‘Tolyamorous’ Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Cheating
“Tolyamorous” is a term Dan Savage coined that’s not polyamory, but the uneasy acceptance of cheating in your relationship.
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In “I Can’t Even…” news, we have a new euphemism for cheating: “Tolyamory.”
At least it’s new to me. (Thanks Chump Nation for the many articles.) Dan Savage introduced the term in his Savage Lovecast. It’s a portmanteau of polyamory and tolerance. Which is a bit of Orwellian dipshittery, as polyamorous relationships are open and consensual, and cheating is not. But hey chumps, you were all in on it! And you’re cool, right?
The NY Post, arbiter of tasty clickbait reports in “What is tolyamory? How couples keep cheating on the down low.”
As explained by relationship columnist and podcaster Dan Savage, being “tolyamorous” means that a person is “willing to turn a blind eye to a lap dance or a brief affair after years of marriage.” In the process, they instead “focus on all the ways their spouse demonstrates their commitment and shows their love” to somehow make the cheating “tolerable,” he says.
“These people aren’t fools or dupes. They’re not to be pitied — they know what they signed up for and long ago made peace with what they got,” Savage said on an episode of his podcast. “They’re willing to put up with it — a certain amount of it — reconciled to it, willing to tolerate it. They are, in a word, tolyamorous.”
Yum, yum. I pronounce this tolyamorous shit sandwich delicious! Or tolerably okay. But, I’ve made peace with the power imbalance because the FW always comes home to me. (Shuffle, shuffle, bow, scrape…) I’m the one FW really loves!
The London Times, not to be outdone, piles on in The Rise of the Tolyamorous Marriage.
What you might not have come across is “tolyamory”. This new term — recently coined in America, and a portmanteau of “tolerate” and “polyamory” — refers to an age-old situation where one partner tacitly consents to the other having a sexual relationship or flirtation with someone else. It’s an agreement, but it’s unspoken.
This arrangement is not uncommon with long-term couples. “It’s turning a blind eye, even though that’s not your first choice,” says Dr Marie Thouin, a relationship coach and the author of What Is Compersion?, a forthcoming book on nonmonogamy. “The couple present as monogamous, but one of them is tolerating their partner’s extracurricular sexual activities.
“I think tolyamory might be the most common form of non-monogamy out there.”
Hey, you can trust the deep data analytics of a relationship coach. (Rising? Got numbers?) But yes, cake eating is common. So is the not-so-subtle blameshift that chumps were in the know.
You didn’t meet their needs.
Lucy Beresford, the psychotherapist who gave the popular TEDx talk Infidelity: To Stay or Go?, agrees that tolyamory doesn’t have to be the worst thing for a long-term relationship.
“I think relationships are changing a lot, especially as we all live longer, and part of that is thinking about whether you can realistically imagine being with the same person exclusively for decades,” she says. “I think many of us are recognising that one person can’t meet all of our needs. For some couples that may mean that you have a partner who has a ‘close friendship’ with their tennis instructor — but what does that do for you? Is your partner happier in domestic life? It could work both ways. You might think, ‘I, too, could have a dalliance and that enables me to be a better spouse or parent, because I’m not annoyed that my needs are unheard.’”
Chlamydia? Not the worst thing! If it enables your FW to be a better parent or partner, what’s a few abnormal Pap smears?
The important takeaway is — you weren’t hearing their needs. To be multiple orifices. And different people. Get on that.
This is all the same old Reconciliation Industrial Complex retread of cheating makes a marriage stronger.
My problems with “tolyamory”:
It’s still an abusive power imbalance.
Tolyabusive doesn’t have the same ring to it. You’re okay with your partner fucking around, or will tolerate it, because you have sunk costs. Children, mortgages, misplaced love, whatever. Noticeably absent from this sales pitch is consent and mutuality. If the chump takes an extracurricular lover, is Mr. or Ms. Tolyamorous going to “focus on all the ways their spouse demonstrates their commitment and shows their love”? Based on reading a few gazillion stories here, I think the FW is going to resent that their spouse appliance is malfunctioning. Someone has to keep the home fires burning.
