20 ms·

Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect

• malfist 2y ago
  I thought this was a nice article. I myself am in a non-open poly relationship and it works quite well for us. It's also pretty common in my community (homos) because we all like the same sex
  • choina 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • malfist 2y ago
      It means, myself and my two partners are in a relationship with each other, and do so without seeking sex or love from other people. It's just the three of us, no more, no less.
• jimbob45 2y ago
  21% of Americans have experimented with consensual non-monogamy at some point in their lives, far more than two decades ago Not only do I not believe that statistic, but the footnote citation seems to be broken. I've never seen a poly relationship make it past 10 years and I've never seen a poly relationship without significant issues that you wouldn't see in a monogamous relationship. Furthermore, there simply isn't enough time in the day for poly to work. You sleep for eight hours, work for eight hours, and then have eight hours in your day left for everything else. Even if you perfectly split your free eight between two people, you're going to quickly become a boring person whose entire personality is the fact that you're poly, god forbid you have a commute or a kid.
  • kbelder 2y ago
    Maybe it was only 2% of the population, but they accounted for 21% of the relationships.
    • beeflet 2y ago
      Now we're thinking with portals!
  • nordsieck 2y ago
    > 21% of Americans have experimented with consensual non-monogamy at some point in their lives, far more than two decades ago > Not only do I not believe that statistic, but the footnote citation seems to be broken. I guess it depends a lot on how the terms are defined. If you include parallel dating (during the "non-exclusive" phase of dating), I could easily see this as being true.
    • wakawaka28 2y ago
      I don't think most people are having sex with multiple people or even doing this parallel dating business. Parallel dating is less common than serial dating, and parallel dating with sex is even less common than parallel dating. It sure isn't looking like 20% of people to me. I avoid people like that too so maybe there is some selection bias.
      • inglor_cz 2y ago
        A single threesome is enough to put all its participants into those 20 per cent, and according to studies, 10 per cent of women and 18 per cent of men had a threesome. There is a majority of the cohort already, and if your friends perceive you as judgmental, they won't likely tell you that they have had one.
        • wakawaka28 2y ago
          There's no way 18% of straight men had a threesome. That sounds like the kind of thing people would lie about. In any case, a single threesome is not "polyamory" and certainly not closely related to "parallel dating."
  • jandrese 2y ago
    > experimented with consensual non-monogamy I think this might be less of "I now have two families" and more of "we brought a third person into the bedroom for a bit of spice once in a blue moon".
  • KittenInABox 2y ago
    I believe 21% of americans have at least tried to hook in a third for a threesome fling successfully or nonsuccessfully
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
      Half of them informed their spouses about it beforehand. One-eighth of them did so after the fact.
  • tremon 2y ago
    I think you're making the claim much bigger than it is. The narrow interpretation of "consensual non-monogamy" does not imply a relationship. Having a threesome with your partner and your best friend already qualifies. Making out with a non-partner while your partner watches might already qualify, depending on how the question is understood.
    • bluefirebrand 2y ago
      > Having a threesome with your partner and your best friend already qualifies I don't think it does qualify any more than having a one night stand between two single people implies that they are dating This seems to be ignore that Poly implies a relationship, not just sex
      • Teever 2y ago
        How many threesomes with their partner and their best friend would someone have to have before they're polyamorous?
        • bluefirebrand 2y ago
          That's probably up to whatever the couple thinks, and has no universally correct answer It just seems absurd to suggest that a monogamous couple who has one single threesome, one time, and then never again, is now "non-monogamous" forever
          • Teever 2y ago
            It's obviously a spectrum. A related concept is if you suck dick are you gay?
            • nprateem 2y ago
              Asking for a friend? It depends if you enjoy it buddy
        • 2y ago
  • CrazyStat 2y ago
    After some sleuthing I believe the original source for that statistic is [1]. But that’s a study of single adults which is a wildly different population than adults as a whole. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2016.1178675 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2016.1...
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • quux 2y ago
    Time spent with different partners doesn't necessarily have to be equal. For instance a "comet partner" who you only spend a couple of days with every few months is one type of common poly relationship
  • dragonwriter 2y ago
    > Furthermore, there simply isn’t enough time in the day for poly to work. You sleep for eight hours, work for eight hours, and then have eight hours in your day left for everything else. Not everyone (or even necessarily anyone in a family) works full time, and not everyone who works, full-time or otherwise, works in an institution at arm’s length from the family, so even at the basic premises your argument about constraints suffers from false generalization problems. Observing that polyamorous family structure is suboptimally suited for a dystopian proletarian life in some extreme capitalism assumptions is accurate, but note that that the same observation has been made by many about monogamous relationships. > Even if you perfectly split your free eight between two people, Why are you assuming splitting time? A person can interact with more than one other person at a time. > god forbid you have a commute or a kid. Seems that in many ways having kids in a poly family would be easier than a monogamous nuclear family. The only problem I see with commutes is that a poly family unit is going to be forced into more complicated commute-optimization trade-offs (OTOH, the probability of having viable commute-sharing with at least one other partner is also higher, so there’s plusses and minuses on that front, too.)
