Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
carsonogenic.substack.com
Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
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Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#2I 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
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#321% 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.
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#4An 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
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#521% 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…
Maybe it was only 2% of the population, but they accounted for 21% of the relationships.
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#621% 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…
> 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.
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#7I'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.
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#821% 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…
> 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".
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#921% 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…
Maybe it was only 2% of the population, but they accounted for 21% of the relationships.
Now we're thinking with portals!
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#10Pretty 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.