Robert and Andrea: Polyamory

I read about this type of multi-partner lifestyle and did some basic research to determine what makes people want to lead this type of relationship existence. Beyond the no-strings attached sex with multiple partners and the possibility of multiple long-term romantic relationships, there is the great possibility of complications brought about by regular old human emotions that will eventually get in the way. This is a story about that eventuality. It is pure fiction and does not relate to anyone I know or my life, but it does raise questions about the polyamorous lifestyle. I hope someone enjoys it.

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So, have you ever heard of the term 'polyamorous?' What it means is an intimate relationship involving more than just the traditional man and woman. In the story I am about to tell you it involves a married couple that have other partners that each are aware of and approve of.

From the wife's perspective she has a husband and a boyfriend. She also occasionally takes other lovers but only infrequently and usually only for the night and with her husbands' knowledge. The husband has one girlfriend that he sees on a semi-regular basis.

In short, it's complicated.

Before they married, they had a clear understanding of what their sex lives and emotional romantic lives would be. They also made a commitment to each other to love each other first and foremost. They made their actual legal marriage their 'primary' relationship. That was the relationship that the state recognized, the one where there was an actual marriage certificate, where they shared a home, a mortgage, paid the bills and used that relationship as a base for their day-to-day lives.

The other relationships that they had were also romantic relationships that were important to them in that it provided an element of what each needed that they believed they could get by having another relationship. They wanted another partner that they could form a sexual and emotional bond with. They felt love for that other person. They also believed that the notion of monogamy was outdated and therefore a hinderance to the exploration of love for another person that they felt they possessed.

Their polyamorous lifestyle overall worked for them. They had to consciously put aside any jealousy that might creep into the marriage. They regularly talked to each other to make sure that they were not unhappy with their lifestyle. And as communication with each other was the key to success they also had to manage expectations not just with each other but also with the others that they formed a romantic relationship and bond with. They were in it for what they thought was the long-haul so went about the business of sex and love with that kind of approach. It wasn't easy.

OK, who are these people?

The wife is Andrea. She is 29 years old and works for a major bank. She is about 5' 9" tall, about 135 pounds, exercises several times a week at the gym, her breasts are medium sized, C cups, her ass is incredibly sexy, not too big and not too small, but just right with great hips. She has a fantastic smile and a sophisticated way and feel about her. She looks amazingly sexy in high hell shoes and a tight dress. She has long shoulder length very thick dark hair. Andrea is incredibly hot, she knows it, and she uses it to her advantage every day.

The husband is Robert. He is 30 years old and is a computer and communications systems engineer. His current specialty is wireless communications. Robert is about 5' 11" tall, weighs-in at about 165 pounds, is also very fit from his exercise and workout routine and a very responsible and healthy diet. He is handsome and likes the attention that he gets from women. He has in the past taken other lovers besides his wife and has been able to effectively compartmentalize his relationships.

Both Andrea and Robert can separate out their married life and their lives and feelings for others, at least until now. But that might get complicated. We'll talk more in a bit about some of the other men and women that form part of their lives and what that means for both.

Now I know that some of you are curious as hell to find out what happens to them and want me to skip right to the heart of the matter, but hang on, all will be revealed to you in the coming pages.

First, we need to understand a bit of the psychology of polyamorous relationships. Polyamory is the practice of having multiple sexual and romantic relationships where all the participants are aware of each other and agree with the lifestyle. Polyamory is not cheating. Cheating takes place in monogamous relationships where one of the partners has a relationship without the permission or knowledge of the other.

Statistically about 1 in 5 relationships are poly. That's a lot and surprisingly we have not heard a lot about the polyamorous lifestyle in mainstream pop-culture. Society has not yet decided to make polyamory a thing yet. Society and especially religion are still pretty much tied to monogamy as a way of married life. There are some religions that permit a man to take more than one wife but those are pretty much relegated to the fringe of North American society. We won't go into other regions of the world because this discussion would get way too complex for this little adventure. And practically speaking, monogamy works for most married couples. It's hard enough being married to one person and figuring out what is good for a relationship and family without having to work on multiple relationships. Who has the time, energy and money for that?

Human emotions being what they are, usually means that one partner having sex outside the marriage is likely to cause the eventual breakdown of the marriage. Jealousy and possessiveness are very powerful emotions and will for most people get in the way of the polyamorous lifestyle being a realistic way to live their life.

There must be some rules for the participants in the relationship group if the lifestyle is to survive. For instance, where do couples have sex with someone other than their primary partner? Do they bring the other person home? Do they have sex in the main bedroom or a spare bedroom? Does the other partner in the primary marriage leave the house or apartment when the husband or wife brings home one of their other partners? Are they mature enough to be tolerant of the other partner in a face-to-face meeting? Do they socialize with their partners in other relationships in group settings like family barbeques, birthdays, Christmas and other normal family events? All this shit is very complicated and varies between relationships. There is no single simple template to determine how different relationships will unfold and affect the others. Divorce amongst polyamorous relationships is slightly higher than in the rest of the population. I suppose that is to be expected from a lifestyle that comes with lots of built-in potential problems.

