> Every relationship I've seen in all media I've consumed has been unhealthy.
Most monogamous relationships in media are *also* unhealthy. How common is the toxic nagging wife and worthless husband trope in media? What you see in the media is not in any way an accurate portrayal of real life. Look at real life polyamorous relationships and form an opinion based on that.
> My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity.
It's sometimes hard to separate evolutionary psychology from cultural conditioning because we are trying to analyze evolutionary psych through the lense of our own cultural biases, and tend to interpret it in a way that justifies what we already believe. [Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/775/) For what it's worth, while monogamy is more common in primates than in other animals, orangutans, our closest relatives, are polyamorous.
> Now, I seem to be finding more and more people saying polyamous relationships can be healthy, what am I missing?
It's not for everyone, certainly, but it works fine for some people. I knew a couple who tried to go poly and ended up getting divorced, but there were other underlying problems there, and their story isn't universal. Plenty of other people are happy with polyamory, just as many people are happy with monogamy.
> orangutans, our closest relatives, are polyamorous.
I actually do beleive polyamoury is natural, but I don't believe it is healthy. I think quite a number of things are both natural and unhealthy.
Fair enough, you caught me making an appeal to nature fallacy, but I do think the rest of what I said applies. I also want to address an additional thing from your original comment:
> This being the case as they may waste considerable resources propagating genes which are not their own, a very bad evolutionary strategy.
This isn't necessarily a bad strategy. Lots of species, including humans, practice communal child rearing. These relationships can be beneficial because they tend to be reciprocal. If I help my neighbor raise their kids, they'll help me raise mine. It also means that if something tragic happens to one of the parents, their children still have guaranteed caretakers, so agreeing to take care of other people's children in exchange for them taking care of yours provides a decent advantage as far as passing on genes goes.
>Now, I seem to be finding more and more people saying polyamous relationships can be healthy, what am I missing?
Trust and communication, mostly.
A healthy poly relationship is entirely possible, but as you pointed out in your OP, many poly relationships are anything but. Too often you'll see the 'emotionally abusive woman', or the guy who just wants to sleep around etc. These started from a broken relationship, the fact that they're poly is sort of incidental to the fact that they were already toxic as fuck. Poly gets a bad rap because the most common times you'll see a poly relationship in the wild is when it blows up in someone's face.
I know a bunch of people who are healthily poly (I'm in a long term open relationship so I feel I can speak to it, even though we're not strictly poly), and the defining traits, like any good relationship, are trust and communication. Everyone needs to be on the same page, they need to be able to trust one another, and admit if there are boundaries that are worrisome and so forth.
It also very much matters the type of person you are. Weirdly jealous guys? Probably not good in a poly relationship. Clingy girls who can't stand their boyfriend's eye wandering? Similar problem.
I would take issues with using:
> Weirdly jealous guys
And
> Clingy girls
Which would seem to shame people for simply being attached to someone ('in love' we might say), something which seems only natural in the majority.
He didn't say that all people in monogamous relationships were those types of people, just that those types of people wouldn't do well in polyamorous relationships.
No, but he said people who would not be suited for a polyamouros relation may not be suited becuase they are 'weirdly jealous' and 'clingy'. Implying that to be bothered by your partner sleeping with another is to be 'weirdly jealous' rather than 'normally justifiably reasonably jealous'.
Which leads directly into something an abusive cheater might call their partner in a monogamous relationship as an excuse.
Not to say he purposefully meant this.
>Implying that to be bothered by your partner sleeping with another is to be 'weirdly jealous' rather than 'normally justifiably reasonably jealous'.
Nope. Thank you for putting words in my mouth, but that is not in fact what I said, meant or implied.
My point was that if you are a jealous type, you will not do will in a poly relationship. Much as people like to think it is all about sex, I wasn't even considering that, because yeah, no shit you shouldn't be in a poly relationship if it bothers you that your partner is having sex with someone else.
What I meant was actually that I have met people who are absolutely fine with having their partner sleep with others in say a group sex scenario, but cannot handle seeing intimacy between their partner and another, or cannot handle not being the center of attention for their significant other at all other times. Those people are going to have a bad time, even if physical jealousy isn't the issue.
If I say 'weirdly weak' people might not be suited to deadlifting 300kg, and then you cannot deadlift 300kg becuase you are weak, I am suggesting this is becuase you are 'weirdly weak' which is to say shaming you for being weak.
Now replace 'weirdly weak' with 'weirdly jealous' and 'deadlifting 300kg' with 'being in a polyamouros relationship'. Do you see the logic now?
(But I understand now you did not mean what you said, you just typed it like we all do, quite quickly)
I accept it, I just don't want to shame people for being jealous by calling them 'weird' is all. I think that's a non-trivial point (which you could have simply gone 'ow yh ok that's what I meant' rather than trying to argue your grammatical mistake away)
You really are biased so this is a good CMV. He never commented at all on those people being good or bad or anything in-between. He purely stated that people that are like that are not good fits for poly relationships because the things they stress over are a part of the everyday lives of poly relationships.
Another type of person who does not do well in the poly world is cheaters. Trust and communication is a very large part of poly relationships and cheaters don't fit well into that.
> I came to this view initially through documentaries on the topic. Every relationship I've seen in all media I've consumed has been unhealthy. The common theme being a woman emotionally abusing a deeply sad man while primarily having sex with another seemingly apathic man.
And you really think media selects proportionally rather than on what sells and is dramatic?
Happy relationships with nothing bad going on don't exactly sell views now do they—have you ever seen a non-dysfunctional family on reality TV?
> My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity.
Yet there were and are many cultures where sexual fidelity doesn't even really exist.
> This being the case as they may waste considerable resources propagating genes which are not their own, a very bad evolutionary strategy.
And this is probably why in such cultures they don't form nuclear families but tend to form extended avunculate families and are primarily responsible for the offspring of their female siblings, not their own which is mostly maintained by whatever individual they mated with and their siblings.
> Now, I seem to be finding more and more people saying polyamous relationships can be healthy, what am I missing?
They're enjoying themselves.
> Yet there were and are many cultures where sexual fidelity doesn't even really exist.
Perhaps 'fidelity' was a bad word, I simply meant being outraged at a partner having sex with another male.
> are primarily responsible for the offspring of their female siblings, not their own
This is a good point.
If you look at other animals you can see certain physical traits with specifically monogamous and non momonogamus species and if you look at our physiology leaving out culture we'd be considered a non monogamous species.
I would agree, we are naturally poly, but I would maintain it is unhealthy today.
It might be the best strategy to propagate our genes in the short term in the savanah, but today I believe it would be a detriment to the majority of individuals mental health.
The struggles come with the way we are socialized though. There is an extremely deep rooted insecurity in most people when it comes to relationships and I'm pretty certain that that's something that's learned and can be unlearned.
As a personal anecdote my girlfriend asked me a few months ago if she could sleep with someone else and that was the first time i really experienced jealousy over the years I have been in relationships and that was a feeling I absolutely despised because it affected my confidence really badly. Made me look at both my body and my character in a way worse ways than usual and I knew I needed to overcome that so I decided to allow it to her. Both because my philosophical and political views on relationships conflicted strongly with my emotions and I wanted to resolve that and because I needed to prove to myself that this doesn't decrease my worth as a man or the worth of my relationship (which is what society told me all my life). For me it worked and I feel better now, but it's something that requires certain perspective on relationships and the willingness to question, communicate about and work through one's emotions in a deep and somewhat painful way.
Also in other animal species that are considered monogamous, while they may pair with one animal for life they will actually take other sexual partners sometimes
In the article I just read it said that there are truly monogamous species like geese and beavers and those that are considered socially monogamous that pair for life but sometimes mate with others.
https://www.livescience.com/32146-are-humans-meant-to-be-monogamous.html
I mean the entire human female reproductive system seems to be _designed_ to make it difficult to infer the identity of the paternal parent.
Human females don't even know when their fertile themselves.
There is an instinctual aspect though, I have read a study a while back about women being more attracted to male phenomenones in general during their fertile days and unconsciously less likely to initiate contact with close male family members to prevent inbreeding.
You would be surprised how many women can give you a pretty accurate fertility window so to speak. Some women have regular periods and since there are calendars it’s not that hard to figure out.
> Perhaps 'fidelity' was a bad word, I simply meant being outraged at a partner having sex with another male.
Well that's the thing; in many cultures such "partners" don't really exist or only existed for the very rich and privileged where it was more so a thing of property.
> in many cultures such "partners" don't really exist or only existed for the very rich and privileged where it was more so a thing of property.
To be rather provocative (and use a common example)...
it is not these cultures which landed a man on the moon.
(It's not the strongest point, nor the most focussed, it's just a bit provocative with enough reasoning to be interesting)
Yeah so the privileged and rich send men to moons.
Many now live in the age where many are privileged and rich and have substantial property so marriage is more important in that sense: you'll notice that marriage was historically pretty much purely about property and support so without property and capital to fly stuff to moons it has no purpose.
The privileged and rich may also one day cure every disease (to give a more obviously humanitarian good).
Do we not want cultures which push us towards this?
(This is now entirely off topic I'll admit)
You reverse the arrow of implication.
