BDSM, Polyamory and Hooking Up
My good friend Lucius Scribbens wrote a piece that made me think.
I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of Polyamory, but never really desired to be a participant. I enjoy my relationships when they’re simple and relatively uncluttered (3rd relationships…Primary Relationships (and their expectations) are handled differently).
In BDSM, Poly relationships seem to be extremely common while Open relationships do not.
In Swinging it’s the opposite. Although there seems to be a heavy Poly component rising in the last few years.
In the Vanilla world? Well…there’s an HBO romance with Polyamory, Swinging and BDSM. People are fascinated by alternative lifestyles (I think they secretly fantasize about such things) while the lip service provided is usually negative.
DE and I don’t do much “Swinging” any more…we’ve gotten a bit tired of that game. Our relationship is Open and we’ve even talked about the two of us and a Poly third (or fourth…etc.) The conversation kind of turned towards this:
We love many of our friends – especially the friends we have sex with and/or beat for fun. But does that make us Polyamorous? No, not really.
4-play
Since DE has a particular desire towards women pretty much all of our Solo/Single play partners are female (although DE will hook up with an occasional male). It’s likely that we’d bring a woman into our relationship as a Third/sub/slave/pet. I know (from experience) that it’s far more difficult for a woman to feel secure and comfortable in a relationship as a Third. Scribbens is right, you often hear them voice concern over getting too attached and never really “getting anywhere”.
Is this why We haven’t sought or taken in a Poly lover? Do we passively avoid this out of a desire to keep our own relationship simplified and “drama-free”?
Yes and Yes. There are a few people DE and I have had the Poly discussion about, and we could probably build something to fit if we decided to go there — but we’re not in a hurry.
It’s far more likely we’d take a sub/slave/pet and keep the relationship in that realm. I can see an arrangement like that morphing into a Polyamorous triad, and that’s likely why it’s so common in the BDSM Lifestyle.
Who knows. I’m one of the LAST people you’d ever want “Relationship Advice” from…heheh.
-Tutivillus
