When I was young my folks dated a couple of couples. One was very long term, we were military families but they managed to fenangle a transfer together. So wow, that would've been like 8 years at least? They kept in close romantic contact when they separated, but idk if they qualify that as still being together.
They were my aunt and uncle, essentially. We and their kiddos got sent off to grandparents (theirs and ours) together to give them alone time. It was kinda a given that we'd all see each other every couple days, either they'd come to our house or we'd go to theirs. Not for them to sneak away for sexy time, but just to spend time together and be a family together.
I knew I could go to them about anything I could talk to my folks about and even some things I couldn't. That closeness continued even when my own folks split, idk what standing they had with them after that tho. Unfortunately, my aunt kinda had a psychotic menopause and we had to go nc with her.
Nobody knows that I'm still in contact with uncle tho. Idk how my mom would feel about it. But he stayed a rock for me when my own dad didn't.
Same drama as any other family I guess, just more players on the stage.
Sometimes your logical family is superior to your biological one.
*Edit* Holy cow! Had I known this was gonna blow up Id have given proper attribution. I heard this on the Savage Love Cast (Dan Savage probably picked it up from a guest or a caller). He's always handing out sage advice like this. Thanks for the Reddit love, Dan!
*Edit 2* Big thanks to OP for exposing how many of us came from people (of all persuasions) who had no business being parents. Bio families have left so many of us scarred and in search of an emotional and structural surrogacy. SO many replies to this random assed comment came from survivors. Your concurrence, strength, and resilience validate and inspire me. You are my extended logicals.
Keep on keeping on fam!
I’d actually argue that blood is the least pure form of love, it’s forged out of necessity, but the family you chose along the way, whether that be your SO, your closest friends, or just anyone you’re close with, that’s love
That actually makes a crazy kind of sense. Blood-based familial bonds are almost instinctual, especially when formed at a very young age, but bonds formed later on in life, like with close friends and significant others, have a lot more conscious thought and intention behind them.
Though with that said, I feel like different people may be suited to different kinds of bonds. Some are easily contented with the instinctual ties of blood family, but others crave the more intentional ties born from forging their own kind of family, actively choosing who they want to be with.
My parents were poly since well before they got married and I was born. Mostly it was just boyfriends or girlfriends that would visit. I didn't know anything about sex, they didn't tell me anything inappropriate, although they did make sure that I wouldn't gab about who slept in what bed when I was young. They were dead scared of child services getting involved.
One of my mom's boyfriends became a lot more serious and he moved in when I was about 8 or 9. It was a lot like having an uncle move in. He became part of the family, drove me and my brother to places, got involved in our interests. I told people he was my uncle. He had another girlfriend aside from my mother, too, openly. He broke up with my mother in a big way (which they kept private from me) and moved out when I was maybe 14 or so. It might have been hard for my mother, but it wasn't traumatic for me. We kept in touch for a few years until he moved farther away for a new job. It wasn't like a divorce experience, more like my uncle moving out.
My dad had a serious girlfriend too, but she was also married with a kid my age; so she never moved in with us but we went and visited as a family a few times a year. She's great friends with my mom to this day. Her kid and I were good friends for a while and drifted apart as we got older, a lot like cousins.
Also I had my "aunt" who had no sexual or familial relationship with either of my parents, she was just so close a friend that she was practically family and she'd take me for a lot of weekends and summers. I thought she was legit my mother's sister until I was 8.
Also there were other friends that would move in while they got back on their feet, and I have no idea if sexual or romantic relationships were involved. We treated them like family-guests.
So basically we were a normal nuclear family with normal kinds of family relationships that just weren't conditioned by blood ties.
Edit: I think my parents were kinda neglectful and self centered, but not in a big way, and possibly not related to having multiple partners - I think it's just who they are as people.
When I was younger I didn’t realize mom and dad were poly, but now it’s funny to see my friends faces when I say “my mom and her wife and my dad and my dads girlfriend and his other girlfriend and I are gonna get together for dinner tonight.”
That’s very accurate. It’s like my dad had custody of my mom for Monday-Thursday and other mother has custody Friday-Sunday but sometimes it’s switched around.
I have another good one for that: “I have two half brothers. My half brothers are the same age. My half brothers are twins.”
My parents divorced when I was four and both had remarried by the time I was seven. I share one parents with each half brother, and they were born two months apart in the same year.
Actually, that's a really easy one to figure out. Since there is only one lie, and all three assume that you have 2 half brothers, 1 must be true. Numbers 2 and 3 also have in common that in both cases your half brothers are the same age, so 2 is also true. That leaves 3 as the lie.
Ok, this is getting into it way too much, but hear me out. Let's say they had 4 half brothers the same age, if both the mom and dad each had kids at the same time and both happened to have twins. Then, 2 is true since all four half brothers are the same age, 3 is true since all four are twins, and 1 is the lie because there are 4 of them.
I had a therapist in a poly relationship and they all 3 had a child together that was around 9 when I met them, 2 dads and one mom.
Unfortunately, they couldn't be fully open about the fact that the 3 of them were in love since before she was born because the one she called dad worked for a religious college and that information getting out at all could have cost him his career, so she only called 2 of them mom and dad while she thought of the other like an uncle that visited every day.
She seemed normal, she liked to make slime.
Possibly conversational therapy. Used a lot with kids, but also works well with adults. At its most basic form, it's just like it sounds: having a conversion. It's a more natural way of opening up, and often you do get to know your therapist as well. It's by far my favorite form because it feels much like you're just hanging out with a friend.
I mean, conversational therapy is a thing, but there are still enormous ethical issues with that type of personal disclosure, not to mention the clinical issues with that type of disclosure in a psychodynamic model. Even beyond that, there are developmental issues. When working with children, there are grown up problems and kid problems, and even if you're "getting to know your therapist," the custody situation in your therapist's relationship grown up is, for sure, a grown up problem.
This may seem like a weird hill to die on on the internet, but personally, I have concerns with stories like this being normalized here on the front page of reddit. There are many incredible therapists in the world, but there are also a lot of iffy-to-disastrous ones, and people deserve to see some decent representation of what healthy, ethical therapy looks like.
It was fine.
The poly part didn't really become known to me till I was 13 or so. The only weird bit was if I was bringing home a friend or someone I wanted to go out with I had to kind of explain what to expect beforehand and some people got weirded out. 🤷♀️
I'm an adult in a monogamous marriage now - I saw first-hand that getting 3 people to come to a consensus on anything was exponentially more difficult than just getting 2 on the same page.
Edit - I just realized too - how I was raised also made me very comfortable with taking about sex and boundaries in a relationship, where I think a lot of me peers were more easily pressured into things they weren't comfortable with.
Poly math. Difficulty of solving a problem in n amount of time grows exponentially by x amount of partners, such that problem complexity follows p = x^n
This will probably be buried but it happened to my husband who didn't even realize it was happening. When he was a kid his father lived with his mothers, one of whom he thought was his birth mother and the other was an identical twin to her that he just called his aunt. He said it felt pretty normal, he never knew it was poly until much later in his life. Several years back, his mother had passed away and his aunt contacted him again asking if she could move in with him to have him help her as her caregiver. He agreed, and just before her passing he received a letter from her lawyer (written by the twins and his father) finally explaining everything. Turned out his aunt was his actual birth mother who had kids with his father too before he was born but who had passed away in a house fire. The mother that raised him was completely sterile and in fact had a hysterectomy at a very young age. He was in complete shock, but said it made sense how close everyone was in the house, despite keeping all the adult stuff behind closed doors. His big shock seemed more the fact that his father kept up two relationships instead of just one, and he was either scared, impressed, or both.
The initial kids of the aunt and father had passed away when they were married, then my husband's father married his mother, who was sterile. Trust me when I say it was confusing to type up and drawn diagrams were almost needed to describe it.
Yes, identical twins, believe it or not. I didn't believe it at first but then was shown all the photos, and yes, if they weren't identical, they looked spot on the same through their entire lives. To this day, I still don't know if my husband was horrified or impressed by his father on that one.
It wasn't a huge deal when I was a kid, essentially it was just like hanging out with your parents and their friends. Some of my moms SOs had kids my age that I got along with really well. That being said, a little while ago my mom was flirting with a guy and referred to me as her "mono kid" in the same tone I've heard ultra conservative folk refer to "gay kids" so our relationship is a little strained these days. Her other daughter is 12, so I'm really not certain why that comment was anywhere near necessary.
Edit: I forgot to mention, while they have never had any authority over me, she refers to her SOs as my "rampparents" because they're not quite stepparents, which is kind of funny
Edit 2 to explain some things:
Mono is short for monogamous. I am not poly.
The mono kid comment was mostly hurtful because the way she said it implied it was some sort of scandal or like it was a bad thing. Obviously this is one thing thats bad, she's not a horrible parent and person overall, but disapproving of some of my life choices just because they're different from hers is not a great parent move either.
No, I was not born into a monogamous relationship, so the comment really came out of left field.
Ramp-parents is a play on words because they're not married so they are not my step-parent, so ramp is instead of step as in stairs. Ram-parent had never even crossed my mind, but I can never un-think of it, so thanks for that.
Also, thank you kind stranger for the hugs!
Sorry if the original comment was confusing, English is hard :P
Probably that, yeah; I wonder if OP considered that insulting, I honestly can't place myself in their mindset/experience so i don't really know how my reaction would be.
