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Poly is not sure what’s happening with John. The party is close and John needs to pull his finger out and go get the STD tests done at the doctors. So he’s already agreed to get them done, but then he falls at the first hurdle because, oh that’s right, he doesn’t currently have a doctor.

“Do you want me to set up one with mine” Poly offers to him.

He agrees, the date at the clinic is set, and Poly and John are spending a lot of time with each other. They are also having a lot of sex, including where she let him cum in her twice. Which I only mention because it’s a contributing symptom of an emerging dilemma. The relationship between Poly and John is deepening, but there is a quiet unease starting to develop in Poly.

They are getting closer and hanging out more, however not on the evening before the doctor’s appointment. No Poly is at a birthday dinner for one of her best friends and he’s out at a film festival and ends up a bit worse for wear. On his suggestion, they had organised a gym date before the doctor’s appointment, but it falls into a hangover.

On top of that, he’s late meeting Poly to get to the clinic. They need to meet beforehand because he wouldn’t be able to find the clinic by himself. Well he could, but for some reason addresses and phone apps are a last resort when there’s a dependable Poly to take you instead. And it’s only when he arrives that he says “oh yeah. I’m a late person, you should probably know that. 20-30 minutes, you gotta expect that”.

Telling me about this over lunch and Poly is lifting up out of her seat, arms extended in the embodiment of incredulity, saying “And I’m like, what the fuck man!”

Poly, you see, is a project manager and is, in her words, “a bit anal” (now, now. Don’t go reading too much into that), and she goes on to explain “If I make plans, I stick to the plans!” But now there’s this big reveal that he’s a “late person.”

But she can’t get upset with John, because they are booked into the swingers party together and, it’s only a week out, and…

….whew …whew… whew (breath) …just play it Cool. Just play it cool.

This brings up a reminder from the past and being a “late person” person has the unmistakable stench of disorganisation. John is also in the process of starting up his own business, and it’s going ok, but even at this stage Poly can only see it through the lens of a PM and it reminds her of her previous long term partner Ed who had attempted to do something similar, only to have Poly carry him financially for years.

Poly does not want to go back there, she has fought hard to get where she is and one of the key indicators she is looking for in a guy is the ability to be basically self-sufficient. You know, kind of the opposite to being a “late person.”

Being late pissed her off because she had to re-arrange her day in order to get him to the doctor, and then he’s out doing his best impression of a stoner on spring break with too much hash.

But wait there’s more. After the doctor’s appointment John takes Poly to lunch to try to make up with her about bailing on their earlier plans and being late. They have a really nice lunch and afterwards they are back at her house just rolling around on the floor, which of course turns intimate. As Poly is lying next to John post-coital glow he says he wants to pop over to see his sister and does Poly want to come?

Boom !

Meeting the family… not sure about this already she thinks. “I have to pick up my daughter soon from her Dad”. He replies “That’s ok, you can bring her along”

BOOOM BOOOM !!!

On the outside Poly was …just play it cool, the party is next weekend, just play it cool. On the inside the churn of emotions is akin to being pushed out onto a stage in front of 20,000 people, whilst all your clothes are being simultaneously ripped off.

But the party is next weekend …whew, whew, breathe, just play it cool.

The sister is of course a gatekeeper for John, or so I suspect, and Poly had to pass the test. It also had the ring of John showing off to his sister saying “See! Not all my girlfriends are brain dead bimbos.”

The evening went well, the kids got along and Poly’s daughter was all over John. Poly chatted with Johns sister and husband and it felt very relaxed. Poly thought maybe she had panicked for nothing until John said “seeing me with kids is gonna make your ovaries bleed”

Again! What the fucking fuck!

Play it cool. Play it cool. The party is next weekend. Play it cool.

Poly is not looking to have any more kids, she’s got one, that’ll do for now. But all of this, the increase in sexual acts where he’s cuming in her, having to organise his doctors visit, the coordination of his day coupled with being late, the invite to meet his family in an attempt to initiate a gynecological heamatoma… all of this is a stark wakeup call that the high walls of intimacy have just suffered a severe bombardment, they have been breached and are being overrun.

