5 ms·

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

by 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.
- ajkjk 2y ago
  I truly believe that it is possible to be in a relationship where both people's "best I can get" is "me and my partner are both getting what we want", like you can love someone in a way in which your own preferences recalibrate to be compatible with theirs. Not sure if this is a state everyone can reach, or would want to, but I'm quite sure it's attainable for lots of people. (Aside, I have some friends who are bad at asserting themselves in the ways I was talking about, but about, like, everything. They'll say "I want X", but they'll feel they have to provide a good reason for it to be taken seriously, e.g. "I want to eat dinner early tonight because it messes up my sleep when we eat late". (You can imagine the kind of relationships (family or friends or romantic) they might have had in their lives which trained them to act this way...) So they act like they have to give a sufficiently good reason for their preferences to be taken seriously.... which is, IMO, the degraded state I'm talking about. In a respectful relationship, the fact that you want something IS a reason to do it; you don't have to provide a logically adequate reason to get what you want as well. And if two people's desires are incompatible, both will happily compromise to find a way to make them compatible again.)
  - hakunin 2y ago
    I think you don't really know what you want if you don't know why you want it. Learning to understand oneself is a huge part of one's personal growth. When you don't know the "why", it's easy to be mistaken about what you actually want, and push for a superficial projection of it, not the real underlying thing. (And therefore lose out on relationships you didn't know you'd be happy with.) But we speak in generalities of course.
  - JohnBooty 2y ago
    They'll say "I want X", but they'll feel they have to provide a good reason for it to be taken seriously, e.g. "I want to eat dinner early tonight because it messes up my sleep when we eat late". This is really interesting. On one level this could be a really bad sign (either about the relationship, or just one person's self esteem) where a person can't just want something. They have to "justify" it. On the other hand, I don't know if that's necessarily bad? Like, if we always eat dinner at 7ish and now you want to eat at 5pm I feel it's just natural that I'd want to know why? Because we probably had reasons for eating at 7pm, and maybe I want to kind of weigh them against everything else? Because maybe I can't take my lunch break at work until 3pm, so eating dinner at 5pm really sucks for me. etc. etc etc etc And if two people's desires are incompatible, both will happily compromise to find a way to make them compatible again Amen, absolutely. Let's say you can't eat at 7.... but I can't eat at 5. But what is the point of eating together? Is it really the act of forking nutrients into our mouths... or is it spending time together? Maybe we can just chill out and talk at 5pm. You can eat... and I'll just hang out and we can talk about our day or watch some netflix or w/e. I probably have just always picked shitty partners but in my experience that kinda happy compromise problem-solving attitude seems so rare. kudos to you for that attitude.
JohnBooty 2y ago
I've kind of wondered this over the years myself. The downsides of being in a rigidly-defined monogamous relationship are all kind of obvious, I think. Most people do not experience love or attraction as zero-sum games: you can have a "crush" or whatever on Person B without diminishing your feelings for Person A. So a person in a monogamous relationship is going to miss out on some positive physical and emotional connections that might have been really enjoyable. But... I've known a fair number of people in poly/open/etc relationships over the years and they tend to be inherently unstable, even moreso than trad monogamy. Like you said, often one person wants more exclusivity. Also... let's be totally honest. One partner is almost always going to have more access to sex and love outside the relationship. Either they are more attractive, more assertive, or simply have more free time, or any other number of reasons. So the "openness" never seems to work out in a totally equal and/or equitable way. They also seem to run into the problem of time and energy. In the abstract, love and sex are not zero-sum games. But a person only has so much energy and so many free hours in a week. So in practicality, yeah. It does become a bit zero-sum.
- ted_bunny 2y ago
  People focus so much on getting equal sex. If that bothers you you'te totally missing the point. Poly people invented the word compersion to amend a blind spot in our language, and thereby do the same in our emotional vocabulary. At least from their point of view. Maybe it's not a part of our vocabulary because it's contrary to our biology.
  - legostormtroopr 2y ago
    "It makes me happy to see my partner happy" is Relationships 101. Just because people gave it a word, doesn't mean it didn't exist - and I'd claim the opposite, poly people had to make a word because its not seen as the default in that community. This is like saying, I invented the word "hiverchill" which means "that feeling of cold when it snows". You can't say this was a blind spot in our language. We didn't need this word, because of course you are cold when it snows.
    - 2y ago

by ajkjk 2y ago

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.

