this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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I was poly for years and my ex and I designated each other as primary just to help ensure our priorities matched. We'd seen couples that just "free loved" it and it frequently led to a lot of drama and hurt feelings.
One person "demoted" her fiance to just a side relationship because she was encouraging her boyfriends to be competitive. It was gross. The idea of making love or sexuality a competition is just gross. These people are gross.
I have had times where people treat “non-hierarchical” as “you should immediately consider me equal to your other partners”. When no, trust takes time and effort to grow. In that sense, the partner that I live with does have some level of primacy over my other partners, because I trust her enough to build a home together. However we don’t share a room, we have our own spaces, and we schedule sleepovers just the same as I would with any other partner.
That is indeed ridiculously gross. She completely missed the memo on the “ethical” part of “ethical non-monogamy”. I think I would agonise for weeks if I was thinking about making the decision to no longer live with my nestmate. Months if I was planning on moving straight in with a different partner. I would need to figure out how to communicate that it wasn’t due to any transgressions on their part, that it wasn’t a punishment. That I just, didn’t feel that living together was right for our relationship or either of us as individuals. Especially if the end goal was to continue to be together. I can’t imagine being so careless with someone’s emotions like that.
Yeah. I loved the idea of non hierarchical poly early on, but there’s a resounding practicality in my relationship hierarchy. My wife comes first. We live together and are married, of course she does.
It’s so disgusting to make this a competition when it should just be a cooperative pursuit of happiness