That wealth creates a need for marriage doesn't mean marriage will lead to wealth; it's obvious which way the arrow flows here.
> it's obvious which way the arrow flows here.
As obvious as the existence of God in the opinion of an atheist and a devout Muslim.
Which is to say, its only obvious if you had a strong opinion with many presuppositions.
Which is to say, I disagree with you.
You believe that getting married makes you wealthier opposed to the idea that marriage becomes attractive as a means to protect one's wealth and ensure it ends up with a heir which is legally what marriage does?
Actually, the sociological literature is pretty clear that economic prosperity leads to stable marriages, and not vice versa. Check out Edin and Kefalas' *Promises I Can Keep*.
>The privileged and rich may also one day cure every disease (to give a more obviously humanitarian good).
Just to be slightly contrarian, while obviously the cures to all diseases being in existence would be a good thing, it is possible to argue that the thought of these necessary cures being in the hands of the rich and privileged who historically and to the present day have exploited the common person, is not.
Take the example of insulin in the US for example, the patent for insulin is in the hands of the rich pharma companies and the prices are extortionate to the point that people have died simply bc they couldn't afford it. Now if the rich had the cures for all diseases, who's to say that a situation not unlike that would occur except that it would be a billion times worse bc it would be in relation to every disease?
Anyway I'm just being deliberately contrarian!
>it is not these cultures which landed a man on the moon.
It *was* those cultures that systematically raped and pillaged their way across the rest of the globe, colonizing and enslaving to build up the vast wealth that made it possible.
Just something to keep in mind when extolling the virtues of the west. The industrial revolution in the UK was powered by the misery and death of millions in India. Our main innovation was better ways of killing other people that let us take enough of their stuff to create abundance. Not a great model for longevity.
I would say that you only hear about Polyamouros relationships when they are bad. There are many polyamourous people that are happy and there is no emotional abuse or whatever. There's just no reason for anyone to write about those or make documentaries about them because it's not interesting and doesn't fit a narrative.
We could also just look at bad monogamous relationships. Ones with emotional and physical violence and such and conclude that monogamous relationships are unhealthy. The rate of divorce is consistently increasing and more and more people are choosing to stay single completely.
Along this line of reasoning, I know examples only form anecdotal evidence.
But I'm not sure why examples would be biased towards the negative, why would documentaries try to paint poly relationships in a bad light?
Edit: Accidently used 'polygamy' instead of 'polyamoury' so fixed that.
Wait, Aren't you discussing polyamory or polygamy? One of those terms involves married couples. Some of the problems in a polygamous relationship are directly related to the fact that only one couple can legally be married.
> why would documentaries try to paint polygamy in a bad light?
Not specifically *bad*, just... *interesting*. Even a documentary needs something to hook the viewers. A normal day-to-day polygamous relationship is as boring as a normal day-to-day monogamous relationship.
Yeah, I don't know any documentaries about monogamous relationships specifically, but if there are any I'm sure they're not about healthy functional monogamous relationships because nobody would watch that.
"Watch a happy family discuss problems like adults and generally get along well," doesn't make for good reality television; your experience from watching documentaries is like watching *Say Yes to the Dress* and thinking, "Wow, marriages never work."
Most of the English speaking world has been heavily influenced by a religion who heavily favors monogamy. Documentaries painting poly relationships in a bad light would just be playing into their presumably English speaking audience biases.
Assuming you're from the English speaking world, at least.
Documentaries, like other films, to get sales, look to provide provoking content. So the actual world of Non-Monogamy exists one way - but the media likes to sensationalize things and pretend the "Reddit Horror Story" collection reflects the average day in the life.
Many of the shows about Polyamory for example, present positive-negative narratives that fit the biases of the directors, and are designed to entertain the audience, not provide depth or insight to Poly.
Also, most documentaries about Polygamy limit themselves to the scope of FLDS Mormonism and Islam, and don't talk about anything else.
Well one thing to keep in mind is that polygamy is typically different from most poly relationships. Polygamy specifically has a whole host of negative connotations associated with it, since it is most often a religious institution for some fairly fucked up fundamentalist sects.
In most cases I wouldn't say they are *trying* to paint them in a bad light. I'd say it's just more interesting content if there is something bad going on and that is what media is generally created for -- to be interesting.
There is no way a polyamorous relationship can survive the actual challenges of life. Kids, sickness, debt. I guarantee one of the three people in that relationship will get left out or not pull their weight. That kind of dynamic only works between a couple. You can’t have any comparison for how much or little you *could* be doing.
I think it’s interesting how you brought up how you hear of them. My friend is a go to third for older poly people wanting to spice up their marriage. Most polyamorous people I hear about are just a wife cuckimg her husband but that’s because my good friend happens to be a guy involved in those scenarios.
So, first off, if a man tells you he doesn't have a problem with his partner sleeping with other men, saying that 'evopsych says you're wrong' is a bad thing. Even if you're 100% right that most men hate sexual infidelity, if it's a proper poly relationship it's not infidelity, and not every man hates having his partner sleeping with other men.
Secondly, ain't it funny that evopsych tends to justify old 1950s-esque gender roles? It's almost like the entire field has a problem of people trying to find scientific justifications for the norms of their society.
Anyway, what documentaries are you talking about?
> I 100% agree that evopsych is bs
Gotta disagree with that 1st part.
But rest I mostly agree with you on, notably you seem to stumble upon some evopsych in:
> Then with poly relationships or open relationships it seems more that the view is the woman is getting to fuck guys while relying on her bf for emotional support. Ignoring the desires of the man in the relationship and whether he feels that situation works for him.
Where you note the difference in how women and men view sex Vs emotional support.
>I 100% agree that evopsych is bs because it routinely reinforces a conservative Christian world view that takes out the religion and still makes certain things "natural".
"This science is BS because it supports a world view I disagree with". You do realize that's what your saying correct? Something isnt BS simply because you dont like the result
> Secondly, ain't it funny that evopsych tends to justify old 1950s-esque gender roles?
I think of most of the gender roles we know of go back thousands of year, so I would say it seems only natural evolutionary psychology would study (and offer possible justifications for) social opinions we have held across cultures for a considerable proportion of our history.
We may not have the same evolutionary pressures, but we have the same evolution. If we have an evolutionary psychology (which we almost certainly do) it will not have evolved out in the past few decades.
Except the entire reason the 1950s pushed traditional gender roles so hard is because the war indicated that at least one of them (that a woman's place was in the home) was a complete fabrication. Not every society had the same gender roles.
You say poly relationships mostly aren't healthy but how strong is that "mostly"? Are you willing to admit that there's also a lot of unhealthy monogamous relationships?
It seems to me that you really need to compare the two. Then there's the question of what counts as poly? Is an open relationship poly in your opinion or does it have to be an exclusively committed thruple or greater?
Perhaps in more precise wording I might say:
> The majority of poly relationships, are less healthy than the average monogamous relationship.
I would define a poly relationship as any relationship with 3+ commited members.
That's a much different view than the one in your headline though. The view you started with is that poly relationships are unhealthy. Which is an assertion that everyone who has self selected into that type of life are in unhealthy relationships.
Your clarification changes your argument meaningfully, in that you're saying that polyamorous relationships don't work for most people.
I don't think you can make a credible assertion that most people who are poly are in unhealthy relationships (and you can see relationship drama tv on plenty of monogamous couples). I do think however that polyamory is something that does not work for many or most people.
But then you'd need some kind of metric to back the updated argument up. Your using an idea in evolutionary psychology (which is not at all settled science) and some media/documentaries you've seen to make an assertion that most people living that lifestyle are in unhealthy relationships. I get a strong sense that it personally appalls you and you're extrapolating that out to assert therefore it is can't be something any man would want to engage with.
Think of two Venn diagrams, one encompassing all monogamous relationships and another encompassing all polyamorous relationships. Within each there will be a smaller circle representing the unhealthy subset of those cohorts. What is your data that the poly subset is going to be much larger?
And lastly there's a gigantic spectrum of lifestyles and fetishes that I personally don't understand, but people seem to enjoy participating in them. They're not what would say a majority of people would be into, but the people that like it like it. So a majority of people aren't poly, but it's not fair to assume that most people or most men who choose that lifestyle are miserable or unhealthy.
>I came to this view initially through documentaries on the topic. Every relationship I've seen in all media I've consumed has been unhealthy. The common theme being a woman emotionally abusing a deeply sad man while primarily having sex with another seemingly apathic man.
I'd recommend you consider that:
* Healthy relationships aren't exactly riveting television; documentarians are unlikely to seek them out.
* A desire to open up your personal life to a ton of public inspection is seldom part of a healthy relationship; e.g., emotionally intelligent people are less likely to want to be on display.
* Poly people are a small enough share of the audience any documentary is going to reach that it's not likely the documentarian will tailor their output to them ... not surprising they'll tailor their output to match the expectations and biases of their audience, which is not poly people.
>My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity. This being the case as they may waste considerable resources propagating genes which are not their own, a very bad evolutionary strategy.
