Being in a polyamorous (or any other ethical non-monogamous) relationship means trusting intimate partners to abide by certain rules to assure openness, transparency, honesty and positive growth in all participants’ love and sex lives.
What happens when people in an intimate relationship with one set of rules engage with new people who have potentially conflicting relationship rules?
For example, what happens when dominant/submissive (D/s) enter in ethically non-monogamous relationships?
Absolute Equality Vs. Authority Imbalance
Non-monogamy emphasizes absolute equality of all involved parties – but D/s is built on exercising the power dynamic of authority imbalance inherent in modern society in order to ultimately exorcize it.
Watch this video to learn “what it’s like being in a healthy, empowering, and supportive D/s relationship…
The personal independence and freedom of choice in all things sexual or amorous that controls the core ethical dynamic animating non-monogamy is, in D/s couplings, replaced with the voluntary submission of one partner to the will of the other.
This is just one example of the many new relational equations that are being formulated and tested in the emotional laboratories of people’s daily lives.
In this video, see how ethical non-monogamy plays out in real relationships.
As to non-monogamy “vs.” D/s, we can illustrate the conundrum in dueling brackets…
[ Poly Rules { D/s Rules } ] or [ D/s Rules { Poly Rules } ] ?
These new brackets raise PLENTY of questions.
Do the rules of non-monogamy equality trump the master/slave contract when a submissive is engaged with other members of the poly circle?
Or does the Dom set the rules of behavior for their submissive in engaging other partners?
Or can all the rules be creatively molded into a mutually acceptable compact, fashioned to fit the unique particularities of any given open relationship?