- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
You escaping this gives me hope and warm feelings. Good job, dude.
r/polyamory
- Thread starter Crunchy Leaf
- Start date
Hey, it's thanks to funny threads and internet people like you I was able to get out at all. I recall a thread on /trash/ mercilessly mocking swingers and making fun of cuck stuff that got me back to my senses fully. What I was being asked for was nonsense and it was a relief to see people I agree with, even though it was shitposting and laughing at lolcows.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2020
Not directly related to the subreddit, but still good.
FEB 19, 202112:41 PM
This article contains spoilers for There Is No “I” in Threesome.
A few minutes into the HBO Max documentary There Is No “I” in Threesome, director, narrator, and central character Jan Oliver “Ollie” Lucks describes the parameters of the open relationship “experiment” he and his fiancée, Zoe, are trying in the year leading up to their wedding.
“We’re mostly committed to each other,” Lucks says. “We’re allowed to cheat.”
With a single word—cheat—the documentary’s audience is split in two. Some viewers will chuckle at the couple’s foolishness and ready themselves for the familiar story: Two people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing flail their way through a weird, crazy little adventure until they inevitably break each other’s hearts. But for people who’ve experienced the happiness of an open relationship, Lucks’ choice of words reveals a woeful ignorance of what it takes to make those relationships work. “It’s not ‘cheating,’ it’s consensual nonmonogamy,” we yell at the screen. “The word ‘consensual’ is right there!”
Anyone who isn’t some kind of mad scientist-slash-tourist playing around in the world of nonmonogamy is left to clunk their head on the coffee table.
No “I,” which premiered on HBO just in time for Valentine’s Day, squanders the opportunity to produce a documentary that could have helped people understand nonmonogamy, the forms it can take, and its inherent challenges, in favor of what Ollie calls his “selfie film,” complete with a splashy final-act twist. While some open relationships implode—you know, just like some monogamous ones—yet another portrayal of messy nonmonogamy only reinforces the notion that this style of relationship is necessarily doomed from the start.
Consensually nonmonogamous people who like to talk about their relationships—and oh, do we—will say that these arrangements depend on regular, specific, clear communication about terms, boundaries, and feelings. Ollie and Zoe fail spectacularly to communicate not only with each other, but to the audience.
Ollie says one of the “rules” of the experiment is that he and Zoe, both bisexual, will only hook up with same-sex partners. But whoops, Zoe replies, she already broke that rule by sleeping with a man. Later, Ollie is dating and sleeping with a woman. We don’t see them discussing their rules, why they exist, why they might change, how they talk about the ones they’ve broken. Ollie’s narration adds no clarity.
Throughout the entire documentary, Ollie describes iterations of his and Zoe’s situation as “an open relationship,” or that they are “full-blown swingers” or “polyamorous,” or that they were in an open relationship but now they’re polyamorous. These are distinct terms under the consensual nonmonogamy umbrella, and even then one couple might do things differently than another couple in a relationship with the same label. Ollie and Zoe would better serve their audience by breaking down what their ground rules are at any given time, but even they don’t seem to know.
While Ollie and Zoe are just kind of irritating—we’re treated to long sequences of them frolicking naked in fields; Ollie waxes poetic about how he loves Zoe for being such an “adult,” because she soaks her oats overnight—what’s hardest to watch is how they’re hurting each other because they don’t communicate with specificity or empathy, or even agree why they’re doing this in the first place. Ollie is obviously uncomfortable and pained when Zoe starts developing serious feelings for a man named Tom, but Zoe relentlessly tells Ollie how funny Tom is, or how she wants to send a Tom a picture of her breast that Ollie took, all while Ollie seems to be cracking under the weight of his jealousy.
Nonmonogamous people experience jealousy, of course, but there’s typically an expectation that couples will talk it through, consider the origins and effects of that jealousy, and decide whether any relationship outside theirs is ultimately harmful to any party. We don’t see Ollie and Zoe do any of that.
Why, of all the consensually nonmonogamous relationships in all the towns in all the world, did HBO produce the story of this one? Turns out that while the story of Ollie and Zoe is real, this isn’t it. Zoe, Tom, and the other non-Ollie characters are played by actors, and the film is a re-creation of Ollie’s experience with the real Zoe (whose name is not actually Zoe). Ollie and Real Zoe did try an open relationship and were documenting it, and Real Zoe really did end their relationship to be with another man, but what we see on screen here is not a documentary of an experiment in real time so much as Ollie’s on-screen memoir, starring himself.