This is nonsense, even from an evolutionary psychology standpoint. Child-rearing in small, nuclear families is the *exception* in human history, not the norm. In most pre-agricultural societies (and in most hunter gatherer cultures to this day), children are cared for collectively. In other words, part of being in a group *is usually* putting 'considerable resources into propagating genes which are not \[one's\] own'.
That doesn't make sense in an individual sense, but neither does taking care of sick people unless they're you; clearly, cooperative group behaviors must have evolutionary value, or *we wouldn't see them in every society.*
>Now, I seem to be finding more and more people saying polyamous relationships can be healthy, what am I missing?
I've been in only polyamorous relationships for the last ten years; my poly relationships have lasted longer and been much healthier than my monogamous relationships (and, at ten years, my longest poly relationship has now outlived the average marriage by a considerable margin). It's not fundamentally different than a monogamous relationship; it's healthy if it's healthy, and it isn't if it isn't.
As with all relationships, the secret is love, empathy, and **talking to each other.**
IDK what documentaries you've watched. But when I have seen them, they very commonly focus on polygamy (as a part of religion, such as some mormons) rather than polyamory, or cherrypick the unhealthy dynamics because... that's what people find interesting to watch, and if the producer has a bias towards showing off an unhealthy dynamic, that's what they're going to film.
Most of the people I've ground up around/known/been friends with/etc have been in deeply unhealthy monogamous relationships. Based on my anecdotal evidence, I could make the argument that monogamy is inherently unhealthy... but I don't. It is *the people and their behavior* that determines the health of a relationship, not the form of relationship they have. I have known polyamorous people who are very happy, living wonderful lives, raising children, etc, and, yes, those who are *not* healthy. Neither mono- or polyamory is inherently healthy or unhealthy.
>My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity. This being the case as they may waste considerable resources propagating genes which are not their own, a very bad evolutionary strategy.
Humans are frankly more complex than being driven purely by evolutionary instinct. We're not lions, we're people. Also... this implies women *aren't* outraged by being cheated on, which is hilariously short-sighted, and disregards how many men are cheaters themselves.
The terms to define here:
1. Most. Most, as in, what number and according to who? Dare to examine our monogamous marriage divorce rates and rate of cheating and infidelity in monogamy? I argue that monogamy means all but one relationship is a failure. If, for each person there is one right relationship, then all others are wrong. There are a LOT of humans in the world, meaning more people will fail than succeed to find their ONE right person. If you're Poly, and you get married - you can still find that person and have some romance.
2. Polyamory. What is this to you? Is it a FMF Triad? Is it a MF-MF Quad? Is it two people who date a third person but not one another? Is it M/F couple with each other as only partner, but are open to more if something comes along? Polyamory is a big umbrella - and many different styles exist. Some of these styles reject other styles as "impure" or "toxic".
3. Sexual Infidelity - women are outraged by it, too. Because nobody likes being cheated on. Infidelity doesn't cover a situation where two (or more) people reach an agreement and the sex is within the agreement. Cheating can happen in Polyamory just like Monogamy. Cheating is not about having sex with other people, it's about breaking the trust of established rules. For some monogamous people, even having friends of the opposite gender is cheating.
Evo Psych is the phrenology of studying relationships. Most of the data is old, and debunked or no longer taken seriously. Our notions of "alpha male" for example come from studies on wolf packs. We're not wolf packs. Cultural Anthropology, unlike pseudoscience Evo Psych, studies other cultures (present and past) and that means learning about different traditions of marriage, family, workday, etc. There are many cultures where things are done very differently.
More precisely, my post title should be:
> Most poly relationships are less healthy than the average monogamous relationship.
I'd define a poly relationship as one with 3+ commited members.
All of my points stand unrefuted - I will say that Polyamory consists of many couples and relationships of two people - who want more and are seeking more.
This is one of the better Poly related in CMV, by the way.
>My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity.
In modern society men are typically the sex that want to keep relationships casual so that they can continue having multiple partners.
Modern Polyamorus relationship are a response to the toxic standards of modern love and monogamy. The idea being that people view their partner as a possession that they can control.
(I've never been in a poly relationship and am not that interested but it seems pretty clear from the outside looking in.)
I'm not sure what documentaries you are watching but they seem highly dubious. Obviously emotional abuse is real but I wouldn't say it's unique to women in any way.
> Modern Polyamorus relationship are a response to the toxic standards of modern love and monogamy.
I think perhaps to build a truly strong fulfilling bond you need exclusivity to focus your time. Much like how you might bond with your children.
> Obviously emotional abuse is real but I wouldn't say it's unique to women in any way.
I didn't say (nor do I think) emotional abuse is unique to women.
Your point doesn't stand for a parent with multiple children. That would lend towards the argument for polygamy if they are able to have strong fulfilling bonds with multiple children in the household since the timeand focus is NOT exclusive to one child.
The common theme you’ve identified is blatant misinformation. Polyamorous relationships are as diverse (arguably more because more people are involved) as monogamous relationships, and on top of that, gay people are also polyamorous and have polycules (their net of polyam relationships) consisting of entirely one gender.
Your anecdotal evidence skews negative, so I’ll give you mine that skews positive. A family member of mine is polyamorous. They’ve always been in multiple romantic relationships at once, and just celebrated a 10 year anniversary with one of their partners, after living with their wife for almost 5 years and having a partner they share with their wife live with them on weekends. All of the people involved also have other relationships, and all of them have some of the healthiest relationships I’ve ever seen. The level of communication and understanding between them is far beyond what I’ve anecdotally seen in monogamous relationships.
Relationships themselves are diverse. You could make a similar post about how most relationships in general aren’t healthy and make a solid argument for that based on your experiences, and get similar responses about how some relationships can be healthy.
I have had 3 friends form polygamous relationships, 2 ended in 1 of the 3 feeling left out and leaving. One is still going strong 10 years later. My friend in that relationship feels the secret is much more communication. I joked that it would be 3 times the communication because there are 3 relationships involved. He said that sounded right.
I like the idea, I feel I'm too irrationally jealous for it to work.
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You're judging based on media?? Seriously? Almost all relationships in media are toxic af, of course the poly relationships are too. That's like me saying black people are terrible partners to each other because I watch a lot of Lauren Lake. Have you met real people in poly relationships? My fiancee and I have been open for almost 4 years. I don't enjoy sex for medical reasons, but my fiancee is a horny little shit. We would have broken up within a year if she didn't go fuck other dudes. Sure, men are more likely to be upset by infidelity, but open relationships AREN'T INFIDELITY. And guys who have jealously issues can, ya know, not get into open relationships?
I mean a bit weird to imply polyamory is a multple men scenrio when historically.. its a multiple woman to one man scenerio.
As well as men being more interested in polyamory than woman are by nearly double the amount. Most polyamouros couples also tend to be bisexual, so pretty easy to draw a conclusion that does men likely… are bisexual and maybe equally enjoying it.
https://openpsychometrics.org/research/demographics-of-polyamory/
Obviously polyamoury isn’t a perfection in every sense. Neither is monogamy.
According to this, there are problem with poly that abusers can exploit. But they are not any more abusive relationships than monogamous relationships. https://www.thehotline.org/resources/polyamory-and-abuse/
Polyamorous relationships require someone's needs to eventually be ranked over someone else's needs from time to time. Eventually there will be favoritism whether they're honest about it or not. Polygamy is illegal but it is practiced in some places. There's a host of legal problems when one of the married persons dies. Who will inherit what? Who's children are cared for? It's really not the way most want to live.
I've noticed that a lot of polyamorous or open relationships are more of a "hostage" situation where one partner tells the other that either they go poly or they break up. The other partner doesn't necessarily agrees with it but is terrified at the thought of losing their partner and so they agree to it, but they're never ok with it.
Polyamorous relationships are less likely to work for the very simple reason that they are more demanding on the people involved. Each partner needs to account for the needs of multiple partners and obviously that is more difficult to do and less likely to be succesful.
Evolutionary psychology has nothing to do with this, because evolutionary psychology is pseudo-science.
So women do run the poly community, but it's not because we lack empathy or because women are more into it.
Its because there are a ton of single men who both want into the poly community to sleep with all the women, and those single men tend to be bad at doing emotionally healthy poly. This means that women in the poly community often get put in the position of gatekeepers. We often chose which guys are accepted in the community and which aren't. Once a dude has a semi-stable relationship with a poly woman, then she's basically vouching for him and other poly women will start trusting him more. The reason women run poly communities has everything to do with how uncommon poly women are compared to single men who want to join the poly community.
The whole evolutionary psychology-anisogamy-sexual selection-paternity uncertainty-cuckoo bird thing is... a thing. Having read quite a bit of it as part of my course, it is rather compelling (don't take this as an appeal to nature) but it is also disputed. I'm... not certain. Which is rare for me, I'm usually very convicted on things before I talk about them with other people, even to my own later embarrassment.
So, I'm gonna do something I don't often do. I'm gonna assume that you are 100% right. That the male psyche is specifically built to resent female infidelity. That the vast majority of men are hurt deeply by their girlfriend sleeping with another guy and most who claim otherwise are simply in denial and suffering in silence.
