I think the whole rigid concept of ‘asking a stranger out on a date’ -> ‘dating phase where every wrong move means goodbye’ -> ‘proposing going steady’ is antithetical to the spirit of polyamory in a way.

Almost all my relationships just gradually and naturally grew out of friendships. My latest one was originally a friend of a friend, and our first conversation was me excitedly infodumping about European emergency vehicles. She was super hooked and interested and I felt like she was pleasant to interact with, so we hung out more often. We talked almost every day because it was just fun to communicate about our hobbies and special interests, and we became friends. Eventually it got to the point where we talked about some deeper topics, trauma, relationships, kinks and such. And that’s usually where we get romantically or sexuall involved just by casually being like ‘ha I wish’ and ‘hey I’m here anytime’, you know? No official Big Date That Needs To Go Perfectly, no playing pretend, no charades.

I just don’t really like making hard cuts between labels such as ‘friends’ or ‘relationships’. They’re limiting and simplistic. By implying they’re completely and wholly separate, you kind of set yourself up for failure: you have to ask someone out and go on a date, which is a really scary and anxiety-inducing, awkward process. Instead of developing a relationship naturally, you come to someone with a full business proposal of long-term commitment, sex, love, unquestioned support and making living arrangements. And if anything goes wrong, the whole thing is irreparably impossible. Of course that’s scary.

I had spontaneous sex with some of my friends, and it doesn’t throw us for a crisis because of any ‘implications’ mono cishet people would associate with that ‘step’. It doesn’t mean we suddenly have to stare into each others eyes and feel our hearts beat with love. It just meant we had sex. Having sex once in a while can be an activity among friends and it doesn’t imply we need to love each other or stay committed to anything.

And similarly, you can love someone or be in a romantic relationship with someone without the expectations of typical ‘partnership’ things like them meeting your parents, you moving together, you being committed to each other for life. Likewise, you can have all of these committed partnership aspects in your relationship but not be up for sexual contact because you don’t feel like it with them. Without labels, this is all possible.

The most natural way of starting relationships is just to make good friends and just doing what you want with them until you happen to find yourself in a relationship one day and laugh about how this happened.

Good friendship and romance are practically indistinguishable anyway.

I’m not really good at dating in person, or really anything in person but being openly polyam and just flirting with people openly has seemed to go fine. It’s not been perfect for sure but being upfront about what I want and what I’m offering has mostly worked.

I hate to say it, but you need to talk to the people you’re interested in. There’s a variety of ways to do this. You could ask one on a date, and then mention polyamory when having the “what are you looking for” conversation. Or you could bring up polyamory casually and see how they feel about it, outside of a “dating you” context.

But, at the end of the day, you have to do the hard work of talking about your interests, feelings, and desires if you want to establish and maintain intimacy with someone. If I were friends with someone, I might choose the “bring poly stuff up” tactic to get a vibe check before proceeding. If these are more strangers, then I’d ask if they wanted to grab lunch or coffee sometime and use that to break the ice.

Edit: you can use Feeld, too, if you want. I think it has a larger proportion of poly folks than any other app I’m aware of. I met one of my partners there.

Following because I’m in a similar situation. I also don’t want to use dating apps so I mostly only want to go out with people I meet in person 😅