The documentary reels us in with a titillating poster and the promise of a peek into the lives of those crazy kids and their ethical sluttiness, but it was never really about the nuances and logistics of open relationships at all. The open relationship “experiment” gets pushed aside by the shock of the faux-documentary reveal, and anyone who isn’t some kind of mad scientist-slash-tourist playing around in the world of nonmonogamy is left to clunk their head on the coffee table.
I’ve been in an open relationship for six years, the entire time I’ve been with my significant other, and I have a hard time thinking of any TV shows or movies that really sink their teeth into consensual nonmonogamy in a three-dimensional way that offers the kind of insight, understanding, or potential words of advice I would have wanted when I entered into it myself.
I don’t want media that only shows open relationships that work; I just want media that’s invested in seriously understanding or portraying all forms of consensual nonmonogamy, not just using it as a seductive hook for a movie that’s more shock than substance.
People get into open relationships for all kinds of reasons, some deeper than others. In mine, we enjoy flirting with, dating, and hooking up with other people while we’re still young, cute, and have the energy, but we’ve also gained a deeper trust and bond than we’ve had before.
We explore different parts of ourselves together and apart, we see each other as even more attractive through other people’s eyes, and we have new experiences that we talk about with honesty and vulnerability. But being consensually nonmonogamous isn’t always about what you get—for some people, it just works. It feels like their default setting, just as monogamy is for others.
Ollie says he learned that an open relationship just wasn’t right for him. That’s fine. They’re not for everyone. But there are tells all over the film that suggest why that might particularly be the case for Ollie. For one, successful relationships, open relationships included, are founded on trust and transparency, yet his entire documentary is founded in misdirection. At one point, Ollie and Zoe talk with Tom about documentary filmmaking. Ollie says he “cares more” about his documentaries when he’s in them, when he’s the subject. It’s hard to miss that at the points in his life when he tried his open relationship experiment and then made this movie, Ollie just might have cared more about his own story than making the relationship work.
But I keep thinking about his words at the beginning of the movie: “We’re mostly committed to each other.” I can’t see how any relationship, monogamous or not, can work if both partners aren’t all-in. You have to be entirely committed to trying to make it work with each other, to protecting each other’s feelings, to respecting terms and boundaries. In the case of this film, an experiment within an experiment, the subjects seemed more committed to shock than anything else.
What HBO’s New Documentary Gets Wrong About Open Relationships
I’ve been in a nonmonogamous relationship for six years, and I’m tired of movies like There’s No “I” in Threesome.
BY MIKALA JAMISONFEB 19, 202112:41 PM
This article contains spoilers for There Is No “I” in Threesome.
A few minutes into the HBO Max documentary There Is No “I” in Threesome, director, narrator, and central character Jan Oliver “Ollie” Lucks describes the parameters of the open relationship “experiment” he and his fiancée, Zoe, are trying in the year leading up to their wedding.
“We’re mostly committed to each other,” Lucks says. “We’re allowed to cheat.”
With a single word—cheat—the documentary’s audience is split in two. Some viewers will chuckle at the couple’s foolishness and ready themselves for the familiar story: Two people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing flail their way through a weird, crazy little adventure until they inevitably break each other’s hearts. But for people who’ve experienced the happiness of an open relationship, Lucks’ choice of words reveals a woeful ignorance of what it takes to make those relationships work. “It’s not ‘cheating,’ it’s consensual nonmonogamy,” we yell at the screen. “The word ‘consensual’ is right there!”
Anyone who isn’t some kind of mad scientist-slash-tourist playing around in the world of nonmonogamy is left to clunk their head on the coffee table.
No “I,” which premiered on HBO just in time for Valentine’s Day, squanders the opportunity to produce a documentary that could have helped people understand nonmonogamy, the forms it can take, and its inherent challenges, in favor of what Ollie calls his “selfie film,” complete with a splashy final-act twist. While some open relationships implode—you know, just like some monogamous ones—yet another portrayal of messy nonmonogamy only reinforces the notion that this style of relationship is necessarily doomed from the start.
Consensually nonmonogamous people who like to talk about their relationships—and oh, do we—will say that these arrangements depend on regular, specific, clear communication about terms, boundaries, and feelings. Ollie and Zoe fail spectacularly to communicate not only with each other, but to the audience.