At the time she wanted to say to him “hey, you know, after the party we’re gonna have to talk about this fucking ‘relationship’.”

What would it be like to be in swingers’ party? Well for me to hear Poly talk about this, let’s just say I would feel …uncomfortable.

This is just me mind you, not Poly. No Poly feels excited by it all.

So for a swingers’ party, the first difficulty is with making sure that it’s safe. No phones, no cameras, and everyone wearing protection, although it is commonplace for partners not to use condoms between themselves.

However then you have to navigate the language.

For example, rather than say “fucking”, it is more widely accepted vernacular to say that people “play”. Sounds much nicer doesn’t it. The former just seems obscene when compared to the gentler later term. You could also say “having sex”, but even that is too explicit, and besides it doesn’t really cover the entire range of activities that go on. “Play” is a much better way of saying it. And it wouldn’t be entirely correct to call it a euphemism either, I mean it is a euphemism, but it’s also just, well, play.

In most swinger clubs and parties it is the women who decide whether to play or not. Men (according to the rules) must not approach women and must wait to be invited. Consent is extremely important in the swingers scene. However it doesn’t have to be explicit – a simple smile back or head nod to continue talking to someone and both parties can probably ascertain the meaning. Sometimes it is very direct such as with an actual quote from a party that Poly attended “My girlfriend and I would like you to help me DP her”. Like all subsets of society, acronyms are created, this one stand for Double Penetrate.

No’s are generally fairly straightforward and simple and no one takes offense (generally).

Most swingers’ events and parties will prohibit single men. To be invited to a party, as a male, you need to be partnered with a female. That said, it’s seen as perfectly ok for a women to turn up by themselves, in fact a single women at a swingers party is considered to be rare and so they are obviously referred to as “unicorns”. Cute right?

Poly related a story about another woman who had a rather basic whip with her, a whip that doesn’t actually hurt at all. It was just a prop for the “playing”. This woman invites Poly to gently whip her to show how light it is, when a guy comes over. He starts to get a bit too close and a bit too eager, at which point the woman turns towards the approaching man and says a very loud and a very clear “And YOU can just FUCK OFF!”, holding up a hand to point at him in a very unambiguous denial of consent. At which point the guy turns to leave without saying a word. I can only imagine that he knew the rules, as clearly laid out by past experience, and he knew he could be cut off at any minute without any recourse or appeal. And of course it’s ironic the harsh use of the word “FUCK” does have a place in the vernacular.

The language makes it clear that the women have a consenting veto power. When Poly first attended a swinger’s nightclub, it didn’t take long to realise that it was the normal behavior in this world. Not only do women have absolute power of veto, they are also seen as the ones who initiate the play. It is the female who decides what she would like, and it is the female who should initiate the contact. In telling me about this, Poly indicated that whilst it was seen as the woman’s role to initiate play, occasionally the man would start up the interaction but almost always they have a partner or their playmate (not everyone attends with a ‘partner’ per se but sometimes just a playmate) by their side.

As a microcosm of society the contrast is stark. Women seem to hold all the power, men seem to be adornments but are OK with that because they get to have sex. There is significantly less hostility, no violence to speak of apart from the occasional play whipping. It is a subset of rules and behaviours that would make it a gynecocracy (yep, that’s actually a word, I just looked it up).

Outsiders seem to imagine that a swinger’s event is a free-for-all, however it’s anything but. Sure there is often a room at the event which is dedicated to an “all-in” entanglement of naked body parts, but for Poly this sort of happening is decidedly unappealing. And to be honest it rather put me off just hearing about it, because it mandates an assumed bisexuality although Poly assures me people generally feel this out (so to speak) and the assumption of bisexuality is not made. Instead, Poly is more interested in meeting other couples that were similar to her, where they feel a connection between them and where they can retire to a more private affair.

Digging a bit deeper however, there is also a familiar echo of what is understood as the wider society.

