If any of you were to ever come across any of my dating profiles, you’d notice the following statement at the top of my bio:

“Only looking to connect with other polyamorous individuals”

This didn’t always used to be a hard boundary of mine but in the years I’ve been polyamorous, I’ve had enough bad experiences with non-polyamorous men that putting up this boundary was necessary. (While I am bisexual, this blog will focus mostly on non-polyamorous men because that’s what I have the most experience with.)

On one specific site I have a dating profile, users specify their monogamy status. Available options to select include: “monogamous”, “non-monogamous”, or “open to monogamy or non-monogamy”. I have learned the hard way that men who list “open to monogamy or non-monogamy” are likely not interested in a long term, romantic, non-monogamous relationship.

I give kudos to the dating site for letting users specify their preferences, as 90% of dating sites are heavily monogamous based, but if I put my preference as “non-monogamous only”, the algorithm will still show me profiles of men who selected “open to non-monogamy”. The year I began exploring non-monogamy, I went on many dates with men who were “open to non-monogamy” and this post details my experiences.

Constant Arrogance and Incorrect Assumptions

If I took time to list all the arrogant one-liners single men have used in an intro message to me, this blog would take hours to read. The following are actual messages I’ve received from single, non-poly men:

“Your husband must not be pleasing you at home”

“If you were my girl you wouldn’t want anyone else”

“You just haven’t had sex with me yet so you’re unsatisfied”

“Give me one hour and I’ll show you what a real man can do”

While I have no doubt that there are some decent single guys on dating sites – the ones “open to non-monogamy” have all fallen into the the same bucket for me. The toxic masculinity. The implication that NP is somehow “less of a man” because he and I aren’t monogamous with each other. The assumption that I’m only non-monogamous because I’m not satisfied, or that my non-monogamy would be “cured” if I was with the right guy. When I first experienced men like this, I tried replying to set the record straight, with the intent of educating them on polyamory. I quickly learned that these men honestly don’t care. Nowadays I quickly swipe left and move on.

Fetishizing Married Women

After the arrogant assumptions, the next most common reaction I got when talking to single men was the fetishization of married women. Many of the men “open to non-monogamy” admitted to just wanting to sleep with me because they “always wanted to sleep with a married woman”. Most of the time I was able to catch on and weed them out pretty quickly but several times I’d be out on dates with guys who seemed decent, only to make weird comments about me being married at the hint of things progressing to a more physical level. One guy went as far as to ask if I could pretend I was cheating on NP to “make things hotter”.

Now, I’m fetish/kink friendly, and I’m totally accepting when YKINMK, but being constantly fetishized simply because I am married gets really exhausting.

Only Interested in Casual Connections

Most of the time I’m able to weed out potential dates who display the above red flags, but it gets a little trickier with this one. Many single guys will be open about the fact that they’re just looking for casual connections, and there’s absolutely no harm to that. For me personally being polyamorous, I prefer to have the romantic and emotional aspects of a relationship alongside the physical aspect, so I seek out less casual connections.

The thing that gets tiring is when I’ve connected with single men who were “open to non-monogamy” who have stated that they’re seeking a deeper connection, only to eventually realize it was all just a line. I’ve had a handful of potential partners who claimed to be looking for the same thing I was, but then when it came down to it, all they actually wanted was the physical aspect. One guy was a single friend of mine who thought it’d be fun to date since we always had flirty energy anyway. We talked about all the fun dates we could go on, but after a couple months of him “only having time for quick physical get togethers” I asked when the actual dating was going to happen. He admitted that with me being married, he couldn’t visualize anything other than a casual relationship with me. A month later I called him up to see if he wanted to grab dinner, and it turned out he was now in a monogamous relationship with someone.

The thing that sucks is that people can just toss you aside like you’re nothing. I’m a real person with real feelings. Even though I’m clear in my communication about what I’m looking for in relationships I’ve had a handful of partners who dropped me without warning or communication the moment a monogamous relationship came along for them.

I am not just a placeholder for single men to be used until they find a monogamous partner, just because I’m non-monogamous.

Most recently, someone had “open to non-monogamy” listed on their profile but told me they actually were polyamorous. We had a great connection via text, despite him always bringing up his ex. When it came time that I was ready to meet in person, he was never available to meet for coffee or dinner, however he had no problem texting me at 10pm several nights asking if I wanted to come to his place and “hang out”…….*insert eye roll here*….to which I declined. A week later I texted asking if we could finally meet up to go on a date and he said he had gotten back with his ex and they were monogamous.

If people could just be upfront about only wanting casual connections, it would make it so much easier for me to bypass them as potential partners.