This is a swell arrangement for one doing the screwing around. It’s not so great to be the concession prize.
Tolyamory assumes the relationship stays intact.
Because they’re out there meeting their needs! And they’ll be so grateful that you loosened the oppressive bonds of monogamy and let them out of captivity that they’ll recommit with greater ardor! Ask a few million of us how that worked out for us. FWs move the happiness goal posts. And Schmoopies have been known to win a pick-me dance or two.
Also, it’s narcissistic to assume you’re such a prize that chump-o wants you. You just offer so much! All those other ways you demonstrate commitment… by doing what? Paying the mortgage? Paint me skeptical.
It sends the message that being cheated on isn’t such a big deal.
I don’t know why you’re so traumatized and upset by my hooker habit. Don’t I demonstrate love? Don’t I pay the bills and come home to you and the kids? So what if I have a secret sexual basement? You’ve seen the door! You’ve walked down a few stairs and smelled musty odors. You don’t want to know what’s down there. Trust me on this.
Trust me! To wear a condom, to not abandon the kids, blow the 401K on sex workers. Stop with all the questions. A relationship coach told me it’s okay. Everyone is doing it. Shut up and eat the shit sandwich.
This feels like a game of “Stupid Excuse Wack-A-Mole”…no sooner do normal people dispel a ridiculous excuse for cheating, they come up with more excuses.
I agree with CL on every point.
The people who try to run and control our culture are PIGS.
They can dress it up with all of the pretty names – and named with freshly made up words at that – as much as they like, it’s still Cheating plain and simple. And, while I’m at it, while the cheating might be tolerated by the Chump (likely as not because they lack the ability to have the Cheater stop it), it almost certainly isn’t agreed with, consented to or approved of.
Cheating is abuse …. and this is just abuse dressed up with a pretty new name.
LFTT
I have no tolerance for any of the euphemisms employed by people to.justify the abuse of their spouse whether it is physical abuse or adultery, an.old fashioned word with very strong negative connotation. When my fuckwit attempted to minimize her fucking around on me with assorted pieces of shit other men by calling the betrayal ” escapades”_ ” flings” and ” time out” from our marriage, I told her no, you betrayed me and committed a adultery and no amount of parsing self exculpatory language with ever rectify what you did or repair the complete utter destruction of our relationship. There really is no coming back from adultery and the only solution in the end is divorce.
That’s why it’s the only reason the Judeo Christian Bible allows for divorce because in that belief system (and I agree with this myself) physical union IS the basis for the marriage bond. When you break the physical union by having sex with other people, you HAVE broken the essence of the marriage bond. The essence IS physical. Man and woman become one, that is I think something of a reality because our fusion creates children but also is perhaps what we may strive for in sex. It’s the only thing we do aside from pregnancy where we physically bond with someone else.
The sexual union between committed partners in marriage in my opinion is both a sacred and transcendental bond which when ruptured by the betrayal of adultery is an act.of grievous harm, a supremely destructive and malicious act from which there is little or no chance of recovery. I realized that I would never again be able to trust.my wife, and the only logical response is complete disconnection, an end to all contact and divorce.
“ It’s an agreement, but it’s unspoken. “
I am guessing in most cases it is unspoken by the cheater, and the chump knows nothing about it” That’s the thing about cheating con artists, it is all about them and others rights don’t matter.
Unspoken as in “If chump speaks about it, there will be hell to pay.”
The fuckwits, the sociopaths, the narcissists, the disordered keep chipping away to “normalize” bad & abusive behaviour. Once you see it, you see it.
When I was first cheated on, after nearly 30 years of marriage, he directed me to Savage so I could learn about “monogamish” and polyamory to let me know that I was sooo old fashioned with my desire for him to keep his marriage vows and be faithful. “Nobody does that anymore”, he said, “you’re sitting on your moral high ground”, he said. He could love more than one person at a time, he said, as he wanted to bring his “soulmate” home to meet me. “You’d like her too”, he said. That wasn’t going to work for me, not at all, so I initiated divorce and consequences and he ran away to re-live his teenage angst (he’s in his 60s). I’ve been 100% no contact for a few years so I don’t know how that all worked out for him, but reading about Dan Savage reminded me about those first dark days. I put Savage in the same category as Perel (he also quoted her.)
