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Ethical Non Monogamy "ENM"/Throupling/Fucking around/whatever.....


Aqua Buddha

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3 hours ago, crash_davis said:

My thinking on this. If I want to bang other women, and my wife wants to bang other men, then what the fuck is the point in my staying married and putting up with her bullshit. I'd rather get divorced, bang other women and not have to put up with her or any other woman's shit.

Are you with your wife just for sex? Good lord, please go ahead and divorce her now. For her sake as much as yours.

Edited by safe sex
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I'll chime in as a single man who is actively dating.

Most the women I come across have enough baggage and skeletons with their exes/past. Adding a current partner to that mix creates way more bullshit I'd need to wade through. To be clear, most the EDM women I wouldn't date for just sex in the first place. I'd rather go the daddy path for younger hotter women that don't have a cock already attached. (That I have to deal with)

One of my friends had a crazy ass wife demand an EDM marriage after he caught her cheating. He made an effort to work it out, cause kids, but she wasn't having it.  She's never had a job is about a 7, 7.5 or Surly 3, and insanely high maintenance. He got a lawyer and noped on out of there.

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7 minutes ago, safe sex said:

Are you with your wife just for sex? Good lord, please go ahead and divorce her now. For her sake as much as yours.

No, but sex with just her is part of what i signed up for.  If she said she also wanted to see other men, I'm out.  She knows it, and it'd be the same response if I said I was gonna have sex with someone else.

Why is that offensive to anyone's sensibilities. It's a fundamental part of the arrangement.

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1 hour ago, Jkwellborn said:

What video game was it? I had a neighbor that was a swinger when she was married. She wasn’t terrible looking, her ex husband was kind of a troll. I know another couple that supposedly swings. She was fine as hell back in the day.

It Takes Seven

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ENM is not for everyone, but it's kind of like a social media app. The larger the number of people who adopt it, the better the experience is for everyone, even the people who aren't connected.

I don't expect it to take hold for another generation or so. The premise is rooted in common sense. It's unrealistic to expect one person to meet all of your needs. Currently the only people who are doing ENM is Gen Z but older generations are also dabbling in it with extremely limited success. The reasons why it's less successful are mostly societal. It's too "weird" to explain and that perception is usually enough to spoil things. That will improve over time though.

Other reasons it fails is because there was some kind of pressure involved which is actually just unethical nonmonogamy and most advocates would argue isn't "real" ENM. And it shouldn't be. It's not supposed to be a loophole for infidelity or being a philandering asshole. So all these anecdotes about couples "opening up the marriage" are not great counterexamples for whether ENM works.

Anyway ou sucks.

Edited by chainsaw
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3 hours ago, texashorne said:

All they did was come up with a fancy and academic term for swingers. This practice isn't new. And if you browse profiles of the idiots that partake in this your not exactly finding Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. 

The ones the WSJ dug up were swamp donkeys.

ENM is specifically not swinging. Swinging is considered play with both partners participating and likely doing stuff during or after as I understand it. It’s not just one night you go fuck rando people without the other. ENM is just cheating for people who don’t want to be labeled cheaters, but the end result is the same afaik. 

22 minutes ago, safe sex said:

Are you with your wife just for sex? Good lord, please go ahead and divorce her now. For her sake as much as yours.

Being a square and fucking other people who aren’t your spouse/significant other are oceans apart. If you are going to cheat do it the good ole fashioned way and just cheat and don’t fucking tell anyone. 

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2 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

ENM is not for everyone, but it's kind of like a social media app. The larger the number of people who adopt it, the better the experience is for everyone, even the people who aren't connected.

I don't expect it to take hold for another generation or so. The premise is rooted in common sense. It's unrealistic to expect one person to meet all of your needs. Currently the only people who are doing ENM is Gen Z but older generations are also dabbling in it with extremely limited success. The reasons why it's less successful are mostly societal. It's too "weird" to explain and that perception is usually enough to spoil things. That will improve over time though.

Other reasons it fails is because there was some kind of pressure involved which is actually just unethical nonmonogamy and most advocates would argue isn't "real" ENM. And it shouldn't be. It's not supposed to be a loophole for infidelity or being a philandering asshole. So all these anecdotes about couples "opening up the marriage" are not great counterexamples for whether ENM works.

Anyway ou sucks.

