Realized I intended to talk a little bit about my experiences with polyamory in my post yesterday and forgot, so here we go..

So during my years trying (and failing, because, duh) to be a submissive I also dabbled in polyamory and knew a lot of poly people. I saw so many bad relationships, so many hurt feelings, so much drama. People basically using each other for sex. At one point, after just getting fed up with the whole thing, I put on my tinder "I don't date poly people." This poly dude matched me and gave me a paragraphs long lecture about how I don't know what really polyamory is after I told him I'd tried it and it wasn't for me. In one of his rants he said "I will stay in a relationship with someone as long as it is still mutually beneficial." That, to me, tells you everything you need to know about poly men.

At one point I knew a man who described himself as a "relationship anarchist." Apparently it has something to do with all of your relationships being equal, whether they're romantic, platonic, sexual, etc. I was young and we got along, so during a single phase of mine we would hook up and hang out. I had warned him from the start that non-monogamy wasn't my thing and I intended to eventually find something serious. I did after five or six months and once I told him we could remain friendly but couldn't have sex anymore I basically never heard from him again.

It's like these poly men are collecting women. And when you're a woman who is publicly identifying as kinky and/or feminist and/or liberal, they gaslight you when you don't want to be part of their harem. As if you can't be left and not want to date a man who's got three other girlfriends. Poly people love to talk about how they're oppressed and we all need to accept their choices but then won't respect others choice to be monogamous.

It's similar to how people in the BDSM community will shame someone for not wanting to engage in a specific kink. "Oh well you just have some internalized issues and aren't a real submissive because you don't like it when I call you a dumb whore during sex." These people want you to think that BDSM and polyamory are all about consent and respect but then shame you when you put up boundaries. So when young women who aren't clear yet about who they are and what they want enter these kinds of communities they get pressured into all sorts of things they regret later on.