A community for polyamorous people and those that are curious about it.
Curiosity compels me
I think I may be poly, but I'm not sure. I know I've felt in love with multiple people at once, for multiple nonconsecutive lengths of time, but none of that has ended well. (He is a jerkwad. She is straight, which rules me out of her dating pool. They (singular) would love to go to dinner with me if only we had something resembling physical proximity [I'm US, they're UK], which sure as hell felt like a turn-down, and neither of us has said a word on the subject since. Etc.) But I've never been in a relationship that lasted more than three months offline or nine months online, never mind two relationships at once. So I don't know, really.
How does one figure out whether one is actually poly?
(fyi I'm a singular they.)




I'll add another thing: there's a lot of spread in what people mean when they say polyamorous. Some use it as a label for sexuality, being natural inclined away toward mutliple affection. Others use it for lifestyle, ethical non-monogamy. A lot of people use it for a mixture. For example, when I say "I'm poly" I don't just mean "I get crushes on a lot of people a lot of the time", I also mean that I've made a conscious choice to arrange my relationship(s) in a way that allows me to pursue other romantic/sexual connections if the opportunity presents itself. Others might mean something different, and sometimes people don't specify if they're refering to polyamory, the orientation, or polyamory, the lifestyle which can get a bit confusing at times.
Yeah, that makes excellent sense. Thanks.
As you may have heard from others at some point, polyamory is not so much a state of being as it is an intrinsic capacity. In the same way that a bisexual person is still bi if they marry someone of a specific gender, poly people are still poly even when they're single or only involved in one relationship. So if you feel you have the capacity to be involved with more than one person at a time, then you're poly. However, I have seen poly people distinguish periods of their lives with the term "actively poly", meaning that they are currently in more than one relationship. If you aren't certain about poly, since you don't have experience with multiple relationships, I don't see any reason why it would be wrong for you to identify as poly until you know otherwise. It's okay to change your identifiers as often as you feel the need. Life is just a series of instances that drive self-awareness and personal growth-- there's no shame in realizing you were wrong. Additionally, if you're still uncomfortable using the "poly" label due to uncertainty, I've seen some people identify as "poly-minded" or "poly-leaning"-- essentially implying that they agree with polymory fundamentally.
Heh, yeah. Been through a lot of that with varying ways to identify my sexuality and gender. It makes sense that much the same applies to poly.
Thank you.
People seem to come to it in a lot of different ways. Personally, I've always been very prone on multiple infatuations and when I was in my early teens I'd often imagine a future in which I had more than one partner. Although I knew most people didn't do that, it never felt weird or wrong to me to think about it, it just felt nice and... well, natural. Some years later I heard the term polyamory for the first time and thought "sounds about right".
*nod nod nod*