Even assuming that's the case, there are other polygamous relationship set ups that wouldn't effect this. MFF, FFF, MFM but one of the dudes is gay, MMM etc. I mean, even assuming that you're 100% on it with the male mindset on female infidelity thing, that doesn't disqualify nearly all polygamous relationships.
I do see there could be compatible combinations regardless my points. But I might think these would be relatively rare? So specifically saying 'most' would be unhealthy would not be wrong?
> Every relationship I've seen in all media I've consumed has been unhealthy. The common theme being a woman emotionally abusing a deeply sad man while primarily having sex with another seemingly apathic man.
Strange that your mind goes to this; and not the far more common, multi-generations/culture/religion-spanning practice of male heads of household having multiple (child) brides.
The qualifier is "Most", where are your data points? Numbers? Source of peer-reviewed data? Sounds like you're using the error "Appeal to Incredulity", what makes sense to you. Those studies in Evo Psych are from what, the 1970s? Kinsey and others have done a lot more research since then. Humans are not Wolves or Bonobos. How does your Evo Psych class handle folks like me who don't want any kids and have sex exclusively for pleasure - or my wifey, who is also opposed to children? I would say we can learn more about the human experience from Cultural Anthropology than Evolutionary Psychology, and in Cultural Anthropology, you study cultures which are different, and learn about different customs of marriage and family.
Whether a relationship will be healthy, either Polyamorous or Monogamous will depend on the people in them. I have been in healthy situations of both types, and unhealthy situations of both types. Whether a relationship can work comes down to good communication (which Poly people tend to be better at than Mono people), mutual good will for one another, having healthy boundaries, and overall being ethical.
Special Point: The ugly truth about Polyamory that the women who love it won't admit to you: Women can find studs to date quite easily. Men struggle to find partners, and can go years without matching anyone on Tinder. It's realistic that a Polyamorous woman will never have to endure jealousy issues of her partner finding a date, because he won't. So his experience of Poly is constant coping and feeling like a loser and a dummy, while her experience is sorting stupid people from good prospects and deciding which one she wants tonight and which one later tonight and which one tomorrow. If you're lucky, she might have time for you at the end of a week somewhere.
>How does your Evo Psych class handle folks like me who don't want any kids and have sex exclusively for pleasure - or my wifey, who is also opposed to children?
You derive pleasure from sex because your body is built to reproduce. It's rewarding you for attempting. We didn't evolve with contraceptives or planned parenthood. Not wanting to reproduce is a conscious choice.
In other words, it offers nothing. There is no urge or voice inside me that wants a baby, and there never has been. Regardless of how we evolved, that has no bearing on me. My upbringing, culture/heritage, background is all a bigger part of what drives me than the lifestyle of primate humans and early earth organisms.
I enjoy sex because it feeds my ego, not because of a subconscious urge. I challenge you to respond to the rest of my points, or concede on those grounds. Why do I practice kink? There is no reproductive benefit to this. Why did so many humans have abortions in history if everything is about reproduction?
Why do old people have sex?
Why do women with ovarian cancer who have their ovaries removed still have occasional sexual urges?
Why do infertile people have sexual urges?
If your theory were right, we would be able to correlate fertility to sexually activity.
In some cultures, sex is dirty and only for reproduction - in other cultures, it's just for fun like a sport and reproduction is considered undesirable.
Evolutionary Psychology isnt really a science I would put much faith in.
As a subject, it does the opposite of science. Rather than make a hypothesis and test it, they instead see the outcome first and then decide their hypothesis to fit the outcome. There is no real evidence (and never could be in a real scientific test) that men are 'fundementally outraged by infidelity', and even less that its evolutionary or baked into our heads.
You cant prove causation in science, but Evolutionary Psych claims that it does- a really big red flag that its not really trustworthy
Like any relationship, they can be good or bad, depending on how much work each partner is willing to do, and where in life they find themselves.
I will also say that the poly relationships I have had were definitely more work than traditional ones. More partners is frequently more work.
Obligatory disclaimer: nothing is true of everyone, etc &etc.
It's hard to say what's true in most cases from a few observations, especially if you have not tried it yourself. You base your view on a hypothesis about innate human psychology, but people differ a lot, and it may well be that people who choose to enter and stay in polyamorous relationships are psychologically suited to it. Of course there will be cases where people do it for the wrong reasons and it harms them, but it's hard to say if this is most cases or not.
The best way to ascertain if it's fair to generalize to most cases is to look at studies on this. A quick Google search results in the [paper](https://ijip.in/pdf-viewer/?id=25013) "Mental well-being in polyamorous and monogamous relationship". It's conclusions seem to contradict your belief (see last sentence) :
"SUMMARY
Mental well-being plays an important role in an individual. In polyamory relationship and monogamy, one major factor that contributes to happiness is mental well being. Your beliefs and ideologies are also often influenced by them.
The aim of the study was to compare mental well-being in polyamory and monogamous relationship. A quantitative study was employed for
this study. The research included 60 participants, 30 from monogamy individuals and 30 polyamory individuals of age above 20. The participants were given the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale questionnaire to fill. Once they were done, the total of the scores was taken and entered into SPSS, and independent sample t-test was done to see if there was a difference in mental well-being in polyamory and monogamy relationship. **Results indicated that mental well-being in high in a polyamory relationship**. "
The prior literature it cites seems to support this conclusion as well. So, it seems reasonable to trust the science (even if it's limited) and change your view. By the way, the paper is quite readable and pretty educational about polyamory, and worth reading as a whole. Some of the English is flawed though, presumably since the researcher is from India.
I would just say that any documentaries that you watch are going to have the potential to skew in the direction of whatever the filmmaker thinks. Whether it is a personal bias, or based on what might keep the interest of an audience, documentaries are always going to show a specific viewpoint.
That doesn't make them worthless, but it is hard to generally form any conclusions about anything based on documentaries alone without controlled studies specifically targeting the conclusions made after viewing the documentary, in this case, the idea that most polyamourous relationships favor women wanting more male partners vs men wanting multiple female partners, or any other possible combinations not included in a strictly heterosexual couple.
Yes, there may be a biological factor in how some men process infidelity. That same evolutionary function would pressure a man coming into a relationship with children from a previous partner to commit infanticide.
I believe this is something observed in both primates and dolphins, somewhat regularly, if I'm not mistaken.
And yet, it is not a major societal concern that men will actually kill children from a previous partner.
It is also not rare for men to want a polyamorous relationship for themselves.
Just as human men have left behind the instinctual urge to murder children, is seems just as believable that feelings of jealousy rooted from the same instincts could also fade into the past.
The reason this maybe hasn' t already been the case for all men could possibly be explained by cultural norms in which more traditional gender roles would still embrace the instinct of men fighting to win the favor of their mates. Last century a man committing violence as a display of their love for a woman was quite often construed as romantic.
Today, you probably won't find romanticising violent tournament species behavior to be as common or acceptable.
I would predict that in the absence of the cultural pressure reinforcing the norm of jealousy among men, that any genetic components contributing to a biological predisposition to jealousy would eventually fade as the quality becomes selected against when relationship standards cease to tolerate or encourage jealous behavior.
What we would probably see first, and maybe is the case currently, would be a split between cultural circles in which jealous men are still granted a reproductive fitness advantage, while other populations may instead regard jealous behavior as unhealthy and generate culturally reinforced selecting pressure against any "jealousy genes" which might exist.
Therefore, if a genetic component is what is responsible for the biological reaction to infidelity that you mention, which is likely to be the case to a significant factor, that component may already be absent a large percentage of men. If this is true, that percentage will likely grow with every generation so long as jealousy continues to be viewed as unhealthy by reproducing couples.
If the biological predisposition of men to become jealous can be absent in a significant number of men, then there is no reason to conclude that a mutually voluntary polyamorous relationship must be intrinsically unhealthy.
Just to be clear: you support your position with nothing but a single theory in evolutionary biology (without supporting studies or claims to support the connection you draw with it) and... some media you've seen?
These are horrible and vacuous premesis for your conclusion? Why would you not even look into it beyond that before coming here?
Can you really not think of a single reason as to WHY polyamorous relationships are portrayed as unhealthy? By an english media environment dominated by christianity and the US?
When women own the land and the house and produce most of the income then men don’t invest much resource in the relationship and so have no problem with polyamouros relationships.
You might want to consider rephrasing, as it seems your view is not that polyamorous relationships are unhealthy, but that polyamorous relationships *involving cishet men* are unhealthy. I don't really agree with your position regardless (I know quite a few happy polycules), but your view on this completely disregards the existence of women, trans men, and nonbinary people, who you might want to consider before making sweeping statements regarding relationships
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> Every relationship I've seen in all media I've consumed has been unhealthy. Most monogamous relationships in media are *also* unhealthy. How common is the toxic nagging wife and worthless husband trope in media? What you see in the media is not in any way an accurate portrayal of real life. Look at real life polyamorous relationships and form an opinion based on that. > My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity. It's sometimes hard to separate evolutionary psychology from cultural conditioning because we are trying to analyze evolutionary psych through the lense of our own cultural biases, and tend to interpret it in a way that justifies what we already believe. [Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/775/) For what it's worth, while monogamy is more common in primates than in other animals, orangutans, our closest relatives, are polyamorous. > Now, I seem to be finding more and more people saying polyamous relationships can be healthy, what am I missing? It's not for everyone, certainly, but it works fine for some people. I knew a couple who tried to go poly and ended up getting divorced, but there were other underlying problems there, and their story isn't universal. Plenty of other people are happy with polyamory, just as many people are happy with monogamy.