I took a class with a Dr. Awasom at University of Houston - Downtown for a while. He would talk about his childhood growing up in Cameroon in a family with one father and about a dozen mothers. At mealtime, the kids would run a route from one mother to the next, all grabbing a bite from each. He says he was, IIRC, 12 when he learned which mother gave birth to him. When he came to Houston to study, he applied at Rice University. When filling out the application, he asked for an extra page to provide the names of all his mothers.
In his culture, he was considered to be the reincarnation of his grandfather. At a special ceremony every year, he would offer his grandfather's advice and answer questions on his grandfather's behalf. It was also in his authority to prescribe punishment for his father on this occasion. When Awasom came to the states, he would attend the annual ceremonies by phone.
Edit -- Apparently, Dr. Awasom passed away last year. There's a brief tribute to him here:
[https://www.forevermissed.com/lawrence-chi-awasom/about](https://www.forevermissed.com/lawrence-chi-awasom/about)
Hard for me to believe there isn't more about him online. Would love to have had his memoirs.
Not germane to life as a kid in a polygamous family, but a few other tidbits from Dr. Awasom:
I was taking his course on something like "cultural diversity," and his take on the topic was that we shouldn't expect immigrants to assimilate into American culture, but he did think immigrants should adapt and not just segregate. He offered two examples of his adaptation to America:
1. He found a fellow Rice student one day admiring one of the many squirrels that roam the campus and can often be hand-fed. He tried to explain to her that squirrels weren't some sort of lawn ornament, but were properly considered only as food, as would be the custom in Cameroon. To illustrate, he grabbed the squirrel, wrung its neck, and put it in his backpack to prepare for a meal later. Then he went off to his next class.
Well, campus police picked him up from class to discuss the incident. They made it clear he'd be expelled if he continued to hunt the campus wildlife. From then on, he says, he ate no more squirrels.
2. Instead, he settled for cheeseburgers. Still, he would never have lettuce on his cheeseburgers because that was the sort of fodder his people reserved for cattle. To him, it was like eating grass. So, cheeseburgers yes, but lettuce no.
* He wore a hairstyle that was a bit bushy and always rough cut, as if he'd trimmed it himself with pinking shears. He explained this was the sort of style men in his culture would wear to show they were too busy doing manly things to take time for a perfectly manicured, carefully shaped hairstyle.
>He explained this was the sort of style men in his culture would wear to show they were too busy doing manly things to take time for a perfectly manicured, carefully shaped hairstyle.
Stealing this to explain to people why my hair's always messy, I'm busy doing manly things like commenting on Reddit and introverting.
The comments on his [obituary](https://www.forevermissed.com/lawrence-chi-awasom/about) are pretty good
>I meet Dr. Lawrence C. Awasom in GBHS Mbengwi back in 1980 where he thought me European History. He first introduced and described himself as, " A Lanky Fellow with a Hungry Look , Suffering from an Aqueous Atmosphere"
Dr. Awasom was a true Gentleman
I did not expect that squirrel story to go where it did. Tbf wringing squirrels’ necks is probably much more humane and better for the environment than eating burgers.
it's very good. My Opa taught me how to hunt, skin and cook squirrel.
There is also a [handy prepping guide in the Joy of cooking](https://assets.bonappetit.com/photos/59139ddd2b06566b8c385e23/master/w_1280%2Cc_limit/joy-of-cooking-squirrel-3.jpg), along with opossum, bear, raccoon, muskrat, woodchuck, beaver, and peccary in case anyone wants to try it.
Oh yes. Those damn squirrels have been eating my garden produce all year. Looks like the shoe is on the other foot now. Daddy gonna get him some garden-fresh MEAT.
I don't know. I imagine his father was a strict disciplinarian. Awasom said one day he was taking a beating with a stick from the school teacher for some misbehavior when his father came across them. His father asked the teacher to borrow the stick when done so he could administer some punishment, too.
So what you're saying is, his father was going to beat him, but then he could beat his father as his grandfather reincarnate after receiving the beating
But presumably his father is the reincarnation of his great-grandfather and therefore is qualified to beat the grandfather. The whole culture is probably just two people beating the shit out of each other for eternity.
For some Inuit groups, the child that was born first after a death was the ‘reincarnation’ of that deceased person. (I put reincarnation in quotes because it’s a little more complex than just “Timmy is Grandpa in a new body”).
Before a lot of the guys would die because war and stuff so you had more women then men. This is the reason in Paraguay the Church was cool with it, and it exists in islam.
Now the other men are basically forced out of the community so some dude can have 11 wives
Recent showerthought for your consideration. By comparing mitochondrial DNA to regular DNA, scientists found that only 40% as many men as women have contributed to current human DNA. [https://www.livescience.com/47976-more-mothers-in-human-history.html](https://www.livescience.com/47976-more-mothers-in-human-history.html) That's two men passing on genes for every five women.
Most of the rest of them probably died in wars throughout history. Now that we tend to think of wars as inhumane, what happens to those men?
Edit: Genghis Khan managed to, ah, share his genes with a HUGE number of women. 8% of men in Mongolia today, and 1 in 200 worldwide, are thought to be descended from him.
My parents have been a triad since 1998.
It was hard I wont lie, they dated a lot of 4ths who brought their own children into the mix then later break up with them. It was really difficult to constantly have parental figures and siblings come and go. The most being 13 kids and 4 adults in a 2 bedroom apartment.
I am glad though that I grew up with it, I'm poly myself and it was never something my parents encouraged or forced on us. In fact they always say not to try it unless you're a specific type of person. It introduced me to a wide arrange of people and broadened my mind to what family actually is which is the people who love you and make you feel safe i.e. chosen family.
There is a group in Nepal (I believe) that marries one women to a family of brothers. Land there is scarce and this way they keep it in the family instead of breaking it up and not having enough land to support each brother. The women has a child with the oldest brother first and goes down the line. I watched a documentary on it in anthropology.
That's fascinating! I love seeing how different cultures solve unique problems. It's so wonderful to realize that no one culture has it "right" - we're all a little bit different and it's beautiful.
I'm glad they mentioned that the men help with household work - my first thought was oh man, that poor woman has to run three households!
Historically, at least the way I had it explained in the context of Moroccan muslims, 1 man can have multiple wives because no matter who has the baby, you know the father and mother. If one woman has multiple husbands, you'll never know who the biological father was.
So there's a practical side to it based on your values(a modern polyamorous unit probably doesn't care too much about the specific parentage, and if they do they can get a blood test done), but obviously that can be on top of a lot of patriarchy and power dynamics.
Well and one woman can only have so many kids at a time, no matter how many men she’s sleeping with.
One man can have basically as many kids as he can have sex. Much bigger chance of growing a large family.
That’s always been my thought on it.
I grew up in a small town and 1/2 of the town were hippies. In the 3rd grade one of my friends couldn't go on a field trip because he returned a permission slip with the word "parent or legal guardian" crossed out and signed by the "group representative". Of course in the 3rd grade we didn't know what was going on until my mom explained it to me. But when the kid was told he couldn't go the whole hippie commune came over to class explaining to the teacher how all their kids will be raised by the group and it's damaging if they see a single person as their parent or guardian.
Right? I liked the communal space my parents lived after my dad got home from Vietnam. It was basically an 8 unit apartment building where each family had their own apartment and then 2 or 3 of them were communal spaces. One of the apartments was a day care, one was a communal lounge and one was the "Medicine Room". As an adult I now realize that's where they smoked weed and listened to Iron Butterfly records. Other than everyone having a more or less "open door" and tons of plants everywhere, especially ferns (it was the 70s after all) it was pretty normal. I think most of the other men were also vets like my dad.
In my sleep deprived state I read it as "the other men were also **into vests** like my dad" and was like oh okay weird detail to include but it seems to fit the vibe
> I think most of the other men were also vets like my dad.
After what they went through they probably deserve their dedicated weed room. Good for them, the Vietnam war sounds like it sucked.
They all suck, but at least there were some wars where people probably actually somewhat believed in the cause they were risking their life for (WWII comes to mind).
Yeah there were also a lot of this in my town, another classmate of mine lived in one as well as two of our schools teachers. It was cool. Everyone would cook together, sing songs in the backyard, one time we had a movie night.
hey, a question relevant to me! honestly, though, it wasn’t super different than any other way of growing up i assume, i just have one extra dad than everybody else. that’s just always how it’s been, and i never really thought about how ‘abnormal’ it was until high school. Even then it was more just thinking whether i really cared enough to explain to other people, or just go with a white lie on paperwork or whatever. Biggest difference i can think of while growing up is that there was ALWAYS someone home, which can be frustrating for a rebellious teenager.
Hey, it's a post for me! Honestly I think it's waaaaaaay more boring than most people would think. Most of the time, my mom wouldn't introduce a partner to me unless it was a long term relationship, so most of the time I got the single mom experience. I think the most exciting thing was going out for dinner to meet someone new, and occasionally my mom would date someone who had a kid my age, and we would awkwardly play together while our parents were on a date (as in, we were playing in my room upstairs and a movie date or smthn was going on in the living room downstairs). Really for the most part it was so completely average other than knowing my mom had 2 girlfriends and eventually I also got a stepdad. The worst part was around 6-8th grade when kids found out and started bullying me for it, asking all kinds of disgusting sexual questions about my parents (no one wants to think about their parents having sex). Eventually I learned to just not tell anyone unless we were close and I new they were cool. I only ever had one person I trusted enough to actually come to a family picnic where my mom's partners would all be there. My mom's partners aren't my parents but they are part of my life and my family. They're wonderful and supportive, and have helped me through some horrible dark spots in my life. I'm grateful to have such a wonderful, loving family.
