Let's take the basketball player as an example.

He comes out as gay, his ex fiancee is heart broken, but says that explains a lot and wishes him the best. Her trust was still violated. Would she have been so understanding if he came out and said he was just polyamorous? Obvioulsly only she can answer that, but in most cases I would say that the response would be along the lines of 'what a cop out'.

As a bisexual polyamorous man, I'm going to try I respond with a calm, rational response. While unintended, many of the things you have said are offensive. I know they come from a place of ignorance so I shall try to explain.

My nature does not come from a desire to spread my seed. You may know that my wife is pregnant. This was her desire and I entered into it after much due consideration. I don't think I can explain what it is that makes me the way I am. It might be easier to describe how I view monogamy. I would like to make it clear that I understand that this is probably not the case for most monogamous people but to me monogamy seems like it stems from childish jealousy. The desire for monogamy is rooted in not wanting to share your partner and so the bargain is silently made that 'I won't if you won't.' This to me seems just plain wrong. To place control and ownership on another person does not sit well with me.

As far as cheating goes, it is a thing of monogamy. Polyamory is honest, at least in this way. If there is no agreement to be exclusive then there should be no expectation to be exclusive. I value honesty and understand that not all people see it this way so if I'm seeing someone and I looks like it might be serious, I'll let them know about that part of me.

Comparing homosexuality to polyamory is fine. Comparing either to lies, deceit and cheering is not.

To add a personal anecdote: a friend of mine has been married for years. She has recently realised that she is polyamorous. She spoke to her husband and he has stated that he's not ok with her sleeping with other people and so she doesn't. She does speak about her desires though because they are a part of her and they have an honest relationship.

I'm not trying to compare it to being deceitful.

Let's take fake person Bob. Bob has been in a relationsip with Sue. Bob has had sex outside of the relationship with Sue. He tells Sue. Sue is obviously upset. Bob explains that he has tried to be monogamous with Sue, but can't. He is not wired that way. Sue knows that Bob has cheated during a previous relationship. Actually she knows Bob has cheated in all of his previous relationships, so why be surprised or upset when it happens in this relationship. In fact, Bob was open about the cheating at the outset and told Sue he would do his best bet couldn't guarantee anything because of his past failings. Bob honestly did put in a real effort, but his nature took over and he went into his old habits. So after this Bob comes out as polyamorous. Is he really in the wrong if he has been battling agains his own nature all this time? Failing to admit to himself his true self until this final incident, can he be blamed?

What if he never acted on his nature and merely came to the conclusion and then presented the situation to Sue? I'm polyamorous and I can't go on living this life of monogamy, but I still would like you to be one of my partners.

The difference between this and your previous basketball player (let's call him George, and his girlfriend Hannah) example is that the first is only about sexuality, the second about sexuality and cheating. Desire vs. acts.

Coming out to your up-to-that-point girlfriend as gay is a sexuality thing. His sexuality is his nature. Assuming that George didn't realize he was gay when he got together with Hannah, it's more-or-less equivalent to a break-up. Nasty for the ones involved, but unavoidable and morally fine.
Had George not only come out to Hannah, but also confess that he slept with Steven, then I consider it the moral equivalent of what happened between Bob & Sue, and condemn George for it.

Bob did more than just coming out as polyamourous to Sue. He also slept with Ingrid. His sexuality is his nature, but he also breached the (implicit or explicit) contract of being exclusive with her. 'His nature took over' is not really an excuse, and neither is his past history if he agreed to be exclusive. What he should have done is 'come out' to Sue and tell her that he absolutely needs to have more partners. If she's not fine with that, he has break up with Sue before hopping into Ingrid's bed, to not be a cheating scumbag.

If Bob did not agree to be with Sue exclusively (in light of his history or for any reason), and then slept with Ingrid, then however I can't fault him, and Sue should have known what she got into. I can understand her being upset, but not support her. Misunderstandings about this fact (she inferred he would be exclusive, he never meant to imply that) are tragic, but they are misunderstandings and not the moral fault of either party.

Addendum: Had George realized he was gay earlier and got together with Hannah as his 'beard', then the relationship was based on a deception on George's part, which is morally reprehensible.

