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Have you ever met someone in a true polyamorous relationship? Like, not just on the Internet, but in real life? And known them well enough to be a close confida

by a2tech 8y ago

Have you ever met someone in a true polyamorous relationship? Like, not just on the Internet, but in real life? And known them well enough to be a close confidant? Because I have. And I'll tell you right now that I've never seen one work. Someone is always unhappy deep down (and usually everyone is). They'll tell people its great and that they're just squares for not joining in, but if you know the parties involved you'll see they're unhappy with their partner and looking for something elsewhere (but the source unhappiness persists) or they're doing it because they're afraid of losing someone (in which case they're secretly jealous and afraid). Not things that make for a happy relationship. Now, I don't have a horse in this race. I've always been a 1 person kind of guy, and my interest in this has always been as an outsider that just wants my friends to be happy (and if that was an open/many sided relationship that is 100% not an issue). If these relationships had solved their problems or even made them one iota happier than they had been I'd be as encouraging as anyone.

SteveNuts 8y ago
This has been my experience as well, I knew someone personally that was in an open relationship and her husband became jealous because she was readily able to find sexual partners outside of the marriage, while he wasn't really having the same luck. They ended up divorcing.
- magduf 8y ago
  Yep, this is one of the frequent complaints about the lifestyle. The problem is that, in my view, men are much more accepting of this* (in that, it's easy to find men who are perfectly fine with having a FWB, not necessarily sharing their primary partner) generally than women, who are much more possessive and jealous. I do find it interesting, because women actually stand to benefit more from relationships like this: resource sharing, being able to take extended time away from work for child-raising, having more adults in the house to cooperate on raising children together, etc. Raising kids in a modern dual-income 2-person family is extremely difficult and stressful (and costly, with day care); I honestly don't know how people do it. *edit
- LeftTurnSignal 8y ago
  The only couple I have seen that's open and it's working for them helps each other find a partner so that neither one goes home alone that night. They're a very unique couple it seems. I've known him for 24 years now and he's always been a bit different, but very open about everything like that. Now I've seen a few open couples that had the exact issue you described. One side gets jealous because the other found someone to bang that night but they didn't / couldn't. It seems like they forget they're in a relationship and leave it up to the partner to fend for themselves.
  - magduf 8y ago
    Personally I kinda like the idea of "monogamish" relationships. A couple is mostly monogamous, but once in a while has a fling, or invites a friend for a threesome. Maybe couples would do better to "play together" rather than separately? If one partner is frequently spending the night elsewhere and the other partner is sleeping alone all these times, that seems obviously a recipe for disaster.
sndean 8y ago
> Someone is always unhappy deep down My experience is the same. For married couples that became polyamorous after getting married, in every case I know of (3), the person initiating the polyamorous relationship was able to find outside relationships easily. The person's spouse wasn't able to. After a few years of that arrangement they've all gotten divorced.
montagg 8y ago
I normally don’t post on HN, but I wanted to to add some clarity to this. My wife and I are poly. We’ve been poly for about a decade, we were in a triad for two years (all three partners in relationships with one another), and have had many committed relationships over that time. It’s absolutely not for everyone, and anyone who says folks are “too square” are needlessly self-righteous. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about polyamory. It’s frankly playing relationships on hard, and you need to be extra committed to working things out early and often. With the right personalities, it can force better relationship health because of the high risk, high reward nature of the lifestyle. I credit poly with giving me and my wife the skills to have hard conversations early and work through problems in good faith, and we do our best to conduct ourselves the same way in all our relationships in order to practice polyamory ethically. I also take issue with you saying it can “never” work. It absolutely can, but as I said, it’s not for everyone. It also doesn’t mean every relationship lasts forever. Looking at any relationship in isolation, it’s just dating; people fall in and out of love naturally, and there’s very normal feelings of pain and loss sometimes. Those same feelings don’t stop monogamous folks from dating, and it’s the same in poly. But when that fallout does occur, there’s a wider safety net of people who are close to you and care about you and have more intimate understanding of you than having them as a friends alone, so there are definitely advantages if you put in the effort. Because it does involve very different configurations of relationships when there’s more than one, poly requires rethinking what relationships mean generally, and it allows for a wider variety of relationship types, and I don’t just mean a linear friends with benefits to committed marriage. I mean accepting a broader range of human interactions and expectations as part of a valid relationship. The result, if you’re willing to do the work and if it’s something you WANT to do, is a very rich set of experiences and deep relationships you might not have if you were monogamous. So in short: it can work, it’s not for everyone and requires way more work than monogamy, and it is also inherently no better or worse than monogamy.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Without touching on the ethics of polyamory, "requires way more work than monogamy" is one way of being worse than monogamy. It is my perception that a large fraction of marriages that end in divorce, do so because one or both people aren't willing to put in the work that is needed to maintain the relationship. Requiring more work... at least for the large majority of people, that's a fatal flaw.
magduf 8y ago
I have, but I didn't know them that well. It was a married couple, and they even led a polyamory group. They seemed very happy. I will admit that what I said before is all theory, not experience from practice. When I see poly people on the dating sites, they're way too "out there" for me to have any interest in them. I have read though that there are successful poly relationships, and that relationship counselors generally agree that the successful ones have the best communication skills of all their clients. All the stuff I've read from them highly emphasizes communication skills.
LeftTurnSignal 8y ago
Out of all the people I've met, I have met a single very open couple that made things work. They met at a strip club, and right off the bat they both said what they were and that was that. Now they're one of the more happier couples I've seen. Been married for 12 years and still doing the open thing. But I have seen many many more open relationships come crashing down over night.
rainbowmverse 8y ago
There's basically two ways polyamory goes down: 1: You learn a lot about yourself and unpack all the stuff you've buried over a lifetime, figure out what you want, and are forever changed for the better. Maybe this means you decide poly isn't for you. This is how it went down for me. 2: You double down on all your insecurities, ruin everything, and blame polyamory for it. Most of the negative stories you hear come from this. All polyamory does is amplify what's already inside. It's like getting superpowers. A jackass with laser vision was already a jackass without it.
- magduf 8y ago
  Wow, this is a really fantastic comment, and very insightful. I think you're onto something here: standard monogamous relationships make it easier to hide problems or ignore them, and you can't do that with polyamory.
mercutio2 8y ago
Yes? Tons of successful polyamorous close friends? I would basically say that every relationship I know of that started with both parties happy to be polyamorous had a happy story arc, whether it ended eventually or not (N=~8). Sometimes a non-primary partner would be unsatisfied and move on, and occasionally primary relationships evolve to something less than primary, but that’s “working as intended”, by my book. Now, I will agree that trying to fix a broken monogamous relationship by opening it up is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps all the polyamorous relationships you’ve observed started out monogamous? It’s also true that polyamory is gargantuan amount of work, it’s in many ways a bigger commitment than monogamy. You have way more dyads needing active and thoughtful communication, and so people whose motivation for polyamory is not wanting commitment are terrible at polyamory. But once you get past those two hurdles (doing polyamory under duress, thinking polyamory is less work, when it’s more), it works great for people who are into it.
phyzome 8y ago
It totally does work for some. I have a number of friends in poly relationships. For some people it works. For some it doesn't. I don't think it would work for most people, though. You need to be effective communicators and good at understanding your own emotions. That's not true for the majority of the population.
- magduf 8y ago
  >I don't think it would work for most people, though. You need to be effective communicators and good at understanding your own emotions. That's not true for the majority of the population. Well, back to my original comment that spawned this mega-thread, where I opined that we'd be better off if poly were much more mainstream, maybe if that were the case, people would be forced to become more effective communicators in order to stay in relationships.