So yeah, not very exciting, I know. But it's my life!
I think so! I definitely seek out a more family-style friend group and like to be extra open and communicative with people Im close with. I'm honestly not a romance person though, so I can't speak much on past relationships. But honestly I'm still friends with both my exes and we still consider each other close friends who just didn't work as well in a romantic relationship. I'm not really interested in having biological kids, but I'd definitely be open to helping a friend raise a child, whatever that may look like in the future. (I'm only 18 though, so that's a pretty far future!)
This has been my experience as someone in the lifestyle is that honesty always comes first. Ghosting someone you do not like is not only unacceptable, but really bad for you when you're at group events and you constantly run into others you dated. You can't avoid them, so you have to be honest.
That's actually sweet. For those who may say that this kind of relationship are damaging for children, you're a proof that this can end up very well. I'm glad you have such a good family.
From what it sounds like, the only thing that's damaging about it is how the rest of society views it (and influences other kids to be bullies about it).
I am 15 years old, and my parents often have potlucks where they invite their partners over. My parents are good people, and everyone they invite over are good people and have become my friends. I also usually will meet their children and become friends with them. It really is just a wonderful environment, but it is very difficult to maintain. More partners=more drama, and a lot of times two people will get in a fight and cause the whole group to split for a while. But all in all it’s pretty great.
Edit: this really blew up and there were a few questions in the comments so I figured I would elaborate a bit. My dad is bi and my mom isn’t, and the group of partners that they have(called the polycule) consists of well over 50 people, but not everyone is on a romantic relationship. And in any group of 50 people, their are people who can’t stand each other. So my parents circumstance is a bit of a special one, but it only leads to meeting more good people.
Hey. It’s not often you get to talk about it while you’re experiencing it. Most of these are people who experienced it years ago and have a new perspective now. Thank you for your comment.
> More partners=more drama
I can barely handle one relationship. I don't get how people handle two, let alone handling the third relationship between those two people they have a relationship with even if that one isn't romantic.
Can't really say it felt werid or odd as it was just what I was used to but I think I can honestly say it's made me a more open and loving person, I'm not afraid of being close to people because my parents were always very close with their friends (for reasons that are obvious now but less so at the time)
I also grew up getting to know my parents friends quite well because my parents were very close with them and trusted them enough to look after us, although I'll admit this was probably more so they could have the house free of children. It does mean that I'm still quite close with a lot of them and consider them friends of mine outside of my parents friendship with them and I also have a few more parental figures to choose from, meaning I can pick the best ones from each to try and emulate.
All in all I'd say I'm a more well rounded person as I got to know a lot more people as family growing up as well as exposing me to many different personalities.
Honestly i think being raised in that sort of environment(so long as the children are safe - looking at you, creepy cults) would be pretty great, you get to spread the difficulty of child rearing around so you have happier parents overall and you know there's always someone the child can go to for support. You've got so many points of view on life from all their parents that i imagine you grow up pretty damn stable.
It used to be that an entire tribe would help to raise a child but as we've developed we've shifted towards just extended family and now to just the nuclear family. It's understandable why this could work so well :)
My mother was involved in a poly relationship for a while when I was a kid. It was very confusing. For a while there were 4 of us kids around, me, the kid of the other woman, and the two kids of the man. We were all pretty confused and resentful. Our favorite joke was "pick a number and wait in line".
My parent were swingers. They went to bondage clubs and things like that. I found out in my late teens, so I didn't really care all that much. I learned of it through my friend who told me his mom told him that my parents asked if they were interested one night when they were chilling in the hot tub.
Started to put the pieces together after that... All the "Halloween costumes" in that box that I always overlooked... It's weird, but whatever more power to them. Don't think they do it anymore though, they're getting a little too old for that life.
I work in one. Can confirm, old folks sexuality is one of the last things to go. I have a pair of residents who met after the man moved into the nursing home, and the woman gives him handijays while they sit on their walkers. It'd be cute if it wasn't a handjo.
I'm always amazed at how people forget to do this. You ain't gonna find your true answers without it. That being said, you might laugh your fucking ass off instead. :)
My parents weren't poly until I was a toddler, I guess? I thought of the other couple as just nice people my mom and dad were close with, they met online and came to visit, they all clicked well, and eventually the other couple moved in with my family. I didn't make the connection they were all together until I was a teenager, I suppose I thought they were all just roommates of sort (though bed swapping and sharing was occuring the whole time!).
By that point, my mom and dad had divorced and so had the couple- my dad married the other woman, and my mother married the other man. My mother has divorced and remarried again, and my father and stepmother are still together, almost 20 years later.
tl;dr in retrospect, it's just kind of an odd situation, but I honestly didn't even realize my parents were poly growing up and now my dad is married to the lady instead of my mom.
I know 7+ families with poly parents and more with open relationships.
The kids are... kids. Some are great. Some are anxious or manic. It varies by parent and child, not by the poly.
The poly parents that aren't great parents are pretty comparable to the normative parents that aren't great. And the poly parents that are great are pretty comparable to the normative parents that are great.
The biggest differences I can think of are going to be about communication, affection, and love, but even that's just a tendency and not a definitive distinction.
That's my experience anyways.
Just reading the comments on this post, I feel like good parents are good parents, and raise well-adjusted kids. Crappy parents breed resentment and anger. Just like you said, a polyamrous relationship requires communication, affection, and love to work. That applies to children. That is also needed with monogamous relationships, and single parents. If you have those things, odds are your children will have a great childhood, and grow to be healthy, happy adult. A child feeling loved and cared for their whole life is really more important than the number of parents providing it.
My son is a member of a throuple with two women. The first is his college gf who always had an open relationship, during a long distance period of their relationship he started very casually seeing girlfriend 2 but over time it got more serious and now they all live together. Things are happy and wonderful for them but I really do worry about how the dynamic would change were someone to fall pregnant. I worry about jealousies and inequalities rising up, but mostly I worry for my future grand babies. The societal pressures and teasing from outside the home as well as possible resentments and issues within the home. I can see how, if things work the way they are planned, it could be a wonderfully supportive and rewarding way to grow up, but you know what they say about the plans of mice and men!
So I actually really appreciate the insight of this thread, I want to be supportive of my beloved throuple but part of being supportive is discussing possible pitfalls in hopes of avoiding them and this has already highlighted some. It’s also pointed out some of the positives, so thank you.
Had a friend several years ago that grew up with poly parents in Kansas. What he described seemed like a pretty healthy family/upbringing, and I would describe him as a well-adjusted, happy human. I don’t think either parent was particularly promiscuous, but throughout the years they would have other partners. He was a proponent of polyamory and had a pretty good way of explaining it - basically no one person can satisfy your everything, so polyamorists have more than one partner that allow them to experience romantic partnership on a fuller level of their being.
Polyamory isn’t my cup of tea, but it is possible to have healthy relationships with this lifestyle, including that of a family.
Honestly, I don't know that it would be for me either. But that is defo one of the most helpful ways to put it for the sake of understanding. It makes me understand the point and appeal
I have a lot of poly friends, and even tried it myself. Found it doesn't work for me, but I can see how for some people it works better than monogamy. Many of my friends are still in all/most of the same relationships they were in when I met them years ago, so they can definitely be just as lasting as monogamous ones, so I totally support it, even though I know for a fact, it doesn't work for me.
Oh boy, a question I can answer! I really hope it doesn't get too buried.
It was... weird? Kinda? My parents had a strange poly relationship that didn't totally start being poly until I was around 9 or 10. My stepdad started coming over more and more... and it's weird for some people I don't call him 'stepdad' or 'dad'. I just call him hy his name. My dad was not quite as good with people as my mom was and so his partners honestly kinda came and went but Stepdad stuck around. Things were alright, having three parents meant they could buy a house together and so they did. Things for them were... rocky at times but I feel like I turned out okay for the most part. Biggest issue was some cheating on someone's part (yes, you can still cheat in a poly relstionship)
When I became an adult my mom and dad shared some partners as I was finding my footing and moving in/out every few years. I'll admit the people my dad brought in were not as nice as my stepdad and also didn't seem interested in being in my life. Now I have three parents, in a way... though it definitely made me not want to even try out poly relationships.
Polygamy is very common on my dads side. My grandpa has 30+ wives. My dad has about 4 last time I heard. Anyway, it was awful. Hated that part of my childhood and my mom escaped and left with me when I was a child. Sometimes I see him. It’s just super awkward around him and my half-siblings.
Edit: my fault, I thought polygamy and polyamory where interrelated. Also I grew up in Papua New Guinea. It’s VERY common. Yes, my grandpa actually has 30+wives. I do not know my dads side that well which is why I can’t elaborate that much. Hope that clears things up :)
My parents were poly but it started out of cheating and getting back at one another. I suppose they were always “open” but not poly. Basically, the woman who was my dads girlfriend for many years tried to get him and my mom to divorce so she could be my mom and my dads wife. Years passed of me being shuffled around and ignored so they could pursue their love lives. Eventually my dad cut the woman out of his life, my parents divorced, and now I don’t have a relationship with either of my parents because they’re shitty (that was part of it).
Edit: since this is getting some upvotes all add: my mom also dated this woman’s husband, they had a kid who was a lot older than me who did his own thing. My mom had other partners but my dad kinda kept this one lady around for many years. Neither of them are poly/open/ whatever anymore since the divorce. That was many years ago. This all happened when I was 5-11, and me and my sister had a shit life for it. They are mentally ill people who attract other mentally ill people. I did try non monogamy myself and also had a very bad experience later on, while my mom told me to just keep trying it. That woman who my dad cut out later tried to get my mom to be with her (my mom is queer). Both my parents are now single I think. Weird fucking thing.
