He has an entire post about this. I'm too lazy to look it up for you. The gist is: sure, a biased survey is imperfect. Just guessing willy nilly based on no data whatsoever is worse. So we're going to go with the biased data approach. (if you don't like it, collect some data yourself in some better way)
Yeah, that's the point. Collecting that data is a lot of work. Scott and Aella have done that work. So let's use their data. One day someone else with a lot of energy and a large audience will make a better data set, or you (or I or whoever) will do it ourselves.
In the meantime, complaining about bias in the data isn't doing anyone much good, because the biased data is the data we have, and the unbiased data is fictional.
Honestly, it's better than a lot of the other surveys--it's bigger, and doesn't have to pass through the ideological filters of academia. But your point is still valid.
Probably a way to pool resources when resources are scarce. I've seen this as an argument for increasing polyamory among young people--housing prices are up, people share, and they're young and horny and one thing leads to another.
I haven't seen this in black communities (not around enough I suppose) but have seen it in poor white communities. There seems to be some serious consent issues and a whole lot of pain and jealousy involved.
I know of a situation where a mom and her adult daughter were both living with the same guy, and he got them both pregnant at the same time. They all hated each other because of it but continued to live together (for a time, no idea how long) because of lack of options.
Fun fact, Ireland is replacing the more Catholic parts of its constitution which reference to durable relations.
From “ The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”
The proposal is to add “ whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships”, after family.
Hard to see how this wouldn’t legalise some forms of polyamory, maybe not in marriage but in other legal forms.
Ah, the two referendums which Leo and the rest of the [redacted] swear blind will mean more support for caregivers, honest, cross their hearts and hope to die.
I don't think it will include poly but I'm damn sure it will mean not a penny extra for the health budget on care assistants, allowances for carers, expanding places in nursing homes or Section 38/Section 39 agencies or more funding for the community and voluntary sector.
It's a way of looking progressive without committing themselves to actually *doing* anything. A bunch of D4 chattering class liberals who dearly wish they were living in London or New York and are bored and want something to occupy themselves set up as the Citizens' Assembly (mar dhea) and every so often produce claptrap like this - "oh, there's sexist language in the Constitution, let's change that!"
I think you may take it from this I'm going to be voting "Hell, no! Dev's constitution is good enough for me, you pack of Blueshirts and backstabbing Soldiers of Destiny!" on this one 😀
I think hoping that a constitutional phrase "The state recognizes X as a primary unit of society with inalienable rights" will force the funding for care assistants is a terrible way of conducting policy. If you want to fund care assistants, pass a law funding care assistants. Don't try to impose some bespoke interpretation of a vague line in the constitution.
This is part of my lemons and vinegar reaction. Like a lot of other countries, people here are looking around and going "If the economy is doing so great, how come I'm struggling to get by?" We have a housing crisis which has been going on for decades now and no sign of any changes. Despite regulations and even a body to regulate the residential tenancies sector, bad landlords are still getting away with blue murder. We've got a burgeoning crisis around refugees/migrants, where unhappily a small minority of genuine far-right/white supremacy actors are trying to get a foothold in Ireland for a long time now and are using incidents to cause trouble and stir up a public backlash - there has been a rash of arson incidents around buildings rumoured to be turned into emergency provision.
So what does our government do about all this? Well, time for a bullshit feel-good maneouvre! The gay marriage referendum went so swimmingly that they haven't stopped patting themselves on the back over it, and we got the Citizens' Assembly (and it's a good job you can't see my expression as I type those words, I make Squidward look like Pollyanna):
Meant to be a way for The Public to get a voice on topics, turned out to be the Usual Suspects of activists, well-heeled do-gooders, and government-appointed jobsworths:
"Questions considered include: abortion, fixed term parliaments, referendums, population ageing, and climate change.
...A 2019 editorial in The Irish Times said that the Citizens' Assembly's work on abortion was a "great success" that "paved the way for the resolution of [a] potentially contentious social issue" and "a vital step on the road to generating support for constitutional change".
(No joke, I am *snarling* here reading that, but that's a whole other rant about the Irish Times, the Horse Protestants, Castle Catholics, Shoneens, provincialism dressed up as cosmopolitanism, etc.)
Three guesses how the Citizens' Assembly recommended we go on abortion, and "let's not" is never one of them. They're also considering "death with dignity" (this is the new term for euthanasia) at the moment, but that's still too hot of a potato so, until the temperature on that one cools down, let's address the most pressing problem affecting the nation, the crisis that has the plain people of the republic gathering in the streets to discuss it in hushed tones, the predicament that keeps strong men awake in their beds at night and has the wretched women of Ireland weeping as they toil, barefoot and pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink:
Sexist Language in the 1937 Constitution!
Well, "gender equality", but that's what it comes down to. See, it is so terribly, terribly awful that women working in the home is assumed to contribute to the stability of society. Women should be out there working in factories and offices and growing the economy, instead of taking care of their families, the aged, and the young!
"In 2019, the Irish government announced two further Citizens' Assemblies including gender equality.
This assembly was tasked with exploring and, within 6 months, making recommendations on; barriers that facilitate gender discrimination towards girls and boys, women and men; removing gender related economic inequalities, reassess the economic value placed traditional 'women's work'; women's full participation in workplace and political; considering the gender imbalance in care; and gender imbalance in low pay sectors".
This campaign is using all the Greatest Hits Tactics from the gay marriage success, which in turn were re-purposed for the abortion referendum: we're modern now! equality! these legal restrictions harm and repress people! and of course, the good old scare tactics about the influence of the Catholic Church (even though, right now, the state of the Church in Ireland is such that in my own diocese, the bishop is looking for suggestions about lack of clergy to service all the churches so - close down parishes? the liturgy of the Eucharist once a month? what?)
Let's get some facts in here, instead of my ranting. What are the two referenda, what is the language that is so offensive/harmful, what is the proposed amendment?
This is going to be a long one, so I'm splitting this into three. Wall o' text is not easy reading.
"The 39th Amendment to the Constitution ...deals with Article 41.1.1°and Article 41.3.1° of the Constitution, both of which relate to the Family.
In Article 41.1.1° “The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”
In Article 41.3.1° “The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.”
In this amendment there is one vote for two proposed changes. The Proposal involves the insertion of additional text to Article 41.1.1° and the deletion of text in Article 41.3.1°. These proposed changes are shown below:
Proposed to change Article 41.1.1° text in bold:
Article 41.1.1° “The State recognises the Family, *whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships*, as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”
Proposed to change Article 41.3.1° by deleting text shown with line through it:
“The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, *on which the Family is founded*, and to protect it against attack.”
...The constitutional protection of the Family would be given to both the Family based on marriage and the Family founded on “other durable relationships”.
The Family founded on marriage means the unit based on a marriage between two people without distinction as to their sex.
The Family founded on other durable relationships means a Family based on different types of committed and continuing relationships other than marriage.
So, different types of family units would have the same constitutional rights and protections.
The institution of Marriage will continue to be recognised as an institution that the State must guard with special care and protect against attack."
Here is where I get very heavy-handed with the sarcasm, so you may want to skip this. Oh, so marriage is not the foundation of the family? 'Other durable relationships' are just as good? Funny, I thought the gay marriage campaign was all about how marriage was so very, very necessary and no, civil partnerships would not do and no, without the right to marry, same-sex couples were doomed to loveless, lonely lives? They just needed to wait a few years and then it would all be the same whether you're married or not, shacking up or an open relationship or three baby mamas on the go is just as good as Mr and Mrs Smith!
And what exactly *is* an "other durable relationship", anyway? You have to be living together for five years? Does it include that ten minutes you spent shifting that fella in the gay club while your partner (not spouse, and what is going on there?) was at home, Leo? Yeah, cheap shot*, but if you're going to be out there in your good suit yammering about "other durable relationships", you need to define them. As I said, I've worked in social housing, I've seen "other relationships" and they're none too durable, Leo dear. "Yes, we were family yesterday, but I'm dumping you today so get out of my council house" happens a *lot*. At least a marriage certificate, even if it's "only a piece of paper" gives you rights, and I'm awaiting the first court case, should this amendment go through, over "I met this girl, I moved in with her, three weeks later she kicked me out, I'm claiming my family rights under the clause of other durable relationships".
The next amendment will be to take out that phrase about "moral institution" because it's so religious and judgmental and icky, now isn't it? Keep your morals off my private life!
I'm also laughing about that bit about the State protecting marriage because look at the bit about marriage as "between two people without distinction as to their sex"; you've already sold the pass there with same-sex marriage, why should I believe you'll make any efforts to resist the Zeitgeist on further tweaks and 'improvements'? We've been discussing polyamory on here, why should I believe that there won't be a push for "okay, we've decided that between three to five people can be in a legal relationship analogous to marriage - sorry, that's not good enough, what about equality? okay - in a marriage. But not ten, that would be silly".
*Interesting question, though. Leo has been out as gay for a while, he's been our First Gay Taoiseach, the other guy is his long-term boyfriend (they were even hosted by Mike Pence and Pence's sister in a photo-op at the Naval Observatory), their parents are not objecting or unsupportive, and re: The Nightclub Kiss, that got defended as "everyone in the Dublin gay community knows Leo is in an open relationship" and indeed it was more an amusing tidbit than a public scandal, and he's leader of the party that introduced legal same-sex marriage, so why no marriage? Could it possibly be that - gasp! - the whole "the gays will die, just die, if you don't make same-sex marriage legal" was just a... tactic????
Referendum Two, and the one which really gets my goat.
"The Care Amendment
The 40th Amendment to the Constitution will be on a green coloured ballot paper. It proposes deleting the current Articles 41.2.1° and 41.2.2° and inserting a new Article 42B.
Article 41.2.1° “In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.”
Article 41.2.2° “The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
The Constitution currently, by Article 41.2, refers to the importance to the common good of the life of women within the home and that the State should endeavour to ensure that mothers should not have to go out to work to the neglect of their “duties in the home”.
In this amendment there is one vote for two proposed changes. The proposal involves deleting Article 41.2.1° and Article 41.2.2° and inserting a new Article 42B, as shown below:
“The State recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to Society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision.”
It is proposed to delete the entirety of current Article 41.2 and insert a new Article 42B.
The new 42B would, firstly, recognise the importance to the common good of the care provided by family members to each other.
Secondly, it would provide that the State would “strive to support” the provision of such care within families."
Okay, let's be upfront - the State has never been able to make sure women don't *have* to work outside the home, and the whole assumption of caregiving/emotional labour (a terrible phrase but it does for once fit here) by women as wives, mothers, daughters as 'free labour' that relieves the responsibility of the State to provide social supports to the needy members of society isn't edifying.
But this crappy amendment is not going to change all that. In the same week, I've read an online newspaper article about a mother complaining about the *long* waiting list for her child to get necessary assessment to access support services, and an opinion piece by some hopeful that by the magic of the changed language, the State will finally start providing all the needed support.
Dream on, second person. I'm working for a Section 39 agency, my boss got me to write a begging proposal for extra funding, but everybody knows the Health Service has no spare capacity, is burning through funding and still needs more, and is understaffed and overstretched. Magic feel-good bullshit Constitutional change is not going to affect that, it's more likely the State will now say, in response to appeals about being a wife and mother who is a caregiver, that "but now you are not the sole person charged with this! anyone can be family - your second cousin, your hairdresser's boyfriend, that person of indeterminate gender you met at the bus stop - all these can be considered family who will support and care for your parents/children! thank you, you're welcome!"
Also, I do *not* believe it is "sexist" to recognise the work of women within the home, or of stay-at-home wives/mothers. The rush is on to recognise women as economic units, that their place is out there working to support the economy and not their families, and various strains of feminism have not helped that. Some women may not choose to remain within the home and have felt trapped and coerced by that, but equally some women would prefer not to be working outside the home and feel trapped and coerced by *that*.
This is not about equality, it's about cutting expenditure. The State will "strive" to support, but there's no reason it won't reply to your request with "Well we'd love to, but we just can't. We strove, but in vain. No money, you see. Can't hire on extra healthcare staff. You're living down the country, it only is economic to provide these services in Dublin. If we give it to you, everyone will want it. Good luck, just keep on keeping on!"
It's not sexist, it's not religious paternalism, to have language in the Constitution recognising the special place of women and the contribution of 'unpaid' labour to supporting society. It *is* sexist to reduce us all to neutral units in an amorphous entity of 'the family' which is not by marriage or blood but some kind of feeling from a 'durable relationship' which means whatever you want it to mean, and which can be terminated on the same terms.
Okay, this doesn't have anything to do with the post and has probably been said before, but who else, every time there's a Highlights post, is like "Well, I thought I had read the comments to the posts, but apparently I didn't, since I don't recall seeing any of these comments"? Were they just all posted after I had stopped following the comment sections or whatever? Or, more likely, they're just in the comment threads that I collapsed since the first comment didn't seem particularly interesting.
Also: "The second happiest are people who have sex so frequently and compulsively that it’s impossible for them to be angry with their partner for sleeping around because not-sleeping-around seems as impossible to them as falling upward. "
...I guess this is just a type of personality I fundamentally don't understand. I know them, I'm friends with them, but still, if they go "Well, I accidentally ended up having sex with her, and..." when telling the story, I won't say anything, but I'm thinking "What, your clothes accidentally ripped off and you accidentally fell on top of her and your dick was accidentally hard and you both accidentally started bucking?" It always just feels like the sort of stuff people who very well know there's no compulsion and accidents and they do have self-control tell themselves to justify their behavior... but what do I know, this is probably one of those fundamental disconnects between different groups of humans.
It seems like some people "accidentally lose self-control", while others hold themselves responsible even for the moments they lose self-control.
Something similar happens with alcohol, I think. For some people, what they did while drunk, is as if a different person did that -- you certainly cannot blame *them* for that behavior. I had my moments with alcohol when I was younger, but no matter how drunk I got... it was still me. Even when I had a problem keeping balance or talking coherently, it was still obvious that whatever I was doing, it was *me* doing it, albeit clumsily.
That said, perhaps we should not generalize too much. There is such thing as a multiple personality disorder. Maybe for some people it is contextual. It only happens when they are drunk. Or, possibly, when horny.
The only way I could make the "accidental" comment legible is 1) ironic / arch distance, to make it less uncomfortable to talk about, or 2), they really just mean that they didn't plan it, that it was impulsive.
I think everyone is gonna have a hard time debating this so long as 1) people have very different definitions of the primary term and 2) incentives to define it differently/ambiguously in relation to themselves.
> An alternative is that Aella got a bad sample (but her sample ought to be much more representative than mine), or that poly people lie / misremember / have a hard time answering surveys
Or that a random sample of subscribers to Aella isn’t a random sample of the population.
That said I don’t suppose that matters much to the argument that full polly > intermediate polly.
I don't understand the difference between "Aella got a bad sample, but her sample ought to be much more representative than mine" and "a random sample of subscribers to Aella isn't a random sample of the population"
And I don’t understand why you think her sample is more representative than yours - numbers?
Clearly people who sign up to her Substack are there for the sexual content, and that’s not a true random sample of the entire population. It’s probably a more sexually adventurous population.
That said, it doesn’t invalidate the findings. Even if people who sign up for her content are more sexually adventurous than the general population this doesn’t eliminate the distinction between the full time and part time polyamorous, since both are probably more sexually open.
What is Aella’s content on TikTok? I could only stand the app for a couple of days before I deleted it so I honestly don’t know. If I had to guess though it would be in the same vein as her Substack.
From my vague recollection of Aella describing the survey population, I think it was the survey itself going viral on TikTok, independent of anything else Aella does.
I find any self selected sample inherently suspect. Aella has made the point that her surveys are actually a lot more rigorous than much of what gets published in the social science literature, but that just inclines me to say "burn the social science literature to the ground".
DISCLAIMER: I don't know any poly people IRL so all this is speculative. I'm speaking as a libertarian-ish person here; my personal religion, Orthodox Christianity, will be recognizing the validity of polyamory around the same time it canonizes Beaker the Muppet. I believe prostitution should be legalized to avoid a lot of pernicious add-on effects while still believing prostitutes are plying a morally illegitimate trade and should be viewed with contempt. Same general principle here, though I don't view polyamory in general anywhere near as negatively as prostitution so don't take that as a comparison! More of an analogy. Hope that makes sense.
With that said, I can accept that there are people who are more happy in polycules or what-have-you for whatever reason. I find it hard to fathom, but it's a big world etc. It seems likely to me that these people are not especially common compared to the people for whom monogamy, broadly, works--though this may be because we have way more experience with monogamy and the ways it can go wrong, so we are generally better at patching it up. Encouraging poly could easily make a few people happier while also encouraging many more people to rationalize their failures of monogamy with a trendy new thing (and, yes, probably messing up kids in the process, though to be fair the kind of people who seem likeliest to do this also seem like the kind of people who would mess up their kids anyway). I'm not sure the two are compatible as coexisting norms, as normalization of polyamory makes it more attractive as a lure for shitty monogamists to justify doing their thing wrong--which would inevitably create friction. And possibly vice-versa, IDK.
Then you have the basic stability problem of building consensus in groups larger than two. If my wife and I disagree on something important, that's bad, but it means two people have to come to an agreement. Add a third person, and you now have three times as many bipolar relationships to keep in harmony; add a fourth, and it doubles compared to having three, etc. And relationships are, by nature, dyadic; I don't have a relationship with "my family" as a unit, I have a relationship with my wife, and with each of my three sons. You can only relate to other people, not to collectives, unless you're psychologically very peculiar. My family unit works because my sons don't get a real vote in major decisions (though of course we think about how they will be affected). Ancient polygyny sort of worked because women had an absymal legal and social status so only the man got a vote. I imagine it was still pretty toxic much of the time.
I'm not even talking about sexual jealousy here, just the potential fault lines from different priorities, the human tendency to form coalitions around shared interests, etc. If I get a job in another state or something, I have to get one person to agree, my wife. Add a third person and I have to juggle in how it incorporates their work life too, and if I am willing to drop the new opportunity to keep them, etc. If that person is, strictly speaking, my wife's second husband, I might think he's a great guy and maybe not be jealous (this is hypothetical alternate sheep, real me would totally be jealous) but the new job is going to be comparatively more attractive to me than if "she" were my second wife. Meanwhile my wife might feel that we could use the extra income compared to keeping otherwife around, since her music gig is tied to the local scene and doesn't bring in much money. Just an off-the-cuff example of why modern plural marriage sounds like a mess to me. Certainly not the kind of arrangement I'd want to bring children into, leaving aside any other objections. If it comes to being expected to factor in other people's kids with my wife and how any decision affects them too, crikey, what a headache. It's like establishing stepfamilies on purpose instead of as a patch for one or more prior ended marriages.
I can take it on faith that there exist groups of people who can make these multipolar clusters work, in the same way that I can accept there are saints who spent decades of their lives standing on pillars. It just doesn't feel like the kind of thing you should encourage large numbers of people to try.
As Deiseach notes, Beaker is usually a martyr anyway. His main obstacle is not being (apparently) Christian, though for all we know "Mee-mee-mee-mee" translates to "I believe in one God, the Father almighty."
This is a good reason to do hierarchical poly, where you and your primary partner make the big decisions for yourselves, and prioritize each other. This does require being forthcoming about what new partners can expect, e.g. "The position of 'wife' has already been filled and I'm not looking to revise that".
In general, I think hierarchical poly gets a lot of what people want out of monogamy while being less restrictive.
... do a lot of people really want to be second or third banana, though? It's not quite "concubine" but intuitively it sounds better to get full consideration from one person than a minority share in a sort of romantic corporation.
Secondary relationships are no more of a consolation prize than friendship - they're good in their own right. Primary partnerships require higher compatibility, since you're building a life together, maybe having kids. There are a lot of people who aren't compatible with me enough for that, but still compatible enough for us to come to care about each other, to have a good relationship that's more bounded in scope, etc.
Also, your secondary partner might have a primary partner of their own, and doesn't want multiple primaries any more than you do.
Well, my first response to that is that, if it gets that ornate, we're better off not legitimizing it just to avoid the massive complications it would introduce to case law, especially if (as I expect would happen) precedents set by poly are seen as potentially binding on ostensibly monogamous couples (the boundaries of poly being so fluid and the arrangements existing along a continuum). It's frustrating and error-prone enough when there are only two people involved.
Mind you, this is a bad time to be making a poly push, since we're now seeing a lot of unforeseen repercussions to the gay rights movement. I expected the bakery lawsuits; the teenage girls getting mastectomies, not so much. Not that this is relevant, but IDK how much appetite the average normie has for rocking the boat anymore.
You could end up with the official Chinese Imperial harem system, where there is only one Empress, but the rest of the concubines, mistresses, and casual flings are ranked in order of importance and status. If formalised, that might mitigate some of the problems: A is my primary, and has this status and legal rights and expectations from me; B and C are secondaries, and so on down.
If B has her own primary, then you are a secondary or even tertiary with that status and so can't make demands of "dump your husband and run off with me, baby!"
I think only Caroline Ellison thought that was desirable, and no doubt she was imagining herself as the emperor. Which, in a Silicon Valley environment, she probably was.
You write "Aella’s survey includes data from 430,000 people! The average social class is somewhere between lower-middle and middle, so this isn’t just capturing elites, and should be able to address concerns that polyamory only works as a “luxury belief”." However, I can't see any data on social class in the file she provides https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/180EK7HaTu-W9cKC599AeLMTVLRhxTAfbaLh9n-B4hek/edit#gid=0. I may have missed it. And, this may sound a bit defensive, but self-reporting of social class is notoriously unreliable: in short, most people throughout history have thought they are poorer than they are, because our brains are very finely tuned to perceive (often illusory) differences in status, and to feel bad about them. This just an example, of many, from popular media https://nypost.com/2023/08/14/some-of-the-richest-people-in-america-feel-very-poor-survey/. I suspect that people in the Bay Area who think they are struggling aren't really struggling as much as upper-middle class people in, say, West Virginia; not to speak of Namibia and Peru, where they are going to watch those Netflix shows about cool polyamorous people starring Hollywood hotties.
Hmm, this could blow this way of topic but (from the NYPost article you provided).
> A survey conducted by Bloomberg of 1,000 Americans making at least $175,000 a year — putting them in the top 10% of US tax filers — revealed that 25% say they are either “very poor,” “poor” or “getting by but things are tight.”
if they are living in an expensive city that could be true. Gross income != disposable income. And disposable income isn‘t that useful either if $20,000 goes twice as far in Arkansas than New York.
But the big problem here is the use of population percentages when the distribution is a Pareto not Gaussian. It’s early possible to be in the top 25% and poor - this is true of most of history and today.
The thing is, yes, you can be in the top 25% and have good reasons to feel poor but you are NOT poor. Feelings are not stats. That's why asking people whether they struggle financially doesn't tell you a lot. Lots of people who are very wealthy struggle financially all the time, including Donald Trump
There are places in the country where $50,000 a year buys you a reasonably solid middle-class lifestyle, and other places in the country where $50,000 a year would leave you homeless. We have a tendency to think a dollar is a dollar, but this isn't really the case; a dollar is worth whatever it will buy you.
This is more obvious when different places have different currencies - once you have an exchange rate, it becomes fairly obvious that high nominal incomes can in fact leave you in poverty - just consider cases of hyper-inflation.
What is less obvious is that there is an implicit exchange rate between different places in the country. A dollar can literally be worth less in one state than another; it buys less food, it buys less house, it buys less fuel. The degree to which this is the case is somewhat limited by trade, but certain goods and services that cannot be meaningfully traded, like housing, can distort intuitive understandings of what it means to be "rich" and "poor" far beyond the simple cost of sending a truckload of carrots to a city might imply.
Further, class is about much more than wealth in the US. If you live in NYC and you make $175,000 annually, it's very unlikely that you are a member of the lower class as contrasted to "the elites," no matter how bad your liquidity problems are. The only occupation I can think of that could pull that kind of income and live in a major metro without accumulating plenty of education and other social capital along the way is "drug dealer."
I tend to stick to economic classes - which is in any case the subject since we are talking dollars. Being educated to PhD level in film studies butters no parsnips unless the PHD student has a job buttering parsnips.
I thought we were talking about whether polyamory was a practice either most prominent in or primarily benefitting elites, as per the topic the Atlantic article, Scott's response, and the (objectionable to me but I'm rolling with it) notion of a "luxury belief".
Edit: Also, how does a PhD student in film studies rake in $175,000? A very lucrative side hustle? Inherited stock dividends? Whether a film studies student is wealthy (can "butter parsnips") answers an unrelated question. As does the fact that one can be wealthy and nevertheless short on cash. My whole point was that "free dollars to spend" is not a great proxy for elite status.
Since you are bluntly insisting that others just don’t get it, let me be blunt: you are badly wrong. They’re objectively not poor.
If you don’t understand that you don’t understand what 175k/yr can buy in NYC. The area median household income is 125k! Certainly you are not suggesting that somehow NYC, with that median income, is a low cost of living area? No, that would be ridiculous. So let’s drop this and move on: they say they are poor and are not poor.
Not having X figure of ‘disposable income’ (a subjective category in itself) doesn’t make you poor. Being unable to afford necessities makes you poor. 175k/yr in NYC makes you well able, more than most people (and most people are doing fine—neither starving nor struggling, and in fact going on pretty decent vacations) so the distribution being Pareto is irrelevant) to afford necessities.
It is very difficult for me to take rich people seriously when they complain about being poor and list "school fees" alongside mortgage and food (I live in a country with a good public education system).
Everyone is reading the words "very poor" and "poor" but not the words "getting by but things are tight".
It is not reasonable to be making $175K and claim to be "poor" and certainly not "very poor", but "getting by but things are tight" might be a perfectly reasonable thing to say if your expenses are high. The next category up is "comfortable", and not everyone feels that.
Also, "here is a person who is richer than you but feels poor" is a standard hate-read clickbait story which gets dragged out every month. It's a great thing to learn to ignore.
I dispute this. It's not THAT much more expensive to live in an expensive city alone. My experience is that the people who make that kind of money in an expensive city are not doing enough to cut their costs. There are people who make far less living in the same city, but they 1) live in a less nice area; 2) don't send their children to expensive private schools; 3) don't have child care services, but instead rely on family or neighbors more often, or if they do have child care services, it is a fairly cheap service and not an expensive one; 4) don't own an expensive car (and maybe no car at all).
This naturally doesn't mean you can't have tight finances in the top 25% in a city, but if you do, there's probably something you're doing a poor job optimizing, or perhaps some expenditures that are "expected" of someone in your *social* class that those in lower social classes mostly ignore.
Okay I was confused about poly before, so this really helped me. As someone who is not jealous, loves sexual variety, and is not interested at all in additional emotional relationships, I just couldn't understand that there were so many people who want more emotional relationships.
That being said, I feel constantly shamed for my extremely high socio-sexuality. Ideally, I'd like to see a hooker of different ethnicity 1x a month. While I see marriage more about building a life together, less about sexual desire, I don't look like I did at 25 either. But I guess that's not a thing with a name that society can pressure my wife into.
Why would you let your wife stop you? This way of thinking is totally foreign to me. Actual me would never agree to such a binding on the first place. But if I was in marriage and my wife wouldn't let me see a monthly hooker I'd just cheat.
So in this hypothetical, there's a person you are closest to in the world, who you made the decision to marry. And they tell you that they would be deeply hurt if you slept with other people. Your reaction is to violate their boundaries and their trust? If so, you're not ready for meaningful relationships, whether mono or poly.
To be fair, he did say he would never have agreed in the first place. So in this hypothetical, his wife is now forbidding it, in violation of what he would have considered necessary, and is assumed to have been discussed before the marriage. If she changed her mind, then the only options I see are 1) cheating, or 2) divorce.
I wouldn't have reacted nearly as strongly if divorce had been the one he'd said would be his reaction in that situation. That represents a consistent position of "that would be a deal-breaker for me". But not even mentioning it and jumping straight to cheating? I stand by that being fucked up. Like, where's the recognition of the other person there?
It's an immature response. "You are trying to change our agreement, thus I am going to privately renege on it without communicating my lack of acceptance." vs. "Your are trying to change our agreement, and I will not continue in our agreement unless you choose to keep its terms."
Yes. Why would I even consider letting their jealousy control my life. They should learn to control their emotions. If its too annoying to fuck other people openly then id cheat yeah.
Well, I hope you're aware that people like you are the literal reason for family breakdowns, traumatic childhoods, and a large part of the world's misery. And that you are the lowest filth on the planet, and you should be full of unending shame for your existence.
(Incidentally, I'd like some clarification on the comment policy here. Are comments like the above, proudly saying that they'd hurt someone, horribly, with a smile on their face, acceptable? If they are, is it acceptable for me to tell them what kind of alleged "person" they are? Seems true and necessary by any moral standard, but people here are often absurdly polite to such sociopaths, maybe expecting they'll be banned, but they're often not. A ruling from Scott would be much appreciated!)
It does feel a bit strong to call someone a sociopath and lowest filth on the planet for someone discussing a hypothetical opinion around conditions in which they imagine engaging in infidelity. It's name-calling and in that sense is more heat than light. It seems more useful to make an argument against the stance than to take aim at the person. That's just my two cents about norms I prefer in this space.
I'm not clear what argument I'm supposed to make to that. What if he'd said "if I saw a woman in a skimpy outfit yeah I'd rape her, it's her fault for being dressed like that, and for rejecting me"? Are you supposed to respond with "respectfully, I think that's slightly unreasonable"?
A decent person would say they might do some bad thing in some circumstances, and add that's it's wrong, and they're ashamed that they would. If they didn't say that, and just said they'd do the thing, that's questionable enough but maybe ambiguous. If they also outright say it's the victim's fault for expecting to be treated kindly and decently, then yeah they're about as clear an example of a sociopath as I can think of.
Does this require further argument? Is some part of that conclusion controversial?
While lowest filth is purely name-calling, I would argue that sociopath as a term is usefully descriptive. It helps us use language to describe reality.
If someone suffers negative consequences from accurately being described as a sociopath, they only have their own actions to blame.
(I'm not calling you woke, just a related thought.) One reason I despise woke thinking is that, in order to spare bad feelings or achieve a social goal, it gleefully perverts the accuracy of language.
Or I suppose wokeness could alternatively be described as a way of thinking where changing language will somehow magically change reality. Totally abhorrent to how my mind works, completely incompatible with success in any reality-tethered work.
It's a bit extreme to say lowest filth on the planet, I can think of plenty worse. Sapph is being honest about their requirements, and while it's not what I'd consider a marriage, if their partner is on the same page, it's their business.
That's not to say you have to approve or have no right to feel this is not the kind of person you would want to have anything to do with. But we do try to be nice here (and I know, the irony of me, famously abrasive, saying that) so a little less heat on all sides?
TBC I have never cheated on anyone, Ive been openly no restriction poly (I prefer to say free love) for a long time. My longest partner, who I have supported in sickness and in health, read my comment and didn't seem very bothered. As she put it 'sapphire is not a marshmallow test passer'. Having self awareness makes you the lowest scum. Im pretty sure if I had made mistakes earlier in life and ended up in a mono marriage I would in fact cheat. Many do and I am not a champion of marshmallow tests. Of course thanks to my self awareness I have avoided making these promises I know I would never keep. I see no reason to dislike myself for my nature.
I find your name-calling and very strong words off-putting, and I think you probably did it because you misrepresented the situation, then thought Sapph was some sort of monster, and so, didn’t know how to debate with him other than resorting to shamming.
He never said he would badly hurt someone with a smile on it faces, he was just refusing to let himself be controlled. Now maybe he could manage the situation better than that, but you know, breaking relationship also hurt people (and some more than infidelity, and other less).
Also, he said he would cheat, but it is unclear he means lying about it here (and not just having sex with other when the other one don’t want it).
I think we are collectively overestimating the importance of (sexual) trust. I sincerely believe that in many cases, cheating can actually be the most ethical decision.
Consider the most common scenario: you are in a monogamous relationship. For the first few months or years, everything is fine, but then sexual frustration becomes unbearable, and you feel imperiously compelled to have sex with others. There are simply no other ways around it. Despite this, you are very happy with your partner in all other aspects.
Now, you could discuss opening up the relationship with your partner, but if they are opposed to the idea, you are left with two choices: cheat or force your partner to make a decision—either they agree to open up the relationship, or you end things (this is an imperative urge).
Forcing your partner to decide can either break the relationship, which is tragic if everything else is good (a rarity in itself), or they agree but live with resentment (in part because you have made the power dynamics explicit) and jealousy, knowing you are sleeping with others.
If you cheat, in the ideal case, everyone remains happy: your partner is either unaware of it or they might suspect it but tolerate the ambiguity (maybe because it is socially less costly and/or more acceptable in terms of self-image). In the worst case, if the cheating is laid bare, you generally end up in the same situation as if you had forced the issue from the start.
I do not believe cheating is the morally right decision in all cases. However, for most people experiencing strong sexual frustration in a relationship with a partner who is highly jealous—a common situation—cheating seems like the ethically superior solution. Therefore, I suspect it would be better for society if we stopped judging those who cheat so harshly. In fact, much of the harm from cheating may arise because we place too much value on sexual trust. In that respect, polyamory (or open-relationships), which still highly values sexual trust, does not promote the evolution of norms in the right direction.
> but then sexual frustration becomes unbearable, and you feel imperiously compelled to have sex with others. There are simply no other ways around it.
Scott also says something a little like that, and I think this is a bad way to say it, because, what about people who just can’t find partners and are as much frustrated by that (and probably more) ?
It is always bearable, and there are other ways, even if it could be quite bad.
That's cheating and a good reason why you shouldn't be married. If you can find someone who doesn't care if you fuck around, or who fucks around themselves, then great, both of you can be temporarily sharing living space while you fuck around. Don't call it a marriage, though.
EDIT: That sounds very judgemental. What I mean is, you construct your relationships as you like, and find compatible persons. But I don't think that further diluting down the already tattered social concept of marriage to include "if my spouse is so stupidly old-fashioned as to expect sexual fidelity from me now we put a ring on it, I'll just lie, deceive and cheat because sex is the most important thing to me and that should be okay" is going to make things better.
I think Scott is on to something with the "majority I know of are women" because "women want emotional relationships" but I also think other commenters are on to something about men wanting easy access to sex. This could end up the same way as all other trade-offs between men and women: the women want emotional connections, the guys want sex, so the guys put up with the relationship stuff so they can get sex, and the women have sex with Joe, Tom and Billy-Bob because they get different connections from each of them.
Your last paragraph makes me feel some kind of despair. Maybe it's a perfectly fine way for most men and women to accommodate their differing preferences. But it feels kind of awful and grim to me. You?
Late replying, sorry for that. Yeah, it's a bit grim, but I think if it's a fact of life, then acknowledging it and working around it is the better choice than pretending it isn't at work. Also, men will get over wanting only sex after a while (citation needed) and look for emotional connection too, when they want to settle down or get serious, and women will get a bit more adventurous about "I'm not looking for anything but a fling right now". Meeting in the middle is a good enough compromise.
If it goes on for years that "I want something deep but the guys just drop me when they get bored/I don't want marriage and kids but I have to fake it to get past a second date, then she gets all upset and dumps me when it turns out I'm not on the same calendar about 'we need to have a baby now'" then it's awful. No idea what to do about that, though.
TBC I have never cheated on anyone, Ive been openly no restriction poly (I prefer to say free love) for a long time. My longest partner, who I have supported in sickness and in health, read my comment and didn't seem very bothered. As she put it 'sapphire is not a marshmallow test passer'. Having self awareness makes you the lowest scum. Im pretty sure if I had made mistakes earlier in life and ended up in a mono marriage I would in fact cheat. Maybe in these spots I could get divorced or something but if I had kids I prolly would just cheat. Divorce with kids is too much drama and would risk my relationship with my kids! Many people cheat and I am not a champion of marshmallow tests. Of course thanks to my self awareness I have avoided making these promises I know I would never keep. I see no reason to dislike myself for my nature.
Okay, you know your nature and are honest with your partners. That's fine.
If you did marry, have kids, and cheat because "uh, divorce too much hassle", then you would be disgusting scum. It's not better for kids to have a parent who privileges their dick over honesty and fidelity. If you're willing to lie in order to get your dick wet, then you're willing to lie when it comes to them if it's something you want - marshmallow tests, right?
You're not doing that. I'll give you credit for that. My general opinion is, what two adults get up to is their business, it's when kids are involved that you have to pass marshmallow tests, otherwise you're worthless. Divorce and working out access is better there than "Parental Unit is not going to be able to come to your school play because they are going to lie about having to work overtime but in reality they're hitting the hot sheets motel with the new pickup".
Just be upfront, if you're willing to look long enough, you can find this (based on people I know in life with similar or more outlandish agreements in their relationships).
There are many people who want a relationship but can't seem to find a good one, for various reasons. I'm one of them. For people like that, is the polyamory vs. monogamy discussion meaningful? I've been asked which I would prefer, and I'm never sure how to answer. I know I prefer one good relationship to zero, but I have no idea whether I would prefer two good relationships to one (or having a partner who has two good relationships instead of one) since I can't seem to even find one.
I've seen some to-and-fro over that question: if you can't get a relationship, or at least a permanent/committed one, then part of a relationship is better than nothing - half a loaf is better than no bread. ' Incel guy getting to be on a rota of other betas who all get crumbs of attention and sex from a woman is better than being always alone' kind of talk. Not really kind to any of the parties involved, but I suppose for some people half a loaf *is* better than no bread: being in a partial relationship even as part of a polycule where the main person, be they male or female, has lots of partners while the individual partners are all only involved with that one person and are not having other relationships as well.
Yeah - the BATNA is being single and celibate for life. Especially if you want kids...people are willing to put up with a LOT in order to have a shot at the white picket fence and 2.5 kids.
If you’re you are male and trying to find a woman on a dating app, I recommend deleting the damn apps. Find some setting or activity that you can at least sort of like where you will be around a lot of people in your age range. If it takes you a while to find something, that is time well spent. If it costs money it’s worth it. Consider activities you normally would not: yoga retreats, dog training classes, rock gyms, political action groups, church, choruses, weekend conferences. Go to them and strike up conversations with both men and women.
I second this, and think this is all great advice for a guy except the rock climbing gyms - I've been a climber for a decade and change, and that's one of many "90%+ male" hobbies I have, and I've been climbing and in climbing gyms all over the US (and in other countries) in terms of sampling into that 90%+ ratio.
Other hobbies NOT to do, as I consider myself an *expert* at finding 90%+ male hobbies inadvertently: car racing (any type), car modding, car shows, powerlifting, Ninja, triathlons, OCR, bouldering, scrambling, difficult hiking, anything to do with AI, computers, programming, or crypto, surfing, racquetball, Wim Hof stuff, rationalist stuff, philosophy stuff, mathematics stuff, maker labs or spaces, trading, finance, startups, VC, and BJJ.
Basically, if you're the standard rat-sphere guy who likes to tinker and build stuff in any medium whatsoever, OR if you're a fit person who likes doing and achieving difficult things with your body, don't do *anything* you actually enjoy for it's own sake.
Things Eremolalos hasn't mentioned with at least SOME chance of meeting interesting people of the opposite sex: Raves, festivals, Burning Man, live music, house parties, dance classes, cooking classes, easy hiking, dog parks and dog walking (highly recommend this, especially if you raise and train puppies), book clubs, frisbee golf, and farmers markets.
That's interesting, my experience with rock climbing is much more gender equal than that; perhaps I only dabbled in the more casual end of things?
I took a salsa class, and most dance classes I went to were well over 50 percent women. I didn't meet anyone there, but it did wonders for my confidence and comfort being in physical proximity to a range of people, and more comfortable moving in my body overall.
I had to look up who Wim Hof was, and yeah. Definitely oriented towards male-only interest. The guy likes to sit on ice floes in his underpants? You do you, Wim, but I'm staying indoors with the heating on.
Though there are some women who also do that year-round swimming thing (in Ireland's cold waters) so maybe not 100% male interest, more like 98% percent?
Alas, that breathing exercises and cold exposure are not enjoyed by the fairer sex!
That said, I do have a good friend who actually teaches and leads Wim Hof breathing groups, and he has a very nice weekly breathing get-together at his house that's pretty coed, probably close to 50/50.
But, it's also a super-hippie group, and they do drum circle and jamming and psychedelics and stuff all together too, so not sure if it's due to the overall culture, due to the breathing, or due to the other stuff.
