Anonymous #1 1w

Yeah and tricking someone into dating you if youre poly wont end well, they’ll just be more angry down the road rather than if you told them immediately and didnt waste their time

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Anonymous #4 1w

This used to upset me too when I was still in a polyamorous relationship. I almost mentioned it too. Like I mentioned I was poly and how many partners I had in my bio and monogamous people would still swipe on me and I was like…”why? Why do this?”

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Anonymous #2 1w

Oh exactly! The last poly person I slept with had monogamous on her profiles and I later found out she was polyamorous. I told her I don’t do polyamory and she was like I don’t either (she had a girlfriend the whole time)

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Anonymous #2 1w

Like when I asked why she didn’t tell me she said well I knew you wouldn’t consent if you knew

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Anonymous #6 1w

not to say that polyam people are incapable of cheating, i just find it to be folks who were monogamous and have a history of cheating that end up doing this type of shit after a while

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Anonymous #6 1w

THIS- i matched w/ someone once who claimed to be poly and their partner didnt even know!

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Anonymous #6 1w

I think we need to be careful when talking about the rules of polyamory bc I have often been told that the people who abused me weren’t real poly ppl

22

Anonymous #1 1w

the thing w/ the “rules” of polyamory is that they can be different from relationship to relationship, and just bc someone “breaks” the “rules” doesnt mean they arent poly, just also a cheater

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Anonymous #4 1w

Oh I have been told my multiple poly ppl that the only real poly people are the ones who follow the rules of their relationship. Like I was told that I wasn’t assaulted by a poly person that I was assaulted by someone who claimed to be polyamorous

22

Anonymous #1 1w

yeah thats a lil weird- someone can be poly and a cheater or abuser at the same time- it doesnt make them not poly just a bad person 😭

36

Anonymous #1 1w

WHAT 😭

75

Anonymous #1 1w

oh no that’s crazy

59

Anonymous #1 1w

That is NOT ethical polyamory. That’s cheating and lying and manipulation

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Anonymous #13 1w

And like with this experience this post just srsly pisses me the fuck off. Like monogamous people shouldn't pretend to be poly and poly people shouldn't pretend to be monogamous. It just stirs up so much unnecessary trouble.

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Anonymous #14 1w

Yes but it was still a poly person

26

Anonymous #6 1w

Yes! I’m poly and have a whole ass ethics degree and have dumped another poly person because I didn’t like the way he talked about me compared to his wife. Honestly it felt like he was cheating and didn’t want to admit it but I couldn’t prove that

24

Anonymous #1 1w

I didn’t say it was or wasn’t. I just said it wasn’t *ethical*

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Anonymous #14 1w

…no shit. Nonethical polyamory is still polyamory

21

Anonymous #10 1w

I think that irks me too, like not only are my likes rare but when I get one, they either ghost me or they’re illiterate. Like I have “monogamous” in big ass bold letters everywhere, keep it moving. Illiterate poly people and people “looking for friends”

10

Anonymous #1 1w

yeah see that's fucked up. that's not someone pretending to be polyamorous, that's a polyam person who is also a cheater and a r*pist. I'm so sorry that happened to you

12

Anonymous #4 1w

fully agree, although most have a baseline ethics outline around, say, communication and how they talk about each other. my point was that claiming you're monogamous on dating apps then switching up on the person two dates later tends to be more poser behavior. abuse is prevalent in all kinds of relationships.

11

Anonymous #6 1w

Yes, I’d argue there a difference between 100% a poser and a cheater, 100% a poly person who is also an ass and/or an abuser, and someone who is a mix of the two. Most bad actors are either 100% poser-cheater-scammer or a large portion of it. Why would they put effort into multiple real relationships when they can pose-cheat-scam?

12

Anonymous #14 1w

You are getting awfully close to discrediting victims, @#6 this is exactly what I was talking about. My problem is when people like this call them posers or fake poly

-1

Anonymous #1 1w

i think they’re replying that because this problem isn’t exclusive to polyamorous people and isn’t a “polyamorous problem”. like that people that call themselves monogamous do the same thing all the time it’s just cheating. a lot of ppl use polyamory as a guise to be noncommittal and shitty partners but that’s not actually what polyamory is

37

Anonymous #16 1w

Also need to note that a good chunk of “poly” people who reinforce bad stereotypes are usually cheaters trying to salvage their relationships or sneak around without the other person ever going to the partner who’s being cheated on

26

Anonymous #17 1w

I think lying about being monogamous when you are polyamorous is a problem that is exclusive to poly people. Often when people try to talk about the abuse they faced in polyamorous relationships they get told that what happened to them wasn’t real polyamory. It is so so harmful. To me it’s not any different than when people say things like not all men after someone else tells their abuse story

22

Anonymous #17 1w

Like I think it is so gross to respond to me and say, “that’s not actually what polyamory is”

14

Anonymous #1 1w

i mean monogamous ppl have lied to me about being polyamorous too and to me that is the same issue. people have been really emotionally manipulative and terrible towards me in trying to get me to be exclusive with them when i was clear from the start that isn’t how i vibe. i see your point and there are definitely shitty poly people 1000%, i guess what i mean more so is that anybody can be a piece of shit and lie and cheat and that that’s not a polyamorous exclusive issue