by a2tech 8y ago

SteveNuts 8y ago

This has been my experience as well, I knew someone personally that was in an open relationship and her husband became jealous because she was readily able to find sexual partners outside of the marriage, while he wasn't really having the same luck. They ended up divorcing.

magduf 8y ago
Yep, this is one of the frequent complaints about the lifestyle. The problem is that, in my view, men are much more accepting of this* (in that, it's easy to find men who are perfectly fine with having a FWB, not necessarily sharing their primary partner) generally than women, who are much more possessive and jealous. I do find it interesting, because women actually stand to benefit more from relationships like this: resource sharing, being able to take extended time away from work for child-raising, having more adults in the house to cooperate on raising children together, etc. Raising kids in a modern dual-income 2-person family is extremely difficult and stressful (and costly, with day care); I honestly don't know how people do it. *edit
LeftTurnSignal 8y ago
The only couple I have seen that's open and it's working for them helps each other find a partner so that neither one goes home alone that night. They're a very unique couple it seems. I've known him for 24 years now and he's always been a bit different, but very open about everything like that. Now I've seen a few open couples that had the exact issue you described. One side gets jealous because the other found someone to bang that night but they didn't / couldn't. It seems like they forget they're in a relationship and leave it up to the partner to fend for themselves.
- magduf 8y ago
  Personally I kinda like the idea of "monogamish" relationships. A couple is mostly monogamous, but once in a while has a fling, or invites a friend for a threesome. Maybe couples would do better to "play together" rather than separately? If one partner is frequently spending the night elsewhere and the other partner is sleeping alone all these times, that seems obviously a recipe for disaster.

sndean 8y ago

> Someone is always unhappy deep down My experience is the same. For married couples that became polyamorous after getting married, in every case I know of (3), the person initiating the polyamorous relationship was able to find outside relationships easily. The person's spouse wasn't able to. After a few years of that arrangement they've all gotten divorced.