Counterpoint: please DON'T do something you DON'T genuinely enjoy. As a person who genuinely enjoys things, it makes things marginally less enjoyable when people show up just to Meet Someone.
I remember thinking this in my teenage years. I read a bunch of books on how to get women, and...
"So basically I have to stop doing the things I like, start doing things I don't like, change my personality, and then if I succeed I get something that's maybe 50% better than masturbation, and have to pay alimony and child support if it gets to the marriage and kids stage and dissolves like half of them do? Yeah, I'm playing video games."
Yeah, one does have to actually like women and enjoy their company to have a long-term relationship with a woman. You don't have to join the knitting group, but the view that a relationship with a woman is 50% better than masturbation speaks volumes. Your honesty about that hopefully spares women who want something deeper from wasting their time.
Quite plausibly he's playing video games with women whose company he enjoys. As a long-term relationship, even. Platonic friendship with women works on a completely different system than romance.
Or maybe his video gaming den is a (virtual) man cave, but you seem to be assuming facts not in evidence.
Well...that was 30 years ago. I was referring specifically to sex (which as a man I was supposed to want, and I guess I did back then). There are other aspects to relationships like emotional closeness, support, sharing things you do with someone with common interests, and of course many people enjoy having kids and raising a family, but I assumed at that point I would never be able to access them since I was a geek and had no common interests with women. There were female geeks, of course, but given the preponderance of male ones, only the most successful ones were going to be able to find one, and I wasn't in that category, so as you said, why waste anyone's time?
Several decades and a bunch of mediocre relationships later, I would say I was...sort of wrong? I never did find someone I really liked, though there were some short-term flings the other person claimed to enjoy, and I did to some degree. My statement was never that relationships were pointless, simply that they were pointless for me. Once I had enough time outside of the notorious academic longhouse (as the kids say), I tried a couple of times without success. I read a bit on Game (I remember Roissy and pre-Nazi Heartiste), which actually did help somewhat, but I wasn't socially perceptive to get away with a third of the stuff or evil enough for another third of it. (The other third kinda helped.)
It turns out sex is actually *less* fun than the other thing, which was a total surprise. My understanding is this is not the common experience--I mean, some of *the women* certainly seemed to enjoy themselves, believe it or not (of course, that part I had read a few books on as well), and I had heard from a young age how men are always doing stupid or evil things to get sex. (The news seems to bear this out.) Wanting sex less than your partner does have all kinds of amusing side effects--they run around begging *you* for it (I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?), though if you don't initiate sometimes they start thinking they're unattractive and feel bad.
It's possible if you find the other person physically attractive it's a different experience--certainly the importance other men seem to place on physical attributes would make you think so! At this age it's extremely unlikely that's going to happen though.
I'm either some kind of ace (aromantic? asexual?) or a very clueless heterosexual. Which one I'm not sure, and I doubt it matters at this point. ;)
Oddly, I remained friends with a few of my exes afterwards, even. (I guess all those pop-psych talks on validation and communication helped somewhat?) One or two kept trying to get back together--one kept sending me notes on Valentine's Day years later, which I found deeply disturbing. Of course, it might have just been my salary. I have to ask myself that every time--is it me, or the money they want? I'm assuming (particularly given the picture painted, and trying to avoid the traditional male ego) it's the money, but who knows? Maybe I really was better than I thought I was. I don't know why anyone would like me, but apparently they did!
Anyway, like you said, I'm done wasting everyone's time.
As an aside, I've never played video games with women--never found one who liked to play. I don't even play video games much anymore, though every few years one catches my fancy for a little while. Though I do appreciate John Schilling going to bat for me. ;)
As a widower considering whether to attempt to remarry - yeah, having someone to share my life with again would have value beyond sex but
>So basically I have to stop doing the things I like, start doing things I don't like, change my personality
for _maybe_ finding someone again is a hard no. Value beyond sex is still a finite value. Some negotiated changes are reasonable. Turning my life inside out is not.
I wonder if the gender distribution in climbing gyms is highly location-dependent? I live in China and in my experience it's about 50/50 in gyms in my city, maybe 60/40, definitely not 90/10...
In rock gyms around Boston it's about 50-50. Gyms have made an effort to become pleasanter and more upscale, and there's exercise equipment & showers as well as rock walls. For many people, it's just their gym. In the actual climbing area there are still plenty of women, and I'd say maybe 10% of them are highly athletic and climbling like 5.11's. Mixed groups at the bouldering walls too. Bouldering walls are a good place to meet people because often there's a cluster of 10 so so people working on the same hard route, and there's lots of kibbutzing -- "what did you do here? " "matched hands" etc. Outdoor climbing is considerably more male, but that's not as good a setting to meet people anyhow. If you climb in the Gunks, that restaurant a lot of people go to after climbing-- I think it's called Bacchus -- is a good place to meet other climbers.
I haven't climbed in China, so not sure, but it certainly seems possible. I've been to a climbing gym in Bangkok, and the ratio was slightly better than the US - maybe 80/20 or 70/30? Was in rich neighborhood in Sukhumvit.
But *actual* climbing, like on rocks with harnesses and ropes? That's 90% male anywhere I've been.
I was just at Stonegoat in Bangkok a couple weeks ago & felt pretty similar to China, I agree with the above that most of the gyms I've been to in China don't have much of a gym bro vibe, don't think it's the exotic Western factor though, it's become very popular here (four new gyms have opened in Hangzhou where I live in the last year or so!) and there is a strong base of regular climbers that are not in it for the novelty. A lot of them climb outdoors but I would guess it may be true that the distribution is a bit different, I don't have as much experience outdoors due to cowardice :D (although I did tick my first outdoor lead recently, so hoping to get out more)
At my last job, the young-engineers social circle was about 20% female (because engineer, subtype aerospace), but nearly 100% actual rocks with harnesses and ropes climbers.
And for that matter, the last woman to ask me on what I think was meant to be a date, from a different engineering-based social group, invited me to a rock-climbing gym. Unfortunately I have mutant feet that basically disallow rock climbing, so I had to decline that particular offer.
And I have three nieces and three nephews, with one of each into rock climbing and the niece by far the most enthusiastic of them.
So, triple independent anecdata leading me to believe that rock climbing is not in fact a 90/10 sausage fest in the contemporary US.
Yes, I'm currently doing those things. I'm not on dating apps, and the hobbies I've enjoyed that haven't been 90%+ male are easy hiking, choir singing, and volunteering.
Last year I asked about 10 women out, and got two first dates and no second dates. Does that sound normal and I just need to keep trying, or does it sound like I need to do something differently to find more women who are interested in first and/or second dates?
From what you've said, it sounds like you're asking a reasonable amount of women out, and just not finding one who clicks with you.
I'd recommend staying the course and hoping for a better match, but you might have burned through the "single and looking" pool in your current groups with asking 10 (I have no idea how big your city or your groups are), in which case you should find new hobbies / groups with new candidates.
>you might have burned through the "single and looking" pool in your current groups with asking 10 (I have no idea how big your city or your groups are), in which case you should find new hobbies / groups with new candidates.
To be clear, are you talking about abandoning my current groups to look for new ones? That would work for some groups that I'm not particularly attached to, but I picked these hobbies in the first place because I like doing them, and I want to keep doing them regardless of relationship status. For some of my hobbies, I've found only one group in the area that works for me - I definitely don't want to abandon those. I also don't have infinite time to spend on new hobbies while maintaining the ones I already have.
I'm not completely out of "single and looking" women to ask out, but the options have dwindled, so this has been on my mind as well.
>To be clear, are you talking about abandoning my current groups to look for new ones?
Yes, exactly. And of course, triage gracefully instead of with hacksaw abandon - but the other downside you can run into for the groups you keep, is you can turn into "that guy" if you're *known* for asking all the single women for dates in the group, and then your chances are basically below zero, because you're tagged as a creep within the group, and existing people will warn new women about you pre-emptively. A bit unfair, I'll agree, but it can definitely happen.
This is another factor to consider when deciding if finding entirely new groups or hobbies is likely to be a better direction overall.
I think we might be talking past each other a little. I do hobbies because I enjoy them. I don't want to give up an activity completely, because I enjoy doing it. Meeting women to date is an extra positive thing, but not meeting women to date doesn't suddenly make a hobby unenjoyable.
Now of course, that leaves the option of finding a different group for the same hobby. That's possible for some and not for others - some of my hobbies have only one group near me, and I really don't want to ditch the activity completely even to meet more women. (That goes for my hobbies which are 90%+ male as well, although I'm not counting them for this conversation.)
On the topic of your comment, I don't think I've turned into "that guy" in any of the groups I'm in - but I wouldn't necessarily know if it happened, so it's possible. I'll keep that in mind as a potential failure mode.
I don't know what's up with that. I wonder if your dating invitations were too "datey"? All the people I dated started off as friends, or at least as acquaintances I knew well enough to joke around with. If there's a woman at the activity you're drawn to, it might work better to try to finagle an activity that's in sort of an intermediate zone first, rather than moving straight from meeting them at the activity to asking them out. Like maybe ask the woman and a couple other people if they'd like to go out for a beer after choir singing, or whatever. Or at the volunteer activity, sit at the table where she is, or try to be in the subgroup she's in, that sort of thing. Also, don't just try to meet women, try to make some guy friends, too. If you have a larger friendship group, that will give you another way to meet women. Also, if you're being friendly to guys, it takes you of the category of "obviously just here to meet a woman," and puts you in the much more appealing category of "friendly guy."
If you don't know anything more about the woman than that her name is X and she's here at the activity, then a first date isn't going to feel much different to either of you than a first date between people who met on Tinder. That's a bad feeling, and most people have had way more than enough of it -- 2 strangers auditioning each other for the role of lover. Yeech!
Of course, you may already be doing what I'm suggesting -- getting to know them some at the activity before asking them out. If you're already doing that, maybe ask one of you're frankest friends whether they have any idea what you're doing that's keeping things from taking off with any of the women you meet.
I kind of feel like that's more finesse than a lot of people here, myself included, can successfully execute, though it may be good advice for the general public.
Well, maybe. On the other hand, trying to make some guy friends and asking the group you’ve been whatevering with at the activity to go out for a beer afterwards — aren’t those easier than asking someone for a date?
You are somehow both asking too few women out (two first dates is not enough) and too many (80% rejection rate is terrible).
Honestly I would ignore all the other advice here and go on the apps. You're not going to find a population of thousands of single women (plus a social context where hitting on them is 100% acceptable) by joining an underwater basket weaving class.
Sounds about right for me. When I decided that I wanted to commit to a relationship for marriage and kids it took me several years (roughly three) to find my now wife. I lived without any romance or sexual contact for years before that, so I wasn't exactly experienced in how to do that. None of the first dates before I met my wife led to a second date. In some cases the woman had no interest in a second one, in some cases I knew after five minutes into that date that I'd never click with her.
In my case I tried various dating services. They are miserable to use, because the incentive structure is such that the service profits if you to remain single, as they can milk you for longer. The issue is that if you use that service as a woman, you get spammed by horny and creepy males each day every day. If you use it as a men, you get presented with a myriad of dead profiles which the service never removes, as it inflates their numbers. Often they won't even tell you which profiles are dead. In the end none of these services worked and I found my now wife on a dating website which was the scamiest of them all.
I'm now happily married for 10+ years ...
Especially if you are an introvert online services, despite being a miserable experience, can actually work. It's a lot of work, but since you have a high probability to click best with another introvert, it's hard to get to know one through more traditional means.
My brother met a wonderful woman about three seconds after his divorce by joining a church choir. He's always been very good at joining things though -- art classes, group music classes, ballroom dance, group travel. He's fearless that way.
Feels like not having an answer to that is going to be an obstacle to getting into a relationship in the first place. "I'll figure it out on your time" is a losing answer, nobody wants to be a stepping stone.
I agree that nobody wants to be a stepping stone. I don't see how it's avoidable in general though; you get relationship experience by trying out relationships to see if they work, not by thinking enough to figure out everything you do and don't want in a partner beforehand. When a relationship has problems, you either figure out a solution that works for both of you, or you break up - and it's hard to know in advance which problems will come up.
In my specific case, there are about two things that I know are deal breakers for me. There are also many things that I have preferences about, but there are lots of people I'm attracted to that have good qualitites but don't meet those preferences perfectly, and I can't know in advance which of those will cause long-term problems and which will be unimportant over time. "My partner wants to have multiple relationships" would be a deal breaker for many people because jealousy would cause long-term problems; I don't think I am one of those people, but I don't actually know.
For now, I'm assuming my future relationships will be mono or poly depending on what my partner wants. (Incidentally, that's also how Scott became poly - he started dating a woman who was poly.) If that causes problems, I will have to reevaluate later - I don't think I can perfectly anticipate the potential problems on either side beforehand.
I think "my partner wants to have multiple relationships" may become a problem, when someone thought it would not, precisely at the point where emotional bonds are formed. Either A develops attachment for B and wants the relationship to now be monogamous, where B is happy to keep it open/poly. Or B finds someone new and now wants to leave A and be with C.
I think poly people are aware of this risk, and if you're one of the "poly by nature" types you could be sufficiently sure you won't suddenly want a monogamous relationship, but even there I think if your partner feels that your new partner is getting all the romance and fun dating, while they're stuck with the "make sure the electricity bill gets paid and the bathroom sink needs to be unclogged" part of the relationship, that takes the gloss off poly.
"in most poly families all partners would consider themselves parents [ergo we wouldn't expect poly families to have higher rates of child abuse than mono families]" seems like exactly the same kind of naïveté as "trans women are women, so they're bound to commit violent crimes at the same rate as any other woman!"
Props to you for (kind of) acknowledging this point.
I've been thinking long and hard about the point that abusers tend to seek out opportunities for abuse. Thus, any system that isn't already hardened against abusers needs to seek ways to do so. If you just think about what a normal distribution of abusers would look like, you're thinking that abusers normally distribute themselves, as opposed to specifically seeking out opportunity. This has dramatically changed my thinking on abuse and related topics, and where I set my priors.
Seems directly related to the trans issue as well: the problem with bathroom bills isn't that trans people are more likely to be predators, its that predators will be more likely to take advantage of a situation where people who look male are allowed in women's spaces.
I'm not really convinced that it'd do anything. I mean, the easiest way in is still to steal the janitor's toilet cleaning cart and wear the uniform regardless of what you look like. Besides, who said the predator is different gender? There's already so many different and easier avenues for that sort of stuff.
The way to defeat predators is to target predatory behaviour directly. Bathroom bills have the same logic of forcing all plane passengers to strip naked so they can't bring bombs on board, as opposed to, like, checking their belongings for bombs (which is still something I resent. I think they should police the ability to access bombs in the first place and keep their hands off my stuff, but I digress).
The risk is also not commensurate. To be honest I'd be happy to run the nearly zero risk of bathroom harassment over the state gaining the right to check my crotch before I get to pee. I strongly believe that bathroom cops are a bigger threat than bathroom perverts.
Let's retreat from the bailey of bathrooms to the mottes of locker rooms and - more importantly - prisons. I think there is where the greatest concerns for abuse actually lie.
And this is how the debate devolves into name-calling, in my experience. Both groups are arguing for hardening spaces to protect vulnerable groups against abusers. But when one side says, "Elimination of female-only spaces allows abusers into those spaces because abusers seek out opportunities for abuse," the other side hears "you're saying all trans people are abusers". That's (usually) not true.
The traditional strategy for hardening against abuser infiltration has been the creation of female-only spaces. No replacement strategy exists that accounts for trans in a satisfying way.
I actually prefer a fairly libertarian solution - ungendered single occupancy bathrooms (and changing rooms and every other facility where I'd want privacy). This accounts for every gender and every sexuality.
This is probably also the solution with the widest possible appeal and has other knock on efficiencies (like the annoying thing where you can't use an unoccupied bathroom, just because it's behind the door with the wrong symbol). This problem is particularly prevalent for any field with a tilted gender balance (engineering, nursing, etc) because public facilities are normally built equal sizes despite the user populations not being equal. If they're all single occupancy and unlabelled, this will immediately solve itself. Without the unnecessary and sort of arbitrary restrictions on who gets to use what stalls, average wait time at the bathroom would probably decrease. We can optimise for total number of bathrooms we need (and not do 8 stalls for 30 men and 8 stalls for 4 women - very common in a lot of engineering workspaces). We'd all benefit.
Sinks and mirrors are pants on, so it won't kill us to have common sinks. But any disrobing should occur in single occupancy spaces.
In general I'd say I'm more of a gender abolitionist, in that gender regulations usually aren't useful and should be abolished. Sport should be segregated by height and weight. You know my opinion on bathrooms. We should quit the women-in-stem initiatives and just focus on attracting the right people to repelling the wrong people (and I'm saying this as a beneficiary of a woman scholarship). Recruiting specifically for women is kind of dumb, and removing shitty people should be a priority - a tradie threatening to shove something up a coworkers hole should be disciplined just as harshly if his coworker is male, you shouldn't be saying that to any of your coworkers. (It's honestly shocking how much sexual violence threats some people spew, it's equally bad regardless of receipient)
But yes, I do view a lot of modern western feminism with contempt, because in my eyes, the field is level as soon as we got the right to vote, own property, access birth control and earn money. I support the feminism movements overseas to secure these basic rights, but I think (mostly white) feminists whinge too much.
Interesting POV. I think you could gradually transition buildings to unisex bathroom designs like what you described. I've always been suspicious about the bathroom argument itself.
The sports is an interesting case. A lot of NCAA scholarships go to women in sports. This is, once again, where an insincere opportunist could game the system to get a full-ride scholarship to attend college. "So if I wear a skirt around for four years and pretend to care I can get $20k+/yr. and admission to a selective school?" This isn't to question actual trans people, but rather to point out that a tiny minority will absolutely game the system if the incentive is high enough. (And indeed, the side effect will be to cause skeptics to accuse actual trans people of also faking it.)
You're proposing that we eliminate gendered sports categories, which would almost certainly eliminate most women from scholarships in everything but gymnastics, and maybe a few other sports. Would we want to counterbalance that with scholarships in other fields, or are you okay with a system that disproportionately favors men?
Now what about prisons? I'm not sure we could do the same things with prisons as we do with bathrooms or sports. And when you've locked someone up, you're taking away their ability to defend themselves or escape a bad situation. Sure, prison shouldn't be a Club Med, but just because we send you to jail doesn't mean you're condemned to getting raped/impregnated by inmate opportunists. Meanwhile, separating everyone would condemn all prisoners to solitary confinement.
Yeah, I agree that there's a hole in my model for prisons. I would like to point out that rape is still extremely high in prisons, even though they're segregated.
I would probably think about a multi-pronged approach.
First, repeal the obviously dumb laws. Much harder done in practice, but are there laws that really don't add much value? Ditch them.
Then, get rid of jail terms for anything that doesn't really need a jail term. Jail should be reserved exclusively for direct threats to society - typically violence.
For everything else, figure out a way to manage the threat to society. Like, yeah, no car access for the drunk driver, etc. A combination of comnunity service, parole officer check ins or house arrest would suffice. (Parole officer check in is basically someone visits and interviews you to make sure you're not doing any more crimes. Specifics relate to the crime, of course. But you'd wanna lock up the serial rapist and you don't wanna lock up the drunk driver, who gets a long term ban from driving at all, mandatory alcohol counselling, and community service like, idk, picking up roadkill. Theft or drug possession/sale is similar. You can restrict them to home, make em take an online job skills course, and some other menial online task or something. And ffs do not let the fraudsters under house arrest pay for their own security (sounds stupid but that's how the "Fat Leonard" case went).
Now that your prison population is down, policing the prison should be easier. I'm still unsure about the specifics but I think it definitely makes sense to segregate the sex criminals from everyone else. I still think sex criminals are mostly opportunists (so they just abuse whoever is convenient, I'm sure the current amount of prison rape does not match up with the number of people who actually get convicted of homosexual rape, and I think that they're probably not bisexual - they're rape-sexual or something).
And then, idk. I'm still torn on whether segregation actually has an effect on the total amount of prison violence and sexual violence. My gut feel is maybe a little bit? I think someone who works in this specific field would have better insight here.
> I was surprised how certain people were that poly relationships were disasters that couldn’t work, compared to how little of a sign there was of that in the data.
Well... I can only speak for myself, as part of quite successful polycule for many years. Not giving a fuck what other people think about how terrible polyamory is is a huge part of having happy polyamorous relationship. Nobody in my polycule or any other I know ever tried to prove anything. YKINMKBYKIOK but in relationship, you know? Most of the people telling you polyamory can't work are absolutely correct, they just forget to add "for them". Most people preaching that polyamory is the best thing ever also right and also "for them".
That's why there's strong bias in things people heard towards the "disasters", while success is quiet but don't mind filling a poll from time to time and show up in data.
>As Overton windows move for new social norms like LGBT and polyamory, the mainstream media narratives evolve along the axis of omission/taboo -> negative/critique -> ambiguity -> struggle/oppression ->positive -> new normal. We have seen LBGT cover almost all these steps during recent 40 years, currently I think we are between positive and new normal. With polyamory, we have just recently moved from omission/taboo to negative/critique. Portraying polyamory as positive or struggling/oppressed in mainstream media is still out of the Overton window, showing ambiguity is now at the edge, only negative critique is in the window
This argument can be applied to anything you want, it's entirely meaningless imo. Just because something is currently fringe doesn't mean it's destined to become mainstream. Some things did, like feminism, Christianity, lgbt rights, others very much did not such as polygny (1800s version), pedophilia, racism from the mid 20th century to today. Some fringe cultural memes just remain fringe cultural memes without ever picking up mainstream appeal.
"it's unpopular now so it will evolve into being popular later" is an expression of faith, nothing more
Agreed. Also, even if a fringe meme *does* become mainstream, that doesn't mean it can't go back to being fringe. Alcohol prohibition and eugenics are examples of ideas that went from fringe to mainstream and then quickly went right back to being fringe again.
And the current reactionary wave will likely reverse all of that progress regardless. Did you know the first sexology research institute in the world was founded in Germany 14 years before the Third Reich was established? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft ...Why are people so confident that history will not repeat itself?
>And the current reactionary wave will likely reverse all of that progress regardless.
You may be right, but (writing from the USA) I interpret the current politics as nearly equally matched Woke and MAGA factions, with it unclear who will win which battles. Regrettably, from my point of view, both of them attack individuals' freedoms, though they attack different freedoms.
edit: A relevant quote:
"History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes" - Mark Twain
"In the canonical poly survey, women were over-represented in polyamory; about 35% of poly people were men and 49% women (the remainder either didn’t answer or were nonbinary or something).
Commenters agreed with this, and said their experience was that polyamory was mostly female-driven. This is my story too; I became poly because the woman I wanted to date at the time was.
Why should this be, since men traditionally prefer sexual variety more than women do?"
Men want it more, but women find it easier to acquire if they do want it.
Or men only care about the sex side, which is easier to just lie about and/or pay for. Shifting social norms so it's ok to do something, rather than just ignoring social norms, seems inherently more feminine. Also more virtuous, so the points probably go to women on this one.
"their experience was that polyamory was mostly female-driven... If someone wants to sleep with a bunch of people, they can just be a normal casual-sex-haver or swinger or something"
My impression (mostly not based on personal experience) is that swinging is also mostly female-driven. Maybe for the same reasons.
As I said above, men who want the sexual variety may put up with the 'relationship' stuff (which is easier as well, because if you're one of several partners, you don't have to put as much effort in as for a single person who is asking emotional connection of you) for the sex, while the women are getting different connections with different guys for the price of being sexually available.
I imagine there are many varieties of poly; there's the emotional connection one, which is majority women, and the 'like swinging but with feels' one, which is majority men, and all the other points on the spectrum.
Counting only heterosexual encounters, women have the same amount of sex that men do. Say there are 10 men and 10 women on a deserted island, and one man has sex with all ten women. Okay, then on average everyone has had sex once. But nine of the ten men had no sex, while all the women had sex. Whether men or women are "more promiscuous" is a question of distribution, not of averages.
In this example, sex is more 'available' to the women, so you'd expect them to value a novel opportunity more, while it's less 'available' to the men (90% of whom in this extreme case have no availability), so you'd expect them to be less selective of opportunities. But regardless of the distribution, the actual number of encounters with different sexual partners is necessarily the same between the sexes.
In contrast to cheating, a poly arrangement is about both what you would like to do and what you are comfortable with your partner doing. It's possible (plausible, even) that more men than women find sexual jealousy prohibitive of polyamory.
"polyamory" as a identity-label may be dominated by women, but poly as "actively attempting to maintain multiple romantic partners" is almost certainly dominated by men.
I know this because while I have never been officially poly, I have slept with a number of poly women on apps, and I have poly friends. The women are getting laid much more in those relationships, frankly. And more than once the womans partner obviously resented it/me but somehow she wasn't picking up on it.
Women who are poly can find casual partners MUCH MUCH more easily than men can, for the obvious reasons. Worse, men who put poly on their profile alienate many/most non-poly women (I have experimented. Now I just put "short term open to long", which I presently translate as functionally "mainstream poly"). But of course women who put poly on their profile are still going to be drowned in options like myself who can easily wear whatever mask is necessary
Right. More women can get it, because more men want it (and thus are willing to give it to them). One is the reverse of the other.
Bisexuality of course exists, but since it's predominantly female in practice (men who are out as bi lose a lot of potential women) it winds up reinforcing the effect.
Then there's the whole queer community, which I won't pretend to have any real-life experience with. As a straight (ish) cis man, I just steer clear--I assume they don't like me from reading the internet discourse, and I see no reason to bother people who don't like me.
(FWIW, I support gay rights...people who don't like you also have rights, and anyway it's none of my business who you sleep with.)
Thinking back on my dating years, there were women who wanted me just for the short-term excitement. (I was too neurotic to be a chad though.) But still I have the general sense that absent being a true chad, to be successful with women an average guy must also be offering the potential of an LTR.
Like you say, women can find casual sex way more easily than men. Given that, a poly relationship with a main couple that are committed to each other time and money wise, but where each person can have sex with an unrestricted number of random others, seems incredibly unfair to the man. (Especially w.r.t. the evolutionary biology jealousy he'd naturally and correctly feel.)
I could see poly potentially working for me in the context of a Heinlein-esque group marriage of an equal number of men and women.
> Given that, a poly relationship with a main couple that are committed to each other time and money wise, but where each person can have sex with an unrestricted number of random others, seems incredibly unfair to the man.
An irresolvable paradox that has pushed me into really weird place in life . Monogamy seemed intolerable but so did the reality of poly dating which seemed more like cuckoldry than anything else (poly folks will surely take offense at this notion, like "keeping track" is missing the point but that's just how I felt)
> I could see poly potentially working for me in the context of a Heinlein-esque group marriage of an equal number of men and women.
Yeah I think scifi in particular gave me this romanticized idea of what non-monogomy could be and then the reality of adult dating just really didn't live up to that
To some extent, this is just a matter of definition. I am not poly, but I am living in an open gay relationship, so I have sex with other people. But that is a purely sexual things and then by definition not classified as polyamorous. I know lots of people in open relationships (it's not so uncommon in gay communities) and some people in poly relationship, and this is just the common terminology. If you mesh together open relationships with polyamorous ones, then probably the numbers would look different.
"Nobody can indulge the entire human experience, unless they’re very lucky and have no contradictory desires. If you’re monogamous, you have to fight the natural human urge to desire people other than your partner (some people won’t have this urge, but many do). If you’re polyamorous, you have to fight the natural human urge to feel jealous (some people won’t have this urge, but many do). I think a good monogamous community won’t pathologize desire, but will politely and firmly remind you not to surrender to it, and a good polyamorous community will do the same with jealousy. Some people will do better with one set of restraints, and other people with the other."
The thing is, Scott, some people absolutely can indulge the entire human experience, because you can desire multiple people and insist that all of those people do not desire anyone but you. You just have to be much more powerful than all of them. If you throw the concept that human beings are equal out of the window, then you can have polyamory for me and monogamy for thee. There are several versions of this, but one is the "one-dick principle" that many polyamory sites warn about. If the rule of the relationship is that there can only ever be one dick in it, then the dick is the guy attached to the penis, not the penis itself. This is, of course, exactly how pre-Graeco-Roman polygyny worked (and how it still works in those societies that never adopted the Graeco-Roman idea of monogamy) - rich and powerful men have lots of women; those women are usually allowed to have sex with each other but not with outside men. Most men in these societies aren't in this situation; they have monogamous relationships with one woman. And the society has enough wars to keep the male: female ratio low enough that this doesn't result in lots of unmarried men.
I am inclined to the argument that the cultural evolution to sufficient sexual equality to make polyamory on equal terms a realistic proposition runs through companionate marriage and that, itself, required monogamy (I'm not saying it couldn't have got there by another route, but that this was the route that it did follow) and so the strong memetic resistance to polyamory is, I think, path-dependent. We dropped polygamy for monogamy and then later on our monogamy evolved into companionate marriage and sexual equality, so it's easy to conceptualise polyamory as being a reversion to the "rich and powerful men have harems" model of ancient polygamy.
Also, it's not like those people don't have a point: if it was socially acceptable to have a harem, then I think (based solely on the fact that their sexual behaviour gets reported enough that even someone like me who largely ignores gossip knows this) that Elon Musk and Leo DiCaprio would have one each. There are probably a bunch of other rich and powerful men who would. The difference would be that there are quite a few women that would too. And there would also be all sorts of other types of poly relationship, not just that one problematic model.
But yes, it likely would be yet another way that social inequality manifests.
I've been poly for over a decade now. Myself and my partner Titania have been together eleven years. In my experience there is very little drama unless you feed the drama. The way I see it I can fuck and date any consenting partner I want. If my partners have a negative emotional reaction to my sex life that is their problem. Maybe I will be a little reassuring, but any emotional coddling I provide is me being extra nice. Its their responsibility to not be a dick to me. They are my partners. They are support to support me not emotionally sabotage me or ruin my fun.
Of course they have the right to behave however they want. But I would very quickly show a controlling or unsupportive partner the door. Im not signing over my life or my dick to anyone else. People know what they are getting into. I don't let myself get pulled into their issues. Mostly this results in total serenity and clear blue water. This attitude seems harsh but don't feed emotions that you aren't trying to grow. Im not going to spend long engaging with jealousy or other emotions that cache out to 'desire to control sapphs love life'. If a partner has those emotions I don't even want to hear about them. Handle your own shit.
"If my partners have a negative emotional reaction to my sex life that is their problem. Maybe I will be a little reassuring, but any emotional coddling I provide is me being extra nice. Its their responsibility to not be a dick to me. They are my partners. They are support to support me not emotionally sabotage me or ruin my fun."
I understand that you explain this is reciprocal, but frankly from a "normal" perspective, this reads as anywhere from emotionally vacant or immature to cruel and borderline anti-social, depending on how charitable you wish to be. I just can't even imagine the mindset that views reassurance to a partner as "emotional coddling" rather than something driven by love (where you feel your partner's emotions nearly as deeply as your own). I suspect that this is rather an extreme viewpoint even for the polyamorous, but if other poly people feel similarly then there is a very deep divide indeed between most mono and poly people.
Seemed like a generalization of the "does this spark joy" test to me. If you are doing a thing you enjoy and are happy with and someone has emotional problems about it and makes you worse off for having been around them then the trajectory of where this relationship goes in the future doesn't seem good. You can just leave early. The "waitwait I can fix things up" response often leads to misery on the side of the person fixing things up and things not actually being fixed. Also "break up with all partners who are not me" is a really huge ask when one of those partners is someone you've been with 11 years.
Maybe i'm just rounding it off to a more reasonable position in my head though.
Sapph is a guy/trans female* (read the remark about signing over their dick) and this is what we've been saying is one of the modes that mainstreaming polyamory will go: the guys who just want sex, emotional commitment is for the birds, having a rotating find them/dump them list of willing partners is what it's about.
At least they're being honest as to their view of the matter: it's about sex, your job is to be nice to me when I want/need it, my job is I don't have to give a damn about you and if you don't like it, there's the door.
*I'm taking that from the names Sapphire and Titania which, em, are very stereotypical 'I came out as trans female' names (sorry!)
> eg “Poly people in the bottom quintile of status will report lower relationship satisfaction” or “Poly marriages among people without a college degree are more likely to end in divorce than monogamous ones.”
Polyamorous relationships require significant time investment. So I hypothesize that people at the two ends of the income distribution will report highest satisfaction (and adoption for!) polyamory.
And that the bulk of folk at the middle will come in at the bottom of the range.
I mean, it's possible that a poly pod will have a normal distribution of income amongst its constitution. And that the relationship style redistributes time and effort - one or more folk with a lot of time on their hands doing most of the work to hold the entire pod together. But that sounds a bit off, right? People tend to be attracted to other people who are a lot like them, so I suspect most pods are relatively homogenous.
So folk in the middle of the distribution, who have the least time for it, will likely be most unhappy and/or not have enough time to do poly things.
More specifically, folk who are upward (or downwards) mobile (or in the process of mobilizing).
Probably this is a likely explanation for why, on average, there are fewer children in poly pods (though the number is just measuring children with primary partner? I suspect that pods will actually increase average birth rates, since they increase the number of folk who can be in a relationship. Something like fewer children per pod member who would have been able to hold down a trad relationship, but relatively higher total children summed over everyone in the pod)
This is an interesting point. I think it's the case more broadly that living a middle class lifestyle puts more constraints on behavior, both logistically and psychologically, than either being wealthy or being poor. The upper class doesn't need to work as hard at conforming to reap the benefits that the middle class receives by living an expected, typical life (a measure of status, acceptance, and material comfort) and the much of the lower class isn't going to get those benefits regardless. A tendency to deviance (neutrally construed, deviating from a norm, not a synonym for degeneracy) is probably correlated with finding oneself in the lower classes as well.
"poly people have fewer children, and even when they do there’s rarely a third partner in the house"
This surprises me (or maybe I'm misunderstanding it)--I'd have thought that stable, long-term polycules would typically live together within the same household, even moreso when raising children. I'm imagining households with 50-100% more parents, but also 50-100% more children, a big happy giant family under one roof. I wonder what about my imagination is incorrect, or what makes it unlikely, and I also wonder at what the alternatives are, and their tradeoffs.
1) Think of polyamory as another leisure activity or thing you can spend time on. Just like how maybe Netflix makes people have fewer kids because there's other fun stuff you could be doing, so too with polyamory.
2) Polyamory makes it easier to leave because you can test someone out ahead of time. Being pregnant and having a baby makes you vulnerable, economically and otherwise, and also the period of time when you are chasing after young children -- - I don't think most women would say they're at their most desirable. How solid do you feel about your male partner not leaving you for their more-fun, more-available, more-attractive partner if you have kids/more kids?
3) Raising children in a poly household is like....very fucking weird. You really got to go all out in terms of willing to be weird, because your kids know, their schools know, your extended relatives know. Whereas, if you're more on the swinger end, you don't have to do that.
I'm remembering the dispute a few years back now in the rationalist community about person A agreed to be the mistress of person B, with rules put in place about "no pregnancy, we use contraception, if an accident happens you get an abortion". A gets pregnant by accident and refuses to have an abortion, B and most of the commenters on the matter agreed that A was being unreasonable and in the wrong after going in to the situation knowing the rules and agreeing to them.
So I think in the poly sphere (to use that term), there probably are a *ton* of rules around safe sex, being careful about disease status, and using contraception so no unplanned pregnancies. If anyone does decide to become a parent, that has to be planned and negotiated beforehand as to who is going to get pregnant with whom, what the child rearing responsibilities will be, etc. so that makes it more complicated to have children. A monogamous couple may decide that they're going to have kids, and if an accident happens "well whoops, that was sooner than we decided, but hey why not?" where a poly arrangement can't handle that so flexibly: if you get pregnant by Z when this hadn't been agreed upon and decided with your primary partner, there's a lot of pressure around "you knew the rules, this wasn't supposed to happen". I think the levels of difficulty for juggling those responsibilities are higher in poly, so besides that it seems to be the young person's set right now engaging in that, and young people aren't as eager to have kids, the mindset is possibly more towards "no kids" than "yes kids".
After all, the memoir that kicked off this entire discussion, the married couple who have been poly for years - they have kids, but they are children of the couple and had been born before ever Mom and Dad decided this was the new way to go, and there certainly is no hint (so far as I get from the reviews) that having children with their lovers (either for Mom *or* Dad) was on the table as a possibility.
"I decided to operationalize this as "on the SSC survey, polyamorous men would have a higher correlation between self-rated social status and self-rated romantic satisfaction than monogamous men"
That is *very close* to a good test of my claim. I appreciate the scrutiny and I admit to mild surprise at the closeness.
Big problem though: men are more likely to become, *and* remain, polyamorous, if they think it will work out for them. Seems very plausible you could control for this, even on a survey, though I can't immediately see how.
(Now that it is more public I regret writing "competition for females", but it's on me. Maybe there's no nice way to put it anyway.)
But it's not a question of absolute status so much as one of relative status. You would expect men of lower status to prefer poly groups with other low-status men, and vice versa, otherwise the arrangement would be expected to devolve into a pseudo-polygynous relationship. I'm not sure that's what most poly women are after, so I assume there are mechanisms aimed at balancing relationships.
The problem with trying to measure the dynamic you describe, where a relatively low status participant (man or woman) is effectively passed over because others in their group are too high-status, is that this doesn't describe a stable relationship - which is what Scott is explicitly measuring. You wouldn't expect it to persist, and therefore you wouldn't expect the low-status partner to remain in the group; potentially even returning to monogamy.
The correlations are very close, but I wonder about the self-rated social status itself. My guess would be that the variance of men's perceived social status is greater in poly people than in monogamous people.
+1 I suspect that a lot of men simply give up on poly because finding a monogamous relationship is easier in practice. There’s about 2x more poly men than poly women, so it’s brutal out there.
Yeah my first thought reading that was that there must be some pretty large selection effects between the groups. The first thing I would think to check is whether poly men in the sample are on average higher status than mono men. If not, then that would bolster the evidence provided by the correlations.
In the past, strictures against polygamy must have been mostly motivated by a need for more certainty of whose kids were whose, for inheritance purposes and the father's reassurance they were raising their own kids. But with DNA testing that is no longer much of an issue.
In the distant past, many thousands of years ago for most societies, polygamy may have been more the default because people weren't aware of the link between coition and conception. So a biological father wasn't even a known concept! Most of their womenfolk were pregnant almost continuously through their child-bearing years, they were all mating like rabbits, but nobody had linked the two as cause and effect.
Well yes, but even 2000 years ago is fairly recent in relation to the anthropological timescales I was thinking of. Perhaps not so many societies were aware of the link say 10000 years ago, and a few not until much more recently!
You would know after one birth from one woman with one partner who never had sex with another man. Also humans transmit culture so once known it’s not likely to be forgotten.
Assuming the partner had repeated sex with the woman, that outcome would also be consistent with a belief (arguably more plausible in the absence of any relevant knowledge of the process!) that sex acts cumulatively caused pregnancy, with it starting only when a certain threshold of "male essence" had been transferred from multiple copulations, like filling a bottle a teaspoon at a time (excuse crude analogy!), rather than only one coition leading to conception.
A belief like that would also encourage polygamy, and be beneficial for the society, firstly because every male who participated in free and easy sexual relations could feel that offspring of all women they'd had sexual relations with were partly theirs, which would make them more considerate and cooperative with the younger generation and reduce familial favoritism.
Also, it would mean women were more likely to conceive than if they were partnered with one man who unfortunately was sterile or indifferent to sex for whatever reason or, if marrying widows was taboo, to a guy who died.
In his work, Malinowski describes a tribe in the Trobriand Islands that was not aware of the relation between coition and concepts, and in fact Malinowski was unable to convince them that there was one. They gave a very good counterargument: the albino women (which were outcasts in the society and were forced to live outside the village) also had children, and obviously noone would have sex with them.
It's not known for sure how this belief developed, but there are two hypotheses (possibly both true):
The traditional Trobriand Islander diet may lower fertility enormously due to the chemicals (phyto-oestrogens and sterols) in yams. You'd think that's be easy to establish, but apparently it's controversial. (Weiner, _The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea_)
Trobriand Islanders begin having sex early, around age 13, but they tend to hit puberty late, historically around 16 for girls. So they've usually been having sex for years before they first get pregnant, making the correlation less obvious.
There is a third possibility, which is that they were lying to the anthropologist, either as a prank or due to some taboo. But it does seem possible that some people would lose this knowledge, given some combination of factors.