When asked about who plays with whom, Poly indicated that people who attend these events would come from a very broad cross section of society. There were all sorts, all ages, all shapes and sizes, however generally it was a case that “like plays with like”. So that younger people would play with younger, older with older, large with large and so on. I also got the distinct impression that this was entirely consistent with wider social norms.

I’ve not asked yet, and to some extent I dread finding out, but I suspect that “attractive” will generally play with “attractive”. For me this is something that stirs strong emotions and I really need to ask Poly next time we meet, because it leads to the reason why I would be so uncomfortable at a swinger’s event. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a part of me that would love to go, however the discomfort would be too great because I’d probably just suffer the same rejection as I’ve done my entire life.

I’ve been to parties where people talk up big about hooking up, but not for me. I’ve been to clubs when I was younger, where friends would say “it’s a total pick up joint” but that was never my experience. I’ve never even been able to say “hi” or introduce myself without fumbling for words. I mean, shit, it’s only one word right, “Hi”, but even that eludes me. And even if I was able to screech out a “Hi” at two octaves above my normal vocal range, I’d still be completely lost afterwards. Any confidence I’ve ever had has been beaten down by relentless rejection in dating sites. And so that a younger audience gets it, I’ve been swiped left to death, or is it right, I actually don’t know because by the time the swipe apps came out I’d just given up.

This is why going to a swinger’s event would be uncomfortable. I’d be so worried that I’d end up being that guy who’s told to fuck off. Sure the language is cool, and they use nicer words, and there are strong confident females who don’t mind taking the lead, which in my book is just unbelievably hot, but I’m pretty sure the same drivers exist there that occur in the wider world, and let’s be real here, it probably wouldn’t change a thing.

“What is it with all those fucking songs about finding ‘THE ONE’? What the fuck are they talking about?”

Is pretty much what Poly exclaims to me over coffee the other day. And I can share her frustration on this, even though our perspectives may be different.

For Poly, the idea of there being THE ONE is just stupid. So many couples out there that we all know, and so many of them end in tears. Only to see the individuals recover from the breakup, branch out again and go off to find another THE ONE. Then that ends, but not to be dissuaded, because there are plenty of “fish in the sea” right, off we go to find another THE ONE because eventually we’ll find THE ONE.

It’s crap.

As much as anything else, it’s a legacy from our prehistoric past, where the idea of till death do us part seems to make sense when you live to the ripe old age of 31, if you’re lucky, and not stomped to death by a mammoth. But it makes much less sense with modern agriculture, sanitation, flushing toilets, hospitals, fluoride, vaccinations and free public healthcare (except that last one if you live in the U.S.A, in which case you’re screwed because you can’t figure out this simple concept like the rest of the developed world.)

Of course, the other reason why it’s crap is because it’s a throwback to a patriarchal modality, where a women’s uterus was something men controlled in order to make sure any offspring were theirs. Again, massive crap! Because in the world of polyamory it just doesn’t fit. As you’ll find out, the swingers scene is a female run thing, and in the polyamorous community it’s more accurate to say that this person that I love will match this part of me, and this other person that I love will match with another part of me.

There are so many people out there and we are all different. Take two different people and mix together (relationship) and you get an entirely unique construct that can never be replicated. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s a bromance that belongs in a cop-buddy movie, but regardless of whether the relationship works or not, it will always be “unique”.

However what the songs about love are trying to do is make all these incredibly unique relationships into EXACTLY THE SAME THING!

And it’s just crap!

Often the reason we want to hold this belief is because breakups are so damn awful. When an aspect of your “self” is invested in the relationship, and the relationship ends, that part of the self is severly compromised. This is what’s just happened with Poly in the last few days.

When Poly and I were talking the other day she mentioned how James (he’s the work colleague that hasn’t been entirely honest with his partner, so Poly felt they had to separate), anyway James has been acting in a way which led to Poly feeling “discarded”. Their relationship did not have to end this way, from Poly’s perspective it’s simple “I really enjoy the close connection we have, but if he can’t be honest with Susan, then I don’t want to wear the trouble in their relationship”. Because he hasn’t really sorted out his hetero-monogamy-normative life, he really should not be out there “playing”.