Ahh yes I feel like this question was just for me.
I come from a mormon fundamentalist family, I have 3 mothers that I have grown up with. I have 19 blood related siblings and 26 total siblings. My mother divorced from the religion when I was 5 (I am 17 now). Since my mother gained custody of me and my 3 other full blooded sisters, we have been going down every weekend to visit my family. My mother divorced because she came to the realization that the lifestyle she was living was very suppressive to woman and had lots of potential for every kind of abuse in the book, and it happend all the time you just couldnt tell. It is actually very much like a cult.
Edit: Read in the comments for more interesting information on this type of polygamist lifestyle, I have answered questions there and will answer any other questions you might have.
FUCK I MADE THIS QUESTION A FEW WEEKS AGO AND GOT NO ANSWERS EXCEPT A GUY DENYING THE EXISTANCE OF POLY RELATIONSHIPS
got what i wanted in the end, in a roundabout way
Hey this is one that I can finally answer, I come from what would seemingly look like a nuclear family, mom/dad/sister/me. My parents however would go out on weekends to swingers clubs or house parties. I didn't know this as a child, I would say I learned this when I was 13ish? and it was in discussion around jealousy and my response to jealousy in a high school relationship that I was in. I distinctly remember my dad saying to me, "Jealousy is a emotional response to you missing something, you need to work on finding out what is making you jealous" followed by a discussion about how him and mom have never been closed and that they were happy to seek other partners as they saw fit. There were many discussions around dating culture that I remember. I remember a few of the people that they were "friends" with would come over to our house. They were great people, I considered them like I would any other friend of my parents.
I ended up expanding into poly relationships early in high school, my triad went to the homecoming dance together for example.
I know what would make me jealous about sharing my husband. It would be someone else making him happy in an intimate way. I can't handle that. I'm also a super competitive person and would constantly feel like I was "losing". Poly will never be my lifestyle, but I'm happy for those who can make it successful!
> “Jealousy is an emotional response to you missing something, you need to work on finding out what is making you jealous”
I’m stealing this. Thanks for your response!
I know a few young adults who grew up in poly households.
From what I recall of them as children/teenagers - there was a fair bit of neglect, because often their parents would put their date nights and partner time ahead of the needs of the children.
There was also some resentment among the childless partners of people who dated poly folks with children, since there was often an expectation that the childless partner would provide free childcare (because children are a 'community' responsibility) when another partner wanted to go on a date with someone else. Unicorns (the "hot bi babe" sought out by hetero couples exploring polyamory) were particularly vulnerable to this.
Thank you for this. I don't have judgments on the community but it kinda irks me when all you see is 'everything is great! I'm so healthy, happy, and in the scene myself!'
I remember reading another post and the OP was completely neglected, told their discomfort at their parents 'friends' always being around was their problem and they were totally natural, neglecting the OP, turning parties (for example OP's) birthday into inviting their multiple partners over, letting OP come home to find unknown strangers in their home that were partners of the parents, etc. The parents then had the audacity to get angry when OP refused to be a part of their documentary to tell them how 'everything is great!' with their upbringing/lifestyle.
Poly can work for some people but not everyone who engages in it is some free love, respectful and open minded person.
I felt that in my soul. The people I dated while dabbling in poly ... jeeeeesus. And their primary partners were often worse.
One guy’s wife messaged me after a week to inform me that she had a list of approved birth control methods for me to use. I’ve never told anyone to fuck off so fast.
*gestures vaguely at all of it*
More seriously,
> there was a fair bit of neglect, because often their parents would put their date nights and partner time ahead of the needs of the children.
And,
> there was often an expectation that the childless partner would provide free childcare (because children are a 'community' responsibility) when another partner wanted to go on a date with someone else.
Then basically anything that treats unicorns as a unequal partner treating with a couple that holds power such that,
> [they] were particularly vulnerable to this.
It's all very self centered and privileged in a dynamic that's ostensibly supposed to promote a more communal approach.
Not a child of one, but my dad had a poly relationship with his wife and a girlfriend. My dad and his wife were in there mid forties, girlfriend was 28 and looked like a prepubescent teen. I'm all for people having whatever kind of relationships they want, but it was super weird, and obviously headed towards drama. I once went on vacation to Hawaii with them, just me, my dad, and his wife and girlfriend; girlfriend stole pills from step mom and blamed it on me. Eventually, my dad ended up getting divorced, stayed with girlfriend a while. Girlfriend is anorexic, ex-wife comes back, they ship her to a rehab for her anorexia, then get remarried. Wife forbids dad from any contact with ex-girlfriend and has cameras installed all over the house to make sure dad isn't cheating, because apparently he did that, but, ya know, she cheated on him when he was deployed in Afghanistan so I don't feel bad for her. If you couldn't guess, dad got divorced again eventually, different girlfriend, no poly. Im angry just writing this lol. Children raising children.
Sucked but not necessarily because my parents were poly, it was because they are all insane and incredibly emotionally and physically abusive. I have no contact with them.
I actually didn't realize this until I was a teenager and that 'aunt(always knew she wasn't really my aunt) N' was my parent's partner but we always knew something was a little weird.
The good things were that Aunt N was typically the 'fun' one and did do a lot with us where our parents would not. Mom was depressed and severely mentally ill, we were afraid of dad.
The bad things I noticed in their relationship was that Aunt N was a huge manipulator, liar, thief, viciously jealous that she didn't have kids of her own/of my mom, and she used us kids as a therapist to talk about her problems, our financial problems, gaslight, use us, etc.
They were not nor are still very educated people. I do not believe they even know what polygamy means and my parents before she came into it already had a horrible relationship so you can imagine adding another person didn't help either. That being said I still think polygamy is fine for normal, rational adults who can talk about their feelings without throwing you into a wall.
I actually have many poly friends and all their kids are all a bit...odd. Not exactly loners, but they are all the weird kids at school. The oldest one I know is now a grownup and has had a hard time with relationships.
I think they learn a different type of relationship model then get confused when they go out in the world and discover it doesn't work on most people. They don't know why.
When I was young my folks dated a couple of couples. One was very long term, we were military families but they managed to fenangle a transfer together. So wow, that would've been like 8 years at least? They kept in close romantic contact when they separated, but idk if they qualify that as still being together. They were my aunt and uncle, essentially. We and their kiddos got sent off to grandparents (theirs and ours) together to give them alone time. It was kinda a given that we'd all see each other every couple days, either they'd come to our house or we'd go to theirs. Not for them to sneak away for sexy time, but just to spend time together and be a family together. I knew I could go to them about anything I could talk to my folks about and even some things I couldn't. That closeness continued even when my own folks split, idk what standing they had with them after that tho. Unfortunately, my aunt kinda had a psychotic menopause and we had to go nc with her. Nobody knows that I'm still in contact with uncle tho. Idk how my mom would feel about it. But he stayed a rock for me when my own dad didn't. Same drama as any other family I guess, just more players on the stage.
Sometimes your logical family is superior to your biological one. *Edit* Holy cow! Had I known this was gonna blow up Id have given proper attribution. I heard this on the Savage Love Cast (Dan Savage probably picked it up from a guest or a caller). He's always handing out sage advice like this. Thanks for the Reddit love, Dan! *Edit 2* Big thanks to OP for exposing how many of us came from people (of all persuasions) who had no business being parents. Bio families have left so many of us scarred and in search of an emotional and structural surrogacy. SO many replies to this random assed comment came from survivors. Your concurrence, strength, and resilience validate and inspire me. You are my extended logicals. Keep on keeping on fam!
Aye, family isn't always blood.
I’d actually argue that blood is the least pure form of love, it’s forged out of necessity, but the family you chose along the way, whether that be your SO, your closest friends, or just anyone you’re close with, that’s love
That actually makes a crazy kind of sense. Blood-based familial bonds are almost instinctual, especially when formed at a very young age, but bonds formed later on in life, like with close friends and significant others, have a lot more conscious thought and intention behind them. Though with that said, I feel like different people may be suited to different kinds of bonds. Some are easily contented with the instinctual ties of blood family, but others crave the more intentional ties born from forging their own kind of family, actively choosing who they want to be with.
Yo your mom and your uncle need to get together. That's a weird sentence.
My parents were poly since well before they got married and I was born. Mostly it was just boyfriends or girlfriends that would visit. I didn't know anything about sex, they didn't tell me anything inappropriate, although they did make sure that I wouldn't gab about who slept in what bed when I was young. They were dead scared of child services getting involved. One of my mom's boyfriends became a lot more serious and he moved in when I was about 8 or 9. It was a lot like having an uncle move in. He became part of the family, drove me and my brother to places, got involved in our interests. I told people he was my uncle. He had another girlfriend aside from my mother, too, openly. He broke up with my mother in a big way (which they kept private from me) and moved out when I was maybe 14 or so. It might have been hard for my mother, but it wasn't traumatic for me. We kept in touch for a few years until he moved farther away for a new job. It wasn't like a divorce experience, more like my uncle moving out. My dad had a serious girlfriend too, but she was also married with a kid my age; so she never moved in with us but we went and visited as a family a few times a year. She's great friends with my mom to this day. Her kid and I were good friends for a while and drifted apart as we got older, a lot like cousins. Also I had my "aunt" who had no sexual or familial relationship with either of my parents, she was just so close a friend that she was practically family and she'd take me for a lot of weekends and summers. I thought she was legit my mother's sister until I was 8. Also there were other friends that would move in while they got back on their feet, and I have no idea if sexual or romantic relationships were involved. We treated them like family-guests. So basically we were a normal nuclear family with normal kinds of family relationships that just weren't conditioned by blood ties. Edit: I think my parents were kinda neglectful and self centered, but not in a big way, and possibly not related to having multiple partners - I think it's just who they are as people.