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Anonymous #1 1w

like i just think there’s a fine line between acknowledging poly people CAN be pieces of shit(true) and blaming the concept of polyamory on why they’re pieces of shit(untrue)

26

Anonymous #17 1w

I agree, I don’t think it is all poly people. I just have noticed a concerning pattern of my own boundaries being violated in the most horrific ways (like I haven’t mentioned the worst of what I experienced). Like I have been told so many times that I just need to try ethical polyamory and it will be different and it hasn’t been said to me irl where the person then doesn’t try to cross my boundaries so it did trigger me

2

Anonymous #17 1w

Really beautifully put! I also think a lot of these POS’s use the concept of polyamory/nonmonogamy as a scapegoat for their poor behavior. Even if you were to go “ok great, I’d love to learn more and establish some ground rules and boundaries” they would be so caught off guard and break those too. That shouldn’t reflect negatively on people who engage in consensual and ethical nonmonogamy

15

Anonymous #16 1w

NOT THE SALVAGE RELATIONSHIP POLYS 💀 had an old friend from HS hmu and low key dog on his WIFE! Like im poly too but no way would I talk about my WIFE with such disrespect. Didn’t bring her up until I mentioned her! Forgot you invited me to the wedding? (I couldn’t make it)

20

Anonymous #14 1w

Honestly nowadays my partner and I just swing with other couples, we’ve found that weeds out cheaters and other dishonest people if all parties are involved (or at least present) instead of creating that one-on-one environment that allows people to choose favorites and talk shit like that. Like I truly don’t want to get sucked into other people’s relationship problems and comparisons, I’m happy on my island with my partner 😭

12

Anonymous #1 1w

In this situation it just sounds more like plain cheating than polyamory since you never consented to be part of a polyamorous relationship. It’s the same thing with calling assault ‘sex’- it wasn’t between all people who consented so it falls under a different category imo.

22

Anonymous #21 1w

I think it falls under the poly category bc that was the boundary that was crossed. I directly said I didn’t want to be in a poly dynamic and that was hidden from me so I would consent. If being in a poly dynamic was not a boundary of mine I think you would be right. My biggest problem with this situation is that I directly said I don’t do polyamory and that wasn’t respected

3

Anonymous #1 1w

CRAZY

1

Anonymous #1 1w

that's just cheating? the way you're framing this implies cheaters are poly. i think you just got cheated on unless i'm missing something. like she didn't enter a poly relationship with you and doesn't label herself that way...

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Anonymous #23 1w

If it was cheating I was the other woman bc the primary partner was around before me (something I figured out later), was around during me (when I thought I was in a monogamous relationship, and I found out from someone else that the girl I was dating was telling others that I was one of her partners, not her partner). Since this has happened I have learned that she identified as poly the entire time we were together and just wanted someone who was going to be entirely devoted to her

7

Anonymous #3 1w

I’m mostly monog but I’ve wondered before, is it an issue for a monog person looking for hookups to hook up with a poly person looking for hookups? Like neither of us are wanting this to be a relationship and idgaf if you have other partners. Would it be okay for me to engage w somebody w poly in their bio?

6

Anonymous #26 1w

hello you were not responding to me but as a poly person i don’t think that matters. i think it only becomes a problem if you want a committed relationship but like if we’re both down to clown why not

10

Anonymous #17 1w

Nice 😎 yeah it was an open question for the group, idk why I responded to them specifically lmao

1

Anonymous #1 1w

it feels like my immediate follow-up comment is being entirely ignored. i know what it's like to be abused by poly people. i'm also saying that a lot of the behavior i see where people switch it up to be convenient isn't typically from poly people, it's from people cheating and lying to all of their partner about it. tf

0

Anonymous #6 1w

*partners. but like come on dude we're talking about two separate issues. of course poly people can cheat and abuse others. no one is actually saying that they can't. the situation OP is talking about is, in my experience, more common with people who are monogamous and want to be consequence free if they get caught cheating. preying on lack of experience with typically monogamous folks.

0

Anonymous #26 1w

When I was in a poly relationship personally that wouldn’t have bothered me what did was that I was never marked as interested in hook ups. I don’t really do those so my profiles would always only say “long term” and maybe “casual dating” but never anything short term or whatever label because I don’t have casual sex. And if someone was looking for hookups that didn’t necessarily bother me but I would be when I’d get people who also were looking for more long term or casual dating or whatever.

2

Anonymous #1 1w

And because you didn’t consent to them seeing other people, that was cheating. Like if I thought I was in a monogamous relationship, clarified that I was, and the other person (even if they called it polyamory) had other people romantically/sexually, that’s cheating because I did not consent.

5

Anonymous #1 1w

Yes. You were cheated on [space] by someone in a poly relationship. No one LIKES being the other woman but it’s like when married men go “oh we’re divorced but we just haven’t sold the house yet so we still live together”. It’s not that being married is wrong it’s that LYING AND CHEATING is wrong. It is not your responsibility to be a lie detector, it’s the other person’s responsibility to be honest.

8

Anonymous #1 1w

Poly people aren’t incapable of cheating just bc they’re poly, they have to have informed consent from their partners or it’s still cheating. I’m sorry this happened to you.

7

Anonymous #1 1w

That's a sign of narcissism!

1