So, a while ago it came out that my uncle（who's from outside the family and married in) cheated on my aunt (mom's sister).
They're still married. Honestly not sure what they'll do since he is the one with the job and our family doesn't have enough to support her and her children.
But I just don't get it. I get falling out of love or even finding other people besides your spouse attractive, but cheating is just such a layered lasagna of shit.
1.You want to eat your cake and have it too. (There's an entire community of people who cheat on their spouses called "cake eaters."). I don't understand what you get out of that though unless you're just really lustful (and even I wouldn't do that and I'm a lustful removed). If you want to break up/divorce that's fine but you can't just have emotional/physical relationships without changing anything. Which leads to point 2
2.How little fucking respect do you have for your wife and family? Because the thing is that youre denying your partner any autonomy in the relationship. You dont even respect them enough to even talk about it, or you don't respect them enough to think they deserve to know about it or will ever find out.
I mean look, there been some stories I've heard where I understand, if the relationship is already dead. It still sucks but I can understand if it's inevitable anyway. But otherwise i just can't conceptualize how selfish and shit you have to be to do it.
And I wouldn't ask if it wasn't so common. I mean it doesn't happen in every relationship but it's so common basically everyone is paranoid their partner is cheating on them. So I just really don't get it
I guess someone could see it that way, especially under capitalism, but I don't think that's generally where the hurt comes from. If somebody explicitly says I don't want monogamy, that's different from going in with the belief that it's exclusive and then going behind someone's back. Whether monogamy makes sense or not is kind of beside the point about trust and the breaking of trust. If I agreed with you that I'm going to play tennis with you and only you, however absurd that might be, I'm still going back on my word if I go play with someone else without telling you. And sex and romance together are generally going to be a much more personal thing than playing tennis together, with a lot more intense feelings tied up in it.
To simplify: Breaking trust generally doesn't go over well.
We also need to talk about how coercing your partner into being monogamous is... a bad thing?
If someone is actually coercing, that'd be abusive. But if we're just talking about people doing it because it's common, I'd think coercion is a bit misleading of a word (makes it sound like it's one person doing it to another) and it'd be more suitable to say it's peer pressure, social expectations, and socializing (media, etc.) shaping what people do. I am personally not convinced there's anything inherently wrong with monogamy that would imply open relationships are somehow healthier, but the structure of it when it is tied up in economics undoubtedly has problems, as do the unrealistic expectations brought on by endless romanticizing in media. It seems to me that under the capitalist framework, some of the urge to go for open relationships would just suffer from problems of being seen as disposable and transactional, a convenience that gets called upon when desired and nothing more. Not that monogamy can't suffer from this too, but point being, I don't think the alternative is fixing the underlying issues on any generalized level.
Ultimately, if you don't want to do monogamy, you should make that clear from the offset and if someone is trying to pressure you to do otherwise, then get out of that relationship as fast as you can. That's a person who is not respecting your side of things.
It is coercion, plain and simple. They start demonizing you because you're not mono? That is coercion, no need to mince words. I don't think there is anything wrong with monogamy, it's just that both partners have to consent to it. It's just that people who are polyam have been forced into the closet by circumstances and may not feel ready coming out yet.
If a closeted gay person has been pressured into a straight relationship, we feel sympathy, but then if a closeted polyam person has been pressured into a mono relationship, all of a sudden, they're le big bad?
Make it make sense.
I guess I'm not familiar with a circumstance in which people are being demonized because they want to have an open relationship. I'm not doubting it occurs, but it's not been an issue I'm familiar with. I'm used to seeing on a dating app, occurrences of people openly saying they'd rather do non-monogamous with a built-in option to choose that in the app. So it takes me by surprise a little.
Isn't that a common problem in cases of a married couple doing an open relationship. Like, do we tell our friends and family? And if we don't, what happens if they find out?
Or if you're married, and considering proposing an open relationship to your spouse, there's some chance that it's taken very badly.
This probably depends on how old you are and where you live tho.
I'm assuming it would be harder between the two of you if you are trying to take a pre-existing monogamous relationship and turn it into an open relationship (and for good reason, since the relationship has been built on the idea of monogamy up to that point). As for how friends and family feel, it's not really their business? Mind you, I don't mean that in a culturally blind, naive way. I'm sure where you live and what the culture is could mean that there's more of a potential consequence for trying to do so, depending on where exactly it is. But as a general principle, if we're looking at it from the cultural standpoint that the worst you'll get is some people judging or complaining at you about it, there are plenty of other things people get judged over and at a certain point you need to put your foot down and say you're an adult and it's not their business what you do in your personal life, as long as it isn't harming others.