How to describe this?

T

Twinkle

New member
I am pretty new to this lifestyle and a bit naive to the terminology.

My husband and I tried "swinging" for a few years, and found it unfulfilling. Both of us are naturally in need of emotional connection in order to enjoy physical connection. We found it may be more suitable to have separate one-on-one relationships, as neither of us are interested in same-sex relationships. In all of the research I have done on this, it seems to me that people typically consider:

Polyamory - all people involved love each other
Open marriage - more typically considered as sexual only (or swingers that "play alone")

Since neither of those apply to me, I hope to find someone to be close to me, with intimacy as a possibility. But it seems that people get so confused, no matter how I try to describe it. They either think I just want to be only friends, or I just want only sex. Surely my situation can't be so unique that no one can even understand. Any advice in how to keep potential friends in understanding this would be appreciated.
 
What you describe is polyamory. Poly does not require that everybody love each other. Take, for example, tangles of three persons. Those can be triads, where each person is involved with both of the other two. Those can also be Vs, where one person is involved with each of the other two, but those two are not involved with each other.

If you are involved with more than one person romantically, that is polyamory. Your husband doesn't have to be involved with any of your other partners for it to be so. Nor would you have to be involved with any of his other partners for it to be poly.
 
Yup. That's what I'd call polyamory. I find that for many, the others know of and possibly are friendly with each other, but it isn't necessary. If you're looking for an emotional relationship and not just the sex, I'd consider you polyamorous.
 
We're in the same boat. We definitely do not view ourselves as swingers. We started exploring our thinking at a swingers board, and found that the completely sexual focus left us a little cold.

For us, we view our marriage of 15 years as the primary relationship in our lives. With all the shared experiences and love involved, nothing could ever replace it.

We're not looking to add anyone to our family, or to find another 'spouse,' but we feel that we want to allow our relationships with others to grow and expand without the limitations normally applied. If that means good friends with someone of either gender, great (which we have anyway), but if it means that we want to express those relationships sexually, that's great too. We don't want to limit our love, or repress our emotions, or deny the natural expressions of love we may have for other people.

And, to be completely honest, we're also curious what it might be like to have sex with someone else. We're just not entirely comfortable doing so in a sleazy, promiscuous way.
 
Yep. If you and your husband each have an outside lover-friend/partner/spouse, you'd be an "N" instead of a V. See it? Regarding explanations, I'd just say you're looking for a straight guy to have a secondary (?) relationship with.
 
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