The main problem with polyamory is the jealousy. I have experienced jealousy maybe three to five times in life, because I was an only child and I have a very laid back temperament. I think if we start prioritizing quality of life more as a society, parents will be free to raise their children well with less insecurities, and maybe that would result in more people gravitating towards polyamory. But it’s really not for everyone. Poly is hard work.
Jealousy is definitely the biggest sticking point for me. Every woman I’ve been with has always had a few other dudes sniffing around at any given time waiting for their chance. I on the other hand have gone years between relationships because I have a hard time meeting women that I’m interested in who also want to be with me. If I could easily find someone else to hook up with while my gf was out doing it I wouldn’t really have that big of a problem but I would have a huge issue if I was stuck at home by myself while she was out potentially finding a replacement for me.
Also I think you have a good point that if we didn’t have to invest so many resources into a relationship more people would probably be more okay with it.
Anecdotally speaking, probably not. I haven’t seen many poly relationships really last, nor have many of my friends (all queer).
I do see the rise of grandparents caring for children as a thing though, as wages continue to stagnate and both parents are forced to work. Intergenerational housing too. Multiple friends buying houses nearby and caring for kids if one parent is fiscally fortunate enough to be stay at home. That sort of thing.
I, after some admittedly short research found averages for monogamous relationships (including marriage) anywhere from 18 months to around 4 years. Which surprised the heck out of me. I’ve been Polyamorous for the last 24 years and the shortest relationship I’ve had in that time is 6 years. Most of my poly friends are also in quite long term relationships but that may just be a function of the friends I make.
This is also an entirely anecdotal response to your experiences as well.
Maybe that’s why poly is becoming a thing; it makes sense in America since its individualism ensures that children are independent of their parents, and especially extended family most of the time. Back in the day, children would still stay with their parents even when they have children themselves (and this is returning with inflations getting worse. Heck, there are even traditional housing systems where there is one “apartment” that consists of one extended family. But now, at least in the States, children can travel miles away from their family and pay them a visit only once in a while; so there’s no constant handling of children like in the old days. I suppose teachers can fill this role as well, but teachers handle groups of children at the time. They may or may not get individualized needs that need to be addressed that only an adult who lives with them can provide.
First world urbanites for sure, but as far as I can tell there’s many that are pretty poor by that standard, as queer people often are. I guess I know less about the circumstances of their birth.
Depends on the setup. Triads are groups of three people all in a relationship with each other and in a relationship together. So there’s a total of 4 relationships to manage: relationship AB, BC, AC, nd ABC. Quads are the same but with 4 people and 7 relationships.
So it’s a bit more involved than roommates with extra sex. But yea also roommates with extra sex too.
Yep. It’s not easy and a lot of people think it’s some amazing relationship goal and when they get there they realize it’s not for them and people get hurt. It’s relationships on hard mode.
It’ll probably be a factor, but then you could do the same with roommates, and the historical pattern is of course multi-generational homes. That’s what I see happening more and more in real life - it’s becoming less unusual to live with parents as an adult.
A core tenant of polyamory is consent. Without consent from all partners to be in multiple relationships, it’s just infidelity.
So no, secret partners isn’t polyamory. Polyamory is a form of ethical, or consensual, non-monogamy, and infidelity is both unethical and non consensual.
Also you can be in a polyamorous relationship and still cheat. It all depends on what structure people are consenting to, where everyone’s boundaries are. Granted it is more rare but it still happens sometimes. For example I have a pretty strict boundary where I don’t want any of my existing partners to start dating any of my new partners until I’ve had a chance to establish the relationship dynamic between me and the new person. I would consider any of my partners crossing this boundary to be a type of cheating.
yep, polyamory has redefined cheating for me and it’s much more grounded now than it used to be. cheating is breaking established agreements. in a monogamous relationship that’s typically defined as infidelity. in ENM it can be just about anything and it might be different with each and every partner. the key aspect is that there’s a mutual agreement and that agreement was violated.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, the vast majority of people under 50 seem to be in polyamorous relationships. I’m fairly new to poly, but I’ve done a lot of reading and therapy, and it’s working out pretty well for me.
