7 ms·
Cons of Polyamory
- more_corn 4y agoThis sounds like a lot of work.
- throwaway882162 4y agoPosting from throwaway - I probably shouldn't but I'm going to go ahead and share my experience. I try to be open minded but I think the article paints a picture that doesn't reflect reality and it almost reads like someone is trying to write a sales brochure for that lifestyle. It certainly minimizes the amount of interpersonal drama that I saw first hand back in my younger days between various polyamorous couples and individuals. Unfortunately, my experience overall with polyamorous people was that they tended to act more like a cult than anything else and often did not to respect personal boundaries at all. A non-negligible percentage of them were bisexual and they appeared to lack the capacity to accept that some people are heterosexual and are only interested in monogamous relationships. Ultimately, this made maintaining any sort of non-sexual social relationship difficult as many convinced themselves that my mere presence indicated consent to unspoken things or that I am closet-poly and that I must be hanging out and drinking a few drinks and watching a movie or playing pool with them for some other reason than wanting to hang out and watch a movie or play pool with them. This would often lead to me getting uncomfortable propositions that I had absolutely no interest in and despite always declining politely I can recall very few times I was actually treated politely in return after declining. Usually, me declining would result in some childish name calling - "closed minded", "prude", "nice" (this always made me go wtf - I knew exactly what they meant by that but it was just a ridiculous word to use - like being nice is some sort of horrible thing) and sometimes even real, unvarnished anger and being told to leave and that I wasn't welcome anymore. Over time, I found myself losing friendships with people I had once considered to be good friends mainly because of the gossip that spread among this relatively large group about my unwillingness to do things they wanted me to do. So, I wasn't even actually connected to the lifestyle and had an absolutely terrible experience with polyamory (if I had to review it I'd give it -infinity stars - do not recommend). If someone that is polyamourous is reading this, please don't take me talking about my personal experience of things that happened well over a decade ago as a personal attack or feel that you need to leap to the defense of your chosen lifestyle. I'm sure that there are plenty of polyamorous groups of people in the world that respect others that are not and I probably just had a terrible experience with a particularly militant group. However, if you are poly and are reading this and you ever acted like the way I describe above towards those that are not poly then you are a fucking intolerant, closed-minded asshole.
- anm89 4y agoI'm a pretty open minded person. I have nothing against what ever life choices consenting adults want to make. I'm just seriously skeptical that many people are able to get a good outcome out of polyamorous relationships. Or especially that it is frequently mutually beneficial to both people in a relationship. More power to people who can make it work. I'm sure it keeps life interesting.
- nwah1 4y agoThe impact upon any affected children should be an overriding concern.
- colanderman 4y agoMost poly people I know are childless. The one relationship I do know that involves children, the children benefit also -- happier parents, more close friends their age.
- zach_garwood 4y agoWon't someone think of the children!?
- refurb 4y agoI mean, yeah? Why wouldn’t we?
- zach_garwood 4y agoWhen a monogamous parent goes dating, no one bats an eye, but when a nonmonogamous parent does it, people come out of the woodwork to question whether they can still parent effectively.
- refurb 4y agoThat's because those two are clearly different things despite your attempt to make them equivalent.
- pyuser583 4y ago> In fact, polyamory often works very well for people who are married to their jobs, highly introverted, or otherwise lacking the energy for a primary relationship” This has very much been my experience with … I’ll never call it “polyamory”, but “low intensity” relationships.
- zwkrt 4y agoAs a queer person in tech with definite introverted tendencies, polyamory is kind of perfect. Although I would be more specific and say relationship anarchy[1]. I really can’t imagine how it would work if I was straight though, there’s just so much more of a culture of being intimate friends in queer circles. I’ve got friends I would cuddle with and watch a movie, acquaintances who have seen my in my darkest moments, trysts as beneficiaries on my bank accounts, passionate lovers who I haven’t seen for years, housemates who used to date people I date now… [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_anarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_anarchy
- kalimanzaro 4y agoWow, the polyamorous people I hang out with were all kind of on the Asp-ectrum.. I kinda wondered but never made sense of that, until this article.. (I also ocasionally hang out with nontech people)
- bongoman37 4y ago
- syndacks 4y agoI tried reading this, and all I could hear was “me, me, me, me”.
- ReactiveJelly 4y agoI guess if you're trying to decide whether you want to pursue a monogamous or polyamorous lifestyle for yourself, much of that decision would be about you
- Georgelemental 4y agoI would think that your partner(s) and children (including children resulting from unplanned pregnancies, even if not yet born) would also have a stake in the decision
- archerx 4y agoSometimes I feel like we live in the age of the narcissist and social media is not helping...
- eurasiantiger 4y agoWe live in an age where psychopaths and sadists are actively enabling narcissists.
- jacquesm 4y agoAs evidence, I present the selfie-stick.
- astrange 4y agoI was just thinking that since it's a relief to be "out of the game" for most people (well, maybe it is?), it must be a pain to be in an open relationship and having to set your own standards for when you're not looking. And a pain for everyone else if it turns out they're socializing with you because you're taken and they don't want to be hit on.
- dqpb 4y agoAmazingly, no mention of children.
- bongoman37 4y ago
- Doxin 4y agoFirst off not everyone is even interested in having children. Secondly I don't really see how polyamory would be bad for a kid. They'd just have a bunch of uncles and aunts more than monogamous parents would bring to the table.
