MFM or FMF - perceptions of ease

[Slugzilla]

And I really didn’t intend it to go much further on the subject than just a comment on how when I’m in groups—I just get lost with a lot of the semantics myself.

My intention was more to say this can come on very strong for polys simply looking to love others. Like, I’ve had to step away from groups because I feel some of them simply want to box me up and make reads on me, but I did think the post had great value for me—where I didn’t understand most terms people were using.

I actually saw it as a pretty fundamental post for the website, but as labels usually do (even the pansexual label) it kinda started argumentative mentality for no reason… this was not my tone at all.

 

[Magdlyn]

Sigh, this thread was never intended to promote heteronormativity. It was to move a discussion that was starting to hijack a thread in the advice forum and move that discussion of the subset of polyamory that is MFM or FMF V shaped relationships because that was what was mooted in the original discussion.

Yes, I know, Evie, and I tried to let it ride. I really did. But honestly, in this day and age, when gender roles have been changing, and the patriarchy extremely painfully crumbling, I think it is not super helpful to draw these sex or gender role lines. So many are harmful.

I felt I must speak out.

Why do men need to be coddled into being proud holders of OPPs? Why do women need to feel they must swing to keep their marriage security and financial safety intact?

Why do men deny their bi or gay natures? Because they are afraid of being humiliated, bullied and killed, obviously. And then, in denial of their same-sex attraction, they go on to humiliate, bully, beat, kill and legislate against gay people. To hate their female partners and abuse them. To abuse, neglect, kick out on the streets their gay and trans kids. To fall into soul-sucking addictions. (The most conservative US states are the ones with the most use of gay porn.)

Why have we turned to polyamory instead of "traditional" swinging? Partly because swinging is hetero-man, bisexual-woman, married couple-centric. Being polyamorous allows for much more gender fluidity and preference. I feel that is worth celebrating and promoting. Conforming to gender stereotypes and homophobia does not help our case.

I kinda want to say Sorry, not sorry.

 

[Magdlyn]

But I am sorry for being somewhat harsh. I understand wanting to discuss a certain concrete topic (at least, you find it concrete), and feeling frustrated when it "derails." However, I think my view, and even the earliest responses on the thread, and now Slugzilla's response, all pertain to questionng the very premise: should "men" and "women" really be acting, reacting, behaving, having expectations in "traditional" ways, while practicing such an alternative way of loving?

After all, even in our very earliest threads here, members and mods alike agreed this board fully accepted and celebrated threads morphing off from the original question/topic in natural organic ways, as they do in dining rooms and living rooms all over the world.

People are of course, fully welcome to embrace the patriarchal binary gender idea and respond to the thread in kind, if they wish. Lurkers (men, in this case) who come here looking for backup for their one-penis policies, or idea of having harems (owning women), and being magical woman-satisfiers, need to have their consciousnesses raised. IMNSHO.

 

[LaminarFlow]

huh! I'm not sure I agree with "women are more naturally attuned to organizing the social lives of family", mostly because i see so many contradictions of this behavior, and women are conditioned to be more family oriented from a young age. But would love if you linked the research here! I'd be curious to see what ages these studies took place at.

I mentioned it's based on cultural and social constructs, and I'm aware existing norms and a child's environment have influence on the quality of acitivities and relationships.

- https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118329
- https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01214
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167212450739
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3160171/

just reread and saw the toddlers part! okay so im reading that as up to 3yrs. interesting; I said something further up about language and motor skill differences in early brain development between male and female children. That could potentially affect early play styles.
I'm not certain that romantic relationship choices can be tied to differences that become much much smaller in adulthood, but it makes a lot of sense that women who have been conditioned by society to be better at anticipating the needs of others would also be more family or group-oriented as a result.

- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-01976-z (take this one with a grain of salt, it's Springer)
- https://www.semanticscholar.org/pap...abes/8139648ce42908ee4cc0729d273ddb67efbf42fe


Remember reading it in a Canadian journal on my travels a while back. It was about the differences between male, female and non-binary social connectedness. Unfortunately, I can't find it now. But here some adjacent articles that could be of help. Ofcourse we strive for more inclusion and remove systemic barriers, but we shouldn't ignore where some of these behaviours come from or pretend they don't exist.

 

[mountaingirl]

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118329

interesting. since this finds women are more likely to be in same-gender dyads, this might be useful info on FMFs? also interesting because this kinda goes against the idea that women have larger social networks, since they came to the conclusion that men prefer larger groups

- https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01214

and then this one directly contradicts those findings! females have more communication partners, but men's networks are better connected.

seems it depends on where we're getting the data, maybe facebook photos aren't a great indicator of social network size. definitely selects for younger ppl. especially for young men, i personally thought of every guy in college i knew with a photo of his entire frat as his profile pic lol

 

[mountaingirl]

should "men" and "women" really be acting, reacting, behaving, having expectations in "traditional" ways, while practicing such an alternative way of loving?

this! i see a lot of cognitive dissonance in MFM/FMFs (and am sometimes guilty of it myself)

 

[XTremeMeow]

To avoid a full hijack of another thread, let's discuss this here. I'll start with my perceptions.

Perception 1a: a lot of men who post here want FMF relationships. One man, two women. Bonus if the women are into each other. Often that man is in an original married couple who are unicorn hunting.

Perception 1b: we have a quite a few members who actually have this set up (but usually V rather than triad) but a LOT more people who create accounts looking for it.

Perception 2a: women are frequently hinges in polycules, creating MFM configurations, or FFM ones. We have/have had quite a large number of members over the years who are in this configuration.

Perception 2b: we have the occasional new profile created by a woman looking for this.