I do tend to be people’s anchor partner, so I’ve admittedly never experienced the pain that comes from being a secondary when you wish you were a primary. My anchor partner tends more towards relationship anarchy and doesn’t like hierarchical relationships, but i made it clear that my expectation is to be the priority in her life. We’ve made it work, although it takes a lot of communication.
Poly can be such a wild learning curve and so much personal growth. There can be a lot of heartbreak in being poly (my polycule split in half a while back, I’ve gone from 5 to 2 partners this year, my anchor of several years broke up with me over text recently I’m pretty devastated over that one), but so much love too it is all worth it imo. And not having to rely on one person for everything is great for everyone’s mental health. Breakups are a lot easier to manage because you don’t have to seek romantic/physical comfort from strangers or the other side of the breakup, there are other partners around to help comfort you.
And yeah, so much communication, and introspection, and evaluating social norms to figure out what parts are toxic. You really have to learn about your partners and be really clear with boundaries for everything to work well.
It seems like one of my partners is about to be broken up with and I’m bracing to be there for them if/when it happens. I’m going to sardonically laugh my ass off if it happens next week because it’ll be nearly a year to the day that my wife and I broke up, and days before our anniversary. It was definitely surreal last year breaking up with my wife and celebrating my first anniversary with this partner 2 days later.
One of my breakups happened during my most recent tranniversary party, their nesting partner broke up with me the next day, and my (at the time) anchor partner broke up with both of them like a week later. Going to be a little weird next tranniversary is also going to be a ‘polycule implosion’ anniversary. Going in sardonically sounds like a good idea
Monogamy assumes marriage is a natural thing people do. People are getting married later or not at all in increasing numbers.
I don’t even think monogamous marriage is the main relationship style if you consider people that have affairs, divorced people, serial monogamist, etc., not part of monogamy. It’s over represented in media but that norm has changed a bunch in recent years as well.
There are also tons of relationships that aren’t marriage. FWB, poly, one night stands, etc.
I think the question could use a rework to clarify if you mean legally, socially, etc., as well.
It’s worth noting that polyamory and marriage aren’t mutually exclusive. Plenty of polyam people are married and even have non-legally binding marriage to multiple people. There’s a movement to make plural marriage legal because these people have the depth of relationship with more than one person that really should warrant the protections of marriage (like hospital visitation, legal protections re being forced to testify against a spouse in court, tax filing purposes, and child rearing, etc).
I’m married and poly. And yeah there are a lot of legal things surrounding marriage that I trust my nesting partner with. How to handle assets if I die suddenly, or what to do with me if I can no longer make decisions for myself, they’re important things to have someone for.
I was going to ask one of my other partners to ‘marry’ me in the sense we’d have a celebration with partners, friends, and possibly family with the focus of the celebration being our partnership. They ended up very unexpectedly breaking up with me recently so that fell through but the thought was there :/
Monogamous relationships are hard. I expect romantic groups are far harder.
This is very true. Even with parallel polyamorous relationships, relationship difficulty is turned up to high. When you introduce polycules to the mix with triads, quads, or more people it takes that Duffy and ramps it up tenfold.
A triad, for example, isn’t just a relationship with 3 people. It’s 4 different relationships that have to be managed (AB, AC, BC, and ABC, are all distinctive relationships with unique needs). A quad, is 7 relationships. Going up to 5 people is something like 22 relationships to manage. So group relationships like this are pretty rare, even in the polyam world.
It depends on the person and the balance within a polycule. I do a lot better being able to spread out the amount and kinds of emotional support I need. I ask who has capacity to help me with things so nobody at any given time should be getting overloaded. When I was more monogamous if I needed emotional support and my partner was tapped at the time my choices were to strain the relationship or silently suffer.
The benefits like this are more than just emotional support too. I connect with people with physical touch even with friends. Monogamous people can get really jealous over that but being poly that jealousy has never happened. I feel more confident I can maintain friendships in a meaningful way for me because I’m poly.
Me and my nesting partner mostly just nest. I get to fill other needs with other people. If I were monogamous I’d have to decide if it was worth it to throw my living stability out the window so I can search for someone else who can be my everything.
It takes work for sure but I’ve found being poly a lot easier. The learning curve and finding boundaries can be wild and painful at times. A lot of that is because as a society we only really talk about relationships from a monogamous lens so anyone trying to explore being poly is usually going in blind and they don’t have words to describe what they’re looking for.