If you made a promise you should keep it. You really should not make promises, that you don't intend to keep. If you at some point recognize, that you can't keep it, you should talk to the person you have promised to, before breaking it.

So people, who know they can't be monogamous, should not enter monogamous relationships. Promising to try, but saying it likely will not work sounds a bit like a sleazy sales man tactic, apearing to make a promise and taking it away in the small print.


If a realationship does not work out as planned, this leads to broken hearts and hard feelings and people like someone to blame, when faced with that. In most cases it's the one, who looks less like they got the short end of the stick. Unless there is some other information many people get for : More sex is getting more, so you are better off then your partner. In individual cases there are other reacions, like "That partner is not bringing in, what is supposed to be part of a relationship, so it's understandable, that the other partner is not paying fully either" and "You expected a monogamous relationship with who?" in case promiscuity is widely known.

And there is a further angel. Some people have a tendency to delude themself about what they can expect from certain partners. often it's the delusion, that the partner will change their ways. Doing that is part of being a teenager, but eventually you should grow out of it, but some people don't. And like with every kind of stupidity. it is not morally right to take advantage of it. And like with cases like flirting vs sexual haressment, people have a tendency to jump to conclusions, who is the culprit and who is the victim.

I would like to quote one of my exes. She remained friends with my sister and once said to her "It is a shame the we seem to learn the mistakes of youth at the expense of good people"

In short relationships are complicated and the best we can do is try to learn from our mistakes and become better people.

I'd like to back up and respond to this really quick:

Did the poly guy cheat before admitting his needs? If not, then the proper response shouldn't be "what a cop out," it should be either "well, I'm poly too, and I'm down with it," "well, I'm not poly but I like you enough to deal with your bed-hopping" or "well, I can't handle that, so I'm out." Any other response is a type of societal conditioning that hopefully is being updated away from "well, that means you're promiscuous, and that's just dirty" OR "but you love ME so much! Change your ways for ME!" It takes time for a major societal shift - openness about sexuality, equal footing among all peoples, these are ideas that have only been implimented with actual results in the US in the last 40 years or so - not even a full generation. I'm not surprised that something as rooted in societal identity as fear of fornication (while going at it like rabbits in the shadows) is taking serious time to kill.

Mono is the special case of poly where your number of partners is 1. It's not as much as you might like but it's fundamentally the same kind of thing and can substantially satisfy. Some are more reliant on it, and in that case the above arguments kick in. Still, even the most adamant poly would probably be noticeably happier with 1 partner than with 0.

Straight is not a special case of gay in any sense. You just aren't getting anything with only a partner of the wrong gender. The only options are tied for the worst possible.


Like, I'm technically poly, but it's such a marginal issue for me that it's an extremely reasonable concession to completely drop it. So I'm monogamous in practice, and don't spend any mental effort looking further, and am not subjected to involuntary mental stress over the issue. On the other hand, the notion of replacing my wife with an otherwise equivalent man (whatever that means), on the other hand, would not be on the table for any combination of personal-relationship-scale concessions.

So if a gay man gets married to a woman and fesses up later about his gender identity you are saying he should still honor his promise to her? got it.

We all know that that is not what anyone here is saying.

@weatherwax I'd be interested in your take on my friends current situation as the state they are in is not one of your stated outcomes.

Shoot! You made me curious.

And of course, previously stated sitches are flexible from person to person - I'm a "cause the least amount of harm possible" person.

In some ways I feel this topic is too personal for my opinion about it to be worth much. I'm a bisexual man who has been faithful in a monogamous heterosexual relationship for nearly ten years.

In my personal situation I feel there was a definite element of choice involved. And I find a lot of value in both monogamy and heterosexuality. But I can't claim that my experiences are generalizable.

Our society is definitely changing rapidly, and I can very clearly see both sides of the debate. Still, at the end of the day, I think we all have many things to worry about that are much more important and consequential.

While this may be true it doesn't mean we can't worry about it at the same time as worrying about the supposedly more important and consequential things.

Ah. My mistake was forgetting to add the person who came out's choice.

A person who is poly and is already in a relationship has two good choices if their desires don't match up with their partner's: stay and remain monogamous, or leave without breaking their original agreement of remaining monogamous while in their relationship. In both instances there will be hurt - it's up to the individual and the couple to determine what will cause the least amount of hurt.