Not a dumb question at all and very honestly and politely asked.

I agree with most of what Stormy has to say on the matter with the excetion that the word polygamy actually means "Many Marriages" and doesn't actually refer to a gender. PolyAndry is many husbands wherein a woman has more than one husband but they have only her and Polygyny is many wives wherein the opposite is true.

In my own case we began our open marriage journey as a triad that is still in effect 5 years later. We are a strange mix and a seeming contradiction in many wasy but we say, "It works for us and is a unique journey." I have been with my legal husband since we were 16 years old so we grew up together, though to be honest it's only in the past five years that we've really begun to grown up.
We are a family centric group centered around our three children that the three adults parent equally or as a unit. We are mostly fidelitous both emotionally and sexually but the option is open for others if we find the desire arises. We have only two hard and fast rules:
You must be honest with everyone involved as to what your intentions and feelins/desires are concerning the relationship or a proposed new one.
You must take every precaution to remain healthy and prevent unwanted pregnancy (should we desire another child that is an option but we don't want it to be unplanned/undesired).

Sigel likes the freedom to play as he wants, Arch likes that he is part of a stable unit and has the freedm to decide IF he wants to play and I simply love everything about the arrangement...except being apart but we're working on that. less

Oh my. Thank you, all of you! I think you were right, Stormy, in saying that it's quite complicated. However, great deal of my confusion has been eased (though not all. I reserve the right to come back and poke you with big sticks ). I do have two questions:

About polyamory and polygamy: Is polygamy an evolution (for lack of a better word) of polyamory, in that it has the inclusion of the family unit, where it wasn't before? But apart from that, the 'adult' relationships are basically the same?

And another: Is it possible to mix and match different subsets? For example, have a polyamorous relationship, yet also have (again, for lack of a better term) flings?

And I knew some of those facts, Airen, but I confess I never thought of it in this setting.

Thanks again! less

Well they do seem to get the most air time don't they? It's a pretty common practice and has been throughout time...did you now that in the Middle Ages it was an assumed duty for a squire to "step in" if the master knight couldn't get his wife pregnant? This is why most if not all squires and Jr. Knights were of the Noble class...can't have no class babies being made lordlings now can we?
It was the lady of the house's (Chatelaine) to welcome weary travelers (mostly menfolk) and bathe them...and see to their 'comfort'....which means exactly what it sounds like. Sex wasn't so romanticized it was a symptom of life. LOVE, however, kept the poets employed!
Love and sex have evolved according to the needs of the people so have lables and descriptions of duties. Generally, though, the best idea is to carve out and define for yourself what makes you happy and then model that for the world!! less

To be quite honest, I can't fully answer your first question about the inclusion of the family unit because polygamy is something as old as the dawn of time, but I don't think it was as sophisticated or complicated in the beginning as it is now and I've only studied the Mormon side of things and the aspects of polyamory in the Noble classes. The belief there (Mormon) is that the more children and wives a man has, the closer he is to God. (Google anything about Warren Jeffs and you'll see what I mean. Just whatever you do, DO NOT listen to the tapes from his trial.) With the English, French and Spanish kingdoms the monarch often had several mistresses throughout his life though usually no more than one at a time unless he was especially ambitious. His wife knew, in some if not most cases the queen had to welcome the mistress to court and see to his bastard children. The mistress rarely lived at the palace, however. If the queen could not produce a viable heir, the mistress's eldest male child would become the next in line and the king would give her a title to make it legitimate. The mistress was usually excluded from any funeral proceedings as it was the first time in the queen's marriage when the king was solely her's. It's quite fascinating stuff. I use polyamory to describe these relationships because all in the relationship are aware of what's going on and both women are loved in a manner unique unto them.

In the Mormon community, a man takes as many wives as he can provide for and has as many children as he can provide for. The family becomes it's own little community. In the beginning, this meant that the eldest children went to work as soon as they were able and the sister wives all shared the household duties of cooking, cleaning and laundry. Today, it's more modernized. (Watch TLC's Sister Wives or HBO's Big Love.) The wives don't engage each other sexually, but they share the bed with the husband at least one night a week depending on how many wives there are in total. If there were two wives, he would just switch rooms every other day. They deal with issues together and the children consider all of the wives to be their mother(s).

And yes. It's completely up to the boundaries the two people are comfortable with. For instance, off the top of my head, there is a radio personality who picks out girls for her boyfriend to have sex with while she watches and she can sleep with any girl she chooses, but she won't (and was asked not to) sleep with another man. There are some who have girlfriends and two out of the three will pair off and go get a third for a night. It really is completely up to them how they carve out what's acceptable and what isn't. When I was first introduced to the concepts my first thought was then why not just say fuck it and sleep with everybody, but as I began to see real working relationships I realized it was a lot more complicated because you still have moments of jealousy and insecurity, even in the best of scenarios. less