In the ethical nonmonogamy (ENM) circles, the form of polygamy is usually frowned as it is a form of power over others. However polyamory and other forms of non monogamy are much practiced and common.
I mean, mormons are a thing (in the US at least idk how far they’ve spread) and polygamy isn’t that uncommon in patriarchal religions. Polyamory on the other hand tends to be more about personal freedoms and flies in the face of a lot of hierarchies.
Polygamy Polygyny, in particular, is a largely religious institution. In no small part that’s due to the fact that polygamy polygyny is inherently patriarchal, and nearly all modern religions are too, so it makes sense that it would be found predominantly in religious communities and histories.
Polyamory, however, is neither patriarchal or matriarchal. It is freedom for everyone involved to have relationships in any capacity they want, including women and other non-male gendered people to be with whoever they want. Patriarchal societies will never accept something that gives women that type of freedom and power over their own lives.
Edit: I got some terminology wrong and thought polygamy was one man multiple women, but the term just refers to having multiple spouses. Polygyny is one man multiple women. Which def means I took the conversation down a weird hole.
other non-male gendered people to be with whoever they want
right, thanks for enlightening me where your opinion comes from. Not that the constant mention of patriarchy in places it has no relevance wasn’t already a red flag.
I’d still like to highlight the inherent sexism in excluding a single group, in this case males, from your supposed Polyamorous Utopia. If it really was independent of the “patriarchy” or a “matriarchy” there would be no need to single out any gender or sexual orientation no? To me it seems like you are simply trying to invert a perceived victim status instead of abolishing victims entirely. Inverting your ideals from time to time helps illustrate inherent flaws or discrimination, helped me get out of the feminism-hate section of the internet, might help you get out of the all-men-are-evil section.
I think by now you read my other comment (the comment chain with June) so it should be cleared up why I didn’t associate polygamy with patriarchy.
As for me being triggered by the world patriarchy: you are absolutely correct. It’s a habit I’ve built on less discussion friendly sites that I need to get rid of. Unfortunately for now my immediate assumption upon reading that word (unless in an academic context) is that whoever uttered it has a pretty hardcore disgust of men. Fortunately I have not seen these takes around here much if at all hence my need to lose that habit. It’s definitely not healthy and, as seen in this trainwreck of a rant, definitely doesn’t contribute to a healthy discussion.
so how exactly does that correlate to excluding men from the equation? That was my point. The discussion was about polygamy and they A) brought up the patriarchy pretty much unprompted (I don’t see how Polygamy is inherently patriarchal, most patriarchal societies are strictly monogamous and while more lenient on a man in case of an infraction of the monogamous relationship Society still punish them. I see that more as a result of the elevated standing of a man in a patriarchal society than from the alleged inherent polygamy) and then B) proceeded to be just as sexist as the alleged Patriarchy by excluding men from polyamory/suggesting men can already be with however many partners of whatever gender and sexual orientation they want (ask any gay guy: really not the case, having multiple relationships with people is in most countries considered adultery/cheating, so also a no on the “however many”)
target baseless attack
if what I wrote comes off as an attack focused on a “target” I truly feel sorry for you, must be hard living in a world where everyone is out to get you. If you can’t accept people challenging your beliefs without immediately being angered that is cause for serious concern, I’ve been there I’d know. Just on the opposite of the spectrum where you apparently are right now. Doesn’t make the fanaticism any more healthy. If in your life so far everyone truly has been out to get you, you have my condolences and hope that the situation improves for you, in that case I’d suggest getting off the internet or liberally employing blocking instead of entering discussions.
issues raised
What issues raised? The only “issue” I see raised is the allegation that
1: somehow polygamy is based only in religion because it is patriarchal. I’m not well read on the religion part but polygamy being a patriarchal construct just isn’t the case given historic precedent. More likely it’s an elitist construct given how it is (when appearing) mostly prevalent in the higher ranks of society and not among the common folk and how among the elite women having affairs was also a thing, that was a lot rarer but still happened.