The taboo answer makes sense, given that the albinos are considered outcast and not to be interacted with. But if you admit that men of the village are sneaking off to have sex with them and fathering children on them, that's throwing a grenade into social life and customs. So a 'formal' answer that "sex does not make babies, having babies is a separate, magical thing" preserves both the taboo nature of interacting with the outcasts and spares the village men (and their families) from disgrace (there surely are punishments for violating purity rituals) and allows the men to have sexual outlets and the albino women to engage in survival sex work (if you make the connection overt between sex and pregnancy, you also need to punish the women for tempting the men etc.)
As I recall the connection between sex and pregnancy was well understood even by the Aka, who are a hunter-gatherer people in the DRC.
Now, it's *conceivable* that they learned this from elsewhere a thousand years ago or what have you, but if so they picked up this information and, well, not that much other lore from the outside world.
More generally, people have had excellent powers of observation for tens of thousands of years, even if they didn't always have a great framework of abstract knowledge to try to explain and connect everything.
I expect the connection has been understood for at least 30,000 years if not far longer than that.
> So a biological father wasn't even a known concept!
In terms of the emergence of a "father" social role, Henrich actually does discuss this in "The Secret of Our Success". But I think people were aware of the biological role even earlier. When a gorilla seizes another gorilla's harem, he typically kills off the children who are already there, distinguishing them from his own later children.
Sexual jealousy is a very ancient trait, and it is the way that natural selection makes us act on this biological father concept thing, even if people are not aware of how things work in this department!
In that situation, the problem then tends to be the different mothers competing to place their biological child's interests ahead of their half-siblings - the 'who will inherit the throne?' problem. One that is often solved by "kill all the rivals so I'm the last one standing" approach, and that's not really stable, either.
Maybe this isn't 10,000 years in the past, but the travails of Rama start when one of his father's four wives (correction: three wives, four sons) is incited by her old nurse/maidservant to get the king to disinherit Rama - who the king plans to announce as his heir - and have her son chosen instead. "When Rama inherits, you will only be the stepmother, and his mother will lord it over you because the king will be dead and no-one will be there to protect you" is part of the argument to convince her. Since you're competing for status with the other wives/concubines and need to win and retain the king's favour in order not alone to protect your own status, but often your life, then your best bet is to put all your support behind your son and make him the next king - the king can always marry a new wife, but a son can only have one mother.
1) R. Gershom's edict is a complicated question historically, it's probably attributed to him rather than actually imposed by him. Additionally, it seems to mostly be about creating a legal justification to penalize men who cheat creatively by "Marrying" their second partner in the context of what was already a monogamous society, rather than an attempt to restructure a polygynous society. It only ever applied to ashkenazic communities, and there were many non-ashkenazic communities that never-the-less practiced monogamy. Sefardic communities in Europe were more or less uniformly monogamous.
2) Conversely, many North African and middle eastern Jewish communities continued to practice polygyny well into the 20th century. The Yemenite Jewish community is one of the most prominent. It was only mass migration to Israel and the Israeli government's efforts to shut it down that more or less ended polygyny in these communities.
> Three thousand years ago, a cultural selectionist could have said that most societies in the world were polygynous, so we should avoid monogamy.
They wouldn't have even been aware of monogamous cultures that got replaced.
> A hundred years ago, they could have said that most societies in the world were monarchies, so we should avoid democracy.
This is a fairer point, the founders of the US were aware of classical philosophers who wrote about democracy being a degraded form government that got replaced eventually. Which is why they tried to constrain democracy (in ways that tended to get overturned later).
> But now you’re not really making a cultural selection argument, you’re making an “I did some armchair reasoning and decided this was bad” argument.
No, I don't think it qualifies. Polyamory really is spreading via memes rather than a group out-competing other groups, and your data above shows poly people have fewer children. Below replacement fertility is not an ESS.
> I think TGGP would answer that it doesn’t require any selective pressure to explain why people would want to have more romantic partners, since this is inherently fun for everyone.
> But this is also how almost every cultural trend spreads. Monogamy didn’t spread to Scandinavia because the Vikings died out and the Romans colonized their land, it spread because missionaries converted them to Christianity.
Those missionaries were from monogamous Christian cultures which had an ESS. Christians warred with pagans for a long time, eventually forcing them to accept Christianity. The Roman civilization (already monogamous) adopting Christianity might be a better example, although per Robin Hanson there Christianity was selected because it was anti-infanticide.
> Years ago, Jason Pargin (of Cracked.com, back when it was still relevant) said that outsiders looking back at our culture would see romantic love as our religion, and I think he was right.
I've never understood about arguments for things like cultural selection. To me, at best they can be transient observations, not positive assertions of what we should prefer. If something is able to out-compete alternatives in the selection race, why does it need to be advocated for? Here's the logical progression that doesn't make sense to me:
1. [X] had to compete with multiple other strategies.
2. [X] won the competition against other strategies.
3. Because of this, [X] is more prevalent in the population.
4. We should prefer [X] since it has proven its utility.
5. We must defend [X] against other strategies, lest it lose its dominant position.
If the reason for preferring [X] is its ability to out-compete other strategies - including once-dominant strategies - shouldn't we cease to prefer [X] once it proves unable to out-compete those other strategies? I fully accept there may be other reasons to prefer [X], and therefore to advocate for it, but if the ONLY reason is its ability to compete then I don't see the reason we need to put our finger on the scale. Indeed, this logic quickly turns circular. We end up influencing the very metric we were using to decide which strategy to promote.
Now, we could decide that [X] isn't something we want to prefer for intrinsic or ethical reasons, or because we want to actively work against selective pressures. (cf Scott's excellent essay, "How the West was Won")
I would also argue that dominance is a very simplistic reading of evolution/selection, including cultural selection. In the real world, multiple different strategies co-exist even in a world where some strategies are dominant. Because what's selected FOR today could be selected AGAINST tomorrow, and since nobody can truly predict the future nobody can know which traits will stop being advantageous in the world of tomorrow.
Read the competing selectors post. Selection on the level of groups implementing memes means the meme gives some advantage to the group. Selection on the level of memes themselves is another story, as memes can simply be parasitic on the groups implementing them. Dawkins compared the memes behind things like religions & chain letters to viruses:
Right. Nobody had to go in and advocate that people change their behavior so that immune systems could evolve. Organisms that had Toll receptors did better than those that didn't, so they became more prevalent in the population. I'm not arguing against evolution. I'm arguing against the idea that people need to step in to 'steady the ark' of evolution in order to make it work. If something is advantageous, it will persist. If it's not it will either die out or stick around in low levels in the off chance that circumstances change and that thing becomes advantageous in the future. Because evolution is about changing for a changing world.
I'm not saying you can't use ideas of selection and evolution themselves. For example, you could say that your preferred strategy is to follow whatever is currently predominantly manifest in the population. You might have to start splitting hairs, though. For example, the *Amish arguably drew a line in the sand over a hundred years ago and stopped accepting certain new additions. So you could either draw a line in the sand today and stop adopting new strategies, or you could just go with whatever the current fad is, accepting that others will be the early adopters. That's fine as a personal (not a general) strategy.
When it comes to advocating general strategies that everyone *should* adopt the same logic falls apart. Nobody will stop change/adaptation by claiming that past adaptations have 'won' the evolutionary game. Because evolution isn't a destination. It's an endless journey. So arguing that we need to preserve some element of the system's state because that's where evolution led us at this moment in time is tantamount to arguing that we should get out of the evolution game altogether.
The natural argument from evolution should be that we let the game continue and see where it goes in a complex interconnected world.
*I know it's more complicated than that for Amish/Mennonites.
The immune system works for organisms unaware of the germ theory of disease. But once you are aware of it, you can take deliberate steps to avoid disease, and humanity has done just that. In the realm of memes, we can tell people not to participate in chain letters, not to open suspicious attachments likely to contain viruses etc.
Monogamy is a bit of a different case because it's in the individual interest of a man to have many wives. That causes problems for the rest of the society though, undermining it relative to societies which restrict polygamy. Once a society has restricted polygamy and successfully outcompeted the societies which haven't, it doesn't make sense to "let the game continue and see where it goes" by tolerating polygamy again, anymore than it would make sense to let a pathogen spread in that society.
'if it means “no woman has ever been good at math”, this is an insane statement that I’m not sure anyone has ever believed'
Jim Donald, who used to post at SSC until you banned him, did literally believe that. He'd argue that all the examples of women being good at STEM were women who were OK but nothing special and being hyped up, or were women taking credit for men's achievements (he argued that about Marie Curie, FFS!). Then I pointed him at Emmy Noether and he has been posting for ten or more years saying "women can't do STEM except for Emmy Noether", because even he couldn't argue with pure math,
Congratulations on getting him to acknowledge an exception. For myself, I have found it best not to argue or try to convince people with bad opinions like this, for I have never had any success arguing from a position of facts and getting anyone to change their mind.
Jim is an odd character; the reason I read him is that he is absolutely straightforwardly honest about his appalling opinions.
I find him useful because he expresses in straightforward terms the motivations that I think - often unconsidered, or at least unexpressed - lie behind many other people's terrible opinions.
Usually the people who don't (or pretend not to) understand overlapping distributions are making the opposite argument (overlap means no differences exist), but I guess you can find anything on the Internet!
> (obviously having kids with someone you love who isn’t responsible and stable won’t work either. It’s maybe unfair that you need both love and responsibility, and maybe I’m doing something wrong since billions of people have had kids since the beginning of time and surely they didn’t all have both these things. But I’m not sure that I could do it without both.)
I think that modern-day parents in the developed world are laboring under some unique disadvantages due to living in a society that's atomized to a historically unprecedented degree. The community-level institutions that people have relied upon since the beginning to help ease the burdens of child-rearing are either unavailable entirely or greatly diminished. We have greater levels of affluence and personal autonomy than our ancestors did, which definitely helps to some degree, but in practice it doesn't help as much as some people might expect, because affluence and personal autonomy can provide a lot of things easily, but experience and wisdom are not among them, and that's something sorely needed for effective child-rearing.
Even just living with your parents would make a big difference. I understand that many jobs only being available in urban population centers makes that difficult, but maybe the rise of remote work will make it easier to live with extended family.
Looking at Aella's article on polyamory, which I found fascinating and enlightening, the following stands out to me:
1) "Fully polyamorous" is 3% of the survey sample.
2) "Fully monogamous" is 60%.
3) Despite the fact that "fully monogamous" is basically the social and cultural norm, it performs almost as well as the "fully poly" option, which Aella describes (and I think it's a logical description) as something akin to a deep, natural orientation, that her life is almost inconceivable without.
I feel like Scott uses this survey to make the point that polyamory works, but I almost come away with the conclusion that monogamy comes off looking pretty good here. Traditional monogamy gives you basically equal satisfaction scores to full polyamory, except it's a mode that works for 60% of the population. Full polyamory may work quite well for a very small minority, which seems largely to be made of people for whom it is a non-negotiable orientation, and society should be empathetic to that and not shame it. But if we're talking about polyamory as it is actually practiced by most people who are poly, Aella's point is that it's usually a disaster, and people are forcing themselves into those categories / lifestyles for the wrong reasons. So to me this seems like an affirmation of tradition with a small caveat that there are groups of people for whom said tradition will not work. Which feels reasonable to me.
I agree. Plus it’s worth noting that most people who consider themselves monogamous don’t consider it much of a choice—to average folks it’s the only path they’ve ever heard of to a stable, lasting relationship. It’s the default. Because of this, people in monogamous relationships are far more likely to be critical of monogamy or view monogamy negatively than poly people view poly negatively. It’s like complaining about congress, or the food at the cafeteria. Yet a poly only ends up in a poly relationship by considered choice, and if they find they view poly negatively from their experience, they simply go mono, which is already mainstream.
I think data suggests poly appears to work fine for a relatively small segment of the population. But I don’t think the data suggests it’s some kind of cultural improvement over monogamy.
I didn’t even pick up on the volume. Am I reading correctly then that 12x people who are poly are in the middle states that tend to have less satisfaction than the full state?
In nearly all the graphs in part I, polyamory has higher error than monogamy (in the strictly statistical sense). Is this reflective of just sample size, or greater actual variance within the set? I could believe either; we kinda take polygamy to mean merely "not-monogamy", and there are lots of widely-varying ways to do that. The more I see people arguing about this, the more I think that lots of different polygamies are happening, and people arguing about it are very often "seeing different parts of the elephant".
I expect that there is smaller sample size on the poly side than the mono side, and if the true distributions within those are the same, then the samples will have higher error with smaller sample size (inversely proportional to square root of sample size).
I should like to know the criterion for classifying people as full/mostly/slightly <X>. Was it simply what label they themselves chose? Or was there some behavioral assessment based on statements about their behavior? Even the latter wouldn't be entirely convincing, as there seems to be lots of evidence that self-reports of behavior are often inaccurate, but it would be clearer what it was attempting to measure than the former.
I'm afraid I don't see how that's responsive. "People took part because they chose to" isn't equivalent to "People were classified as A because they chose to classify themselves so." Both might be true, but the second doesn't have to follow from the first, or vice versa.
I suspected that that was likely. But it makes me think that those categories are not particularly well defined. Does "mostly monogamous" mean that you have only one relationship most of the time, or that you have one relationship but you spent a little time seeing people on the side, or that you have one relationship that uses up, say, 90% of your relationship time, and another that uses up, say, 10%, and in the latter cases, do you keep it a secret from the primary person (which is why you might count it as "monogamous" rather than "polyamorous")? Those seem to be different behavioral options, and some of them might create more problems than others.
>I didn’t know before looking into the statistics for this post that poly people were that much less likely to have children.
One interesting bit of somewhat collaborating evidence is polygamy seemed to have decreased the number of children born for Mormons overall when they practiced it. For example, a study on the effects of Mormon Polygamy found "for the average mated women born in the late 19th century, sharing a mate with an additional female would have reduced her number of offspring by slightly more than one."
I expect that the men were providing most of the household income for all the wives and children, so that lack of financial comfort for more children would also be doing some of the work.
Since men replenish sperm at a fixed rate you'd also expect that, in a situation where one man has multiple wives, the number of children _per wife_ would be diminished. The number of children per man presumably would not.
I had the opposite experience. My parents divorced when I was 8/9 and my mom dated multiple people simultaneously. She was always very clear that I came first and she only brought men home if they were 100% on board with kids. The only one of her partners I interacted with extensively has always been kind to me. My mom is still with him and I call him my stepfather. I didn't like his children (my kind-of step-siblings) but I never had to spend much time with them. Not having clear 'family unit' lines helped a lot here! Otherwise these kids would have been my actual stepsiblings and I would have had to spend so much time with them.
On the other hand, I had a friend whose mom got divorced and remarried a little after my parents. Her new stepmom actively disliked kids and made her and her brother's life miserable.
The major difference here is "does the parent prioritize their children", but polyamory probably helped a bit by making it easier to have casual relationships that stayed outside the home.
"The happiest polycules I know are asexual people."
I ask in all sincerity... are these _friendships_? With maybe less of a personal space bubble?
I think we have a lot of social respect for romantic/sexual relationships and a very eroded view of friendship as something that can have a place of privilege in your life, so some variants of polyamory seem like an excuse to prioritize friends.
I remember about ten years ago a poly piece where the woman said she opened her marriage because her husband didn't want to go to the opera with her, and she found a lover who would, and all I could think was, "they don't ask you if you're having sex when you try to buy two tickets!"
I guess it's a definition question. For me, for example, a 'romantic relationship' is "if you have problems, I will support you with my time and money as long as needed, no questions asked," which doesn't _require_ any sexual interaction but seems like more than just a good friendship (to me, at least), and I could see an asexual person seeing this similarly.
I strongly disagree, but suspect we're talking about different orders of magnitude here.
For scale: I am paying my Australian girlfriend a good chunk of what she used to earn as a wage each month while she's looking for a job. For complicated reasons, this is going on for about a year now. I'm not about to stop.
Maybe you have friendships like that, but I do think that's not how far most people would take them!
(1) This is not any more taxing than having several kids that you're willing to support if things go south.
(2) There's an (obvious) general awareness that just because I'm willing to share my resources doesn't make them infinite, and that I need some of them for myself. Sometimes problems are beyond our ability to fix. That is sad and stressful, but doesn't change the underlying principle.
(3) Things are usually not on fire simultaneously. If they are, things do indeed get bad (but again, see #1 and #2). It took many, many years of being together for even just this one fire to happen.
(4) It goes both ways! :) I haven't had to for anything serious, but I could ask my other partners for financial support. That can be a passive contribution - I will, for example, be asking that my US-American boyfriend fund his visit(s) to me this year entirely out of his own pocket (usually we split this partway), and he's not hurting for money, so this is an easy way for him to help me while things are tighter than usual. (He and my Australian girlfriend chat every day and are good friends, but they are, in fact, only friends, so I'm not expecting him to directly pitch into the financial aid, and I would reduce the financial aid before I ask him to offset it - it's my responsibility what I do with my money, not his.)
I don't know the details, but it sure sounds like you're being taken advantage of. I unfortunately have plenty of experience with how long it takes someone else to "look" for a "job" when I'm paying their living expenses with no deadline.
I subscribe to your heuristic, but, being in this situation, have much more data than you about it, and can assure you that it does not apply. Sharing details would help make this understandable, but they are actually private, and I'm not willing to disclose them on her behalf.
Your response is gracious. I think it's hard to apply a heuristic to situations we have almost no information about. There are so many situations I can imagine where a person might be out of work or take a while to transition to work for more than a year and that supporting them would be kind, generous, etc but not in any way being taken advantage of.
I'm unsure how much the difference in engagement towards people one is attached to depends on the kind of relationship compared to common projects. A bonded pair with kids or a family or a clan are special. Without procreation in the game, things can be team stuff. A real good team seems to me not categorically different from a polycule without kids. You care about each other, respect each other and everyone gives what they can. Friendship can mean a lot of things but sometimes it makes great teams, with networks of different personal relationships within, not necessarily all platonic.
Maybe it's the distinction between "asexual" and "aromantic"?
I have a friend who recently realized that they were asexual but "romantic" (i.e., the opposite of aromantic). It explains a lot, and if they had realized this decades ago it would have saved them a lot of heartbreak and disappointment. I don't think they ever tried poly, and I don't think it would work for them emotionally. But if it did work, I think that would expand their dating prospects by a fair amount. They'd be able to develop a committed romantic relationship without conflict around sex.
I mean, sure, but I exist in the culture as it's constituted today. If I dated monogamously and were like "I want to sleep over at a friend's house once a week, cuddle naked with friends, go on vacation alone with a friend while leaving my spouse at home, indefinitely support a friend financially, and raise my child with a friend in addition to my spouse," people would say to me "are you sure this thing you want is in fact monogamy?"
And in fact I'm raising my child with one person I'm in a romantic relationship with and one person neither my husband nor I is dating, and I think this is very meaningfully a poly experience. It's also true that no one asks if you're having sex before they refuse to let you put someone on your health insurance or deny them legal rights to their kid.
The health insurance thing is a major issue in the US, due to how we handle insurance through employers. Requiring that someone be legally married and to have birth certificates for adding kids are necessary to maintain the system. Otherwise insurance companies would have no means of limiting groups of friends or the random guy you just met who needed health care from joining the plan.
If your solution is Universal Healthcare - fine, sure. But unless or until that happens, we would need a workable solution. Civil Unions were not a workable solution to same-sex couples because there were very few guidelines about who could join or leave and under what circumstances.
"And in fact I'm raising my child with one person I'm in a romantic relationship with and one person neither my husband nor I is dating, and I think this is very meaningfully a poly experience."
Well congratulations, there's a term for that, and it's not poly!
"The legal definition of a parent includes biological parents (whose parental rights have not been terminated) and adoptive parents (who have had parental rights conferred by a legal proceeding). A caregiver is a broader term and includes any person with whom the child lives who provides daily care to the child, and who acts as the child's 'parent' whether they are biological parents or not. A caregiver can be the mother or father, or another family member such as a grandparent or older sibling. This includes informal arrangements in which the caregiver does not have legal responsibility. As with children, parents and caregivers are critical actors within the care system and recipients of services designed to support them to fulfil their caregiving duties."
Person helping raise your child who is not related to them by blood or marriage and not in a sexual/romantic relationship with any parent: "caregiver".
Now, usually this is a job description because it will be child minders and childcare workers who act in this role, but it's not confined to them.
I think it's not uncommon to have a situation where people open their marriage because they and their primary partner no longer have much interest in sex with each other, but still both have interest in sex with others. Traditionally, we think of having sex together as more core to a relationship than going to the opera together, but I definitely know relationships for which the opposite is true.
I mean, from my understanding a lot of asexual people really enjoy kissing and cuddling. I have close friends of both sexes that I would never cuddle with, even if I wasn't in a relationship.
That being said, "platonic cuddling" between people who don't consider themselves to be in a romantic relationship also seems to be quite a big thing in the nerd circles in which Scott moves. I must say I've always found the concept kind of weird and gross.
I do think one of the forces behind poly is a desire to render a larger network of relationships legible with some amount of formal commitment. Traditionally I think this role was mainly filled by kinship networks and supplemented by other formalized structures. You could bind families to each other through strategic marriages, formal arrangements of guest-friendship, oaths of fealty, etc.
But for better or worse, family life has atomized quite a bit, and these structures no longer really function. Poly arrangements let you build a new kinship structure in place with a group of likeminded people.
The entire conversation about this is deeply fascinating for me with my three long-term partners (all more than a decade) and no one I've ever disclosed this to (and I do this often, because e.g. I have some relationship-related arrangements with my manager(s) about sabbaticals so my partners don't have to fight over my vacation days as much) having ever made a fuss over it. I feel privileged and lucky that I've been spared the drama.
(Also, I don't want kids of my own, but you've made me realise that I'd actually be open to co-parenting, especially to assist with the messy parts (if this surprises you, it may also surprise you that I'm the software engineer who prefers fixing bugs to writing new features), which is a fascinating insight to me.)
Virtually all relationships start with exactly two people, so some extremely large proportion of all poly relationships will involve a couple opening up their relationship. If you stipulate that this is a perilous course of action then it's clear that having it as a socially sanctioned option is bad for people.
Yeah - isn't it a meme that restaurants are REALLY hard to get right and run properly and that you should only attempt doing so if you're already a head chef with excellent business acumen or something like it?
In my experience, the vast majority of poly people are single before they become poly and begin a primary relationship on the expectation that it be a polyamorous relationship.
Why think that starting as a couple and then adding others is always a case of "opening up" a relationship, rather than the relationship having started as open?
Just wanting to chime in as a polyamorous person, with a kid.
A huge part of polyamory’s PR problem is that “multiple relationships” is by definition more vague and ill-defined than monogamy. My family has three adults (2 women, myself included, and one man) and one child (my female partner’s from a previous relationship), who we all parent. We hope to have more children together.
Our relationship is closed-ish, we don’t have time or desire to date outside our group.
We are out with family and friends but quiet. We all are basically normal and you might not know from seeing us, even all together in public, that we are a triad unless you were paying attention.
I can’t speak to whether this is a “normal” polyamorous experience. Certainly the messes and the weird people with 8 partners or the couples “opening up” who treat their partners like shit get more air time. But it can be done, it’s not even that hard. You just have to have the right people (both as individuals, but also as a unit - just like lots of monogamous pairings don’t work, lots of poly groups don’t work either. And because the dynamics are more complex, it’s extra important to get a good match.)
Personally, I feel like having two partners pushes and challenges me to grow in a way I can’t get with one partner. It’s also very nice to have more hands on deck to deal with practicalities. People who say this is all for sexual gratification have not thought for one second about what actually living with multiple serious partners would be like.
I agree with Scott that it’s sad more poly people don’t have children. The structure of society makes this very, very challenging - limiting legal parenthood to two individuals, stigma from healthcare providers, schools, taxes and government benefits, etc. I think there would be more people like us if there were solutions to these issues, not even easy solutions, just anything at all one could do. I do think there is probably some selection at play too, though, in that lots of people who identify as poly do so because they don’t want the traditional narrative, which includes forgoing children.
I suspect the link between 'non-parent in house' and child-abuse is a selection effect.
Many/most divorces have abuse of sort as the root cause ==> people that leave abusive relationships tend to repeatedly fall into abusive relationships.
If only two people are in the house, there are two potential child abusers. If three people are in the house, there are three potential child abusers. The more people in the house, the higher the number of potential child abusers. If the probability of them being an abuser is constant, more adults increases the probability of abuse. (Excepting the space where there are sufficiently many people in the house that abuse can't happen because you would get caught.)
> You've made an unfounded assumption that child abusers are normally distributed and that simply increasing N by increases the odds of child abuse.
No? Even if you enact some effective barrier that reduces the child abuser probability from 5% to 1%, the same logic applies: more people around the child are more risk to the child. Unless the risk goes down with each additional person, which only happens when you have so many people that the child is never alone with any one individual.
> FWIW this is also an argument against having more children and allowing friends/family around your children.
Yes. Leaving people alone with your children carries the risk that they are an offender, even if they are your friends or family members. Do you think grandparents and high school best friends don't ever abuse children? Children are a low-risk class but teenaged sex offenders (for one example) do exist.
> No? Even if you enact some effective barrier that reduces the child abuser probability from 5% to 1%,
Yes, odds are not uniform so you can't look at two situations (with 2 adults and one with 3 adults) and make any conclusions about the relative risk that the child is being abused.
Besides, none of this has anything to do with my statement that having non-parent residents in the home vs parent is likely due to selection effects.
It's also the case that if only two people are in the house, then there are two potential child carers, and if three people are in the house, there are three potential child carers. The more people in the house, the higher the number of potential child carers. If the probability of being a carer is constant, more adults increases the amount of care.
The question is whether the average additional adult is likely to provide more care or more abuse. If the average adult *generally* provides more abuse than care, then children really shouldn't be reared by the general public. But if the average adult generally provides more care than abuse, then children should generally be raised by larger households (as in traditional extended-family situations).
But I think the real point is that the probability of abuse and amount of care is generally not constant.
Speaking as someone who's never interacted with a polyamorous person, and is 85-90% sure would get blank looks if I used the term in front of anyone I knew, this really looks like it's being used to describe a bunch of different things that aren't especially related. Throwing every form of sexual/romantic interaction that's not monogamy (or covert breaches of monogamy*) into one bucket looks like about as natural a category as "gentiles" to refer to the set of Inuit, Colombians, Han Chinese and Danes but excluding Jews; it's potentially useful in some contexts, but probably not a group you can generalise about.
Teasing out a taxonomy, I think you have:
1. Open relationships (a romantic couple where one or both has sex (or possibly romance) with other people).
2. Swingers (similar to above, but as part of a structured group; principally sexual).
3. Casual sex/relationships (having sex with several people without being in a committed relationship; dating multiple people without being in a committed relationship).
4. Polygamy/polygyny/polyandry (one person having multiple sexual/romantic partners).
5. Web-type polyamory (multiple people each having multiple partners, but as a series of relationships; eg. John's dating Jane and Becky, Becky's also dating Steve and Toby, Jane's also dating Toby, not dating Steve and dating Brad, Brad and Steve are both dating Claire).
6. Blob-type polyamory (a group of people who are all having relationships with every other [compatible?] member of the group; a group relationship).
I always thought polyamory was a new word for 5/6 (I'm not sure to what extent 6 exists), invented for the purpose of distinguishing it from 4. Including 1, 2 and 3 seems to needlessly muddy the waters and catch a bunch of wholly unrelated people engaging in something that isn't remotely new (my fortunately-limited interaction with swingers IRL confirms the retired policemen and divorced receptionists stereotype). Again, it's a bit like trying to discuss what gentiles are like while one person's talking about Nebraskans and the other's talking about San bushmen.
*Coming soon: I'm not cheating on you, I'm crypto-polyamorous.
When people want to distinguish these, they use "ethical non-monogamy" to refer to all of these (excepting maybe 4, since institutionalizing the idea that only one person is allowed to do it is usually thought of as unethical) while "polyamory" is reserved for 5 and 6. I think people sometimes use the term "solo-poly" for 3. But I think there is a continuum between 1 and 5, since you often can't tell the difference between (5) someone who has a strongly primary partner and some other side relationships (many of whom have their own primary partners), and (1) someone who is just in an open relationship and has a few repeat friends-with-benefits in addition to casual sex with some others.
Supposing that polyamorists did have more kids, I think you would have a serious free-rider problem with multiple people trying to co-parent kids that aren't biologically their own.
Wait, why would this be a problem? Aren't more people who want to parent, and actively taking part in parenting, a *good* thing for the kid (and the other parents, in the sense of spreading the load) in most cases?
Because I think you'd have different people with different levels of desire to actually parent a child that wasn't theirs, and the fact that a lot of the work and financial commitment that goes into parenting is a chore or in many cases downright unpleasant, like changing diapers, a parenting by committee approach is likely to have difficulty achieving a stable equilibrium or stable division of labor. I suspect that even the biological fathers are in many cases likely to try to take advantage of the fact that they're probably not married to the child's mother. The whole thing seems like a gateway to low investment parenting, from my vantage point.
Even if that's the case, I'm basically seeing it play out like this:
1. Single mom scenario - mom does all the hard / messy parts, and all of everything else. Zero breathing room, max effort.
2. Monogamy scenario - mom does all the hard / messy parts, gets to share lighter parts with 1 other person. Little breathing room due to dad working, etc, but at least some load taken off.
3. Poly multi-parent scenario - mom does all the hard / messy parts, get to share pretty much all the rest of load with multiple other people. Max breathing room and sanity scenario.
Why doesn't it end up working like that the majority of the time? It's what I would expect / bet on.
I can only speculate, but I suspect scenario 3 works out for probably about 18-36 months, and then becomes more like scenario 1. If polyamorous parenting is so great, why don't we see more of it? Again, I suspect probably because there's a little bit of a tragedy of the commons type phenomenon that can/would occur. Consider the possibility that evolution has wired people not to want to invest large amounts of time and energy into raising kids that aren't biologically theirs.
Most of the discussion of problems with polyamory seems to be just an extension of problems with any open relationship, formally polyamorous or not. But the polyamorous group I know best is a stable three-person marriage (2 men, 1 woman). Both men are straight, so it functions as a woman with two husbands, who treat each other as housemates/buddies. The three don't, at least not actively, have romantic/sexual relations with others, and they've been together for decades and seem very happy.
Isn't that menage-a-trois, not polyamory, though? It may be a little different because it's one woman and two men, where classically it was a husband, wife, and admitted mistress of the husband all knowing about each other and getting on together, even living together?
If that's not polyamory, then I'm at a loss as to how what's been described here as polyamory is any different from open marriage. Maybe it is the same thing, and "polyamory" is just a Latin term meaning "open marriage."
There's something special about comments that are 1) completely unhelpful and 2) assume that the person being commented to is an idiot. "meaning" is for "means the same thing," not "literal translation."
It would be. But the question was, are all stable three-person arrangements fairly describable as menage-a-trois? I would say not. There is nothing like (the male equivalent of) wife and mistress about the three-person marriage I am discussing. For one thing, they all live together. For another, there's no primary or secondary about the husbands.
"For another, there's no primary or secondary about the husbands."
Well, if A is legally married to B, that's a distinction. If they're not married at all but living together and calling each other husband and wife, that's a different matter. But if things go sour and they split up, absolutely it will make a difference if B is the legal husband and C is just the lover.
I believe this triad does have a legal arrangement of that kind. But it's strictly a legal nicety and would only become relevant in the case of a breakup, which after decades of stability seems unlikely. It has absolutely no reflection in the relationship among the three. "How relationships work" is the topic here, and there's nothing primary/secondary about that. in this relationship. It is completely unlike the classic menage-a-trois in which the man lives with the wife and conducts his public social life with her, while the mistress lives separately and has a secondary relationship with him.
As has been said elsewhere here, half a loaf is better than none.
I think this works with male nerds because we're not very masculine and don't fight physically much. In the general public I doubt this would work long-term--too much fighting. Remember that case the media were going on about where there was a lady with four men and they claimed not to care whose baby it was, and then they found the kid with injuries?
This "half a loaf" doesn't make any sense to me. In a world with an equal number of men and women, monogamy would satisfy everyone, subject only to coordination problems of people meeting each other and getting along (admittedly a big "only"). For people who are sexually or romantically less successful or desirable, how is enforced monogamy, where every man has his own wife and every woman has her own husband, not the best outcome?
Or put in the economic terms people here love so much: if "nerds" are likely to get less share of a sexual "pie", then...they really *shouldn't* want sex to be a pie to be unequally sliced up. And that toxic comodification of sex and love is exactly what monogamy and conservatism is against!
The phenomenon of socially liberal nerds is endlessly baffling to me.
> Poly emphasizes the part where you have multiple relationships. This is more of a female fantasy than a male one, hence the female predominance.
Yeah, in my experience, gay men don’t do polyamory, they do sexual-but-not-emotional non-monogamy (where sex outside the relationship is allowed, according to some set of rules, but falling in love with someone else would be considered cheating).
(Then there are “throuples”, but those also don’t behave like classic straight polyamory, in that once the throuple stabilizes, they are generally agreed to be three-way-emotionally-monogamous, not open to further relationships.)
In my experience, this is largely right - but it's often the case that there are some good friends that are common friend-with-benefits for one member of a couple, and it's not all pure casual one-night stands (though there's a lot of those too). Whether or not that counts as a secondary relationship is usually a terminological thing (perhaps because cohabitation is still primarily one or two people).
The survey data are going to have survivorship bias of the form, people who have tried X, found they were miserable, and had enough self-awareness to stop X, probably don't self-identify as X any longer.
One can still use those U-shaped curves to say "The thing that is working for you, can probably continue to work for you."
But I don't think we can use this data to test hypotheses like, "The median hetero male would be more/less satisfied trying X."
""I think there’s something really attractive about being poly even if you never get around to having any other relationships, just so you don’t have to constantly be getting angry at your partner for having normal human desires."
Respectfully, this reads to mono people as "I think there's something really attractive about not having pain receptors, so that you don't have to constantly be jumping around in agony every time you stub your toe."
Honestly, not having to jump around due to a stubbed toe sounds great. Especially if it were elective! You feel the pain signal, acknowledge it, then turn it off. You don't really need to do anything about a stubbed toe, so the pain is a spandrel.
Jealousy is elective for some people. Wouldn't it be unambiguously better if pain were elective?
I guess that's the crux, then - but I can tell you that for myself, and for ~20 other people I know, jealousy is indeed elective or non-existent.
The existence of elective / nonexistent jealousy is no doubt a great driver to inclinations towards monogamy or polyamory in an individual.
And surely, it can't be hard to believe that there are indeed people who jealousy does not affect (slight if any penalty to fitness) when there are verified people who *pain itself* (massive penalty to fitness) does not affect.
My point here was that Scott was writing in a manner that only had meaning if invoked as to reactions that were elective. To the extent that jealousy, like pain, is non-elective, you can't persuade people that they shouldn't feel it because it would be "good" any more than you can persuade them not to feel pain from a stubbed toe because that would be "good." Whether or not jealousy, like pain reception, is present or absent in an individual isn't susceptible of argumentation.
"I think there’s something really attractive about being poly even if you never get around to having any other relationships, just so you don’t have to constantly be getting angry at your partner for having normal human desires."
For example, Esther Perel pointing out that monogamous people want waaaaayyyy too much from a monogamous relationship:
We expect sex, companionship, friendship, psychological counseling and support, workout buddies, people who are fun in downtimes, people who are fun in uptimes, people who are compatible with all our interests and friends and diets, and much more from our partners.
Sub "poly" with "non-jealous," and Scott's quote could as easily apply to the other party in a relationship getting one of these other aspects fulfilled with somebody else, and not feeling jealous about it. And indeed, this has to be something like what asexual poly relationships are doing, because it's explicitly *not* about the sex!
The distinction between having "close friends who are not your partner" and "asexual poly" seems pretty slim if you extend it to encompass anyone who fulfills one of that lengthy list of enumerated needs who isn't a monogamous partner. These are all things for which people maintain friends who they aren't into sexually or romantically.
Many things aren't elective, and people are supposed to exercise self-control. In monogamy, the desire to have sex with others isn't elective, and yet people are supposed to refrain from acting on it. Why can't we say the same about jealousy? From this perspective, poly isn't more or less unnatural than mono, it's just a different choice of which emotion to use as a sacred foundation for our relations, and which one is considered socially inappropriate.
And just like different people have naturally different sex appetite, they also have different levels of jealousy. Some people are so jealous they would be unable to function properly in polyamorous relationships. Some people are so jealous that they are not even able to properly function in monogamous relationships -- we call them abusive, and consider this level of jealousy pathological. But similarly, some people suffer in monogamous relationships; they cheat on each other, or just feel deeply unhappy.
Shortly, this argument can be made in both directions.
I guess the information part of pain is more important than the urgency part. But I wouldn't want to get rid of the urgency part. I often ignore important information and would probably die of a treatable disease I have been noticed about.
One selection bias that might be worth checking (idk if the data is available) is life/relationship satisfaction of practicing monogomist/polyamorists (i.e. only those currently in a relationship). Anecdotally I've never met a poly person who was single, and it seems like the kind of thing where a soon-to-be poly person might self-identify as monogamous until they get into their first poly relationship, so there might be disproportionately more dissatisfied single people calling themselves poly on surveys, dragging down life satisfaction, etc.
I doubt this will actually change the result of the test, but it has been gnawing at my brain as I read.
"One interesting demonstration of this is how many asexual people are poly. In the 2017 SSC survey (the same one cited above), about 5% of polyamorous people described themselves as asexual (having no sex drive) compared to about 3% of monogamous people. These people are probably in relationships for the emotional benefits."
Either that, or they're opening their relationship under pressure because society tells them that their partner won't be satisfied with an asexual partner and they need to allow their partner an outlet.
It seems hard not to conclude that all the benefits Scott sees in polyamory would be even better realized with traditional sexual morality ("enforced monogamy"). Side relationships are even easier to form and less likely to have issues with jealousy if they're strictly and automatically non-sexual, plus then you don't need to have the same worry about children being born into unstable or abusive situations. Giving up the sexual aspect is apparently no big deal anyway, since, according to Scott, the relationship aspect is what people really want. In fact, the one aspect truly unique to polyamory, promiscuous sex, seems to be the aspect that Scott is least enthusiastic about defending.
I’m not sure that a society that had strictly enforced monogamy would have the same concerns about emotional affairs as our society with the ever present reality of adultery and divorce.
Exactly, if sexual affairs were very taboo and unusual you wouldn't need to worry about them, the same as almost no one worries that their partner is secretly a cannibal.
Historically I do not think it was the case that people commonly had very close (but non-sexual) cross-gender friendships (what we might call "emotional affairs" today) in societies which had strictly enforced sexual monogamy. In fact that seems to have been less common when sexual monogamy was more strictly enforced - presumably at least in part as a mechanism of enforcement.
So even if you leave the sex out of it, there are still benefits to polyamory over enforced monogamy, namely, the freedom to have close cross-gender friendships.
>The amount of discourse around "emotional affairs" suggests that jealousy is still an issue even when the other relationships are non-sexual.
That is my understanding as well. ( Admittedly I'm looking at all of this from the sidelines, personally having been monogamous when my late wife was alive, though bearing no ill will towards poly people. )
As a fan of AI, I'm curious as to how it does or will fit into this. I've read comments that it is far easier to have an LLM write emotionally supportive text than (as technology stands) to build a sexbot. Can Replika or similar systems act as an "emotional" partner in a thruple? :-)
"I don’t really know how to rescue cultural selection arguments from these kinds of considerations."
I think the rescue would go something like this:
When we had basically universal monogamy, made official by marriage, while there were plenty of problems, there were also lots of kids. Fertility was sky high. As we have moved away from that, we can debate problems, happiness, etc. But there is not much debate about what happened to fertility: it collapsed. Our society may be happy, but it is dying out. Our mores will either be replaced by others, which are more kid-friendly, or we will go extinct.
I think "monogamy" is probably the wrong cue there, in terms of greater depression and anomie in the modern world.
And honestly, I think "monogamy" is the wrong cue in terms of fertility effects, too. It's MUCH more likely to be cheap, effective birth control and educational and economic dynamics.
1). True love/soulmates is a stupid harmful concept, but that isn’t what makes a good monogamous relationship work.