So, it is no different for our happy couple, Robert and Andrea. They have embarked on a way of life that would boggle the mind of most and be a boondoggle for marriage counsellors and psychologists as they try to unfold all the many wrinkles of human thinking that makes up polyamorous relationships.

Robert and Andrea have great careers that require their skill, talent and hard work to get ahead. They devote significant time during the week to their careers and thus when you add in a complicated group of relationships, they often do not see each other for days at a time.

Andrea has a boyfriend, Thomas, who is a High School science teacher. He has undergraduate degrees in physics and education. He also coaches the school's basketball team in his spare time and is an avid runner. Thomas is a perpetual-motion machine that always must be doing something. He has a lot of energy and gives off the feeling of great self-confidence and self-esteem. That, and he is a good listener and comes across as an easy person to talk to. In addition to his relationship with Andrea he has another on-again off-again relationship with another teacher, Brittany.

Robert has a girlfriend, Leeann, who is a newly minted lawyer with a small law firm in the city, and she has a two-year-old daughter, Isabel. Leeann is divorced just over a year ago from a husband that is works for the federal government in one of the three-letter agencies, a guy who decided that he was better equipped to wage war on the enemies of the nation than be a father. Not everyone is cut out for parenthood, so they divorced and went their separate ways. She is blond and beautiful, about 5'10" tall, very fit weighing about 140 pounds. She is an avid cyclist; that's how Robert met her. She likes to read and her primary focus in her life is her daughter. So, every decision she makes is with Isabel's best interests at heart. No surprise then that her love life is not going to be such that any man that she gets serious with must also want Isabel to be part of his life. She has not gotten serious about Robert because she knows about his polyamorous lifestyle and is very unsure what his long term desires are and where that will take him. She is curious about the poly lifestyle but is not interested in being part of it. Her interests in Robert were just to have fun and to do things together. It developed into a sexual relationship without much conscious thought but she is wary of an emotional commitment to Robert, more so that Isabel doesn't get too attached to him and is hurt if he leaves their lives completely.

Robert spends about at least one night during the week with Leeann and he normally tries to spend one day of the weekend with her and Isabel. Robert likes children and was wishing that he and Andrea had the time to get serious about starting a family.

Andrea was taking birth control, so she was able to have sex without the need for condoms. Robert and Thomas both would orgasm inside her vagina, giving her a good measure of their sperm. Neither had reason to worry about STDs, or believed that they did, since they had all been careful about who they were having sex with and that their sex partners were selective in who they had sex with. Still, unprotected sex in non-monogamous relationships is a bit of a ticking time-bomb. Eventually something is going to creep in there to remind everyone that there is a risk in any multiple-partner situation.

Robert is secretly in love with Leeann and her daughter. He cares very much for them and spends as much time with them that he can.

Andrea is openly in love with Thomas. Her emotional relationship with him is to the point that she considers him to be equal to Robert. Although not married to him legally she is married to him emotionally.

This polyamorous life for them carried on until there was a turning point for Robert and Andrea. There is usually always a turning point and it usually gets you where and when you least expect it. In the case of this poly extended relationship family it came down to the simple fact of heredity. Whose blood lines get to be extended and with whom.

Andrea and Robert had had the talk about starting a family several times and while they had difficulty deciding on when would be the best time Robert knew that ultimately it was up to his wife to make the decision. She was the one to get pregnant and carry the child. She would give birth to the child and she and Robert would be parents of the child for life. Not a small responsibility for any marriage or relationship but even more in a poly family grouping.

The surprise for Robert came on a Friday night when they were having dinner together at home. They had prepared a nice meal together, something that they enjoyed doing as a couple, and had opened a good bottle of their favourite wine.

When the time was right Andrea brought up the subject of children and Robert was really happy to hear that she was thinking that it was time for them to grow their family. She even told him that she was going to go off her birth control so that they could get pregnant.

I said 'they' could get pregnant because any parent will tell you that creating, growing and birthing a child is a two-person job. The mother gets the hard part, but the father gets a big chunk of the responsibility and work as well. Parenting is a big job.

"Rob, I'm excited to get going on our family. I know that we will make a great mother and father."

"Andrea, you do not know how happy that makes me to hear that you are ready for us to have a baby."

Robert was already planning where they would make the nursery for the baby and he was mentally making a list of things that he needed to do to get ready for the arrival of their new family member.

That night they made love with a renewed enthusiasm that they had not seen in the last few months. The next day Robert called Leeann and cancelled their plans telling her that he had to stay with his wife. What he didn't say was that he planned to spend the day in bed planting his sperm deep in her vagina and hopefully getting her pregnant.

There was one fly in that ointment. It was Thomas and his plan to get Andrea pregnant. You see he and Andrea had already had the talk about her getting pregnant. Thomas wanted to be the father of her child and so he convinced her that she should stop her birth control pill. She had agreed that it was time for them all to be parents.