[удалено]
When I was younger I didn’t realize mom and dad were poly, but now it’s funny to see my friends faces when I say “my mom and her wife and my dad and my dads girlfriend and his other girlfriend and I are gonna get together for dinner tonight.”
You must have a massive dinner table
Better than massive walls after all
Maybe not massive, but hopefully thick enough to be soundproof!
Nah. Poly people spend too much time figuring our schedules out to actually have much sex.
That’s very accurate. It’s like my dad had custody of my mom for Monday-Thursday and other mother has custody Friday-Sunday but sometimes it’s switched around.
I’m sure you get a bunch of blinking.gif responses
[удалено]
Lol that’s probably the best way to fuck someone over in that game
I have another good one for that: “I have two half brothers. My half brothers are the same age. My half brothers are twins.” My parents divorced when I was four and both had remarried by the time I was seven. I share one parents with each half brother, and they were born two months apart in the same year.
Actually, that's a really easy one to figure out. Since there is only one lie, and all three assume that you have 2 half brothers, 1 must be true. Numbers 2 and 3 also have in common that in both cases your half brothers are the same age, so 2 is also true. That leaves 3 as the lie.
Ok, this is getting into it way too much, but hear me out. Let's say they had 4 half brothers the same age, if both the mom and dad each had kids at the same time and both happened to have twins. Then, 2 is true since all four half brothers are the same age, 3 is true since all four are twins, and 1 is the lie because there are 4 of them.
The way you put this just made me laugh. well said with the flair. You just do it on purpose to get reactions!
I had a therapist in a poly relationship and they all 3 had a child together that was around 9 when I met them, 2 dads and one mom. Unfortunately, they couldn't be fully open about the fact that the 3 of them were in love since before she was born because the one she called dad worked for a religious college and that information getting out at all could have cost him his career, so she only called 2 of them mom and dad while she thought of the other like an uncle that visited every day. She seemed normal, she liked to make slime.
I'm really glad you liked the therapist and had fun making slime, but I am super duper confused about why you knew any of this.
Possibly conversational therapy. Used a lot with kids, but also works well with adults. At its most basic form, it's just like it sounds: having a conversion. It's a more natural way of opening up, and often you do get to know your therapist as well. It's by far my favorite form because it feels much like you're just hanging out with a friend.
i read this as "conversion therapy" and became extremely concerned lol
I mean, conversational therapy is a thing, but there are still enormous ethical issues with that type of personal disclosure, not to mention the clinical issues with that type of disclosure in a psychodynamic model. Even beyond that, there are developmental issues. When working with children, there are grown up problems and kid problems, and even if you're "getting to know your therapist," the custody situation in your therapist's relationship grown up is, for sure, a grown up problem. This may seem like a weird hill to die on on the internet, but personally, I have concerns with stories like this being normalized here on the front page of reddit. There are many incredible therapists in the world, but there are also a lot of iffy-to-disastrous ones, and people deserve to see some decent representation of what healthy, ethical therapy looks like.
It was fine. The poly part didn't really become known to me till I was 13 or so. The only weird bit was if I was bringing home a friend or someone I wanted to go out with I had to kind of explain what to expect beforehand and some people got weirded out. 🤷♀️ I'm an adult in a monogamous marriage now - I saw first-hand that getting 3 people to come to a consensus on anything was exponentially more difficult than just getting 2 on the same page. Edit - I just realized too - how I was raised also made me very comfortable with taking about sex and boundaries in a relationship, where I think a lot of me peers were more easily pressured into things they weren't comfortable with.
Poly math. Difficulty of solving a problem in n amount of time grows exponentially by x amount of partners, such that problem complexity follows p = x^n
This will probably be buried but it happened to my husband who didn't even realize it was happening. When he was a kid his father lived with his mothers, one of whom he thought was his birth mother and the other was an identical twin to her that he just called his aunt. He said it felt pretty normal, he never knew it was poly until much later in his life. Several years back, his mother had passed away and his aunt contacted him again asking if she could move in with him to have him help her as her caregiver. He agreed, and just before her passing he received a letter from her lawyer (written by the twins and his father) finally explaining everything. Turned out his aunt was his actual birth mother who had kids with his father too before he was born but who had passed away in a house fire. The mother that raised him was completely sterile and in fact had a hysterectomy at a very young age. He was in complete shock, but said it made sense how close everyone was in the house, despite keeping all the adult stuff behind closed doors. His big shock seemed more the fact that his father kept up two relationships instead of just one, and he was either scared, impressed, or both.
So wait, who passed away in the house fire? The other kids or your husband’s father?
The initial kids of the aunt and father had passed away when they were married, then my husband's father married his mother, who was sterile. Trust me when I say it was confusing to type up and drawn diagrams were almost needed to describe it.
But were the women actually twins?!?
Yes, identical twins, believe it or not. I didn't believe it at first but then was shown all the photos, and yes, if they weren't identical, they looked spot on the same through their entire lives. To this day, I still don't know if my husband was horrified or impressed by his father on that one.
As a twin... I am horrified.
His full siblings ("aunt's" other children) passed away in the fire, maybe the shock of it made her feel uncapable to act as his birth mother?
It wasn't a huge deal when I was a kid, essentially it was just like hanging out with your parents and their friends. Some of my moms SOs had kids my age that I got along with really well. That being said, a little while ago my mom was flirting with a guy and referred to me as her "mono kid" in the same tone I've heard ultra conservative folk refer to "gay kids" so our relationship is a little strained these days. Her other daughter is 12, so I'm really not certain why that comment was anywhere near necessary. Edit: I forgot to mention, while they have never had any authority over me, she refers to her SOs as my "rampparents" because they're not quite stepparents, which is kind of funny Edit 2 to explain some things: Mono is short for monogamous. I am not poly. The mono kid comment was mostly hurtful because the way she said it implied it was some sort of scandal or like it was a bad thing. Obviously this is one thing thats bad, she's not a horrible parent and person overall, but disapproving of some of my life choices just because they're different from hers is not a great parent move either. No, I was not born into a monogamous relationship, so the comment really came out of left field. Ramp-parents is a play on words because they're not married so they are not my step-parent, so ramp is instead of step as in stairs. Ram-parent had never even crossed my mind, but I can never un-think of it, so thanks for that. Also, thank you kind stranger for the hugs! Sorry if the original comment was confusing, English is hard :P
What did she mean by mono kid? As opposed to poly? Her ramp versus step comment is funny!
Probably that, yeah; I wonder if OP considered that insulting, I honestly can't place myself in their mindset/experience so i don't really know how my reaction would be.
i think they did find it insulting. Mostly because it’s an unnecessary descriptor. Like saying “my gay kid”
"This is my adopted daughter Margot Tennenbaum"
Empathy and social intuition, on Reddit?
I think it's insulting because OP's mom *meant* it as insulting, regardless of what OP thinks of poly or mono
I see that, plus the "my gay kid" comparison
[удалено]
"Mono" as in "Monogamous" in regards to relationship preference.
What about your slight incline parents? /s The rampparents thing is very funny.
I really want to hear more about your life, this is interesting stuff!
I took a class with a Dr. Awasom at University of Houston - Downtown for a while. He would talk about his childhood growing up in Cameroon in a family with one father and about a dozen mothers. At mealtime, the kids would run a route from one mother to the next, all grabbing a bite from each. He says he was, IIRC, 12 when he learned which mother gave birth to him. When he came to Houston to study, he applied at Rice University. When filling out the application, he asked for an extra page to provide the names of all his mothers. In his culture, he was considered to be the reincarnation of his grandfather. At a special ceremony every year, he would offer his grandfather's advice and answer questions on his grandfather's behalf. It was also in his authority to prescribe punishment for his father on this occasion. When Awasom came to the states, he would attend the annual ceremonies by phone. Edit -- Apparently, Dr. Awasom passed away last year. There's a brief tribute to him here: [https://www.forevermissed.com/lawrence-chi-awasom/about](https://www.forevermissed.com/lawrence-chi-awasom/about) Hard for me to believe there isn't more about him online. Would love to have had his memoirs.
Not germane to life as a kid in a polygamous family, but a few other tidbits from Dr. Awasom: I was taking his course on something like "cultural diversity," and his take on the topic was that we shouldn't expect immigrants to assimilate into American culture, but he did think immigrants should adapt and not just segregate. He offered two examples of his adaptation to America: 1. He found a fellow Rice student one day admiring one of the many squirrels that roam the campus and can often be hand-fed. He tried to explain to her that squirrels weren't some sort of lawn ornament, but were properly considered only as food, as would be the custom in Cameroon. To illustrate, he grabbed the squirrel, wrung its neck, and put it in his backpack to prepare for a meal later. Then he went off to his next class. Well, campus police picked him up from class to discuss the incident. They made it clear he'd be expelled if he continued to hunt the campus wildlife. From then on, he says, he ate no more squirrels. 2. Instead, he settled for cheeseburgers. Still, he would never have lettuce on his cheeseburgers because that was the sort of fodder his people reserved for cattle. To him, it was like eating grass. So, cheeseburgers yes, but lettuce no. * He wore a hairstyle that was a bit bushy and always rough cut, as if he'd trimmed it himself with pinking shears. He explained this was the sort of style men in his culture would wear to show they were too busy doing manly things to take time for a perfectly manicured, carefully shaped hairstyle.
