Your form of poly is valid.
Consider this a bit of a PSA, I suppose, because I had some pretty negative thoughts recently and I thought maybe someone else might need to hear the kinds of things I found myself saying to myself.
I just want to remind people that their form of poly is valid, so long as it works for them and the people they are with.
Have sex with your partner and their spouse? Cool. Never have any of your partners meet each other? Also cool. Involved in a triad with two points that are also part of a thrupple that shoots off into a V? You do you.
Just as you can feel compersion for the people you are partnered with, you can feel it for others here in this subreddit even when their version of poly doesn't match yours, too. Some of us are in tight-knit, closed-loop sexual and nonsexual relationships. Some of us a solo poly and enjoy slutting it up as often as we can.
Healthy relationships aren't defined by the lines or dotted lines; they're defined by how the parties involved treat one another. So let's treat everyone as we'd want to be treated (hopefully that means with love and compassion). <3
Posted Apr 29, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC
Hate towards unicorn hunters is getting old. It’s not the structure of the relationship that is the problem, but the various unhealthy ways that a couple can go about obtaining such a relationship.
I thought the term "unicorn hunters" referred to couples who place ridiculous expectations on potential shared partners, not a successful and healthy triad?
I think the issue is more, there isn't really a concept for two people already in a relationship seeking someone to make an equal triad with. There isn't a term, there aren't stereotypes, etc. If I tell you Chris and Sam are in that position, then you don't really get a sense of them. But if I tell you Casey and Bobbie are unicorn hunters, then you very much get a sense of them.
As a result, some people use the term more broadly, calling Chris and Sam "unicorn hunters" as if they were as dubiously-ethical as Casey and Bobbie.
And then, cognitive bias tells me situations like the one I'm in are more common: Two people, both capable of poly, agree that monogamy is better than continuing to look. Then someone meets them by chance, and all three hearts ignite. The three date as a polyfidelitous triad. Are we unicorn hunters? We've been tarred with that brush.
Edit: I guess that last sentence was unclear. We've been hated as unicorn hunters. Hate towards unicorn hunters falls on us.
No, you were not unicorn hunting by the simple fact you weren't hunting. Your unicorn just showed up. It's the hunting and attempts to entrap and the rigid parameters that make hunters unethical.
Maybe there's a roadkill analogy there.... lol
I think two different but related concepts have been merged into the term over the years. This debate happens from time to time.
I think both things should be criticized, but the worse of the two is definitely the dehumanization of potential partners. Faceless couple profiles on dating sites asking a young attractive woman to assume 100% of the risk in the situation and then fit into a specific box they've prepared for her. It's super gross.
But you can be that particular kind of gross as a single person too, so it's not actually unique to looking for unicorns. It's just very prevelent there.
The idea of wanting to see a unicorn is fine in a vacuum and there are plenty of people who want to be unicorns, it's just wow so many emotionally immature people are looking.
That's not unicorn hunting though, that's forming a triad. Unicorn hunting is trying to use a person (usually a hetero couple using a bi woman) as a sexual object to fulfil their fantasies without consideration towards the person, which should be hated on because it's really shitty and inconsiderate. There's plenty of circumstances where a couple can meet someone and form a triad without it being unicorn hunting.
This isn't widely accepted though. A couple looking for a third comes off as unicorn hunting more often than not. I'm part of a couple looking to become a thruple and just because we have some expectations for our third and wont date anybody we've been labeled hunters.
The thing is that (while I am generally on board with people doing whatever they want) I think there's some justifiable tension in response to the fact you did think monogamy was better, and may well be bringing associated normative assumptions to the table when showing up under the label of "polyamorous". There is a very real sense in which poly-fidelity is more like monogamy than polyamory in terms of it's core assumptions and orientation towards the world. In an online dating scene where unicorn hunters calling themselves polyamorous are somehow more visible than the prototypical polyamorous people, and the media narratives center the cis, heterosexual man / bisexual women closed triad (who are in fact typically newcomers to the scene, poking their head in as it finally gains a measure of mainstream acceptance) it's natural for a bit of resentment to crop up.
An ostrich is a bird but it doesn't fly. A bat isn't a bird, but it does. Imagine the resentment of the sparrows when the mammal dominated mainstream media starts holding up an ostrich as the most visible, prototypical, understandable form of bird, when to most birds the real point is the flying.
Totes, and in that sense the new relationship is similar to the old, just with one more person. Given that the pair each had separate poly experience before and had discussed it extensively before pairing up, you could look at the old relationship as a "polyfidelitous dyad". We haven't experimented with looser poly types in great part because I'm "fidelitous", so yes, it's about the similarity between polyfidelity and monogamy.
The problem is that "ridiculous expectation" is very subjective. A lot of people would think that polyamory itself was a "ridiculous expectation".
Suppose a heterosexual couple is looking for a bisexual woman to date them both simultaneously, not separately, and to not date anyone else other than them...then...well...it's not non-consensual.
If a heterosexual couple is looking for a bisexual woman, they're already treating her as a sex object because the woman in the relationship isn't even interested in women outside of the sexual fantasy with her partner.
It's carry over from SJW communities. You always see the most upvoted response say it's fine, as well as most people here. There are just the loud ones that also participate in "cancel culture" that come here to hate on how other people experience relationships with other consenting adults.