  • kyletns 2y ago
    Good thing you figured out that non-monogamy simply doesn't work. Must feel good to finally get to the bottom of that! I'll make sure to inform the millions of Americans currently practicing it that you figured it out - simple arithmetic!
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    > Simply isn't enough time in the day We do a lot of three-person dates and hangouts, that helps with timing
• xkcd-sucks 2y ago
  An underappreciated feature of nonmonogamy is that it makes ethical conflicts of interest a bit more challenging. This article doesn't discuss that explicitly, but does hint at it in some of the quotes
  • zeroonetwothree 2y ago
    How so?
    • lazide 2y ago
      It’s hard enough when there are clear roles/responsibilities/expectations. Divorces (which assume monogamy) are notorious for getting incredibly ugly. Look at how few people can even agree what open/enm/poly even means in this discussion. Then add more parties with more emotions and more abilities to act out…. More degrees of freedom means harder to predict. And then also add in that Society is going to have an even harder time holding anyone accountable for anything in these kinds of situations - he said/she said is hard enough, what about when it’s he said/she said/he said/she said/they said? Just give up and throw everyone in jail? Or no one?
• jpm_sd 2y ago
  I've observed a number of poly relationships from the outside, as a friend of one or more of the participants. I've also been in a monogamous relationship for >20yr and I've lived on both coasts of the US in that time. Generalizing wildly, "going poly" seems to be driven by one partner's selfishness and the other partner's desire to please. It has resulted in breakup of the original dyad in 100% of cases.
  • kyletns 2y ago
    Indeed a wild generalization, but I can agree from many anecdotes that monogamous couples "going poly" is super super hard - much easier to start a relationship in a poly dynamic than attempt to transform one.
  • aguaviva 2y ago
    Probably a function of the particlar psychographic you hang out with. Meanwhile one observes the denial of any potential to even discuss ENM (along with straight-up cheating) contributing to an immeasurable portion of dyad breakups. Or people staying in the dyad, but with tremendous unacknowledged suffering.
  • Tade0 2y ago
    My only observation of this phenomenon was essentially as you described in your second paragraph, the difference being it started as a poly relationship and it was painfully visible that one person was the third wheel there and in denial about it.
  • nprateem 2y ago
    On dating sites 100% of the girls I've seen with poly/open relationship on their profiles are butt ugly. Guys have been banging other girls on the side since forever, but now apparently a new word is needed and everyone needs to know about it. Just go and bang someone else and don't go on about it to your actual gf ffs.
• renewiltord 2y ago
  Pretty good article. I think everyone could do with a little less pathologization of a lot of human behaviour. My wife has suggested in the past that we have another wife so that we can have more children[0]. I'm amenable to the idea but the logistics of this seem hard to me: our finances are fused, our desires are mostly unified, and it took me many years to find someone with whom this was easy to do. A two-party marriage like mine is straightforward for us both. There is a natural Nash equilibrium in responsibility splitting. We do so without explicit handling and simple nudges one way or the other suffice to recalibrate. I imagine long-term polyamorous relationships are easier to handle for people who have more explicit procedures in interaction or who are more comfortable with the uncertainty. If there's an equivalent article which focuses more on the machinery of long-term polyamorous relationships that would be interesting. 0: It's not that we're old but that we will be old by the time we're done.
  • thatfrenchguy 2y ago
    > 0: It's not that we're old but that we will be old by the time we're done. Raising children when you're old is so much harder, and you'll be mega-old when they're 20. I really don't see the point?
    • renewiltord 2y ago
      The point is to avoid that precise problem by parallelizing the child-having. My wife can only have one child at a time and medically recommended spacing is 18 months. The objective is to have our children as young as we can given our current ages.
      • echoangle 2y ago
        I hope it’s not too personal, ignore if it is: How many children are you aiming for?
        • renewiltord 2y ago
          Given that we have this limit and our age, 3 if her health permits. If we could parallelize, one could imagine twice that+.
• nerdjon 2y ago
  There is one issue that I have with this article and most discussions around polyamory. That is mixing in open relationships and poly. There is a massive difference between, you can do whatever sexually you want and dating other people. There is an emotional difference. Myself, I am in an open relationship but I know that what I consider poly is a line I do not wish to cross. I know that just it is not for me. I don't consider myself poly. (To be very clear, this is not a judgement on being poly. I have several poly friends. I just don't know why we group all of them together) Mixing these has made having discussions with some people more difficult. So I am not really sure why we are grouping all... non traditional relationship structures into poly. That all aside. I find whenever this topic comes up to be quite interesting. I don't live in SF but I am a gay man. I know very few gay couples that are not at least "door ajar" as I have heard a few explain it. I have had a few people ask me why I am open, and honestly I don't like that question. To me the better question is, "why not?". And you may have a valid reason, maybe you are a very jealous person, maybe you just don't want too and thats perfectly valid. But to me this boils down the problem isn't monogamy, being open, poly, or however you want to define your relationship (or lack of one). The problem is the assumption of monogamy. Not ever having that discussion, and honestly having the discussion without jumping to doing something because you think it's the way you are supposed too. I do find some of the numbers presented here to be interesting, particularly the divide between men and woman. But I honestly can't really speak on that since I don't really have much exposure to this world outside of the LGBT world.
