One giant annoyance that comes with being a relatively out poly person is the Nice Guys Laying In Wait. You think you have a friend, or even just friendly casual acquaintance, but you’re wrong. As soon as he hears you are poly, and therefore might possibly be sexually available, even though you’re married, and he morphs in to Mr. Hitting-on-you-super-inappropriately.
That’s obnoxious, because I’d always like to think my male friends were really my friends, not just laying in wait for the time when maybe they will convince me to have sex with them. But it is even worse when they decide that because I’m married, I must want to have sex with everything that moves. The assumption made by some that because my marriage is open, I must be theoretically available, all the time, to anyone, really turns my stomach.
I want to yell at these men – You were perfectly respectful when you thought that I was another man’s property and therefore totally off-limits. The minute you find out I might have independent sexual agency, you dispense with the layer of respect and hit on me, make sexual advances, touch me, etc. in ways you never did previously. It is fucked up to treat women with different levels of respect depending on whether or not you believe them to be owned by another man. FUCKED UP.
I know any out poly married lady reading this will recognize the experience. Gross. Men: When you learn a lady is in an open relationship, don’t do this. Don’t earn this Nice Guy (TM) merit badge. Please. Don’t.