Last week, I went to the first of several Halloween parties, Andrew and Serena's swinger house party, which was much fun, and a great way to start the festivities for my favorite party holiday of the year.  This weekend was the big celebratory weekend, though, since Halloween night was Friday.  When I went out with ABD last weekend (A.K.A. Poly Boy # 2), we made plans to get together on Halloween, contingent on him confirming with his wife that he was free.  Unfortunately, he didn't tell me until Wednesday that his wife had decided she wanted to spend time with him on Halloween, leaving me only 2 days to find something else to do for Halloween Night.  I was a little annoyed, but he was very apologetic and we rescheduled for Sunday.  Thinking I might end up sitting home Friday night, on Thursday, as I was chatting with Mitch, he told me he and his wife had Halloween night tickets to a concert for a favorite funk band of mine who A. I didn't know was coming to town and B. I'd just been lamenting missing their last local appearance when I discovered an article about it not 2 days earlier.  As it happened, his wife had come down with a nasty cold, and wasn't going to be able to go.  It seemed like fate, the stars had aligned, this was meant to happen (or something), so I gleefully agreed to go with him in her absence.

But, alas, by Friday afternoon, Mitch was texting me saying he felt like he was coming down with the same ick his wife had, and that he'd better not go to the concert either and spread his ick around.  He offered to give me both tickets, but I had noone to go with.  I called Nancy to see if she might like to go, but she already had plans for a bit of party hopping...  and invited me to join her.  We went to a toga party, she looking like a greek goddess in a beautifully self-styled satiny royal blue toga, and me looking like the grecian idle rich in a gold and burgundy silk sari finery.  It was a vanilla party though, and noone there that I would consider a dating prospect, so there's not much to report about that party.

But SATURDAY night, on the other hand, that's another story.  

ABD is the guy I met recently who told me shortly thereafter that he's (as seems to be a pattern for the men who fall into my life) happily married and polyamorous.  We met mid-afternoon for lunch and then wandered around the indoor/outdoor mall, eventually stopping for dessert, all the while lost in conversation.  Before I realized it, more than 5 hours had gone by... all the while, just engrossed in conversation with one another - it was quite nice! 
 

Throughout the course of my adult life, I have practiced many different relationship paradigms, from strict monogamy to all flavors of swinging to open relationships to full on polyamory. But I don't advertise this to the men I meet online - as far as they're concerned, I'm little Miss Traditional Monogamous.

So why is it every time I meet a guy who's interesting, attractive, intelligent, cool, and otherwise someone I'd want to keep around, he turns out ot be married and polyamorous?

Having tried all flavors of relationship openness, I've decided that (for me) polyamory is fundamentally flawed (as there is virtually always an imbalance that leaves one or more people involved unhappy and with unmet needs), and not something I want to do again. I don't want to fall head over heels in love with someone who will never be able to truly "be" with me in a long term committed living together kind of way (you know, because they already have that with somebody else). So for me... ultimately I expect I will end up somewhere between monogamous and swinger, depending on my partner's comfort zone.