To me it seems like Poly ended it in large part because she did not want to be a home wrecker. It would be OK if James and Susan were actually polyamorous, but they aren’t.

When they parted he started to act insensitively, The tone of the interaction was in a way that left Poly feeling discarded. When she later ran into him at work, she told him that she had felt “discarded”. To which he replied that he was falling for her and felt too attached to Poly and he was trying to get a bit of distance.

But the texts continued and they got a bit heated. Anyway the texts were not civil at all and as I’ve previously pointed out to Poly he may not even turn up to the swingers party in a few weeks. All the while, it’s left Poly wondering why these stupid songs keep blaring on about “THE ONE”. If only people could just get over it and stop putting so much pressure on each other.

Then there is my perspective, which comes from a more depressing place where a belief that there “MUST BE THE ONE” is patently false. What forces in the physical world mandate that there must be? Why are we so focused on this that we end up creating a default social position where to be alone is basically synonymous with being dead? What if, just saying, there is not someone for everyone?

When you study this problem mathematically, and I have (look up “stable marriage problem” if you’re interested in that sort of thing), what if the maths just doesn’t work out? What if this colander of romantic logic is really just there because people in a relationship have an existential crisis at the very thought that they might be alone. Or, what if it’s just a marketing gimmick to sell us stuff we don’t need in order to prop up a monogamous Ponsey scheme that’s actually bedrock in a patriarchal world view.

What if it’s worse than crap?

What if it’s a great big fucking lie!

Just in case you need to catch up. James was a work colleague that Poly was able to connect with a deep level, but he was not being honest with his other partner Susan about his pretend polyamory and, well, Poly can’t stand lies. After the split, James is still trying to hook her into his intimate world. But the whole mess with James and his baiting behaviour just reminds Poly of another relationship that ended a few months beforehand…

A bit of background

Tim’s lives and works in two countries and he’s been around for a bit longer. For one out of every three months Tim would travel to where Poly lives for work. It was when Tim and Poly were seeing each other that I got to know Poly better. For several months, we’d meet and usually end up discussing what was going on with Tim, all the while discussing why her relationship with him had some problems.

Poly met Tim at the start of one of his Sydney months and from the first date they both felt an instant strong connection. The sex was great “…and I mean really great” was how she’d put it. On their first date they went out for lunch which soon turned into the afternoon which saw them “making out” for about an hour standing in the middle of her living room. Poly had to go pick up her daughter but her daughter was actually staying with her grandma that night so Tim suggested date 2 could start in about 3 hours. And so it did… Poly said they didn’t attempt to go to sleep until about 4am. The physical connection was amazing but as time went on they found there was also a strong intellectual one as well. Poly would pine over our coffees together, about how she was really addicted to being with him.

The relationship had problems from the beginning. They both had very young children from ex partners, Tim’s child was living in his home country and obviously, Poly’s was here. Neither could move so they would never be able to be together. Tim was also a workaholic, extremely successful and incredibly smart but not so much in the emotional intelligence department. Poly highly suspected the reason for his ex-wife cheating on him was due to being ignored for his career. But at the beginning it is easy to rationalise these incompatibilities and still strive to find a way to be together.

So when the first month ended and it was time for Tim to go home they said let’s be realistic and be fine with an open relationship while we are not together and then see how things are when you are back in two months. But no less than a week into Tim returning to his home he made strong indications that he was not cool with Poly dating anyone else and so she reluctantly agreed to wait till they could see each other again. She was struggling with the whole no sex thing for two months and Tim suggested they fly to meet each other in Hong Kong for a long weekend at the four week mark. Poly was delighted with this suggestion and agreed to the terms.

Poly now sees it was just the start of a man who wanted to have control. She should not have given in to what she wanted (an open relationship) just to satisfy his narcissist behaviour. Soon she would learn what a mistake it was.

