I'm not polyam, but I know a few people who got into it recently and wew the vibes have been off. Protip fellas if you're not talking to me don't send one of your girlfriends to talk to me instead 
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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Ugh I hate when folks do that. I've been to too many events where a dude walks up because I'm apparently talking to his partner and he starts chatting me up on her behalf. Bleh. These are the kind of people who give the polyam community a bad name.
Dunno, i never really got in to "community", the vibes always felt weird. I just date more than one person, it's not an ethos or a hobby. I don't necessarily have any connection with other people just because both of our girlfriends have three boyfriends.
I mean if you're dating multiple people and it's above board and they all know about it and consent to it...congrats you're polyam by pretty much every definition I know even if you don't use the label! I would agree that the community vibes can be weird but that's true of every community I've ever been in for anything.
It's a difference between doing a thing and forming a worldview or ideology around it. Like I don't think of hellenic greek homosexual men as gay in the same way I think of myself. Like the thing they were doing was the same but the cultural frame is very different.
There's a trust and safety issue, too.
If someone's at an event because they're Brad's friend or Jenny's girlfriend or Tom's sister then they've got a name, a face, and a reputation. If someone's with Tom, they're with Tom and we're going to Tom's Thing with Tom's Freinds at Tom's Place. There's details. "The whatever community" makes me think of events where there's paid wrist bands, a paid bar, and no guest list, or events where no one is quite sure who is running things, or "hey let's split hte cost of rooms with these guys I met from out of town they seem cool".
I don't trust lifestylists because a lot of them seem like they're in it for the lifestyle, not the people. I've observed a substantial number of lifestylists will sacrifice people to protect the lifestyle. Not with polyamory, but with any lifestylist thing; hobbies, whatever. i dunno. Lots of bad experiences. Lots of stray dogs and ronin out there.
See, I used to live in an area with a big polyamory community. Most of us were gay or trans or both. Befriending just one person led you to a whole group of entanglement. Swiping with poly people on tinder led me to people I didn't know yet, but maybe I knew their partners or friends of partners or some other entanglement. They were like my found family. I really miss them all.
I moved to a brand new area, and started swiping. I put that I'm poly in my profile. I swiped on some potato who said they were poly. I figured that was my way into find some group. I met the potato, and their partner carrot shows up in the middle. They leave together. Potato blocks me. Carrot starts interviewing me on another platform I had never even giving to potato. Like dang, I didn't know it was like that. That interaction freaked me out and I haven't been talking to anyone since.
Does potato and carrot mean something other than nomme-de-poly here?
Yeah the top paragraph is how the communities I'm part of are. That's how polyamory should be j think. The bottom paragraph are the unethical folks that really should just go crawl under a rock. I'm sorry you're dealing with folks like that
"saw it on tv and wanted to try it"
Woah have they been putting poly on tv?
They have actually there have been a few shows with polyam characters now and some weird Netflix show about non monogamy too. It's out there in media and the interest in it is growing fast.
Hopefully a positive development, don't trust mainstream media not to be trash but it would be good.
Yeah that's sorta what I'm trying to gauge here. Is it helping or not? I'm really not sure
The vibes seem kinda stinky so far :3
I think there are a lot more younger inexperienced people trying various types of polyamory. Probably leads to a lot of mistakes and bad taste in people's mouths... I've found that most people under 25 don't really know what they want. I've also noticed that younger generations tend to be partnered super early in school and don't really know how to be alone. Even to the point of taking fake relationships just because that's what everyone else is doing.
There are always gonna be shitty people, monogamy or no. Some people take advantage of polyamory as an excuse to ignore ethical responsibility. I always preface that I practice relationship anarchy that looks a lot like ethical polyamory (even though polyamory is already supposed to be ENM).
People seem to think that polyamorous people are always available. One of my partners has this problem but I personally enjoy watching them rip ignorant people a new asshole.