2: Somehow a patriarchal society will not allow polyamory. Technically part of a patriarchal society but more a byproduct of biology than a construct designed by men to oppress women. Polyamory not being prevalent is down to the same reason why in the past men accused their partner of cheating when the son of the blue eyed man had no blue eyes: There is an inherent biological drive to leave offspring. We might lose that drive some day but for now we’re stuck with it. Since men don’t have an easy identifier to make sure the kid is theirs (women physically push the child out of their body, pretty strong indicator for who the mother is) they resort to whatever option they have available. That also includes generally, as in not all men do this, (sub-)consciously preferring monogamous relationships over polyamorous ones. Now you could swap out a patriarchy for a matriarchy or any other societal blueprint and it would not change much in that preference. Upbringing can help mold that preference a bit but overall it’s still there. So I can’t see how blaming the patriarchy helps here, monogamy and patriarchy are correlated, not causally linked. One does not cause the other but where one appears, the other also happens to appear (at the very least in one direction: in patriarchal societies monogamy appears).
At this point I’d highlight something that might help understand why Polygamy isn’t inherently linked with the Patriarchy: There is a rough 50/50 split between males and females in the human population (yes I’m ignoring homosexuals and non-binary here, won’t matter for the point I’m making, it’d simply change the numbers to 47/47 or whatever the percentages are). Most men have a biological drive to leave offspring (ignoring external factors making them decide against it such as poverty or bad environment) which works out to roughly one possible woman per man to be in a relationship (assuming all men actually manage to get into a relationship by behaving accordingly). If we introduce Polygamy suddenly there is a “lack” of women a man can try to get into a relationship with for sub-average men. Naturally those men will be dissatisfied that one man is “hogging” multiple women for himself, therefore uniting them in the common goal of getting rid of polygamy so they can have a change.
it’s funny that you wrote like 5000 words based on a misreading.
they said that polyamory is different from polygamy because non-males have more freedom in polyamory tyan in polygamy.
you misread that to mean only women get that freedom. that is not true. everyone gets the freedom, but in polygamy men already had it, so op omitted it.
try to spend more time understanding and less time ranting and raving. i sincerely mean this, and with empathy: something about this comment thread triggered you, and you might wanna think through it.
If you read my other comment chain with June (which you apparently have) you would know that the accusation of me supposedly attacking June is what triggered me, not June’s statement. (As evident by the much calmer tone of that convo) I was annoyed by her statement but not to the point of starting a rant, that only happened after lexi thought it a good idea to add her own toxic soup. The result was a toxic² response from me. Was that a healthy response? Certainly not and I hope I can learn from it for similar situations in the future. Not defending myself here, that rant is pretty sad to look at in hindsight but the cause of it certainly wasn’t June’s statements.
I brought up patriarchy because polygamy polygyny (one man, multiple wives) is inherently patriarchal. Same as polygyny polyandry (one woman many husbands) being matriarchal. While polyamory is genderless and everyone is free to pursue their own relationships.
This isn’t a controversial take. I never excluded men from the equation, I simply pointed out that polyamory is different from polygamy in that women can have more than one partner as well, something that polygamy doesn’t allow.
The rest of your comment here is word salad and idk what you’re getting at. But the basis of your offense is rooted in a my own misunderstanding of the conversation and terms being referred to.
Edit: I got some terminology wrong and thought polygamy was one man multiple women, but the term just refers to having multiple spouses. Polygyny is one man multiple women. Which def means I took the conversation down a weird hole.
Oh hey, I learned something, thank you. Not sure where I got my definitions from but I’d have sworn i had it right, but polygamy is just the practice of having multiple spouses, you’re right.
I’d done a fair bit of research on it a while ago and either had bad info or bad memory. Thanks for the correction! I’ll go make edits and let that other person know I got the terminology wrong.
polygamy (one man, multiple wives) is inherently patriarchal. Same as polygyny (one woman many husbands)
right, I can see why we talked past each other. When I hear polygamy I understand that as one person with mutiple partners (imagine the spoke of a wheel) whereas I understand polyamory as a web. I don’t differentiate between the genders because frankly it doesn’t make a lick of sense to do so imo. If you’re gonna be fine with one you should be fine with the other type of deal.
Word salad was mostly me not even knowing how the second person chpping in here got seemingly so offended and trying to overexplain.
Wouldn’t really say it was an offense, got offended by the second person accusing me of a “baseless attack” though. Just tired of both extremes so I get pissy when I see either (the “all men pigs” and “women belong to the kitchen” extremes). Definitely should have asked for clarification though.