And would he have allowed YOU to do the same thing? To have your own soulmates other than him? Was that something he discussed? It always seems to work one way in practice from what I can see.
Ah, yes, just what I want in a marriage — to hold my nose and look the other way. Good times!
Divorced women age 63 and higher have a 27% poverty rate.
Tolerating the intolerable is not exercising a choice. It’s a recognition of the cost of dignity. You can’t clean it up by pretending women are “consenting”.
Well said, walkbymyself.
Exactly. It’s like saying low wage workers in the third world are “choosing” to tolerate terrible working conditions, when the only other choice is starvation. In order to choose, you must have another viable option.
Yep, I am reluctant to be too judge about a woman in her golden years staying in a cheating marriage. It is easy for others to say, oh you will be better off. Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. If the pair are fairly well off and there is not a huge amount of debt, then I would agree she would likely be better off to take her half, and even less sometimes to get away. But for those not in that situation, it is case by case and they have to live with the results. It is an awful position to be in.
I think there are exceptions of course but for the most part men in the later years don’t have the ability they had in youth. Between two loving partners this is not an issue and there are lots of work arounds.
For a an older guy hunting strange because for a short time strange can bring back the stiffer junk, if you are financially able, get the hell out of dodge and let him share his floppy disc with a young woman who is, lets be honest getting paid for it, one way or another.
Viagra can only do so much, and it causes sinus issues, cardiovascular disease, and way higher blood pressure, headache, diarrhea and others. Sexy.
I agree, Susie Lee; many older women don’t have the financial and family safety nets younger women might. One woman I worked with said that once her parents passed, she didn’t have anywhere to go or family to help. The sad thing is, Staying isn’t always safe either with STDs, A spouse who will continue to drain accounts, and an increased risk of violence.
Those who get out are Mighty, but I won’t judge a woman who looks at both options’ cold, hard facts and has to choose the one that lets her survive, keep her home, and hopefully outlive the bastard. It’s an awful place to be in for a FuckWit’s fantasy life.
So I wake up Chridtmas morning and run down to look under the tree! 4 boxes all for me, some big, some small. I open#1..why it’s Christmas socks!! Oh but here’s another ..it’s a giant box…why it’s Christmas socks but a different color…so #3 and 4 with pretty bows..all Christmas socks. Same with flavors of cheating..any name you put on it, whether the Chump is groomed, beaten,coerced, scared into obedience or just plain ignorant of the depths of the abuse…. is just the same Christmas socks in a different box. Remember the French Canadian story where Americans are just uptight where as the French have class to tolerate abuse? It hurts my Chump heart as I review what horrible behavior I endured because I was so ” resilient and strong!! I hope we are here for all those volunteer chumps who will see one day how they allowed themselves to be kept as property by entitled and arrogant kings/ queens.It feels so much better to be free. Freedom from chumpdom at ANY COST.
I’m struggling with a friendship right now with someone who doesn’t see herself as an affair partner because the relationship of her partner is polyamorous. The two of them are keeping their relationship secret from the original partner, which is the main problem, in my book.
She feels he is being abused by the original partner and doesn’t see anything wrong with maintaining a friendship with him….
Where it falls apart is that he is truly being abused by his Partner; he needs resources and therapy to end the relationship. He doesn’t need another sex partner.
Polyrelationships are supposed to be consensual; if someone isn’t in a safe relationship, they are not in a good place to start a new one for several reasons. You are right, your friend has either fallen for some deep nonsense or is deluding herself.
See, this is why they are all full of shit. If the relationship is polyamorous….why is this being kept a secret? Because polyamorous really does’t work for 99.9% of people, it’s a fiction to allow people to cheat. If they are truly polyamorous, they should just be able to talk this out and come to agreements….but….this is just plain old cheating.
It’s not polyamory unless all partners are aware of and giving implicit or explicit consent to the sexual activity of the others. If one person doesn’t know, it’s plain old garden variety cheating/infidelity.