As the Hong Kong weekend got closer and closer, Poly had to organise flights and most importantly ask her ex-partner to look after their daughter. As a parent she thought Tim would understand this better than most. Well as the date got closer and closer, Tim still wouldn’t confirm he had booked his flights and said he was trying to juggle work commitments for the two days he would have to take off. Flights for Poly were booking up so she just took a leap of faith and booked her flights. No less than 10 days out and even though he had promised he would be booking flights that weekend, he still had not and Poly was getting peeved. She felt he was being very dis-respectful to her time and more importantly her life. They had a massive argument, probably what Tim was hoping for so he could call off the whole thing. Poly was livid. They didn’t speak for two weeks, but they did start speaking again.

It’s not hard to guess that this was not an isolated incident and these types of things happened a few more times till eventually they separated, mostly to break the addiction it seems to me. He was extremely self-centred and their relationship seemed to revolve around what she was doing for him, what she was organising for him. It seemed like he did bugger all.

Now, after separating, and faced with the prospect of no longer “having access” to Poly (and I’m using this phrase deliberately in order to make a point that Tim was a bit of a misogynist), Tim decides to open up and talk about his new girlfriend in a nearby city. And he’s also talking about how she needs to meet his daughter. Tim then goes on to suggest that Poly should also being doing this, but Poly is wondering why all this stuff about other peoples’ families, all this forced intimacy, is being dumped on her now.

James is an echo of Tim because in the middle of their Poly affairs they try to sell themselves as open and sexually liberated males, however by sharing intimate details of their new/existing partners you can see it was just a show. They still want to ‘lock’ down the principle women in their life whilst also indulging in the temptation someone like Poly offers.

Now with the swingers party looming, James is earnestly trying to stay in Poly’s good books, and putting on a good show. However he still hasn’t told his main partner Susan that “oh, by the way, the person who put me onto this sex party is this woman I know from the building where I work, and oh, and we’ve been having lots of really good connected sex, oh and she’s also going to be at the party, and yeah, it’s completely ok that you will meet, because that won’t make me uncomfortable at all.”

Yeah, this won’t get said.

What Tim and now James show is that they are really just monogamous heterosexual males who manage to do a bit of cheating using the pretence of an open relationship. Not the same thing at all as a polyamorous mindset.

Put simply, if ALL your partners are not poly, then sorry, you’re not poly.

Nope, instead, you’re just lying.

Poly likes other people watching her having sex.

This was what I should have said in the last entry, and it was one of the things that Poly needed to correct in the first blog. Originally I wrote that it feels “like being on a porn film set only without the cameras.” Actually it’s not like a porn film at all, she explains to me as we’re working our way through a brunch the other day.

We’d found a nice cafe nearby and she chose the most open spot there to sit and talk, and I find myself wishing that our table wasn’t so close to all the other people eating their stacked bacon and eggs or smashed avocados. This closeness to other ears only serves to amplify what I perceive as judgement from the social norm

The way Poly describes the sex she is having is much more erotic and wholesome than porn. It’s a fully embodied experience, a fundamentally grounded connectedness.

Of course, I struggle with this at a personal level. For me personally, any sex I had (oh so long ago) was always a disconnected and blocked thing. It was enjoyable, but it had very little of this “connectedness” thing that Poly talks about. For me it’s actually too much arousal. It’s too much desire, so that I tend to fragment and kind of fall apart mentally and emotionally. There is no ‘real me’ in the act of sex. No-one to simply connect with. A large part of this comes from a profound fear that if someone did connect with the real me, they wouldn’t like it. That is, they wouldn’t like me. And that would be devastating.

Sad right? Yeah well that’s what guilt and shame did to me. I’m just being honest about it.

Society on the other hand is probably not being honest.

You see, as Poly is telling me about having lots of sex, and I’m wondering if the nearby cafe patrons are being a bit judgy. It’s as though I can hear what the social norm would say about having a truckload of sex and it being “fundamentally grounded” this or an “embodied experiential” that.