Unwilling to Work Through Jealous Emotions

This red flag is probably the hardest to pick out without meeting in person, although I did have one occasion where a guy I’d only just started talking to flipped out and stopped talking to me because of jealousy. In his case, we had met online earlier that day and been texting on and off. That evening I had a date with a partner and texted this new connection that I would be slow to respond for the next few hours due to being on a date. He was someone who claimed to be polyamorous despite listing “open to non-monogamy” on his profile but me saying I was going on a date sent him into a frenzy. He started calling me on repeat and then sent numerous texts when I didn’t answer. I let him know that it wasn’t going to work out which prompted him to start texting me from a fake number claiming to be NP. It was creepy, to say the least. That one encounter is why I now have a boundary that I don’t give out my number within 24 hours of connecting with someone, no matter how legitimate they seem.

More often than not, though, this doesn’t pop up unless I’ve been on a few dates with someone. A guy will often say he’s “open to non-monogamy” even if he’s never been in a non-monogamous situation. Sure, it sounds great – dating a girl who doesn’t want to tie you down, and doesn’t care if you still interact with other women? What could go wrong? Well, it’s all fun and games until they are forced to deal with the fact that you do actually have other relationships. Usually in this situation, the guy is single and has only ever been in monogamous relationships. I’m not kidding when I tell people that non-monogamy actually requires work. Monogamy has been so ingrained into us that most people can’t just wake up and say “yep, I think today I’ll try non-monogamy”. It took NP and I years to get to where we are. So when a single guy who is “open to non-monogamy” finally enters a relationship with a partner who is actually non-monogamous, he’s often bombarded with a ton of emotions he’s never had to deal with before. Because society teaches us that “jealousy is bad”, most monogamous people aren’t prepared to cope with it when it pops up.

When this happens, guys usually have one of two reactions. Sometimes they cling harder trying to get me to spend more of my time with them, with the thought that relationship importance is directly proportional to time spent together (which, spoiler alert – that isn’t the case in polyamory). Men in this group then get irritable and passive aggressive the moment I spend time with others. If they don’t have that reaction, then they do the exact opposite and feign disinterest. They make it seem like they have a bunch of other options and that I’m at the bottom of the list. However, I don’t chase people – if they come off as disinterested, I don’t try to make them stay, which ruins their game. I had a potential partner not too long ago who kept texting me and the moment I would reply, he’d make it seem like he couldn’t care less if we saw each other, so I’d stop texting him only to receive another text weeks later. With all of these potential partners, I always tried to help them cope with their jealous emotions but it never worked. It always lead to the end of the relationship.

Sticking to my Boundary

Because of all the experiences I’ve had and referenced above, I am now firm with my boundary of only seeking other polyamorous individuals on dating sites. It doesn’t matter how great the intro message is or how cute the person looks, if they haven’t specifically listed “non-monogamous” on their profile, I won’t even engage. Since initiating this boundary, the quality of men I’ve gone on dates with is much improved.

But What About…?

If you know me in real life, you know that I have a current partner who is an exception to this boundary. The one difference to the rest of the men I’ve referenced in this blog, is that I knew this individual in person and we were friends before we decided to pursue a relationship. This relationship still poses the drawback of brevity since his ultimate end goal is a monogamous marriage but we decided to pursue things while we could to experience what it’s like to have each other as a partner. I’m not just his placeholder until something better comes along. Unlike the other single men I’ve dated, this person knew me and NP as a poly couple before any emotional connections emerged. He doesn’t fetishize me, he doesn’t mandate that it stays casual, and he takes time to communicate and work through any jealous emotions. I think it helped that this person knew other polyamorous individuals prior to knowing me, so it wasn’t a “weird” concept to him.

Non-Poly Women

While I haven’t had enough experiences dating non-poly women, I have witnessed NP’s struggles with dating non-poly women.

I’m an introvert with social anxiety and just the thought of me talking to a stranger while out and about gives me the chills. NP loves meeting new people while he’s out. This personality trait means that I mostly turn to dating sites to find partners while NP prefers to meet people in-person at bars and clubs. We live in a smaller suburb and so the majority of people he encounters aren’t likely to be polyamorous. Out of the multitude of single women NP has met, they can be sorted into two categories. In the first group are the women who don’t trust men and think he’s lying about being ethically non-monogamous. They see a ring on his finger and assume he’s cheating even though he is upfront and honest from the get-go. The majority of single women who NP tries to date claim to be “okay with non-monogamy” but after a week or so, they demand that he break things off with me. Most of them are actually very against non-monogamy and they pull the same nonsense as men do with their incorrect assumptions. Typically they try to convince NP that if he actually loved me he wouldn’t be looking for anyone else, to which he respectfully declines to pursue a relationship.

Talking with NP, we’re both in agreement that the quality of partners is higher in individuals who are polyamorous as opposed to single individuals “open to non-monogamy”.

Discussion Questions

If you’re polyamorous – if you’ve been struggling with finding quality partners, what boundaries have you put in place to help improve your matches? What have your experiences been with individuals who weren’t necessarily polyamorous?

If you’re monogamous – I realized while writing this that not all of my red flags are specific to polyamory, some of them can be applied to monogamous dating as well. What are your dating horror stories – either on dating sites or in person? What boundaries do/did you have for yourself when searching for potential partners?