What are your thoughts on a bisexual person being able to marry 2 people?

[Elspeth]

U-Haul is a lesbian syndrome - presumably a womance, like a bromance, assumes the participants are nominally heterosexual .

I guess at some level I just don't understand bromances then. I think I leapt to the conclusion that they were sort of some kind of softcore gay relationship... a way of acknowledging same-sex attraction without actively labelling it gay? I haven't noticed anyone actively using "womance" as a word so far, and my own limited experience has been, with the exception of my ex, with female friends who generally would describe themselves as bi, and some who considered themselves exclusively lesbian.

There's also the fact that for all practical purposes I did bring a U-Haul to my second date with my ex. 

Not that this proves anything, just that I haven't been exposed to anything I'd describe as a womance, unless it was my ex's housemate's jealousy when I practically moved into their apartment within a few days of our starting to date.

[Elspeth]

Taking this a little more seriously on the second take, and having read the fairly serious Wikipedia article on bromances, I'd have to say, if we're talking about emotionally open friendships without overt sexual components to them, among women that seems to just describe the general nature of any close friendship between two or more women who spend lots of social time together. It doesn't need a special word because women have traditonally always had that kind of friendship as an option, while many seem to suggest it's only emerging for a younger generation of men encouraged to be a bit more emotionally available, and also tending to marry later, if they marry at all.

[Padma]

It does my heart good to see men being intimate and affectionate with each other without it being a relationship or something sexual. I actually find "bromance" as a term to be a pretty matronising put-down of passionate friendship between men.

Needless to say, I'm happy to see men being romantic together too, I just think it's very refreshing to see men allowing themselves intimacy with each other as friends in the way that women have more traditionally been allowed. As you say, for women it doesn't need a word - and enforcing a word on men is just a way of making it seem somehow noteworthy and laughable at the same time.

Men can love each other, and women can love each other, outside the confines of romance. As can men and women. (Speaking in binary terms, for convenience.) And all this terminology is to serve the apparently vital distinction made between love and "romantic love". I think the edges are a lot more artificial than we're encouraged to assume.

Sorry, it's a bit of a bee in my bonnet at the moment.

[Elspeth]

As you say, for women it doesn't need a word - and enforcing a word on men is just a way of making it seem somehow noteworthy and laughable at the same time....

Sorry, it's a bit of a bee in my bonnet at the moment.

I sympathize completely.  Maybe because I had more than a few very close friendships growing up that were given this sort of disdain and suspicion? Granted, I wasn't necessarily seeing them as homosocial relationships back then, they were just the friendships that I could find, and not particularly encouraged, since they tended to be read as vaguely sexual, or that was the impression I got back then.  Way too many people were trying to hook me up with people they thought would be "my type" while not appreciating how my reservations about being the "guy" in a relationship complicated things for me.

This all works out a lot differently among my kids and their main circle of friends, where bromance and gender ambiguity are a lot more common and accepted, even encouraged among peers, and to quite an extent among at least some of their mothers that I've gotten to know over time (their friends are mostly around the Woodstock area in the Catskills, which is about a 100 mile drive from where we live, so I wind up spending lots of weekends driving them to house parties and LARP events, and talking to the hostesses and sometimes the hosts about the social dynamics in this particularly fluid and creative group of friends.

[BlueSloth]

Nobody's mentioned compersion yet.  It's the opposite of jealousy.  It's being happy because your lovers are happy, even if they're with each other and not with you at the moment.

I think it's a fundamental part of all love, mono or poly.  It's strange that it's a much newer and lesser known word than jealousy.  Maybe because people tend to focus on the negative?  I don't know.

[Padma]

+1 for compersion.

[Elspeth]

+1 for compersion.

First time for me of hearing this term. Thanks for expanding my universe!

A little hesitant to ask this, but in polyamory circles, what seems to be the general take on things like cuckolding fantasies (or humiliation fantasies in general, at least those that center on sharing intimacy between more than two lovers, where each person may be seeking very different kinds of intimacy?

I have pretty mixed feelings about them myself, but I have to admit that (as fantasy) they could be a turn-on... where they tended to be a turn off was in the in-built assumption that someone who was sharing a lover and getting joy from their lover's pleasure (and being involved in that pleasure intimately, perhaps, in other ways) were not things that I felt would have actually been humiliating or shaming... a lot of submissive fantasy stuff contains assumptions about coercion and shaming that tended to be the main reason I was not drawn to exploring them practically, and a reason that I tend to find porn on those subjects a turn off most of the time, even though I recognize some aspects of the fantasies are an attraction for me.

Stereotypical humiliation is a turn-off for me, at least it would be if I thought someone was thinking of it as real.  Role-playing could be very different, I suspect, but could never come up with a safe way to explore that in person, outside my own head, that is.

I really need to explore more of the dialogue among polyamorists, it seems.

[TheGrayWolf]

My thoughts are that it's none of my business. People are free to associate and should be free to marry whomever and however many people they want, provided it is voluntary. In terms of legality, I am opposed to all government (I'm an anarchist), so this aspect is not relevant to me.

