what experience do you have with non-monogamy?

The only experience I have until now is meeting [the person I’m currently dating] and finding out he’s polyamorous. At that point, I liked him a little too much already to not give it a chance - and I try to be very open minded with everything, so I decided to give it a try. I have to say that I don’t mind it too much, but maybe that’s also because I haven’t really experienced being in an actual relationship with him while he’s also dating someone else. So I might change my mind eventually but for now it’s fine.

I don’t have that much experience with it, considering that not a lot of my partners have really agreed to being in non-monogamous relationships. The one time in one it was kind of long distance, he lived like an hour away, and we had been friends for at least fifteen years. I asked him to be in a non-monogamous relationship with me and he said yes, and then he ghosted me and I haven’t talked to him since, so… [laughs]. I guess the most experience I have with it is I have been seeing somebody that is in a non-monogamous relationship with their partner who they’re married to. So that’s cool because I get to experience what it’s like to have somebody that is open to that kind of thing and is actually practicing it.

I feel I have had a couple of different experiences with non-monogamy, but my first personal experience can’t be painted as a positive one, unfortunately. My romantic relationship with my previous partner was going in a very positive direction, it seemed, until one day they said to me that they missed the sexual freedom of sleeping with other people. I think this was their way of admitting they would rather not be confined to the boundaries of a relationship any longer, but as we were both scared of what the outcome of ending the relationship outright would be. I came forward with the idea of being sexually non-monogamous but still romantically committed to one another. We agreed on some boundaries and put it into practice, but at the end of it all the relationship fell apart because they didn’t respect these boundaries and ultimately feelings got hurt. I believe that if my former partner had truly believed in equality and considered my needs to be as relevant as their own then perhaps it would have been a more honest and successful experience. However apart from this, I suppose you could say that I regularly practice non-monogamy by having multiple sexual, but not romantic, relationships that continue parallel to each other without suffering any kind of disturbance between themselves. Casual sex with multiple partners is in its own way a form of non-monogamy.

I am currently eight months into my first polyamorous relationship. We started out as friends with benefits, so the transition into the polyamorous relationship was probably a little smoother because of that, the parameters are similar. He and I were serious before we started officially dating, and we were open with each other about any other serious commitments. The both of us have casual flings at our own discretion. He was serious with another girl as well and he's currently dating her also! Her and I are not in a relationship with each other, although we are quite good friends and talk to each other daily! For me, going from (albeit very poor) monogamous relationships, to a polyamorous relationship, learning to accept jealousy and learn to work through it was definitely difficult for me, I have damage from my past and I can get a little paranoid sometimes, but since we try to practice open communication often even on difficult subjects, I find it easier now to handle than I would have in a monogamous relationship, and I'm rarely bothered with it any more. I'm currently not dating anyone outside of him but I'm free to if I wish, just as he is outside of me and also outside of his other partner, and she is as well! I would also consider dating someone with him if feelings developed but currently I'm alright where I am.

I am non-monogamous. My married partner (B) and I use the label polyamorous. We co-parent our children. We both can date anyone we like. My other partner (K) and I also are co-parents. K also has a fiancé. The kids are raised by all of us communally. B and I got married purely for the legal protection it affords us with regards to health issues I have and gives B the rights to make medical decisions for me and prevents my unsupportive family from banning K from the room. My children refer to me as Zaza, K as mama, and B as dad. K’s partner hasn’t chosen a parenting name yet. Currently K and their partner don’t live near by but they are moving to be with us soon. We are all getting a house together. I think parenting which polyamorous actually gives us a much more “village” aspect. We have a lot more support for the kids and for each other. We are able to have the down time we need and also be around for the kids more.

I’ve identified as polyamorous for a little over 5 years now. I’ve been in several relationships that were supposed to be non-monogamous but didn’t quite get there. I have had a handful of people date me who claimed to be non-monogamous, but struggle with the idea of me dating other people while officially being with them (though typically I was free to sleep with whomever). For the past 7 months though I’ve been happily involved in a polyamorous relationship with two different people.

I don't have very good experiences with non-monogamy yet. But I have been attracted to it a lot in the past relationships I had.

Myself and my partner are currently in a non-monogamous relationship, it came about when we first got together. We were friends for some time and spoke at length, things just progressed from there. We didn’t really explore it too much in the early part of the relationship, to me it felt like we had to be happy with each other. The relationship had to have enough room to grow and mature. Now we live together in China, she is mine and I am hers, we share everything together. She truly is my life partner. We decided to open up our relationship as she is bisexual and craves women. My thoughts on non-monogamy still stand as a positive thing. I cannot be her everything she needs and nor can she give me everything I need. We both realise this and are very happy to see others. She is more to me than anyone else can ever be. We spend a ridiculous amount of time together and never seem get in each other’s way. We are best friends, lovers and life partners. We both spend time with others frequently. Everyone we are involved with knows the situation we are in and is okay with it.

I have never actually been in a non-monogamous relationship but I have been in love with multiple people at once, I loved them both equally and really wanted to be with the both of them but neither of them were okay with the idea of me dating them both. I struggled really hard with this, thinking i was selfish for wanting to be with both of them.