So what does normal society think. Well, I could have just turned around and asked the other patrons, but I didn’t.

Instead let’s just anthropomorphize normal society and call him Norm (it helps if you imagine a conservative white middle aged male who knows enough about psychology to be just slightly annoying.)

I can hear Norm speaking at a sex addicts meeting, saying that sex is just a physical thing that in a way keeps us from being really intimately connected with someone, and that like any drug of addiction, it needs to escalate and become more and more erotic in order to ‘up the dosage’. I can understand Norm, but I’m starting to question this thinking. I know addiction is often related to dopamine, and I get that there is a strong dopamine release which comes with sex, and that there is a strong oxytocin release during the creation of an intimate bond. So why can’t you have both?

What’s more it seems that opportunities to talk about this stuff just don’t seem to be available in the broader community. No doubt there are numerous dark corners of the web where this stuff is voiced, but that’s the point, they are often just “dark corners”. What about having a real conversation about it, in the real everyday world? Like in a cafe with lots of people listening.

Anyway, in terms of upping the dosage, this may have some truth to it. The big sex/swingers party is still a few weeks away, and Poly says she “can’t wait”. Having sex almost daily if that’s around, and masturbating once or twice a day if it’s not.

However the complications are also growing. Firstly there are the very real physiological complications and Poly explains that after brunch she’s on her way to the doctors to get a STD check. I acknowledge her practical no-nonsense approach to this, and she informs me that most people in the ‘scene’ are very careful with this aspect of play. Funnily enough its actually in ‘normal’ dating world where this becomes more of an issue. Oh yeah! That’s right! Norm’s all too quick to hand out advice about sex addiction but he won’t go and get that rash looked at.

And then there are the growing emotional complications. Polys recently ex’d lover James has agreed on the surface that they are still friends. That is before he then tells Poly that he’s in the process of making a decision with his primary partner Susan, about whether or not to have a vasectomy. And of course he wants to tell Poly about this. And of course this creates distress for Poly.

“Why is he telling me about this?” She exclaims.

To make things worse, James also works in the same building as Poly, so whenever she sees him its yet another reminder of what is falling apart.

Disclosure about the vasectomy can work like a hook, and he’s thrown it out to try and catch Poly. This hook is cleverly baited with enough intimacy to lure her in. Poly bites by suggesting that it would be foolish for James to have a vasectomy if he is young and has not had any kids.

Thinking about it now, I reckon that James has said this before to women and this was the response others had given him. He used this on Poly in order to illicit the same response and thus reopen that intimacy. To reinforce the old connection, he also starts to detail what having sex without viable sperm makes possible. Again there’s that escalation for something more and more erotic. That full on, out there “wham” of instant arousal.

Poly is still coming to terms with the end of her and James. She feels let down, disappointed and plain hurt. Poly then discloses “you see, James knows the ‘raw’ me.”

When Poly tells me this I’m intrigued. “What do you mean by the ‘raw’ me.”

The raw Poly is the unfiltered version, which is weird because most people who know her would say “What? There’s more to unfilter?” because she is pretty direct and says a lot of things most people wouldn’t bring up in everyday society (you know, just around the corner from where Norm lives).

But the raw Poly is when she really lets someone into her head and how she really thinks and feels about things. In all of her previous serious relationships she would have to tone down aspects of the raw self because when she tested it out here and there, it was never received well.

There is no ‘front’ to the raw Poly and in contrast her barriers come down and reveal a somewhat softened creature who gets turned on by how she is connecting with someone else’s ‘raw’ self.

And because that ‘raw self’ to ‘raw self’ is unique with each individual, this creates a fundamental driver for being polyamorous. Because the possibilities are infinite, why would you want to be limited?

So even though Poly is trying to let go of James, and even though he keeps trying to reel her back in, she talks excitedly about the upcoming sex party, and even though they have broken up…

“Yeah BUT, I’m still going to be fucking him in a few weeks”

She exclaims a bit too loudly,
in the too crowded cafe,
that just went a bit too silent.