2). I think as a 10-25 year old with absolutely raging hormones I found the arguments for poly lifestyle pretty compelling and only suffered monogamy due to my partners wishes and societies insistence (and cheated a bit a few times). Once I got much past 25 though my main concern became landing as high quality mate as possible and then having as much stability and loyalty/trust in the lat relationship as possible. And monogamy just seems like a much better teamwork than that. I should add that our married sex life is like a solid B+/A- even in year 13 of marriage, if it was bad I might be a lot more interested in cheating or an open relationship situation.
3). I don’t think there is any reason to doubt that if 2 parents are better than 1, that 3 is even better, or 10.
The issue is do those non genetically connected parents actually care as much and act like true parents. I suspect having 4 parents is strictly speaking better, but often if there are 4 adults and one kid two of the people aren’t going to act/be “real” parents.
“3). I don’t think there is any reason to doubt that if 2 parents are better than 1, that 3 is even better, or 10.”
I’m not sure I’d be willing to say that there’s no reason to doubt. The situation that human evolution has selected for to date is one in which two biological parents (not three or ten) mate and create an offspring. The typical human offspring might plausibly be best adapted to that (two biological parents) supplemented by extended family. I don’t know.
Isn't it much more likely that the typical Homo Sap offspring is likely to be adapted to being raised by the Dunbar's number-sized group of adults who would be around in the EEA?
"It takes a village."
I mean, at the minimum, there's ~250k+ years of that vs <9k years of any form of civilization whatsoever.
I think the Dunbar limit is meant to propose a cognitive cap on the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. I think within the space of such relationships, there are degrees of intimacy and commitment. A parent-child relationship appears to require more interaction and dedication than many other stable social relationships. All stable social relationships are potentially beneficial. But within the parent subset of Dunbar-limit relationships, I don’t think ten parents undoubtedly leads to better results for an offspring than two.
Maybe it’s like if you have an hour-long class and instead of one instructor for the whole hour, you get ten instructors for six minutes apiece. I don’t think it’s obvious that the student benefits from the addition of so many instructors over the same class duration.
The kind of class I'm referring to is a short period in which a particular subject is taught. It’s something defined in part by its duration.
If you’re asking me if I think diversity of viewpoints can be a good thing, I think you know the answer is yes. But I don’t think having two parents means the child will not have other wonderful formative relationships that will expose them to a diversity of viewpoints. All of the most open-minded, knowledgable and compassionate people who ever lived managed to get that way despite the handicap of only having two (or fewer) parents.
My stated position is that it is not undoubtedly the case that ten parents is better for a child than two. I proposed that “maybe” it’s like having ten teachers in a typical class period to illustrate that one can imagine cases in which simply adding extra authority figures wouldn't obviously and without question add to the well-being and healthy development of a child. With ten parents one can imagine how a child might routinely receive conflicting instruction. The child could be confused as to the parent’s hierarchy. The child might be over-supervised and grow up with a diminished sense of autonomy. Who knows? Of course there could be benefits to having extra parents, as well, particularly for the parents. No one is doubting that possibility. But it is not outlandish to consider that having as many parents as possible might not be optimal for a child’s development.
I’m surprised there’s so much pushback against the mere possibility that two parents, the exact number of bioloigical parents every human’s ever had, might be worth considering as one of the candidates for the optimal number.
>I don’t think there is any reason to doubt that if 2 parents are better than 1, that 3 is even better, or 10.
There are a number of reasons to doubt that, and they have been pointed out over and over in this very comment section. They could all turn out to be wrong, but they certainly exist.
Even if only two of the people are "real parents", having two more people that are willing and able to take over when one or both of the primary parents is sick or on a surprise work trip can often be huge (and I think this is how extended-family households usually work).
I was wondering how polyamory plays out among heterosexuals, for gender balance. I can imagine two scenarios. One, a polycule of couples, or so-called “swingers.” Each man-woman couple joins up, with a partner contributing their opposite-sex partner’s sexual availability to the polycule in exchange for sexual access to the opposite-sex members of the polycule. I feel like, usually, the contributor is the man and the contributed is his woman, but I’m open to the other way around. In this model, everyone would have a primary partner. I wonder how norms would be negotiated around mate-swapping. Swinging seems to reify almost a property norm in the primary relationship. Like, for it to work, everyone needs to acknowledge each other’s right to their primary partner and not poach.
The other model seems to be the harem. I’m thinking one man and several women, but sure why not an aspie cumdump. Equal opportunity. Perhaps the alpha rotates among partners equally, maybe one partner is primary. Maybe the partners serve different functions (conversation, wealth, hotness, fertility) so they aren’t directly competing. Perhaps the alpha invites a same-sex guest star, if he approves of the desire on the part of one of his opposite-sex partners. But a same-sex regular (a beta?) would seem to disrupt the dynamic if he had sexual access independently of the alpha, which is that the harem focuses on the needs of the alpha. If the beta were to become the effective alpha for part of the harem, (1) he would be stealing mates from the alpha or (2) the alphas would become “swingers” with respect to the opposite partner they share.
I’m not anti-polyamory! But the discourse seems oversold and misleading in the way it’s about individual fulfillment and autonomy. I question whether polyamory is ever individualistic and egalitarian, in practice. In swinging, the couple or the harem’s alpha is the autonomous unit. For a harem, one partner is the sun; the others, planets. Again, I don’t think these arrangements are inherently bad. But in some way they are less sexually liberating than the normal practice of hooking up slash dating then monogamy. I think polyamory gets oversold or leads to disappointment when people get into it without considering whether being swingers or being in a harem is right them.
I don’t have a problem with someone choosing polyamory over monogamy. Yay freedom! But the choice is between one set of social norms and expectations (one faithful partner) for another (swinging and harems), which constrain their participants in a different way.
I think a better model is: imagine a group of friends. You know how sometimes people in a group of friends pair off to play Magic the Gathering, or go to a concert, or edit each other's poetry, or whatever? Like that, except one of the activities is sex.
It's true that gender ratios affect the dynamics at *all*, but you'll have a much more accurate viewpoint if you anchor on "friendship, but with sex" rather than "monogamy, but with more people."
I have a hard time believing it's exempt from the cruelties of the sexual marketplace, but I suppose anything's possible somewhere, even if it doesn't scale.
It seems pretty obvious that polyamory and having children are an ... interesting mix, evolutionarily.
Certainly there's an advantage to collaboration: for a man to help out with his friends' kids if the friend also helps out with his kids.
But if his friend is banging his wife and it turns out all the kids are actually biologically his friend's and none of them are his, that's clearly a big evolutionary disadvantage for the man.
Yeah. But friendship may be crucial here. As Scott wrote, the poly relationships he endorses are more about something else than sex. Considering the autism spectrum epidemic and the fact that autistic traits are on the male side of behavior distributions, I suspect there are a quite a few women around nowadays who function socially a lot like men: Team bonding, value trust highly, don't care too much whom you fuck. Such women may well be happy in a polycule.
It may well be the case that most women on the spectrum can't. If there's enough of them, there'd be enough of the high-functioning kind to explain the cultural phenomenon. I really don't know the numbers, not even roughly. But something seems to be happening. I thought it was some co-evolution of intelligence and autistic traits. But accepting the autism spectrum as expression of some kind of brain damage, now I tend more to the suspicion it's something chemical. How have the numbers of low-functioning autists developed?
In monogamous relationships, paternity testing is considered by many a dangerous thing, precisely because it can ruin the relationship if it turns out that one partner has cheated on the other.
Doesn't matter how many friends are having sex with someone's wife; as long as the tests show that the children are biologically his, there is no evolutionary disadvantage.
But think about the relationship dynamics. Let's say two guys and one woman living together, both guys having sex with the woman. If she has a kid, it only biologically belongs to one of them. Resentment about the other guy's baby is going to be huge. This gets worse if the same father has more kids, and the other guy doesn't. Maybe even worse is if they each have one or more kids, and then the fathers might develop a rivalry among the children. Bob's kids gets extra Christmas gifts or whatever - which is totally a thing that happens among divorced families with mixed parentage kids.
"In many, (though not all) polyamorous groups I've seen, kids are often an afterthought who are brought up by single mom's who often find themselves as satellites to several disparate polyamorous groups. The nature of easily picking up a new flame and dropping old ones makes it easy to pick up attractive but difficult people, and get rid of them (and their kids) when they become too inconvenient or unreasonable.{snip}
Raising healthy children who have stable family backgrounds could be a primary focus within polyamorous culture in the US if expectations were a little more codified and there were fewer individuals flying the polyamorous flag for hedonic sexual pursuits alone. Kids need a fair amount of support, stability, and need to have connections to people of all ages to grow up as responsible, strong minded people.{snip}
I'd be interested to see what effective polyamorous marriage would look like as a legal institution, as it could provide satellites who have kids more recourse. However, it still wouldn't solve the cultural issue of commitment to relationships, which is increasingly rare in monogamous couples as well.{snip}"
In terms of romantic relationships, society has moved from an obligations-based viewpoint to a more rights-based viewpoint. Traditionally, marriage included an obligation to stay beside the spouse, for richer or poorer. Now, many married people reject this interpretation of marriage, others never marry or marry later in life. More and more are in relationships where there's no moral obligation to remain. Instead, the focus is on the rights of the individual to pursue his or her own personal happiness. This parallels the rise of individualism in society more generally.
But this trend stops where children begin. Almost nobody thinks its morally acceptable for a mother to tell her ten-year-old, "sorry, but this relationship just isn't working out for me, have fun in foster care!" With polyamory, kids bum out the whole project, you don't want to raise someone else's kids, but you don't want to make explicit the attitude "DNA test or its not my problem," so you just shrug and say nothing.
Fundamentally, people don't want to raise kids that aren't genetically their own. I don't think this is destiny, at least some people could make polycule childrearing work, but it would likely require a lot of social pressure like you see in fundamentalist religious groups, not laid-back, whatever worksism.
Strong agree. Even the norm of adults joining and leaving the kid's lives can be very difficult for developing healthy relationships. Is the alternative that social pressure says that if a woman in your polycule gets pregnant, you have to stay until the kid turns [8? 12? 18?]? I don't see anyone accepting that - it appears to be fundamentally against the whole idea. But then the kids are stuck with adults leaving them potentially regularly and new adults entering the picture. Some Guy from the last thread had a lot to say about that, and the increased likelihood of abuse.
Presumably you are not the first person in history to tell them that there's something odd or unusual about being trans. But they've probably settled their thoughts around that, and being poly is the thing that they're still not sure of, and thus might have novel worries about.
Yeah, pretty much. I don't know what the original reply said, but I get it, it's new and weird and makes some people uncomfortable. But transitioning makes me really happy like nothing else does, so I stick with it.
I think the big risk factors for it going bad are poverty, trauma, severe mental illness, and a charismatic person with bizarre political beliefs who becomes a cult leader.
I think that trans people are more likely than average to be poor, traumatized, severely mentally ill, and/or in possession of bizarre political beliefs.
Knee-jerk reaction: While I have utmost respect for Scott, trans people in polycules are a minority within a minority. I'd like to know the sample size here! Concluding _anything_ might well be a mistake...
People talk a lot about how impossible it is for regular people to have families in this late-stage capitalist hellscape, but then it becomes all the more fascinating how Ultra-Orthodox Jews have an *average* of 7 kids each (often in New York apartments?). And these aren't even well off Jews I take it, lacking much secular education. According to the economic perspective these families must be suffering greatly, but it seems like people get used to living at pretty much any economic level as long they're not poor relative to their community.
And before anyone says "community support", consider how much the kids must outnumber the adults if every generation is 3.5 times the size of the previous one. Grandparents? Good luck helping out with your 49 grandkids. Older kids can care for younger kids, sure, but any community could teach their kids that.
There are so many factors here. Among them is that, if you get married and start having kids quite young, and you don't have much of a secular education, and your English may not even be great, and the only culture you know is your own, and if you leave your community will fight you on having access to your kids -- it's not exactly easy for you to get out. Like, we can contrast the Haredi with Modern Orthodox Jews, who are both observant and well-educated, and family size looks really different. It's still relatively high and I absolutely think there are things to learn from cultures which are successful at having kids! But it's not 7 kids in an apartment as a normal thing. To get people to do that....a lot of things need to line up, and they're not necessarily things you want.
And then, on an individual level, of course you can't really just enact these things in your own life without also separating a lot in other ways. Like, try having your older kids regularly minding your younger kids while you send them to your local public school and see how fast they come home with the word "parentification." Or send them to a playground together, just them, and they will get approached by well-meaning adults, and possibly someone will call the police. You really need to do this on a community level, so even if it might be theoretically possible it doesn't really negate the whole "impossible for regular people" thing. (And barriers to becoming Haredi are very high!!)
I think that even if kids outnumber adults, just having more than two adults around is going to be helpful. Two parents alone can handle 90% of situations even with many children, but those 10% where it might be helpful to have an additional person to step in can happen even with just one child. It's possible that these situations where an additional helper is useful are more common with more children than with fewer, but the growth may well be sub-linear.
>Do you think it’s bad for someone to have a second child? Surely if they really love their first child, one should be enough for them!
It could actually be bad from the point of view of the child, and it might indicate that a selfish biological imperative is overriding the best interests of your current child.
There are of course also countervailing arguments. Mostly variants of, "Having a second child would be good for my current child actually." which, to the extent it is true, renders the point moot.
It doesn't render the initial point moot, as the question or whether two guys "sharing" the same girl is good for either of them is an open question. Siblings being good for each other is a much more common result, though obviously not always. I've known families who decided not to have more children because a current child is unusually needy or problematic (severe disability, especially emotional outbursts) to have around smaller children. That's actually closer to my mental picture of most guys trying to share a single woman.
If a woman says, "I love my current husband but I'm thinking of getting a second one as well because I think that would be good for my current husband." then to the extent that is true, (not just a rationalization based in self-interest) it does seem to moot the point.
I agree that it does strain credulity though. I was mostly trying to invalidate the analogy rather than do a reductio on the original point in my prior comment.
> I challenge you to operationalize this in a way that we can test on future (or existing) surveys
Well the one I'd like to see is "people who think polyamory will work for them but haven't been sifted yet". So right now when you compare people in monoamorous relationships to people in polyamorous relationships, the monoamorous group contains people "built for polyamory" who have never seriously considered polyamory while the polyamorous group won't really contain many people "built for monogamy". This is exacerbated by the fact that "people currently in poly relationships" don't include many of the people terrible at polyamory who drop out. Whereas people terrible at monogamy don't drop out of monogamy at nearly the same rate.
So look at people who believe they are poly but who are just starting to look or have been in such a relationship <1 month. Follow them out for a few years.
If polyamory statistics are heavily improved by "survivorship bias" this n00b group should do poorly as it is unaffected by survivorship bias. It would be the proper group for someone considering taking up polyamory but who wants to see stats.
"I want my wife to definitely be the most important person in my life and vice versa. But I find I can carve out a category “secondary partner” that doesn’t interfere with this, any more than her having friends , hobbies, children, etc interferes with this. Probably other people’s psychology doesn’t work this way, and those people wouldn’t enjoy being poly."
I can't help but think of the "secondary partner" here and how they view this. Does that person also have a primary partner to whom they're the most important? If so, there's no problem, but otherwise, I can't imagine that this can't result in at least one person feeling pretty bad (and the others feeling at least a bit guilty over it) unless they're not interested in attachment much or just care about occasional sex.
Right. That's what's behind all these ladies with two or three nerd boyfriends. A humorously logical solution to the geek gender gap...not enough women to go around...OK, we'll share!
If it works reasonably well for everyone, I can't complain. Life is full of suboptimal solutions that are still better than the pessimal solution. I mean, like it or not, sometimes, as in the old Christopher Cross song, love is the best that you can do. Absent a lunar collision with New York, of course.
I can't help but wonder how much the success of that arrangement requires long term and consistent use of birth control. In terms of raising a child, child support in cases of separation, etc. it sounds like a nightmare.
It is common for many people to have primary partners, while being secondary partners of others. There are also people, who often use the term "solo poly", who like being a secondary partner but also like being able to go home and be alone.
I enjoyed reading this more than the original post, go figure. The polls at the start were particularly interesting. That said, I think you're interpreting them a bit too favorably? Polygamy is largely an opt-in method of romance, while monogamy is the default, something you opt out of. I'm pretty sure that boosts the satisfaction numbers for polyamory, since anyone who doesn't like it will just, y'know, choose a different style of romance. Meanwhile, miserable monogamists remain monogamous, yet still the group as a whole is relationally satisfied and generally happy. Comparable outcomes actually favor monogamy as a superior option, at least on the macro scale.
Still, I think the data supports a lesser form of your argument, the idea that polygamy is valuable as an available alternative to the norm. Seems like it can make a select group of people happier than they might otherwise be. Good ole market economics at work. Except with love I guess.
Decent point, though a little part of me wants to give you pushback anyway. Not eating food is also technically a default option, but anyone who picks the "default" isn't going to be around for very long. Romance is sort of like that, but on a larger scale. Any individual person can "default" to having no relationship, but that just isn't sustainable for a population. Inevitably, we have to default to some method(s?) of romance, not an avoidance of it altogether. Or we could collectively decide to be the last humans, I suppose, but where's the fun in that?
Well a lot of people are counting on a singularity within our lifetimes to make the point moot without necessarily turning out as human extinction. (Or if not the full transcendent-silicon-gods package, at least technological advances i.e. artificial wombs that will fundamentally alter reproduction trends much more than sexual mores could hope to.)
Alright, fair enough. I hadn't considered the route of technological usurpation. Maybe there is a way forward that doesn't involve romance as the default option.
One relevant statistic from Aella's survey that this post didn't include is the percent of survey-takers in each group:
Fully monogamous: 59.5%
Mostly monogamous: 22.4%
Slightly monogamous: 7.7%
Slightly polyamorous: 3.9%
Mostly polyamorous: 3.7%
Fully polyamorous: 2.9%
If you buy the story that it's best to be at an extreme and bad to be in the middle, it's notable that most (66%) of the people on the monogamous side of the spectrum are at the "fully monogamous" extreme, while only 28% of the people on the polyamorous half are "fully polyamorous".
You could also think about this in terms of the intention-to-treat vs. per-protocol distinction. Of the people who intend to be polyamorous, what fraction manage to follow the protocol, and how do things go for the ones who do and the ones who don't? And similarly for the monogamy treatment? The surveys didn't exactly ask these questions, but we could use the spectrum question as a rough approximation of the answer, assuming that the "fully" people are the ones successfully following that protocol and the mostly/slightly groups are the ones with the intention who aren't following the protocol. On that interpretation, both protocols work pretty well if followed, and the monogamy protocol is much easier to follow.
The graph of children by length of relationship is fascinating. It shows that poly relationships' number children jumps up for relationships longer than 18 years, compared to anything lower. It seems highly unlikely that poly people just decide to start having kids that long into a relationship (especially with how it becomes harder to have kids after your early 30s--for 18 year relationship starting when you're 20, you'd be 38 at least by this point). So I think this graph is strong evidence of one or both of cohort effects (e.g. polyamory is rare, but becoming more common over time, so the average poly person in 2003 and even in 2008 might be very different) and selection effects (the kind of people who stay in poly relationships for 2 decades are different from those who stay in them for even 15 years). The former intuitively seems likely to be stronger to me; does anyone have any idea which one is bigger or why? (There could also be overlap between these 2 effects--i.e. are you the kind of person who was poly in 2003 *and* stayed together 20 years, or the kind who was poly in 2008 *and* stayed together 15 years?)
Hmmm, if someone is in a long-term relationship, starting out mono, but become poly, I wonder how that's reflected in the data? I guess it's all self-report. I also wonder how selection effects of the poll itself impact these results. Scott has pointed out that overall, polls of selected subsets often show correlations that hold up in broader samples. But Aella's polls are mostly done on Twitter or other websites; maybe there's stronger selection effects among older people? Not sure how that would select for people with kids though.
1) “fully poly/mono people are more satisfied with their poly/mono relationships than people who are not fully poly/mono” feels like a tautology, and therefore kind of a meaningless result.
2) All the results you show from the Aella survey are referenced to the primary partner. Does this provide an accurate picture? Having a secondary partner could impact your overall life satisfaction independent of the quality of your primary relationship. Or maybe a bad secondary relationship would make your primary look better by comparison. What about people who are nobody’s primary?
Thanks for this - especially your last question. That's something that was bugging me but I didn't put my finger on it. Presumably there are lots of people in poly communities that are not a primary and don't have a primary. Continual third wheel types. Surely this is a less-good situation for them, but I haven't seen anything about them from Scott or elsewhere.
I think for a lot of people, being in relationship(s) without being a primary partner is an ideal situation that fits their needs.
Different people have different life balances and different needs, not being someone's primary partner often opens up a lot more freedom to find a mutually beneficial balance.
Granted, for some people it's probably not ideal, but I think it's a question of comparing that to a counterfactual which isn't necessarily obvious.
Two possible survey questions can shed light on some of these unknowns in the future.
1. If you could enter into some form of a multi-marriage legal status, would you do it?
Obviously this is already legal in many places around the world, typically in the one male to many female format. But I think it is fair to say we're talking about poly in the western context where this is generally illegal. This could elucidate if the polycule structure exists and has a true level of commitment behind it for legal, social, etc. status or opinons about that type of status.
I think a genuine group marriage would be legally very difficult to administer if by marrying one person you had to marry everyone else already in that marriage. What rights and what fraction of resoruces could be claimed in a divorce and why? If you get 1/3 by breaking up a 3 way marriage, do the same rules of 'dependency' apply with alimony etc. with or without kids for a 'certain lifestyle' or whatever.
How would a divorce work? If a woman married into an existing male-female marriage out of interest for the male...would the other pre existing female owe alimony payments to the other woman if she left? Would she be married to the other woman? If this is a choice, what does marriage even mean or convey with such diverse subsets of rules for each scenario? Cheating can't exactly be a set of clear cut grounds for divorce in such a situation, unless it is sex with someone outside the marriage trio, which draws into question how the poycule formed in the first place. Is this already true in a de facto way to some degree in serial marriages where the new wife loses out on resources sent to the old wife?
Anyhow it would show if there were any kind of genuine and long term financial and familiar desire to legally link themselves through multi and or group marriage structures. I'd guess this would be quite unpopular in practice and we'd see even lower rates of utilisation of such a legal arrangement compared to same sex or opposite sex 2 person marriages.
2. If you have children, how many years of your child's life have been spent with you, or the other parent, as a single parent household? Plus age and number of children to help with statistics on this question.
And
2b. How many significant romantic/sexual partners have you had during your children's life while they were under 18 who are no longer present in the same way?
While poly people may have fewer children, the issue of understanding children's welfare could be better understood. We currently have a huge data set on the impacts of divorce and other factors in mono relationships on children's welfare and mental health, but we mostly have hand waving speculation about western poly childhoods, however limited in number they may be. Looking to polygamy in some religious communities tends to not shed much light on the status of polycule children, but I noted the other commenter talking about single mothers hanging out in the orbit and fringes of poly groups as lower status and temporary partners and this is concerning.
This question set can be parred with poly vs mono status and others to tease apart the impacts on children in a direct way. Even with serial marriages or multi person poly situations, the rate of introducing more people into your child's life is a factor creating instability. A stable mono or poly situation with the same 2 or 3 adults in a child's life the whole time is very different than some mono situation of a new husband or wife every 3 years or a poly situation where adults are a revolving door of abandonment for the child.
By anecdote what I've seen is disorganised communities of single mothers and children leading poor quality lives with many half siblings and various deadbeat dads, abusive or disinterested step parents, and distracted mothers in a lower income hippie community practicing poly, free love, Osho, etc. While single child status has grown, not so much in these scenarios and the tenuous or missing relationships with various half siblings and step parents or partners coming and going has had significant detrimental impacts on those children whom I know as adults from a somewhat still ongoing Osho related community with a diverse palette of poly structures and its fallout.
The ephemeral and abandonment issue for children is explored here along with the sheer number of such encounters. To truly get into this issue would require several questions likely unsuitable for most surveys, but this can be a good indicator of how much disruption and abandonment a child is experiencing due to their parents appetites for serial mono or fluid poly environments.
In general we have structural information in how few children are had in poly relationships as a percentage and how often questions around children and their welfare seem to come as a surprise or are things people in poly situations haven't seem to thought about very much.
That sort of fresh faced and somewhat startled 'huh'? one tends to get from poly people around children is indicative of the life focus and goals of those in poly vs mono in my view. Children seem like an afterthought and pre-planning their welfare and circumstances with sacrifices in lifestyle made by the parent for the children has not been a dominant and or even extant concern or topic of conversation, at least not beyond the hypothetical. Not to say every mono parent is focused on their children and many are self-indulgent or drug addicts more interested in the bottle. But still, I'd argue the question of how children will fit into your life as an urgent priority with practical impacts on ones' life is more of a focus in mono vs poly western relationships, though with subpar outcomes as seen in high divorce rates and single parent households.
Fundamentally one can be more focused and dedicated to creating a life focused on creating and raising children or one can be more focused on their romantic and sexual partner. This isn't a clear mono vs poly dividing line and many people are raised by parents who are more interested in other things such as work, their own ego, hobbies, friends, sex, romantic partners, other family/siblings, prior or new marriages, status, or other factors than the child or children.
While poly remains a more fringe cultural element in the west, it seems likely it has attracted those who are more interested in personal satisfaction and relationship dynamics with other adults. Perhaps that could change, but it seems doubtful poly would ever become widespread or common in the western context as a polycule or group marriage structure.
This is compared to a polygamous arrangement of multiple wives in Islam where the goal and social customs are focused on having more children raised to worship god and sister-wife relationships instead of sexual exploration, though this is admittedly rare and more of a high status/wealthy person situation in modern Islam from what I understand and while I've met many Muslim people I don't know any families who have multiple wife marriages. The goal of most western polycules does not seem to be on maximising the number of children they have or honour god. Their primary focus is on their adult relationships in my experience.
1. I suspect the alimony situation would be resolved in whatever manner most benefited the lower-earning partners, i.e. usually the women. In practice this would serve as a disincentive to high-earning men to maintain multiple wives as they would then face double alimony if things go south. Theoretically you could see high-status women having the same problem, i.e. if Taylor Swift decided to have two husbands and they both broke up with her she might have big bills to pay. (Though Taylor Swift in particular would never do that...too off-brand.)
2. Yeah, that was always my big concern. I actually do think Scott and his wife and whoever they're dating will work this out, but I wonder once this goes mainstream if you're going to see more of exactly what you've described.
Self-identified comparisons between poly and mono seems incredibly biased, since identifying as poly will be disproportionately affected by survivorship bias. Many more people have probably attempted to be poly and given up than vice versa.
You are polling high openness, highly educated, high income individuals who are actively in successful polyamorous relationships and comparing them to, well... everyone else.
I would also say that certain failure modes for poly-like activities are not identified as poly - for instance pretty much all cheating could be identified as poorly-conducted poly (not talking to your partner first or whatever), but is instead identified as a failure to maintain monogamy.
I was thinking about the woman who complains that her husband is jealous about her male bestie who speak chats with once a week. Um wtf??? She’s cultivating a back-up husband to his face. Women look for the same things in men for romance as for friendship. So, the bestie is definitely competing. The bigger issue is that she feels the need to cultivate the bestie. Like, she might value her husband but she is definitely looking to add another man.
There are plenty of happily married people who stay friends with exes. Exes are also sometimes co-parents as well and so it's something more than friendship. Once you've really committed to someone and built something solid, exes don't present a threat.
I thought that whole scenario was weird. Like, the guy is way over the top controlling, but she's giving him really good reasons for that in the specific case! It's not like she has a group of friends that includes some guys (perhaps a group hobby). She's straight up having a very personal relationship with a single specific guy.
I don't look for the same things in men for romance as for friendship. I grew up with lots of brothers and I like men in that friendship way and am in no way cultivating a back-up husband. I want different things from my husband. This is like 25 years in, so long track record.
Your comment and some of its replies gave me some insight into what people think. I had read that example as an example of clearly unhealthy and toxic behavior on the part of the husband.
I guess it speaks to how varied the default assumptions may be, and the importance of communicating these expectations prior to it becoming a point of conflict.
There is a possible effect where, because monogamy is the default, a higher proportion of its practitioners do it per-protocol - in which case equal outcomes would mean an advantage for monogamy. (Because if someone tries poly and it goes catastrophically they'll likely not try it again, whereas monogamous people would likely keep at it.)
Or the opposite effect could be true due to poly people being much more analytical towards their relationships?
I imagine the way to try and look for this is asking several concrete questions about social and economic status but also about "love languages" sort of thing, plus the sorts of questions already asked. And then you could do a sort of Prosperity Score Matching analysis on responses to see whether these results are still there when sufficiently similar people are compared. Not sure how big a sample you'd need to do this properly though.
>In either case, the ban is now expired, and the prohibition on polygamy rests on questionable legal footing.
It is important to remember that polygamy =/= polyamory. Polygamy, particularly as practiced by ancient Jews, was multiple women married to one man. So while it is possible polygamy is koshor for Orthodox Jews, if there isn't a marriage relationship and if there is more than one guy involved at a time then its not.
It makes sense that most societies used to be polygamous. It preserves family lines by ensuring each child in the family has the same father (vital in societies where inheritance travels through the male line, which is most of them), and from a reproductive perspective it's efficient. Adding another woman to a polygamous marriage means the family can have one more kid a year (realistically every two or three years based on weaning, but you know what I mean). Adding another male to a poly marriage doesn't increase the number of kids the family can have at all (assuming everyone is fertile).
Since polyamorous people today don't seem concerned with complicated inheritance situations, or having a lot of kids, there doesn't seem to be much parallel between historical polygamy and modern polyamory.
If I were a well-known writer with important things to say about rationality and altruism and x-risk and so forth, then I'd probably concentrate on spending my weirdness points writing about those, rather than pissing them up the wall defending polyamory.
Agreed, but it may damage your credibility in other areas. Piss off enough people and you can actually get censored.
Imagine if he's arguing against a company that developed AGI in Congress and the software developer pays bots or trolls to spread rumors he's an asexual polyamorist, discrediting him on the right. (He already has a bad name on the left...)
Ah, but lots of rationalists/originators of A.I. risk thought/etc. are in fact poly, and Scott has no power to induce them to change that. Trying to defend polyamory's reputation might very well be necessary to getting those causes to be taken more seriously.
Many years ago, in a slatestarcodex subreddit comment thread I can't find, in response to my argument much the same as yours, Scott said (paraphrased, the fog of memory, grain of salt, etc) that polyamory only costs weirdness points with people he doesn't consider to matter, and it's neutral to positive with those that do. I assume his position has not changed.
The current dyspepsia over monogamy is just another facet of Epicurean self-absorption. It was all the rage in the early 1970s, but wore out its welcome pretty quick. Polyester bell-bottoms and mutton chops were in style.
> The happiest polycules I know are asexual people. The second happiest are people who have sex so frequently and compulsively that it’s impossible for them to be angry with their partner for sleeping around because not-sleeping-around seems as impossible to them as falling upward. Autistic is third (and sometimes overlaps with the previous two categories). Trans people in polycules tend to go either very well or very very badly, no in-between.
I don't understand how this is not at the top of every discussion about this subject!!! I feel like these obviously explanatory demographic facts take all of the mystery and intrigue out of it. Asexual people! And to think some want to make this part of the culture war...
> I found Some Guy’s concern about the abuse risk of having an extra person in the house to be thought-provoking and something I hadn’t considered before.
You asked hypothetically in your comment response in the thread if single moms should be discouraged from marrying. Here is my anecdote - I am a single mom of a girl and decided at the time of divorce a couple years ago that I will not remarry while my daughter is a minor for this exact reason. Stepdad abuse is so common that this is an obvious decision to me. Not cohabitating with a man for the next 15 years is a cost am willing to bear pretty easily, and it wouldn’t even break the top three in a list of sacrifices I have made for my child.
You must have one of the most thoughtful comment sections on Substack. I thought I had read through most of the comments on the original post, but I guess I hadn't.
I'm not sure if this point has been addressed prior or not, but based on my very anecdotal evidence, poolyamory is more prevalent in the LGBT community. My wife and I are in a monogomous relationship however, I would say 80% of our gay male friends are in an open relationship, not necessarily 100% poly. Women and NB relationships are 50/50. When I see a same sex couple I now assume they're in an open relationship.
As far as I can tell, as an outside observer, when "done right" all of the partners seem to be extremely happy and satisfied with the relationship, unfortunately not many do it right (lack of education, communication, pure novelty, they were pressured into it, etc.) and it's cause for more drama than it's worth.
I always figured this was partly because LGBT people are already selected for willingness to challenge traditional relationship norms, and because there's less of a pre-existing cultural idea of how an LGBT relationship "should" look. Also potentially because they're less likely to have to optimize around child-rearing.
I think this is a really confusing topic because there's basically only one way to be monogamous, but there are multiple ways to be polygamous.
Like the children topic. I would naively expect that children in a closed commited poly household can access better parenting than in a closed commited mono household. Poly parents have access to more parents and are better placed to specialise and play to their strengths, while mono parents are basically stuck with wage-earner or childrearer (unless they're in really unusually good or bad circumstances - like households with access to non-wage income, or households where income is so low that both parents are primarily wage-earners and no one is doing much childrearing). The poly household would tend to have more flexibility - you could have one adult do full time childrearing and the other adults work, or one adult breadwinning and everyone else else do childrearing. In an idealistic utopia where polyam is legally and socially legitimate, more parents also means more access to in-law resources - experience, labour, inherited property, money.
It wouldn't shock me if, like mono marriage, poly marriages make the economics of house buying and childbearing actually attainable for a lot of people. Maybe this would be bad for mono families (poly households having a better ratio of wage earners vs mouths to feed and can better afford scarce housing?) but maybe this can be good in other ways (drives down cost of childcare if a % of households can afford to do childcare in-house).
I would speculate that a lot of the queer relationship anarchy type people make very low wages and those big open polycules allow them to live in high CoL areas on part-time pay - a member of a polycule is basically like a roommate you can't easily evict! Idk if this is widespread, but I also get the sense that a lot of these arrangements are possible due to one of the members having rich, open minded parents that let them stay in the house basically rent free. If you think about it in the find-somewhere-to-sleep way, having 8 partners is better than having 1 partner because the odds that your partner has a parent who owns a house and won't charge you rent is significantly and absurdly improved in the 8 partner scenario.
(This is what I think of the 20-something poly vs the 40-something poly, btw - I think a not insignificant portion of the 20 somethings are probably barely poly, and have a strong preference for not being homeless over a preference for their partner to exclusively sleep with them. The 40 somethings tend to be better at asserting boundaries because a bad breakup probably won't leave them homeless!)
I do agree with a lot of commenters pointing out that open polyam would probably be bad for children. I don't think having a constantly shifting cast of adults in their life is great for child development, regardless of how amicably their parents deal with parting - even amicable divorces aren't super great for the kids. Luckily for us, at the moment, the trend seems to be that people who prefer open relationships also prefer not to have kids.
Although, maybe I'm just speaking from a space of exhaustion in a mono household - basic household management when I was single was super difficult for me and improved a little when I coupled up. My logic is that, provided both me and my partners have the emotional competence to manage it, adding more adults to the household would only improve the ratio of housework and labour as well as the ratio of earnings vs expenses. On paper, a closed polycule just seems way more resource and labour efficient.
I suspect that less children in a poly relationship can have something to do with being less bored. A mono relationship means that you are mostly hanging out just with a single person and the only option to add someone else is to give birth to them. In a poly relationship you can just add an already grown up interesting person to hang out with which is much less trouble than raising a child.
I am bewildered what toxic people many of the comments talk about. I know a few poly people and constellation, and they are... well, pretty boring.
Whatever bubble Scott lives in, mine looks exactly the same. The poly constellations are mostly about multiple romantic relationships, not about sex. It's just a few people figuring out how to arrange their lives best given the desires of the partners. Sometimes, this works out pretty well for all sides, and gives a real surplus. For example, because A can live out their adventurous side with B, and their cuddling side with C, and all are happy about it.
Sometimes, not all sides get exactly what they want. For example, a good friend of mine would spend more quality time with B alone, but B likes spending their time with the whole group of partners. But that's pretty much the same as in mono relationships, where A would like to have more sex with B, or go on more adventures with B, and B doesn't want that.
Obviously, some people are good at negotiating their desires. It helps a lot to be open about their desires in the first place. I think poly relationship work really well for these people, and give a true surplus. I happen to live in a bubble where almost all people I know are pretty good at that. This goes for my family (which is *ridiculously* good at integration; my uncle cheated on my ex-aunt and had twins with a younger women; a few years later all five of them get along pretty well and come together to the annual Christmas celebration of the family). Also, basically all my friends are like this. Heck, from what I know, my colleagues at work are also like this. I really don't know a lot of people who are bad at this type of relationship things. I think most of them would find poly nice if they tried (some do), some of them would find it better than mono, but they get along well either way. On some level it's not the big life-changer for them, it's more on the level of having different flavors of icecream. I would be really sad if strawberry was the only icecream flavor that society would allow, but I would get over it and still be able to live a happy life.
The big exception for me is my family-in-law, which is not good at relationships. So I know that there is this strange world of people out there who suck at relationships, and I get a glance every few months (they live far away). I assume these people suck at either poly or mono, but probably poly is worse for them because you can screw up with more partners. But I don't know a lot of these people. I can 100% relate to everything Scott describes about poly, because this is how it would look for almost everyone I know.
Unfortunately I know a lot of people like your in-laws and believe that they are a significant majority of all people. My fear is that you are correct that poly relationships are significantly worse for them as well, which means that whatever happens to increase the acceptability of poly relationships disproportionately increases it among people who will be least served by any gains and more hurt by any problems.
My bigger concern is that a more permissive society is burning through effective Schelling Points that benefit most of society but *especially children and raising a successful future generation*. No-fault divorce - maybe good for adults, bad for kids. Gay marriage - maybe good for adults, bad for kids (far fewer kids at least). Decline in marriage rates - maybe good for adults, bad for kids (far fewer kids again). More sexual partners in a lifetime - maybe good for adults, bad for kids (far fewer kids, more exposure to potentially abuse step-parents).
I don't actually think these things are good for adults either, but that's much more complicated and I tend to take a libertarian "let people make their own decisions" approach. I don't think there's much doubt that each step has been bad for kids, either the actual lives of the kids, or the fact that each contributes to there simply being less kids.
I see humanity moving towards lab grown children raised communally by people who are good at it and who like doing it. Good for adults, good for kids, good for humanity. The quality of life for most women will improve dramatically if we can turn off our reproductive systems.
"The quality of life for most women will improve dramatically if we can turn off our reproductive systems."
Yes, now they can freeze their eggs until their employer has squeezed the last drop of usefulness out of them so they can be discarded in favour of cheap younger labour or AI, and are now free to have a baby in their sixties, if they've saved enough money for IVF and hiring a surrogate.
I was referring to the elimination of hormone cycling, periods, and all the resulting impacts to daily quality of life. Having been on medication now for a few years that eliminates it all (to treat endometriosis), I am stunned at how different life is on this side. It makes me angry to be honest. Also - pregnancy and childbirth are horrific experiences for many many women (myself included). I feel a profound sadness that my daughter too will have to suffer through the bs of the female reproductive system.
Re: the productive worker bee stuff, that wasn’t my point at all.
I must admit that for kids I have little experience because most of my poly friends are gay and don't have kids. I only know one who is in a threelationship with kids (which works well).
I am unsure how it would turn out for kids in general. I think in principle kids profit from additional caretakers, which traditionally were other family members or (like for me) neighbours. It is not good for kids that this has reduced to a tiny core family, even though this means less people who can be at tension with each other. (And less sexual abuse. Uncles and other relatives are traditionally among the main child abusers.) Poly relationships act in the opposite direction and give additional caretakers, which is in principle a good thing for the kids. But if the constellation fluctuates a lot, then this counteracts the positive effects.
But I think a lot less rosy about the childhood of previous generations. My mother is psychologist and has treated abused and neglected children for almost 50 years. I agree that some of your points are not good for some children. But there are also lots of children who were beaten into permanent damage by abusive dads. Nowadays, it is a lot easier for women to escape from such a relationship, in order to protect their children. And if I look into the literature from the early 20th century, it seems that whole generations of children were traumatized by the coldness of their parents, especially their fathers'. Parents were a lot less attached to their kids. When my grandmother's sister, Maria, died, well, her parents just called the next child Maria because one Maria is as well as the other.
Apart from that, there are also new Schelling points. Corporeal punishments are now illegal in most (soon all) of EU, and have become a lot less common. If parents mistreat their children, then this is no longer the parents' proper right, but school and society and institutions are supposed to care about that. Even if it does not always work, there is a consensus in society that parents are not allowed to mistreat their children. I think this is a pretty new thing.