I so agree! This is why I’m feeling the way I am about this friendship. I had this conversation with her, to which she replied “I disagree, fwiw. Abused people act differently,” as if I have no experience in that department.
And, reading all the comments under my original post, I feel the need to clarify that I am not involved in this relationship in any way other than having a friendship with Partner C. Partners A and B were together first, then B started a sexual relationship with C without telling A.
I dipped my toe into the dating pool a couple months ago, and when the person told me she wanted to explore polyamory I noped out of the relationship. Respect to ethical non-monogamy, and it’s 100% not for me.
There’s always an excuse for cheating, they always look for an out. I come from a pretty horrible FOO experience and abused people or neglected people whatever don’t act differently. That’s just an excuse. I hate to say this but you might have to decide if you want to stay close friends with this person or start putting them at a distance. Someone who engages in unethical behavior is an unethical person and you’re gonna see that in other ways, possibly involving you. At any rate, this is making you uncomfortable and I would just be honest with this person and tell them what you think, as you did with us. Just ask them this….if I told the partner of this person you’re seeing about what you’re doing now….what would happen? What would your response be? That would be interesting to see.
Everything Mehitable said.
If anything, I would feel it is unethical to start a sexual relationship with someone being actively abused, especially if they rely on you for support. Victims can be vulnerable and desperate to escape if they are unhealthy enough to try and get into another relationship as a means to get housing or support.
It’s on Friend to say, “This isn’t a good situation for either of us until you are single and have had time to heal. I can help you move out/get a therapist/talk to a counselor instead.”
This is purely hypothetical, of course; I think the guy and Friend are full of it.
How is the original partner abusing your friend? And if that’s the case, why on earth would you do something (get involved with *their* partner) which would give you greater proximity to said “abusive” person?
She feels the original partner is abusive toward her partner, not necessarily to my friend. Original partner is a drug addict and very problematic, but it doesn’t justify my friend and her partner doing what they are doing.
I essentially had that conversation with her and am stepping back from the friendship. It’s just really frustrating.
Unless you know the original partner, you may be being told a convenient lie…like the ex-wife is crazy or bullshit like that. My guess is your friend is lying to excuse/cover up what’s going on. And adding an affair on top of abuse….does not help. It just makes the situation even more potentially explosive.
If none of you are communicating with the original partner, assume everything you know about them is a lie. They are probably not polyamorous. They are probably not crazy/abusive/on drugs. They probably know absolutely nothing about the entire shitshow.
This is exactly what I think. All lies. My wife, ex-husband, whatever….is CRAZEEEEEEEE!
The shifting of names, endless columns of ‘everyone is doing it’ lemming type musings and other rubbish suggests society is desperately pouring glitter on this turd – but that turd keeps finding it’s way out and being smelled by those that know it’s abuse with absolutely no love involved at all.
Condoning and encouraging abuse- the pinnacle of human evolution of modern society. Yay.
The cruelty and mental abuse involved is staggering! I have a friend, another male chump who has internalized this toxic message of acceptance that adultery is rampant and inevitable so he decided to have a revenge affair before divorcing his wife and of course only felt worse when he began to realize how his behavior had hurt another chumped. husband and solved.nothing.
Yes… there’s no ‘evening the score’ in this game.
It’s a terrible mindset and just passes on the abuse.
It seems to me that infidelity is the last bastion where victim blaming and excuse making resides. Just because the wounds are psychic and not visible, doesn’t make it right or up for redefinitions. Heck, an STD makes the wounds visible.
The harms are physical, emotional, financial, existential – I can’t think of anything that can blow up a person’s life so thoroughly outside of a natural disaster or sudden death of a loved one.
I believe there are also physical wounds, but again no scars. In my case I am sure it is when my first issues with Type 2 diabetes started. Also about one year after Dday, I started losing hair in large volumes. It horrified me, I thought I was going to go bald.
It took a while but most (though not all) of it grew back, if I had not had naturally thick hair; I likely would have been left with visible thinning.
The role of stress in so many immune diseases is so under-rated. I think it’s a major factor.