montagg 8y ago

I normally don’t post on HN, but I wanted to to add some clarity to this. My wife and I are poly. We’ve been poly for about a decade, we were in a triad for two years (all three partners in relationships with one another), and have had many committed relationships over that time. It’s absolutely not for everyone, and anyone who says folks are “too square” are needlessly self-righteous. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about polyamory. It’s frankly playing relationships on hard, and you need to be extra committed to working things out early and often. With the right personalities, it can force better relationship health because of the high risk, high reward nature of the lifestyle. I credit poly with giving me and my wife the skills to have hard conversations early and work through problems in good faith, and we do our best to conduct ourselves the same way in all our relationships in order to practice polyamory ethically. I also take issue with you saying it can “never” work. It absolutely can, but as I said, it’s not for everyone. It also doesn’t mean every relationship lasts forever. Looking at any relationship in isolation, it’s just dating; people fall in and out of love naturally, and there’s very normal feelings of pain and loss sometimes. Those same feelings don’t stop monogamous folks from dating, and it’s the same in poly. But when that fallout does occur, there’s a wider safety net of people who are close to you and care about you and have more intimate understanding of you than having them as a friends alone, so there are definitely advantages if you put in the effort. Because it does involve very different configurations of relationships when there’s more than one, poly requires rethinking what relationships mean generally, and it allows for a wider variety of relationship types, and I don’t just mean a linear friends with benefits to committed marriage. I mean accepting a broader range of human interactions and expectations as part of a valid relationship. The result, if you’re willing to do the work and if it’s something you WANT to do, is a very rich set of experiences and deep relationships you might not have if you were monogamous. So in short: it can work, it’s not for everyone and requires way more work than monogamy, and it is also inherently no better or worse than monogamy.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Without touching on the ethics of polyamory, "requires way more work than monogamy" is one way of being worse than monogamy. It is my perception that a large fraction of marriages that end in divorce, do so because one or both people aren't willing to put in the work that is needed to maintain the relationship. Requiring more work... at least for the large majority of people, that's a fatal flaw.

magduf 8y ago

I have, but I didn't know them that well. It was a married couple, and they even led a polyamory group. They seemed very happy. I will admit that what I said before is all theory, not experience from practice. When I see poly people on the dating sites, they're way too "out there" for me to have any interest in them. I have read though that there are successful poly relationships, and that relationship counselors generally agree that the successful ones have the best communication skills of all their clients. All the stuff I've read from them highly emphasizes communication skills.

LeftTurnSignal 8y ago

Out of all the people I've met, I have met a single very open couple that made things work. They met at a strip club, and right off the bat they both said what they were and that was that. Now they're one of the more happier couples I've seen. Been married for 12 years and still doing the open thing. But I have seen many many more open relationships come crashing down over night.

rainbowmverse 8y ago

There's basically two ways polyamory goes down: 1: You learn a lot about yourself and unpack all the stuff you've buried over a lifetime, figure out what you want, and are forever changed for the better. Maybe this means you decide poly isn't for you. This is how it went down for me. 2: You double down on all your insecurities, ruin everything, and blame polyamory for it. Most of the negative stories you hear come from this. All polyamory does is amplify what's already inside. It's like getting superpowers. A jackass with laser vision was already a jackass without it.

magduf 8y ago
Wow, this is a really fantastic comment, and very insightful. I think you're onto something here: standard monogamous relationships make it easier to hide problems or ignore them, and you can't do that with polyamory.

mercutio2 8y ago

Yes? Tons of successful polyamorous close friends? I would basically say that every relationship I know of that started with both parties happy to be polyamorous had a happy story arc, whether it ended eventually or not (N=~8). Sometimes a non-primary partner would be unsatisfied and move on, and occasionally primary relationships evolve to something less than primary, but that’s “working as intended”, by my book. Now, I will agree that trying to fix a broken monogamous relationship by opening it up is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps all the polyamorous relationships you’ve observed started out monogamous? It’s also true that polyamory is gargantuan amount of work, it’s in many ways a bigger commitment than monogamy. You have way more dyads needing active and thoughtful communication, and so people whose motivation for polyamory is not wanting commitment are terrible at polyamory. But once you get past those two hurdles (doing polyamory under duress, thinking polyamory is less work, when it’s more), it works great for people who are into it.

phyzome 8y ago

It totally does work for some. I have a number of friends in poly relationships. For some people it works. For some it doesn't. I don't think it would work for most people, though. You need to be effective communicators and good at understanding your own emotions. That's not true for the majority of the population.

magduf 8y ago
>I don't think it would work for most people, though. You need to be effective communicators and good at understanding your own emotions. That's not true for the majority of the population. Well, back to my original comment that spawned this mega-thread, where I opined that we'd be better off if poly were much more mainstream, maybe if that were the case, people would be forced to become more effective communicators in order to stay in relationships.