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.
Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
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Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#1221% 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…
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#13Myself, 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.
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#1421% 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…
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#15Monogamy 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?
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#16Pretty 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 ma…
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?
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#17Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#18Afterwards, 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
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#1921% 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…
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2016.1...
Re: Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
#2021% 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…