Mary Crumpton has more men in her life than the average 44-year-old. As well as a husband, she also has a fiancé and two boyfriends. The former teacher started exploring polyamory aged 29, having been brought up in quite conventional surroundings.
“I was brought up in quite a traditional home,” she says.
“I had boyfriends and was monogamous. Having more than one partner never crossed my mind. In my twenties, I got married and settled down in Charlton fully intending to be with my husband for life.
“At the time I didn’t really question having just one partner. It was normal. I did sometimes have feelings for other people, but I felt guilty about doing so and just took it as a sign that I didn’t love my husband enough. When the marriage didn’t work out, I met someone else and started a monogamous relationship with him.
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“The idea that loving more than one person might not make me a terrible human being only dawned on me when, at a pub, I bumped into a person who had more than one partner. I had never come across it before, or the term “polyamory” which means “more-than-one love”. I was quite shocked, and curious about how it all worked for them.” She says that her partner was with her when she met the polyamorous stranger and he was curious about it too.
It wasn’t until a couple of years later, however, that she suggested to him that they might try having an open relationship, and he agreed, with both finding their first additional partner. “I took to it immediately,” she says. “I had a friend that I was already close to and that ‘friendship drifted very naturally into something more.
“My partner had a similar experience with a friend of his. It was a revelation to me. I quickly realised that I had been “wired up” this way probably all my life – loving more than one person now seems like the most natural thing in the world to me and I can’t imagine being any other way.”
For her, it’s about finding more love – while for her former partner, it was more centred around having more than one sexual partner, Metro said.
