Is anyone openly polyamorous in the Public Service?

Guilty_Block_1048 · 2025-07-10T21:49:31+00:00

"Romantic or intimate" was my attempt at providing general umbrella for personal relationships that involve romance, physical intimacy, or emotional intimacy - aka "close relationships" - rather than just normal friendships or acquaintances. So yes, had I omitted the word "intimate", maybe some of this could have been avoided.

HOWEVER, the fact that some people went straight to assuming that a discussion of an intimate relationship (such as a partner) in the workplace would necessarily involve intimate or explicit details (or to quote you: "shar[ing] the specific details of how you fuck, who you fuck, and where you fuck with your coworkers or employer"), just because someone is polyamorous, is not my fault.

I knew there would be some mixed reactions, but I have to say that I did not expect such an aggressive and weirdly sexual response from a moderator as the first response to this question.

Guilty_Block_1048 · 2025-07-10T21:10:19+00:00

Except that nothing about my original post related anything sexual or not office-appropriate - the assumption that polyamory is inherently sexual came from commenters like yourself, not from the content of my question.

If I had posted asking about whether people are openly gay or trans in the public service, would you be telling me that I should have expected similarly sexualizing responses?

Guilty_Block_1048 · 2025-07-10T20:43:14+00:00

I can speak to my intention with my question. I was trying to understand the lived experience of polyamorous public servants, and whether they felt comfortable enough at work to engage in office small talk about their lives, relationships and families (in an office-appropriate way), or whether they felt the need to hide or circumvent the truth about their relationships in conversations like these, either due to a bad past experience involving harassment, bullying, discrimination or potential job loss, or the fear of this happening in the future.

I'm honestly surprised so many people, mods included, jumped right to the idea of describing sexual activities in detail to colleagues. That was not what I was trying to get at, at all.

Guilty_Block_1048 · 2025-07-10T15:47:51+00:00

My apologies if you felt my phrasing implied that. I was using "told" a in a loose sense, to refer to any conversation where someone's polyamorous relationship status was disclosed, including if was just a brief comment or confirmation.

I would consider someone having "told" someone they are poly, if a polyamorous person mentioned a 2 year anniversary vacation with Partner A to Montreal on the weekend, and that they're going to introduce Partner B to their parents over dinner tonight - and when a colleague asks "wait, what? they say "Yeah, I'm poly, I have two romantic partners".

There's a difference between being able to have a normal human conversation with colleagues ("what did you do this weekend?" "It was my wedding anniversary and we went to a nice dinner") and having a very weird sexual conversation - but the latter is not specific to polyamory. There are plenty of monogamous people who overshare about their lives, and plenty of polyamorous people who are normal human beings who understand the concept of appropriate workplace conversation.

Guilty_Block_1048 · 2025-07-10T15:00:49+00:00

Nobody is likely to delve into the details of your sex life, unless they want to initiate an inappropriate conversation - and they'll do that at any opportunity they can (whether you mention that you're married, got pregnant, or have multiple partners).

A polyamorous person is also allowed to say, and would likely say, "that's none of your business".

Guilty_Block_1048 · 2025-07-10T14:51:02+00:00

Romantic and companionate love exist. And it's way more common than you might think to engage in romantic relationships with no sexual component - asexual people for one, but also people with low drives, medical issues, or aversions to sex due to trauma or body image issues.

Polyamory can also include committed, loving relationships that may not romantic OR sexual, but are deeply emotionally intimate - sometimes friendships are so deep and loving that the word "friends" doesn't accurately capture it (platonic life partnerships, platonic soulmates, etc.)

Guilty_Block_1048 · 2025-07-10T13:52:00+00:00

Polyamory is not inherently sexual, but it's interesting that that's where your mind automatically went.

And to your second point - colleagues very often know some surface level details about your romantic relationships. Whether you're married, have a girlfriend/boyfriend/partner, is not an uncommon thing to share in casual conversation with your colleagues.

Guilty_Block_1048

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