By the way, I would really avoid conflating "less kids are born" with "existing kids are less happy". Those are completely different categories for me, and it is not obvious to me that the first one is bad.
"When my grandmother's sister, Maria, died, well, her parents just called the next child Maria because one Maria is as well as the other."
Do you know this is the real reason, or are you just assuming that was the motivation? People often reused 'family' names, where there might be a set of names (like Maria or Thomas or James or Ellen) which were traditional in the family. So "one Maria is as good as the other" isn't because they don't care that the first daughter died. People used to use names of dead relatives as a means of honouring and remembering them.
Just glibly assuming that "we're so modern and cool and invested in our kids so that's why I have no kids, because I care *too* much; previous generations had tons of kids because they didn't care about them any more than dogs care about their litters" is a horribly snobby way of looking at our ancestors. Maybe your great-grandparents were uncaring, or maybe they just weren't 'creative' enough to name a daughter Kayleigh, Myqkella, or Sloan Butterfly X59 Traction Engine.
Indeed, nowadays you're more likely to run into the mindset that animals love their babies too just like humans - see the discussion on meat-eating about weeping cow mothers.
I'm old enough to remember when Scott spent time writing about the ever-growing plight of lonely, miserable, nerdy men... rather than trying to explain that we should change society so high-status, attractive, sociable people dominate the relationship market even more than they already do. But I guess being high-status for long enough makes you forget. I look forward to his future article on whether it's possible to eat too much caviar.
Caviar? He's going to talk about the right places to buy your own island, and how to best distribute the ownership of your mansion within your polycule.
It's true though. When you're successful long enough, you're usually surrounded by successful people, and their concerns become your concerns.
Where does this idea, that normalization of polyamory will decrease nerdy guys chances at relationships, even come from?
The conventionally attractive high status rich people are dating each other now in serial monogamy equilibrium and will keep doing it just the same in a more polyamory friendly equilibrium. I don't see how it affects dating prospects of lonely nerds with poor social skills at all. The real difference is in the supply of women who are into nerdy men. Currently when one of them finds herself a nerdy boyfriend she is, at least temporary, removed from the supply. But if polyamory is an option - then she is not. Instead of a million pairs and a million lonely guys there can be a million 2 guys 1 girl polycules.
It would be nice if that were true, but there's no reason to believe the gender ratios that arise from free polygamous choice will happen to match the actual demographics. Why would the girl (who has many options) choose two guys less desirable than her, rather than joining a 1 guy 3 girl polycule with somebody really awesome? That's pretty much the way polygamy worked in the past - great if you're the Emperor or Sultan or Khan, not so good for the average male: https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/neolithic-culture-may-have-kept-most-men-from-mating/
> Why would the girl (who has many options) choose two guys less desirable than her, rather than joining a 1 guy 3 girl polycule with somebody really awesome?
Isn't it obvious? Because there are a lot of women who would rather have multiple admirers than be a fangirl №5. I would be moderately surprised if such women are not the majority of the population.
> but there's no reason to believe the gender ratios that arise from free polygamous choice will happen to match the actual demographics.
As a matter of fact, there are several. In general polyamory allows more degrees of freedom so better odds to fit a given demographics. More specifically, the ability to have several partners reduces the selection pressure for a particular partner and allows more specilization. Mono relationship push standards to the extreme. You would like a partner who is everything in one package because there is no option to divercify.
> That's pretty much the way polygamy worked in the past - great if you're the Emperor or Sultan or Khan, not so good for the average male
Average male in the past was a poor farmer. And average woman a trade good. It's not hard to notice that modern world is quite different. As the political and economical power between genders is more equalized and average wealth has skyrocketed, polyandry can be as widespreaded as polygyny. We went much closer to the bonobo part of the spectrum and these guys do not suffer from the lack of sex, to put it mildly.
So, I'll be honest, I was indeed making an unexamined assumption in my (bitter) initial post and you've made me think about it a bit harder. So, good work. But I still don't think you've countered my central point that there's no reason for local choices to match the global demographics, and the mismatch will massively increase misery.
> In general polyamory allows more degrees of freedom so better odds to fit a given demographics.
Nobody's trying to fit the demographics, though! Everyone's just making local choices. To oversimplify (a lot), in monogamy, with a 50/50 split between men and women, you trend towards the most desirable 5% pairing up, the next most desirable 5%, etc. You can see why this is fairly stable. It still fails, mind you - in a smaller group like the nerd community you might have skewed gender ratios, leading to men having far worse and fewer options as all the nerd-friendly women get better matches. Thus misery.
Polyamory (and, to a lesser extent, hookup culture) makes this mismatch apply even to the global population. If there's some statistical trend that, say, 50% of women only want to polycule (or hook up) with the top 10% of men, then that happens, and you end up with large pools of men with absolutely no hope for love (or sex). And ANY statistical trend except perfect balance causes this. As far as I can tell this is exactly what's happened to the dating market over the last few decades, and widespread polyamory will make it even worse.
> More specifically, the ability to have several partners reduces the selection pressure for a particular partner and allows more specilization.
I agree that this is interesting, but I don't think it affects my argument. It just means that there's good incentive for all the desirable people making polycules to add more members (links in the graph). Doesn't really affect distribution, or help those of us in the outcast population.
Anyway, thanks for some good pushback. This is all just armchair philosophizing (not to mention massively oversimplified) and who really knows? Religion is mostly dead (good riddance), high-status hedonists run the world, polyamory is probably going to happen (because they - and Scott - want it), and in a few decades we'll have actual statistics to go on.
1. I suspect that to really compare between number of kids between poly/mono people, you need to control for LGBT status. LGBT people seem to have kids much less than straight cis people, even when doing "traditional monogamy".
I would suspect (anecdotally) that LGBT people may also be more likely to be poly - some LGBT people I've known have in general been more likely to question common societal norms around sex and relationships, as they're already outside the mainstream in one way, and I'd expect this to correlate with poly status. (Also anecdotally, some LGBT people I've known have had big misunderstandings of straight cis dating culture, taking some things to be arbitrary which have good reasons, because they overlooked child-rearing completely.)
2. I live in a European country which is in some ways more gender-egalitarian than the US median but also has a substantial Muslim minority. I suspect that greater legal recognition for poly relationships would hit a major stumbling block with regards to this population for two reasons.
The first is that this population may practice polygyny in ways that are bad for women (I am not actually sure if it is but it seems that way from the outside to the broader culture). Muslim polygyny does seem different in some important ways from the more feminist-derived Bay Area poly culture.
The second is that there is already a (IMO overblown, but that's another question) panic about Muslim immigration, which could be increased if a man were allowed to bring over more than one wife, with more accompanying minors.
Those were full of inside jokes as an 'Easter Egg' for the commenters. Hope some of you saw and enjoyed them.
"Becoming Fully Myself" is an ironic transposition of Richard Spencer's 'become who you are'. The joke is that removing context and changing wording slightly can turn a far-right slogan into a New Age title you'd skip past at Barnes and Noble.
"Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem" is an actual Gloria Steinem title from the nineties.
"Me/Myself/I: A Journey of Three and One" alludes to the love of postmodernists and some science fiction writers for slashes.
"Every Man and Woman is a Star" is, as Scott has said, a reference to Aleister Crowley's Book of the Law, a nod to an earlier 'sex-positive' ideology.
"Transgressing Boundaries: A Non-Binary, Non-Toxic, Non-Violent Journey" is a reference to the Sokal hoax, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity".
"Neutralizing Poison: The Fourth Level of Self-Healing (the first three being, of course, Curing Light Wounds, Slowing the Venom, and Banishing Blindness, and the sequel being Returning from the Underworld)" is based on 1st and 2nd edition D&D spells: Cure Light Wounds, Slow Poison, Cure Blindness, Neutralize Poison, and Raise Dead. A decidedly non-serious form of spirituality.
"The Love of an Influencer: Very Different from Conventional Love" is a reference to the Idiocracy quote, "The love of a pimp is very different from that of a square."
I would like to know how many people in Aella's survey answered Fully Mono, Fully Poly, or somewhere in the middle. It sounds like a lot of commenters have noticed 'two types' of poly people that basically boil down to those who do poly well and those who don't. Then there seems to be concern that the popularization of polyamorous relationships will cause a lot of people to attempt some form of open relationship who shouldn't and have themselves a shit show. I know your surveys aren't a good representative sample of the population, but you could ask people on your next survey if they've had experience with poly or mono, what type, and whether it worked out for them. I think the more interesting dialogue about the topic isn't whether poly is always terrible or always great, but what works and for whom. Then again - people are going to try things and fall on their face and get up again. I certainly know people for whom poly worked out and people for whom it was a shit show. I hasn't seemed to me that trying and failing at poly is all that different than trying a failing at other romances or leaves particularly more scars.
>> I think the reason most people are uncomfortable with polyamory is that it subverts the dearly-held mythology of all-conquering “true love” between soulmates that pervaded western culture for a few centuries until the last decade or-so. Years ago, Jason Pargin (of Cracked.com, back when it was still relevant) said that outsiders looking back at our culture would see romantic love as our religion, and I think he was right.
The mythology of 'true love' between 'soulmates' has some similarity to the story attributed to Aristophanes in the the Symposium by Plato.
That story gave a mythical-sounding explanation about how people were originally bonded together in a way that provided two faces, four arms, four legs...and were separated by Zeus and company. The separated couples wouldn't be whole until they found their other half, whom they could love.
This may be a cultural thread distinct from modern love stories, but it does show that the idea of a 'soulmate' isn't confined to the last few centuries.
My biggest concern would just be Chesterton's gate: monogamy comes with a set of rules that have more or less worked for most people, and with well understood failure modes. Poly relationships have to choose which rules to use, and may be more likely to fail in unpredictable ways. (As opposed to predictable ways.)
You could argue that recent changes to monogamy have removed most of the historical know how, so we're all in the same boat anyway.
i really doubt asexuals or supersexuals succeed either.
lets say im ace but romantic. here's the thing; romantic love isn't something that gets better with loving more people; there is just one me to give love. (this is applicable for sex with polygyny; the women are property because there is only one man to love and have sex with them).
the opposite for supersexual; there is no benefit to fixed partners because they crave novelty, or monogamy with a similar hi drive partner can be fine.
the thing here assumes a weird balance of being romantically or sexually promiscous but not TOO much, but in an equal sense when do relationships ever work like that?
the reality is still 2-1 power differentials. the asexual loves her partner but cant sexually satisfy him. the wife lets the husband cheat because she cant live without him. and big surprise, a big fantasy of women is being desired and doted on by two men, and of men to sleep with tons of women. if you receive or benefit its great, but i really wonder how many self-selected surveys are made of those people.
"here's the thing; romantic love isn't something that gets better with loving more people; there is just one me to give love."
This isn't obvious. There's lots of social dynamics where it doesn't follow like that. I would expect a friendship with someone to be better if they had other friends. I wouldn't necessarily expect a parent to be a worse parent per-kid given additional kids. I'd expect a therapist to be a better therapist if they have other clients.
You can argue that increased demands on scarce resources will only have negative impacts, but you'd have to be consistent and argue the same point for any resources spent on anything other than the partner. Does a close relationship with a family member detract from a romantic relationship? Is there something particular about romantic love that implies it's more subject to scarcity constraints?
Yes, it is particular. Sometimes a thing is unique; you can't compare it or universalize it.
Actually a common complaint towards men is being too close to the mother, causing friction in a romantic relationship. Another complaint is "emotional infidelity," which is being more emotionally intimate with a third party, sometimes on the sly. No sex at all.
i mean the history of deep romantic relationships hasn't shown that love can be multiplied; its weakened into promiscuity and less impact. if it were we'd have significantly less problems. its not comparable to the variety of family, kids, and friends.
We don't have a separate category for relationships in which there's no default restrictions on maternal bonds. The default is to accept maternal bonds unless it becomes an issue for the health of the relationship, in which case it's negotiated via communication. Similar to a poly relationship with additional romantic/sexual interests.
I think the idea of emotional infidelity is pretty unhealthy but fair enough if two people consent to those rules. I don't think it's typically applied to all types of close friendships.
As for your first and last point I just disagree. I don't think it gets close to showing that it's obvious that love between two people is inherently diminished by loving an additional person.
So Scott has challenged me to operationalize why I think polyamory is bad.
Challenge accepted!
I will make the following predictions (reasoning bellow)
1. Polyamorous relationships of more than 2 people will have a "rate of divorce" approximately 3 times higher than monogamous relationships
(where a "divorce" is defined as at least one member of the n-tuple no longer having a romantic relationship with at least one of the other members )
2. Polyamorous n-tuples are much less likely to share income or assets (meaning shared by all members of the n-tuple)
And this is related to
3. Polyamorous n-tuples having less children (already confirmed by the survey)
1. Is because in a 3 person relationship there are actually 3 binary relationships. Triple the binary relationships means triple opportunity for divorce
(technically though this means the expected rate of divorce would be 1-(1-p)^3
If p is the rate of divorce for monogamous couples than the rate of non-divorce should for troples should be (1-p)^3. Necessary caveat since otherwise point 1 would mean probabilities greater than 1)
2. Is expected from 1. If you think relationships might end you are less likely to risk losing your assets in that case.
3. Follows from 1 and 2 because having kids almost requires you share assets. For one thing major expenses like child care or a bigger house to fit kids are expenses everyone has. For another, if you aren't secure enough to keep a joint bank account, how could you expect to keep a kid together.
And I would posit that this shows that polyamorous people are not as committed as they say. Meaning that, the reason they aren't having kids is because they are not committed.
The realtionships might last long (atleast 1 out of the 3 might last long or longer than the average binary marriage)
But if it's not the case that "all 3 of the relationships" are expected to last than that reduces the sense of security of all 3 of them. One of the 3 may last by dumb luck. But it was not a "lasting commitment" that lasts because it was expected to from the outset.
And to me this goes to the core of what relationships are "supposed" to be about. They are about being able to invest in each other: emotionally, financially, physically etc even when it is not the case that both partners are "gaining" from the investment. It's about being able to sacrifice for your partner because you have the expectation that this relationship will last for your whole life and in the course of the next 70 years your partner will sacrifice for you.
"The happiest polycules I know are asexual people. The second happiest are people who have sex so frequently and compulsively that it’s impossible for them to be angry with their partner for sleeping around because not-sleeping-around seems as impossible to them as falling upward."
I think that points to an issue with sex-mediated long-term attachment. Apparently during sex significant amounts of oxytocin are released and that is related to long-term bonding. Asexual people might lack in this due to low sexual activity, while compulsive sexual behaviour might decrease oxytocin release in each act (as the ability to produce oxytocin is likely limiited).
This seems like a testeable hypothesis.
It might also have a genetic component, and someone could find a polyamory polygenetic score.
In any case, this type of biological explanation might make everyone happy: normies can rest assured that polyamory will not work for them or most people because they lack the unusual oxytocine (or whatever it is) phenotype, while polyamorous people can claim that they polyamory works for them because they are different and should be respected.
The point about having a second child is a good point, and one I'm not precisely sure how to answer. Roughly, though, there seems to be a major difference between creating someone and then loving them, and loving someone who already exists. Why people have children is a complex question, but I would assume and/or hope that a selfless desire to bring someone into the world and give them a good life is at least as important as a personal desire to have someone else to love you. In any case, what I'd like to know is *why* people have a desire for a second partner. What's wrong with their current partner, why are they not enough for you? It's definitely not like a friend who is, by definition, not a maximally close relationship; if they were they'd be a lover. Much like abortion, if there's a good reason for it, and crucially *if people recognise that they need a good reason for it to be acceptable!* then my attitude to it will be *inconceivably* different to when it's "I don't need a reason, I can do whatever I want".
Do you accept you need a reason, and if so what are the reasons people think they need to be polyamorous?
I'm not convinced about it not being mostly about sex. The asexuals could be an exception, but it's 5%! And measuring sex drive is meaningless when there could be numerous people with high sex drives in monogamous relationships who are controlling it, or finding a way to channel it into their existing relationship. Indeed, there *should* be numerous such people; that's exactly what anti-polyamory people are saying you should be doing! (not eliminating your sex drive). Also, lots of people are bringing up incompatible sex drives within monogamy as a reason for polyamory, in these comments. You're saying it's not about sex but the pro-poly comments are saying otherwise! I wonder if those people realise that conservatives are the ones who advocate sexual obligations within marriage; sexual frustration is the fault of the progressive ideology where the highest moral law is always "whatever *I* want".
And *also*, even if it's not about sex right now that won't remain so. Say it's 2010 and a feminist says that all rape accusations should be believed without question. And let's say you have ironclad evidence that there are absolutely zero false accusations being made currently. Do you support that policy? No you don't, because you can be sure that that will change once accusations start being automatically believed. Currently polyamory may be fringe enough that it's attracting principled people who aren't just looking for more sex (though see my doubts above). But you're trying to normalise it, to make it less fringe. What could possibly make you think that that won't be accompanied by a massive rise in people using it as an excuse to cheat, sleep around, and otherwise indulge their base and selfish desires?
I honestly think part of it is that we have made (1) romantic/erotic love the be-all and end-all, *this* is True Love and other loves are in second place or not even considered as such (2) marriage is, or should be, *only* for romantic love and (3) marriage has become the basket into which *everything* is stuffed. Your spouse is not only your spouse, now (the ideal is) they are your soulmate (I *hate* the damn notion of soulmates), your best friend, the person who is your primary emotional support, the one who shares your interests, the one who goes along with your fun hobbies, and the one who completes you (whatever the heck *that* is supposed to mean).
That's an awful lot to dump on a fellow human who is struggling with work and family life themselves! And while I won't say it's *impossible* for someone to meet all that, I think it's hard and maybe harder than it needs to be. So people can't be all that, so one or the other partner goes looking for something outside that. Often that results in cheating, because we've bigged up romantic love so much (and the problem of jealousy; see the complaints about 'my wife is spending too much time talking to her male best friend' and the comments about 'she's setting up a backup husband') and that breaks up marriages, or results in the r/otherwoman sub-reddit where women are in long-term affairs and complaining that he won't leave his wife for them.
More honest/cynical people just have an open marriage or some other arrangement where "you sleep around but be discreet and I pretend I don't know". Like our friend Saph, very open about "if I want sex with this person, I'm going to have it, and if my spouse objects that's a them problem and I'll just cheat".
The more idealistic types go for polyamory. Now they can have Partner who shares my niche interests, Romantic Partner, emotional support Partner, and spouse/primary/whatever they want to call it too!
I think if we were a little more relaxed about "if you have a problem, you're going to talk to your best friend Mike or Sue first, not me, and that is not emotional affair or cheating", we'd take a lot of the impetus out of "I'm not 100% happy in 100% areas so I need an affair/open marriage/divorce".
As for the rest of it? Yeah, it's sex (for guys and unknown percentage of women) and emotional connections (for women and unknown percentage of guys). The talk about New Relationship Energy is that pink fluffy clouds stage of being in love, and since we've made romantic love this big idol of life, now if that wears off (which inevitably it will do, to make way for more settled, deeper, mature love) once that goes, the notion we've inculcated is that this means you don't love your partner any more and must find new partner who this time you surely will always feel the romantic tingle.
To quote 1941 letter of Tolkien to his son Michael:
"This 'friendship' has often been tried: one side or the other nearly always fails. …The other partner will let him (or her) down, almost certainly, by 'falling in love'. But a young man does not really (as a rule) want 'friendship', even if he says he does. There are plenty of young men (as a rule). He wants love: innocent, and yet irresponsible perhaps. 'Allas! Allas! that ever love was sinne!' as Chaucer says. Then if he is a Christian and is aware that there is such a thing as sin, he wants to know what to do about it.
There is in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times are inimical to it …Yet I still think it has dangers. It is not wholly true, and it is not perfectly 'theocentric'. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the young man turn cynical.) To forget their desires, needs and temptations. It inculcates exaggerated notions of 'true love', as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a 'love' that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts).
…No good pretending. Men just ain't, not by their animal nature. Monogamy (although it has long been fundamental to our inherited ideas) is for us men a piece of 'revealed' ethic, according to faith and not to the flesh. Each of us could healthily beget, in our 30 odd years of full manhood, a few hundred children, and enjoy the process. Brigham Young (I believe) was a healthy and happy man. It is a fallen world, and there is no consonance between our bodies, minds, and souls.
However, the essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called 'self-realization' (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify & direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him – as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are told that — even those brought up 'in the Church'. Those outside seem seldom to have heard it. When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find. The real soul-mate too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along. Someone whom they might indeed very profitably have married, if only —. Hence divorce, to provide the 'if only'. And of course they are as a rule quite right: they did make a mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgement concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to. You really do very little choosing: life and circumstance do most of it (though if there is a God these must be His instruments, or His appearances). It is notorious that in fact happy marriages are more common where the 'choosing' by the young persons is even more limited, by parental or family authority, as long as there is a social ethic of plain unromantic responsibility and conjugal fidelity. But even in countries where the romantic tradition has so far affected social arrangements as to make people believe that the choosing of a mate is solely the concern of the young, only the rarest good fortune brings together the man and woman who are really as it were 'destined' for one another, and capable of a very great and splendid love. The idea still dazzles us, catches us by the throat: poems and stories in multitudes have been written on the theme, more, probably, than the total of such loves in real life (yet the greatest of these tales do not tell of the happy marriage of such great lovers, but of their tragic separation; as if even in this sphere the truly great and splendid in this fallen world is more nearly achieved by 'failure' and suffering). In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an unfallen world. In this fallen world we have as our only guides, prudence, wisdom (rare in youth, too late in age), a clean heart, and fidelity of will."
"It's definitely not like a friend who is, by definition, not a maximally close relationship; if they were they'd be a lover"
Sex isn't inherently something that happens given a certain level of closeness. You can define it that way, but people won't agree with your definitions.
As a pollster, I loved seeing the data! Strong takeout that if you’re going to go Poly, go full Poly. But the challenge here is that this is a pretty extreme lifestyle, esp in the context of a family unit, so while it is easier for a 25 year old to explore, it seems the data implies that if you’re a married couple with kids, it is probably best not to try. As you’re unlikely to (be able to) make the full jump.
> This isn’t really how things work for me. I want my wife to definitely be the most important person in my life and vice versa. But I find I can carve out a category “secondary partner” that doesn’t interfere with this, any more than her having friends , hobbies, children, etc interferes with this.
Forgive the prying personal questions, but this is actually really important considering you are publicly using your own life as testimony to support a trend that will have dramatic consequences for other people's lives. Questions: 1) Is your wife actively having sex with other men? 2) Is she actively going on romantic one-on-one dates with other men?
I ask this because if your wife is not actively in romantic or sexual relationships, you are not actually doing polyamory (even if it is the case that you have given her permission to seek other relationships but she chooses not too). You are doing ye olde "man has wife and dalliances or mistresses on the side" which is obviously quite functional and sustainable for the man, and historically may not even bother the wife that much as long as he invested sufficient resources and romance into the wife. You owe it to your readers to tell us whether you are actually finding success in "ethical polyamory" or success in being a Charles II/Louis XVI/Allan Dulles/ Magic Johnson-style chad philanderer (you being a chad because of your prominence and success within a certain circle).
It's also a relevant question, because from what I have seen in life, men have no problem loving more than one woman at the same time, but it is far more rare for a woman to feel intense sexual/romantic love for multiple men at the same time. If a woman falls in love with a new man, the previous man often becomes less attractive and something of an annoyance.
1. Not sure, I haven't pried into this, but plausibly yes.
2. Yes, although her conception of "romantic" is weird (one of her other partners took her to a corpse dissection at a local college - I'm just mad I didn't think of that one).
"If you’re monogamous, you have to fight the natural human urge to desire people other than your partner"
What? No you don't. The rule isn't that you don't desire other people, it's: desire all you like, but stay faithful. Nobody ever said monogamy means becoming blind to every other attractive person.
> Commenters agreed with this, and said their experience was that polyamory was mostly female-driven. This is my story too; I became poly because the woman I wanted to date at the time was.
Isn't it widely agreed that it's easier for women to find partners than men? From that you'd expect poly women to have more partners than poly men (who often end up with a single partner). So women benefit more and are obviously going to drive it?
Having just now read deep enough in the article, I want to respond to the "limited resources" argument: that it's feasible to have multiple lovers because it's feasible to have multiple children, multiple friends, multiple people at your Christmas party.
For some people, those may be comparable situations, but for me they definitely aren't. For me, a lover is a major commitment in a way a friend is not. If I don't see a friend for weeks, maybe even months, on end, no harm is done, but ignoring a lover that way would seem pretty hurtful. (And if you think a person only counts as a friend if you see them all the time, then I've only had one friend at a time my entire adult life, which makes me a serial monogamist as a friend, not a polyamorist.)
When I first started dating my wife-to-be, I warned her that I was too busy (work, volunteer activities) to have a real relationship. But the pull of romance rapidly moved her up my priority scale, and I found myself reworking my life. My other activities had to move back on the stove burners a little. I would not, could not, risk the same thing happening to my primary relationship if I started a secondary.
As for multiple children, those are at least all living with you at once, so it's a little easier to juggle them. But, at the same time, sibling rivalry rooted in jealousy over amounts of parental attention is a classic problem. Handling multiple children turns out to be difficult! Just like handling multiple amorous relationships is.
I don't think there is any rational justification for it. It's a depraved state of living that harms the soul long term.
You can get to any set of beliefs by asking "why not" enough. I sincerely believe that people doing this alienate themselves from God and so lose part of what it means to be fully human in the pursuit of their desires.
After all if we see sex as a positive it should be no retraction to pursue meaningless sex. And I the same light, all relationships as positive, then there should be no negative reaction to unlimited relationships.
And yet there is on both sides. It's clear the pursuit of our desires is just a form of idol worship. Whether that involve sex or a sexless harem.
Even the women who were sex positive understood boundaries of consent. And so saw how irrational desire hurts this.
Equivocation with jealousy doesn't change the fundamental nature of idol worship.
The question of benefits is unimportant if the loss of the soul is final.
To involve others is just to commit adultery with license. Rather than in a world where adultery is wrong. It is to inculcate the lie.
I cannot and never will support polyamory. If God does not approve of it, then the loss of the soul to satan is enough to cause an infinity of suffering post death.
And no possible earthly benefit is worth that.
If you are an athiest then your lack of knowledge of the divine doesn't preclude the risk you expose to souls.
It just means you would do it with impunity in pursuit of benefits.
For example what if you went to a witch and they performed craft on you for wealth. An athiest can always say "at worst I lose nothing" because they do not believe.
But there are far too many possessions and demonic oppression for this to be even remotely true. He loses everything thinking he lost nothing.
To me people contemplating polyamory are just peering over a cliff.
Their angel warns them not to jump. But the devil says the water is warm.
If they jump they don't die so they think it's not bad.
Human nature is just this kind of easily decieved thing without the holy spirit.
I wonder what the monogamous response to the person who can't stop cheating on her partners would be? If you think cheating is wrong, and you accept that there are people who find it very hard to be monogamous, would you advocate that those people just remain celibate?
I'm not exactly poly but not exactly monogamous - married and planning to start having kids soon, attend sex parties together and occasionally have sex/go on dates separately. Separately we live with another couple and a single person who are all long term friends. We are not sleeping with each other (outside of the couples) but we are planning to have kids and help each other raise them. I would not generally recommend non monogamy nor be happy if it became trendy because it seems to require very specific personality traits to be successful. Neither my husband nor I experience sexual jealousy. We have consciously prioritized each other, so that either of us could end the non monogamy if we felt that it was causing issues, but it has not. I do expect to be largely monogamous for the time we are raising young children just because of the time and energy required (maybe we'll go to the odd sex party when we can get a babysitter/housemates are planning to watch kids). I have seen poly with kids both go very well and very poorly, and I think it requires lack of jealousy, emotional maturity, impulse control, and common sense (for example, don't go on a date with a new person when your wife is 39 weeks pregnant!)
There's many kinds of love, like selfless love and selfish love. I think the first fits polyamory well while the second doesn't. I also consider the second one to be real love (Nietzsche said that if you can't hate, you also can't love, and criticized the selfless, all-too-logical type.) Thinking logically rather than emotionally about relationships is a sign that one is more casual and hedonic, less invested. I think autism correlates with this trend of thinking of relationships in terms of utility.
Perhaps I just don't like polyamory, in the same way that I don't like porn addicts. I want great things to be sacred so they don't lose their value. Desensitized people rub me the wrong way. I'm reminded by an old 4chan rule, which went "Nothing is sacred" (know rule34? well, there's more rules). Perhaps this lack of sacredness is what degeneracy is, and what purists fight against. But I will be the first one to admit that these things aren't harmful, at least in the way that spending hours on liveleak doesn't hurt anyone. It just makes me think "Please don't do that to yourself. Your stoicism blunts positive emotions along with the negative ones. Is my puppy love stupid and immature? You bet, but it's a shame you will never experience it".
> In the 2017 SSC survey (the same one cited above), about 5% of polyamorous people described themselves as asexual (having no sex drive) compared to about 3% of monogamous people.
I suspect that comparing these numbers directly relies on a too-naive theory of how people end up ace or poly. I don't want to be insulting about people's identities or practices or suchlike, but I suspect that the same kind of person is more likely to adopt these labels, and many more like them.
I wonder what the crosstabs are to various other factors: I would not be surprised if these people had high "Other" as gender identity and sexual orientation, young age, high autism, high anxiety disorder, and high IQ.
I would be cautious about applying data about the dangers of unrelated adults living with children to polyamory. I think a lot depends on how well the studies control for socioeconomic status.
When I was poor, the modal household children seemed to be raised in was: Mother gets knocked up while underemployed by underemployed boyfriend and convinces herself he's The One to avoid getting an abortion. Baby daddy leaves her not long after, often to go to jail. Obviously mother has roommates because she can't afford an apartment of her own (and not because she lives in a major city with a housing crisis, just because she's poor for an American), roommates are often very dysfunctional. Mother continues to make bad decisions about dating, and a series of dysfunctional men make their way through the child's life. Things like divorce rates being anti-correlated with income point to this experience being more than anecdotal.
Studies find that most Americans born in the poorest 20% leave it by early adulthood. In my experience the ones raising children in it generally have specific personal problems holding them back or are downwardly mobile because of specific personal problems. These problems make it far more likely that the non-related adults are dangerous to the children.
> However, they only have about half as many children.
The survey asks how many children they have *with their primary partner*. I'm not certain this is a fair proxy for the total number of children among each group. Stepparents and secondary partners may confound the data. I think a better question for getting at the total number of children would be "how many biological children do you have?" (Although surrogates and adoptions may confound that data?)
I'd love to have more relationships of the form "Polyamory without the sex part". Like... Friends who love each other and are delighted to spend time together and eager to cook for each other or help each other move house or look after each other's kids. Every relationship I've ever had of this kind has been overwhelming wonderful.
Well I noticed that, but I don’t think that it necessarily affects the results with regard to total polyamory vs partial polyamory
He has an entire post about this. I'm too lazy to look it up for you. The gist is: sure, a biased survey is imperfect. Just guessing willy nilly based on no data whatsoever is worse. So we're going to go with the biased data approach. (if you don't like it, collect some data yourself in some better way)
Yeah, that's the point. Collecting that data is a lot of work. Scott and Aella have done that work. So let's use their data. One day someone else with a lot of energy and a large audience will make a better data set, or you (or I or whoever) will do it ourselves.
In the meantime, complaining about bias in the data isn't doing anyone much good, because the biased data is the data we have, and the unbiased data is fictional.
Honestly, it's better than a lot of the other surveys--it's bigger, and doesn't have to pass through the ideological filters of academia. But your point is still valid.
Taking this for granted: I have observed a similar phenomenon in poor rural white communities, but polygamy would be a misnomer since few are married.
Probably a way to pool resources when resources are scarce. I've seen this as an argument for increasing polyamory among young people--housing prices are up, people share, and they're young and horny and one thing leads to another.
I haven't seen this in black communities (not around enough I suppose) but have seen it in poor white communities. There seems to be some serious consent issues and a whole lot of pain and jealousy involved.
I know of a situation where a mom and her adult daughter were both living with the same guy, and he got them both pregnant at the same time. They all hated each other because of it but continued to live together (for a time, no idea how long) because of lack of options.
Based on this and many other comments, banning this commenter.
Fun fact, Ireland is replacing the more Catholic parts of its constitution which reference to durable relations.
From “ The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”
The proposal is to add “ whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships”, after family.
Hard to see how this wouldn’t legalise some forms of polyamory, maybe not in marriage but in other legal forms.
Ah, the two referendums which Leo and the rest of the [redacted] swear blind will mean more support for caregivers, honest, cross their hearts and hope to die.
I don't think it will include poly but I'm damn sure it will mean not a penny extra for the health budget on care assistants, allowances for carers, expanding places in nursing homes or Section 38/Section 39 agencies or more funding for the community and voluntary sector.
https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/24538/1/Caring%20at%20what%20cost.pdf
It's a way of looking progressive without committing themselves to actually *doing* anything. A bunch of D4 chattering class liberals who dearly wish they were living in London or New York and are bored and want something to occupy themselves set up as the Citizens' Assembly (mar dhea) and every so often produce claptrap like this - "oh, there's sexist language in the Constitution, let's change that!"
I think you may take it from this I'm going to be voting "Hell, no! Dev's constitution is good enough for me, you pack of Blueshirts and backstabbing Soldiers of Destiny!" on this one 😀
Seconded. The wording of the amendment promises only that they'll "strive" to support care assistants, without committing them to actually doing so.
I think hoping that a constitutional phrase "The state recognizes X as a primary unit of society with inalienable rights" will force the funding for care assistants is a terrible way of conducting policy. If you want to fund care assistants, pass a law funding care assistants. Don't try to impose some bespoke interpretation of a vague line in the constitution.
This is part of my lemons and vinegar reaction. Like a lot of other countries, people here are looking around and going "If the economy is doing so great, how come I'm struggling to get by?" We have a housing crisis which has been going on for decades now and no sign of any changes. Despite regulations and even a body to regulate the residential tenancies sector, bad landlords are still getting away with blue murder. We've got a burgeoning crisis around refugees/migrants, where unhappily a small minority of genuine far-right/white supremacy actors are trying to get a foothold in Ireland for a long time now and are using incidents to cause trouble and stir up a public backlash - there has been a rash of arson incidents around buildings rumoured to be turned into emergency provision.
So what does our government do about all this? Well, time for a bullshit feel-good maneouvre! The gay marriage referendum went so swimmingly that they haven't stopped patting themselves on the back over it, and we got the Citizens' Assembly (and it's a good job you can't see my expression as I type those words, I make Squidward look like Pollyanna):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens'_Assembly_(Ireland)
Meant to be a way for The Public to get a voice on topics, turned out to be the Usual Suspects of activists, well-heeled do-gooders, and government-appointed jobsworths:
"Questions considered include: abortion, fixed term parliaments, referendums, population ageing, and climate change.
...A 2019 editorial in The Irish Times said that the Citizens' Assembly's work on abortion was a "great success" that "paved the way for the resolution of [a] potentially contentious social issue" and "a vital step on the road to generating support for constitutional change".
(No joke, I am *snarling* here reading that, but that's a whole other rant about the Irish Times, the Horse Protestants, Castle Catholics, Shoneens, provincialism dressed up as cosmopolitanism, etc.)
Three guesses how the Citizens' Assembly recommended we go on abortion, and "let's not" is never one of them. They're also considering "death with dignity" (this is the new term for euthanasia) at the moment, but that's still too hot of a potato so, until the temperature on that one cools down, let's address the most pressing problem affecting the nation, the crisis that has the plain people of the republic gathering in the streets to discuss it in hushed tones, the predicament that keeps strong men awake in their beds at night and has the wretched women of Ireland weeping as they toil, barefoot and pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink:
Sexist Language in the 1937 Constitution!
Well, "gender equality", but that's what it comes down to. See, it is so terribly, terribly awful that women working in the home is assumed to contribute to the stability of society. Women should be out there working in factories and offices and growing the economy, instead of taking care of their families, the aged, and the young!
"In 2019, the Irish government announced two further Citizens' Assemblies including gender equality.
This assembly was tasked with exploring and, within 6 months, making recommendations on; barriers that facilitate gender discrimination towards girls and boys, women and men; removing gender related economic inequalities, reassess the economic value placed traditional 'women's work'; women's full participation in workplace and political; considering the gender imbalance in care; and gender imbalance in low pay sectors".
This campaign is using all the Greatest Hits Tactics from the gay marriage success, which in turn were re-purposed for the abortion referendum: we're modern now! equality! these legal restrictions harm and repress people! and of course, the good old scare tactics about the influence of the Catholic Church (even though, right now, the state of the Church in Ireland is such that in my own diocese, the bishop is looking for suggestions about lack of clergy to service all the churches so - close down parishes? the liturgy of the Eucharist once a month? what?)
Let's get some facts in here, instead of my ranting. What are the two referenda, what is the language that is so offensive/harmful, what is the proposed amendment?
This is going to be a long one, so I'm splitting this into three. Wall o' text is not easy reading.
"On Friday, 8 March 2024, Irish citizens will be asked to decide if changes should be made to Article 41 of the Irish Constitution.
The proposed changes are also called the Family Amendment and the Care Amendment."
https://www.electoralcommission.ie/referendums/referendum-information/what-are-you-being-asked-to-decide-on/#FamilyAmendment
"The 39th Amendment to the Constitution ...deals with Article 41.1.1°and Article 41.3.1° of the Constitution, both of which relate to the Family.
In Article 41.1.1° “The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”
In Article 41.3.1° “The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.”
In this amendment there is one vote for two proposed changes. The Proposal involves the insertion of additional text to Article 41.1.1° and the deletion of text in Article 41.3.1°. These proposed changes are shown below:
Proposed to change Article 41.1.1° text in bold:
Article 41.1.1° “The State recognises the Family, *whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships*, as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”
Proposed to change Article 41.3.1° by deleting text shown with line through it:
“The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, *on which the Family is founded*, and to protect it against attack.”
...The constitutional protection of the Family would be given to both the Family based on marriage and the Family founded on “other durable relationships”.
The Family founded on marriage means the unit based on a marriage between two people without distinction as to their sex.
The Family founded on other durable relationships means a Family based on different types of committed and continuing relationships other than marriage.
So, different types of family units would have the same constitutional rights and protections.
The institution of Marriage will continue to be recognised as an institution that the State must guard with special care and protect against attack."
Here is where I get very heavy-handed with the sarcasm, so you may want to skip this. Oh, so marriage is not the foundation of the family? 'Other durable relationships' are just as good? Funny, I thought the gay marriage campaign was all about how marriage was so very, very necessary and no, civil partnerships would not do and no, without the right to marry, same-sex couples were doomed to loveless, lonely lives? They just needed to wait a few years and then it would all be the same whether you're married or not, shacking up or an open relationship or three baby mamas on the go is just as good as Mr and Mrs Smith!
And what exactly *is* an "other durable relationship", anyway? You have to be living together for five years? Does it include that ten minutes you spent shifting that fella in the gay club while your partner (not spouse, and what is going on there?) was at home, Leo? Yeah, cheap shot*, but if you're going to be out there in your good suit yammering about "other durable relationships", you need to define them. As I said, I've worked in social housing, I've seen "other relationships" and they're none too durable, Leo dear. "Yes, we were family yesterday, but I'm dumping you today so get out of my council house" happens a *lot*. At least a marriage certificate, even if it's "only a piece of paper" gives you rights, and I'm awaiting the first court case, should this amendment go through, over "I met this girl, I moved in with her, three weeks later she kicked me out, I'm claiming my family rights under the clause of other durable relationships".
The next amendment will be to take out that phrase about "moral institution" because it's so religious and judgmental and icky, now isn't it? Keep your morals off my private life!
I'm also laughing about that bit about the State protecting marriage because look at the bit about marriage as "between two people without distinction as to their sex"; you've already sold the pass there with same-sex marriage, why should I believe you'll make any efforts to resist the Zeitgeist on further tweaks and 'improvements'? We've been discussing polyamory on here, why should I believe that there won't be a push for "okay, we've decided that between three to five people can be in a legal relationship analogous to marriage - sorry, that's not good enough, what about equality? okay - in a marriage. But not ten, that would be silly".
