r/polycritical

I’ve been dating a girl for almost a year. We’ve texted and talked every day. Yesterday she tells me that she’s been seeing someone else for the last two months, my jaw hit the floor. Partially because she started cheating on me and partially that she would just volunteer this in such a casual way. Before I could collect my thoughts she started to explain to me that the guy she started seeing is poly, and that she’s poly now and that it’s all ok because she understands love in a new way and <insert standard poly gaslighting script>

Poly is the absolute cancer of dating, its a self serving self righteous way to justify cheating on people and use a scripted playbook to gaslight you into thinking there’s something wrong with you for not being supportive of it.

TLDR: poly is trash

in monogamous relationships there is the emotional and spiritual element of deeply connecting with someone. almost like a soul merging sort of event. this translates in sex where it almost feels like a converging of souls. it is so highly spiritual and transcendent - and a large part of that is both people have the capacity for emotional depth and make the conscious choice to engage in deep love with each other and feel safe in order to do so. like there is this extreme tenderness, care, trust, spiritual bonding and vulnerability/surrender that could not be exist if others were involved.

from what i can understand and have observed - polyamorous/“enm” relationships lack emotional depth and have a large amount of highly avoidant and emotionally stunted individuals who value autonomy. it almost feels like hookup culture in a sense where people involved really divorce themselves from feelings and emotions which i would assume leads to an inability to access the spiritual and transcendent qualities that sex can have which is why they often view it as like a drug or recreational activity (ie “play parties”) rather than something sacred.

i don’t even mean like sacred in like a puritanical way but im talking like sex can be a spiritual merging of souls and i would have to imagine this is inaccessible to people in poly/enm relationships?

my question is for those who have been in both poly and mono relationships- how does this translate in the sexual experiences of each relationship type? what has your experience been? how does it feel and what are the differences in each?

Hey all, I've been looking for YouTubers that actually align with my beliefs that aren't MAGA chuds. Preferably ones that are trans like me.

Thank y'all.

I don’t mean when you realized it wasn’t for you, I mean when you actually started questioning it beyond the usual “different strokes for different folks” kind of thing; was there a specific experience that made you look at it differently?

For me, it started with lesbian spaces. I kept noticing heterosexual men gaining access to LGBTQIA+ spaces because they were dating bisexual or pansexual women, and then some of those women would come into lesbian spaces looking for something they weren’t getting from the men they were with.

That bothered me, because at some point I started asking myself what the point of having lesbian spaces even was if heterosexual relationships were still finding their way into them through somebody’s poly arrangement. Not literally every time of course, but enough that I started noticing it as a pattern.

And to be clear, I’m not saying bisexual or pansexual women don’t belong in LGBTQIA+ spaces, they obviously do; I’m talking specifically about lesbian spaces, and the way those spaces can start feeling less lesbian-centered when women are entering them while still very much attached to heterosexual relationship dynamics outside of them.

That was probably the first crack for me. Once I noticed that, I started paying attention to other things too, like how often jealousy gets treated like some personal failing, how much emphasis there is on becoming more accommodating, more secure or more evolved, or how quickly somebody’s discomfort can get turned into “you just need to do more work on yourself.”

I also understand that this subreddit has people from all walks of life and across the political spectrum; conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, Democrats, progressives, liberals, and probably plenty of people who don’t fit neatly into any of those categories. I get that my sexuality itself may be something some people here don’t particularly like or agree with, and that’s okay with me. I’m not here to shove my sexuality in anybody’s face or demand that everyone see the world the way I do.

What I am here to do is analyze and critique polyamory, and I actually appreciate that I can have those conversations with people whose politics, backgrounds, and values may be completely different from mine, we don’t have to agree on everything else in order to recognize some of the same problems or ask some of the same questions about this particular relationship structure.

So I’m curious, when did it happen for you? Was there one thing that made you start questioning polyamory, or was it more of a slow accumulation of things that just stopped sitting right with you?

So just started dating someone whose previous partner wanted to open the relationship (basically only on their terms), that relationship ended then he felt like he needed to try open/poly dynamics because he felt pressure as thats what everyone else was doing, but came to the conclusion that that lifestyle isn't fulfilling for him but also wouldn't be stable for him and his child.

I have always been monogamous and never dabbled otherwise so wondering how I can support someone who has had that kind of experience? as part of me is fearful they are "giving up" exploring poly just for me despite them saying they'd already come to the conclusion it wasn't for them or they might change their mind again.

I keep coming to the same thought. I arrive at it in different ways. The ending thought is always the same: he was capable of the most heartbreaking betrayal I have experienced. We were allies in this battle called life, my safe place. He disrespected that bond for a narcissistic, manipulative goth therapist who was f&&king five other people. Cheap. The whole situation reeks of the desperation of a teenage boy, not a man. Certainly not the man I thought I built my life with. It can’t be undone or truly fixed. Why do I keep trying? Why do I still have some love for the person that stabbed me in the heart and pissed on my corpse?

So we go back to a year ago. My partner “A” asks me if we can open up our relationship of 5 years for someone they just met at work. I tell them I’m really not okay with that but they kept pushing and pushing and said “it would really hurt me if you say no to this”. So I gave in and let them open our relationship because I felt like I had no other choice…I regret not being more firm about my decision. Fast forward to the past couple of months. They are only taking this partner on dates and only buying food and things for them when I had no money of my own. I felt completely replaced and alone. They then asked me to have threesomes with them. I wasn’t okay with this but the environment “A” put me in felt like I had to say yes or they would spiral. They made me watch them and their other partner have sex in front of me while I was stoned out of my mind. This was very traumatic and I still have flashbacks to it. The flashbacks got so bad the other night that I overdosed on lithium pills. I finally reached a breaking point today and reached out to my family for help. And now I’m in a safe environment and not looking back.

Here’s a brief list of the terror this man has inflicted on my life

Cheated on me three times that I know of
Got a girl pregnant
Lived rent free at my place
Convinced and pressured me to sign a lease together - lost his job - I was once again paying the full rent
Wrecked my paid off car
Left me for another girl just to come back
Didn’t pay rent but spend \~$400 on onlyfans
Constantly seeking sex online and on reddit
Using my new car every day and is entitled to it and makes me use Ubers (he at least pays for Ubers) I pay for my car payments even though he said he would

And what he just did last night has enraged me so badly that I want to leave right now. Even though there’s a month left on the lease. I think I have to leave asap

He messaged me last night as he was coming home from work. He’s a car mechanic. He said a homeless woman was by her broken down car. He said she asked him if she could stay the night and he said yes. He didn’t consult me at all. He doesn’t pay rent. I have pets. She was high as fuck and has needle marks all over her arms.
She slept in his room. He wanted to sleep on the bed with her. As his ex girlfriend, and knowing his history, it was hurtful. And I asked if he could sleep on the couch. He was mad but agreed. Then this morning I told him that I think he should refrain from trying to have sex with her bc she could *possibly* have hiv due to the needle use. He got mad bc he said I was “trying to control” him

He also said if he doesn’t fix her car today, he will let her stay another three nights or so. I tried to say I’m not comfortable with it and he called me a “tightass”

One month on the lease. I think I just want to leave asap at this point.

And his whole “polyamory” identity is complete bullshit. He’s a narcissist who just wants absolutely no accountability for anything he does. EVER. it’s so fucking pathetic and gross. It seems like a lot of the people on this subreddit have experienced a similar “genre” of man