"What Being in a Polyamorous Relationship Taught Me About Fidelity"

A first-person story appears in another women's magazine in Australia. This time it's SheSaid, "Australia’s largest independent free online magazine for women, reaching internet-savvy females who are shopping focused and brand conscious" according to their ad department. The editorial department says the magazine is about "informing, inspiring and empowering women worldwide."

If we can stimulate maybe another five thousand such articles in the coming decade, we'll lock in the poly-aware future for good. Once people hear about the concept, it is not something they forget.

(As a comparison, this website has noted about 2,500 articles and broadcasts in the last 11 years, and it's not complete.)

What Being in a Polyamorous Relationship Taught Me About Fidelity

It isn’t about the number of people you’re seeing…

By Natalie Slaughter

Our worlds are changing. We’re becoming more aware of other cultures, other religions, other practises within our communities and others. We’re starting to dissolve the idea of a nuclear family as the best option for dating, getting married and/or raising kids....

...Despite all of that, there are still a lot of misconceptions about another relationship that’s on the rise: polyamory.

...My first attempt at a poly relationship was a disaster. I had been with one partner for a couple of years and we decided to try to introduce a third person.... We all agreed to communicate with each other often and let each other know when we were ready for each next step forward.

Our third – let’s call her Rachel – broke this rule. She told my partner I had okayed something I hadn’t, and the two of them started a separate relationship I had no knowledge of and was completely cut out of. Even though the three of us were dating each other, the way they went about their relationship constituted cheating. Needless to say, it ended terribly.

...I’ve recently given polyamory another chance, in a healthier way. I’ve found that while I’m still personally wary of triad situations, being involved in a poly relationship works well for me. The relationship I now find myself in involves situations where everyone knows my boundaries and they’re actually respected, and we aren’t all dating each other (maybe that’s something that works better for me).

Poly relationships are like every other kind of relationship – there are tons of options, and you almost never end up at the end of the path you’d planned for yourself. Every poly relationship works differently, and this way of life definitely isn’t for everyone. One of the few constants you can count on, though, is that polyamory and infidelity aren’t synonymous terms, so let’s stop acting like they are.

Read the whole article (May 13, 2016). SheSaid claims to have 200,000 newsletter subscribers.

If you missed that other one from Australia last week, here you go: Big Love: Polyamory in Canberra.

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