  • spondylosaurus 2y ago
    The poly vs open distinction is interesting because (anecdotally) I see some variation there between gay and lesbian relationships—it seems like gay dudes are more likely to be in a door-ajar couple, whereas the throuples I know are usually groups of lesbians! Conversely, I don't see many poly gay dudes or door-ajar lesbian couples, and lesbians might be more monogamous on average.
    • nerdjon 2y ago
      > I don't see many poly gay dudes From my experience. I only know a few poly gay men. I know far more gay couples in open relationships that have similar lines that I do when it comes to anything beyond that. I mean, for sure those lines get blurry. Things that you may traditionally associate with dating like cuddling on the couch at a party (just a party, not anything more) or similar things. But, there is still that line. I do wonder why that seems to be the case. I am reluctant to get into stereotypes to explain it...
• scott_w 2y ago
  I don’t think the author is saying this is their opinion but this sentence stood out to me: Monogamy is coercive. For a lifestyle that tries to sound “open,” this is an incredibly judgemental view to take on the many people who don’t live your lifestyle. Some of this attitude reminds me of hearing “nobody cares if you’re not tattooed” in my tooth, from tattooed people. Right before insisting I should get a tattoo to be like them. To be clear, I don’t care what 2, 3 or 30 consenting adults do in their personal lives. I wonder if the negative view of monogamy is just the immaturity of youth and those people have since grown out of that position?
  • phoe-krk 2y ago
    > I wonder if the negative view of monogamy is just the immaturity of youth and those people have since grown out of that position? There are powerful entities, including religions and country laws, that either make life easier for people pratcicing the monogamous relationship style or just outright force that style on masses of people. This force spawns resistance, and the negative view you mention is an expression of this resistance.
    • t-writescode 2y ago
      And it's worth adding that the comment "Monogamy is coercive." is a reflection of this part: > There are powerful entities, including religions and country laws, that [...] just outright force that style on masses of people.
      • BitterCritter 2y ago
        I think we are conflating two different things. Monogamous people and monogamous institutions. Does the author mean institutions are coercive or that couples are coercive?
        • t-writescode 2y ago
          Almost certainly Both! Systemic, indoctrinated and even toxic monogamy, perpetuated by people and society at large. You've got people and relationships that are so harmed by strict heteronormativity and its related monogamy that "men and women can't be friends" and "you can't say that lady's cute because that's cheating" and pornography is adultery. It's little microaggressions and requirements of conformity that systematize and enforce monogamy in little ways.
• 23B1 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • ajkjk 2y ago
    It's talking about a different place and culture than you're in and you're calling it out of touch because it's not familiar to you? Isn't that the point?
    • 23B1 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • t-writescode 2y ago
        Disgust is an interesting response to this experience. I encourage you to reframe your thoughts in "is they consenting adults?" and then "is this hurting anyone?" if the answers are "yes they're adults and they're not hurting anyone", I encourage you to mind your own business :) Gay people aren't "shoving things in your face" when they kiss, or can be seen holding hands, or have representation in a book or movies because the author wanted to represent themselves in the media any more than straight people are "shoving things in your face" when they kiss, or can be seen holding hands, etc. Equally, non-monogamous people aren't shoving anything in your face by existing in a way that makes them happy and affirmed. Disgust over other people's choices and lives and the subsequent attempt to squelch that is very anti-liberty.
        • 23B1 2y ago
          [flagged]
      • ajkjk 2y ago
        You ... might be the out-of-touch one here. This culture is pretty common all over the country these days (although definitely most prevalent in the big metro areas).