Ollie says one of the “rules” of the experiment is that he and Zoe, both bisexual, will only hook up with same-sex partners. But whoops, Zoe replies, she already broke that rule by sleeping with a man. Later, Ollie is dating and sleeping with a woman. We don’t see them discussing their rules, why they exist, why they might change, how they talk about the ones they’ve broken. Ollie’s narration adds no clarity.
Throughout the entire documentary, Ollie describes iterations of his and Zoe’s situation as “an open relationship,” or that they are “full-blown swingers” or “polyamorous,” or that they were in an open relationship but now they’re polyamorous. These are distinct terms under the consensual nonmonogamy umbrella, and even then one couple might do things differently than another couple in a relationship with the same label. Ollie and Zoe would better serve their audience by breaking down what their ground rules are at any given time, but even they don’t seem to know.
While Ollie and Zoe are just kind of irritating—we’re treated to long sequences of them frolicking naked in fields; Ollie waxes poetic about how he loves Zoe for being such an “adult,” because she soaks her oats overnight—what’s hardest to watch is how they’re hurting each other because they don’t communicate with specificity or empathy, or even agree why they’re doing this in the first place. Ollie is obviously uncomfortable and pained when Zoe starts developing serious feelings for a man named Tom, but Zoe relentlessly tells Ollie how funny Tom is, or how she wants to send a Tom a picture of her breast that Ollie took, all while Ollie seems to be cracking under the weight of his jealousy.
Nonmonogamous people experience jealousy, of course, but there’s typically an expectation that couples will talk it through, consider the origins and effects of that jealousy, and decide whether any relationship outside theirs is ultimately harmful to any party. We don’t see Ollie and Zoe do any of that.
Why, of all the consensually nonmonogamous relationships in all the towns in all the world, did HBO produce the story of this one? Turns out that while the story of Ollie and Zoe is real, this isn’t it. Zoe, Tom, and the other non-Ollie characters are played by actors, and the film is a re-creation of Ollie’s experience with the real Zoe (whose name is not actually Zoe). Ollie and Real Zoe did try an open relationship and were documenting it, and Real Zoe really did end their relationship to be with another man, but what we see on screen here is not a documentary of an experiment in real time so much as Ollie’s on-screen memoir, starring himself.
The documentary reels us in with a titillating poster and the promise of a peek into the lives of those crazy kids and their ethical sluttiness, but it was never really about the nuances and logistics of open relationships at all. The open relationship “experiment” gets pushed aside by the shock of the faux-documentary reveal, and anyone who isn’t some kind of mad scientist-slash-tourist playing around in the world of nonmonogamy is left to clunk their head on the coffee table.
I’ve been in an open relationship for six years, the entire time I’ve been with my significant other, and I have a hard time thinking of any TV shows or movies that really sink their teeth into consensual nonmonogamy in a three-dimensional way that offers the kind of insight, understanding, or potential words of advice I would have wanted when I entered into it myself.
I don’t want media that only shows open relationships that work; I just want media that’s invested in seriously understanding or portraying all forms of consensual nonmonogamy, not just using it as a seductive hook for a movie that’s more shock than substance.
People get into open relationships for all kinds of reasons, some deeper than others. In mine, we enjoy flirting with, dating, and hooking up with other people while we’re still young, cute, and have the energy, but we’ve also gained a deeper trust and bond than we’ve had before.
We explore different parts of ourselves together and apart, we see each other as even more attractive through other people’s eyes, and we have new experiences that we talk about with honesty and vulnerability. But being consensually nonmonogamous isn’t always about what you get—for some people, it just works. It feels like their default setting, just as monogamy is for others.
Ollie says he learned that an open relationship just wasn’t right for him. That’s fine. They’re not for everyone. But there are tells all over the film that suggest why that might particularly be the case for Ollie. For one, successful relationships, open relationships included, are founded on trust and transparency, yet his entire documentary is founded in misdirection. At one point, Ollie and Zoe talk with Tom about documentary filmmaking. Ollie says he “cares more” about his documentaries when he’s in them, when he’s the subject. It’s hard to miss that at the points in his life when he tried his open relationship experiment and then made this movie, Ollie just might have cared more about his own story than making the relationship work.
But I keep thinking about his words at the beginning of the movie: “We’re mostly committed to each other.” I can’t see how any relationship, monogamous or not, can work if both partners aren’t all-in. You have to be entirely committed to trying to make it work with each other, to protecting each other’s feelings, to respecting terms and boundaries. In the case of this film, an experiment within an experiment, the subjects seemed more committed to shock than anything else.