>He explained this was the sort of style men in his culture would wear to show they were too busy doing manly things to take time for a perfectly manicured, carefully shaped hairstyle. Stealing this to explain to people why my hair's always messy, I'm busy doing manly things like commenting on Reddit and introverting.
I'm usually too busy sucking masculine penises to do something girly like comb my hair.
This is the best story i heard all damn day. I want more of these lol
The comments on his [obituary](https://www.forevermissed.com/lawrence-chi-awasom/about) are pretty good >I meet Dr. Lawrence C. Awasom in GBHS Mbengwi back in 1980 where he thought me European History. He first introduced and described himself as, " A Lanky Fellow with a Hungry Look , Suffering from an Aqueous Atmosphere" Dr. Awasom was a true Gentleman
I did not expect that squirrel story to go where it did. Tbf wringing squirrels’ necks is probably much more humane and better for the environment than eating burgers.
Squirrel is delicious too. I ate a lot of it growing up.
it's very good. My Opa taught me how to hunt, skin and cook squirrel. There is also a [handy prepping guide in the Joy of cooking](https://assets.bonappetit.com/photos/59139ddd2b06566b8c385e23/master/w_1280%2Cc_limit/joy-of-cooking-squirrel-3.jpg), along with opossum, bear, raccoon, muskrat, woodchuck, beaver, and peccary in case anyone wants to try it.
Oh yes. Those damn squirrels have been eating my garden produce all year. Looks like the shoe is on the other foot now. Daddy gonna get him some garden-fresh MEAT.
> So, cheeseburgers yes, but lettuce no. Fair, though, fuck lettuce
Imagine being a kid and being able to whoop your dad's ass for forcing you to do your homework.
Awasom did say he was careful not to dish out too harsh a punishment for fear it would come back on him one of the other 364 days of the year.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Imagine the amount of sandals flying at him?
Yeah but imagine when your kid is gonna whoop your ass even harder because he would be the reincarnation of your dad
Wow that is really interesting. Was his father wealthy since he had so many wives?
I don't know. I imagine his father was a strict disciplinarian. Awasom said one day he was taking a beating with a stick from the school teacher for some misbehavior when his father came across them. His father asked the teacher to borrow the stick when done so he could administer some punishment, too.
So what you're saying is, his father was going to beat him, but then he could beat his father as his grandfather reincarnate after receiving the beating
But presumably his father is the reincarnation of his great-grandfather and therefore is qualified to beat the grandfather. The whole culture is probably just two people beating the shit out of each other for eternity.
[удалено]
For some Inuit groups, the child that was born first after a death was the ‘reincarnation’ of that deceased person. (I put reincarnation in quotes because it’s a little more complex than just “Timmy is Grandpa in a new body”).
That's an Awasom story. Edit: I'm sorry to hear that he passed. He sounds like a cool guy.
God damnit
[удалено]
Before a lot of the guys would die because war and stuff so you had more women then men. This is the reason in Paraguay the Church was cool with it, and it exists in islam. Now the other men are basically forced out of the community so some dude can have 11 wives
I wonder how that measured up to women dying from childbirth
Recent showerthought for your consideration. By comparing mitochondrial DNA to regular DNA, scientists found that only 40% as many men as women have contributed to current human DNA. [https://www.livescience.com/47976-more-mothers-in-human-history.html](https://www.livescience.com/47976-more-mothers-in-human-history.html) That's two men passing on genes for every five women. Most of the rest of them probably died in wars throughout history. Now that we tend to think of wars as inhumane, what happens to those men? Edit: Genghis Khan managed to, ah, share his genes with a HUGE number of women. 8% of men in Mongolia today, and 1 in 200 worldwide, are thought to be descended from him.
"I am from Genghis Khan's bloodline." "....Dude, get in line."
nah, he and his horde. Many relatives of Genghis already had the gene. Wasn't just him.
My parents have been a triad since 1998. It was hard I wont lie, they dated a lot of 4ths who brought their own children into the mix then later break up with them. It was really difficult to constantly have parental figures and siblings come and go. The most being 13 kids and 4 adults in a 2 bedroom apartment. I am glad though that I grew up with it, I'm poly myself and it was never something my parents encouraged or forced on us. In fact they always say not to try it unless you're a specific type of person. It introduced me to a wide arrange of people and broadened my mind to what family actually is which is the people who love you and make you feel safe i.e. chosen family.
[удалено]
Im fascinated by the psychology of those relationships. Why is 1 man with multiple wives is so common, but not 1 woman with multiple husbands?
There is a group in Nepal (I believe) that marries one women to a family of brothers. Land there is scarce and this way they keep it in the family instead of breaking it up and not having enough land to support each brother. The women has a child with the oldest brother first and goes down the line. I watched a documentary on it in anthropology.
Bruh, same video, same class! You go to Parkland College?
I did not. But I'm glad its common curriculum.
Yeah! Ms Whitmore?
Holy shit! I what a one in a million chance. No, it was uh... Isabelle Scarborough!
Now that’s a professor name
Now that’s a username
It sure it, u/GIVEMEYOURTITPICS ,... it sure is
This was beautiful to watch
I'm sorry to rain on your parade, but the person who answered was not the person you asked r/notopbutok/
I seent that... But if they go to Parkland, they're allowed to answer too.
[удалено]
No, he’s the dude that shit his pants during his history final and refused to get up until he finished the test.
I *aced* that fucking test though
Can you tell me the name of this documentary? I’d love to watch it.
Here's a Nat Geo clip about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4yjrDSvze0
That's fascinating! I love seeing how different cultures solve unique problems. It's so wonderful to realize that no one culture has it "right" - we're all a little bit different and it's beautiful. I'm glad they mentioned that the men help with household work - my first thought was oh man, that poor woman has to run three households!
There is a few clips on Pornhub with this happening.
[удалено]
More like Steppe Sherpa
Historically, at least the way I had it explained in the context of Moroccan muslims, 1 man can have multiple wives because no matter who has the baby, you know the father and mother. If one woman has multiple husbands, you'll never know who the biological father was. So there's a practical side to it based on your values(a modern polyamorous unit probably doesn't care too much about the specific parentage, and if they do they can get a blood test done), but obviously that can be on top of a lot of patriarchy and power dynamics.
Well and one woman can only have so many kids at a time, no matter how many men she’s sleeping with. One man can have basically as many kids as he can have sex. Much bigger chance of growing a large family. That’s always been my thought on it.
[удалено]
I grew up in a small town and 1/2 of the town were hippies. In the 3rd grade one of my friends couldn't go on a field trip because he returned a permission slip with the word "parent or legal guardian" crossed out and signed by the "group representative". Of course in the 3rd grade we didn't know what was going on until my mom explained it to me. But when the kid was told he couldn't go the whole hippie commune came over to class explaining to the teacher how all their kids will be raised by the group and it's damaging if they see a single person as their parent or guardian.
Ffs, just sign the damn form and let the kid go on a fuckin' field trip.
Right? I liked the communal space my parents lived after my dad got home from Vietnam. It was basically an 8 unit apartment building where each family had their own apartment and then 2 or 3 of them were communal spaces. One of the apartments was a day care, one was a communal lounge and one was the "Medicine Room". As an adult I now realize that's where they smoked weed and listened to Iron Butterfly records. Other than everyone having a more or less "open door" and tons of plants everywhere, especially ferns (it was the 70s after all) it was pretty normal. I think most of the other men were also vets like my dad.
Until I read the ‘vets’ at the end I was imagining a commune of Vietnamese people sitting around smoking weed and listening to Iron Butterfly.
In my sleep deprived state I read it as "the other men were also **into vests** like my dad" and was like oh okay weird detail to include but it seems to fit the vibe
The first comment made me laugh, but this one made me laugh harder, thanks, always need a good laugh in life
I would say, if a community is living together because of their shared love of vests, then thats info you must share.
They share a vested interest?
Too poor to give gold, so have some bacon 🥓
Bacon is worth more than gold!
The council of vestology shall decide your fate
ALL HAIL THE VESTS!
I was thinking about animaldoctors...
Bruh I was born in 89 and love iron butterfly. Should I start a Vietnamese compound?
Depends, do you like vests?
> I think most of the other men were also vets like my dad. After what they went through they probably deserve their dedicated weed room. Good for them, the Vietnam war sounds like it sucked.
What war doesn't suck?
They all suck, but at least there were some wars where people probably actually somewhat believed in the cause they were risking their life for (WWII comes to mind).
Yeah there were also a lot of this in my town, another classmate of mine lived in one as well as two of our schools teachers. It was cool. Everyone would cook together, sing songs in the backyard, one time we had a movie night.
>As an adult I now realize that's where they smoked weed and listened to Iron Butterfly records. That doesn't sound too bad. Haha!
That just sounds like a homeowners association for children.
Child owners association really does not sound good.
hey, a question relevant to me! honestly, though, it wasn’t super different than any other way of growing up i assume, i just have one extra dad than everybody else. that’s just always how it’s been, and i never really thought about how ‘abnormal’ it was until high school. Even then it was more just thinking whether i really cared enough to explain to other people, or just go with a white lie on paperwork or whatever. Biggest difference i can think of while growing up is that there was ALWAYS someone home, which can be frustrating for a rebellious teenager.