*Interesting question, though. Leo has been out as gay for a while, he's been our First Gay Taoiseach, the other guy is his long-term boyfriend (they were even hosted by Mike Pence and Pence's sister in a photo-op at the Naval Observatory), their parents are not objecting or unsupportive, and re: The Nightclub Kiss, that got defended as "everyone in the Dublin gay community knows Leo is in an open relationship" and indeed it was more an amusing tidbit than a public scandal, and he's leader of the party that introduced legal same-sex marriage, so why no marriage? Could it possibly be that - gasp! - the whole "the gays will die, just die, if you don't make same-sex marriage legal" was just a... tactic????
Referendum Two, and the one which really gets my goat.
"The Care Amendment
The 40th Amendment to the Constitution will be on a green coloured ballot paper. It proposes deleting the current Articles 41.2.1° and 41.2.2° and inserting a new Article 42B.
Article 41.2.1° “In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.”
Article 41.2.2° “The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
The Constitution currently, by Article 41.2, refers to the importance to the common good of the life of women within the home and that the State should endeavour to ensure that mothers should not have to go out to work to the neglect of their “duties in the home”.
In this amendment there is one vote for two proposed changes. The proposal involves deleting Article 41.2.1° and Article 41.2.2° and inserting a new Article 42B, as shown below:
“The State recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to Society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision.”
It is proposed to delete the entirety of current Article 41.2 and insert a new Article 42B.
The new 42B would, firstly, recognise the importance to the common good of the care provided by family members to each other.
Secondly, it would provide that the State would “strive to support” the provision of such care within families."
Okay, let's be upfront - the State has never been able to make sure women don't *have* to work outside the home, and the whole assumption of caregiving/emotional labour (a terrible phrase but it does for once fit here) by women as wives, mothers, daughters as 'free labour' that relieves the responsibility of the State to provide social supports to the needy members of society isn't edifying.
But this crappy amendment is not going to change all that. In the same week, I've read an online newspaper article about a mother complaining about the *long* waiting list for her child to get necessary assessment to access support services, and an opinion piece by some hopeful that by the magic of the changed language, the State will finally start providing all the needed support.
Dream on, second person. I'm working for a Section 39 agency, my boss got me to write a begging proposal for extra funding, but everybody knows the Health Service has no spare capacity, is burning through funding and still needs more, and is understaffed and overstretched. Magic feel-good bullshit Constitutional change is not going to affect that, it's more likely the State will now say, in response to appeals about being a wife and mother who is a caregiver, that "but now you are not the sole person charged with this! anyone can be family - your second cousin, your hairdresser's boyfriend, that person of indeterminate gender you met at the bus stop - all these can be considered family who will support and care for your parents/children! thank you, you're welcome!"
Also, I do *not* believe it is "sexist" to recognise the work of women within the home, or of stay-at-home wives/mothers. The rush is on to recognise women as economic units, that their place is out there working to support the economy and not their families, and various strains of feminism have not helped that. Some women may not choose to remain within the home and have felt trapped and coerced by that, but equally some women would prefer not to be working outside the home and feel trapped and coerced by *that*.
This is not about equality, it's about cutting expenditure. The State will "strive" to support, but there's no reason it won't reply to your request with "Well we'd love to, but we just can't. We strove, but in vain. No money, you see. Can't hire on extra healthcare staff. You're living down the country, it only is economic to provide these services in Dublin. If we give it to you, everyone will want it. Good luck, just keep on keeping on!"
It's not sexist, it's not religious paternalism, to have language in the Constitution recognising the special place of women and the contribution of 'unpaid' labour to supporting society. It *is* sexist to reduce us all to neutral units in an amorphous entity of 'the family' which is not by marriage or blood but some kind of feeling from a 'durable relationship' which means whatever you want it to mean, and which can be terminated on the same terms.
Okay, this doesn't have anything to do with the post and has probably been said before, but who else, every time there's a Highlights post, is like "Well, I thought I had read the comments to the posts, but apparently I didn't, since I don't recall seeing any of these comments"? Were they just all posted after I had stopped following the comment sections or whatever? Or, more likely, they're just in the comment threads that I collapsed since the first comment didn't seem particularly interesting.
Also: "The second happiest are people who have sex so frequently and compulsively that it’s impossible for them to be angry with their partner for sleeping around because not-sleeping-around seems as impossible to them as falling upward. "
...I guess this is just a type of personality I fundamentally don't understand. I know them, I'm friends with them, but still, if they go "Well, I accidentally ended up having sex with her, and..." when telling the story, I won't say anything, but I'm thinking "What, your clothes accidentally ripped off and you accidentally fell on top of her and your dick was accidentally hard and you both accidentally started bucking?" It always just feels like the sort of stuff people who very well know there's no compulsion and accidents and they do have self-control tell themselves to justify their behavior... but what do I know, this is probably one of those fundamental disconnects between different groups of humans.
It seems like some people "accidentally lose self-control", while others hold themselves responsible even for the moments they lose self-control.
Something similar happens with alcohol, I think. For some people, what they did while drunk, is as if a different person did that -- you certainly cannot blame *them* for that behavior. I had my moments with alcohol when I was younger, but no matter how drunk I got... it was still me. Even when I had a problem keeping balance or talking coherently, it was still obvious that whatever I was doing, it was *me* doing it, albeit clumsily.
That said, perhaps we should not generalize too much. There is such thing as a multiple personality disorder. Maybe for some people it is contextual. It only happens when they are drunk. Or, possibly, when horny.
The only way I could make the "accidental" comment legible is 1) ironic / arch distance, to make it less uncomfortable to talk about, or 2), they really just mean that they didn't plan it, that it was impulsive.
I think everyone is gonna have a hard time debating this so long as 1) people have very different definitions of the primary term and 2) incentives to define it differently/ambiguously in relation to themselves.
> An alternative is that Aella got a bad sample (but her sample ought to be much more representative than mine), or that poly people lie / misremember / have a hard time answering surveys
Or that a random sample of subscribers to Aella isn’t a random sample of the population.
That said I don’t suppose that matters much to the argument that full polly > intermediate polly.
I don't understand the difference between "Aella got a bad sample, but her sample ought to be much more representative than mine" and "a random sample of subscribers to Aella isn't a random sample of the population"
And I don’t understand why you think her sample is more representative than yours - numbers?
Clearly people who sign up to her Substack are there for the sexual content, and that’s not a true random sample of the entire population. It’s probably a more sexually adventurous population.
That said, it doesn’t invalidate the findings. Even if people who sign up for her content are more sexually adventurous than the general population this doesn’t eliminate the distinction between the full time and part time polyamorous, since both are probably more sexually open.
Actually, Aella's respondents are more than 99% not from her Substack. Most of her respondents come from her going viral on TikTok.
Oh, ok. I didn’t see that. I retract the statement.
What is Aella’s content on TikTok? I could only stand the app for a couple of days before I deleted it so I honestly don’t know. If I had to guess though it would be in the same vein as her Substack.
From my vague recollection of Aella describing the survey population, I think it was the survey itself going viral on TikTok, independent of anything else Aella does.
Huh, I didn't realize that a survey was the sort of thing that could go viral. I'm gonna guess that she wrote it in a way that made it fun to take.
I find any self selected sample inherently suspect. Aella has made the point that her surveys are actually a lot more rigorous than much of what gets published in the social science literature, but that just inclines me to say "burn the social science literature to the ground".
DISCLAIMER: I don't know any poly people IRL so all this is speculative. I'm speaking as a libertarian-ish person here; my personal religion, Orthodox Christianity, will be recognizing the validity of polyamory around the same time it canonizes Beaker the Muppet. I believe prostitution should be legalized to avoid a lot of pernicious add-on effects while still believing prostitutes are plying a morally illegitimate trade and should be viewed with contempt. Same general principle here, though I don't view polyamory in general anywhere near as negatively as prostitution so don't take that as a comparison! More of an analogy. Hope that makes sense.
With that said, I can accept that there are people who are more happy in polycules or what-have-you for whatever reason. I find it hard to fathom, but it's a big world etc. It seems likely to me that these people are not especially common compared to the people for whom monogamy, broadly, works--though this may be because we have way more experience with monogamy and the ways it can go wrong, so we are generally better at patching it up. Encouraging poly could easily make a few people happier while also encouraging many more people to rationalize their failures of monogamy with a trendy new thing (and, yes, probably messing up kids in the process, though to be fair the kind of people who seem likeliest to do this also seem like the kind of people who would mess up their kids anyway). I'm not sure the two are compatible as coexisting norms, as normalization of polyamory makes it more attractive as a lure for shitty monogamists to justify doing their thing wrong--which would inevitably create friction. And possibly vice-versa, IDK.
Then you have the basic stability problem of building consensus in groups larger than two. If my wife and I disagree on something important, that's bad, but it means two people have to come to an agreement. Add a third person, and you now have three times as many bipolar relationships to keep in harmony; add a fourth, and it doubles compared to having three, etc. And relationships are, by nature, dyadic; I don't have a relationship with "my family" as a unit, I have a relationship with my wife, and with each of my three sons. You can only relate to other people, not to collectives, unless you're psychologically very peculiar. My family unit works because my sons don't get a real vote in major decisions (though of course we think about how they will be affected). Ancient polygyny sort of worked because women had an absymal legal and social status so only the man got a vote. I imagine it was still pretty toxic much of the time.
I'm not even talking about sexual jealousy here, just the potential fault lines from different priorities, the human tendency to form coalitions around shared interests, etc. If I get a job in another state or something, I have to get one person to agree, my wife. Add a third person and I have to juggle in how it incorporates their work life too, and if I am willing to drop the new opportunity to keep them, etc. If that person is, strictly speaking, my wife's second husband, I might think he's a great guy and maybe not be jealous (this is hypothetical alternate sheep, real me would totally be jealous) but the new job is going to be comparatively more attractive to me than if "she" were my second wife. Meanwhile my wife might feel that we could use the extra income compared to keeping otherwife around, since her music gig is tied to the local scene and doesn't bring in much money. Just an off-the-cuff example of why modern plural marriage sounds like a mess to me. Certainly not the kind of arrangement I'd want to bring children into, leaving aside any other objections. If it comes to being expected to factor in other people's kids with my wife and how any decision affects them too, crikey, what a headache. It's like establishing stepfamilies on purpose instead of as a patch for one or more prior ended marriages.
I can take it on faith that there exist groups of people who can make these multipolar clusters work, in the same way that I can accept there are saints who spent decades of their lives standing on pillars. It just doesn't feel like the kind of thing you should encourage large numbers of people to try.
(Off topic, but now I'm picturing Beaker being martyred in various traditional ways, and it's very sad.)
Doesn't seem that much different than a traditional The Muppet Show episode.
But now we know that "mee mee ma nee na ma" translates to "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani".
Beaker wouldn't have to be martyred, he could be a Servant Saint along the lines of St. Zita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zita or St. Genevieve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevieve or St. Martin de Porres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_de_Porres
Beaker certainly puts up with a lot of abuse, is faithful, loyal and hard-working, and is often wronged by those about him.
I motion for someone to find Beaker’s miracles. He must have a few. Anyone?
As Deiseach notes, Beaker is usually a martyr anyway. His main obstacle is not being (apparently) Christian, though for all we know "Mee-mee-mee-mee" translates to "I believe in one God, the Father almighty."
This is a good reason to do hierarchical poly, where you and your primary partner make the big decisions for yourselves, and prioritize each other. This does require being forthcoming about what new partners can expect, e.g. "The position of 'wife' has already been filled and I'm not looking to revise that".
In general, I think hierarchical poly gets a lot of what people want out of monogamy while being less restrictive.
... do a lot of people really want to be second or third banana, though? It's not quite "concubine" but intuitively it sounds better to get full consideration from one person than a minority share in a sort of romantic corporation.
Secondary relationships are no more of a consolation prize than friendship - they're good in their own right. Primary partnerships require higher compatibility, since you're building a life together, maybe having kids. There are a lot of people who aren't compatible with me enough for that, but still compatible enough for us to come to care about each other, to have a good relationship that's more bounded in scope, etc.
Also, your secondary partner might have a primary partner of their own, and doesn't want multiple primaries any more than you do.
Well, my first response to that is that, if it gets that ornate, we're better off not legitimizing it just to avoid the massive complications it would introduce to case law, especially if (as I expect would happen) precedents set by poly are seen as potentially binding on ostensibly monogamous couples (the boundaries of poly being so fluid and the arrangements existing along a continuum). It's frustrating and error-prone enough when there are only two people involved.
Mind you, this is a bad time to be making a poly push, since we're now seeing a lot of unforeseen repercussions to the gay rights movement. I expected the bakery lawsuits; the teenage girls getting mastectomies, not so much. Not that this is relevant, but IDK how much appetite the average normie has for rocking the boat anymore.
You could end up with the official Chinese Imperial harem system, where there is only one Empress, but the rest of the concubines, mistresses, and casual flings are ranked in order of importance and status. If formalised, that might mitigate some of the problems: A is my primary, and has this status and legal rights and expectations from me; B and C are secondaries, and so on down.
If B has her own primary, then you are a secondary or even tertiary with that status and so can't make demands of "dump your husband and run off with me, baby!"
I think only Caroline Ellison thought that was desirable, and no doubt she was imagining herself as the emperor. Which, in a Silicon Valley environment, she probably was.
This is all starting to remind me of my neighbor's amusing accounts of being the secretary of his Rotary Club.
You write "Aella’s survey includes data from 430,000 people! The average social class is somewhere between lower-middle and middle, so this isn’t just capturing elites, and should be able to address concerns that polyamory only works as a “luxury belief”." However, I can't see any data on social class in the file she provides https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/180EK7HaTu-W9cKC599AeLMTVLRhxTAfbaLh9n-B4hek/edit#gid=0. I may have missed it. And, this may sound a bit defensive, but self-reporting of social class is notoriously unreliable: in short, most people throughout history have thought they are poorer than they are, because our brains are very finely tuned to perceive (often illusory) differences in status, and to feel bad about them. This just an example, of many, from popular media https://nypost.com/2023/08/14/some-of-the-richest-people-in-america-feel-very-poor-survey/. I suspect that people in the Bay Area who think they are struggling aren't really struggling as much as upper-middle class people in, say, West Virginia; not to speak of Namibia and Peru, where they are going to watch those Netflix shows about cool polyamorous people starring Hollywood hotties.
Hmm, this could blow this way of topic but (from the NYPost article you provided).
> A survey conducted by Bloomberg of 1,000 Americans making at least $175,000 a year — putting them in the top 10% of US tax filers — revealed that 25% say they are either “very poor,” “poor” or “getting by but things are tight.”
if they are living in an expensive city that could be true. Gross income != disposable income. And disposable income isn‘t that useful either if $20,000 goes twice as far in Arkansas than New York.
But the big problem here is the use of population percentages when the distribution is a Pareto not Gaussian. It’s early possible to be in the top 25% and poor - this is true of most of history and today.
The thing is, yes, you can be in the top 25% and have good reasons to feel poor but you are NOT poor. Feelings are not stats. That's why asking people whether they struggle financially doesn't tell you a lot. Lots of people who are very wealthy struggle financially all the time, including Donald Trump
There are places in the country where $50,000 a year buys you a reasonably solid middle-class lifestyle, and other places in the country where $50,000 a year would leave you homeless. We have a tendency to think a dollar is a dollar, but this isn't really the case; a dollar is worth whatever it will buy you.
This is more obvious when different places have different currencies - once you have an exchange rate, it becomes fairly obvious that high nominal incomes can in fact leave you in poverty - just consider cases of hyper-inflation.
What is less obvious is that there is an implicit exchange rate between different places in the country. A dollar can literally be worth less in one state than another; it buys less food, it buys less house, it buys less fuel. The degree to which this is the case is somewhat limited by trade, but certain goods and services that cannot be meaningfully traded, like housing, can distort intuitive understandings of what it means to be "rich" and "poor" far beyond the simple cost of sending a truckload of carrots to a city might imply.
Further, class is about much more than wealth in the US. If you live in NYC and you make $175,000 annually, it's very unlikely that you are a member of the lower class as contrasted to "the elites," no matter how bad your liquidity problems are. The only occupation I can think of that could pull that kind of income and live in a major metro without accumulating plenty of education and other social capital along the way is "drug dealer."
I tend to stick to economic classes - which is in any case the subject since we are talking dollars. Being educated to PhD level in film studies butters no parsnips unless the PHD student has a job buttering parsnips.
I thought we were talking about whether polyamory was a practice either most prominent in or primarily benefitting elites, as per the topic the Atlantic article, Scott's response, and the (objectionable to me but I'm rolling with it) notion of a "luxury belief".
Edit: Also, how does a PhD student in film studies rake in $175,000? A very lucrative side hustle? Inherited stock dividends? Whether a film studies student is wealthy (can "butter parsnips") answers an unrelated question. As does the fact that one can be wealthy and nevertheless short on cash. My whole point was that "free dollars to spend" is not a great proxy for elite status.
But they are poor. That’s my point. And people who don’t understand that don’t understand statistics. You are thinking Gaussian distribution.
Since you are bluntly insisting that others just don’t get it, let me be blunt: you are badly wrong. They’re objectively not poor.
If you don’t understand that you don’t understand what 175k/yr can buy in NYC. The area median household income is 125k! Certainly you are not suggesting that somehow NYC, with that median income, is a low cost of living area? No, that would be ridiculous. So let’s drop this and move on: they say they are poor and are not poor.
Not having X figure of ‘disposable income’ (a subjective category in itself) doesn’t make you poor. Being unable to afford necessities makes you poor. 175k/yr in NYC makes you well able, more than most people (and most people are doing fine—neither starving nor struggling, and in fact going on pretty decent vacations) so the distribution being Pareto is irrelevant) to afford necessities.
It is very difficult for me to take rich people seriously when they complain about being poor and list "school fees" alongside mortgage and food (I live in a country with a good public education system).
Everyone is reading the words "very poor" and "poor" but not the words "getting by but things are tight".
It is not reasonable to be making $175K and claim to be "poor" and certainly not "very poor", but "getting by but things are tight" might be a perfectly reasonable thing to say if your expenses are high. The next category up is "comfortable", and not everyone feels that.
Also, "here is a person who is richer than you but feels poor" is a standard hate-read clickbait story which gets dragged out every month. It's a great thing to learn to ignore.
I dispute this. It's not THAT much more expensive to live in an expensive city alone. My experience is that the people who make that kind of money in an expensive city are not doing enough to cut their costs. There are people who make far less living in the same city, but they 1) live in a less nice area; 2) don't send their children to expensive private schools; 3) don't have child care services, but instead rely on family or neighbors more often, or if they do have child care services, it is a fairly cheap service and not an expensive one; 4) don't own an expensive car (and maybe no car at all).
This naturally doesn't mean you can't have tight finances in the top 25% in a city, but if you do, there's probably something you're doing a poor job optimizing, or perhaps some expenditures that are "expected" of someone in your *social* class that those in lower social classes mostly ignore.
Okay I was confused about poly before, so this really helped me. As someone who is not jealous, loves sexual variety, and is not interested at all in additional emotional relationships, I just couldn't understand that there were so many people who want more emotional relationships.
That being said, I feel constantly shamed for my extremely high socio-sexuality. Ideally, I'd like to see a hooker of different ethnicity 1x a month. While I see marriage more about building a life together, less about sexual desire, I don't look like I did at 25 either. But I guess that's not a thing with a name that society can pressure my wife into.
Why would you let your wife stop you? This way of thinking is totally foreign to me. Actual me would never agree to such a binding on the first place. But if I was in marriage and my wife wouldn't let me see a monthly hooker I'd just cheat.
Very magnanimous.
So in this hypothetical, there's a person you are closest to in the world, who you made the decision to marry. And they tell you that they would be deeply hurt if you slept with other people. Your reaction is to violate their boundaries and their trust? If so, you're not ready for meaningful relationships, whether mono or poly.
To be fair, he did say he would never have agreed in the first place. So in this hypothetical, his wife is now forbidding it, in violation of what he would have considered necessary, and is assumed to have been discussed before the marriage. If she changed her mind, then the only options I see are 1) cheating, or 2) divorce.
I wouldn't have reacted nearly as strongly if divorce had been the one he'd said would be his reaction in that situation. That represents a consistent position of "that would be a deal-breaker for me". But not even mentioning it and jumping straight to cheating? I stand by that being fucked up. Like, where's the recognition of the other person there?
It's an immature response. "You are trying to change our agreement, thus I am going to privately renege on it without communicating my lack of acceptance." vs. "Your are trying to change our agreement, and I will not continue in our agreement unless you choose to keep its terms."
Yes. Why would I even consider letting their jealousy control my life. They should learn to control their emotions. If its too annoying to fuck other people openly then id cheat yeah.
Well, I hope you're aware that people like you are the literal reason for family breakdowns, traumatic childhoods, and a large part of the world's misery. And that you are the lowest filth on the planet, and you should be full of unending shame for your existence.
(Incidentally, I'd like some clarification on the comment policy here. Are comments like the above, proudly saying that they'd hurt someone, horribly, with a smile on their face, acceptable? If they are, is it acceptable for me to tell them what kind of alleged "person" they are? Seems true and necessary by any moral standard, but people here are often absurdly polite to such sociopaths, maybe expecting they'll be banned, but they're often not. A ruling from Scott would be much appreciated!)
It does feel a bit strong to call someone a sociopath and lowest filth on the planet for someone discussing a hypothetical opinion around conditions in which they imagine engaging in infidelity. It's name-calling and in that sense is more heat than light. It seems more useful to make an argument against the stance than to take aim at the person. That's just my two cents about norms I prefer in this space.
I'm not clear what argument I'm supposed to make to that. What if he'd said "if I saw a woman in a skimpy outfit yeah I'd rape her, it's her fault for being dressed like that, and for rejecting me"? Are you supposed to respond with "respectfully, I think that's slightly unreasonable"?
A decent person would say they might do some bad thing in some circumstances, and add that's it's wrong, and they're ashamed that they would. If they didn't say that, and just said they'd do the thing, that's questionable enough but maybe ambiguous. If they also outright say it's the victim's fault for expecting to be treated kindly and decently, then yeah they're about as clear an example of a sociopath as I can think of.
Does this require further argument? Is some part of that conclusion controversial?
While lowest filth is purely name-calling, I would argue that sociopath as a term is usefully descriptive. It helps us use language to describe reality.
If someone suffers negative consequences from accurately being described as a sociopath, they only have their own actions to blame.
(I'm not calling you woke, just a related thought.) One reason I despise woke thinking is that, in order to spare bad feelings or achieve a social goal, it gleefully perverts the accuracy of language.
Or I suppose wokeness could alternatively be described as a way of thinking where changing language will somehow magically change reality. Totally abhorrent to how my mind works, completely incompatible with success in any reality-tethered work.
It's a bit extreme to say lowest filth on the planet, I can think of plenty worse. Sapph is being honest about their requirements, and while it's not what I'd consider a marriage, if their partner is on the same page, it's their business.
That's not to say you have to approve or have no right to feel this is not the kind of person you would want to have anything to do with. But we do try to be nice here (and I know, the irony of me, famously abrasive, saying that) so a little less heat on all sides?
TBC I have never cheated on anyone, Ive been openly no restriction poly (I prefer to say free love) for a long time. My longest partner, who I have supported in sickness and in health, read my comment and didn't seem very bothered. As she put it 'sapphire is not a marshmallow test passer'. Having self awareness makes you the lowest scum. Im pretty sure if I had made mistakes earlier in life and ended up in a mono marriage I would in fact cheat. Many do and I am not a champion of marshmallow tests. Of course thanks to my self awareness I have avoided making these promises I know I would never keep. I see no reason to dislike myself for my nature.
I find your name-calling and very strong words off-putting, and I think you probably did it because you misrepresented the situation, then thought Sapph was some sort of monster, and so, didn’t know how to debate with him other than resorting to shamming.
He never said he would badly hurt someone with a smile on it faces, he was just refusing to let himself be controlled. Now maybe he could manage the situation better than that, but you know, breaking relationship also hurt people (and some more than infidelity, and other less).
Also, he said he would cheat, but it is unclear he means lying about it here (and not just having sex with other when the other one don’t want it).
I think we are collectively overestimating the importance of (sexual) trust. I sincerely believe that in many cases, cheating can actually be the most ethical decision.
Consider the most common scenario: you are in a monogamous relationship. For the first few months or years, everything is fine, but then sexual frustration becomes unbearable, and you feel imperiously compelled to have sex with others. There are simply no other ways around it. Despite this, you are very happy with your partner in all other aspects.
Now, you could discuss opening up the relationship with your partner, but if they are opposed to the idea, you are left with two choices: cheat or force your partner to make a decision—either they agree to open up the relationship, or you end things (this is an imperative urge).
Forcing your partner to decide can either break the relationship, which is tragic if everything else is good (a rarity in itself), or they agree but live with resentment (in part because you have made the power dynamics explicit) and jealousy, knowing you are sleeping with others.
If you cheat, in the ideal case, everyone remains happy: your partner is either unaware of it or they might suspect it but tolerate the ambiguity (maybe because it is socially less costly and/or more acceptable in terms of self-image). In the worst case, if the cheating is laid bare, you generally end up in the same situation as if you had forced the issue from the start.
I do not believe cheating is the morally right decision in all cases. However, for most people experiencing strong sexual frustration in a relationship with a partner who is highly jealous—a common situation—cheating seems like the ethically superior solution. Therefore, I suspect it would be better for society if we stopped judging those who cheat so harshly. In fact, much of the harm from cheating may arise because we place too much value on sexual trust. In that respect, polyamory (or open-relationships), which still highly values sexual trust, does not promote the evolution of norms in the right direction.
This is an interesting argument.
> but then sexual frustration becomes unbearable, and you feel imperiously compelled to have sex with others. There are simply no other ways around it.
Scott also says something a little like that, and I think this is a bad way to say it, because, what about people who just can’t find partners and are as much frustrated by that (and probably more) ?
It is always bearable, and there are other ways, even if it could be quite bad.
That's cheating and a good reason why you shouldn't be married. If you can find someone who doesn't care if you fuck around, or who fucks around themselves, then great, both of you can be temporarily sharing living space while you fuck around. Don't call it a marriage, though.
EDIT: That sounds very judgemental. What I mean is, you construct your relationships as you like, and find compatible persons. But I don't think that further diluting down the already tattered social concept of marriage to include "if my spouse is so stupidly old-fashioned as to expect sexual fidelity from me now we put a ring on it, I'll just lie, deceive and cheat because sex is the most important thing to me and that should be okay" is going to make things better.
I think Scott is on to something with the "majority I know of are women" because "women want emotional relationships" but I also think other commenters are on to something about men wanting easy access to sex. This could end up the same way as all other trade-offs between men and women: the women want emotional connections, the guys want sex, so the guys put up with the relationship stuff so they can get sex, and the women have sex with Joe, Tom and Billy-Bob because they get different connections from each of them.
Your last paragraph makes me feel some kind of despair. Maybe it's a perfectly fine way for most men and women to accommodate their differing preferences. But it feels kind of awful and grim to me. You?
Late replying, sorry for that. Yeah, it's a bit grim, but I think if it's a fact of life, then acknowledging it and working around it is the better choice than pretending it isn't at work. Also, men will get over wanting only sex after a while (citation needed) and look for emotional connection too, when they want to settle down or get serious, and women will get a bit more adventurous about "I'm not looking for anything but a fling right now". Meeting in the middle is a good enough compromise.
If it goes on for years that "I want something deep but the guys just drop me when they get bored/I don't want marriage and kids but I have to fake it to get past a second date, then she gets all upset and dumps me when it turns out I'm not on the same calendar about 'we need to have a baby now'" then it's awful. No idea what to do about that, though.
TBC I have never cheated on anyone, Ive been openly no restriction poly (I prefer to say free love) for a long time. My longest partner, who I have supported in sickness and in health, read my comment and didn't seem very bothered. As she put it 'sapphire is not a marshmallow test passer'. Having self awareness makes you the lowest scum. Im pretty sure if I had made mistakes earlier in life and ended up in a mono marriage I would in fact cheat. Maybe in these spots I could get divorced or something but if I had kids I prolly would just cheat. Divorce with kids is too much drama and would risk my relationship with my kids! Many people cheat and I am not a champion of marshmallow tests. Of course thanks to my self awareness I have avoided making these promises I know I would never keep. I see no reason to dislike myself for my nature.
Okay, you know your nature and are honest with your partners. That's fine.
If you did marry, have kids, and cheat because "uh, divorce too much hassle", then you would be disgusting scum. It's not better for kids to have a parent who privileges their dick over honesty and fidelity. If you're willing to lie in order to get your dick wet, then you're willing to lie when it comes to them if it's something you want - marshmallow tests, right?
You're not doing that. I'll give you credit for that. My general opinion is, what two adults get up to is their business, it's when kids are involved that you have to pass marshmallow tests, otherwise you're worthless. Divorce and working out access is better there than "Parental Unit is not going to be able to come to your school play because they are going to lie about having to work overtime but in reality they're hitting the hot sheets motel with the new pickup".
Just be upfront, if you're willing to look long enough, you can find this (based on people I know in life with similar or more outlandish agreements in their relationships).
Only if you're like in the top 1% of guys. I mean, I'm sure Brad Pitt could find that. But even Jeff Bezos wound up divorced.
There are many people who want a relationship but can't seem to find a good one, for various reasons. I'm one of them. For people like that, is the polyamory vs. monogamy discussion meaningful? I've been asked which I would prefer, and I'm never sure how to answer. I know I prefer one good relationship to zero, but I have no idea whether I would prefer two good relationships to one (or having a partner who has two good relationships instead of one) since I can't seem to even find one.
I've seen some to-and-fro over that question: if you can't get a relationship, or at least a permanent/committed one, then part of a relationship is better than nothing - half a loaf is better than no bread. ' Incel guy getting to be on a rota of other betas who all get crumbs of attention and sex from a woman is better than being always alone' kind of talk. Not really kind to any of the parties involved, but I suppose for some people half a loaf *is* better than no bread: being in a partial relationship even as part of a polycule where the main person, be they male or female, has lots of partners while the individual partners are all only involved with that one person and are not having other relationships as well.
Yeah - the BATNA is being single and celibate for life. Especially if you want kids...people are willing to put up with a LOT in order to have a shot at the white picket fence and 2.5 kids.
If you’re you are male and trying to find a woman on a dating app, I recommend deleting the damn apps. Find some setting or activity that you can at least sort of like where you will be around a lot of people in your age range. If it takes you a while to find something, that is time well spent. If it costs money it’s worth it. Consider activities you normally would not: yoga retreats, dog training classes, rock gyms, political action groups, church, choruses, weekend conferences. Go to them and strike up conversations with both men and women.
I second this, and think this is all great advice for a guy except the rock climbing gyms - I've been a climber for a decade and change, and that's one of many "90%+ male" hobbies I have, and I've been climbing and in climbing gyms all over the US (and in other countries) in terms of sampling into that 90%+ ratio.
Other hobbies NOT to do, as I consider myself an *expert* at finding 90%+ male hobbies inadvertently: car racing (any type), car modding, car shows, powerlifting, Ninja, triathlons, OCR, bouldering, scrambling, difficult hiking, anything to do with AI, computers, programming, or crypto, surfing, racquetball, Wim Hof stuff, rationalist stuff, philosophy stuff, mathematics stuff, maker labs or spaces, trading, finance, startups, VC, and BJJ.
Basically, if you're the standard rat-sphere guy who likes to tinker and build stuff in any medium whatsoever, OR if you're a fit person who likes doing and achieving difficult things with your body, don't do *anything* you actually enjoy for it's own sake.
Things Eremolalos hasn't mentioned with at least SOME chance of meeting interesting people of the opposite sex: Raves, festivals, Burning Man, live music, house parties, dance classes, cooking classes, easy hiking, dog parks and dog walking (highly recommend this, especially if you raise and train puppies), book clubs, frisbee golf, and farmers markets.
That's interesting, my experience with rock climbing is much more gender equal than that; perhaps I only dabbled in the more casual end of things?
I took a salsa class, and most dance classes I went to were well over 50 percent women. I didn't meet anyone there, but it did wonders for my confidence and comfort being in physical proximity to a range of people, and more comfortable moving in my body overall.
I had to look up who Wim Hof was, and yeah. Definitely oriented towards male-only interest. The guy likes to sit on ice floes in his underpants? You do you, Wim, but I'm staying indoors with the heating on.
Though there are some women who also do that year-round swimming thing (in Ireland's cold waters) so maybe not 100% male interest, more like 98% percent?
Alas, that breathing exercises and cold exposure are not enjoyed by the fairer sex!
That said, I do have a good friend who actually teaches and leads Wim Hof breathing groups, and he has a very nice weekly breathing get-together at his house that's pretty coed, probably close to 50/50.
But, it's also a super-hippie group, and they do drum circle and jamming and psychedelics and stuff all together too, so not sure if it's due to the overall culture, due to the breathing, or due to the other stuff.
Counterpoint: please DON'T do something you DON'T genuinely enjoy. As a person who genuinely enjoys things, it makes things marginally less enjoyable when people show up just to Meet Someone.
Yup!
I remember thinking this in my teenage years. I read a bunch of books on how to get women, and...
"So basically I have to stop doing the things I like, start doing things I don't like, change my personality, and then if I succeed I get something that's maybe 50% better than masturbation, and have to pay alimony and child support if it gets to the marriage and kids stage and dissolves like half of them do? Yeah, I'm playing video games."
Yeah, one does have to actually like women and enjoy their company to have a long-term relationship with a woman. You don't have to join the knitting group, but the view that a relationship with a woman is 50% better than masturbation speaks volumes. Your honesty about that hopefully spares women who want something deeper from wasting their time.
Quite plausibly he's playing video games with women whose company he enjoys. As a long-term relationship, even. Platonic friendship with women works on a completely different system than romance.
Or maybe his video gaming den is a (virtual) man cave, but you seem to be assuming facts not in evidence.
Well...that was 30 years ago. I was referring specifically to sex (which as a man I was supposed to want, and I guess I did back then). There are other aspects to relationships like emotional closeness, support, sharing things you do with someone with common interests, and of course many people enjoy having kids and raising a family, but I assumed at that point I would never be able to access them since I was a geek and had no common interests with women. There were female geeks, of course, but given the preponderance of male ones, only the most successful ones were going to be able to find one, and I wasn't in that category, so as you said, why waste anyone's time?
Several decades and a bunch of mediocre relationships later, I would say I was...sort of wrong? I never did find someone I really liked, though there were some short-term flings the other person claimed to enjoy, and I did to some degree. My statement was never that relationships were pointless, simply that they were pointless for me. Once I had enough time outside of the notorious academic longhouse (as the kids say), I tried a couple of times without success. I read a bit on Game (I remember Roissy and pre-Nazi Heartiste), which actually did help somewhat, but I wasn't socially perceptive to get away with a third of the stuff or evil enough for another third of it. (The other third kinda helped.)
It turns out sex is actually *less* fun than the other thing, which was a total surprise. My understanding is this is not the common experience--I mean, some of *the women* certainly seemed to enjoy themselves, believe it or not (of course, that part I had read a few books on as well), and I had heard from a young age how men are always doing stupid or evil things to get sex. (The news seems to bear this out.) Wanting sex less than your partner does have all kinds of amusing side effects--they run around begging *you* for it (I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?), though if you don't initiate sometimes they start thinking they're unattractive and feel bad.
It's possible if you find the other person physically attractive it's a different experience--certainly the importance other men seem to place on physical attributes would make you think so! At this age it's extremely unlikely that's going to happen though.
I'm either some kind of ace (aromantic? asexual?) or a very clueless heterosexual. Which one I'm not sure, and I doubt it matters at this point. ;)
Oddly, I remained friends with a few of my exes afterwards, even. (I guess all those pop-psych talks on validation and communication helped somewhat?) One or two kept trying to get back together--one kept sending me notes on Valentine's Day years later, which I found deeply disturbing. Of course, it might have just been my salary. I have to ask myself that every time--is it me, or the money they want? I'm assuming (particularly given the picture painted, and trying to avoid the traditional male ego) it's the money, but who knows? Maybe I really was better than I thought I was. I don't know why anyone would like me, but apparently they did!
Anyway, like you said, I'm done wasting everyone's time.
As an aside, I've never played video games with women--never found one who liked to play. I don't even play video games much anymore, though every few years one catches my fancy for a little while. Though I do appreciate John Schilling going to bat for me. ;)
As a widower considering whether to attempt to remarry - yeah, having someone to share my life with again would have value beyond sex but
>So basically I have to stop doing the things I like, start doing things I don't like, change my personality
for _maybe_ finding someone again is a hard no. Value beyond sex is still a finite value. Some negotiated changes are reasonable. Turning my life inside out is not.
I wonder if the gender distribution in climbing gyms is highly location-dependent? I live in China and in my experience it's about 50/50 in gyms in my city, maybe 60/40, definitely not 90/10...
Different culture, it might be an 'exotic western thing' rather than a 'macho thing'.
In rock gyms around Boston it's about 50-50. Gyms have made an effort to become pleasanter and more upscale, and there's exercise equipment & showers as well as rock walls. For many people, it's just their gym. In the actual climbing area there are still plenty of women, and I'd say maybe 10% of them are highly athletic and climbling like 5.11's. Mixed groups at the bouldering walls too. Bouldering walls are a good place to meet people because often there's a cluster of 10 so so people working on the same hard route, and there's lots of kibbutzing -- "what did you do here? " "matched hands" etc. Outdoor climbing is considerably more male, but that's not as good a setting to meet people anyhow. If you climb in the Gunks, that restaurant a lot of people go to after climbing-- I think it's called Bacchus -- is a good place to meet other climbers.
I haven't climbed in China, so not sure, but it certainly seems possible. I've been to a climbing gym in Bangkok, and the ratio was slightly better than the US - maybe 80/20 or 70/30? Was in rich neighborhood in Sukhumvit.
But *actual* climbing, like on rocks with harnesses and ropes? That's 90% male anywhere I've been.
I was just at Stonegoat in Bangkok a couple weeks ago & felt pretty similar to China, I agree with the above that most of the gyms I've been to in China don't have much of a gym bro vibe, don't think it's the exotic Western factor though, it's become very popular here (four new gyms have opened in Hangzhou where I live in the last year or so!) and there is a strong base of regular climbers that are not in it for the novelty. A lot of them climb outdoors but I would guess it may be true that the distribution is a bit different, I don't have as much experience outdoors due to cowardice :D (although I did tick my first outdoor lead recently, so hoping to get out more)
At my last job, the young-engineers social circle was about 20% female (because engineer, subtype aerospace), but nearly 100% actual rocks with harnesses and ropes climbers.
And for that matter, the last woman to ask me on what I think was meant to be a date, from a different engineering-based social group, invited me to a rock-climbing gym. Unfortunately I have mutant feet that basically disallow rock climbing, so I had to decline that particular offer.
And I have three nieces and three nephews, with one of each into rock climbing and the niece by far the most enthusiastic of them.
So, triple independent anecdata leading me to believe that rock climbing is not in fact a 90/10 sausage fest in the contemporary US.
Yes, I'm currently doing those things. I'm not on dating apps, and the hobbies I've enjoyed that haven't been 90%+ male are easy hiking, choir singing, and volunteering.
Last year I asked about 10 women out, and got two first dates and no second dates. Does that sound normal and I just need to keep trying, or does it sound like I need to do something differently to find more women who are interested in first and/or second dates?
From what you've said, it sounds like you're asking a reasonable amount of women out, and just not finding one who clicks with you.
I'd recommend staying the course and hoping for a better match, but you might have burned through the "single and looking" pool in your current groups with asking 10 (I have no idea how big your city or your groups are), in which case you should find new hobbies / groups with new candidates.
>you might have burned through the "single and looking" pool in your current groups with asking 10 (I have no idea how big your city or your groups are), in which case you should find new hobbies / groups with new candidates.
To be clear, are you talking about abandoning my current groups to look for new ones? That would work for some groups that I'm not particularly attached to, but I picked these hobbies in the first place because I like doing them, and I want to keep doing them regardless of relationship status. For some of my hobbies, I've found only one group in the area that works for me - I definitely don't want to abandon those. I also don't have infinite time to spend on new hobbies while maintaining the ones I already have.
I'm not completely out of "single and looking" women to ask out, but the options have dwindled, so this has been on my mind as well.
>To be clear, are you talking about abandoning my current groups to look for new ones?