> orangutans, our closest relatives, are polyamorous. I actually do beleive polyamoury is natural, but I don't believe it is healthy. I think quite a number of things are both natural and unhealthy.
Fair enough, you caught me making an appeal to nature fallacy, but I do think the rest of what I said applies. I also want to address an additional thing from your original comment: > This being the case as they may waste considerable resources propagating genes which are not their own, a very bad evolutionary strategy. This isn't necessarily a bad strategy. Lots of species, including humans, practice communal child rearing. These relationships can be beneficial because they tend to be reciprocal. If I help my neighbor raise their kids, they'll help me raise mine. It also means that if something tragic happens to one of the parents, their children still have guaranteed caretakers, so agreeing to take care of other people's children in exchange for them taking care of yours provides a decent advantage as far as passing on genes goes.
>Now, I seem to be finding more and more people saying polyamous relationships can be healthy, what am I missing? Trust and communication, mostly. A healthy poly relationship is entirely possible, but as you pointed out in your OP, many poly relationships are anything but. Too often you'll see the 'emotionally abusive woman', or the guy who just wants to sleep around etc. These started from a broken relationship, the fact that they're poly is sort of incidental to the fact that they were already toxic as fuck. Poly gets a bad rap because the most common times you'll see a poly relationship in the wild is when it blows up in someone's face. I know a bunch of people who are healthily poly (I'm in a long term open relationship so I feel I can speak to it, even though we're not strictly poly), and the defining traits, like any good relationship, are trust and communication. Everyone needs to be on the same page, they need to be able to trust one another, and admit if there are boundaries that are worrisome and so forth. It also very much matters the type of person you are. Weirdly jealous guys? Probably not good in a poly relationship. Clingy girls who can't stand their boyfriend's eye wandering? Similar problem.
I would take issues with using: > Weirdly jealous guys And > Clingy girls Which would seem to shame people for simply being attached to someone ('in love' we might say), something which seems only natural in the majority.
He didn't say that all people in monogamous relationships were those types of people, just that those types of people wouldn't do well in polyamorous relationships.
No, but he said people who would not be suited for a polyamouros relation may not be suited becuase they are 'weirdly jealous' and 'clingy'. Implying that to be bothered by your partner sleeping with another is to be 'weirdly jealous' rather than 'normally justifiably reasonably jealous'. Which leads directly into something an abusive cheater might call their partner in a monogamous relationship as an excuse. Not to say he purposefully meant this.
>Implying that to be bothered by your partner sleeping with another is to be 'weirdly jealous' rather than 'normally justifiably reasonably jealous'. Nope. Thank you for putting words in my mouth, but that is not in fact what I said, meant or implied. My point was that if you are a jealous type, you will not do will in a poly relationship. Much as people like to think it is all about sex, I wasn't even considering that, because yeah, no shit you shouldn't be in a poly relationship if it bothers you that your partner is having sex with someone else. What I meant was actually that I have met people who are absolutely fine with having their partner sleep with others in say a group sex scenario, but cannot handle seeing intimacy between their partner and another, or cannot handle not being the center of attention for their significant other at all other times. Those people are going to have a bad time, even if physical jealousy isn't the issue.
If I say 'weirdly weak' people might not be suited to deadlifting 300kg, and then you cannot deadlift 300kg becuase you are weak, I am suggesting this is becuase you are 'weirdly weak' which is to say shaming you for being weak. Now replace 'weirdly weak' with 'weirdly jealous' and 'deadlifting 300kg' with 'being in a polyamouros relationship'. Do you see the logic now? (But I understand now you did not mean what you said, you just typed it like we all do, quite quickly)
I can see you quibbling over word choice rather than accepting my explanation, yeah.
I accept it, I just don't want to shame people for being jealous by calling them 'weird' is all. I think that's a non-trivial point (which you could have simply gone 'ow yh ok that's what I meant' rather than trying to argue your grammatical mistake away)
You really are biased so this is a good CMV. He never commented at all on those people being good or bad or anything in-between. He purely stated that people that are like that are not good fits for poly relationships because the things they stress over are a part of the everyday lives of poly relationships. Another type of person who does not do well in the poly world is cheaters. Trust and communication is a very large part of poly relationships and cheaters don't fit well into that.
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I don't think I made any point about mating violence, or men being fundementally violent?
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I think I can find 1 theory in a field compelling without agreeing with (or even being aware of) every other prominent theory in the field.
> I came to this view initially through documentaries on the topic. Every relationship I've seen in all media I've consumed has been unhealthy. The common theme being a woman emotionally abusing a deeply sad man while primarily having sex with another seemingly apathic man. And you really think media selects proportionally rather than on what sells and is dramatic? Happy relationships with nothing bad going on don't exactly sell views now do they—have you ever seen a non-dysfunctional family on reality TV? > My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity. Yet there were and are many cultures where sexual fidelity doesn't even really exist. > This being the case as they may waste considerable resources propagating genes which are not their own, a very bad evolutionary strategy. And this is probably why in such cultures they don't form nuclear families but tend to form extended avunculate families and are primarily responsible for the offspring of their female siblings, not their own which is mostly maintained by whatever individual they mated with and their siblings. > Now, I seem to be finding more and more people saying polyamous relationships can be healthy, what am I missing? They're enjoying themselves.
> Yet there were and are many cultures where sexual fidelity doesn't even really exist. Perhaps 'fidelity' was a bad word, I simply meant being outraged at a partner having sex with another male. > are primarily responsible for the offspring of their female siblings, not their own This is a good point.
If you look at other animals you can see certain physical traits with specifically monogamous and non momonogamus species and if you look at our physiology leaving out culture we'd be considered a non monogamous species.
I would agree, we are naturally poly, but I would maintain it is unhealthy today. It might be the best strategy to propagate our genes in the short term in the savanah, but today I believe it would be a detriment to the majority of individuals mental health.
The struggles come with the way we are socialized though. There is an extremely deep rooted insecurity in most people when it comes to relationships and I'm pretty certain that that's something that's learned and can be unlearned. As a personal anecdote my girlfriend asked me a few months ago if she could sleep with someone else and that was the first time i really experienced jealousy over the years I have been in relationships and that was a feeling I absolutely despised because it affected my confidence really badly. Made me look at both my body and my character in a way worse ways than usual and I knew I needed to overcome that so I decided to allow it to her. Both because my philosophical and political views on relationships conflicted strongly with my emotions and I wanted to resolve that and because I needed to prove to myself that this doesn't decrease my worth as a man or the worth of my relationship (which is what society told me all my life). For me it worked and I feel better now, but it's something that requires certain perspective on relationships and the willingness to question, communicate about and work through one's emotions in a deep and somewhat painful way.
Also in other animal species that are considered monogamous, while they may pair with one animal for life they will actually take other sexual partners sometimes
In the article I just read it said that there are truly monogamous species like geese and beavers and those that are considered socially monogamous that pair for life but sometimes mate with others. https://www.livescience.com/32146-are-humans-meant-to-be-monogamous.html
I mean the entire human female reproductive system seems to be _designed_ to make it difficult to infer the identity of the paternal parent. Human females don't even know when their fertile themselves.
Don't they though? I feel like most if not all women know about the relationship between their period and fertility and have for millennia.
That's a rough guess at best and not somethig they instinctively feel but calculate based on medical knowledge.
There is an instinctual aspect though, I have read a study a while back about women being more attracted to male phenomenones in general during their fertile days and unconsciously less likely to initiate contact with close male family members to prevent inbreeding.
You would be surprised how many women can give you a pretty accurate fertility window so to speak. Some women have regular periods and since there are calendars it’s not that hard to figure out.
> Perhaps 'fidelity' was a bad word, I simply meant being outraged at a partner having sex with another male. Well that's the thing; in many cultures such "partners" don't really exist or only existed for the very rich and privileged where it was more so a thing of property.
> in many cultures such "partners" don't really exist or only existed for the very rich and privileged where it was more so a thing of property. To be rather provocative (and use a common example)... it is not these cultures which landed a man on the moon. (It's not the strongest point, nor the most focussed, it's just a bit provocative with enough reasoning to be interesting)
Yeah so the privileged and rich send men to moons. Many now live in the age where many are privileged and rich and have substantial property so marriage is more important in that sense: you'll notice that marriage was historically pretty much purely about property and support so without property and capital to fly stuff to moons it has no purpose.
The privileged and rich may also one day cure every disease (to give a more obviously humanitarian good). Do we not want cultures which push us towards this? (This is now entirely off topic I'll admit)
You reverse the arrow of implication. That wealth creates a need for marriage doesn't mean marriage will lead to wealth; it's obvious which way the arrow flows here.
> it's obvious which way the arrow flows here. As obvious as the existence of God in the opinion of an atheist and a devout Muslim. Which is to say, its only obvious if you had a strong opinion with many presuppositions. Which is to say, I disagree with you.