In the polyamorous family setting she figured that the three of them would be parents together. The child would have one mother and two fathers. To Andrea it did not matter which of the two men that she loved was the biological father. They would both be the emotional father.

But the polyamorous lifestyle concept fails to recognize very deep-seated human needs and emotions that deal with being a farther. Maslow identified a series of needs in all humans that must be satisfied starting from the basics of air, water and food through to higher order needs like self-actualization. In the middle of the spectrum are social needs that include family and the need to love and be loved. To be part of a family is very important. While the poly lifestyle meets certain parts of that, it relies on the need to put aside things like dominance and possessiveness and especially jealousy.

So now we have a contest between two men both wanting to get the same woman pregnant with their child. The contest would eventually leave one a father and the other not a father.

The next few weeks saw Andrea having sex almost every night as both men worked to inseminate her. The way they lived neither man was present in the same room when the other was being intimate with Andrea. She did truly love both men and so for her it was not an issue as to which man would be the father. As far as she was concerned both men would be the father no matter which one's sperm fertilized her egg and made the baby. Her polyamorous beliefs dictated that it didn't really matter to her, all she wanted was a healthy baby.

Both men were strong-willed and proud men, and in the back of both their minds, they could not give up the notion that it ultimately didn't matter which one of them was the biological father of the child. Notwithstanding their agreement to share Andrea there was the primal urge to conquer the woman and claim her as their own. In modern times we do that through the ritual of marriage. We agree to be faithful to each other and for the most part it works out fine. Divorce takes place all too often as relationships break down for many reasons, but we usually move on to another monogamous relationship to replace the last one.

A month later Andrea had missed her period, and after peeing on the home pregnancy test stick, she proudly revealed that she was pregnant. Both men separately took the news with great excitement. But both were ultimately wanting to know if they were the father. Andrea told both, "the baby will be born and then we will see which of you is the biological father. But you both are the father. You both have a responsibility here, to me. I love you both very much and plan to raise this child with you both."

Now fast-forward to eight months later. Andrea delivered a healthy baby boy weighing in at just over seven pounds.

Now the competition begins.

Andrea tells Robert, "when we take the baby home, I want Thomas to move in at the house. He is the also a father now and he has a right to be with his son."

Robert was quietly acquiescent, "Ok, but I would like him to move into the spare bedroom. We're still married Dear, and I want us to still have the master-bedroom."

"Ok, I suppose that will fine for now. Eventually he will have to have right to use the master-bedroom when he and I are having sex. That's only right, Sweetie."

Robert quietly bristled at the thought of another man in his bed. He knew that Andrea was having six with Thomas for almost two years now so that part of it was not a shock. It was the sudden realization that he was going to be potentially displaced from his own bed in his own home.

After a couple of months it was becoming hard for either man to look at the baby and not secretly ask themselves if this was their child. All newborn babies look pretty much the same, round chubby cheeks, not much hair, no teeth, they cry and poop and need lots of sleep.

Robert broke the logjam and quietly toke DNA samples from himself and the baby. It was the cheek swab test and was easy to do and he sent them off to the DNA laboratory company for analysis. Then he had to wait the week for the results.

It was a long week before he found out the results. He saw the envelope in the mail and his heart rate increased as he anticipated the outcome. Unfortunately he could not discretely open the letter that night, so he was forced to put it in his briefcase and wait until he got to his office in the morning.

It was a long night and he didn't sleep.

When he go to the office he got himself a cup of coffee, shut the door to his office and quickly got out the letter from the laboratory and put it on his desk. As he sat and looked at the unopened envelope, he knew that it was inevitable that the father of the baby had to be determined. Who knows, there might be a medical reason someday, possibly for some urgent medical treatment, the child and his mother need to know who is the father. It was the right thing to do.

Robert also knew that the test result would determine a lot of other things that would happen in their lives. Robert loved the child and wanted to be the father. He wanted the test result to say that he was the father.

He picked up the envelope and tore it open and pulled out the single sheet of paper.

He quickly scanned the page to find out what it said, he read, 'cheek swab test analysis indicated that neither individual tested was genetically related to the other.'

So, there it was. Robert was not the father of the baby. Thomas was the father of the baby. The lab report indicated 100% confidence in the test outcome.

Robert inhaled deeply and slowly let it out. What would he do? Would he tell Andrea? Did she already know? Did Thomas know?

Sometimes it is easy to tell who the father of a child is but in this case both Robert and Thomas have the same skin tone, hair colour and general build. They even had he same colour eyes. Their differences would not be seen in the baby at his tender young age. It would not become apparent which of them was the father until the child started to grow and mature.

Robert began to question the lifestyle that he and his wife had choose to follow. Was this the right thing for him now that Andrea was a mother with a child fathered by another man. He was conflicted.

That night he made the decision that he had to be up-front and honest with his wife and Thomas. He owed them both the truth. He owed it to himself. He asked them to sit down for a 'family' chat.