Hey, just wanted to follow up that you had the definition of polygamy right and I had it wrong. I got polygamy and polygyny melded together in my head, but polygamy is the blanket term for having multiple spouses and polygyny is one man multiple wives. I kinda set us up for this misunderstanding and wanted to own that and make sure you knew.
Monogamy has never been the main thing. However, with the equalizing of sexes in marriage according to the law, I don’t see how anything but monogamy can be legally until a lot of work is put into defining how three equal people can be married.
A form of polygamy is available to the upper class; it is called having a mistress. However, the mistress has no marriage rights; any rights would come from being the parent of a joint child.
It appears to be pretty stable through history and prehistory around the world, so it’s probably biological. Occasionally cultures allow limited exceptions but they’re usually one-sided. This lines up with my personal experience, which is that some people are capable of being poly, but most people just aren’t.
I should do some reading about EFF. It really does seem like both SA and Zimbabwe chose the wrong strategy to righting colonial inequalities. Something in between, like just a tax on white-owned businesses while they’re disproportionately powerful, could be good.
That’s exactly what I’ve heard too. Eventually they have to fall; ending apartheid was huge but even the most traditional public won’t remember forever.
That’s… not true? Monogamy was not the primary form of bonding through humanity’s history. It actually is only recently a global phenomenon, mostly due to European colonialism and the spread of Christianity.
You really need to show some data or sources to backup such a claim tbh. It contradicts most of anthropology of bonding and relationships.
Well, here’s the Wikipedia. To be clear, I’m counting a society where elite men might have multiple wives as still monogamous, since that’s not representative of an average member of the population and the wives themselves are still bound to a single partner. Maybe that’s a terminology error but for the sake of this question I think it’s clearest.
And yeah, as someone pointed out there’s an amount of infidelity in every human society, but it’s generally neither endorsed by the legitimate partner or society at large, at least not as an actual relationship.
The wiki says out of ~1200 societies studied only ~180 were monogamous. And that 16% of the monogamous were not strictly monogamous. I don’t know why the wiki would help your case.
If you didn’t read the rest of the paragraph, you should. It was comparing against variants of polygamy, plus 2 cultures that had polyandry, which I discussed elsewhere. Western-style polyamory didn’t even make the rankings. I can only think of one other culture (the Mosuo) that might count.
Like I said, it might be an abuse of terminology to call this all monogamy, but natural language is inherently imprecise and this isn’t an academic audience that can digest heavy jargon.
Some animals mate for life or mate exclusively, others don't. It's not "the main form of earth," it's the norm by which humans establish long-term romantic and sexual relationships and raise their young.
I don't think society will forget that any time soon, but it's hard to predict the future. Culture does change over time.
@Violett_Queen I don't think it's already the case and we already generally do just do whatever we want, but are afraid to admit it to ourselves.
Also, are you talking about *gamy or *amory?
There's distinction.
Polygamy is about just sex pretty much. Polyamory is about romantic relationships.
If the former, then, a lot of married people have sex outside marriage. It's debatable how honest this is, most of it just cheating - but that already counts as polygamy.
If the latter... Unfortunately, we're ways off universally recognizing this type of relationship. For shame.
There's also the factor of polyamorous relationships being harder to maintain, requiring a lot more work to do properly. Despite what conservatives might say, this type of relationship demands MORE responsibility from all involved, not less. So, it's not everyone's cup of tea, and probably monoamory will be the default in most of the cases. But if you are willing and able pull it off, there's nothing quite like it.
I think you are talking about marriage and family, more than just sex, right? Because sex-wise, you can do what you want already.
Polygamy no. I don’t think that’s what most people want, the sister wives thing. That’s a system used when men are scarce and you are trying to increase the population quickly, neither of those conditions exist now, and polygamist systems are often dead patriarchal and nasty.
Polyamory? The make your own family, whatever configuration, more than 2 people? I think we are closer to that, yes. In a time when you are trying to decrease birth rates, yes families with more than just a couple might become popular. More parents to love and care for each child would be handy.
Polyandry, two or more husbands? That would work in a world where there were more men than women - but most of those places in the world right now are not places where a woman would have the freedom to do that.
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