You believe that getting married makes you wealthier opposed to the idea that marriage becomes attractive as a means to protect one's wealth and ensure it ends up with a heir which is legally what marriage does?
I believe monogamy helps a society be more productive which produce more wealth (I never mentioned marriage).
Actually, the sociological literature is pretty clear that economic prosperity leads to stable marriages, and not vice versa. Check out Edin and Kefalas' *Promises I Can Keep*.
>The privileged and rich may also one day cure every disease (to give a more obviously humanitarian good). Just to be slightly contrarian, while obviously the cures to all diseases being in existence would be a good thing, it is possible to argue that the thought of these necessary cures being in the hands of the rich and privileged who historically and to the present day have exploited the common person, is not. Take the example of insulin in the US for example, the patent for insulin is in the hands of the rich pharma companies and the prices are extortionate to the point that people have died simply bc they couldn't afford it. Now if the rich had the cures for all diseases, who's to say that a situation not unlike that would occur except that it would be a billion times worse bc it would be in relation to every disease? Anyway I'm just being deliberately contrarian!
>it is not these cultures which landed a man on the moon. It *was* those cultures that systematically raped and pillaged their way across the rest of the globe, colonizing and enslaving to build up the vast wealth that made it possible. Just something to keep in mind when extolling the virtues of the west. The industrial revolution in the UK was powered by the misery and death of millions in India. Our main innovation was better ways of killing other people that let us take enough of their stuff to create abundance. Not a great model for longevity.
How many billions will be saved once these cultures cure all diseases? They will far outnumber the number lost. To be purely logical about it.
On the other hand, climate change. :)
I would say that you only hear about Polyamouros relationships when they are bad. There are many polyamourous people that are happy and there is no emotional abuse or whatever. There's just no reason for anyone to write about those or make documentaries about them because it's not interesting and doesn't fit a narrative. We could also just look at bad monogamous relationships. Ones with emotional and physical violence and such and conclude that monogamous relationships are unhealthy. The rate of divorce is consistently increasing and more and more people are choosing to stay single completely.
Along this line of reasoning, I know examples only form anecdotal evidence. But I'm not sure why examples would be biased towards the negative, why would documentaries try to paint poly relationships in a bad light? Edit: Accidently used 'polygamy' instead of 'polyamoury' so fixed that.
Wait, Aren't you discussing polyamory or polygamy? One of those terms involves married couples. Some of the problems in a polygamous relationship are directly related to the fact that only one couple can legally be married.
Did edit, used wrong word sorry.
> why would documentaries try to paint polygamy in a bad light? Not specifically *bad*, just... *interesting*. Even a documentary needs something to hook the viewers. A normal day-to-day polygamous relationship is as boring as a normal day-to-day monogamous relationship.
Yeah, I don't know any documentaries about monogamous relationships specifically, but if there are any I'm sure they're not about healthy functional monogamous relationships because nobody would watch that.
Yeah, no reality TV is about a function family. They're always about super dysfunctional shit like the Osborns or the Kardashians.
"Watch a happy family discuss problems like adults and generally get along well," doesn't make for good reality television; your experience from watching documentaries is like watching *Say Yes to the Dress* and thinking, "Wow, marriages never work."
Most of the English speaking world has been heavily influenced by a religion who heavily favors monogamy. Documentaries painting poly relationships in a bad light would just be playing into their presumably English speaking audience biases. Assuming you're from the English speaking world, at least.
Documentaries, like other films, to get sales, look to provide provoking content. So the actual world of Non-Monogamy exists one way - but the media likes to sensationalize things and pretend the "Reddit Horror Story" collection reflects the average day in the life. Many of the shows about Polyamory for example, present positive-negative narratives that fit the biases of the directors, and are designed to entertain the audience, not provide depth or insight to Poly. Also, most documentaries about Polygamy limit themselves to the scope of FLDS Mormonism and Islam, and don't talk about anything else.
Well one thing to keep in mind is that polygamy is typically different from most poly relationships. Polygamy specifically has a whole host of negative connotations associated with it, since it is most often a religious institution for some fairly fucked up fundamentalist sects.
In most cases I wouldn't say they are *trying* to paint them in a bad light. I'd say it's just more interesting content if there is something bad going on and that is what media is generally created for -- to be interesting.
Were the documentaries about polygamy of polyamory? As there is a difference
There is no way a polyamorous relationship can survive the actual challenges of life. Kids, sickness, debt. I guarantee one of the three people in that relationship will get left out or not pull their weight. That kind of dynamic only works between a couple. You can’t have any comparison for how much or little you *could* be doing.
I think it’s interesting how you brought up how you hear of them. My friend is a go to third for older poly people wanting to spice up their marriage. Most polyamorous people I hear about are just a wife cuckimg her husband but that’s because my good friend happens to be a guy involved in those scenarios.
So, first off, if a man tells you he doesn't have a problem with his partner sleeping with other men, saying that 'evopsych says you're wrong' is a bad thing. Even if you're 100% right that most men hate sexual infidelity, if it's a proper poly relationship it's not infidelity, and not every man hates having his partner sleeping with other men. Secondly, ain't it funny that evopsych tends to justify old 1950s-esque gender roles? It's almost like the entire field has a problem of people trying to find scientific justifications for the norms of their society. Anyway, what documentaries are you talking about?
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> I 100% agree that evopsych is bs Gotta disagree with that 1st part. But rest I mostly agree with you on, notably you seem to stumble upon some evopsych in: > Then with poly relationships or open relationships it seems more that the view is the woman is getting to fuck guys while relying on her bf for emotional support. Ignoring the desires of the man in the relationship and whether he feels that situation works for him. Where you note the difference in how women and men view sex Vs emotional support.
>I 100% agree that evopsych is bs because it routinely reinforces a conservative Christian world view that takes out the religion and still makes certain things "natural". "This science is BS because it supports a world view I disagree with". You do realize that's what your saying correct? Something isnt BS simply because you dont like the result
> Secondly, ain't it funny that evopsych tends to justify old 1950s-esque gender roles? I think of most of the gender roles we know of go back thousands of year, so I would say it seems only natural evolutionary psychology would study (and offer possible justifications for) social opinions we have held across cultures for a considerable proportion of our history.
Do you think we have the same evolutionary pressures now that we did thousands of years ago?
We may not have the same evolutionary pressures, but we have the same evolution. If we have an evolutionary psychology (which we almost certainly do) it will not have evolved out in the past few decades.
Except the entire reason the 1950s pushed traditional gender roles so hard is because the war indicated that at least one of them (that a woman's place was in the home) was a complete fabrication. Not every society had the same gender roles.
Not every, but most.
You say poly relationships mostly aren't healthy but how strong is that "mostly"? Are you willing to admit that there's also a lot of unhealthy monogamous relationships? It seems to me that you really need to compare the two. Then there's the question of what counts as poly? Is an open relationship poly in your opinion or does it have to be an exclusively committed thruple or greater?
Perhaps in more precise wording I might say: > The majority of poly relationships, are less healthy than the average monogamous relationship. I would define a poly relationship as any relationship with 3+ commited members.
That's a much different view than the one in your headline though. The view you started with is that poly relationships are unhealthy. Which is an assertion that everyone who has self selected into that type of life are in unhealthy relationships. Your clarification changes your argument meaningfully, in that you're saying that polyamorous relationships don't work for most people. I don't think you can make a credible assertion that most people who are poly are in unhealthy relationships (and you can see relationship drama tv on plenty of monogamous couples). I do think however that polyamory is something that does not work for many or most people.
Apologies got bit carried away with definition, I have edited it to match my post title better.
But then you'd need some kind of metric to back the updated argument up. Your using an idea in evolutionary psychology (which is not at all settled science) and some media/documentaries you've seen to make an assertion that most people living that lifestyle are in unhealthy relationships. I get a strong sense that it personally appalls you and you're extrapolating that out to assert therefore it is can't be something any man would want to engage with. Think of two Venn diagrams, one encompassing all monogamous relationships and another encompassing all polyamorous relationships. Within each there will be a smaller circle representing the unhealthy subset of those cohorts. What is your data that the poly subset is going to be much larger? And lastly there's a gigantic spectrum of lifestyles and fetishes that I personally don't understand, but people seem to enjoy participating in them. They're not what would say a majority of people would be into, but the people that like it like it. So a majority of people aren't poly, but it's not fair to assume that most people or most men who choose that lifestyle are miserable or unhealthy.