ENM is just dating before going steady for gen z? Like wtf there’s tons of non exclusive dating arrangements out there and there have been forever. ENM takes that a step further in that you are in a committed relationship with another (singular) person and having sexual relations with other people (plural). 

Im all for sexual freedom and doing whatever you do. This just seems like a whack excuse and label for something that really makes no sense at all. Going out and sport fucking and ENM are different specifically in the fact that they aren’t positioning it with the other person as sport fucking it’s actual emotional involvement. If you are going to do that just don’t be married it’s actually really simple. No judgement. Marriage is a monogamous concept. 

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I've been aware of several swinger couples amongst the folks I've worked with over the years.  The closest that I've seen to ENM was an attractive 60ish woman that was married to a guy that no longer had the lumber. She told errybody that she had his permission to find some wood.

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15 minutes ago, immamac said:

ENM is just dating before going steady for gen z? Like wtf there’s tons of non exclusive dating arrangements out there and there have been forever. ENM takes that a step further in that you are in a committed relationship with another (singular) person and having sexual relations with other people (plural). 

Im all for sexual freedom and doing whatever you do. This just seems like a whack excuse and label for something that really makes no sense at all. Going out and sport fucking and ENM are different specifically in the fact that they aren’t positioning it with the other person as sport fucking it’s actual emotional involvement. If you are going to do that just don’t be married it’s actually really simple. No judgement. Marriage is a monogamous concept. 

I'm not polyamorous, nor do I practice ENM, but what you are describing is the concept at its absolute base level, and not at all representative of  how it's practiced by the majority portion of the community. ENM, like almost everything in life, takes place on a spectrum

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While I personally think ENM and EDM life is silly, I think a lot of things are silly.

I truly don't care what strangers or even friends choose to do relating to their cocks and vaginas. 

People do a lot of stupid shit that I think is silly and stupid. I've found my life is better just nodding and letting them continue doing whatever they think makes them happy.

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31 minutes ago, safe sex said:

The way so many of y'all talk about women on this site, it seems like the only problem you have with ethical non-monogamy is that it's a two-way street. 

Fair point.  But keep in mind what website you're on.  It's not that we're overly-misogynist or hypocritical.  We're just getting older and barely able to deal with ourselves, let alone our significant other.  To add another person of either gender to either member of the marriage?  I dunno dude, that sounds like a lotta work." /Stiffler  

Also, speaking of ENM, ELO has joined the chat with the plea that she don't go down on Bruce...

 

 

Edited by YGIFS
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6 hours ago, safe sex said:

It's called polyamory or ethical non-monogamy. Some people are really good at it. Most people are pretty shit at it.

 

23 minutes ago, safe sex said:

The way so many of y'all talk about women on this site, it seems like the only problem you have with ethical non-monogamy is that it's a two-way street. 

Both these responses are spot on.

My wife saw a client recently. The client said she was polyamorous, but her boyfriend got mad when she hooked up with dudes but he was okay if it was women.

Most people are not mature enough to be polyamorous, much less monogamous. 

 

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40 minutes ago, safe sex said:

I'm not polyamorous, nor do I practice ENM, but what you are describing is the concept at its absolute base level, and not at all representative of  how it's practiced by the majority portion of the community. ENM, like almost everything in life, takes place on a spectrum

There isn’t really a spectrum. This whole ideology of everything being a spectrum is what is so wrong with everything. You either are or aren’t fucking multiple people. If you want to fuck multiple people and make emotional connections with multiple people there’s nothing wrong with that. That just isn’t monogamy. It doesn’t make a shit whether you have permission or not. That is just not being exclusive. Exclusive dating or going steady has been a thing for who the fuck knows how long.  You can’t be ethically non monogamous because by definition you are just non monogamous, meaning monogamy has nothing to do with anything you are doing. You are ethically polyamorous - way better way to describe it. Set expectations let people know what you are about etc.

I guess I take more issue with the label than I do the actual concept if that makes any sense. 

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14 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

 

Both these responses are spot on.

My wife saw a client recently. The client said she was polyamorous, but her boyfriend got mad when she hooked up with dudes but he was okay if it was women.

Most people are not mature enough to be polyamorous, much less monogamous. 

 

I agree with you're broader point that most people don't have enough maturity nor communication skills to pull of monogamy. 