N.B. Often, polycules are also more complex than three people. So there may be zigzags (multiple hinges) or stars in a polycule.

Possible reasons that MFM or MFF *seems* more common than FMF (my observations over the last 10 years).

- Women are more likely to sustain being a hinge than men are. Men want to be hinges but women are more likely to be able to develop two or more longer term relationships.

- It can be difficult for men to find women who agree to sharing him with another. Since a large number of our posters are from the US, given long standing sociopolitical factors, women are vulnerable (especially financially) when a relationship ends, so the idea of sharing is not just an emotional challenge, it's potentially literally life or death.

- Participating in forums like this (or Reddit) is more common among women.

- Personal bias since I'm in a zigzag and am both a leg and a hinge but I tend to subconsciously notice more successful V posts with women as hinges.

What have others noticed in the discourses both here and on the wider web regarding buildable and sustainable polycule configurations?

Thanks for sharing your observations—this matches a lot of what I’ve seen as well. I’d add a few personal thoughts based on my experience and what I’ve noticed in real-life situations.

For me, it often seems easier for a serious couple to find a third partner when either the guy is genuinely “worth it” and knows how to communicate and connect, or the girl in the couple has the social ability to meet others and create connections.

I personally know a girl who has successfully found a few partners for her couple, just because she was taking the lead in the search, rather than the guy. It seems that having someone actively engaged in reaching out, and being thoughtful about compatibility and boundaries, can make a huge difference.

I also agree with your points about women being more likely to sustain hinge positions in polycules. From what I’ve observed, men often want to be the hinge, but struggle to maintain multiple long-term connections, whereas women in these roles often have more experience or emotional bandwidth for sustaining multiple relationships. It’s definitely interesting to think about how these dynamics show up both online and in real life.

I’m curious if you’ve noticed similar patterns in terms of who tends to take the lead when forming these relationships?

 

[davidisfun67]

Thank you all, this is great information. And gives me hope to keep trying and looking for the perfect combination.

 

[Maur]

I can't speak for FMF, nor for MF+F, but I know MFM works for me.

I've been in both, haven't noticed much of a difference. Or rather, not exactly Vees, but zigzags, which I think are much more common.

The only thing that's as rare as unicorn is FMM. Never seen it in the wild.

Edit: lol, the newest thread in the section looking for people is exactly an FM(M) thing. I should eat my hat, I guess.

 

[nks]

Interesting thread. I was in an FMF and it was very satisfying but was a short-term thing. We all got separated by distance, and long-term the whole was perhaps not too stable. The girls liked each other, but clearly one of the girls (A) had much more affection towards the other (B) than the other way round. She was bisexual and handled polyamory well. B had a strong emotional attachment to A, but long-term she wanted a male partner (mono) outside the triad.

Ideally, MFM sounds better to me. Sexually more stable, I think. For me, much better to know that my partner has more opportunities to get satisfied.

But I wonder how many women can truly be poly vs. "I just want someone else/new," and just stick to a husband for financial, etc., reasons. Is there any thread/data on male/female tendencies for being able to love more than two partners and be happy for your partner having another mate?

As for MMM, my gay friends are always trying to set one up. I don't know about FFF, because I don't have close lesbian friends whom we discuss relationships with.

 

[acuri ousman]

Can you prove this one? I know "women are more emotional than men" is something that is frequently stated, but i'm gonna go ahead and ask you to please link me to a study or an article that makes this claim and then provides proof to back it up because I do not believe this initial premise is true.

To answer the original question, I find most people's confusion comes from the difficulty in not extrapolating from their own limited, anecdotal experiences. Most folks have never questioned if their "gut" is actually accurate and 99 times out of 100, it's not. Also, the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Evie, we don't actually have any sort of data for this site, do we? We could do a survey! I'd love to actually do some science about this.

This is an over generalisation, right. Actually, depending on cultural, geographical, religious, spiritual environment - lets wrap it up and claim it to be contextual - the expression of feelings may change.

What is normally observed and probably referred to when people talk about „men not having feelings“ is the lack of expression of feeling. We can not know anyones feelings unless we see how they are expressed or unless the individual shares the experience of a feeling.

Nevertheless, what may be true for a western society like the French, the British, the US is that at a certain time in a certain milieu especially men were trained to be contained and not become easily tempered. This was later understood as having a good character. And even later adopted by the military where discipline was and still is the focus. However, I assume that this „cultivation“ mystified itself up to a degree where individuals assume that men are not having emotions.

Unfortunately, in many ways men are not able to relate to the full scope of feelings from my experience. Often one or two feelings become coping mechanisms for other feelings. For example anger is felt though there is a hurt or a sadness or a hopelessness.

 

[New2polydude]

It is interesting to read such a structured approach to this topic...I fell into this kind of thinking...when I was 10, I read many of my friend's mother's books while having sleep overs at his house. All of her books were about non-traditional roles in sex, i.e. the initiator, having a husband but still visiting other men at will, or even 2 at a time. Very original for the 70's! For better or worse, I grew up thinking that it was OK for women to be so open, and that it was actually a good thing to look for in a spouse - maybe that is why I have not married? Also, from a practical point of view, it seems (maybe I am wrong) that women can physically have sex for longer times than a man can produce for...so it has always seemed practical that one woman should have 2 (or more) men. In all cases, the woman was the dominant one, and it was always mfm. I am a little curious about mmf, but am afraid it would make things more complicated to start....but...I am sure that I am naive.

 

[New2polydude]

...but yes, I am also into the relational side of multiple partners, not just the physical...maybe the relational side is becoming more important.