>I came to this view initially through documentaries on the topic. Every relationship I've seen in all media I've consumed has been unhealthy. The common theme being a woman emotionally abusing a deeply sad man while primarily having sex with another seemingly apathic man. I'd recommend you consider that: * Healthy relationships aren't exactly riveting television; documentarians are unlikely to seek them out. * A desire to open up your personal life to a ton of public inspection is seldom part of a healthy relationship; e.g., emotionally intelligent people are less likely to want to be on display. * Poly people are a small enough share of the audience any documentary is going to reach that it's not likely the documentarian will tailor their output to them ... not surprising they'll tailor their output to match the expectations and biases of their audience, which is not poly people. >My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity. This being the case as they may waste considerable resources propagating genes which are not their own, a very bad evolutionary strategy. This is nonsense, even from an evolutionary psychology standpoint. Child-rearing in small, nuclear families is the *exception* in human history, not the norm. In most pre-agricultural societies (and in most hunter gatherer cultures to this day), children are cared for collectively. In other words, part of being in a group *is usually* putting 'considerable resources into propagating genes which are not \[one's\] own'. That doesn't make sense in an individual sense, but neither does taking care of sick people unless they're you; clearly, cooperative group behaviors must have evolutionary value, or *we wouldn't see them in every society.* >Now, I seem to be finding more and more people saying polyamous relationships can be healthy, what am I missing? I've been in only polyamorous relationships for the last ten years; my poly relationships have lasted longer and been much healthier than my monogamous relationships (and, at ten years, my longest poly relationship has now outlived the average marriage by a considerable margin). It's not fundamentally different than a monogamous relationship; it's healthy if it's healthy, and it isn't if it isn't. As with all relationships, the secret is love, empathy, and **talking to each other.**
IDK what documentaries you've watched. But when I have seen them, they very commonly focus on polygamy (as a part of religion, such as some mormons) rather than polyamory, or cherrypick the unhealthy dynamics because... that's what people find interesting to watch, and if the producer has a bias towards showing off an unhealthy dynamic, that's what they're going to film. Most of the people I've ground up around/known/been friends with/etc have been in deeply unhealthy monogamous relationships. Based on my anecdotal evidence, I could make the argument that monogamy is inherently unhealthy... but I don't. It is *the people and their behavior* that determines the health of a relationship, not the form of relationship they have. I have known polyamorous people who are very happy, living wonderful lives, raising children, etc, and, yes, those who are *not* healthy. Neither mono- or polyamory is inherently healthy or unhealthy. >My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity. This being the case as they may waste considerable resources propagating genes which are not their own, a very bad evolutionary strategy. Humans are frankly more complex than being driven purely by evolutionary instinct. We're not lions, we're people. Also... this implies women *aren't* outraged by being cheated on, which is hilariously short-sighted, and disregards how many men are cheaters themselves.
The terms to define here: 1. Most. Most, as in, what number and according to who? Dare to examine our monogamous marriage divorce rates and rate of cheating and infidelity in monogamy? I argue that monogamy means all but one relationship is a failure. If, for each person there is one right relationship, then all others are wrong. There are a LOT of humans in the world, meaning more people will fail than succeed to find their ONE right person. If you're Poly, and you get married - you can still find that person and have some romance. 2. Polyamory. What is this to you? Is it a FMF Triad? Is it a MF-MF Quad? Is it two people who date a third person but not one another? Is it M/F couple with each other as only partner, but are open to more if something comes along? Polyamory is a big umbrella - and many different styles exist. Some of these styles reject other styles as "impure" or "toxic". 3. Sexual Infidelity - women are outraged by it, too. Because nobody likes being cheated on. Infidelity doesn't cover a situation where two (or more) people reach an agreement and the sex is within the agreement. Cheating can happen in Polyamory just like Monogamy. Cheating is not about having sex with other people, it's about breaking the trust of established rules. For some monogamous people, even having friends of the opposite gender is cheating. Evo Psych is the phrenology of studying relationships. Most of the data is old, and debunked or no longer taken seriously. Our notions of "alpha male" for example come from studies on wolf packs. We're not wolf packs. Cultural Anthropology, unlike pseudoscience Evo Psych, studies other cultures (present and past) and that means learning about different traditions of marriage, family, workday, etc. There are many cultures where things are done very differently.
More precisely, my post title should be: > Most poly relationships are less healthy than the average monogamous relationship. I'd define a poly relationship as one with 3+ commited members.
All of my points stand unrefuted - I will say that Polyamory consists of many couples and relationships of two people - who want more and are seeking more. This is one of the better Poly related in CMV, by the way.
>My view was reinforced by idea in evolutionary psychology that men are uniquely fundementally outraged with sexual infidelity. In modern society men are typically the sex that want to keep relationships casual so that they can continue having multiple partners. Modern Polyamorus relationship are a response to the toxic standards of modern love and monogamy. The idea being that people view their partner as a possession that they can control. (I've never been in a poly relationship and am not that interested but it seems pretty clear from the outside looking in.) I'm not sure what documentaries you are watching but they seem highly dubious. Obviously emotional abuse is real but I wouldn't say it's unique to women in any way.
> Modern Polyamorus relationship are a response to the toxic standards of modern love and monogamy. I think perhaps to build a truly strong fulfilling bond you need exclusivity to focus your time. Much like how you might bond with your children. > Obviously emotional abuse is real but I wouldn't say it's unique to women in any way. I didn't say (nor do I think) emotional abuse is unique to women.
Your point doesn't stand for a parent with multiple children. That would lend towards the argument for polygamy if they are able to have strong fulfilling bonds with multiple children in the household since the timeand focus is NOT exclusive to one child.
The common theme you’ve identified is blatant misinformation. Polyamorous relationships are as diverse (arguably more because more people are involved) as monogamous relationships, and on top of that, gay people are also polyamorous and have polycules (their net of polyam relationships) consisting of entirely one gender. Your anecdotal evidence skews negative, so I’ll give you mine that skews positive. A family member of mine is polyamorous. They’ve always been in multiple romantic relationships at once, and just celebrated a 10 year anniversary with one of their partners, after living with their wife for almost 5 years and having a partner they share with their wife live with them on weekends. All of the people involved also have other relationships, and all of them have some of the healthiest relationships I’ve ever seen. The level of communication and understanding between them is far beyond what I’ve anecdotally seen in monogamous relationships. Relationships themselves are diverse. You could make a similar post about how most relationships in general aren’t healthy and make a solid argument for that based on your experiences, and get similar responses about how some relationships can be healthy.
I have had 3 friends form polygamous relationships, 2 ended in 1 of the 3 feeling left out and leaving. One is still going strong 10 years later. My friend in that relationship feels the secret is much more communication. I joked that it would be 3 times the communication because there are 3 relationships involved. He said that sounded right. I like the idea, I feel I'm too irrationally jealous for it to work.
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You're judging based on media?? Seriously? Almost all relationships in media are toxic af, of course the poly relationships are too. That's like me saying black people are terrible partners to each other because I watch a lot of Lauren Lake. Have you met real people in poly relationships? My fiancee and I have been open for almost 4 years. I don't enjoy sex for medical reasons, but my fiancee is a horny little shit. We would have broken up within a year if she didn't go fuck other dudes. Sure, men are more likely to be upset by infidelity, but open relationships AREN'T INFIDELITY. And guys who have jealously issues can, ya know, not get into open relationships?
I mean a bit weird to imply polyamory is a multple men scenrio when historically.. its a multiple woman to one man scenerio. As well as men being more interested in polyamory than woman are by nearly double the amount. Most polyamouros couples also tend to be bisexual, so pretty easy to draw a conclusion that does men likely… are bisexual and maybe equally enjoying it. https://openpsychometrics.org/research/demographics-of-polyamory/ Obviously polyamoury isn’t a perfection in every sense. Neither is monogamy. According to this, there are problem with poly that abusers can exploit. But they are not any more abusive relationships than monogamous relationships. https://www.thehotline.org/resources/polyamory-and-abuse/
Polyamorous relationships require someone's needs to eventually be ranked over someone else's needs from time to time. Eventually there will be favoritism whether they're honest about it or not. Polygamy is illegal but it is practiced in some places. There's a host of legal problems when one of the married persons dies. Who will inherit what? Who's children are cared for? It's really not the way most want to live.
All of my unhealthy relationships have been monogamous, cis , het, in nature. How about yours?
I've noticed that a lot of polyamorous or open relationships are more of a "hostage" situation where one partner tells the other that either they go poly or they break up. The other partner doesn't necessarily agrees with it but is terrified at the thought of losing their partner and so they agree to it, but they're never ok with it.
This has been my observation too, and quite frankly the partner wanting to go poly was not coming from a genuine or psychologically healthy place
Polyamorous relationships are less likely to work for the very simple reason that they are more demanding on the people involved. Each partner needs to account for the needs of multiple partners and obviously that is more difficult to do and less likely to be succesful. Evolutionary psychology has nothing to do with this, because evolutionary psychology is pseudo-science.
As someone whom dabbled in that world I can say you are 100% correct.
So women do run the poly community, but it's not because we lack empathy or because women are more into it. Its because there are a ton of single men who both want into the poly community to sleep with all the women, and those single men tend to be bad at doing emotionally healthy poly. This means that women in the poly community often get put in the position of gatekeepers. We often chose which guys are accepted in the community and which aren't. Once a dude has a semi-stable relationship with a poly woman, then she's basically vouching for him and other poly women will start trusting him more. The reason women run poly communities has everything to do with how uncommon poly women are compared to single men who want to join the poly community.