        • 2y ago
• bluefirebrand 2y ago
  I am someone who experienced the "longterm partner decided she wanted to be poly" heartbreak. When she told me, I asked her why she would choose to stay with me rather than just be single and date as many men as she wanted. She told me something along the lines of "I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but I don't feel like one person is enough for all the love I have". I wasn't terribly happy with that response, and she broke up with me a week later (while a man who she wanted to be poly with was staying with her). She left me because she wanted to change the parameters of the relationship and I didn't Afterwards, oddly enough, I wound up in a friendship for a while with a different woman who had just broken up with her fiance for almost the same reason. In her case she had always been open about wanting to be Poly, her fiance had been okay with it, and I guess changed his mind the closer they got towards marriage. She left him because he wanted to change the parameters of the relationship and she didn't. I wound up talking to the second woman a lot about polyamory and my unhappiness with how my ex had treated me. One night we met for coffee and she basically spent the whole time trashing me. She called me a loser for still being upset about my ex, she told me I was a miserable sad sack of a person and I needed to get over it, etc. Once she was done with that, she proceeded to tell me (in unwelcome and unwanted detail) about a lot of the latest sex parties she had been attending and how excited it made her to be living her fantasies. Then she casually asked if I wanted to go back to her place and screw (which was not our relationship up to that point). I declined, told her I didn't want anything to do with her anymore and left. She spent a couple of weeks asking me what she had done wrong. I mostly ignored her but even when I tried to explain she just argued with me, then eventually she cut me off with a long tirade where she acted like it was her choice not to have anything to do with me anymore, not mine I'm aware that n=2 is not statistically significant, but those two encounters happening within the span of a few months kind of convinced me that people who are Poly are self-centered, emotionally stunted, and absolutely not suitable for any kind of long term relationship Yeah a lot of monogamous relationships end these days too, but if this is representative of even a small fraction of poly people, I wonder if you can even call poly a relationship at all, really
  • 123yawaworht456 2y ago
    the more I glimpse American culture, the happier I am that I was not born there. >I wasn't terribly happy with that response, and she broke up with me a week later my brother in Christ, you should've broken up with her on the spot.
• silexia 2y ago
  Fantastic article, but as a monogamous married father of 4, I think the author misses the fundamental point of all relationships... And the point of life itself: Reproduction. The primary drive of every living creature from whales to amoeba is to procreate. Having children is WHY we have a sex drive and an urge to have relationships in the first place. Tons of studies show children require stability in the relationships in their lives. Poly may work great for people without children, but children need the stability of long term committed parents who are always there and this is best provided by monogamy.
  • 9999px 2y ago
    Downvotes are mad that you're correct.
  • krupan 2y ago
    I generally agree with what you are saying, but you need to add "and not fighting" to "long term committed parents who are always there." Not fighting is so important that sometimes the parents need to split up so they can stop fighting. They can still be committed parents who are always there for the kids while no longer in a relationship with each other and the kids will do well. I really really wish someone had told me that a long time ago, and while I'm wishing I wish someone would have told my children's grandparents that an even longer time ago.
    • em-bee 2y ago
      when my parents separated (and then divorced) and we moved, i thought it was the best thing that we moved so far away that they just could not meet and thus could not fight anymore. that was my feeling as a 12 year old. forget shared responsibility and kids alternating between both parents. in our case that would have been a disaster and the opposite of a stable living situation for us children.
  • bluefirebrand 2y ago
    I suspect you're being downvoted based on the "purpose of life is reproduction" piece, but I hope people are aware that this part about studies showing that in general Poly parenting leads to worse outcomes for children is spot on Poly relationships tend to be complicated, and children are not capable of understanding all of the nuance of ethical poly relationships, nevermind the many variations of non-ethical poly relationships. It tends to lead to people who have really screwed up ideas about relationships and attachment issues. Note that this is not me saying that ethical poly relationships are inherently screwed up. What I'm saying is that from the outside perspective of an immature child, who will likely then go on to mimic what they see modelled without understanding it, that child is going to have screwed up ideas about relationships
• nkingsy 2y ago
  The word swinger wasn't mentioned once. Probably because the swingers are just quietly enjoying their lives under the radar.
  • t-writescode 2y ago
    I think it might also be because "Swinging" is a word from a previous era and some/many of the young LGBTQ+ people are against learning from their elders. Swinging is a very clear example of ENM.
    • nkingsy 2y ago
      Google seems to think monogamish is the new word for it, but that is a really confusing word (I thought it meant you can cuddle puddle with your friends).
    • e40 2y ago
      ENM?
      • trogdor 2y ago
        Ethical non-monogamy
    • giraffe_lady 2y ago
      > some/many of the young LGBTQ+ people are against learning from their elders. Well almost a complete generational cohort of their elders is simply missing. They died of aids in the 80s and 90s.
      • moralestapia 2y ago
        No, they didn't. At least look at the data before making such a bigoted statement.
