Is polyamorism in men correlated with sex drive?

5 years is actually fairly typical for turning a decent profit in a start-up. It happens quicker in some industries than others, but 5 years is typical. Also, to be fair, neither Portia or Lysander have actually stated that he isn't bringing in income. Playing devil's advocate, assuming that he is bringing income in, it may be a matter of mismatched desires financially. Portia may prefer more income for more creature comforts and greater wealth accumulation for the future than Lysander. Otherwise, I agree with everything Evie says...more time focused on having fun together, and more downtime for Portia can only help.

Maybe it would help if Portia thinks about self-care as her oxygen mask? Put yours on first (take care of yourself, do things that fill you back up) to ensure that you're capable of correctly putting your kids' on... In this case, it's up to Portia to take time out for self care. As Mom's, I think it's easy and natural to fall into the trap of taking care of everyone else and ignoring our own needs. And, yes, Lysander should be supportive of Portia's needs for self-care (by taking care of the kids, helping out at home, etc), but in the end, it falls on Portia to make sure that she makes herself a priority.



Yes...but I also think part of the problem may be that Lysander feels like Portia considers sex just another bullet point on her to do list.

So what? she can lay there every night on her back while he f**** her for 5 minutes that's not to make him any happier either. He should be making an effort to try to get her to want to have sex with him if he felt like she's only doing it to capitulate to his needs
 
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So what? she can lay there every night on her back while he f**** her for 5 minutes that's not to make him any happier either. He should be making an effort to try to get her to want to have sex with him if he felt like she's only doing it to capitulate to his needs

Oh, absolutely agree! We're on the same page. He does need to make more of an effort. But, then, she also needs to make herself a priority. And, I say this as someone who was the primary breadwinner and child caregiver in my past relationship. It's much easier for me to see where I played the martyr by taking on the kid care, finances, etc. That helped no one...not me, not my ex, and not the kids. Now, as a single parent, I take more time for self-care. I may spend less time with my kids than if I didn't take that time; however, it's much better quality time and therefore, more meaningful to all of us.
 
A few quick thoughts --

- Why is Portia the primary breadwinner AND the primary emotional caregiver to the kids? Could Lysander pick up the slack in at least one of these areas? Seems like it could make a big positive impact.

- I don't think it's unreasonable to 1) be more attracted to someone who's actively investing in making your shared life better (whether by working hard in a traditional sense or by working hard emotionally), or 2) only want sex about once a week or so. Of course, I also don't think it's unreasonable to want poly... though I DO think it's unreasonable to expect a mono partner to acquiesce to poly against their wishes, when it's not like they're not giving you sex or love period (between 26 and 52 times a year ain't that bad for a parent who works full time!).

- Poly CAN strengthen one's family. I like to think that my love and support for Bee makes Gia and Eric's family stronger. It can also weaken it, and almost certainly will do so if one partner doesn't want it, or if there are already existing unaddressed problems in the relationship, both of which are the case here. I would say that poly MIGHT not be impossible for you guys, if you worked on your existing relationship and Portia's feelings one day changed. But right now, it would likely be a death sentence, even if Portia didn't consider it a deal breaker.

- For the record, Lysander, it's much rarer (though not unheard of) that a new partner will want to "join the commune". More often, a new partner has their own life, their own other partner(s), their own house and maybe their own children, and wouldn't be prepared to pull up stakes and join your life full time any more than the two of you would be prepared to pull up stakes and join theirs. Where you DO find people, usually women, who are interested in doing that, they're usually younger and inexperienced, and the result is usually an emotional disaster for all involved, for a variety of reasons. Just so you're aware.
 
I need to stop starting posts with "a few quick thoughts", they always end up being a bunch of long paragraphs when I do that...
 
Thank you all for excellent advice! There is no question that Portia needs, above all, to take better care of herself; and I need to do everything humanly possible to facilitate that.

I've redoubled my efforts to make it clear that whenever she'll allow me to schedule them I will go on dates (with evening babysitters), watch the kids, engage in sexless physical contract, send her to a spa, help with her business, or just take whatever I can off her plate so she can recover.


