I want to make it clear that I do not support polyamory as a lifestyle, especially for women. I have been involved in the polyamorous community for over a decade, and i’ve seen so much more toxicity and abuse than anyone in the community would like to admit. Polyamory for the most part is just an excuse to increase sexual availability of women to men, which is why so many relationship formats involved multiple women and one man. And I know when FDS talks about polyamory, people tend to jump on us and say we don’t know what we’re talking about - I actually divested myself from that community because of the backlash I got for my relationship format. I was involved with two men and we did not date outside of each other (the men did not date one another).

I was told that I’m stifling the men, that they couldn’t possibly be happy (they were), that I was greedy, selfish, there’s no way they could actually be ok with that. (Funny how when it’s a man with a harem, no one cares about the women’s comfort.) As an aside, the only funny comment I received was from an anti polyamorous woman who asked me why I would willingly want to take on double the share of emotional labor and housework - a criticism I actually have seen in other relationship formats like that - I saw a post on a subreddit from a woman who bought a house with her two male partners who....literally could not contribute whatsoever to the fixing up of the house. She literally had to do everything because she chose to buy a house with two man children who couldn’t even schedule a flooring quote, let alone lay tile on their own.

So for women in the polyamorous scene - is this what you want? a slow, torturous descent into mental illness because you’re being slowly gaslit out of your natural emotional reactions like jealousy or wanting security or having boundaries? or do you want to end up taking on essentially multiple man children who will probably just use you up and move on once they get bored?

I want again to reiterate that my situation was an extreme exception that ended up amicably working out for the time that it did, and that it’s literally a miracle I got out of that scene without an abuser or an STD. largely the entire scene is literally just a bunch of abusive people with no boundaries trying to force their partners to accept that they treat everyone like sex objects. I was repeatedly told i was frigid or unavailable because i would not sleep with people on the first date, or agree to/talk about sexual boundaries before even meeting someone offline!! If someone says you need to “work through” your jealousy or that asking a partner to get STD tested is being controlling, please sis, run.