Polyamory General - Polyamory drama from Facebook, Reddit, and more

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I hate the term fluid bonding. It sounds like an alien mating ritual on a cheap sci-fi show.
 

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I hate the term fluid bonding. It sounds like an alien mating ritual on a cheap sci-fi show.

Are these both in the same "4 way" relationship? Small world.

Fluid Bonding (and any other small detail) just seems like an arbitrary line in the sand. You are allowed fall in love with other people, have sex with them, get into relationships with them, but if you raw dog it that's crossing a line?
 
Man, polyamorists are funny to gawk at but it’s also pretty damn depressing that people try to subject themselves to this.
 
You know, for a group that advocates communication all the time, poliys sure do suck at it.

It's because whenever you do communicate how awful it's making you feel, you get guilt tripped even further into depression. They advocate for communication, but the communication will inherently be negative because everyone involved feels awful, and then you get shut down because nobody wants to wallow in negativity. They just want free passes to be degenerate, nothing else.
 
Are these both in the same "4 way" relationship? Small world.

Fluid Bonding (and any other small detail) just seems like an arbitrary line in the sand. You are allowed fall in love with other people, have sex with them, get into relationships with them, but if you raw dog it that's crossing a line?

To be fair, from point of view STD risk fluid bonding or other words having sex without barrier methods is a big step no matter what type of relationship. This is partly why gay guys tend to get so many STDs. Why waste money on condoms when nobody can get pregnant? Fluid bonding is always bigger risk with people who recently or currently have many partners. So, I don’t think it’s that arbitrary to forbid it. If I was into poly or swinging , I would never be cool with raw sex. My long term health is that important to me.
 
It's because whenever you do communicate how awful it's making you feel, you get guilt tripped even further into depression. They advocate for communication, but the communication will inherently be negative because everyone involved feels awful, and then you get shut down because nobody wants to wallow in negativity. They just want free passes to be degenerate, nothing else.

To be fair, some of them probably really do believe in this. But there's a problem that's best illustrated by an anecdote about someone similar I once knew.

She did something that put her, and those associated with her, in a very negative light and damaged their reputation. The friends were upset with her, and like a good mutual friend, I tried to explain to her what was wrong. Her position was that what she did wasn't technically wrong, just sort of frowned upon, so it was none of anyone's business and they shouldn't hold it against her friends at least.

I told her that in a perfect world, maybe that was the case, but the world wasn't perfect. People gonna people, I said, and they would stigmatize her and her friends if they wanted to.

Her response: "But they shouldn't." Over. And over. And over. No concession that they would, only that they shouldn't.

She simply could not get past how it should work in a perfect world. She didn't even have the attitude that she would endure the stigma and the consequences out of some obligation to be a reformer/martyr. She simply assumed that because it should work this way, she was free to do what she wanted and consequences wouldn't happen.

It did happen, however. Her friends ended up disavowing her to avoid stigma, and she spent the rest of the time I knew her bitching about how she didn't understand why this had happened, it shouldn't work like this so why did it?

I get the feeling that a lot of the people we see posting their woes in the subreddit don't really understand the difference between should and is. They feel people should be a certain way, so one must assume they are that way, and therefore no harm can come of not taking the usual, common-sense precautions one does in dealing with people as they truly are.
 
It's because whenever you do communicate how awful it's making you feel, you get guilt tripped even further into depression. They advocate for communication, but the communication will inherently be negative because everyone involved feels awful, and then you get shut down because nobody wants to wallow in negativity. They just want free passes to be degenerate, nothing else.

Poly people are really, really adverse to anything that could be construed as drama. It is far preferable to keep up the illusion of everything running smoothly and everyone in the poly club being best friends with everyone else. They want to believe that poly is a perfect haven of consent and communication, so any negative feelings get swallowed to preserve the intragroup harmony. Feelings of jealousy, resentment, abandonment, etc. all need to be suppressed, or else you're just causing conflict and betraying the implied agreement in the group to all be chill. In the long run, this works out about as well as you'd expect.

See also the Abeline Paradox.
 
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