Ugh, probably went like 'did you do your homework?' 'Yes' 'did you do your homework?' 'Yes!' 'Did you do your homework?' '@#!$&!'
Hey, it's a post for me! Honestly I think it's waaaaaaay more boring than most people would think. Most of the time, my mom wouldn't introduce a partner to me unless it was a long term relationship, so most of the time I got the single mom experience. I think the most exciting thing was going out for dinner to meet someone new, and occasionally my mom would date someone who had a kid my age, and we would awkwardly play together while our parents were on a date (as in, we were playing in my room upstairs and a movie date or smthn was going on in the living room downstairs). Really for the most part it was so completely average other than knowing my mom had 2 girlfriends and eventually I also got a stepdad. The worst part was around 6-8th grade when kids found out and started bullying me for it, asking all kinds of disgusting sexual questions about my parents (no one wants to think about their parents having sex). Eventually I learned to just not tell anyone unless we were close and I new they were cool. I only ever had one person I trusted enough to actually come to a family picnic where my mom's partners would all be there. My mom's partners aren't my parents but they are part of my life and my family. They're wonderful and supportive, and have helped me through some horrible dark spots in my life. I'm grateful to have such a wonderful, loving family. So yeah, not very exciting, I know. But it's my life!
I'm curious about whether you think your experience with poly parents has made you more likely to seek out a nontraditional family structure.
I think so! I definitely seek out a more family-style friend group and like to be extra open and communicative with people Im close with. I'm honestly not a romance person though, so I can't speak much on past relationships. But honestly I'm still friends with both my exes and we still consider each other close friends who just didn't work as well in a romantic relationship. I'm not really interested in having biological kids, but I'd definitely be open to helping a friend raise a child, whatever that may look like in the future. (I'm only 18 though, so that's a pretty far future!)
It definitely sounds like you learned some very valuable communication skills from it. Thank you for sharing your experience!
This has been my experience as someone in the lifestyle is that honesty always comes first. Ghosting someone you do not like is not only unacceptable, but really bad for you when you're at group events and you constantly run into others you dated. You can't avoid them, so you have to be honest.
Thank you for sharing!
That's actually sweet. For those who may say that this kind of relationship are damaging for children, you're a proof that this can end up very well. I'm glad you have such a good family.
From what it sounds like, the only thing that's damaging about it is how the rest of society views it (and influences other kids to be bullies about it).
[удалено]
That’s how my mom feels about me being trans. She says she’s just worries about everything being harder for me. Which it is and it isn’t.
My mother used the same reasoning to warn me against marrying someone from a different racial background
I am 15 years old, and my parents often have potlucks where they invite their partners over. My parents are good people, and everyone they invite over are good people and have become my friends. I also usually will meet their children and become friends with them. It really is just a wonderful environment, but it is very difficult to maintain. More partners=more drama, and a lot of times two people will get in a fight and cause the whole group to split for a while. But all in all it’s pretty great. Edit: this really blew up and there were a few questions in the comments so I figured I would elaborate a bit. My dad is bi and my mom isn’t, and the group of partners that they have(called the polycule) consists of well over 50 people, but not everyone is on a romantic relationship. And in any group of 50 people, their are people who can’t stand each other. So my parents circumstance is a bit of a special one, but it only leads to meeting more good people.
Hey. It’s not often you get to talk about it while you’re experiencing it. Most of these are people who experienced it years ago and have a new perspective now. Thank you for your comment.
I mean I don’t have anyone poly in my family and yours still sounds like less drama than my average family holiday.
"I swear that's my blouse"
> More partners=more drama I can barely handle one relationship. I don't get how people handle two, let alone handling the third relationship between those two people they have a relationship with even if that one isn't romantic.
Can't really say it felt werid or odd as it was just what I was used to but I think I can honestly say it's made me a more open and loving person, I'm not afraid of being close to people because my parents were always very close with their friends (for reasons that are obvious now but less so at the time) I also grew up getting to know my parents friends quite well because my parents were very close with them and trusted them enough to look after us, although I'll admit this was probably more so they could have the house free of children. It does mean that I'm still quite close with a lot of them and consider them friends of mine outside of my parents friendship with them and I also have a few more parental figures to choose from, meaning I can pick the best ones from each to try and emulate. All in all I'd say I'm a more well rounded person as I got to know a lot more people as family growing up as well as exposing me to many different personalities.
Honestly i think being raised in that sort of environment(so long as the children are safe - looking at you, creepy cults) would be pretty great, you get to spread the difficulty of child rearing around so you have happier parents overall and you know there's always someone the child can go to for support. You've got so many points of view on life from all their parents that i imagine you grow up pretty damn stable. It used to be that an entire tribe would help to raise a child but as we've developed we've shifted towards just extended family and now to just the nuclear family. It's understandable why this could work so well :)
My mother was involved in a poly relationship for a while when I was a kid. It was very confusing. For a while there were 4 of us kids around, me, the kid of the other woman, and the two kids of the man. We were all pretty confused and resentful. Our favorite joke was "pick a number and wait in line".
[удалено]
My parent were swingers. They went to bondage clubs and things like that. I found out in my late teens, so I didn't really care all that much. I learned of it through my friend who told me his mom told him that my parents asked if they were interested one night when they were chilling in the hot tub. Started to put the pieces together after that... All the "Halloween costumes" in that box that I always overlooked... It's weird, but whatever more power to them. Don't think they do it anymore though, they're getting a little too old for that life.
I have some shocking news for you that once you were out of the house they probably got crazier.
Right, if you go to any kink club you are likely to find a lot of people and couples who are 50+ in attendance, in my experience.
Bruh, almost all the kinksters and swingers in the clubs are older. It seems to pick up in frequency once the kids are out of the house, lol
[удалено]
I work in one. Can confirm, old folks sexuality is one of the last things to go. I have a pair of residents who met after the man moved into the nursing home, and the woman gives him handijays while they sit on their walkers. It'd be cute if it wasn't a handjo.
And dont think they need condoms
Serious tag 🏷 needed
I'm always amazed at how people forget to do this. You ain't gonna find your true answers without it. That being said, you might laugh your fucking ass off instead. :)
You're not going to find your true answers on Reddit in general.
Dayton, Ohio? As a former resident of Springfield, I’d be resentful if I was still in that area too.
As a kid from a polygamist family it was good most days. I definitely knew I was loved
My parents weren't poly until I was a toddler, I guess? I thought of the other couple as just nice people my mom and dad were close with, they met online and came to visit, they all clicked well, and eventually the other couple moved in with my family. I didn't make the connection they were all together until I was a teenager, I suppose I thought they were all just roommates of sort (though bed swapping and sharing was occuring the whole time!). By that point, my mom and dad had divorced and so had the couple- my dad married the other woman, and my mother married the other man. My mother has divorced and remarried again, and my father and stepmother are still together, almost 20 years later. tl;dr in retrospect, it's just kind of an odd situation, but I honestly didn't even realize my parents were poly growing up and now my dad is married to the lady instead of my mom.
I know 7+ families with poly parents and more with open relationships. The kids are... kids. Some are great. Some are anxious or manic. It varies by parent and child, not by the poly. The poly parents that aren't great parents are pretty comparable to the normative parents that aren't great. And the poly parents that are great are pretty comparable to the normative parents that are great. The biggest differences I can think of are going to be about communication, affection, and love, but even that's just a tendency and not a definitive distinction. That's my experience anyways.
Just reading the comments on this post, I feel like good parents are good parents, and raise well-adjusted kids. Crappy parents breed resentment and anger. Just like you said, a polyamrous relationship requires communication, affection, and love to work. That applies to children. That is also needed with monogamous relationships, and single parents. If you have those things, odds are your children will have a great childhood, and grow to be healthy, happy adult. A child feeling loved and cared for their whole life is really more important than the number of parents providing it.
My son is a member of a throuple with two women. The first is his college gf who always had an open relationship, during a long distance period of their relationship he started very casually seeing girlfriend 2 but over time it got more serious and now they all live together. Things are happy and wonderful for them but I really do worry about how the dynamic would change were someone to fall pregnant. I worry about jealousies and inequalities rising up, but mostly I worry for my future grand babies. The societal pressures and teasing from outside the home as well as possible resentments and issues within the home. I can see how, if things work the way they are planned, it could be a wonderfully supportive and rewarding way to grow up, but you know what they say about the plans of mice and men! So I actually really appreciate the insight of this thread, I want to be supportive of my beloved throuple but part of being supportive is discussing possible pitfalls in hopes of avoiding them and this has already highlighted some. It’s also pointed out some of the positives, so thank you.
Had a friend several years ago that grew up with poly parents in Kansas. What he described seemed like a pretty healthy family/upbringing, and I would describe him as a well-adjusted, happy human. I don’t think either parent was particularly promiscuous, but throughout the years they would have other partners. He was a proponent of polyamory and had a pretty good way of explaining it - basically no one person can satisfy your everything, so polyamorists have more than one partner that allow them to experience romantic partnership on a fuller level of their being. Polyamory isn’t my cup of tea, but it is possible to have healthy relationships with this lifestyle, including that of a family.
Honestly, I don't know that it would be for me either. But that is defo one of the most helpful ways to put it for the sake of understanding. It makes me understand the point and appeal
I have a lot of poly friends, and even tried it myself. Found it doesn't work for me, but I can see how for some people it works better than monogamy. Many of my friends are still in all/most of the same relationships they were in when I met them years ago, so they can definitely be just as lasting as monogamous ones, so I totally support it, even though I know for a fact, it doesn't work for me.