        • indrora 2y ago
• ajkjk 2y ago
  I liked this, but I feel like it glosses over a significant dynamic that discolors both sides of the mono/poly split, which is "people not living the life they want". Not that it's literally "coercive" -- they're not being forced to be in that relationship in any real sense. But the dynamic I often observe (well, infer from observations) is that a person would really like to monogamous or polyamorous (or a different kind of polyamorous---just, they want to be in a different status) but feels they aren't allowed to assert what they want from their partner(s), and a result is being somewhat "degraded" by the status of their relationship. They may even believe they are happy with everything, because it's the best thing they can feel they can get, but often (I suspect) there's an arrangement they would be much happier with, if they could bring themselves to insist on it. After all a person ought to aspire to be physically and emotionally secure enough to assert what they need from their partners, even if that risks the partner leaving them, and they ought to be able to find partnerships in which their partner respects them enough to compromise or negotiate if it is something they truly need. But I suspect a lot of people aren't there, and being mono/poly is often a "workaround": if you don't believe you can fully assert the relationship you want, sometimes you can get half of it by becoming monogamous/polyamorous instead even if it's not truly your preference. And maybe that lets you avoid the issue, sometimes for years. But it's never as as good as being able to get what you truly want. (Occasionally I mention this vibe to people and they react negatively---"who are you to question other people's decisions?", they say. And at one level they're right, because yes, everyone out there is pretty much day-to-day making the best decision they can see to make for themselves, so if they're coping with their world by being in a certain kind of relationship, it's not really our place to doubt them. But on the other hand, you can sense when someone is not living their best life, whether it be living the relationship they want or having the job / friends / beliefs / sexuality / gender that they want. You can't be sure, but these things do show a bit through cracks in the way that people talk and act. So I think it's fair to observe this phenomenon and speculate about it, so long as you never push anyone to "admit" to it, or to change before they're ready.)
  • hakunin 2y ago
    Only issue is that when you get what you want, you might be convincing your partner(s) to settle for something they want less. Perhaps the mindset of "best I can get" and finding an acceptable compromise is the way to go.
• krupan 2y ago
  It's wild that we can't differentiate lust and love, committed relationship and meaningless sex. That's the main thing I get from the confusion in the article and the confusion in the comments here about what even defines polyamory. It sounds to me like who you have sex with is the main and only thing that defines a relationship? Can people that wait to have sex until marriage ever be considered polyamorous while unmarried? If a married person gets close to a second person but doesn't do anything sexual with them are they still being monogamous?
  • bluefirebrand 2y ago
    Polyamory may literally just mean "Many loves" but I think we can all agree that we are not in a polyamorous relationship with our parents or close friends The level of partnership doesn't have to be sex, but being real sex is the thing that most often differentiates romantic partnerships from other close relationships
    • t-writescode 2y ago
      > but being real sex is the thing that most often differentiates romantic partnerships from other close relationships I don't actually agree. I think "willingness and continued intention to follow this person and live with them ever still, including the sacrifices that come along with it" tends to be something that connects more with relationships traditionally seen as romantic. It's something that would separate a very close friendship from, for example, a "Queer Platonic Relationship", which could very arguably be romantic.
      • archagon 2y ago
        People devote themselves to their non-romantic loved ones, including parents and siblings.
        • Spivak 2y ago
          Sure but the thing that matters is when you make a bond with someone who isn't a member of your family.
• big-green-man 2y ago
  I think people who like ideas like polyamory have misconstrued notions about what monogamy is, which is a general cultural problem in western societies these days. I don't own my partner and she doesn't own me. I give myself freely to her and she does the same. It's not about expectation, but commitment. I promise her she's the only one for me, despite my very human desires, and she promises me the same thing. This is healthier than the pervasive "ownership" mental model, because we both very much are aware that we have human and animal desire, and understand that the commitment is freely given. We don't get mad at each other for being attracted to other people, and feel no jealousy, we would feel betrayed if the other broke the commitment, because we were promised something by the other. The idea that monogamy is the default in relationships outside of marriage is a very new thing in US culture. There was a time, not so long ago, when the point at which monogamy began was marriage, or for some, engagement. Needing to define being single in over convoluted terms like "polyamory" is a bit ridiculous. I've always been very casual about these things with partners. Some can't handle it, they're jealous by nature or something. Usually, being clear "we aren't committed until we talk about that and commit" is a pretty easy to digest thing for people, even if they default to the opposite usually. On a less personal note, it's no coincidence I think that the most successful cultures in the world were and are monogamous by social expectation. Polyamorous social structures are not conducive to responsibility with regard to rearing children, and are more often than not to leave women in a difficult position. As such, women expect commitment from men where there are few options to prevent pregnancy. That's not to say anything about the spread of disease. Jealousy is still a problem, and leads to conflict. Polygamous social structures, the second most successful of the reproduction/sex oriented social structures, lead to swathes of unmarried men, and you get rejections from the tribe, hostile takeovers, warlike cultures designed to dispose of the men who will not hope to reproduce. Monogamy is the stable arrangement and it shows. Other more exotic complex social arrangements tend to be very niche, small tribal groups relegated to basically Africa, and don't scale well. I think if young people want to have fun, do it, be clear, if someone doesn't like it that's their decision to not participate. But slapping labels on it like it's some revolution in sexual dynamics is silly. Be prepared to outgrow your exploration, read the allegory of Chesterton's fence to understand why.
  • __turbobrew__ 2y ago
• mensetmanusman 2y ago
  “ The major monogamy delusion is obvious. It is simple: the idea that you possess your partner” /facepalm
  • Spivak 2y ago
    Why do you say this? This has only become untrue in recent history. For most of history the man effectively possesses the woman. We have feminism to thank for sexual equality and it's still today controversial and not universal. You're standing in the eye of the storm saying of course the winds are calm.