It’s just another flavor of the day to those of us in Chump Nation, but OH MY! They’re entitled to what they want, so deal with it, confused partner.
I’m glad that I drew the hard line and said, “No more.”
The longer I remain a survivor of infidelity, the more I realize the rationale these idiots use is the same an 8 year old will try to use to get out of trouble.
“Well, it’s technically cheating-but I dropped hints and it doesn’t count if they don’t know the particulars…”
Or, my favorite,
“They knew and they didn’t say anything.”
Or something.
I love that thinking error-“it’s against the rules but I didn’t get in trouble so it’s not against the rules.”
It’s the same rationale child molesters use-“it ok to do this-you just can’t tell anybody.”
I was trained pretty soon into the “pick-me dance” phase of the last year of my relationship that regardless of whether I spoke up or not that my fuckwit did not particularly care and was going to do what she was going to do anyway and probably just lie about it if caught.
When she pitched the open relationship(which she opened up anyway-“no” apparently doesn’t count if it isn’t her) I told her that the servant of two masters ends up hating one and loving the other. She disagreed. And then proceeded to hate me and love Schmoopie.
Relationships are about compromise and sacrifice. When only one person compromises and sacrifices, it breaks things-usually that person’s heart. Myself and probably everybody reading this had to come to terms with there being things that would no longer be possible or that they would have liked but “thems the breaks.” The relationship/marriage/whatnot was more important. The other person’s needs have to preclude “wants.”
Only to be treated like that. Makes the whole thing that much more frustrating and angering 10 months out. Deep down I’d love if somebody cleaned up after me and let me did whatever I want, too. But sadly I live in a place called “reality” where I am accountable for my actions.
I bet there are people out there that are totally OK with this sort of thing. I am not one of them.
(You can tell I just stormed out of a meeting pissed off, huh?)
Happiest of Juneteenth to all!
“I dropped hints”
I now see SO MANY times when he dropped hints and I was so absolutely convinced that he would never do such a thing, I’m sure he saw me as a complete idiot.
He also said “we had an understanding” since I was “cheating too” (never ever ever).
Don’t you just hate that? Mine loved her “technicalities”-really she was just lazy and probably spent more energy figuring out the absolute bare minimum to get credit rather than just doing stuff. During D-Day mine was like “you know I told you that you could wander if you wanted to on (two specific occasions)”. That part is accurate and should have been a red flag in retrospect-it wasn’t love, it was “in case I need leverage later”. Granted I always replied with “you know I would never.” Which I didn’t.
“But sadly I live in a place called “reality” where I am accountable for my actions.”
That’s not sad, that’s actually a prescription for a happy, healthy life. Doing what you like with no regard for the consequences might be fun for a hot minute, then boredom and frustration would inevitably set in. You’d get bored with what you have and frustration when what you wanted next was out of reach. Have you ever noticed the most spoiled kids are always the crankiest?
Fuckwits can’t be content with what they have, no matter how good it is. That’s a miserable way to live.
Oh totally agree. I was trying to be ironic; I guess it was lost in my “post meeting anger bile.”
Back here in the real world, there’s really no such thing as an unspoken agreement. If the chump finds out, the cheater doesn’t know the chump knows he/she is cheating without a conversation about it. Having a conversation about it is the only way an agreement can be made. Agreements are between two or more people, not between one person and his/her better sense.
So if you are tolerating, but you haven’t talked about it, there is no agreement at all, just a cheater blithely doing his/her thing, unaware of being busted, and a chump too afraid to let on that he/she knows.
Dan Savage is not very bright and seems narcissistic. He acts like an attention seeking fool when he’s on talk shows and the vibe coming off him is downright creepy. He makes my skin crawl.
In the early days he was known to write letters for his “advice” column himself, making them as outrageous as possible to garner more attention. That’s how he made it to where he is. He cheated. Gee, what a surprise.
I’d be curious to know what Savage’s partners think of him. My guess is……..not much.