Poly is a friend of mine, and I am a vicarious observer of her sex life, relationships and inner world.

Obviously her name and other details have been changed to protect the innocent, …and the not so innocent, and the choice of alias is partly the reason why it is becoming so interesting. A few of her friends suggested that she needed to do a blog. I just decided to act on it.

For a few years we have been talking about her relationships and sex life over the occasional coffee, and she has agreed to let me write this up. Poly has full editorial access to change anything that doesn’t work for her, and is very supportive of the effort. I’m even starting to think it could be a new form of psychotherapy, but this idea is still in it’s infancy.

In a few weeks’ time Poly will be going to a party, this has been several months in the planning, but also several years of desire and expectation. That’s because it’s a swinger’s party. It’s invite only, and there will be lots of sex.

Poly has been looking forward to this for a while, and she is at a stage in her life where the sexual exploration is getting pretty interesting, as are the connected relationships, as are the men she is hooking up with, as are the women, and the partners of these people, some of who don’t necessarily know what’s happening.

Anyway, shits about to get real.

Some Background

I’ve only known Poly for a few years, initially as work colleagues, and more recently as confidant. When she first came into our team she was pregnant and, to be honest I found her to be forthright, open and not at all shy in coming forward. I can see how a lot of guys would be intimidated, and she says that happens a lot, only to protest “but fuck that, I’m not going to dumb it down for someone else”. For me it was refreshing and honest, and our conversations soon became something that is not typical workplace banter.

Poly is complex and layered. She is a mother now and she has a professional career as a project manager. She has a wide variety of interests and other aspect to her life, it’s just that the relationship stuff, and the sex, is just so damn rich at the moment.

After returning from maternity leave, Poly and I were talking at work and the discussion came around to her ex. Ed (also named changed) is the father of her child, but it was never going to work out. Despite having hoped for the socially acceptable concept of a “happy family”, they separated fairly quickly and in one of the first conversations with me, Poly explained how she had never really believed in monogamy anyway. She said the ‘one person only’ thing that was ‘for your whole life’ seemed to be extremely unrealistic. However, she had never found a partner who was willing to ‘share’.

“I just don’t get jealousy” she says, “why do guys seem to have such a problem with the idea of an open relationship?”, or something to that effect. It was a few years ago.

Someone else in the conversation piped up and asked what she meant. “Well,” she continues, “why do we have to have just one person that we are attached too? Isn’t it possible that you can be in love with more than one person? What I feel for one person has nothing to do with how I feel about someone else. I can honestly say I have felt that, and can trust that is true for whoever my partner is. Being attracted to other people is only natural, and there are a lot of people out there we could be attracted to!”

At this point I spoke up. “Oh, you’re poly.”

“I’m what?” she says, pulling an expression of curiosity when you find something weird and unexpected.

I continued, “You’re saying things that make me understand that you might be polyamorous.”

Don’t get me wrong, at this point I was starting to feel the pressure of that line of professional detachment we adhere to in our day jobs. Well, most of us adhere to it most of the time, but there are exceptions which typically happen at the staff Christmas party where there is too much free booze, work politics and pent up sexual frustration. So I started to feel like that ‘line of professional detachment’ was fast approaching, and I was worried that HR would be busting in at any moment and going all “inappropriate this” and “inappropriate that” on my ass. You see, I didn’t know her that well and I am about 17 years older, and oh, …did I mention that I’m male?

“No.” She said, “I know what polygamy is but I don’t know what ‘polyamorous’ means. What’s polyamorous?”

I proceeded to explain, as best I could, by way of what I’ve learnt from TV docos and the occasionally piece in newspapers and journals.

“Polyamory” I explained “is where a person can have multiple ‘parallel’ relationships that are committed, based on trust and mutual understanding. It’s like monogamy, only where monogamy is ‘serial’, that is one at a time, with Polyamory there is a belief that no one person can meet all your needs, so why should you try. It’s still based on trust, it still has strong attachment, it’s just with more than one other person.”