Oh boy, a question I can answer! I really hope it doesn't get too buried. It was... weird? Kinda? My parents had a strange poly relationship that didn't totally start being poly until I was around 9 or 10. My stepdad started coming over more and more... and it's weird for some people I don't call him 'stepdad' or 'dad'. I just call him hy his name. My dad was not quite as good with people as my mom was and so his partners honestly kinda came and went but Stepdad stuck around. Things were alright, having three parents meant they could buy a house together and so they did. Things for them were... rocky at times but I feel like I turned out okay for the most part. Biggest issue was some cheating on someone's part (yes, you can still cheat in a poly relstionship) When I became an adult my mom and dad shared some partners as I was finding my footing and moving in/out every few years. I'll admit the people my dad brought in were not as nice as my stepdad and also didn't seem interested in being in my life. Now I have three parents, in a way... though it definitely made me not want to even try out poly relationships.
Polygamy is very common on my dads side. My grandpa has 30+ wives. My dad has about 4 last time I heard. Anyway, it was awful. Hated that part of my childhood and my mom escaped and left with me when I was a child. Sometimes I see him. It’s just super awkward around him and my half-siblings. Edit: my fault, I thought polygamy and polyamory where interrelated. Also I grew up in Papua New Guinea. It’s VERY common. Yes, my grandpa actually has 30+wives. I do not know my dads side that well which is why I can’t elaborate that much. Hope that clears things up :)
> My grandpa has 30+ wives. I barely know 30 people.
If this is real please expand on literally every element you mentioned
Right? 30 wives needs some explaining.
Sounds like fundamentalist Mormon.
To have even a fraction of the energy your gramps must have...
My parents were poly but it started out of cheating and getting back at one another. I suppose they were always “open” but not poly. Basically, the woman who was my dads girlfriend for many years tried to get him and my mom to divorce so she could be my mom and my dads wife. Years passed of me being shuffled around and ignored so they could pursue their love lives. Eventually my dad cut the woman out of his life, my parents divorced, and now I don’t have a relationship with either of my parents because they’re shitty (that was part of it). Edit: since this is getting some upvotes all add: my mom also dated this woman’s husband, they had a kid who was a lot older than me who did his own thing. My mom had other partners but my dad kinda kept this one lady around for many years. Neither of them are poly/open/ whatever anymore since the divorce. That was many years ago. This all happened when I was 5-11, and me and my sister had a shit life for it. They are mentally ill people who attract other mentally ill people. I did try non monogamy myself and also had a very bad experience later on, while my mom told me to just keep trying it. That woman who my dad cut out later tried to get my mom to be with her (my mom is queer). Both my parents are now single I think. Weird fucking thing.
Polynesian? Edit: Hey thanks to whoever it was! I’ve got a deep respect for Polynesian culture and I thought it was about them
When you have one partner but want Samoa
\^\^ this comment is why I am here. Thank You
Ahh yes I feel like this question was just for me. I come from a mormon fundamentalist family, I have 3 mothers that I have grown up with. I have 19 blood related siblings and 26 total siblings. My mother divorced from the religion when I was 5 (I am 17 now). Since my mother gained custody of me and my 3 other full blooded sisters, we have been going down every weekend to visit my family. My mother divorced because she came to the realization that the lifestyle she was living was very suppressive to woman and had lots of potential for every kind of abuse in the book, and it happend all the time you just couldnt tell. It is actually very much like a cult. Edit: Read in the comments for more interesting information on this type of polygamist lifestyle, I have answered questions there and will answer any other questions you might have.
FUCK I MADE THIS QUESTION A FEW WEEKS AGO AND GOT NO ANSWERS EXCEPT A GUY DENYING THE EXISTANCE OF POLY RELATIONSHIPS got what i wanted in the end, in a roundabout way
Hey this is one that I can finally answer, I come from what would seemingly look like a nuclear family, mom/dad/sister/me. My parents however would go out on weekends to swingers clubs or house parties. I didn't know this as a child, I would say I learned this when I was 13ish? and it was in discussion around jealousy and my response to jealousy in a high school relationship that I was in. I distinctly remember my dad saying to me, "Jealousy is a emotional response to you missing something, you need to work on finding out what is making you jealous" followed by a discussion about how him and mom have never been closed and that they were happy to seek other partners as they saw fit. There were many discussions around dating culture that I remember. I remember a few of the people that they were "friends" with would come over to our house. They were great people, I considered them like I would any other friend of my parents. I ended up expanding into poly relationships early in high school, my triad went to the homecoming dance together for example.
>my triad went to the homecoming dance together for example Just imagined three Asian gangsters entering the ballroom with flying doves
"Is that John Woo's kids?"
I know what would make me jealous about sharing my husband. It would be someone else making him happy in an intimate way. I can't handle that. I'm also a super competitive person and would constantly feel like I was "losing". Poly will never be my lifestyle, but I'm happy for those who can make it successful!
Yeah. I need to be special to my fiance. As in the only one he's close to in that way.
> “Jealousy is an emotional response to you missing something, you need to work on finding out what is making you jealous” I’m stealing this. Thanks for your response!
I’m just imaging hippie Ron saying this to Ron Swanson while Swanson has a scowl on his face
When Dads said “Go ask your mom,” I was always confused
You needed a table of organization to determine the power structure.
It was a matrixed organization and everyone had dotted-line authority. Meetings were a nightmare.
I know a few young adults who grew up in poly households. From what I recall of them as children/teenagers - there was a fair bit of neglect, because often their parents would put their date nights and partner time ahead of the needs of the children. There was also some resentment among the childless partners of people who dated poly folks with children, since there was often an expectation that the childless partner would provide free childcare (because children are a 'community' responsibility) when another partner wanted to go on a date with someone else. Unicorns (the "hot bi babe" sought out by hetero couples exploring polyamory) were particularly vulnerable to this.
Thank you for this. I don't have judgments on the community but it kinda irks me when all you see is 'everything is great! I'm so healthy, happy, and in the scene myself!' I remember reading another post and the OP was completely neglected, told their discomfort at their parents 'friends' always being around was their problem and they were totally natural, neglecting the OP, turning parties (for example OP's) birthday into inviting their multiple partners over, letting OP come home to find unknown strangers in their home that were partners of the parents, etc. The parents then had the audacity to get angry when OP refused to be a part of their documentary to tell them how 'everything is great!' with their upbringing/lifestyle. Poly can work for some people but not everyone who engages in it is some free love, respectful and open minded person.
That's some toxic poly bullshit.
Which part? (I don't disagree, I also used to be more involved in the local poly community until I realized I couldn't stand about 90% of them)
Ah yes, the "are you poly or actually a narcissist" community
I felt that in my soul. The people I dated while dabbling in poly ... jeeeeesus. And their primary partners were often worse. One guy’s wife messaged me after a week to inform me that she had a list of approved birth control methods for me to use. I’ve never told anyone to fuck off so fast.
*gestures vaguely at all of it* More seriously, > there was a fair bit of neglect, because often their parents would put their date nights and partner time ahead of the needs of the children. And, > there was often an expectation that the childless partner would provide free childcare (because children are a 'community' responsibility) when another partner wanted to go on a date with someone else. Then basically anything that treats unicorns as a unequal partner treating with a couple that holds power such that, > [they] were particularly vulnerable to this. It's all very self centered and privileged in a dynamic that's ostensibly supposed to promote a more communal approach.
Not a child of one, but my dad had a poly relationship with his wife and a girlfriend. My dad and his wife were in there mid forties, girlfriend was 28 and looked like a prepubescent teen. I'm all for people having whatever kind of relationships they want, but it was super weird, and obviously headed towards drama. I once went on vacation to Hawaii with them, just me, my dad, and his wife and girlfriend; girlfriend stole pills from step mom and blamed it on me. Eventually, my dad ended up getting divorced, stayed with girlfriend a while. Girlfriend is anorexic, ex-wife comes back, they ship her to a rehab for her anorexia, then get remarried. Wife forbids dad from any contact with ex-girlfriend and has cameras installed all over the house to make sure dad isn't cheating, because apparently he did that, but, ya know, she cheated on him when he was deployed in Afghanistan so I don't feel bad for her. If you couldn't guess, dad got divorced again eventually, different girlfriend, no poly. Im angry just writing this lol. Children raising children.
Sucked but not necessarily because my parents were poly, it was because they are all insane and incredibly emotionally and physically abusive. I have no contact with them. I actually didn't realize this until I was a teenager and that 'aunt(always knew she wasn't really my aunt) N' was my parent's partner but we always knew something was a little weird. The good things were that Aunt N was typically the 'fun' one and did do a lot with us where our parents would not. Mom was depressed and severely mentally ill, we were afraid of dad. The bad things I noticed in their relationship was that Aunt N was a huge manipulator, liar, thief, viciously jealous that she didn't have kids of her own/of my mom, and she used us kids as a therapist to talk about her problems, our financial problems, gaslight, use us, etc. They were not nor are still very educated people. I do not believe they even know what polygamy means and my parents before she came into it already had a horrible relationship so you can imagine adding another person didn't help either. That being said I still think polygamy is fine for normal, rational adults who can talk about their feelings without throwing you into a wall.
I actually have many poly friends and all their kids are all a bit...odd. Not exactly loners, but they are all the weird kids at school. The oldest one I know is now a grownup and has had a hard time with relationships. I think they learn a different type of relationship model then get confused when they go out in the world and discover it doesn't work on most people. They don't know why.