Yes, exactly. And of course, triage gracefully instead of with hacksaw abandon - but the other downside you can run into for the groups you keep, is you can turn into "that guy" if you're *known* for asking all the single women for dates in the group, and then your chances are basically below zero, because you're tagged as a creep within the group, and existing people will warn new women about you pre-emptively. A bit unfair, I'll agree, but it can definitely happen.
This is another factor to consider when deciding if finding entirely new groups or hobbies is likely to be a better direction overall.
I think we might be talking past each other a little. I do hobbies because I enjoy them. I don't want to give up an activity completely, because I enjoy doing it. Meeting women to date is an extra positive thing, but not meeting women to date doesn't suddenly make a hobby unenjoyable.
Now of course, that leaves the option of finding a different group for the same hobby. That's possible for some and not for others - some of my hobbies have only one group near me, and I really don't want to ditch the activity completely even to meet more women. (That goes for my hobbies which are 90%+ male as well, although I'm not counting them for this conversation.)
On the topic of your comment, I don't think I've turned into "that guy" in any of the groups I'm in - but I wouldn't necessarily know if it happened, so it's possible. I'll keep that in mind as a potential failure mode.
I don't know what's up with that. I wonder if your dating invitations were too "datey"? All the people I dated started off as friends, or at least as acquaintances I knew well enough to joke around with. If there's a woman at the activity you're drawn to, it might work better to try to finagle an activity that's in sort of an intermediate zone first, rather than moving straight from meeting them at the activity to asking them out. Like maybe ask the woman and a couple other people if they'd like to go out for a beer after choir singing, or whatever. Or at the volunteer activity, sit at the table where she is, or try to be in the subgroup she's in, that sort of thing. Also, don't just try to meet women, try to make some guy friends, too. If you have a larger friendship group, that will give you another way to meet women. Also, if you're being friendly to guys, it takes you of the category of "obviously just here to meet a woman," and puts you in the much more appealing category of "friendly guy."
If you don't know anything more about the woman than that her name is X and she's here at the activity, then a first date isn't going to feel much different to either of you than a first date between people who met on Tinder. That's a bad feeling, and most people have had way more than enough of it -- 2 strangers auditioning each other for the role of lover. Yeech!
Of course, you may already be doing what I'm suggesting -- getting to know them some at the activity before asking them out. If you're already doing that, maybe ask one of you're frankest friends whether they have any idea what you're doing that's keeping things from taking off with any of the women you meet.
I kind of feel like that's more finesse than a lot of people here, myself included, can successfully execute, though it may be good advice for the general public.
(Though I personally am no longer looking.)
Well, maybe. On the other hand, trying to make some guy friends and asking the group you’ve been whatevering with at the activity to go out for a beer afterwards — aren’t those easier than asking someone for a date?
You are somehow both asking too few women out (two first dates is not enough) and too many (80% rejection rate is terrible).
Honestly I would ignore all the other advice here and go on the apps. You're not going to find a population of thousands of single women (plus a social context where hitting on them is 100% acceptable) by joining an underwater basket weaving class.
Sounds about right for me. When I decided that I wanted to commit to a relationship for marriage and kids it took me several years (roughly three) to find my now wife. I lived without any romance or sexual contact for years before that, so I wasn't exactly experienced in how to do that. None of the first dates before I met my wife led to a second date. In some cases the woman had no interest in a second one, in some cases I knew after five minutes into that date that I'd never click with her.
In my case I tried various dating services. They are miserable to use, because the incentive structure is such that the service profits if you to remain single, as they can milk you for longer. The issue is that if you use that service as a woman, you get spammed by horny and creepy males each day every day. If you use it as a men, you get presented with a myriad of dead profiles which the service never removes, as it inflates their numbers. Often they won't even tell you which profiles are dead. In the end none of these services worked and I found my now wife on a dating website which was the scamiest of them all.
I'm now happily married for 10+ years ...
Especially if you are an introvert online services, despite being a miserable experience, can actually work. It's a lot of work, but since you have a high probability to click best with another introvert, it's hard to get to know one through more traditional means.
My brother met a wonderful woman about three seconds after his divorce by joining a church choir. He's always been very good at joining things though -- art classes, group music classes, ballroom dance, group travel. He's fearless that way.
Feels like not having an answer to that is going to be an obstacle to getting into a relationship in the first place. "I'll figure it out on your time" is a losing answer, nobody wants to be a stepping stone.
I agree that nobody wants to be a stepping stone. I don't see how it's avoidable in general though; you get relationship experience by trying out relationships to see if they work, not by thinking enough to figure out everything you do and don't want in a partner beforehand. When a relationship has problems, you either figure out a solution that works for both of you, or you break up - and it's hard to know in advance which problems will come up.
In my specific case, there are about two things that I know are deal breakers for me. There are also many things that I have preferences about, but there are lots of people I'm attracted to that have good qualitites but don't meet those preferences perfectly, and I can't know in advance which of those will cause long-term problems and which will be unimportant over time. "My partner wants to have multiple relationships" would be a deal breaker for many people because jealousy would cause long-term problems; I don't think I am one of those people, but I don't actually know.
For now, I'm assuming my future relationships will be mono or poly depending on what my partner wants. (Incidentally, that's also how Scott became poly - he started dating a woman who was poly.) If that causes problems, I will have to reevaluate later - I don't think I can perfectly anticipate the potential problems on either side beforehand.
I think "my partner wants to have multiple relationships" may become a problem, when someone thought it would not, precisely at the point where emotional bonds are formed. Either A develops attachment for B and wants the relationship to now be monogamous, where B is happy to keep it open/poly. Or B finds someone new and now wants to leave A and be with C.
I think poly people are aware of this risk, and if you're one of the "poly by nature" types you could be sufficiently sure you won't suddenly want a monogamous relationship, but even there I think if your partner feels that your new partner is getting all the romance and fun dating, while they're stuck with the "make sure the electricity bill gets paid and the bathroom sink needs to be unclogged" part of the relationship, that takes the gloss off poly.
'Monkey branching' is an equivalent to 'stepping stone' I've seen in poly discourse, BTW.
"in most poly families all partners would consider themselves parents [ergo we wouldn't expect poly families to have higher rates of child abuse than mono families]" seems like exactly the same kind of naïveté as "trans women are women, so they're bound to commit violent crimes at the same rate as any other woman!"
Props to you for (kind of) acknowledging this point.
I've been thinking long and hard about the point that abusers tend to seek out opportunities for abuse. Thus, any system that isn't already hardened against abusers needs to seek ways to do so. If you just think about what a normal distribution of abusers would look like, you're thinking that abusers normally distribute themselves, as opposed to specifically seeking out opportunity. This has dramatically changed my thinking on abuse and related topics, and where I set my priors.
Seems directly related to the trans issue as well: the problem with bathroom bills isn't that trans people are more likely to be predators, its that predators will be more likely to take advantage of a situation where people who look male are allowed in women's spaces.
I'm not really convinced that it'd do anything. I mean, the easiest way in is still to steal the janitor's toilet cleaning cart and wear the uniform regardless of what you look like. Besides, who said the predator is different gender? There's already so many different and easier avenues for that sort of stuff.
The way to defeat predators is to target predatory behaviour directly. Bathroom bills have the same logic of forcing all plane passengers to strip naked so they can't bring bombs on board, as opposed to, like, checking their belongings for bombs (which is still something I resent. I think they should police the ability to access bombs in the first place and keep their hands off my stuff, but I digress).
The risk is also not commensurate. To be honest I'd be happy to run the nearly zero risk of bathroom harassment over the state gaining the right to check my crotch before I get to pee. I strongly believe that bathroom cops are a bigger threat than bathroom perverts.
Let's retreat from the bailey of bathrooms to the mottes of locker rooms and - more importantly - prisons. I think there is where the greatest concerns for abuse actually lie.
And this is how the debate devolves into name-calling, in my experience. Both groups are arguing for hardening spaces to protect vulnerable groups against abusers. But when one side says, "Elimination of female-only spaces allows abusers into those spaces because abusers seek out opportunities for abuse," the other side hears "you're saying all trans people are abusers". That's (usually) not true.
The traditional strategy for hardening against abuser infiltration has been the creation of female-only spaces. No replacement strategy exists that accounts for trans in a satisfying way.
I actually prefer a fairly libertarian solution - ungendered single occupancy bathrooms (and changing rooms and every other facility where I'd want privacy). This accounts for every gender and every sexuality.
This is probably also the solution with the widest possible appeal and has other knock on efficiencies (like the annoying thing where you can't use an unoccupied bathroom, just because it's behind the door with the wrong symbol). This problem is particularly prevalent for any field with a tilted gender balance (engineering, nursing, etc) because public facilities are normally built equal sizes despite the user populations not being equal. If they're all single occupancy and unlabelled, this will immediately solve itself. Without the unnecessary and sort of arbitrary restrictions on who gets to use what stalls, average wait time at the bathroom would probably decrease. We can optimise for total number of bathrooms we need (and not do 8 stalls for 30 men and 8 stalls for 4 women - very common in a lot of engineering workspaces). We'd all benefit.
Sinks and mirrors are pants on, so it won't kill us to have common sinks. But any disrobing should occur in single occupancy spaces.
In general I'd say I'm more of a gender abolitionist, in that gender regulations usually aren't useful and should be abolished. Sport should be segregated by height and weight. You know my opinion on bathrooms. We should quit the women-in-stem initiatives and just focus on attracting the right people to repelling the wrong people (and I'm saying this as a beneficiary of a woman scholarship). Recruiting specifically for women is kind of dumb, and removing shitty people should be a priority - a tradie threatening to shove something up a coworkers hole should be disciplined just as harshly if his coworker is male, you shouldn't be saying that to any of your coworkers. (It's honestly shocking how much sexual violence threats some people spew, it's equally bad regardless of receipient)
But yes, I do view a lot of modern western feminism with contempt, because in my eyes, the field is level as soon as we got the right to vote, own property, access birth control and earn money. I support the feminism movements overseas to secure these basic rights, but I think (mostly white) feminists whinge too much.
Interesting POV. I think you could gradually transition buildings to unisex bathroom designs like what you described. I've always been suspicious about the bathroom argument itself.
The sports is an interesting case. A lot of NCAA scholarships go to women in sports. This is, once again, where an insincere opportunist could game the system to get a full-ride scholarship to attend college. "So if I wear a skirt around for four years and pretend to care I can get $20k+/yr. and admission to a selective school?" This isn't to question actual trans people, but rather to point out that a tiny minority will absolutely game the system if the incentive is high enough. (And indeed, the side effect will be to cause skeptics to accuse actual trans people of also faking it.)
You're proposing that we eliminate gendered sports categories, which would almost certainly eliminate most women from scholarships in everything but gymnastics, and maybe a few other sports. Would we want to counterbalance that with scholarships in other fields, or are you okay with a system that disproportionately favors men?
Now what about prisons? I'm not sure we could do the same things with prisons as we do with bathrooms or sports. And when you've locked someone up, you're taking away their ability to defend themselves or escape a bad situation. Sure, prison shouldn't be a Club Med, but just because we send you to jail doesn't mean you're condemned to getting raped/impregnated by inmate opportunists. Meanwhile, separating everyone would condemn all prisoners to solitary confinement.
Yeah, I agree that there's a hole in my model for prisons. I would like to point out that rape is still extremely high in prisons, even though they're segregated.
I would probably think about a multi-pronged approach.
First, repeal the obviously dumb laws. Much harder done in practice, but are there laws that really don't add much value? Ditch them.
Then, get rid of jail terms for anything that doesn't really need a jail term. Jail should be reserved exclusively for direct threats to society - typically violence.
For everything else, figure out a way to manage the threat to society. Like, yeah, no car access for the drunk driver, etc. A combination of comnunity service, parole officer check ins or house arrest would suffice. (Parole officer check in is basically someone visits and interviews you to make sure you're not doing any more crimes. Specifics relate to the crime, of course. But you'd wanna lock up the serial rapist and you don't wanna lock up the drunk driver, who gets a long term ban from driving at all, mandatory alcohol counselling, and community service like, idk, picking up roadkill. Theft or drug possession/sale is similar. You can restrict them to home, make em take an online job skills course, and some other menial online task or something. And ffs do not let the fraudsters under house arrest pay for their own security (sounds stupid but that's how the "Fat Leonard" case went).
Now that your prison population is down, policing the prison should be easier. I'm still unsure about the specifics but I think it definitely makes sense to segregate the sex criminals from everyone else. I still think sex criminals are mostly opportunists (so they just abuse whoever is convenient, I'm sure the current amount of prison rape does not match up with the number of people who actually get convicted of homosexual rape, and I think that they're probably not bisexual - they're rape-sexual or something).
And then, idk. I'm still torn on whether segregation actually has an effect on the total amount of prison violence and sexual violence. My gut feel is maybe a little bit? I think someone who works in this specific field would have better insight here.
> I was surprised how certain people were that poly relationships were disasters that couldn’t work, compared to how little of a sign there was of that in the data.
Well... I can only speak for myself, as part of quite successful polycule for many years. Not giving a fuck what other people think about how terrible polyamory is is a huge part of having happy polyamorous relationship. Nobody in my polycule or any other I know ever tried to prove anything. YKINMKBYKIOK but in relationship, you know? Most of the people telling you polyamory can't work are absolutely correct, they just forget to add "for them". Most people preaching that polyamory is the best thing ever also right and also "for them".
That's why there's strong bias in things people heard towards the "disasters", while success is quiet but don't mind filling a poll from time to time and show up in data.
>As Overton windows move for new social norms like LGBT and polyamory, the mainstream media narratives evolve along the axis of omission/taboo -> negative/critique -> ambiguity -> struggle/oppression ->positive -> new normal. We have seen LBGT cover almost all these steps during recent 40 years, currently I think we are between positive and new normal. With polyamory, we have just recently moved from omission/taboo to negative/critique. Portraying polyamory as positive or struggling/oppressed in mainstream media is still out of the Overton window, showing ambiguity is now at the edge, only negative critique is in the window
This argument can be applied to anything you want, it's entirely meaningless imo. Just because something is currently fringe doesn't mean it's destined to become mainstream. Some things did, like feminism, Christianity, lgbt rights, others very much did not such as polygny (1800s version), pedophilia, racism from the mid 20th century to today. Some fringe cultural memes just remain fringe cultural memes without ever picking up mainstream appeal.
"it's unpopular now so it will evolve into being popular later" is an expression of faith, nothing more
Agreed. Also, even if a fringe meme *does* become mainstream, that doesn't mean it can't go back to being fringe. Alcohol prohibition and eugenics are examples of ideas that went from fringe to mainstream and then quickly went right back to being fringe again.
And the current reactionary wave will likely reverse all of that progress regardless. Did you know the first sexology research institute in the world was founded in Germany 14 years before the Third Reich was established? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft ...Why are people so confident that history will not repeat itself?
>And the current reactionary wave will likely reverse all of that progress regardless.
You may be right, but (writing from the USA) I interpret the current politics as nearly equally matched Woke and MAGA factions, with it unclear who will win which battles. Regrettably, from my point of view, both of them attack individuals' freedoms, though they attack different freedoms.
edit: A relevant quote:
"History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes" - Mark Twain
"In the canonical poly survey, women were over-represented in polyamory; about 35% of poly people were men and 49% women (the remainder either didn’t answer or were nonbinary or something).
Commenters agreed with this, and said their experience was that polyamory was mostly female-driven. This is my story too; I became poly because the woman I wanted to date at the time was.
Why should this be, since men traditionally prefer sexual variety more than women do?"
Men want it more, but women find it easier to acquire if they do want it.
Or men only care about the sex side, which is easier to just lie about and/or pay for. Shifting social norms so it's ok to do something, rather than just ignoring social norms, seems inherently more feminine. Also more virtuous, so the points probably go to women on this one.
"their experience was that polyamory was mostly female-driven... If someone wants to sleep with a bunch of people, they can just be a normal casual-sex-haver or swinger or something"
My impression (mostly not based on personal experience) is that swinging is also mostly female-driven. Maybe for the same reasons.
As I said above, men who want the sexual variety may put up with the 'relationship' stuff (which is easier as well, because if you're one of several partners, you don't have to put as much effort in as for a single person who is asking emotional connection of you) for the sex, while the women are getting different connections with different guys for the price of being sexually available.
I imagine there are many varieties of poly; there's the emotional connection one, which is majority women, and the 'like swinging but with feels' one, which is majority men, and all the other points on the spectrum.
Counting only heterosexual encounters, women have the same amount of sex that men do. Say there are 10 men and 10 women on a deserted island, and one man has sex with all ten women. Okay, then on average everyone has had sex once. But nine of the ten men had no sex, while all the women had sex. Whether men or women are "more promiscuous" is a question of distribution, not of averages.
In this example, sex is more 'available' to the women, so you'd expect them to value a novel opportunity more, while it's less 'available' to the men (90% of whom in this extreme case have no availability), so you'd expect them to be less selective of opportunities. But regardless of the distribution, the actual number of encounters with different sexual partners is necessarily the same between the sexes.
In contrast to cheating, a poly arrangement is about both what you would like to do and what you are comfortable with your partner doing. It's possible (plausible, even) that more men than women find sexual jealousy prohibitive of polyamory.
Median bloke who has a bevy of sheilas he occasionally shags: "I'm single"
Median sheila who has a bevy of blokes she occasionally shags: "I'm polyamorous"
Out there on the margin are a lot of blokes and sheilas that disagree on whether they're actually in some kind of a relationship or not.
"polyamory" as a identity-label may be dominated by women, but poly as "actively attempting to maintain multiple romantic partners" is almost certainly dominated by men.
I know this because while I have never been officially poly, I have slept with a number of poly women on apps, and I have poly friends. The women are getting laid much more in those relationships, frankly. And more than once the womans partner obviously resented it/me but somehow she wasn't picking up on it.
Women who are poly can find casual partners MUCH MUCH more easily than men can, for the obvious reasons. Worse, men who put poly on their profile alienate many/most non-poly women (I have experimented. Now I just put "short term open to long", which I presently translate as functionally "mainstream poly"). But of course women who put poly on their profile are still going to be drowned in options like myself who can easily wear whatever mask is necessary
Right. More women can get it, because more men want it (and thus are willing to give it to them). One is the reverse of the other.
Bisexuality of course exists, but since it's predominantly female in practice (men who are out as bi lose a lot of potential women) it winds up reinforcing the effect.
Then there's the whole queer community, which I won't pretend to have any real-life experience with. As a straight (ish) cis man, I just steer clear--I assume they don't like me from reading the internet discourse, and I see no reason to bother people who don't like me.
(FWIW, I support gay rights...people who don't like you also have rights, and anyway it's none of my business who you sleep with.)
Thinking back on my dating years, there were women who wanted me just for the short-term excitement. (I was too neurotic to be a chad though.) But still I have the general sense that absent being a true chad, to be successful with women an average guy must also be offering the potential of an LTR.
Like you say, women can find casual sex way more easily than men. Given that, a poly relationship with a main couple that are committed to each other time and money wise, but where each person can have sex with an unrestricted number of random others, seems incredibly unfair to the man. (Especially w.r.t. the evolutionary biology jealousy he'd naturally and correctly feel.)
I could see poly potentially working for me in the context of a Heinlein-esque group marriage of an equal number of men and women.
> Given that, a poly relationship with a main couple that are committed to each other time and money wise, but where each person can have sex with an unrestricted number of random others, seems incredibly unfair to the man.
An irresolvable paradox that has pushed me into really weird place in life . Monogamy seemed intolerable but so did the reality of poly dating which seemed more like cuckoldry than anything else (poly folks will surely take offense at this notion, like "keeping track" is missing the point but that's just how I felt)
> I could see poly potentially working for me in the context of a Heinlein-esque group marriage of an equal number of men and women.
Yeah I think scifi in particular gave me this romanticized idea of what non-monogomy could be and then the reality of adult dating just really didn't live up to that
To some extent, this is just a matter of definition. I am not poly, but I am living in an open gay relationship, so I have sex with other people. But that is a purely sexual things and then by definition not classified as polyamorous. I know lots of people in open relationships (it's not so uncommon in gay communities) and some people in poly relationship, and this is just the common terminology. If you mesh together open relationships with polyamorous ones, then probably the numbers would look different.
Long quote to make clear what I'm responding to:
"Nobody can indulge the entire human experience, unless they’re very lucky and have no contradictory desires. If you’re monogamous, you have to fight the natural human urge to desire people other than your partner (some people won’t have this urge, but many do). If you’re polyamorous, you have to fight the natural human urge to feel jealous (some people won’t have this urge, but many do). I think a good monogamous community won’t pathologize desire, but will politely and firmly remind you not to surrender to it, and a good polyamorous community will do the same with jealousy. Some people will do better with one set of restraints, and other people with the other."
The thing is, Scott, some people absolutely can indulge the entire human experience, because you can desire multiple people and insist that all of those people do not desire anyone but you. You just have to be much more powerful than all of them. If you throw the concept that human beings are equal out of the window, then you can have polyamory for me and monogamy for thee. There are several versions of this, but one is the "one-dick principle" that many polyamory sites warn about. If the rule of the relationship is that there can only ever be one dick in it, then the dick is the guy attached to the penis, not the penis itself. This is, of course, exactly how pre-Graeco-Roman polygyny worked (and how it still works in those societies that never adopted the Graeco-Roman idea of monogamy) - rich and powerful men have lots of women; those women are usually allowed to have sex with each other but not with outside men. Most men in these societies aren't in this situation; they have monogamous relationships with one woman. And the society has enough wars to keep the male: female ratio low enough that this doesn't result in lots of unmarried men.
I am inclined to the argument that the cultural evolution to sufficient sexual equality to make polyamory on equal terms a realistic proposition runs through companionate marriage and that, itself, required monogamy (I'm not saying it couldn't have got there by another route, but that this was the route that it did follow) and so the strong memetic resistance to polyamory is, I think, path-dependent. We dropped polygamy for monogamy and then later on our monogamy evolved into companionate marriage and sexual equality, so it's easy to conceptualise polyamory as being a reversion to the "rich and powerful men have harems" model of ancient polygamy.
Also, it's not like those people don't have a point: if it was socially acceptable to have a harem, then I think (based solely on the fact that their sexual behaviour gets reported enough that even someone like me who largely ignores gossip knows this) that Elon Musk and Leo DiCaprio would have one each. There are probably a bunch of other rich and powerful men who would. The difference would be that there are quite a few women that would too. And there would also be all sorts of other types of poly relationship, not just that one problematic model.
But yes, it likely would be yet another way that social inequality manifests.
I've been poly for over a decade now. Myself and my partner Titania have been together eleven years. In my experience there is very little drama unless you feed the drama. The way I see it I can fuck and date any consenting partner I want. If my partners have a negative emotional reaction to my sex life that is their problem. Maybe I will be a little reassuring, but any emotional coddling I provide is me being extra nice. Its their responsibility to not be a dick to me. They are my partners. They are support to support me not emotionally sabotage me or ruin my fun.
Of course they have the right to behave however they want. But I would very quickly show a controlling or unsupportive partner the door. Im not signing over my life or my dick to anyone else. People know what they are getting into. I don't let myself get pulled into their issues. Mostly this results in total serenity and clear blue water. This attitude seems harsh but don't feed emotions that you aren't trying to grow. Im not going to spend long engaging with jealousy or other emotions that cache out to 'desire to control sapphs love life'. If a partner has those emotions I don't even want to hear about them. Handle your own shit.
"If my partners have a negative emotional reaction to my sex life that is their problem. Maybe I will be a little reassuring, but any emotional coddling I provide is me being extra nice. Its their responsibility to not be a dick to me. They are my partners. They are support to support me not emotionally sabotage me or ruin my fun."
I understand that you explain this is reciprocal, but frankly from a "normal" perspective, this reads as anywhere from emotionally vacant or immature to cruel and borderline anti-social, depending on how charitable you wish to be. I just can't even imagine the mindset that views reassurance to a partner as "emotional coddling" rather than something driven by love (where you feel your partner's emotions nearly as deeply as your own). I suspect that this is rather an extreme viewpoint even for the polyamorous, but if other poly people feel similarly then there is a very deep divide indeed between most mono and poly people.
Seemed like a generalization of the "does this spark joy" test to me. If you are doing a thing you enjoy and are happy with and someone has emotional problems about it and makes you worse off for having been around them then the trajectory of where this relationship goes in the future doesn't seem good. You can just leave early. The "waitwait I can fix things up" response often leads to misery on the side of the person fixing things up and things not actually being fixed. Also "break up with all partners who are not me" is a really huge ask when one of those partners is someone you've been with 11 years.
Maybe i'm just rounding it off to a more reasonable position in my head though.
Sapph is a guy/trans female* (read the remark about signing over their dick) and this is what we've been saying is one of the modes that mainstreaming polyamory will go: the guys who just want sex, emotional commitment is for the birds, having a rotating find them/dump them list of willing partners is what it's about.
At least they're being honest as to their view of the matter: it's about sex, your job is to be nice to me when I want/need it, my job is I don't have to give a damn about you and if you don't like it, there's the door.
*I'm taking that from the names Sapphire and Titania which, em, are very stereotypical 'I came out as trans female' names (sorry!)
I'm wondering if his partner isn't named Titania McGrath.
Well now Gordon, you may say that, I couldn't possibly comment! 😁
> emotional commitment is for the birds
This is an excellent pun.
I met an actual woman like that. It was a fun two or three years.
> eg “Poly people in the bottom quintile of status will report lower relationship satisfaction” or “Poly marriages among people without a college degree are more likely to end in divorce than monogamous ones.”
Polyamorous relationships require significant time investment. So I hypothesize that people at the two ends of the income distribution will report highest satisfaction (and adoption for!) polyamory.
And that the bulk of folk at the middle will come in at the bottom of the range.
I mean, it's possible that a poly pod will have a normal distribution of income amongst its constitution. And that the relationship style redistributes time and effort - one or more folk with a lot of time on their hands doing most of the work to hold the entire pod together. But that sounds a bit off, right? People tend to be attracted to other people who are a lot like them, so I suspect most pods are relatively homogenous.
So folk in the middle of the distribution, who have the least time for it, will likely be most unhappy and/or not have enough time to do poly things.
More specifically, folk who are upward (or downwards) mobile (or in the process of mobilizing).
Probably this is a likely explanation for why, on average, there are fewer children in poly pods (though the number is just measuring children with primary partner? I suspect that pods will actually increase average birth rates, since they increase the number of folk who can be in a relationship. Something like fewer children per pod member who would have been able to hold down a trad relationship, but relatively higher total children summed over everyone in the pod)
This is an interesting point. I think it's the case more broadly that living a middle class lifestyle puts more constraints on behavior, both logistically and psychologically, than either being wealthy or being poor. The upper class doesn't need to work as hard at conforming to reap the benefits that the middle class receives by living an expected, typical life (a measure of status, acceptance, and material comfort) and the much of the lower class isn't going to get those benefits regardless. A tendency to deviance (neutrally construed, deviating from a norm, not a synonym for degeneracy) is probably correlated with finding oneself in the lower classes as well.
"poly people have fewer children, and even when they do there’s rarely a third partner in the house"
This surprises me (or maybe I'm misunderstanding it)--I'd have thought that stable, long-term polycules would typically live together within the same household, even moreso when raising children. I'm imagining households with 50-100% more parents, but also 50-100% more children, a big happy giant family under one roof. I wonder what about my imagination is incorrect, or what makes it unlikely, and I also wonder at what the alternatives are, and their tradeoffs.
A few ideas:
1) Think of polyamory as another leisure activity or thing you can spend time on. Just like how maybe Netflix makes people have fewer kids because there's other fun stuff you could be doing, so too with polyamory.
2) Polyamory makes it easier to leave because you can test someone out ahead of time. Being pregnant and having a baby makes you vulnerable, economically and otherwise, and also the period of time when you are chasing after young children -- - I don't think most women would say they're at their most desirable. How solid do you feel about your male partner not leaving you for their more-fun, more-available, more-attractive partner if you have kids/more kids?
3) Raising children in a poly household is like....very fucking weird. You really got to go all out in terms of willing to be weird, because your kids know, their schools know, your extended relatives know. Whereas, if you're more on the swinger end, you don't have to do that.
I'm remembering the dispute a few years back now in the rationalist community about person A agreed to be the mistress of person B, with rules put in place about "no pregnancy, we use contraception, if an accident happens you get an abortion". A gets pregnant by accident and refuses to have an abortion, B and most of the commenters on the matter agreed that A was being unreasonable and in the wrong after going in to the situation knowing the rules and agreeing to them.
So I think in the poly sphere (to use that term), there probably are a *ton* of rules around safe sex, being careful about disease status, and using contraception so no unplanned pregnancies. If anyone does decide to become a parent, that has to be planned and negotiated beforehand as to who is going to get pregnant with whom, what the child rearing responsibilities will be, etc. so that makes it more complicated to have children. A monogamous couple may decide that they're going to have kids, and if an accident happens "well whoops, that was sooner than we decided, but hey why not?" where a poly arrangement can't handle that so flexibly: if you get pregnant by Z when this hadn't been agreed upon and decided with your primary partner, there's a lot of pressure around "you knew the rules, this wasn't supposed to happen". I think the levels of difficulty for juggling those responsibilities are higher in poly, so besides that it seems to be the young person's set right now engaging in that, and young people aren't as eager to have kids, the mindset is possibly more towards "no kids" than "yes kids".
After all, the memoir that kicked off this entire discussion, the married couple who have been poly for years - they have kids, but they are children of the couple and had been born before ever Mom and Dad decided this was the new way to go, and there certainly is no hint (so far as I get from the reviews) that having children with their lovers (either for Mom *or* Dad) was on the table as a possibility.
"I decided to operationalize this as "on the SSC survey, polyamorous men would have a higher correlation between self-rated social status and self-rated romantic satisfaction than monogamous men"
That is *very close* to a good test of my claim. I appreciate the scrutiny and I admit to mild surprise at the closeness.
Big problem though: men are more likely to become, *and* remain, polyamorous, if they think it will work out for them. Seems very plausible you could control for this, even on a survey, though I can't immediately see how.
(Now that it is more public I regret writing "competition for females", but it's on me. Maybe there's no nice way to put it anyway.)
But it's not a question of absolute status so much as one of relative status. You would expect men of lower status to prefer poly groups with other low-status men, and vice versa, otherwise the arrangement would be expected to devolve into a pseudo-polygynous relationship. I'm not sure that's what most poly women are after, so I assume there are mechanisms aimed at balancing relationships.
The problem with trying to measure the dynamic you describe, where a relatively low status participant (man or woman) is effectively passed over because others in their group are too high-status, is that this doesn't describe a stable relationship - which is what Scott is explicitly measuring. You wouldn't expect it to persist, and therefore you wouldn't expect the low-status partner to remain in the group; potentially even returning to monogamy.
The correlations are very close, but I wonder about the self-rated social status itself. My guess would be that the variance of men's perceived social status is greater in poly people than in monogamous people.
+1 I suspect that a lot of men simply give up on poly because finding a monogamous relationship is easier in practice. There’s about 2x more poly men than poly women, so it’s brutal out there.
Err, what? I think there are stats in Scott's post that contradict this?
There aren’t 2x more _practicing_ poly men due to selection effects but there’s 2x more men interested in poly than women, as per the polls I’ve seen.
Right. It's easier for women to get casual sex, because more men want it.
Yeah my first thought reading that was that there must be some pretty large selection effects between the groups. The first thing I would think to check is whether poly men in the sample are on average higher status than mono men. If not, then that would bolster the evidence provided by the correlations.
In the past, strictures against polygamy must have been mostly motivated by a need for more certainty of whose kids were whose, for inheritance purposes and the father's reassurance they were raising their own kids. But with DNA testing that is no longer much of an issue.
In the distant past, many thousands of years ago for most societies, polygamy may have been more the default because people weren't aware of the link between coition and conception. So a biological father wasn't even a known concept! Most of their womenfolk were pregnant almost continuously through their child-bearing years, they were all mating like rabbits, but nobody had linked the two as cause and effect.
I think most cultures became aware of the connection. The "virgin birth" is a miracle because people knew virgins don't normally get pregnant.
Well yes, but even 2000 years ago is fairly recent in relation to the anthropological timescales I was thinking of. Perhaps not so many societies were aware of the link say 10000 years ago, and a few not until much more recently!
Sounds like something that would be biologically innate
You would know after one birth from one woman with one partner who never had sex with another man. Also humans transmit culture so once known it’s not likely to be forgotten.
Assuming the partner had repeated sex with the woman, that outcome would also be consistent with a belief (arguably more plausible in the absence of any relevant knowledge of the process!) that sex acts cumulatively caused pregnancy, with it starting only when a certain threshold of "male essence" had been transferred from multiple copulations, like filling a bottle a teaspoon at a time (excuse crude analogy!), rather than only one coition leading to conception.
A belief like that would also encourage polygamy, and be beneficial for the society, firstly because every male who participated in free and easy sexual relations could feel that offspring of all women they'd had sexual relations with were partly theirs, which would make them more considerate and cooperative with the younger generation and reduce familial favoritism.
Also, it would mean women were more likely to conceive than if they were partnered with one man who unfortunately was sterile or indifferent to sex for whatever reason or, if marrying widows was taboo, to a guy who died.
Your speculations are exactly right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partible_paternity
Well done!
In his work, Malinowski describes a tribe in the Trobriand Islands that was not aware of the relation between coition and concepts, and in fact Malinowski was unable to convince them that there was one. They gave a very good counterargument: the albino women (which were outcasts in the society and were forced to live outside the village) also had children, and obviously noone would have sex with them.
It's not known for sure how this belief developed, but there are two hypotheses (possibly both true):
The traditional Trobriand Islander diet may lower fertility enormously due to the chemicals (phyto-oestrogens and sterols) in yams. You'd think that's be easy to establish, but apparently it's controversial. (Weiner, _The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea_)
Trobriand Islanders begin having sex early, around age 13, but they tend to hit puberty late, historically around 16 for girls. So they've usually been having sex for years before they first get pregnant, making the correlation less obvious.
There is a third possibility, which is that they were lying to the anthropologist, either as a prank or due to some taboo. But it does seem possible that some people would lose this knowledge, given some combination of factors.
The taboo answer makes sense, given that the albinos are considered outcast and not to be interacted with. But if you admit that men of the village are sneaking off to have sex with them and fathering children on them, that's throwing a grenade into social life and customs. So a 'formal' answer that "sex does not make babies, having babies is a separate, magical thing" preserves both the taboo nature of interacting with the outcasts and spares the village men (and their families) from disgrace (there surely are punishments for violating purity rituals) and allows the men to have sexual outlets and the albino women to engage in survival sex work (if you make the connection overt between sex and pregnancy, you also need to punish the women for tempting the men etc.)
As I recall the connection between sex and pregnancy was well understood even by the Aka, who are a hunter-gatherer people in the DRC.
Now, it's *conceivable* that they learned this from elsewhere a thousand years ago or what have you, but if so they picked up this information and, well, not that much other lore from the outside world.
More generally, people have had excellent powers of observation for tens of thousands of years, even if they didn't always have a great framework of abstract knowledge to try to explain and connect everything.
I expect the connection has been understood for at least 30,000 years if not far longer than that.
> So a biological father wasn't even a known concept!
In terms of the emergence of a "father" social role, Henrich actually does discuss this in "The Secret of Our Success". But I think people were aware of the biological role even earlier. When a gorilla seizes another gorilla's harem, he typically kills off the children who are already there, distinguishing them from his own later children.
Sexual jealousy is a very ancient trait, and it is the way that natural selection makes us act on this biological father concept thing, even if people are not aware of how things work in this department!
In that situation, the problem then tends to be the different mothers competing to place their biological child's interests ahead of their half-siblings - the 'who will inherit the throne?' problem. One that is often solved by "kill all the rivals so I'm the last one standing" approach, and that's not really stable, either.
Maybe this isn't 10,000 years in the past, but the travails of Rama start when one of his father's four wives (correction: three wives, four sons) is incited by her old nurse/maidservant to get the king to disinherit Rama - who the king plans to announce as his heir - and have her son chosen instead. "When Rama inherits, you will only be the stepmother, and his mother will lord it over you because the king will be dead and no-one will be there to protect you" is part of the argument to convince her. Since you're competing for status with the other wives/concubines and need to win and retain the king's favour in order not alone to protect your own status, but often your life, then your best bet is to put all your support behind your son and make him the next king - the king can always marry a new wife, but a son can only have one mother.
On the topic of polygyny in Judaism, a few notes:
1) R. Gershom's edict is a complicated question historically, it's probably attributed to him rather than actually imposed by him. Additionally, it seems to mostly be about creating a legal justification to penalize men who cheat creatively by "Marrying" their second partner in the context of what was already a monogamous society, rather than an attempt to restructure a polygynous society. It only ever applied to ashkenazic communities, and there were many non-ashkenazic communities that never-the-less practiced monogamy. Sefardic communities in Europe were more or less uniformly monogamous.
2) Conversely, many North African and middle eastern Jewish communities continued to practice polygyny well into the 20th century. The Yemenite Jewish community is one of the most prominent. It was only mass migration to Israel and the Israeli government's efforts to shut it down that more or less ended polygyny in these communities.
> Three thousand years ago, a cultural selectionist could have said that most societies in the world were polygynous, so we should avoid monogamy.
They wouldn't have even been aware of monogamous cultures that got replaced.
> A hundred years ago, they could have said that most societies in the world were monarchies, so we should avoid democracy.
This is a fairer point, the founders of the US were aware of classical philosophers who wrote about democracy being a degraded form government that got replaced eventually. Which is why they tried to constrain democracy (in ways that tended to get overturned later).
> But now you’re not really making a cultural selection argument, you’re making an “I did some armchair reasoning and decided this was bad” argument.
No, I don't think it qualifies. Polyamory really is spreading via memes rather than a group out-competing other groups, and your data above shows poly people have fewer children. Below replacement fertility is not an ESS.
> I think TGGP would answer that it doesn’t require any selective pressure to explain why people would want to have more romantic partners, since this is inherently fun for everyone.
That wouldn't be my answer. All sorts of arbitrary things can spread memetically. Even ones that seem like the opposite of fun: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/skoptsys/
> But this is also how almost every cultural trend spreads. Monogamy didn’t spread to Scandinavia because the Vikings died out and the Romans colonized their land, it spread because missionaries converted them to Christianity.
Those missionaries were from monogamous Christian cultures which had an ESS. Christians warred with pagans for a long time, eventually forcing them to accept Christianity. The Roman civilization (already monogamous) adopting Christianity might be a better example, although per Robin Hanson there Christianity was selected because it was anti-infanticide.
> Years ago, Jason Pargin (of Cracked.com, back when it was still relevant) said that outsiders looking back at our culture would see romantic love as our religion, and I think he was right.
Spotted Toad would say the "cult of love" was a midcentury thing. Unfortunately, he erased his existence from the internet, so the closest thing I can link to is this: https://forum.earwolf.com/topic/74961-when-harry-met-sally/?do=findComment&comment=324547
I've never understood about arguments for things like cultural selection. To me, at best they can be transient observations, not positive assertions of what we should prefer. If something is able to out-compete alternatives in the selection race, why does it need to be advocated for? Here's the logical progression that doesn't make sense to me:
1. [X] had to compete with multiple other strategies.
2. [X] won the competition against other strategies.
3. Because of this, [X] is more prevalent in the population.
4. We should prefer [X] since it has proven its utility.
5. We must defend [X] against other strategies, lest it lose its dominant position.
If the reason for preferring [X] is its ability to out-compete other strategies - including once-dominant strategies - shouldn't we cease to prefer [X] once it proves unable to out-compete those other strategies? I fully accept there may be other reasons to prefer [X], and therefore to advocate for it, but if the ONLY reason is its ability to compete then I don't see the reason we need to put our finger on the scale. Indeed, this logic quickly turns circular. We end up influencing the very metric we were using to decide which strategy to promote.
Now, we could decide that [X] isn't something we want to prefer for intrinsic or ethical reasons, or because we want to actively work against selective pressures. (cf Scott's excellent essay, "How the West was Won")
I would also argue that dominance is a very simplistic reading of evolution/selection, including cultural selection. In the real world, multiple different strategies co-exist even in a world where some strategies are dominant. Because what's selected FOR today could be selected AGAINST tomorrow, and since nobody can truly predict the future nobody can know which traits will stop being advantageous in the world of tomorrow.
