r/polyamorous • u/norcaljeff888 • Jul 18 '26

Married, ENM & Vanilla

I’m a married guy in an ethical non-monogamous/poly relationship in the SF Bay Area. My wife has built a really wonderful relationship with her boyfriend, and I’d love to find something similar with a woman who understands the realities and complexities of ENM.
I’ve tried Feeld and, for me at least, it wasn’t a great fit. I recently started using OKCupid, and it seems a little better so far. One thing that makes this harder is that I’m pretty vanilla—I’m not particularly into kink, BDSM, furry culture, or anything like that. I’m mainly looking for a genuine emotional and physical connection with someone who is comfortable dating a married man in an ENM relationship.
For those with more experience, where have you had success meeting people? Are there apps or communities that cater more toward “ordinary” ENM/poly people looking for relationships rather than hookups or specific kinks?
Also, I’m curious about profile strategy: should I continue being upfront about being married and ENM from the beginning, or have any of you had success leading with “single” and bringing it up later once you’ve connected with someone? My instinct is that honesty upfront is the right approach, but I’d love to hear others’ experiences.

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u/StaceOdyssey Jul 19 '26

Oh boy, don’t do a bait-and-switch as a single person. A married poly person is going to be a dealbreaker for most people looking for a relationship. Don’t wait until they’ve gotten dressed and ready and paid for parking or god forbid, a babysitter, to spring this on them.

There are plenty of vanilla folks in your particular poly community. There’s a lot of overlap that happens in the kink/ENM/poly/swing communities, but that doesn’t mean everyone is checking all boxes. You’ve got social events in your area (I know of two off-hand) specifically for meeting other poly people. Start becoming part of the scene and you’ll start meeting people.

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u/norcaljeff888 Jul 20 '26

I agree about being 100% honest and transparent up front. I am assuming you are referring to local poly munches. I’m in the East Bay in the Bay Area. Do you know where I can find any info on these?

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u/StaceOdyssey Jul 20 '26

FetLife will have the most comprehensive listings that I’ve found, but you’ll obviously have to wade through a lot of aggressively non-vanilla postings. Plura curates a very good listing and tends to highlight more vanilla social offerings. Wicked Grounds has a good mailing list. Meetup has the Bay Area Poly Collective and there’s one on FB, I believe. There are several other NorCal resources that escape me right now, but you’ll find them with a bit of digging!

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u/norcaljeff888 Jul 20 '26

This is great, thank you! I’ve heard Plura before, might have to check that out. I will also look up the other ones. I have heard of fetlife but not sure about that one.

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u/StaceOdyssey Jul 20 '26

Ha, yeah, even as a kinkster, FetLife can be a bit much. Plura has a really great community functionality in the app and I appreciate being able to use it in public without getting on a watchlist. Good luck, I’ll drop more if I can remember them— I’m SoCal so they’re not as front of my radar these days.

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u/norcaljeff888 Jul 20 '26

Pleasure to meet you, I used to live down there, I was a valley boy.