- dqpb 4y ago> First off not everyone is even interested in having children Pregnancies happen, regardless of whether or not you’re interested in them > They'd just have a bunch of uncles and aunts more than monogamous parents would bring to the table. You’re skipping all the fun parts, like who’s the father? Whose eyes does the child have? Who gives up their leisurely lifestyle to help the mother who is now too busy and tired to have sex with anybody. Let’s say you know who the father is and he’s happily continuing his polyamorous lifestyle - how does the mother feel, who’s now stuck breastfeeding all day and feels like the only committed parent. Etc, etc… Children introduce a whole rainbow of complications.
- Doxin 4y ago> Children introduce a whole rainbow of complications. Which is why condoms, contraceptives, morning after pills, adoption, and abortion got invented. You're painting polyamorous folks as if they are having unsafe sex all willy-nilly and care for nothing other than sex. Clearly for most poly folks this isn't true.
- ReactiveJelly 4y ago> It is basically impossible to avoid what would, in monogamous contexts, be severe conflicts of interest. > You think that “unable to avoid your ex” is bad? Now you can’t even go to work and avoid your ex. Huh. I just realized, if we had rigid gender roles where every work place or work team was one gender, and if everyone was monogamous, cisgender, and heterosexual, those problems wouldn't happen. It would be an absurd waste to ruin so many lives (especially mine) to fix a relatively small problem, but if you think that problem is a big problem, I can see the appeal. Usually the arguments you see online for rigid gender roles and reverting feminism is weak sauce like "but homophobia" or "but religion" or "but, like, tradition"
- AndrewGaspar 4y agoThat you're just now discovering a possible argument for traditional gender roles is a failure on your part to engage with any contrary points of view (on this topic we've been hashing it over for centuries) not that those arguments are actually two word "but muh"s. You might even find that there are billions of people still living in societies with some form of traditional gender roles, and it turns out they're not all superstitious rubes!
- anarticle 4y agoReading this makes me realize how much of a pain in the ass polyamory is. Is this much complexity worth it?
- subjectsigma 4y agoI have yet to hear a single good thing about polyamory, neither on the Internet nor in real life, including this article. It seems like if sex is the most important thing to you in a relationship it may be worth it, though.
- catsarebetter 4y agoohhh this makes sense I never thought of that before "It’s really easy to only socialize within your polycule." that is a huge benefit, esp. as you get older and finding good friends is really hard. Being friends with your friends' friends is usually a pretty good way to go but this probably leads to stronger value alignment
- vmilner 4y agoI haven’t seen this use of “obligate” before. I’m not sure I’ve understood the nuances of its meaning from the context. (If I delete all the occurrences of the word, the article appears to have the same meaning)
- marssaxman 4y agoYou may have heard that cats are "obligate carnivores"; that is, they must eat meat to survive. The author means that some people will never be happy in a polyamorous situation.
- captainmuon 4y agoI find it interesting that the article assumes once you go polyamorous, you automatically open all the floodgates. You join the local poly scene, and tend to make your relationship graph as densely connected as possible. Its like the caricature of what (we) straight people think gay dating must be like. Now, I have some friends who are actually like that. But I wonder, if you can't just open up your relationship a little bit and be polygamous, without going all in with the whole poly scene. I think the allure would be that it is hard to find one single person who makes you perfectly happy on every level. You might have one person that you connect with emotionally, or sexually, but you also want to connect intellectually, you want them to laugh about your jokes, and so on. Traditionally, you have one person you are married to, and fulfill the other needs though platonic friends, but this doesn't always work out. You don't want to give up the one person you really love, but you might be still missing something - and your partner might be as well! One downside that hasn't been mentioned is that you actually restrict your dating pool when you are poly. From what I've heard (personally I'm in a traditional relationship) a lot of potential dates are put off by it. Many assume you are only looking for casual sex, where you might actually be looking for a meaningful relationship, someone you can have deep discussions with, experience infatuation again, and so on.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago> But I wonder, if you can't just open up your relationship a little bit and be polygamous, without going all in with the whole poly scene. "Polygamous" is not likely the word you were going for. Perhaps "monogamish" or "ethically non-monogamous"? Polyamory is a funky mix of Greek and Latin roots for many loves. ENM does not require love, but it can be on the menu for many; it depends solely where you (and everyone you're involved with) mutually decide to draw the lines.
- catsarebetter 4y agoIf people were systems, this would be a short vs long term tradeoff, it's hard to find a single person that fits all those pieces but once you find them, you're not going to give up easily or at all. If you are able to date multiple people you're more easily incentived to move on. That being said, people aren't systems, but it's a fun thought
- throwawa8675309 4y agoMy partner was part of a group which included a former(?) partner of the author of this page. My partner had to end their involvement because multiple polyamorous people in the group were unable to respect my partner's boundaries and were continually pushing my partner to enter into relations they weren't interested in (and which would have violated our monogamous relationship). It's frustrating to keep having the experience of meeting up with someone for something only to realize they think it's a date, doubly so when even bringing your partner along doesn't prevent someone from thinking its a date. The author's "romance on the table" seems a bit self-centered from my position given the background above: The difficulty in setting and respecting clear boundaries doesn't just harm the poly practitioner, but can also harm people in their proximity who get non-consensually exposed to the negatives of their lifestyle. Or to put it in personal disadvantage terms: Not only will you tend to fall into socializing only "in-network", monogamous people may well prefer to avoid socializing with you and your network because they prefer to avoid situations where "romance is on the table" with people other than their partner, just as they may prefer to limit their socialization with single people. Even if everyone is well behaved there is still a loss of the 'they are in a relationship' automatic boundary. Since this preference is due to an actual cost and not only prejudice it's unlikely to improved by education.