That said, @safe sex noted the spectrum. An ENM agreement could be that the partners agreed to only same sex alt partners. I obviously don't know if that's the case with your clients wife, doesn't sound like it, but that's not misogynistic if both parties are bi-sexual and agree to those specific terms. Or if one can do alt sex partners and one agrees to same sex. It comes down to agreement of what both parties are comfortable with in the ENM world. Granted, what you described above sounds and most frequently is misogynistic, but not always.

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1 minute ago, immamac said:

There isn’t really a spectrum. This whole ideology of everything being a spectrum is what is so wrong with everything. You either are or aren’t fucking multiple people. If you want to fuck multiple people and make emotional connections with multiple people there’s nothing wrong with that. That just isn’t monogamy. It doesn’t make a shit whether you have permission or not. That is just not being exclusive. Exclusive dating or going steady has been a thing for who the fuck knows how long.  You can’t be ethically non monogamous because by definition you are just non monogamous, meaning monogamy has nothing to do with anything you are doing. You are ethically polyamorous - way better way to describe it. Set expectations let people know what you are about etc.

I guess I take more issue with the label than I do the actual concept if that makes any sense. 

Hah! Yeah man, you're arguing semantics, it's what we fucking do here. 

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@immamac What is the problem with the name? It seems pretty to the point and accurate. 

And your insistence that something which exists on a spectrum is actually something that is binary is really fucking weird. There are multitudes of types of relationships within the spectrum of ethical non-monogamy. It's not just fucking other people, and I'm confused as to why you are so sure that it is

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My wife told me "You're not special.  But you are...different."  Is that anything?

I'm an ally for any consenting lifestyle.  And I sit at my wife's church every Sunday and think of how organized religion has repressed and subjugated women for millennia using everything from scripture to marriage.  There's a 99% chance the men that invented formal marriage, in the religion (not governmental) sense, had nothing but ill intentions to continue to the awfulness of it all.  But there's a 1% chance they thought, "Let's just do this because honestly who has the time and energy for anything else but pair-bonding, oy vey?"  

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1 minute ago, YGIFS said:

My wife told me "You're not special.  But you are...different."  Is that anything?

I'm an ally for any consenting lifestyle.  And I sit at my wife's church every Sunday and think of how organized religion has repressed and subjugated women for millennia using everything from scripture to marriage.  There's a 99% chance the men that invented formal marriage, in the religion (not governmental) sense, had nothing but ill intentions to continue to the awfulness of it all.  But there's a 1% chance they thought, "Let's just do this because honestly who has the time and energy for anything else but pair-bonding, oy vey?"  

It was invented in a financial/property sense and reinforced by religion. Government just followed the script already written.

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1 hour ago, chainsaw said:

ENM is not for everyone, but it's kind of like a social media app. The larger the number of people who adopt it, the better the experience is for everyone, even the people who aren't connected.

I don't expect it to take hold for another generation or so. The premise is rooted in common sense. It's unrealistic to expect one person to meet all of your needs. Currently the only people who are doing ENM is Gen Z but older generations are also dabbling in it with extremely limited success. The reasons why it's less successful are mostly societal. It's too "weird" to explain and that perception is usually enough to spoil things. That will improve over time though.

Other reasons it fails is because there was some kind of pressure involved which is actually just unethical nonmonogamy and most advocates would argue isn't "real" ENM. And it shouldn't be. It's not supposed to be a loophole for infidelity or being a philandering asshole. So all these anecdotes about couples "opening up the marriage" are not great counterexamples for whether ENM works.

Anyway ou sucks.

Every generation thinks they invented fucking, or at least how to fuck the right way. Good luck with all that.

I do have to LOL at arguments that this is all common sense or rooted in basic needs.  I celebrate the invention of reliable birth control and antibiotics that enable self-discovery via free-form coupling.  For all but the last 80 years of human history, the combined death toll between childbirth and STDs means that nature laughs at your polycule and self-realization needs. She’s a cruel mistress, don’t cite her as the justification but applaud that we escaped her grasp. 

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1 minute ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Every generation thinks they invented fucking, or at least how to fuck the right way. Good luck with all that.

I do have to LOL at arguments that this is all common sense or rooted in basic needs.  I celebrate the invention of reliable birth control and antibiotics that enable self-discovery via free-form coupling.  For all but the last 80 years of human history, the combined death toll between childbirth and STDs means that nature laughs at your polycule and self-realization needs. She’s a cruel mistress, don’t cite her as the justification but applaud that we escaped her grasp. 