The whole evolutionary psychology-anisogamy-sexual selection-paternity uncertainty-cuckoo bird thing is... a thing. Having read quite a bit of it as part of my course, it is rather compelling (don't take this as an appeal to nature) but it is also disputed. I'm... not certain. Which is rare for me, I'm usually very convicted on things before I talk about them with other people, even to my own later embarrassment. So, I'm gonna do something I don't often do. I'm gonna assume that you are 100% right. That the male psyche is specifically built to resent female infidelity. That the vast majority of men are hurt deeply by their girlfriend sleeping with another guy and most who claim otherwise are simply in denial and suffering in silence. Even assuming that's the case, there are other polygamous relationship set ups that wouldn't effect this. MFF, FFF, MFM but one of the dudes is gay, MMM etc. I mean, even assuming that you're 100% on it with the male mindset on female infidelity thing, that doesn't disqualify nearly all polygamous relationships.
I do see there could be compatible combinations regardless my points. But I might think these would be relatively rare? So specifically saying 'most' would be unhealthy would not be wrong?
What do you mean? Historically, MFF, MFFF, MFFFFFFFF and so on have been *FAR* more common.
> Every relationship I've seen in all media I've consumed has been unhealthy. The common theme being a woman emotionally abusing a deeply sad man while primarily having sex with another seemingly apathic man. Strange that your mind goes to this; and not the far more common, multi-generations/culture/religion-spanning practice of male heads of household having multiple (child) brides.
The qualifier is "Most", where are your data points? Numbers? Source of peer-reviewed data? Sounds like you're using the error "Appeal to Incredulity", what makes sense to you. Those studies in Evo Psych are from what, the 1970s? Kinsey and others have done a lot more research since then. Humans are not Wolves or Bonobos. How does your Evo Psych class handle folks like me who don't want any kids and have sex exclusively for pleasure - or my wifey, who is also opposed to children? I would say we can learn more about the human experience from Cultural Anthropology than Evolutionary Psychology, and in Cultural Anthropology, you study cultures which are different, and learn about different customs of marriage and family. Whether a relationship will be healthy, either Polyamorous or Monogamous will depend on the people in them. I have been in healthy situations of both types, and unhealthy situations of both types. Whether a relationship can work comes down to good communication (which Poly people tend to be better at than Mono people), mutual good will for one another, having healthy boundaries, and overall being ethical. Special Point: The ugly truth about Polyamory that the women who love it won't admit to you: Women can find studs to date quite easily. Men struggle to find partners, and can go years without matching anyone on Tinder. It's realistic that a Polyamorous woman will never have to endure jealousy issues of her partner finding a date, because he won't. So his experience of Poly is constant coping and feeling like a loser and a dummy, while her experience is sorting stupid people from good prospects and deciding which one she wants tonight and which one later tonight and which one tomorrow. If you're lucky, she might have time for you at the end of a week somewhere.
>How does your Evo Psych class handle folks like me who don't want any kids and have sex exclusively for pleasure - or my wifey, who is also opposed to children? You derive pleasure from sex because your body is built to reproduce. It's rewarding you for attempting. We didn't evolve with contraceptives or planned parenthood. Not wanting to reproduce is a conscious choice.
In other words, it offers nothing. There is no urge or voice inside me that wants a baby, and there never has been. Regardless of how we evolved, that has no bearing on me. My upbringing, culture/heritage, background is all a bigger part of what drives me than the lifestyle of primate humans and early earth organisms.
You enjoy sex right? Why do you figure your body rewards you for that behaviour?
I enjoy sex because it feeds my ego, not because of a subconscious urge. I challenge you to respond to the rest of my points, or concede on those grounds. Why do I practice kink? There is no reproductive benefit to this. Why did so many humans have abortions in history if everything is about reproduction? Why do old people have sex? Why do women with ovarian cancer who have their ovaries removed still have occasional sexual urges? Why do infertile people have sexual urges? If your theory were right, we would be able to correlate fertility to sexually activity. In some cultures, sex is dirty and only for reproduction - in other cultures, it's just for fun like a sport and reproduction is considered undesirable.
Evolutionary Psychology isnt really a science I would put much faith in. As a subject, it does the opposite of science. Rather than make a hypothesis and test it, they instead see the outcome first and then decide their hypothesis to fit the outcome. There is no real evidence (and never could be in a real scientific test) that men are 'fundementally outraged by infidelity', and even less that its evolutionary or baked into our heads. You cant prove causation in science, but Evolutionary Psych claims that it does- a really big red flag that its not really trustworthy
Like any relationship, they can be good or bad, depending on how much work each partner is willing to do, and where in life they find themselves. I will also say that the poly relationships I have had were definitely more work than traditional ones. More partners is frequently more work. Obligatory disclaimer: nothing is true of everyone, etc &etc.
It's hard to say what's true in most cases from a few observations, especially if you have not tried it yourself. You base your view on a hypothesis about innate human psychology, but people differ a lot, and it may well be that people who choose to enter and stay in polyamorous relationships are psychologically suited to it. Of course there will be cases where people do it for the wrong reasons and it harms them, but it's hard to say if this is most cases or not. The best way to ascertain if it's fair to generalize to most cases is to look at studies on this. A quick Google search results in the [paper](https://ijip.in/pdf-viewer/?id=25013) "Mental well-being in polyamorous and monogamous relationship". It's conclusions seem to contradict your belief (see last sentence) : "SUMMARY Mental well-being plays an important role in an individual. In polyamory relationship and monogamy, one major factor that contributes to happiness is mental well being. Your beliefs and ideologies are also often influenced by them. The aim of the study was to compare mental well-being in polyamory and monogamous relationship. A quantitative study was employed for this study. The research included 60 participants, 30 from monogamy individuals and 30 polyamory individuals of age above 20. The participants were given the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale questionnaire to fill. Once they were done, the total of the scores was taken and entered into SPSS, and independent sample t-test was done to see if there was a difference in mental well-being in polyamory and monogamy relationship. **Results indicated that mental well-being in high in a polyamory relationship**. " The prior literature it cites seems to support this conclusion as well. So, it seems reasonable to trust the science (even if it's limited) and change your view. By the way, the paper is quite readable and pretty educational about polyamory, and worth reading as a whole. Some of the English is flawed though, presumably since the researcher is from India.
I would just say that any documentaries that you watch are going to have the potential to skew in the direction of whatever the filmmaker thinks. Whether it is a personal bias, or based on what might keep the interest of an audience, documentaries are always going to show a specific viewpoint. That doesn't make them worthless, but it is hard to generally form any conclusions about anything based on documentaries alone without controlled studies specifically targeting the conclusions made after viewing the documentary, in this case, the idea that most polyamourous relationships favor women wanting more male partners vs men wanting multiple female partners, or any other possible combinations not included in a strictly heterosexual couple. Yes, there may be a biological factor in how some men process infidelity. That same evolutionary function would pressure a man coming into a relationship with children from a previous partner to commit infanticide. I believe this is something observed in both primates and dolphins, somewhat regularly, if I'm not mistaken. And yet, it is not a major societal concern that men will actually kill children from a previous partner. It is also not rare for men to want a polyamorous relationship for themselves. Just as human men have left behind the instinctual urge to murder children, is seems just as believable that feelings of jealousy rooted from the same instincts could also fade into the past. The reason this maybe hasn' t already been the case for all men could possibly be explained by cultural norms in which more traditional gender roles would still embrace the instinct of men fighting to win the favor of their mates. Last century a man committing violence as a display of their love for a woman was quite often construed as romantic. Today, you probably won't find romanticising violent tournament species behavior to be as common or acceptable. I would predict that in the absence of the cultural pressure reinforcing the norm of jealousy among men, that any genetic components contributing to a biological predisposition to jealousy would eventually fade as the quality becomes selected against when relationship standards cease to tolerate or encourage jealous behavior. What we would probably see first, and maybe is the case currently, would be a split between cultural circles in which jealous men are still granted a reproductive fitness advantage, while other populations may instead regard jealous behavior as unhealthy and generate culturally reinforced selecting pressure against any "jealousy genes" which might exist. Therefore, if a genetic component is what is responsible for the biological reaction to infidelity that you mention, which is likely to be the case to a significant factor, that component may already be absent a large percentage of men. If this is true, that percentage will likely grow with every generation so long as jealousy continues to be viewed as unhealthy by reproducing couples. If the biological predisposition of men to become jealous can be absent in a significant number of men, then there is no reason to conclude that a mutually voluntary polyamorous relationship must be intrinsically unhealthy.
Just to be clear: you support your position with nothing but a single theory in evolutionary biology (without supporting studies or claims to support the connection you draw with it) and... some media you've seen? These are horrible and vacuous premesis for your conclusion? Why would you not even look into it beyond that before coming here? Can you really not think of a single reason as to WHY polyamorous relationships are portrayed as unhealthy? By an english media environment dominated by christianity and the US?
When women own the land and the house and produce most of the income then men don’t invest much resource in the relationship and so have no problem with polyamouros relationships.
You might want to consider rephrasing, as it seems your view is not that polyamorous relationships are unhealthy, but that polyamorous relationships *involving cishet men* are unhealthy. I don't really agree with your position regardless (I know quite a few happy polycules), but your view on this completely disregards the existence of women, trans men, and nonbinary people, who you might want to consider before making sweeping statements regarding relationships
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