Right and what I didn’t get a chance to get into (yet) for length’s purposes is the fact that it is, in fact, a gradient, however leaning more into one category than another. Relationships grow and change — I’m pretty sure virtually every polyamorous relationship started off as just non-committal swinging or with a sexual premise and then developed into something different. So a gradient is the proper way to look at it, meaning that some of your relationships likely fall closer in with “swinging” while other are more on the “polymory” side; hierarchical polyamory is something I’ll personally always have difficulty with, depending on how it’s played out.
I’ve seen people try to date someone, say, one day every two weeks and then demand loyalty to that relationship, while they spent the rest of their time with their main partner. This usually happens when a couple seeks out an additional female to be an additional partner and want her to be available 100% but don’t want to give in return. This is problematic, in my view. It should be noted that “feeling” isn’t a good guide for what these relationships mean; we’re going to feel strongly about anyone we have sex with, for the most part, that’s just the nature of human relationships, what matters, in my book, is our level of commitment to a person. Are we committed to continue that relationship with that person and support them through their lives, when they hit a rough patch and need our help? Or are they just someone who we see and invite into our bedrooms one in a while so we can enjoy ourselves? The latter quite obviously doesn’t quite define what it means to be in a real relationship. Like I tried to explain at the beginning, what’s the real defining feature of these relationships is our concrete actions and what we’re willing to commit to.
Like I always say, the real question of polyamory is what would happen if the sex stopped indefinitely — would the relationship still continue? If not, it was probably based on sex and hey, that’s fine, but it’s different from making meaningful commitments to people.
While you seem to have a pretty good situation going with everyone involved, a lot of people seem to throw around the word “polyamory” when they’re really just sleeping with like eight different people once a month and pretending they’re deep, long, lasting, passionate, caring relationships so they don’t look promiscuous. That’s highly dishonest, to say the least, if the people are just booty-calls.