[Padma]

A little hesitant to ask this, but in polyamory circles, what seems to be the general take on things like cuckolding fantasies (or humiliation fantasies in general, at least those that center on sharing intimacy between more than two lovers, where each person may be seeking very different kinds of intimacy?

I don't think there's a "general take" on stuff like that, because it's not really anything to do with polyamory as such. Polyamory treats of consensual, mutually agreed commitments between multiple people, where everyone knows what the score is together, rules are agreed and abided by. Anything outside of that isn't to do with polyamory, though people who are polyamorous may or may not be into it, or into talking about it, on a fantasy level. At least, this is how I see it.

[dalebert]

I think its because of the common misconception that bisexuals can't be satisfied with one person.

Agreed. This is a ridiculous one. That's as ridiculsous as assuming that, because I'm capable of being attracted to many types of men (from muscular hunky types to cute twinky types to nerdy intellectual types), that I must therefore have one of each or I will be eternally unsatisfied.

[dalebert]

Ah, the bromance. 

Camaraderie? That makes me think that they'll be pleasuring the same girl at the same time and then... HIGH FIVE! 

Marriage isn't about sex. People can have sex without marriage. Marriage is about becoming a family that supports each other to the end. Thinking marriage is about sex is extra fuel for the fire for social conservatives fighting same-sex marriage. There are plenty of open marriages that are still valid. There are sexless marriages. Asexual people sometimes get married for very valid reasons. I don't know why this particular case should be mocked.

[Elspeth]

I don't think there's a "general take" on stuff like that, because it's not really anything to do with polyamory as such. Polyamory treats of consensual, mutually agreed commitments between multiple people, where everyone knows what the score is together, rules are agreed and abided by. Anything outside of that isn't to do with polyamory, though people who are polyamorous may or may not be into it, or into talking about it, on a fantasy level. At least, this is how I see it.

I understand the perspective is completely different. It's more that I'm wondering because I'd like to see that critique echoed somewhere, in part because I do find the stuff that focuses on such fantasies more than a bit disquieting. I see more than I want to of it, though, because I think what I am looking for are personal accounts of more consensual stuff, some of which might wind up under some polyamory-related tags?

I'm referring here mainly, I guess, to the way one can come across a shock of recogition while following links around Tumblr, for instance, where I tend to find most things that don't fit with the prevailing stereotypes that seem to colonize so much of what gets promoted as porn or erotica?

[Elsa]

I am bisexual - and I would be happy with just one person for the rest of my life.

And yes I don't care if there is no sex in our relationship as long we love each other and care for each other.

[LilDevilOfPrada]

I am bisexual - and I would be happy with just one person for the rest of my life.

And yes I don't care if there is no sex in our relationship as long we love each other and care for each other.

Shes got a great view on life!!!

[JulieC.]

Wow that was a lot of posts to read through.  Now for my two cents.  I am bi and while I don't think I could ever be in a marriage with both a woman and a man, I believe consenting adults should be allowed to.  I have never understood why government needs to involve itself in the love life of it's citizens.  Marriage a legal contract.  In reality they don't even need to be in love to get married...As long as it's 1 man and 1 woman.  What's better?...a man and woman married for convenience or 2 men, 2 women, or any other combination of men and women married because they genuinely love one another.

[supremecatoverlord]

I'm really tired of having to see this thread and then see how several people are miscontruing a brief post I made. There's two separate thoughts in the post. That's why they're divided into two separate paragraphs. I really don't think polygamy is necessary nor can I say I agree with it, but in my post I never said why, just to clear that up. I didn't really think I needed to since actually the point of my post was to highlight more so how Shawn seems to assume that bisexuals are more likely to be polyamorous compared to other people.
I would have quoted someone who replied to my post, but it's really hard to scroll when through extremely long posts when I'm on my phone. Honestly, it surprises me how two sentences were able to simulate so much conversation multiple times. Seriously?

[Shawn Sunshine]

Shawn seems to assume that bisexuals are more likely to be polyamorous compared to other people.

You are wrong about that and that if your tired of seeing the thread, don't look at it then.

[Annah]

You are wrong about that and that if your tired of seeing the thread, don't look at it then.

To clarify: your thread topic title is "What are your thoughts on a bisexual person being able to marry 2 people?"

That can be seen as what are your thought on bisexual people being able to marry 2 people; which can have a type of stereotype that bisexuals would even want to marry 2 people. Bisexuals have been struggling against that stereotype for decades. Some Gays, Lesbians, Transenders, and Straight people have all been guilty of this thinking that bisexual people will "bounce around."

You may have had no intention of meaning it that way..I am just pointing out how someone can see that in your thread title.

[EmmaMcAllister]

Perhaps this debate would have been more fruitful if the initial question was, "Should marriage be open to more than two people?" Sexual orientation is largely irrelevant to the question of whether or not codified polyamory should be permitted.

[Shawn Sunshine]

That is true i could have picked a different title, its just that i am still wondering If "I" am Pansexual or Bisexual and then if i could legally marry 2 people of different genders. I had had a dream about being with 2 people the other night and so well, it just rolled off the top of my head that way.