BTW, thought it might reduce some confusion to clarify a few things:

  • My wife feels like she is the "primary" earner because my industry is risky (i.e., it tends to pay above average, but it has above average failure/turnover rates). I have not gone 5 years without producing income; it has been 2 years on my current venture. Aggregated over the last 5 years we have brought in roughly the same amount of money. Unfortunately it appears that the only way to make my wife feel like she isn't primarily responsible for our financial security is for me to switch to a more traditional job with much lower expected long-term income, which is not what she actually wants. That would be a short-term fix, but I'm not ready to let her inability to emotionally process the real expected values have such a drastic effect on our long-term financial status, especially given how important that is to her.
  • Sex doesn't happen if she doesn't want it ... or at least allow it (yay?). I learned years ago that annoyed sex is no fun at all. In recent years I've even stopped nagging her about my sex deficit. Although that disparity is on my short list of core relationship complaints: at her best she is up for 1, maybe 2, times a week. We both now know that any more than that is a duty. Back when she was putting more effort into "fulfilling that duty" I was certainly grateful even if sad about the mismatch.
  • After some discussion this morning I have to admit that maybe poly for me is fundamentally about sex. When I learned a typical woman is only up for sex once or twice a week I thought, "Well that's dismaying. Oh well, I guess being sex-starved is part of the human male experience." When I learned that there are men who aren't up for it every day I thought, "Hey, wait a minute...." Then I learned that there are women who are up for daily+ sex. Now I think, "This is a tragedy! There must be a way to improve the cosmic balance of sex! Furthermore: This is not fair! I'm doomed to a life of what feels like semi-celibacy because we couldn't gauge our sexual appetites before we got married?"
 
Sex drive waxes and wanes though it's not always consistent just because somebody like sex daily now doesn't mean a year from now that's going to remain the same
 
This is not fair! I'm doomed to a life of what feels like semi-celibacy because we couldn't gauge our sexual appetites before we got married?"

"Doomed" means you have no choice, so you're not "doomed" because you have choices. You always have choices. "Doomed" is blaming others and circumstances on an unhappy life. You certainly have the social and financial wherewithal to make choices. Don't ever blame anyone else for holding you back from a happy life. If staying married is a top priority for you, then stay married and find other things that fulfill you besides sex. Make peace with that choice move forward. If more frequent and more varied sex is very important to you, then make that choice and take steps to separate since an open relationship is not acceptable to your wife. Find your peace within and go from there. Don't ask your wife (or any lover) to give you the fulfilling life you desire.

I renegotiated my marriage at year 15 to include additional sexual relationships and I couldn't have imagined my conservative husband considering the change, but he did. It was not easy, but we have come to a peaceful place that allows for me to have variety. (He doesn't care for it for himself.) I think one reason our renegotiation was successful was because I decided that my sexual fulfillment was top priority. I came to a peace about it and was ready to go with whatever my husband and I decided, but I did not enter the discussions pleading for him to allow me to have others. I decided what was important to me, I knew my own mind, and we made our choice to stay together based on that. At no time was my future sexlife dependent on anything but my own value in having it. Decide what is of top priority to YOU and go from there. Don't ask your wife to bend in ways she cannot in order to spare you having to make choices and look deeply into who you are. If you want this question to be resolved in your marriage, you have to resolve it in yourself first.
 
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It absolutely changes and sex drive can go way up and down with the vagaries of life and particularly parenting and how they affect a relationship.

I have a high sex drive, I seek out sex for comfort when I feel bad, as a way to help me sleep or even when I'm ill. My husband doesn't do this but he wants sex when he feels good. So we are always at a slight mismatch. On holidays when things are good and he's not tired from working he wants it more than me. When things are trickier I want it more than him.

We read a book together a few years back called something like When your sex drives don't match which was interesting as a way to start to really understand one another's patterns of desire.

In any relationship at any one time there is going to be a high desire partner and a low desire partner. It's easy to become polarised and feel defined by them so you lose compassion for the position of the other but it's surprising how uncomfortable both sides feel.
 
After some discussion this morning I have to admit that maybe poly for me is fundamentally about sex. When I learned a typical woman is only up for sex once or twice a week I thought, "Well that's dismaying. Oh well, I guess being sex-starved is part of the human male experience." When I learned that there are men who aren't up for it every day I thought, "Hey, wait a minute...." Then I learned that there are women who are up for daily+ sex. Now I think, "This is a tragedy! There must be a way to improve the cosmic balance of sex! Furthermore: This is not fair! I'm doomed to a life of what feels like semi-celibacy because we couldn't gauge our sexual appetites before we got married?"


I had no sex drive to speak of in my 30s when my kids were small, I was homeschooling them, they were poor sleepers, my husband and I couldn't afford sitters, our friends weren't too into swapping babysitting, and our relatives all lived out of state.

Something happened when I hit my 40s. First of all, all kids were sleeping through the night. The youngest was 5, the oldest was 10, and really good at watching the 2 younger ones. As well, I began peri-menopause and lowered estrogen really seemed to bring my testosterone to the fore. My sex drive went up big time. I thought I'd never see it again! I'd kind of forgotten what it was like to feel horny.