A non-exclusive ‘friends with benefits’ that lasted roughly two years, when I was 16 or 17, essentially just constant hook-ups. I don’t think we did it properly, like we never set any boundaries so it was this quasi relationship without the label. I think the lack of communication really fucked us both up for a while. It came about when we got pretty close over a summer, chilling together while she was avoiding her shitty ex. I was pretty immature and she’d just been through the ringer with this lazy dickhead for like three years? Which is a lot of time when you’re that age. So neither of us were in a good place to be doing tricky conversation and actually sorting stuff out. We just decided to start sleeping together, but I guess in our strange heads, we figured that by just not mentioning romance it wasn’t a relationship? We called it FWB (friends with benefits) from the start, you can get stuck between ‘yes we are going out’ and ‘no we aren’t’, and then we never talked about it for two years until a break-up that we never expected to be doing because we didn’t know we were in a relationship, but obviously we were. We both had as much of a single life as we could given our age and lack of social skills – when we weren’t at each other’s houses. It went okay for me, and pretty good for her, but then every time I heard she was with someone else I wanted to throw up. But I never said anything and it went away, which is pretty fucked up. It was okay for a while but we didn’t communicate and it went bad. Towards the end I don’t think we saw much of anyone else other than each other, and yet, we didn’t talk. I just let the feeling sit inside of me for like eight months, and when we finally did talk it took about seven hours of crying and was probably the messiest conversation I’ve ever had. I don’t really regret any of it though, we honestly had such a good time and we’re kind of friends again. It’s a weird thing to talk about because things develop so much over such a long time, especially at that age as we were both preparing for our university applications and exams. Who we were kept changing but we never altered the relationship, and it got claustrophobic. Being with someone I actually had real feelings for a year later really put things in perspective, and I don’t ever wanna mislead someone again. We both learnt a lot and fell in love with people better suited to our needs.

My current partner and I are non-monogamous! Originally when I told her about all these realizations I had about how I experience love, and how I think I am polyamorous by nature, she didn’t personally identify with it - but understood that I did and didn’t want to push me into a box I didn’t fit into. As our relationship grew, and as we kept talking, she began to understand more why I felt that way and began to explore the idea a little bit herself. Now she’s talking to one of our long-time mutual friends and it’s so cute! I love them both dearly.

All my relationships have been non-monogamous from my point of view.

I'm very open about it, respect it and I wish I could be non-monogamous. I'm also in a semi-open relationship with my partner. We're both bisexual and are okay with the other person being sexually involved with someone of the same sex.

Little to none [laughs]. I don’t know, I don’t really have much experience in it. I broke up with my ex in July last year, I communicated with her about poly, but she wasn’t interested in it and it eventually broke us apart, but I didn’t really know much about it at the time either. I’m just dating two girls at the same time now, and they are taking other people too… I think? They are friends with each other now, which is kind of weird [laughs]. I think it’s nice, I feel free. I started dating someone, and they were dating someone else for a while, and it was good because they can talk to me whenever. I started dating the other person and we have a great time, so it’s all good.

I’ve been poly since I was sixteen and had like eight mostly long-term polyamorous relationships. I’ve got two boyfriends and I’m openly looking for friends with benefits; I would be open to another relationship but trying to work on creating a stable polycule before expanding. It’s difficult because when you add an extra person into your relationship, even if they’re just involved with one of you, it will have a wave effect on everyone else involved. Communication and honesty is essential - talking through each other’s feelings and figuring out what is best for each person. Sometimes an argument is necessary to divulge emotions, but as long as both people leave feeling better about the situation it’s good. I guess it’s hard to think about it as exciting because it just feels normal, it is ‘exciting’ like it would be for a monogamists to see their partner each day. I try to split my time evenly - two days at my house with my boyfriend and days at my boyfriend’s (much worse) flat [laughs].

I was first in an open relationship in 2017. I’ve always been poly but have settled with monogamous relationship structure because my partner wasn’t comfortable with me being with other people. I opened up the conversation about polyamory and he said he wasn’t interested, but then I found out he had been cheating on me for like six months a year into the relationship. I literally gave him permission to be with others as long as he made me aware and he couldn’t even do that - dumbass. Since then I’ve been in very healthy poly structures don’t feel trapped anymore so that’s pretty great.

I don't know if I ever saw the concept of non monogamy as anything other than the norm for me but it took a while to consciously realise that and externalize it. I think the mere fact that I never strived to have one partner and the capacity to be invested in more than one person at a time is all I can offer regarding the subject. I've never been in any type of romantic relationship because of that, let alone in an "extreme" non-monoganous relationship, such as a polyamorous one. I think during my childhood I often heard people insult any way of being other than monogamy. It wasn't an issue of it's weird to have more than one partener but more of an it's weird if you have any type of intimate relationship that's not with one single sexual partner, not having a partner whatsoever being part of what's seen as not normal as well.

This experience is teaching me every day since I'm on this journey, to love myself first and most of all, take care of the way you feel about someone as an individual and not as part of something. In monogamous relationships it usually happens that we take care of what makes the other person feel good or whatever. In order to not lose what you have together; a romantic relationship. In open relationships or basically any agreement between people who care about each other. Respect, friendship and transparency are the pillars. Which gives a sense of peace and freedom that helps in so many ways to make everything easier.