people who pretend they are doing some really radical thing by just throwing back to centuries-old traditional arrangements.

Though I've nothing against anyone being poly, and I'm generally supportive of the experiments of young people, especially if they do take a chance to reflect a little so they aren't reproducing the mistakes of their elders. But reflection and caution tends not to be the way of either youth or love!

Also Harriet, I'm not angry now so I'm sorry. The other thing that frustrates me is that wider conversations on this topic (not ours necessarily but I started there) tend to focus quite a bit on sex drive and testosterone with only a passing mention (if at all) of the infinitely more complicated female hormonal system. Judging by the letters Dan receives, these issues with women's hormonal system and reproductive health are pretty common factors in affecting a straight couple's sex life. Which I tried to bring up, but instead the conversation was sidetracked into discussions about kinky party scenes and gender role which might be fun and interesting, but I believe that if this conversation really were lead by straight couples- and at least half by women- there'd be a lot more discussion of things like menopause and fluctuations in hormones at different phases in life and what is exciting about new encounters vs how to build up a slow steady but on-going passion in old ones or what to do when that is just gone (temporarily or otherwise) and how to build a relationship that is solid enough to counter jealousy/insecurity and how to safely have anonymous hookups, how to balance these things with other roles/responsibilities within the marriage. Another thing, when people bring up that there are in fact stigmas still, including in socialization and also in the judgement of others and also in the reluctance of straight people themselves to let their partners fuck outside the marriage- including men and women- then often men just push it away "Oh it's not like that anymore" when a conversation that was led by straight people including at least half women would spend more time discussing these things. It is true that there are plenty of men who are angry at women because they are not able to get laid, and the weird flip side to this is that they then shame and ridicule women who do have sex- it sometimes feels there is no way to win. I've found the people to be LEAST this way are people involved in swinger scenes and open marriages, and I'd assume that kink scenes are similar. But the fact is that most straight people aren't in situations like that, so any changing of the tides is going to have to grapple with these issues, not blow them off. Daddy brings them up right away you see though he is referring to what it feels like from a male point of view- but he is correct that the simple fact that the imbalance is a factor in straight nonmonogamy in a way that it is not in gay nonmonogamy- it's such a huge differnece that yes, I do no think it is helpful for gay people just to tell straight people to get over it. Yeah, how? We're trying and you literally don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

The reason I'm trying now to calmly belabor this point is to explain why your approach leads things off track. Aside from leading the discussion away to things that are unlikely to be common experiences or obstacles or interests to most straight couples, you also keep making assumptions (either about situations that you have no experience or by reading things into what I say) rather than asking questions. I mean, you literally started this conversation with this:

The key audience to convince in 'non-monogamy can be better' are straight women. To me, though, the reasons why most (I would say) straight women have a preference for committed monogamous relationships / marriage have to do with non-sexual, or not narrowly sexual, symbolic and practical benefits associated with this form of partnership.

Hey, here's an idea. Instead of making an assumption about millions of people, then continuing on to explain why you think the millions of people feel the way you assume they do, how about asking them to talk about it instead? It's just like you taking my post, which was in fact about the pitfalls of comparing gay male nonmonogamy with straight nonmonogamy and making it about emotions or gender roles or women w/their husbands vs women w/others and then a full paragraph where you attack me for holding views that you assumed I held based on what you read into my statement. Then when I told you that this isn't what I said, you responded that I'm being diffuse. No acknowledgement that maybe your inexperience with the topic caused you to misread it?

See? Let straight people have this conversation. And when you want to include other experiences (which are endlessly fascinating and interesting), then include them in this way "This is what X group does. What does Y do?" etc.

@90. Emma. No, I do like to have sex with women. Admittedly, mostly to be pegged, but not just that. I am bi in many ways. But if I'm GQ, am I sexually bi, gay or straight?

Where did I describe myself as going about en femme as 'drag'? It's not a word I normally use, any more than 'transvestite' or 'cross-dresser'. It’s not about putting on women's clothes. I'm not saying you're wrong, mind, but I'd like to see the reference.

I feel we have the opposite reactions to the 'headline', then, when we get down to talking about what matters in particular relationships, we say many of the same things. The headline is 'Alan Cumming says straight people can learn how to have sex outside marriage from queers'. My reaction is something like 'yay!'. Or more soberly, 'Yes. This is a helpful intervention. It would be good if more straight couples were poly or monogam-ish'. Your intervention is something like 'No! A gay [bi] man telling straight women how to be poly is the last thing we need'. The detailed discussion then devolves onto what kinds of support women may need in rearing children; and we both say that what matters most is the quality of their relationship with the father and others, and both deny that any particular relationship configuration (either monogamy, poly, or some other non-poly form of nonmonogamy) by itself guarantees the quality or trustworthiness of that bond. Indeed, we are both suspicious of the claim that any particular culture (either a mainstream patriarchal culture or a bien-pendant counterculture) could be more important than individuals' commitments and actions within the circle of a mother's close support group.

So I think we're mostly on the same side. I may get back to some of your remarks later.

If Cumming had said 'mormons' rather than 'queers', he may have gone down better with you :)

@94. Emma. I don't think you have anything to apologise for; and, in fact, I still don't know what you were angry about. Possibly something to do with my perceived maleness or perceived gayness; but I could only speculate.

Your basic position seems to be that there will inevitably be differences between how straight couples 'do' nonmonogamy and how non-straights do it. Why? It's not clear to me there will be. Your reason seems to be 'because women' and further because of something to do with women's hormones. I don't believe there are differences between women and men at this coarseness of resolution. I don't believe in your 'groups' in this way.

Queer people, poly people and kinky people are not exactly a social group but there are substantial overlaps of personnel, politicking and attitude or belief among them (us). We or they are a political coalition. My view would be that to split the sheep and the goats, the straights and the queers, divides the coalition unnecessarily.

@94. Emma. Well, I'm a Democratic voter. If I commented about the last election, 'the key audience to convince ... are straight women', would you find that remark any less objectionable? To me, it's closely analogous to what I said about people having sex outside of marriage. Of course I think you can have voted for Trump and be a viable human being. Of course I know most straight women are unlikely to become poly (or otherwise nonmonogamous).

Also, why do you think you can speak for straight women, and I (I could call myself a 'straight woman'; I have a female identification and preponderantly have sex with men) ... and I can't?