Dear HippieChick:

My thoughts: I think that if you experimented with such an arrangement, it may be a short term success, an exhilaration in the very act of challenging and breaking a convention, a social rule. Social conventions or rules we follow along with (almost) everyone else can feel like a bondage (no pun intended) of sorts, a lack of freedom, and once you get the courage to break a rule, there is an exhilaration, a high of sorts in the bare (no pun intended) fact that you are breaking of a rule.

Then there is the newness of it, the First Time Excitement Factor.

Following this short term success are the long term consequences. Even if you terminate the experiment and re-establish good old monogamy, there will be the memories. Once you saw what you saw and heard what you heard and sensed what you sensed with up to your five senses during the experiment, those things will be stuck to your brain neurons like hair to soap. Here is your boyfriend acting passionate about you and you remember how he looked when he was passionate about her, in your presence and you compare. There is the glitter in his eye, why.. you remember he had that glitter with her!

And you want to go back and undo the experiment but you can’t. And every time you see your boyfriend intimately, you see her. You can’t stand it anymore so you decide on a temporary separation. After he moves out, you wonder if he got together with her.

Am I being carried away?

anita

Hi HippieChick,

There’s another factor besides your feelings, or even your partner’s. It’s the other person you’d bring along for the ride! When a couple brings in a third, there is a TOTALLY (no guilt here) unconscious mindset that the couple is the one in control, the Primary. Well, human nature being what it is, even if the third party is “cool” s/he does have the potential to be emotional/insecure/attached/jealous as well!

There’s nothing more boring than Convention, and yet, there is a reason why Monogamy is the way to go (for most people most of the time).

I say download an app ~ “Shall We Date?” has a great line! 😉 And have fun THAT way!

Best,

Inky

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Inky.

Dear HipppieCHick:

I am glad you brought up this topic of questioning the “old ways” of doing things, the traditional ways. Many traditional ways of parenting, for example, including child abuse should be stopped. Arranged marriages still practiced where they are traditional and in practice… child labor and on and on. So questioning and challenging traditional ways of living, challenging social conventions, these are good things.

The thing is we already absorbed so much of Do and Do Not from such an early age that it is impossible to ignore these teachings at will. So we question, challenge and choose what of those social conventions to keep and what to toss.

anita