I have a short story to tell. And it's a real one.
My husband (and I) had a friend, and she had a boyfriend. When they broke up, she started fucking around (not saying that as a bad thing; I'm a slut myself, after all) and sharing stories with us.
But you see, the thing was – they never actually broke up. She just lied.
Along with this one, we found out about a lot of other lies. And her visiting us in a multicultural country also exposed her racism that we hadn't gotten a chance to see earlier. Overall, a huge shock and disappointment.
We were angry as fuck, and feeling sorry for the boyfriend. So we told him everything we'd found out (and shared all the screenshots he might be insterested in). He was thankful. Broke up with her and kicked her out. Overall, not the happiest ending for her.
Fast forward to last week. The guy… comes out as bisexual and polyamorous.
And my first thought was: daaaamn, girl, you fucked up!
Imagine she had been honest him. Not necessarily with a straight-forward “I wanna fuck other people”, but she could have dropped a hint or two, cracked a joke, asked him how he feels about it, learned to communicate better in the relationship, and in general, you know, treated him as a partner…
They could have explored the world of ethical non-monogamy together. They could have had the most amazing group sex they wanted. They could have had an amazing, loving polycule.
But you can't build amazing relationships without the foundation of trust, honesty and communication. Polyamory isn't about promiscuous people getting together for some reason. An open relationship isn't less of an relationship – if anything, it's kinda more! Because you need to really know your partner well, trust them and be honest with them, if you don't want to be constantly paranoid about what they do with other people.
If you actually get interested in your partner's needs, it might just turn out they align perfectly with yours. But if you lie and cheat and make up an entire fake reality to cover up your infidelities, trust me, no good relationship will come out of that – even if the other person just happens to crave other relations as much as you do.