I skimmed through that website and I feel like all the advice and tips that they have to the potential problems that can arise can be much more simply solved by just not being in a poly relationship in the first place. Everything there sounds exhausting and needlessly complicated. and the way it's written I don't see how anyone, if they are to live the life the way that's advised in the website, can keep up education, gainful employment, friendships, kids, or anything else other than those poly relationships.
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2021
Implying it hasnt already
Look at the number of suicides among divorced men
BTW were you married?
Dafrunk89
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2018
What the fuck? So they do use that shit for indoctrination purposes. I kind of suggested that to be the case but it's a different thing when someone like you starts to talk about it. There's a lot of awful human behavior involved in what you wrote, but that "poly friendly therapist" part just reeks of evil. The intent is to put you in a mindset where you need help, you need to get "fixed". You'd get better therapy from a drunken bum and probably for free. Maddening.
Much like few others who let that shit go too far, and they end up on the verge of suicide for not being 100% okay with the idea of getting cucked and manipulated for the rest of their lives by people they think they love. At least you ended that relationship before ending yourself. Good for you, I'm glad.
Then again, if it happened now, they'd have so much more material, and that stuff is more accepted now. I pity the fools who fall into this shit today.
I got mad on the internet. Lord, come with fire.
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2017
Like fucking clockwork every time the mainstream attempts to get close to one of these weirdo-subcultures there's some naval-gazing thinkpiece published about how they just don't really get it and how this isn't real
I'll take "Polyamory" for $1000, Alex.
That website hurt my brain after trying to read it for five minutes. It reads exactly like cult programming behaviour. Can't think of too many other subcultures that require desperately providing talking points and reading material to other people in your life in an attempt to partially mitigate how fucking obviously degenerate and crazy you're coming off as.
RainbowStarlight
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2018
Okay, not reddit. But just as ridiculous. No surprise, most of the comments are agreeing with this.
I'm trying not to get MOTI. But can you say with a straight face that poly people have been mass murdered, killed, hung, tortured etc for their beliefs...
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2018
Oh, I think I understand better now. 1) This was way before polyshit was more visible and widespread, and 2) It's not like you were already solidified into an anti-poly opinion as I am currently, which is why I said I wouldn't have put up with it. It must have been difficult to decide what was right when it was still outside of the mainstream enough to lack significant backlash/criticism online. It can also be hard when rejecting it would've meant the loss of your immediate support network, which is exactly how cults work. I feel for you, I'm glad you were able to get out of that situation.
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2021
Thank God, no. I am now though, to the monogamous woman of my dreams. I've told her the story and joked about how I was almost indoctrinated into a polycule and she laughs, because she's an ex-Mormon who recognizes cult shit when she sees it. I'm sure this joke has been made in this thread before, but there's something inherently hilarious about lefties going so far up their own ass that they've effectively become Mormon.
Isn't it?
Also thank yall for the kind words.
Kiwifarms offering heartfelt support in my plight against internet retards? The world really is turned upside down.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2017
>We are queer. We go against social norms. Our love is not accepted in society. We are dealing with haters and we have no rights at all.
By that logic, aren’t pedophiles queer? Touching children goes against social norms, and their love is not accepted in society. They also deal with haters every day, to the point where even drug dealers and cop killers will go after child molesters in prison out of disgust.
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2017
By that logic I'd say yes, but at the same time pedophiles aren't people so technically they don't count.
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2021
They do this all the time, eg: being anti-racist but then supporting the racism of other races
Or being anti-class but supporting the creation of new overclasses like the nomenklatura
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2014
That is some first world privilege I'm seeing right now. I'm pretty sure fucking multiple people doesn't count as a sexual preference.
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2018
It is, a slippery slope as to what you can define as queer
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2016
Oh, you're fucking queer alright.
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
There it is again! The idea that if you're queer you must be oppressed and vice versa!
It creates a disincentive to actually fix those problems because oppression becomes a part of your identity, and leads to weird shit like lesbians being accused of being "basically straight" when they want to live happy normal lives with their wives instead of forming a queer trans-centering polycule for maximum oppression points.
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2021
- Joined
- May 21, 2019
Considering that NAMBLA was involved in the gay rights movement in the 70s and some gay rights groups didn't dissociate from them until the 90s, pedos can definitely claim to be as queer as any non-criminal pillow biter or carpet muncher.