We started leaving the kids for weekends or even a week at a time in summer, who were happy to have them. My husband and I started dating! Taking road trips! Going to music fests, and wandering around the countryside and small towns and cities exploring. It was so relaxing and nurturing and stimulating. This gave us energy and time for tons of great sex.

How old are your kids? This new phase might be just around the corner. My husband and I went from once every 4-6 weeks to daily, or multiple times a day. He thought he'd died and gone to heaven.:p

But if you don't want to wait-- and my experience isn't a guarantee, of course-- you can choose polyamory. Your wife just might not want to join you. (Some women lose sex drive in menopause, it doesn't increase as mine did.)

As a side note, I divorced hubby when the kids were college age, and met my dear gf. Her sex drive is much lower than mine, and we average about once a week. I do date others primarily for sex, although I don't date people I can't at least talk to. I prefer other partners who want to date, but if it's choice between a mostly sex-based relationship and nothing, I choose the sex!
 
I'm in a similar situation than you in regards to finances. The partner that I share financial obligations with earns a little less than me per year, but she gets paid a regular, monthly salary and I get paid large amounts about three or four times a year. This means that she pays the everyday regular stuff for the most part - mortgage, utilities, car payments etc. I do the big things like pay for renovations to our home, put down deposits on other things we want like a holiday home or a luxury vacation.

Despite this, I very much consider her to be the primary breadwinner. We could live a relatively privileged life on what I earn, but it would mean scaling down our lifestyle for one and secondly, changing the way we manage our finances. This would not work at all if she didn't have a conventional, stable job but it could work if we both did, for the most part. We probably wouldn't have the icing but we would still have a pretty decent cake. That is why I have to appreciate that she carries the burden of keeping things afloat in a completely different way than I do. Her load in this respect is heavier than mine. It has never been an issue for us because a) I consistently show that I understand this and b) it was something that we both agreed to; we didn't have to mingle our finances in this way, we wanted to.

At the moment, I am living on a different continent for work, so I am unable to do what I normally do to try and even things up. For example, I work significantly less hours than my partner. This means that cooking and cleaning are mainly my responsibility. Now that I am away, I still have this responsibility although there is probably a lot less mess anyway! What I chose to do is sacrifice a leisure expense in order to use that money to employ a cleaner three times a week so my partner doesn't have to also do the cleaning. I keep my social life here as cheap as possible to make sure we can see each other regularly. Note: We could afford to do this without me making these sacrifices, but I do it so that my choice to work in the way that I do does not become more of a practical/financial burden than what we initially agreed.

When I am home, little things like appreciating that I can pretty much choose what I do and who I work with in my chosen vocation; my partner, however, is working for someone and has limited control over her colleagues or even what she does at work because she is the primary breadwinner. Sure, she could refuse to do something that she doesn't agree with and make her working life difficult or even lose her job altogether, but that would put us in a situation that we don't want to be in. So, when she comes home and complains about work, I listen intently, ask the right questions, make the right faces and rub her feet. I do not complain that my day was also challenging. I don't talk about my work-free days as days off, I talk about them as times I am more available to lighten her load.

Perhaps your wife needs a bit of understanding in this respect too.
 
It probably correlates to some degree in many cases, but I don't think it's the de facto determining factor of whether every man or woman is polyamorous.

I'm male, and my sex drive fluctuates. Sometimes I can romp six times a day. Other times I go a week or two without, no problem. I enjoy polyamory primarily for the romance, intimate interaction, and the personal development that comes with it. Sex is important, but isn't the primary drive behind me being poly.

If one's poly is exclusively about sex (which is fine), I call that polyfuckery/polyerotic/polysexual, since it isn't so much about the amory.
 
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If one's poly is exclusively about sex (which is fine), I call that polyfuckery/polyerotic/polysexual, since it isn't so much about the amory.

Polysexuality can be meaningless, but I think most of us only have sex with people we somewhat like and trust... Personally, I have not full on Loved with a capital L all my lovers, but I've liked them all, I've been fond of some, I've had gigantic crushes on others. If they want to just fuck and leave with barely a word, I stop dating them. I like some cuddling, some relaxed conversation, maybe a meal together. I only date/have sex with intelligent people I can have a decent conversation with! I am sapiosexual. But I understand not every person I date is going to be full-on bf or gf material. And that's OK! I've got a live in girlfriend already. In other words, I am fine with being someone's primary or secondary, and having my own dear secondaries as well. I don't want another live-in partner.
 
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