• choina 2y ago
  [flagged]
• znpy 2y ago
  I have a strong feeling that like many new things, poliamory is currently mostly/only getting get “positive marketing” narrative. Basically: what’s being advertised is mostly the “happy path”. Everything goes well until it doesn’t, what then? Relationships are hard. There are a number of ways things get messy (and/or toxic) with two individuals, somehow things should improve with more than two persons ?
  • valval 2y ago
    I think it’s just the latest fad neurodivergent people push on each other.
    • innerHTML 2y ago
      this, tbh. to a large degree. anecdotally, all those I know who practice poly, and name it as such, also say they have asperger's.
    • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
      I wonder if it's also easier for people who have less family relationships going on. Me and my girlfriends are all distant from our families. If I regularly visited my parents and siblings and spent time with them, I'd have less time for romantic partners. I wonder if there's a need for secure family-like relationships, and where the family of origin has failed, people are more likely to seek that feeling from romantic partners. "There is no form of incest greater than T4T"
• VeejayRampay 2y ago
  I wish someone would find a way to shield us from those topics on Hacker News, the one place that we can go without being flooded with those mundane societal issues and focus on actual technology and science
  • emptiestplace 2y ago
    Great comment, appreciate you taking the time to come in and share your thoughts. We've discussed and decided to prioritize this change - please check back very soon!
  • snapcaster 2y ago
    I agree, and the hackernews demographic are the last group i want to hear from on things like this
    • emptiestplace 2y ago
      Despite the technical focus, HN is one of the most diverse and thoughtful communities I've ever had the privilege to be a part of - and I've been doing this since 300 baud. There isn't really anything I wouldn't want to see discussed here. If you find you absolutely cannot disregard things you aren't interested in, you might want to try Youtube comments, or maybe a technical community on Facebook.
  • beachtaxidriver 2y ago
    You can downvote it. Many hackernews readers have pretty diverse interests though, and want to hear about both tech and general social issues.
    • moralestapia 2y ago
      >You can downvote it. Nope, you can't.
• sgentle 2y ago
  This article didn't really hit for me. It feels like I'm just reading the author's particular experiences run through a gauntlet of theorisation that ultimately does more to obscure than clarify the message. 1. Being a very particular sort of person (I'm going to guess specifically Bay Area tech or tech-adjacent rationalist), the author is surprised to find that his personal experience of poly dating is different to what the statistics say. Is it the author's social group? His preferences? A limitation of his context? Nope, it's "statistics, culture, and biology". I find this to be generally true of rationalist writing: why reflect when you can generalise? 2. "most things conceptualized as identity are silly" is a pretty significant axiom to assert halfway down a section on definitions, immediately underneath the Classical Greek Forms of Love infographic. The article's first conclusion is just this same premise restated, leaving me suspicious of whatever reasoning occured in between. 3. It's hard to even find the author's actual perspective through all the equivocation. Monogamy and polyamory are both deluded in their own ways, they both say they're natural, but really the most natural thing is... incel-tier sexual economics? And maybe that's bad, or maybe not, so you should do what feels right for you. But also it's really about your attachment wounds, so maybe just do whatever's easiest. Or maybe just pick one and stick with it. But you can (and probably will) change your mind. In conclusion, the important thing is to be thoughtful and considered in our choices and the effect they have on society. As far as I can tell, the actual truth of this piece is that the author is in a community where polyamory is the norm. He really tried to make it work for him but it didn't. He's not poly anymore and kinda thinks the whole thing is busted, but doesn't want to alienate his community. So he's just wafting a general sense of intellectualised discontent into the air and hoping for the best. I mean, fine, but I don't think we needed to get to Level Seven of The Spiral to do it.
• black_13 2y ago
  [dead]
• potato3732842 2y ago
  I really hate "traditional values" on account of their peddlers and the history books full of horrors they have enabled but when literally every successful society and major religion has some semblance of a 1:1 rule even if the exceptions and edge case handling are different you kinda gotta take notice.
  • butlike 2y ago
    Chemistry is monogamous. 1 electron. 1 pairing.
    • GranularRecipe 2y ago
      In covalent bonds, it's two electrons one pair. Metallic bonds are more polyamorous.
    • foogazi 2y ago
      They get excited but still bound
    • lazide 2y ago
      Oh boy, just wait until you learn about Plasma.
      • fragmede 2y ago
        That's hot!
        • lazide 2y ago
          Like a cocaine fueled orgy!
    • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
      I vote benzene for wildest non-monogamy config
  • kelseyfrog 2y ago
• UDontKnowJack 2y ago
  This is one of the stupidest things I've ever read.
