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Originally Posted by Elspode
Mrs. Elspode and I have some experience in this area, both in our previous marriages to others, and in our current relationship. There's no pat answer to "is poly good or bad", because every single situation is different.
In general, we have not discovered it to be a real great thing. Every poly relationship we have had or known of in our community has ended badly, save two, and we've known of *a lot* of them over the years. Not only have they ended badly, but they have usually ended worse than any one-to-one coupling we've ever known of.
Our last one was about three years back. We held out great hope for it as we both are heartily in support of the concept in principle. However, while the lady from the other couple was very compatible with me and my Mrs., the gent was not clicking with my wife at all. The greater comfort level and attraction between myself and Mrs. X quickly caused terrible strain, and so we dissolved the whole scene before causing any more harm to the friendship we all had.
The friendship ended up going by the wayside anyway due to a different matter involving the Mr. of the other couple, and we remain friends with the Mrs. However, the other couple got involved with a second couple several months later, and with the result that the Mr. of the couple we had been involved with left his Mrs. for the other couple's Mrs. (ya'll following me so far?). Part of the reason we dissolved our arrangement with them was because we saw high potential for their relationship coming undone over it, and our fears turned out to be true. We didn't wish to contribute to it any more than we had, and so that figured into our considerations.
We had been aware that the other couple's relationship was not as strong as it should have been when we were with them. I do believe in one thing for sure...you *must* be absolutely secure with your own relationship before you dive into something like this. Even as secure as Mrs. Elspode and I are together most of the time, our experience caused a lot of setback to our relationship...irrational jealousies, fears and other nasties (none of which actually related to the sexual component, strangely enough) arose, and are only now being put down again.
Both of our first marriages suffered from similar things, hers more than mine (my first wife and I dallied with consent, but not a great deal. My current Mrs. was much more involved in the Poly lifestyle before she met me...and subsequently left her husband to be with me, after a few months of us being a poly triad).
So...you can see from my brief description that it *can* be very, very difficult to do this. But, when it works, it is terribly cool and very fulfilling.
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I think that we've found that the more casual the whole thing is, the easier it is to deal with. The triad thing, as I mentioned, didn't work out . . . but then, it wouldn't have worked out in the long run even if it was not a serious relationship. I don't think that I could truly be friends with this woman... everything that I thought she was turned out to be this huge facade of normalcy (up to and including needlepoint and a love of hiking) . . .
Anyway - psychosis aside - yeah, none of it is easy. But then, neither is marriage or parenthood.
The way we're doing it now is friendship first. I like it, it's comfortable.