What are your experiences with polyamory, first or second hand?
I personally am in a phenomenally stable polyamorous relationship. I've been married to my wife for 12 years, and she has had the same boyfriend for about half of that time. It's a really fulfilling arrangement for all of us in various ways. We're all genuinely happy and satisfied. I'm kind of casually looking for a boyfriend of my own.
But I feel like I only hear negative stories about other poly experiences. It's always unstable people and situations. It's always two out of three people happy at most. Surely there are other success stories out there, and I just hear the disasters because they're more memorable and fun to tell. Does anyone else have or know a polyamory success story?
EDIT: This blew up a little while I was asleep. I promise I'm at least reading every comment.
EDIT 2.0: ngl I did not expect the trope of polyamory to fix a struggling relationship would be so real. We did just the opposite and are both baffled. Don't use volitility to fight the volitility.
My understanding is that, If one partner is in a relationship with more than one partner it is polygamy
while if all the partners are in a relationship will all the other partners then it is polyamory
I never considered marriage as a prerequisite for polygamy . because many people are polygamous even in states where polygamous marriages are outlawed.
Then your understanding of these terms is wrong. Polyamory refers to people having multiple relationships (consensually), that's it.
So there's no term distinction between people with multiple separate relationships and those who's relationships are all mutual/shared?
There is, but they all come under the umbrella of polyamory. There's lots of sub categories like "parallel" (where someone's partners don't have much or any contact with each other), "kitchen table" where they're not in a relationship but do talk a lot about scheduling etc, might be friends, and then where everyone is in the same relationship or has independent relationships between everyone in a group. But lots of people use lots of different terms for those things.
There are different terms inside of polyamory, but all of it falls into the polyamory bucket.
Polygamy does mean marriages but has been missed because people didn't have better alternative words. "Menage a trois" is another term not needing marriage but has connotations to some of being mostly sexual and also only cover 3 people.
Polyamory as a word wasn't really widely used until the 90s and it's only really become mainstream in the last maybe 10 years?
Polyamory is much more precise and correct than polygamy.for describing relationships outside marriage. Polygamy is also a legal term very specifically related to marriage laws.