• coldtea 2y ago
  Polyamory is a sign of comodification/casualness about relationships and sex, in an increasingly sexless and loveless period. Sexless and loveless are both well documented in research and polls. People fucking less than past decades, fewer being in relationships than than past decades, and more reporting being alone and lonely than past decades.
  • daymanstep 2y ago
    It is a sign of increasing inequality / hypergamy as the most desirable 1% of men have multiple partners while the rest have none. In other words human society is reverting to the way it always has been since the dawn of the agricultural age 12,000 years ago. There was never any reason to believe that the monogamous system of the 1950s West was a permanent stable arrangement and indeed we are seeing its death in our own lifetimes.
    • sss111 2y ago
      > monogamous system of the 1950s West It's not exclusively a "West" thing, and it never was. Monogamy has been a stable and thriving system in many parts of the world for centuries, well before the 1950s or the Western framing of it. Societies in South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, for example, have long upheld monogamous traditions through cultural and religious practices, sometimes even more rigidly than the West.
      • Larrikin 2y ago
        They also had slavery, secret societies that hoarded scientific knowledge and attributed it to religious powers, dictators as a default, and plenty of other things people did for thousands of years. How people used to do it, especially more than 100 years ago, is of no worth to anybody living without it being constantly tested. Newton was a genius with an amazing model, until Einstein showed he was thinking too small, and its becoming apparent that Einstein missed something at this point. Humanity advances by pushing and testing limits.
      • daymanstep 2y ago
• ElijahLynn 2y ago
  There is a new documentary coming out called The Village of Lovers, https://thevillageoflovers.com/ https://thevillageoflovers.com/. It is about a 40-year intentional polyamorous "free love" community called Tamera in Portugal. It is specifically about non-hierarchal polyamory. And I watched it and I tend to agree with their approach. It seems like the answer to a lot of society's problems honestly.
• saulpw 2y ago
  Polyamory is wrong. It should be multiamory.
• zeroCalories 2y ago
  My open/poly relationship was incredibly shallow. My "lover" felt more like a friend, and they weren't even that important to me because I only knew them for a few months. The relationship became fully transactional, and I eventually just left for another person I was with to be monogamous. If the idea of a relationship is ultimately just friend + sex or a business relationship, I can see how it works well for you. But for me it was lacking.
• novia 2y ago
  This article starts by noting that more women are polyamorous than men and then does a "thought experiment" where it completely ignores that.
• ashoeafoot 2y ago
  The formation of contract cults around relationships is the basis of all law. Every sort of state flows from that. Every limitation of a society in that department ,every ability grows from this. A judge looks like a priest for a reason . The masses call for moral constraints in times of crisis because of this. Handle with care for culture makes and brraks these things .
• freedomben 2y ago
  This quote so resonated with me that I thought it worth a specific call out: > I believe that it is valuable to deeply interrogate nature, not because it is intrinsically right, but because it helps us to understand what materials we are working with. Also the author mentions Robert Sapolsky, whose work I absolutely adore. If you haven't read any of his books or watched interviews/lectures with him, definitely do so! If you want to understand human nature, he's a phenomenal resource.
• jaco6 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • idontwantthis 2y ago
    What the inc-hell?
    • cyanydeez 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • popcalc 2y ago
        Good cop-out, don't actually address OP's argument and just attack their character.
        • cyanydeez 2y ago
          You know very well that generating garbage is easier than defending it. Sorry.
  • OfficeChad 2y ago
    [dead]
  • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    [flagged]
• _yb2s 2y ago
  I had an ex that "forced" me to become poly to stay together, which in hindsight was really just abuse and cheating rather than polyamory, although I didn't realize it at the time. So I'll admit I'm a bit jaded, and that colors my opinions of it. However, I dove into it, read a lot of books, and decided to give it a try and was dating 3 women at once, while trying to also meet a huge number of other major life responsibilities, and the scheduling alone was a living nightmare. Having a deep and meaningful relationship with one person already takes the maximum amount of my time that I could possibly allocate to romance. Three time constrained and shallow relationships are maybe 1/100th as satisfying as one good one to me - I actually felt more lonely when I was dating 3 women, even though one was only dating me. I would go on a trip or adventure, and have to keep 3 women updated on my well being and whereabouts. I would accidentally mix up my schedule, and have to rearrange 3 other peoples schedules to fix it- including managing a lot of resulting anger and jealousy. My snarky opinion is that polyamory is primarily for people that appreciate extra stress, busyness, logistics, scheduling, and conflict. I also feel it inevitably hurts people when you are more excited about a new partner than them, and it fundamentally requires a low level of empathy - and love - for your partners to be willing to hurt them in that way. I think people should be free to do whatever they want, but I am skeptical that polyamory is anything but awful for people that have regular levels of human empathy, or have obligations like a career or children. I read almost every book I could on polyamory, and I felt the authors were almost universally sociopaths- and I could tell they were deeply harming other people in their own stories, and didn't even realize or care. For example, the book "The Ethical Slut" the author literally describes raping people, and is completely oblivious, and thinks they are "helping open them to new experiences."
  • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    > For example, the book "The Ethical Slut" the author literally describes raping people Wow, I don't remember that. I'll have to re-read it. > I also feel it inevitably hurts people when you are more excited about a new partner than them It certainly happens. Sometimes I think I'm doomed to be unhappy because I just want too much out of life. I can't imagine settling down, but I don't want flings or hookups without emotion, I want to feel a lot of emotion with people freely. The first possibility is that, as the Internet keeps saying, I'm a shit person and I'm not ready to date. Most people seem to start dating around half my age so even if this is true, I just reject it. The second is that I just haven't met the person who is such a perfect match that I would sacrifice a lifetime of possibility to stay with them forever. I don't imagine that partner exists. Given that I'm going to crush on people who aren't my partner(s), I'd rather be upfront about it. The third possibility is that I really am a sociopath and I just want the wrong things. I ask people and they say I'm not a narcissistic or a sociopath. I feel empathy, I don't try to control people. Shrug?
• mancerayder 2y ago
  I'm always wary of definitions for things that require complex explanations, and are subject to debate. That doesn't mean it's invalid, but it just speaks to - and I hate to say this - a possible influence of academic studies or literature or class content. I once asked a person who described themselves as 'ethically non-monogamous' what that meant, if it were possible to love more than one person. I was told I was presumptuous, I needed to do more reading, and she gave me multiple paragraphs that interspersed terms like 'the traditional family model' that suggested this was coming from literature. So - unpopular opinion, and an alternative to "the world is reverting back to the original state of our ancestors with polyamory and hypergamy" -- what if a lot of these definitions are lifestyles that are catching on, due to certain personality proclivities that have always existed, and by making complex explanations we've given them acknowledgment? In other words, niche lifestyles that have been very much studied and many academic essays written.
• stkdump 2y ago
  While reading the definitions I was imagining this flat male comic with gender jokes "monosaturated, am I right?" When I came to the quotes I was kind of relieved to see women representing this experience. I think evolutionary speaking, it is neither that humans are by nature strictly monogamous nor polyamorous. I think what people are confused about is that evolution often benefits from conflicts of interest between individuals. It also can both benefit from societal norms and from deviations from them. It can benefit from honesty and from deception. It can benefit from people doing their best to figure out and live by what their personal nature is and by people trying to overcome their nature to become something they think is better than that.
• bhouston 2y ago
  Do polyamorous people have more or less children compared to non-polyamorous people? This is a way to judge the viability of this way of life long term rather than just as a fad. For it to be sustainable it needs to be both more than the groups around it and above replacement. If it is neither it is a fad.
  • jhghikvhu 2y ago
    Monasticism is a counterexample
  • Spivak 2y ago
    If that's your definition of success then don't look at the fertility rates of countries around the world. You would be forced to conclude that everyone should be made materially worse off.
    • bhouston 2y ago
      We probably need a solution to that. Below replacement fertility rates are not desirable.
• jokoon 2y ago
  Polyamory is just a nice way to try people and cheat as you want. It's a cool way to say casual sex. It's like using those insult word, except with a new word, and then a thing that was immoral then becomes cool. My experience: started a poly thing, after about 3 months she closed her couple and went monogamous again. It's like arguing "we don't need to wear clothes" except there are sociological, historical reasons that we wear clothes, it's not about being progressive or not.
  • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    I don't think I have casual sex but... Sure, is it wrong to want to try people? I'm currently trying non-monogamy after a monogamous marriage slid from "I could spend the rest of my life with this person" to "I should not have settled down so early in my 20s"
• volemo 2y ago
  I want to be a hydrogen in a polycule. What are those called?
• ksaj 2y ago
  A lot of people don't seem to realize polyamory versus open relationship. Polyamory is about holding multiple relationships. Open relationship is more about the physical act, without additional relationships. Multiple loves, versus getting it on with others once in a while, but not forming lasting relationships with them. My partner and I have open relationship. We don't "date" other people, and actively avoid the baggage that comes with people who try to turn it into that. But a sexcapade or romp is fair.. we might be sexy, but not the only sexy people on the planet.
• xg15 2y ago
  > and human polygynous situations (like Elon Musk and his baby momas https://nypost.com/2024/10/29/business/elon-musk-building-compound-for-his-11-kids-and-their-mothers-r/ https://nypost.com/2024/10/29/business/elon-musk-building-co... ) So Musk is building a harem now?
• olddog2 2y ago
  Do americans realise how odd it is that prostitution is illegal there? In most countries guys just quiety see a prostitute and have a great time without inflicting weird justifications for their horniness on their families.
• LeroyRaz 2y ago
  Yawn. This post is all old hat. Richard Dawkins made the same point about humans being roughly between polyamory and monogamy 20 years ago in the Ancestors Tale (and others likely made the points before that). And the evo-psy people have been saying all these points for similarly long...