This might come as a surprise to you but there's a lot more to life than childbirth and STDs.

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There are a lot of downsides. Sexually transmitted diseases. Inadvertent penile docking. Jealousy. Paternity disputes. But above all, one risk reigns supreme: just when you think the polycule cuddle puddle is about to get freaky and orgy is about to break out... Settlers of Catan. 

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3 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

This might come as a surprise to you but there's a lot more to life than childbirth and STDs.

Yes, but what this free-clinic brochure presupposes is, "What if there wasn't"???

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1 minute ago, chainsaw said:

This might come as a surprise to you but there's a lot more to life than childbirth and STDs.

My point is that you don’t get to choose to experience all that extra stuff without modern medicine, so none of it has much to do with the natural order of things. Nature does not give a shit about what you want out of life, but she does deliver pathogens and babies when you fuck. 

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2 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

My point is that you don’t get to choose to experience all that extra stuff without modern medicine, so none of it has much to do with the natural order of things. Nature does not give a shit about what you want out of life, but she does deliver pathogens and babies when you fuck. 

Who said anything about nature? Why are you bringing science into this? Common sense is common sense. Setting aside the fact that people slept around long before birth control, non-monogamy is not only about intercourse and it may even have nothing at all to do with sex. A husband could be more into sports than his wife and have a connection with another woman who likes to watch games with him. A "date" between the husband and his friend that would end a lot of strictly monogamous marriages is totally fine in an open marriage. Could those dates lead to sex? If everyone consents, sure. If not, that's still non-monogamy. No sex required.

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1 minute ago, chainsaw said:

Who said anything about nature? Why are you bringing science into this? Common sense is common sense. Setting aside the fact that people slept around long before birth control, non-monogamy is not only about intercourse and it may even have nothing at all to do with sex. A husband could be more into sports than his wife and have a connection with another woman who likes to watch games with him. A "date" between the husband and his friend that would end a lot of strictly monogamous marriages is totally fine in an open marriage. Could those dates lead to sex? If everyone consents, sure. If not, that's still non-monogamy. No sex required.

No…that’s just called having a friend who likes football. 

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59 minutes ago, BurntEyes said:

I agree with you're broader point that most people don't have enough maturity nor communication skills to pull of monogamy. 

That said, @safe sex noted the spectrum. An ENM agreement could be that the partners agreed to only same sex alt partners. I obviously don't know if that's the case with your clients wife, doesn't sound like it, but that's not misogynistic if both parties are bi-sexual and agree to those specific terms. Or if one can do alt sex partners and one agrees to same sex. It comes down to agreement of what both parties are comfortable with in the ENM world. Granted, what you described above sounds and most frequently is misogynistic, but not always.

It's a bit of a red flag to set rules like that; for one party in a ENM relationship to say "you can be with partners of one gender but not another." Even if both parties agree, it's setting the stage for conflict in the future.

Edited by safe sex
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14 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

Who said anything about nature? Why are you bringing science into this? Common sense is common sense. Setting aside the fact that people slept around long before birth control, non-monogamy is not only about intercourse and it may even have nothing at all to do with sex. A husband could be more into sports than his wife and have a connection with another woman who likes to watch games with him. A "date" between the husband and his friend that would end a lot of strictly monogamous marriages is totally fine in an open marriage. Could those dates lead to sex? If everyone consents, sure. If not, that's still non-monogamy. No sex required.

You’re the one who proposed that “society” is what’s restricting ENM and I’m suggesting the at the arrow goes the other way— “society” at large (technology, medicine, the welfare state, etc.) enables some of these new and novel ways of existing to shape up.  People are just biology and a lot of these norms go far deeper than just superstition or arbitrary squares setting their morals on you, man. Physics and biology get to set speed limits and sometimes we can raise them with the right technology. 
 

Somehow I don’t think that many ENM discussions boil down to “but she understands RPO concepts, can I please just have Sundays with her?” LOL. 

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1 minute ago, 956 Worldwide said:

a lot of these norms go far deeper than just superstition or arbitrary squares setting their morals on you,

This is more or less the exact playbook used against queer people for generations. Being closeted was the rule more often than the exception. Society evolved. I don't know what the exact ratio of closeted to out people is today, but I know it's much lower.

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