Just another excuse he used to tell me everyone was doing it, “look, they have a name for it!” and he was just being “honest”. I said, but I didn’t know you were cheating for months and months, so how are you just NOW claiming to be honest? Crickets. Crickets. I had to threaten him with a RO after the divorce. I guess he didn’t think there would ever be consequences. He should write a letter to Savage about that…
“especially as we all live longer, and part of that is thinking about whether you can realistically imagine being with the same person exclusively for decades,” she says. “I think many of us are recognising that one person can’t meet all of our needs.”
WANTS, not needs, and they don’t all have to be met, FFS. Only children think their every want should be met. These people need to grow the fuck up.
And who but a narcissist expects to have “all their needs met” by someone else. Presenting “wants” as “needs” is part of the problem.
One of the biggest true-ist things in life is that YOU CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING. You have to make choices based on where you want to end up – how you want to end up. Every choice you make takes you to a certain end – we all have detours forced on us or things we don’t figure out right. If you choose to have multiple partners, you are not going to have depth in a relationship. If you want depth in a relationship, you need to eschew multiple partners. It is what it is, you can’t have EVERYTHING, you have to make choices. To choose means you pick a path and leave some things behind and they might be things you would want or like or desire, but there are other things you want MORE that are going to define what you want to have in the end.
Exactly OHFFS. The definition of terms is the source of this mindfuckery.
Needs vs wants is something the entitled asshats want to parse. No one died from not having sex. Ergo it’s a want not a need. See: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Agreement is by definition where people are in accord on terms and conditions of a situation. That means they know and it is spoken about. Wedding vows as an example of agreement. Ergo not unspoken / reverse engineered or bullied into technically a “non-agreement” due to one party unilaterally breaking the original agreement and recasting it with a new word.
If you don’t agree / consent to the new situation and it is also harmful to you?
Nope that’s just abuse.
What happens is that people tolerate bad behaviour for all sorts of reasons. Everyone gets used to the bad behaviour. The bad behaviour becomes worse behaviour which people tolerate again, because they’ve got used to tolerating the worse behaviour. Which becomes the norm, and the worse behaviour becomes even worse. And so it goes. I really think that giving stupid names to bad behaviour is part of the pattern. It’s putting the frog into the pan of cold water and slowly heating it up until the frog dies without realising it was being killed.
My ex was a big fan of Dan, and I did like some of his positions, about “It gets better” and being GGG (good, giving, game) in a relationship. Needless to say, his positions on monogamy have soured me somewhat on him, and this latest tripe further affirms that he is no friend of us chumps.
Looking back, I can see that my ex may have taken some comfort and thought that she had valid reasons to cheat from some of Dan’s “advice”, about it okay to have a “monogamish” relationship, or that you need to do what makes you happy and whole.
To the best of my recollection, nowhere in any of his advice is the idea that lying and cheating is bad. and that fostering healthy communication and respect is important, even more so with ENM open relationships. Feeling entitled and being selfish seems to be more encouraged and it’s hugely disappointing to see that from him now.
ENM — Ethical Non Monogamy. Emphasis on the “E”.
Tolyamory is an ethics free zone.
Cheating is a far more accurate description and, bonus, the cheaters really hate it.
My head blew up reading “tacit consent.” Is there a term for something worse than an oxymoron? Oxy-imbicle? Oxy-this-is-so-stupid-I-could-puke?
Something like that.
All of us who heard, “I thought you knew!” are going to have a hard time keeping our coffee down today.
Our Fws must be related NotAnymore. I got “You should have known” on DDay.
Blaming me for not knowing about his secret sexual basement that he kept so hidden. So in the Cheater’s delusional mind then — logically extending this — I’m Tolyamorish?
No. I’m not. I’m divorced.
Savanah’s is a total FW — so disdainful of unwitting partners or chumps:
“These people aren’t fools or dupes. They’re not to be pitied — they know what they signed up for and long ago made peace with what they got,” Savage said on an episode of his podcast. “They’re willing to put up with it — a certain amount of it — reconciled to it, willing to tolerate it. They are, in a word, tolyamorous.”
You are a fool if someone fools you. You are duped if someone deceives you. Nice bit of sophistry by Savage. A chump / fool or duped person does NOT know what they “signed up for” if their partner cheats and if they keep it hidden. That’s the point: there is no agreement that is not agreed / committed to in advance.
