I feel very lucky that the very first guy I met up with from an online dating site fell head over heels for me in the first minutes of us meeting. My size has never, not once, been an issue for him. He calls me sexy and beautiful all the time and is confused when I tell him that I'm not.

We're all on a continuum, well several continuua, relating to our needs, sexual preferences, security/insecurity ETC. Consistency clearly demands that I (try) to regulate my behaviour according to what I can tolerate in others. This is only my feeling of course, but “resisting” those impulses is a way of affirming the importance of my primary relationship. It's a way of demonstrating my commitment, both to myself and my partner.

I can see there are different ways of establishing trust between people, and I think the issue of what two people need from each other to feel secure is often neglected as an area of prime importance. My initial feeling would be that polyamory has to apply to both of you. A monogamous partner who simply accepted that her/his partner had polyamorous needs is hard for me to imagine. But I'm rationalising on the basis of my own feelings of course.

Anyway, it's all mightily subjective, and I think the main thing is that both people have to be on the same page. If I thought I really understood someone on a different page, I'd be afraid that the wishful thinking had started, and there might be trouble ahead.

Thanks again for your response, and for the opportunity to think aloud.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that “give(ing) some relative stranger a good time” is what being poly is about.. it isn't. Not all poly people are into casual encounters – some are, I'm certainly not. Many poly people (myself included) seek out this lifestyle simply BECAUSE they feel that love and sex are very much intertwined. Polyamory is not “have sex with whoever you want, but just love one person”.. I think that would more properly be described as “swinging” which is often considered almost polar opposite to polyamory in it's philosophy.

It'd be foolish for me or anyone to claim that I had it “all sorted out” but the problem you describe has never been an issue for me.. my partner(s) and I communicate a lot, and if someone is feeling bad then we work it out, together, long before it turns into the sort of heart-wrenching pain you're talking about.

If there's a main relationship involved, I.E. if two people live together or something close to that, I suppose most people would agree, as you say, that everyone has to be “informed”. Acting on the basis of “what the other person doesn't know about doesn't matter”, is, if not exploitative, at least contemptuous of the other's feelings – one's own wishes always coming first.

But, informed or not, my problem is that I can't treat love and sex between two people as separate. Sex on its own can do nothing for me which masturbation can't, and sex with another human being seems to cross some line which I couldn't bear my partner to cross, which rules it out for me as well of course. There is certainly a part of me which would like to be all accepting, and I'm as prone to hormonal impulses as anyone but, it would feel like squandering the long term for the sake of the short term. Putting something fundamental at risk for the sake of something which might not even be enjoyable and, if it was, it would only be the equivalent of masturbation, plus proving some dumb thing to myself about how I could still be attractive and give some relative stranger a good time. I'm a musician; I can give a roomful of people a good time. Why would I want my partner going nuts about what aspect of our mutual trust had been violated, as I would wonder if she were doing the same thing.

If poly people have got all this totally sorted out, then I certainly wish you nothing but well. But I worry that some might only find that it wasn't as sorted out as they thought it was, when someone they loved had to cave in and admit the pain they were suffering. Then what would you do? Put your desire for variety ahead of love and trust? Just asking.