Some thoughts on polyamory, D/s, and being cucked

No conclusions, just a lot of questions.

Where I am now, and where I came from.

Polyamory and kink have been inseparable for me since I joined the kink scene eight years ago. Until now, I have never questioned if I wanted to do kink with multiple partners because the people I’ve been interested in doing it with already had other partners when I met them. For a few months now, the situation has been different, though. I am currently in a monogam-ish relationship, and it seems I like the comfort of it. But it also makes me feel ashamed.

I used to think that the way I want to do kink will always have to do with doing it with multiple partners. I loved the thrill of the first rope session, the feeling of a new dominant energy descending upon me, and everything that came with it. The way the particular alchemy of us two meeting together revealed parts of me that nobody had seen before. The intensity of humiliation of being dominated by someone I barely knew. But recent experiences have made me reconsider if my ideas around kink were just a story I told myself to cope with a reality that was less than perfect.

I started my current relationship having multiple existing partners, but, for one reason or another (not related to the newly forming relationship), they all disappeared over a few months. My partner started out with no other partners and no experience in polyamory, but a strong interest in non-monogamy. We went through a few bumps related to his jealousy over my existing partners, but it’s over now. We’re on steady waters. I can play with other people, and it does not stir him up.

What triggered this whole exploration?

My jealousy, on the other hand, seems to be growing. It doesn’t help that one of our kinks is cucking. And igniting and intensifying jealousy is a big part of it. It is not an issue when the person he’s cucking me with does not seem like a steady relationship candidate. It becomes a problem when it turns out they might be, but my thoughts and feelings towards them have been set when they were the ‘cupcake’, and are now reluctant to change. It happened some time ago, and it completely freaked me out. But it also made me think. I imagined what it would be like to have to share him with another person. To meet my metamour at social events. To interact with them. And I couldn’t. What I have done before with other partners I could not bring myself to imagine happening with him. So I started asking myself, ‘Why?’.

I’ve always wanted an owner, and I might need him to belong to me too.

One thing that came to my mind was that the depth of ownership I am interested in might not be possible when playing with multiple people. I might be made for exclusivity, at least in some dimensions, and the reason I suffered so much in my previous relationships might have been because it was not there. And not only on my side. Whether I like it or not, I might need my dominant’s full attention to be able to safely give as much as I want to. In the past, I longed so much to feel owned by someone and to be used for their fun and pleasure that I gave myself to others haphazardly. If someone seemed like the right candidate, I would offer myself to them fully, whether they were equipped to deal with all the implications or not. I dealt with them instead. But looking back, I don’t think it was a healthy setup.

With him, it’s different. I know he cares about me deeply, and even if I like to think that I also cared deeply about other people in the past, what I feel towards him is not something I would allow myself to feel towards my previous partners. And probably rightfully so. If I think about it, it would not be healthy for me to belong to someone as fully as I feel I belong to him if he had multiple other partners with the same level of commitment. I simply can’t imagine getting the same level of attention and care from my past partners, no matter how much they wished they could give it to me (which they often didn’t and couldn’t). And I start to believe that I need that level of care and attention for the level of intensity I crave.

Or am I just a jealous bitch?

At the same time, I can’t disentangle whether my reluctance to introduce new partners into our constellation is really driven by the fact that the D/s I want requires some form of exclusivity or if it is just my petty jealousy telling me that I need him only for myself. Because I do believe he cares more about me than any other partner did in the past. And that means I have the power to say ‘no’ where previously I didn’t. So I might be exercising the right to say it just because I can. It is shameful to think about it, but I can’t deny that it might be true.

I can’t reconcile cucking and poly.

Then there is the whole cucking play topic, which has always been my kink, and I experimented with it a bit before, but my current partner is the first person I’ve met who is really into it and with whom I could properly explore it. But I can’t wrap my head around how to marry it with polyamory. To me, being cucked has a lot to do with exploring jealousy and feelings of inferiority, which I find hot and intriguing. But then, if you want a healthy attitude towards your metamour, your goal is not to feel jealous of them. And if your partner wants to reassure you when you feel insecure, they should try to make you feel equally important and special, and not worse than any of their other partners. I feel like this can’t be reconciled with being cucked. Of course, you could say you do cucking with one person and poly with another, but how do you know what to do with whom? And is it ever possible to switch from being cucked with someone to being their metamour? How much emotional and mental gymnastics would I have to do to make it possible? And is it worth the effort?

I can’t(?) reconcile poly and getting my emotional needs met.

And then there is my recent realization that getting my emotional needs fulfilled is actually possible, but it clashes with being polyamorous in my case. It seems that I am not that bad at expressing my emotional needs in a monogam-ish relationship in which their fulfillment hinges mostly on one person. If I know that he is my ‘boyfriend’, I don’t doubt that I can walk up to him (almost) any time and ask for what I need (while not necessarily needing to get it, it’s mostly about the freedom to ask in this case). Things change when more partners are involved. In that scenario, I become withdrawn, waiting for the partner’s initiative because I am unsure if they want me to approach them, especially if they are busy with another partner. What I think then is something like: ‘They should be spending their time with and giving their attention to whoever they see fit. If they are talking to this person now, it means it is what they want. If they wanted to talk to me, they would come to me. But they don’t. So I need to take care of myself.’ This kind of thinking makes me feel emotionally deprived and lonely, and as other partners often don’t have these kinds of inhibitions, they end up getting more attention than I do, simply because they ask and I don’t, which makes me even more hurt and withdrawn.

(Non)conclusion

To sum it up, there is no conclusion. I don’t know what to do with all this. I used to strongly believe in polyamory. For a long while, I was solo poly and quite happy at that. I thought that this was the best way for me to be in a relationship since I needed quite a lot of personal space and freedom. At the same time, now that I’ve met someone I am comfortable with saying they are my ‘primary’ partner (I put it in quotation marks because I still don’t like hierarchy in relationships, another thing that makes poly hard, taking into account all that I wrote above), I am not sure about that anymore. It might be that back then, I just hadn't met the right person, and solo poly was a story I was telling myself to not feel lonely and worthless as a relationship material. Or maybe long-term, this relationship will not succeed if monogam-ish, stifled by too much closeness and dependence on each other, which was not aligned with my true nature after all?

I don’t know. What I do know is that I am currently questioning many of my past life choices and wondering how to reconcile my values with my needs, feelings, and kinks. You can’t have it all, they say. Which part of ‘all’ am I the most willing to forsake? And can’t I really?