What “they” signed up for is ethical monogamy — not lies, bullying, psychological harm, enforced domestic slavery and financial endangerment. That’s abuse. Nothing tolerable about it. Even if someone appears to tolerate it, it changes nothing — it is abuse.
DAN SAVAGE IS TALKING ABOUT HIMSELF AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS. I think we have to be aware of this….he is describing his own life and his own relationships and if we could talk to his partners….I bet they would have a VERY DIFFERENT VIEW of what Dan does and how it affected them and what they agreed to. Dan is full of shit.
Savage — thanks autocorrect 🙄
I was in my local fruit and vege shop one day about a year ago. A woman there was in the emotionally vomiting stage, telling the owner about how her marriage had just ended. She was a stranger but her voice carried and I felt I had to go and promise her that she would get through this. Turns out she was a chump too. We stood there in that shop and swapped stories and cried. I told her about Chump Lady (Hi Sharon, if you’re here!). Anyway, she could have been described as tolyamorous (ugh, awful word for an awful concept). She’d been pushed into accepting the presence of an other woman for a time to try and keep the marriage together. It hadn’t worked, and eventually he’d run off. She was devastated.
Coercion is not consent. And no amount of fancy portmanteaus can make it so.
Oh, this is a good one. Just how DESPERATE are you to stay in a relationship where you share your “loved one” with other people? How many other people and what kind and where and how much money do they spend and how much time? Well…..are you really going to know or are all those part of the Tolyamory? What you don’t know won’t hurt you until you find out how many diseases you have, or how much I spent, or that I’m leaving you for Porky, or the kids are gonna have a half sibling! or I can’t go with you to whatever because I need to be there for Porky….or one of the other 7 Dwarves. You could try to put parameters around this “activity” but….you know they’re not gonna respect any boundaries. YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!!! And you can fuck around too….well….theoretically. LOLOLOL….just propose that and see how far that goes.
Let’s ask Tom Brady and Giselle about ignoring the Yoga trainer in the room. See….Tom needed to be more broadminded and he could still be sharing Giselle with that Yoga trainer! And maybe the pool boy!
What a romantic way to live! How much trust you must have in each other to use condoms ALL THE TIME. To keep coming on home even when you’re in a “fog”. Here’s the reality….relationships like anything else only are as good as the energy you put into them. If you put the energy into someone else….if you bring in a third party….YOUR SPOUSE IS USUALLY GOING TO NOTICE because you’re not putting the energy into them or the family or your lives together. Most of the people here knew on some level that something was wrong – which turned out to be someone else, sometimes with a multiplier force. That’s because the energy either wasn’t there at all because it was going elsewhere….or it turned bad for you because they were trying to cover it up. Yeah, people do get bored over time but…if you get that bored….get a divorce. Because your marriage is not going to have the necessary energy to sustain a partnership and you are just gonna become roommates who maybe look after some kids and a dog and maybe fuck once in a while when there’s nothing better. And that’s what happens in practice. I’VE SEEN IT IN COUPLES I KNOW who try this open marriage or don’t tell me bullshit. Their marriage dies and just becomes a dim memory like a dead rose.
Don’t know about you folks but I don’t see any sense in preserving that. It’s not what I want out of a relationship. Maybe if I were a Queen of England and I wanted to keep the Crown, I’d put up with it. But we see….Princess Diana didn’t. Even a Princess doesn’t want this bullshit. PEOPLE NEED TO DO BETTER and this shit needs to stop being encouraged. It makes us lesser beings and destroys families and communities ultimately.
BTW….what the hell is wrong with divorce if you’ve reached this point in your relationship? Why preserve a broken marriage at all costs? I don’t understand the desperation for pretending that you’re married when you really just a have a roommate and maybe someone to drive the kids somewhere. Why is that worth keeping? Why not just be honest and independent and try for something……better?
