Ranting about Cheating


One day I had two different people tell me about their affairs, each soon after I had told them about my polyamorous lifestyle. That stuck in my craw, and resulted in this diatribe to a polyamory mailing list. I've corrected a few typos and grammatical flaws, but this is essentially what I wrote.




This is a bit of a rant, I'm afraid. I'm polyamorous. I tell people I'm poly. I go to reasonable lengths to explain what that means to me, and what it does not mean to me. And, despite this effort, more than I get people who dislike what it is that I do, I seem to attract people who assume that I'll be okay with their cheating because I'm poly. Some of the people I'm talking about here are my friends, and sometimes, even often, I can sympathize with their positions even though I disagree with them. What bothers me is that I keep feeling that my outing myself as poly is the trigger for these revelations. It would not bother me nearly as much if this didn't keep happening soon after me outing myself to them... perhaps then I would get the sense that they just see me as being non-judgemental, a good person to talk to about complicated situations. And I'm sure that that is part of the motivations of the people I'm talking about. But when I always get told immediately after outing myself about poly, it just makes me livid. It makes me think that they don't accept what I've told them:
  • that I wouldn't've had other relationships unless my primary partner had been comfortable with them.
  • that I spent nearly a year having a deep, caring relationship with another person and did not kiss her entirely out of my committment to my primary partner.
  • that being dishonest with your partners about who you're sleeping with is completely disrespectful of their right to understand the STD risks that they are exposed to.
So, if you're having an affair, fine. If you want to talk to me about it, fine. But do me a favor. If you just found out I'm poly, give it a rest for a month. I don't want to hear it right now. I worked hard, and occasionally still work hard, to deal honestly and responsibly in my relationship web, and if you tell me right now I'll just take it as disrespect. And while you're at it, don't expect me to congratulate you. I won't.


Note: This rant was previously published in The Polylog in April 1997. The Polylog is the newsletter of the Potomac Area Polyamory Network.


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Last modified: 22 October 2000