At this point Poly lit up. “THAT’S IT!” she says, gesticulating widely with her arms in an impression she does of someone from ‘the hood’.

“THAT’S IT!”

“Why can’t the guys I have relationships with GET THAT?”

Because of my engineering mindset, I was using words like ‘parallel’ and ‘serial’ to normalise something for her, and notwithstanding she still resonated with the message. The conversation got more interesting after that, as I explained what I knew about Polyamory, but then we realised that we were at work, that others were listening and that it might be best to talk more in another setting.

We’ve come to know each other well since then, and she has since moved on to another roll in a different part of the organisation, so technically we are still colleagues, but I guess that line of professional detachment is well and truly in the rear view mirror.

Over the intervening few years, we’d meet occasionally to have lunch or a coffee, and we’d usually end up talking about her relationships. This is what the blog you are reading will be about. And Poly has said that our chats are good for her because it helps to make sense of the complex world she is in.

It may sound like a strange relationship we have, but I’ve been able to help people make sense of their experience for as long as I can remember. It’s just something that I do. I’ve also liked the idea of polyamoury since I first heard about it. It challenges co-dependence at it’s core, and that is only ever a good thing. At a personal level, it’s also good for me because I am anhedonic, which means I struggle to feel pleasure in life and suffer chronic depression. My very limited sexual relationships have always felt disconnected, and have been mired in catholic guilt where people don’t, or are not meant to enjoy sex. To hear a real live woman talking about her sensual and sexual explosion has been a challenge to my identity.

Poly is taking control in her sex life, and to some extent, taking back control. It’s positive and it’s inspiring because it’s a real embodied experience of a woman that is being the person she wants to be. It’s not the fake trumped up media trying to sell me something and it’s not feminists just talking about being assertive in sex, it’s not about the theory of it, for me it’s about bearing witness to a very real and exuberant expression of sexuality, connected relationships and internal maturity that is both normal and extraordinary at the same time.

Anyway, back to the current boyfriends and that sex party.

Poly has been to a few swingers clubs and meet-ups over the last year or two, she loves how there is a lot of emphasis on consent, and she also loves the men’s cocks and the women’s curves. She is loving the sex with both men, women and couples. The build-up of desire, the coupling with people who she may hardly know but where the connection is real. She discovered she loves being watched while having sex and gets to live out all the sexual fantasies she could only ever masturbate to while watching youporn.

But there are also complications.

Right now there’s one really super-hot guy, John, who is recently out of a long series of relationships with many serial girlfriends who are also very hot. However, like a cliché, his ex’s are more ‘creative types’ and typically very high maintenance, and Poly feels like “he could have anyone, why has he chosen me? I mean I’m a boring project manager and single mother… not exactly Instagram worthy”. John is inquisitive about Poly’s ideas on open relationships and keen to try out the swinging thing and happy to explore and deepen the relationship, but there are problems there as well. Deep recurring themes around intimacy. Anyway, John and Poly are a registered couple booked into this somewhat expensive swinger’s party happening soon.

Then there’s another guy (let’s call him James) who when they met was in a certain state of an open relationship. However mid-way through their dalliance his partner Susan decided they should ‘close it up’ and just focus on themselves for a while. The problem is there was a lot of chemistry between Poly and James where very real and meaningful emotions were forming. However James is no longer in a position to continue seeing Poly and now Poly feels like she is part of a deceit in someone else’s relationship. This is exactly the reason why she wanted to be in a open relationship to begin with, so that there was always honesty and trust.

Poly is baffled at how she ended up in the exact situation she was trying to avoid!

So with James’ partner Susan not on board, Poly had to have this difficult conversation with James where “…it felt like we were breaking up”. “I am in a position where I could be with both John and James and where I can be completely honest about it. But James is not able to, and there lies the problem”.

So not only are Poly and John going to the Swingers party but so are James and Susan.

It could all go horribly wrong.