The reality is….if you agree to something like this as Dan Savage apparently did in his relationship, what you have is an OPEN RELATIONSHIP. You may or may not agree to open it on both sides, that’s up to you, but when you know at least one of you is seeing other people clandestinely…or openly but maybe leaving out the “sex” part….that is an open relationship. If you want to live like that, that’s your option, but PLEASE….be honest about it. People have had “arrangements”, which is what they used to call it, for centuries. These were NOT happy marriages, they were usually among upper classes, or people who needed the money or the land or whatever. Maybe we can get a Ouija board and ask all those Kennedy women how they loved their DontellAmorys with their husbands and assorted actresses and secretaries. I hope we’ve moved beyond that era of chattel marriage for both sexes.
True, but it is only an open marriage if both sides are open. If it is one sided, it is simply an arrangement with a power imbalance.
Most cheaters only want themselves to take of the forbidden fruit, not their spouses. After all they are the prize.
That’s true, but based on what Savage seems to be saying, he’s saying that both sides DO know, the active cheater and the Chump who actually does know but looks away. Whatever, LOL, it ain’t gonna work. I’m sure Savage probably has great relationships himself.
I just want to be VERY explicit about this. DAN SAVAGE IS TALKING ABOUT HIMSELF AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS. This is obviously what HE has done in his relationships and how he has treated HIS partners. I would love to get a group of his partners together at a bar or something and see what THEY have to say about this tolamory or whatever he calls it bullshit, because my guess is they would say he’s just a common, garden variety cheater with a column where he can lie to a much larger group of humans.
Ugh, cheaters will jump through hoops to evade accountability and justify their abuse.
I once asked the dipshit why he hadn’t told me he had a fiancee. I wouldn’t have gone near him with a ten foot pole if I’d known. His response? “You didn’t ask.”
No shit, Sherlock. The presumption when you’re dating someone is that they’re single and available!
Can we please bury the idea that other people should have to “meet our needs”? JFC. The very idea that another person should “meet our needs” is completely dehumanizing. “Sex” is not a “need” that you are “entitled” to, and other humans are not put on earth for the purpose of providing you with orgasms. God, I just want to curse and kick something when I hear that garbage phrase.
I’m glad ChumpLady addressed this as someone needs to be the voice of reason presenting the other side to all this nonsense.
But it’s exhausting.
Tolyamory? SERIOUSLY????
It’s literally just cheating where the chump doesn’t leave. What on earth are they trying to sell us now? We don’t need a special name for that. And having a special name doesn’t make it any less cheating.
People get cheated on, and they all respond differently depending on the person and their situation.
A chumps reaction to cheating doesn’t CHANGE the fact that adultery occurred. Also as a chump that took too long to leave, I can say with authority that I wasn’t tolerating it. It was brutal. I was scared and hurt and suicidal. My reasons for staying were not healthy. (I recognize that some chumps may stay and it could be for more strategic and practical reasons. I’m not judging them and saying their behavior is unhealthy. Mine was for sure. But I think that all chumps would leave if doing so was not going to cause other issues. )
This old narrative. Women usually turn a blind eye because of economics. Hasnt changed much over the years. They dont want to live in poverty. Even now with women working, its hard to make ends meet with cost of housing, cars, food, need for childcare, ect. Men too its economics, and wanting to keep the family together.
People tolerating! Yes you tolerate, but are you happy? Does it fill you with love peace and joy knowing your spouse is fing another? Making the best of a situation? Sucking it up? Wow what a life!
Thats why I like CL asking if this relationship is acceptable to you?
The other aspect is the cheater cheating in other aspects of their life. They are not noble people. They do other nefarious things. Financial abuse, lying, using marital funds, missing important kids functions, like plays and sporting events, birthday parties.
Its taking away from the kids too. Its a family affair really. And eventually kids figure it out and it damages their relationships with their parents and with future partners. Its the gift that keeps on giving.
The best is the happiness narrative. Cheaters saying they deserve to be happy and to have their “needs” (for fucking strange) met. No concern for meeting the needs or their children or the chump appliance. No interest in making their children or chumps happy. Maybe we would like our cheaters to not rage, slam on brakes when driving, damage property, be nice, kind, engaged.
Thank god to CL for calling BS on the entire narrative, which is pushed by the patriarchy.