ajkjk 2y ago
I truly believe that it is possible to be in a relationship where both people's "best I can get" is "me and my partner are both getting what we want", like you can love someone in a way in which your own preferences recalibrate to be compatible with theirs. Not sure if this is a state everyone can reach, or would want to, but I'm quite sure it's attainable for lots of people. (Aside, I have some friends who are bad at asserting themselves in the ways I was talking about, but about, like, everything. They'll say "I want X", but they'll feel they have to provide a good reason for it to be taken seriously, e.g. "I want to eat dinner early tonight because it messes up my sleep when we eat late". (You can imagine the kind of relationships (family or friends or romantic) they might have had in their lives which trained them to act this way...) So they act like they have to give a sufficiently good reason for their preferences to be taken seriously.... which is, IMO, the degraded state I'm talking about. In a respectful relationship, the fact that you want something IS a reason to do it; you don't have to provide a logically adequate reason to get what you want as well. And if two people's desires are incompatible, both will happily compromise to find a way to make them compatible again.)
- hakunin 2y ago
  I think you don't really know what you want if you don't know why you want it. Learning to understand oneself is a huge part of one's personal growth. When you don't know the "why", it's easy to be mistaken about what you actually want, and push for a superficial projection of it, not the real underlying thing. (And therefore lose out on relationships you didn't know you'd be happy with.) But we speak in generalities of course.
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  They'll say "I want X", but they'll feel they have to provide a good reason for it to be taken seriously, e.g. "I want to eat dinner early tonight because it messes up my sleep when we eat late". This is really interesting. On one level this could be a really bad sign (either about the relationship, or just one person's self esteem) where a person can't just want something. They have to "justify" it. On the other hand, I don't know if that's necessarily bad? Like, if we always eat dinner at 7ish and now you want to eat at 5pm I feel it's just natural that I'd want to know why? Because we probably had reasons for eating at 7pm, and maybe I want to kind of weigh them against everything else? Because maybe I can't take my lunch break at work until 3pm, so eating dinner at 5pm really sucks for me. etc. etc etc etc And if two people's desires are incompatible, both will happily compromise to find a way to make them compatible again Amen, absolutely. Let's say you can't eat at 7.... but I can't eat at 5. But what is the point of eating together? Is it really the act of forking nutrients into our mouths... or is it spending time together? Maybe we can just chill out and talk at 5pm. You can eat... and I'll just hang out and we can talk about our day or watch some netflix or w/e. I probably have just always picked shitty partners but in my experience that kinda happy compromise problem-solving attitude seems so rare. kudos to you for that attitude.

JohnBooty 2y ago

I've kind of wondered this over the years myself. The downsides of being in a rigidly-defined monogamous relationship are all kind of obvious, I think. Most people do not experience love or attraction as zero-sum games: you can have a "crush" or whatever on Person B without diminishing your feelings for Person A. So a person in a monogamous relationship is going to miss out on some positive physical and emotional connections that might have been really enjoyable. But... I've known a fair number of people in poly/open/etc relationships over the years and they tend to be inherently unstable, even moreso than trad monogamy. Like you said, often one person wants more exclusivity. Also... let's be totally honest. One partner is almost always going to have more access to sex and love outside the relationship. Either they are more attractive, more assertive, or simply have more free time, or any other number of reasons. So the "openness" never seems to work out in a totally equal and/or equitable way. They also seem to run into the problem of time and energy. In the abstract, love and sex are not zero-sum games. But a person only has so much energy and so many free hours in a week. So in practicality, yeah. It does become a bit zero-sum.

ted_bunny 2y ago
People focus so much on getting equal sex. If that bothers you you'te totally missing the point. Poly people invented the word compersion to amend a blind spot in our language, and thereby do the same in our emotional vocabulary. At least from their point of view. Maybe it's not a part of our vocabulary because it's contrary to our biology.
- legostormtroopr 2y ago
  "It makes me happy to see my partner happy" is Relationships 101. Just because people gave it a word, doesn't mean it didn't exist - and I'd claim the opposite, poly people had to make a word because its not seen as the default in that community. This is like saying, I invented the word "hiverchill" which means "that feeling of cold when it snows". You can't say this was a blind spot in our language. We didn't need this word, because of course you are cold when it snows.
  - 2y ago