Read the competing selectors post. Selection on the level of groups implementing memes means the meme gives some advantage to the group. Selection on the level of memes themselves is another story, as memes can simply be parasitic on the groups implementing them. Dawkins compared the memes behind things like religions & chain letters to viruses:
https://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/dawk-frame.html
Abstracting to that level doesn't seem to do anything to rescue the argument from circular reasoning.
Sure it does. Look at the effect on Darwinian fitness. A pathogen reduces your fitness, which is why we evolved immune systems to combat them.
Right. Nobody had to go in and advocate that people change their behavior so that immune systems could evolve. Organisms that had Toll receptors did better than those that didn't, so they became more prevalent in the population. I'm not arguing against evolution. I'm arguing against the idea that people need to step in to 'steady the ark' of evolution in order to make it work. If something is advantageous, it will persist. If it's not it will either die out or stick around in low levels in the off chance that circumstances change and that thing becomes advantageous in the future. Because evolution is about changing for a changing world.
I'm not saying you can't use ideas of selection and evolution themselves. For example, you could say that your preferred strategy is to follow whatever is currently predominantly manifest in the population. You might have to start splitting hairs, though. For example, the *Amish arguably drew a line in the sand over a hundred years ago and stopped accepting certain new additions. So you could either draw a line in the sand today and stop adopting new strategies, or you could just go with whatever the current fad is, accepting that others will be the early adopters. That's fine as a personal (not a general) strategy.
When it comes to advocating general strategies that everyone *should* adopt the same logic falls apart. Nobody will stop change/adaptation by claiming that past adaptations have 'won' the evolutionary game. Because evolution isn't a destination. It's an endless journey. So arguing that we need to preserve some element of the system's state because that's where evolution led us at this moment in time is tantamount to arguing that we should get out of the evolution game altogether.
The natural argument from evolution should be that we let the game continue and see where it goes in a complex interconnected world.
*I know it's more complicated than that for Amish/Mennonites.
The immune system works for organisms unaware of the germ theory of disease. But once you are aware of it, you can take deliberate steps to avoid disease, and humanity has done just that. In the realm of memes, we can tell people not to participate in chain letters, not to open suspicious attachments likely to contain viruses etc.
Monogamy is a bit of a different case because it's in the individual interest of a man to have many wives. That causes problems for the rest of the society though, undermining it relative to societies which restrict polygamy. Once a society has restricted polygamy and successfully outcompeted the societies which haven't, it doesn't make sense to "let the game continue and see where it goes" by tolerating polygamy again, anymore than it would make sense to let a pathogen spread in that society.
Anyone know why the Toad quit? I enjoyed reading him.
'if it means “no woman has ever been good at math”, this is an insane statement that I’m not sure anyone has ever believed'
Jim Donald, who used to post at SSC until you banned him, did literally believe that. He'd argue that all the examples of women being good at STEM were women who were OK but nothing special and being hyped up, or were women taking credit for men's achievements (he argued that about Marie Curie, FFS!). Then I pointed him at Emmy Noether and he has been posting for ten or more years saying "women can't do STEM except for Emmy Noether", because even he couldn't argue with pure math,
Congratulations on getting him to acknowledge an exception. For myself, I have found it best not to argue or try to convince people with bad opinions like this, for I have never had any success arguing from a position of facts and getting anyone to change their mind.
Jim is an odd character; the reason I read him is that he is absolutely straightforwardly honest about his appalling opinions.
I find him useful because he expresses in straightforward terms the motivations that I think - often unconsidered, or at least unexpressed - lie behind many other people's terrible opinions.
Usually the people who don't (or pretend not to) understand overlapping distributions are making the opposite argument (overlap means no differences exist), but I guess you can find anything on the Internet!
> (obviously having kids with someone you love who isn’t responsible and stable won’t work either. It’s maybe unfair that you need both love and responsibility, and maybe I’m doing something wrong since billions of people have had kids since the beginning of time and surely they didn’t all have both these things. But I’m not sure that I could do it without both.)
I think that modern-day parents in the developed world are laboring under some unique disadvantages due to living in a society that's atomized to a historically unprecedented degree. The community-level institutions that people have relied upon since the beginning to help ease the burdens of child-rearing are either unavailable entirely or greatly diminished. We have greater levels of affluence and personal autonomy than our ancestors did, which definitely helps to some degree, but in practice it doesn't help as much as some people might expect, because affluence and personal autonomy can provide a lot of things easily, but experience and wisdom are not among them, and that's something sorely needed for effective child-rearing.
Even just living with your parents would make a big difference. I understand that many jobs only being available in urban population centers makes that difficult, but maybe the rise of remote work will make it easier to live with extended family.
Looking at Aella's article on polyamory, which I found fascinating and enlightening, the following stands out to me:
1) "Fully polyamorous" is 3% of the survey sample.
2) "Fully monogamous" is 60%.
3) Despite the fact that "fully monogamous" is basically the social and cultural norm, it performs almost as well as the "fully poly" option, which Aella describes (and I think it's a logical description) as something akin to a deep, natural orientation, that her life is almost inconceivable without.
I feel like Scott uses this survey to make the point that polyamory works, but I almost come away with the conclusion that monogamy comes off looking pretty good here. Traditional monogamy gives you basically equal satisfaction scores to full polyamory, except it's a mode that works for 60% of the population. Full polyamory may work quite well for a very small minority, which seems largely to be made of people for whom it is a non-negotiable orientation, and society should be empathetic to that and not shame it. But if we're talking about polyamory as it is actually practiced by most people who are poly, Aella's point is that it's usually a disaster, and people are forcing themselves into those categories / lifestyles for the wrong reasons. So to me this seems like an affirmation of tradition with a small caveat that there are groups of people for whom said tradition will not work. Which feels reasonable to me.
I agree. Plus it’s worth noting that most people who consider themselves monogamous don’t consider it much of a choice—to average folks it’s the only path they’ve ever heard of to a stable, lasting relationship. It’s the default. Because of this, people in monogamous relationships are far more likely to be critical of monogamy or view monogamy negatively than poly people view poly negatively. It’s like complaining about congress, or the food at the cafeteria. Yet a poly only ends up in a poly relationship by considered choice, and if they find they view poly negatively from their experience, they simply go mono, which is already mainstream.
I think data suggests poly appears to work fine for a relatively small segment of the population. But I don’t think the data suggests it’s some kind of cultural improvement over monogamy.
A lot of people have heard of "cheating" or "open relationships" or other things that really classify as polyamory. They just don't like these things.
I didn’t even pick up on the volume. Am I reading correctly then that 12x people who are poly are in the middle states that tend to have less satisfaction than the full state?
In nearly all the graphs in part I, polyamory has higher error than monogamy (in the strictly statistical sense). Is this reflective of just sample size, or greater actual variance within the set? I could believe either; we kinda take polygamy to mean merely "not-monogamy", and there are lots of widely-varying ways to do that. The more I see people arguing about this, the more I think that lots of different polygamies are happening, and people arguing about it are very often "seeing different parts of the elephant".
I expect that there is smaller sample size on the poly side than the mono side, and if the true distributions within those are the same, then the samples will have higher error with smaller sample size (inversely proportional to square root of sample size).
I should like to know the criterion for classifying people as full/mostly/slightly <X>. Was it simply what label they themselves chose? Or was there some behavioral assessment based on statements about their behavior? Even the latter wouldn't be entirely convincing, as there seems to be lots of evidence that self-reports of behavior are often inaccurate, but it would be clearer what it was attempting to measure than the former.
It's from a self-selection survey.
I'm afraid I don't see how that's responsive. "People took part because they chose to" isn't equivalent to "People were classified as A because they chose to classify themselves so." Both might be true, but the second doesn't have to follow from the first, or vice versa.
People who read Scott's blog voluntarily decided to fill out the survey and could choose between the options through multiple choice.
I suspected that that was likely. But it makes me think that those categories are not particularly well defined. Does "mostly monogamous" mean that you have only one relationship most of the time, or that you have one relationship but you spent a little time seeing people on the side, or that you have one relationship that uses up, say, 90% of your relationship time, and another that uses up, say, 10%, and in the latter cases, do you keep it a secret from the primary person (which is why you might count it as "monogamous" rather than "polyamorous")? Those seem to be different behavioral options, and some of them might create more problems than others.
Is the fertility decrease more severe if you look at just the “non primary” partners? That would be my guess.
>I didn’t know before looking into the statistics for this post that poly people were that much less likely to have children.
One interesting bit of somewhat collaborating evidence is polygamy seemed to have decreased the number of children born for Mormons overall when they practiced it. For example, a study on the effects of Mormon Polygamy found "for the average mated women born in the late 19th century, sharing a mate with an additional female would have reduced her number of offspring by slightly more than one."
Quoting From: "Mating system change reduces the strength of sexual selection in an American frontier population of the 19th century" found at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6430215/
Super interesting! Is that because more women were paired with older men?
I expect that the men were providing most of the household income for all the wives and children, so that lack of financial comfort for more children would also be doing some of the work.
Since men replenish sperm at a fixed rate you'd also expect that, in a situation where one man has multiple wives, the number of children _per wife_ would be diminished. The number of children per man presumably would not.
In response to Some Guy:
I had the opposite experience. My parents divorced when I was 8/9 and my mom dated multiple people simultaneously. She was always very clear that I came first and she only brought men home if they were 100% on board with kids. The only one of her partners I interacted with extensively has always been kind to me. My mom is still with him and I call him my stepfather. I didn't like his children (my kind-of step-siblings) but I never had to spend much time with them. Not having clear 'family unit' lines helped a lot here! Otherwise these kids would have been my actual stepsiblings and I would have had to spend so much time with them.
On the other hand, I had a friend whose mom got divorced and remarried a little after my parents. Her new stepmom actively disliked kids and made her and her brother's life miserable.
The major difference here is "does the parent prioritize their children", but polyamory probably helped a bit by making it easier to have casual relationships that stayed outside the home.
Thanks for the example and I think I was trying but failing to move from the personal to the mechanical and then the statistical.
My situation was bad but it doesn’t mean they all are.
I don’t think, in a lot of cases, from a mechanical pov polyamory looks different from having lots of relationships.
So take the stuff from people with lots of relationships do and statistically I’d guess they get bigger under polyamory.
"The happiest polycules I know are asexual people."
I ask in all sincerity... are these _friendships_? With maybe less of a personal space bubble?
I think we have a lot of social respect for romantic/sexual relationships and a very eroded view of friendship as something that can have a place of privilege in your life, so some variants of polyamory seem like an excuse to prioritize friends.
I remember about ten years ago a poly piece where the woman said she opened her marriage because her husband didn't want to go to the opera with her, and she found a lover who would, and all I could think was, "they don't ask you if you're having sex when you try to buy two tickets!"
I guess it's a definition question. For me, for example, a 'romantic relationship' is "if you have problems, I will support you with my time and money as long as needed, no questions asked," which doesn't _require_ any sexual interaction but seems like more than just a good friendship (to me, at least), and I could see an asexual person seeing this similarly.
"if you have problems, I will support you with my time and money as long as needed, no questions asked,", yeah, that's what friends are for.
I strongly disagree, but suspect we're talking about different orders of magnitude here.
For scale: I am paying my Australian girlfriend a good chunk of what she used to earn as a wage each month while she's looking for a job. For complicated reasons, this is going on for about a year now. I'm not about to stop.
Maybe you have friendships like that, but I do think that's not how far most people would take them!
This sounds like something that would be difficult to do for multiple partners simultaneously.
Indeed, it could be! However, several points:
(1) This is not any more taxing than having several kids that you're willing to support if things go south.
(2) There's an (obvious) general awareness that just because I'm willing to share my resources doesn't make them infinite, and that I need some of them for myself. Sometimes problems are beyond our ability to fix. That is sad and stressful, but doesn't change the underlying principle.
(3) Things are usually not on fire simultaneously. If they are, things do indeed get bad (but again, see #1 and #2). It took many, many years of being together for even just this one fire to happen.
(4) It goes both ways! :) I haven't had to for anything serious, but I could ask my other partners for financial support. That can be a passive contribution - I will, for example, be asking that my US-American boyfriend fund his visit(s) to me this year entirely out of his own pocket (usually we split this partway), and he's not hurting for money, so this is an easy way for him to help me while things are tighter than usual. (He and my Australian girlfriend chat every day and are good friends, but they are, in fact, only friends, so I'm not expecting him to directly pitch into the financial aid, and I would reduce the financial aid before I ask him to offset it - it's my responsibility what I do with my money, not his.)
I don't know the details, but it sure sounds like you're being taken advantage of. I unfortunately have plenty of experience with how long it takes someone else to "look" for a "job" when I'm paying their living expenses with no deadline.
I subscribe to your heuristic, but, being in this situation, have much more data than you about it, and can assure you that it does not apply. Sharing details would help make this understandable, but they are actually private, and I'm not willing to disclose them on her behalf.
Your response is gracious. I think it's hard to apply a heuristic to situations we have almost no information about. There are so many situations I can imagine where a person might be out of work or take a while to transition to work for more than a year and that supporting them would be kind, generous, etc but not in any way being taken advantage of.
I'm unsure how much the difference in engagement towards people one is attached to depends on the kind of relationship compared to common projects. A bonded pair with kids or a family or a clan are special. Without procreation in the game, things can be team stuff. A real good team seems to me not categorically different from a polycule without kids. You care about each other, respect each other and everyone gives what they can. Friendship can mean a lot of things but sometimes it makes great teams, with networks of different personal relationships within, not necessarily all platonic.
Maybe it's the distinction between "asexual" and "aromantic"?
I have a friend who recently realized that they were asexual but "romantic" (i.e., the opposite of aromantic). It explains a lot, and if they had realized this decades ago it would have saved them a lot of heartbreak and disappointment. I don't think they ever tried poly, and I don't think it would work for them emotionally. But if it did work, I think that would expand their dating prospects by a fair amount. They'd be able to develop a committed romantic relationship without conflict around sex.
I mean, sure, but I exist in the culture as it's constituted today. If I dated monogamously and were like "I want to sleep over at a friend's house once a week, cuddle naked with friends, go on vacation alone with a friend while leaving my spouse at home, indefinitely support a friend financially, and raise my child with a friend in addition to my spouse," people would say to me "are you sure this thing you want is in fact monogamy?"
And in fact I'm raising my child with one person I'm in a romantic relationship with and one person neither my husband nor I is dating, and I think this is very meaningfully a poly experience. It's also true that no one asks if you're having sex before they refuse to let you put someone on your health insurance or deny them legal rights to their kid.
The health insurance thing is a major issue in the US, due to how we handle insurance through employers. Requiring that someone be legally married and to have birth certificates for adding kids are necessary to maintain the system. Otherwise insurance companies would have no means of limiting groups of friends or the random guy you just met who needed health care from joining the plan.
If your solution is Universal Healthcare - fine, sure. But unless or until that happens, we would need a workable solution. Civil Unions were not a workable solution to same-sex couples because there were very few guidelines about who could join or leave and under what circumstances.
"And in fact I'm raising my child with one person I'm in a romantic relationship with and one person neither my husband nor I is dating, and I think this is very meaningfully a poly experience."
Well congratulations, there's a term for that, and it's not poly!
https://bettercarenetwork.org/practitioner-library/human-resources/parents-and-caregivers
"The legal definition of a parent includes biological parents (whose parental rights have not been terminated) and adoptive parents (who have had parental rights conferred by a legal proceeding). A caregiver is a broader term and includes any person with whom the child lives who provides daily care to the child, and who acts as the child's 'parent' whether they are biological parents or not. A caregiver can be the mother or father, or another family member such as a grandparent or older sibling. This includes informal arrangements in which the caregiver does not have legal responsibility. As with children, parents and caregivers are critical actors within the care system and recipients of services designed to support them to fulfil their caregiving duties."
Person helping raise your child who is not related to them by blood or marriage and not in a sexual/romantic relationship with any parent: "caregiver".
Now, usually this is a job description because it will be child minders and childcare workers who act in this role, but it's not confined to them.
I think it's not uncommon to have a situation where people open their marriage because they and their primary partner no longer have much interest in sex with each other, but still both have interest in sex with others. Traditionally, we think of having sex together as more core to a relationship than going to the opera together, but I definitely know relationships for which the opposite is true.
I mean, from my understanding a lot of asexual people really enjoy kissing and cuddling. I have close friends of both sexes that I would never cuddle with, even if I wasn't in a relationship.
That being said, "platonic cuddling" between people who don't consider themselves to be in a romantic relationship also seems to be quite a big thing in the nerd circles in which Scott moves. I must say I've always found the concept kind of weird and gross.
I do think one of the forces behind poly is a desire to render a larger network of relationships legible with some amount of formal commitment. Traditionally I think this role was mainly filled by kinship networks and supplemented by other formalized structures. You could bind families to each other through strategic marriages, formal arrangements of guest-friendship, oaths of fealty, etc.
But for better or worse, family life has atomized quite a bit, and these structures no longer really function. Poly arrangements let you build a new kinship structure in place with a group of likeminded people.
The entire conversation about this is deeply fascinating for me with my three long-term partners (all more than a decade) and no one I've ever disclosed this to (and I do this often, because e.g. I have some relationship-related arrangements with my manager(s) about sabbaticals so my partners don't have to fight over my vacation days as much) having ever made a fuss over it. I feel privileged and lucky that I've been spared the drama.
(Also, I don't want kids of my own, but you've made me realise that I'd actually be open to co-parenting, especially to assist with the messy parts (if this surprises you, it may also surprise you that I'm the software engineer who prefers fixing bugs to writing new features), which is a fascinating insight to me.)
Virtually all relationships start with exactly two people, so some extremely large proportion of all poly relationships will involve a couple opening up their relationship. If you stipulate that this is a perilous course of action then it's clear that having it as a socially sanctioned option is bad for people.
I am willing to bite that bullet and say that starting restaurants should be socially discouraged.
Yeah - isn't it a meme that restaurants are REALLY hard to get right and run properly and that you should only attempt doing so if you're already a head chef with excellent business acumen or something like it?
I would discourage anybody who asked me about opening a restaurant
In my experience, the vast majority of poly people are single before they become poly and begin a primary relationship on the expectation that it be a polyamorous relationship.
Why think that starting as a couple and then adding others is always a case of "opening up" a relationship, rather than the relationship having started as open?
Just wanting to chime in as a polyamorous person, with a kid.
A huge part of polyamory’s PR problem is that “multiple relationships” is by definition more vague and ill-defined than monogamy. My family has three adults (2 women, myself included, and one man) and one child (my female partner’s from a previous relationship), who we all parent. We hope to have more children together.
Our relationship is closed-ish, we don’t have time or desire to date outside our group.
We are out with family and friends but quiet. We all are basically normal and you might not know from seeing us, even all together in public, that we are a triad unless you were paying attention.
I can’t speak to whether this is a “normal” polyamorous experience. Certainly the messes and the weird people with 8 partners or the couples “opening up” who treat their partners like shit get more air time. But it can be done, it’s not even that hard. You just have to have the right people (both as individuals, but also as a unit - just like lots of monogamous pairings don’t work, lots of poly groups don’t work either. And because the dynamics are more complex, it’s extra important to get a good match.)
Personally, I feel like having two partners pushes and challenges me to grow in a way I can’t get with one partner. It’s also very nice to have more hands on deck to deal with practicalities. People who say this is all for sexual gratification have not thought for one second about what actually living with multiple serious partners would be like.
I agree with Scott that it’s sad more poly people don’t have children. The structure of society makes this very, very challenging - limiting legal parenthood to two individuals, stigma from healthcare providers, schools, taxes and government benefits, etc. I think there would be more people like us if there were solutions to these issues, not even easy solutions, just anything at all one could do. I do think there is probably some selection at play too, though, in that lots of people who identify as poly do so because they don’t want the traditional narrative, which includes forgoing children.
I suspect the link between 'non-parent in house' and child-abuse is a selection effect.
Many/most divorces have abuse of sort as the root cause ==> people that leave abusive relationships tend to repeatedly fall into abusive relationships.
If only two people are in the house, there are two potential child abusers. If three people are in the house, there are three potential child abusers. The more people in the house, the higher the number of potential child abusers. If the probability of them being an abuser is constant, more adults increases the probability of abuse. (Excepting the space where there are sufficiently many people in the house that abuse can't happen because you would get caught.)
You've made an unfounded assumption that child abusers are normally distributed and that simply increasing N by increases the odds of child abuse.
FWIW this is also an argument against having more children and allowing friends/family around your children.
> You've made an unfounded assumption that child abusers are normally distributed and that simply increasing N by increases the odds of child abuse.
No? Even if you enact some effective barrier that reduces the child abuser probability from 5% to 1%, the same logic applies: more people around the child are more risk to the child. Unless the risk goes down with each additional person, which only happens when you have so many people that the child is never alone with any one individual.
> FWIW this is also an argument against having more children and allowing friends/family around your children.
Yes. Leaving people alone with your children carries the risk that they are an offender, even if they are your friends or family members. Do you think grandparents and high school best friends don't ever abuse children? Children are a low-risk class but teenaged sex offenders (for one example) do exist.
> No? Even if you enact some effective barrier that reduces the child abuser probability from 5% to 1%,
Yes, odds are not uniform so you can't look at two situations (with 2 adults and one with 3 adults) and make any conclusions about the relative risk that the child is being abused.
Besides, none of this has anything to do with my statement that having non-parent residents in the home vs parent is likely due to selection effects.
It's also the case that if only two people are in the house, then there are two potential child carers, and if three people are in the house, there are three potential child carers. The more people in the house, the higher the number of potential child carers. If the probability of being a carer is constant, more adults increases the amount of care.
The question is whether the average additional adult is likely to provide more care or more abuse. If the average adult *generally* provides more abuse than care, then children really shouldn't be reared by the general public. But if the average adult generally provides more care than abuse, then children should generally be raised by larger households (as in traditional extended-family situations).
But I think the real point is that the probability of abuse and amount of care is generally not constant.
Sadly, I think abuse rates vary sharply depending on whether the adult is (or thinks they are) biologically related to the child.
And trauma may not be one of the times where the effect varies linearly with the amount of cause.
I think the vast majority of divorces do not involve abuse.
"Approximately 23.5% of divorces list domestic abuse as a contributing factor." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4012696/
More than high enough to make selection effects a plausible underlying explanation.
Speaking as someone who's never interacted with a polyamorous person, and is 85-90% sure would get blank looks if I used the term in front of anyone I knew, this really looks like it's being used to describe a bunch of different things that aren't especially related. Throwing every form of sexual/romantic interaction that's not monogamy (or covert breaches of monogamy*) into one bucket looks like about as natural a category as "gentiles" to refer to the set of Inuit, Colombians, Han Chinese and Danes but excluding Jews; it's potentially useful in some contexts, but probably not a group you can generalise about.
Teasing out a taxonomy, I think you have:
1. Open relationships (a romantic couple where one or both has sex (or possibly romance) with other people).
2. Swingers (similar to above, but as part of a structured group; principally sexual).
3. Casual sex/relationships (having sex with several people without being in a committed relationship; dating multiple people without being in a committed relationship).
4. Polygamy/polygyny/polyandry (one person having multiple sexual/romantic partners).
5. Web-type polyamory (multiple people each having multiple partners, but as a series of relationships; eg. John's dating Jane and Becky, Becky's also dating Steve and Toby, Jane's also dating Toby, not dating Steve and dating Brad, Brad and Steve are both dating Claire).
6. Blob-type polyamory (a group of people who are all having relationships with every other [compatible?] member of the group; a group relationship).
I always thought polyamory was a new word for 5/6 (I'm not sure to what extent 6 exists), invented for the purpose of distinguishing it from 4. Including 1, 2 and 3 seems to needlessly muddy the waters and catch a bunch of wholly unrelated people engaging in something that isn't remotely new (my fortunately-limited interaction with swingers IRL confirms the retired policemen and divorced receptionists stereotype). Again, it's a bit like trying to discuss what gentiles are like while one person's talking about Nebraskans and the other's talking about San bushmen.
*Coming soon: I'm not cheating on you, I'm crypto-polyamorous.
When people want to distinguish these, they use "ethical non-monogamy" to refer to all of these (excepting maybe 4, since institutionalizing the idea that only one person is allowed to do it is usually thought of as unethical) while "polyamory" is reserved for 5 and 6. I think people sometimes use the term "solo-poly" for 3. But I think there is a continuum between 1 and 5, since you often can't tell the difference between (5) someone who has a strongly primary partner and some other side relationships (many of whom have their own primary partners), and (1) someone who is just in an open relationship and has a few repeat friends-with-benefits in addition to casual sex with some others.
Supposing that polyamorists did have more kids, I think you would have a serious free-rider problem with multiple people trying to co-parent kids that aren't biologically their own.
Wait, why would this be a problem? Aren't more people who want to parent, and actively taking part in parenting, a *good* thing for the kid (and the other parents, in the sense of spreading the load) in most cases?
Because I think you'd have different people with different levels of desire to actually parent a child that wasn't theirs, and the fact that a lot of the work and financial commitment that goes into parenting is a chore or in many cases downright unpleasant, like changing diapers, a parenting by committee approach is likely to have difficulty achieving a stable equilibrium or stable division of labor. I suspect that even the biological fathers are in many cases likely to try to take advantage of the fact that they're probably not married to the child's mother. The whole thing seems like a gateway to low investment parenting, from my vantage point.
Even if that's the case, I'm basically seeing it play out like this:
1. Single mom scenario - mom does all the hard / messy parts, and all of everything else. Zero breathing room, max effort.
2. Monogamy scenario - mom does all the hard / messy parts, gets to share lighter parts with 1 other person. Little breathing room due to dad working, etc, but at least some load taken off.
3. Poly multi-parent scenario - mom does all the hard / messy parts, get to share pretty much all the rest of load with multiple other people. Max breathing room and sanity scenario.
Why doesn't it end up working like that the majority of the time? It's what I would expect / bet on.
I can only speculate, but I suspect scenario 3 works out for probably about 18-36 months, and then becomes more like scenario 1. If polyamorous parenting is so great, why don't we see more of it? Again, I suspect probably because there's a little bit of a tragedy of the commons type phenomenon that can/would occur. Consider the possibility that evolution has wired people not to want to invest large amounts of time and energy into raising kids that aren't biologically theirs.
The other dudes (or women) don't care as much--as Gordon Tremeshko says, 3 collapses into approximately 1.
The advantage of 2. has always been the dude thinks the kid is his.
Most of the discussion of problems with polyamory seems to be just an extension of problems with any open relationship, formally polyamorous or not. But the polyamorous group I know best is a stable three-person marriage (2 men, 1 woman). Both men are straight, so it functions as a woman with two husbands, who treat each other as housemates/buddies. The three don't, at least not actively, have romantic/sexual relations with others, and they've been together for decades and seem very happy.
Isn't that menage-a-trois, not polyamory, though? It may be a little different because it's one woman and two men, where classically it was a husband, wife, and admitted mistress of the husband all knowing about each other and getting on together, even living together?
If that's not polyamory, then I'm at a loss as to how what's been described here as polyamory is any different from open marriage. Maybe it is the same thing, and "polyamory" is just a Latin term meaning "open marriage."
It literally means many (poly) love (amor). Mono means one.
There's something special about comments that are 1) completely unhelpful and 2) assume that the person being commented to is an idiot. "meaning" is for "means the same thing," not "literal translation."
I would argue the menage-a-trois was a form of polyamory. And some of them involved two men--there are French movies about them.
It would be. But the question was, are all stable three-person arrangements fairly describable as menage-a-trois? I would say not. There is nothing like (the male equivalent of) wife and mistress about the three-person marriage I am discussing. For one thing, they all live together. For another, there's no primary or secondary about the husbands.
"For another, there's no primary or secondary about the husbands."
Well, if A is legally married to B, that's a distinction. If they're not married at all but living together and calling each other husband and wife, that's a different matter. But if things go sour and they split up, absolutely it will make a difference if B is the legal husband and C is just the lover.
I believe this triad does have a legal arrangement of that kind. But it's strictly a legal nicety and would only become relevant in the case of a breakup, which after decades of stability seems unlikely. It has absolutely no reflection in the relationship among the three. "How relationships work" is the topic here, and there's nothing primary/secondary about that. in this relationship. It is completely unlike the classic menage-a-trois in which the man lives with the wife and conducts his public social life with her, while the mistress lives separately and has a secondary relationship with him.
As has been said elsewhere here, half a loaf is better than none.
I think this works with male nerds because we're not very masculine and don't fight physically much. In the general public I doubt this would work long-term--too much fighting. Remember that case the media were going on about where there was a lady with four men and they claimed not to care whose baby it was, and then they found the kid with injuries?
This "half a loaf" doesn't make any sense to me. In a world with an equal number of men and women, monogamy would satisfy everyone, subject only to coordination problems of people meeting each other and getting along (admittedly a big "only"). For people who are sexually or romantically less successful or desirable, how is enforced monogamy, where every man has his own wife and every woman has her own husband, not the best outcome?
Or put in the economic terms people here love so much: if "nerds" are likely to get less share of a sexual "pie", then...they really *shouldn't* want sex to be a pie to be unequally sliced up. And that toxic comodification of sex and love is exactly what monogamy and conservatism is against!
The phenomenon of socially liberal nerds is endlessly baffling to me.
> Poly emphasizes the part where you have multiple relationships. This is more of a female fantasy than a male one, hence the female predominance.
Yeah, in my experience, gay men don’t do polyamory, they do sexual-but-not-emotional non-monogamy (where sex outside the relationship is allowed, according to some set of rules, but falling in love with someone else would be considered cheating).
(Then there are “throuples”, but those also don’t behave like classic straight polyamory, in that once the throuple stabilizes, they are generally agreed to be three-way-emotionally-monogamous, not open to further relationships.)
In my experience, this is largely right - but it's often the case that there are some good friends that are common friend-with-benefits for one member of a couple, and it's not all pure casual one-night stands (though there's a lot of those too). Whether or not that counts as a secondary relationship is usually a terminological thing (perhaps because cohabitation is still primarily one or two people).
If you're interested in data on the child-rearing aspect of this, I have some I could provide in a private side channel.
The survey data are going to have survivorship bias of the form, people who have tried X, found they were miserable, and had enough self-awareness to stop X, probably don't self-identify as X any longer.
One can still use those U-shaped curves to say "The thing that is working for you, can probably continue to work for you."
But I don't think we can use this data to test hypotheses like, "The median hetero male would be more/less satisfied trying X."
And how will the wording go on the 'polyamorous' marriage license?
Oh, that's the easy part. "Aspen, Birch, and Cedar are married."
Ah. I just met a waitress named Aspen. It could be intersectionality. It's all starting to make sense.
""I think there’s something really attractive about being poly even if you never get around to having any other relationships, just so you don’t have to constantly be getting angry at your partner for having normal human desires."
Respectfully, this reads to mono people as "I think there's something really attractive about not having pain receptors, so that you don't have to constantly be jumping around in agony every time you stub your toe."
Honestly, not having to jump around due to a stubbed toe sounds great. Especially if it were elective! You feel the pain signal, acknowledge it, then turn it off. You don't really need to do anything about a stubbed toe, so the pain is a spandrel.
Jealousy is elective for some people. Wouldn't it be unambiguously better if pain were elective?
My point is that jealousy isn't elective, so it's meaningless to invoke the putative desirability of its absence.
I guess that's the crux, then - but I can tell you that for myself, and for ~20 other people I know, jealousy is indeed elective or non-existent.
The existence of elective / nonexistent jealousy is no doubt a great driver to inclinations towards monogamy or polyamory in an individual.
And surely, it can't be hard to believe that there are indeed people who jealousy does not affect (slight if any penalty to fitness) when there are verified people who *pain itself* (massive penalty to fitness) does not affect.
My point here was that Scott was writing in a manner that only had meaning if invoked as to reactions that were elective. To the extent that jealousy, like pain, is non-elective, you can't persuade people that they shouldn't feel it because it would be "good" any more than you can persuade them not to feel pain from a stubbed toe because that would be "good." Whether or not jealousy, like pain reception, is present or absent in an individual isn't susceptible of argumentation.
Sure, I agree.
I think there's levels to it, though:
"I think there’s something really attractive about being poly even if you never get around to having any other relationships, just so you don’t have to constantly be getting angry at your partner for having normal human desires."
For example, Esther Perel pointing out that monogamous people want waaaaayyyy too much from a monogamous relationship:
We expect sex, companionship, friendship, psychological counseling and support, workout buddies, people who are fun in downtimes, people who are fun in uptimes, people who are compatible with all our interests and friends and diets, and much more from our partners.
Sub "poly" with "non-jealous," and Scott's quote could as easily apply to the other party in a relationship getting one of these other aspects fulfilled with somebody else, and not feeling jealous about it. And indeed, this has to be something like what asexual poly relationships are doing, because it's explicitly *not* about the sex!
The distinction between having "close friends who are not your partner" and "asexual poly" seems pretty slim if you extend it to encompass anyone who fulfills one of that lengthy list of enumerated needs who isn't a monogamous partner. These are all things for which people maintain friends who they aren't into sexually or romantically.
Many things aren't elective, and people are supposed to exercise self-control. In monogamy, the desire to have sex with others isn't elective, and yet people are supposed to refrain from acting on it. Why can't we say the same about jealousy? From this perspective, poly isn't more or less unnatural than mono, it's just a different choice of which emotion to use as a sacred foundation for our relations, and which one is considered socially inappropriate.
And just like different people have naturally different sex appetite, they also have different levels of jealousy. Some people are so jealous they would be unable to function properly in polyamorous relationships. Some people are so jealous that they are not even able to properly function in monogamous relationships -- we call them abusive, and consider this level of jealousy pathological. But similarly, some people suffer in monogamous relationships; they cheat on each other, or just feel deeply unhappy.
Shortly, this argument can be made in both directions.
I guess the information part of pain is more important than the urgency part. But I wouldn't want to get rid of the urgency part. I often ignore important information and would probably die of a treatable disease I have been noticed about.
That was the third grant I funded this year! https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/acx-grants-results-2024
.....Touché, Mr. Alexander.
One selection bias that might be worth checking (idk if the data is available) is life/relationship satisfaction of practicing monogomist/polyamorists (i.e. only those currently in a relationship). Anecdotally I've never met a poly person who was single, and it seems like the kind of thing where a soon-to-be poly person might self-identify as monogamous until they get into their first poly relationship, so there might be disproportionately more dissatisfied single people calling themselves poly on surveys, dragging down life satisfaction, etc.
I doubt this will actually change the result of the test, but it has been gnawing at my brain as I read.
"One interesting demonstration of this is how many asexual people are poly. In the 2017 SSC survey (the same one cited above), about 5% of polyamorous people described themselves as asexual (having no sex drive) compared to about 3% of monogamous people. These people are probably in relationships for the emotional benefits."
Either that, or they're opening their relationship under pressure because society tells them that their partner won't be satisfied with an asexual partner and they need to allow their partner an outlet.
Could check that by looking how many of these asexual poly people's primary partners are *also* ace. I think it's a lot of them.
It seems hard not to conclude that all the benefits Scott sees in polyamory would be even better realized with traditional sexual morality ("enforced monogamy"). Side relationships are even easier to form and less likely to have issues with jealousy if they're strictly and automatically non-sexual, plus then you don't need to have the same worry about children being born into unstable or abusive situations. Giving up the sexual aspect is apparently no big deal anyway, since, according to Scott, the relationship aspect is what people really want. In fact, the one aspect truly unique to polyamory, promiscuous sex, seems to be the aspect that Scott is least enthusiastic about defending.
The amount of discourse around "emotional affairs" suggests that jealousy is still an issue even when the other relationships are non-sexual.
I’m not sure that a society that had strictly enforced monogamy would have the same concerns about emotional affairs as our society with the ever present reality of adultery and divorce.
Exactly, if sexual affairs were very taboo and unusual you wouldn't need to worry about them, the same as almost no one worries that their partner is secretly a cannibal.
Historically I do not think it was the case that people commonly had very close (but non-sexual) cross-gender friendships (what we might call "emotional affairs" today) in societies which had strictly enforced sexual monogamy. In fact that seems to have been less common when sexual monogamy was more strictly enforced - presumably at least in part as a mechanism of enforcement.
So even if you leave the sex out of it, there are still benefits to polyamory over enforced monogamy, namely, the freedom to have close cross-gender friendships.
>The amount of discourse around "emotional affairs" suggests that jealousy is still an issue even when the other relationships are non-sexual.
That is my understanding as well. ( Admittedly I'm looking at all of this from the sidelines, personally having been monogamous when my late wife was alive, though bearing no ill will towards poly people. )
As a fan of AI, I'm curious as to how it does or will fit into this. I've read comments that it is far easier to have an LLM write emotionally supportive text than (as technology stands) to build a sexbot. Can Replika or similar systems act as an "emotional" partner in a thruple? :-)
"I don’t really know how to rescue cultural selection arguments from these kinds of considerations."
I think the rescue would go something like this:
When we had basically universal monogamy, made official by marriage, while there were plenty of problems, there were also lots of kids. Fertility was sky high. As we have moved away from that, we can debate problems, happiness, etc. But there is not much debate about what happened to fertility: it collapsed. Our society may be happy, but it is dying out. Our mores will either be replaced by others, which are more kid-friendly, or we will go extinct.
Fair enough - that's certainly debatable.
I think "monogamy" is probably the wrong cue there, in terms of greater depression and anomie in the modern world.
And honestly, I think "monogamy" is the wrong cue in terms of fertility effects, too. It's MUCH more likely to be cheap, effective birth control and educational and economic dynamics.
I doubt the dilution of monogamy is independent of cheap, effective birth control and our educational and economic dynamics.
Seriously. Poly communities seem impossible without reliable birth control.
Just some general thoughts.
1). True love/soulmates is a stupid harmful concept, but that isn’t what makes a good monogamous relationship work.
2). I think as a 10-25 year old with absolutely raging hormones I found the arguments for poly lifestyle pretty compelling and only suffered monogamy due to my partners wishes and societies insistence (and cheated a bit a few times). Once I got much past 25 though my main concern became landing as high quality mate as possible and then having as much stability and loyalty/trust in the lat relationship as possible. And monogamy just seems like a much better teamwork than that. I should add that our married sex life is like a solid B+/A- even in year 13 of marriage, if it was bad I might be a lot more interested in cheating or an open relationship situation.
3). I don’t think there is any reason to doubt that if 2 parents are better than 1, that 3 is even better, or 10.
The issue is do those non genetically connected parents actually care as much and act like true parents. I suspect having 4 parents is strictly speaking better, but often if there are 4 adults and one kid two of the people aren’t going to act/be “real” parents.
“3). I don’t think there is any reason to doubt that if 2 parents are better than 1, that 3 is even better, or 10.”
I’m not sure I’d be willing to say that there’s no reason to doubt. The situation that human evolution has selected for to date is one in which two biological parents (not three or ten) mate and create an offspring. The typical human offspring might plausibly be best adapted to that (two biological parents) supplemented by extended family. I don’t know.
Isn't it much more likely that the typical Homo Sap offspring is likely to be adapted to being raised by the Dunbar's number-sized group of adults who would be around in the EEA?
"It takes a village."
I mean, at the minimum, there's ~250k+ years of that vs <9k years of any form of civilization whatsoever.
I think the Dunbar limit is meant to propose a cognitive cap on the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. I think within the space of such relationships, there are degrees of intimacy and commitment. A parent-child relationship appears to require more interaction and dedication than many other stable social relationships. All stable social relationships are potentially beneficial. But within the parent subset of Dunbar-limit relationships, I don’t think ten parents undoubtedly leads to better results for an offspring than two.
Maybe it’s like if you have an hour-long class and instead of one instructor for the whole hour, you get ten instructors for six minutes apiece. I don’t think it’s obvious that the student benefits from the addition of so many instructors over the same class duration.
What if class duration is 10 years? Would you then consider that the additional viewpoints could make for an improvement?
The kind of class I'm referring to is a short period in which a particular subject is taught. It’s something defined in part by its duration.
If you’re asking me if I think diversity of viewpoints can be a good thing, I think you know the answer is yes. But I don’t think having two parents means the child will not have other wonderful formative relationships that will expose them to a diversity of viewpoints. All of the most open-minded, knowledgable and compassionate people who ever lived managed to get that way despite the handicap of only having two (or fewer) parents.
My stated position is that it is not undoubtedly the case that ten parents is better for a child than two. I proposed that “maybe” it’s like having ten teachers in a typical class period to illustrate that one can imagine cases in which simply adding extra authority figures wouldn't obviously and without question add to the well-being and healthy development of a child. With ten parents one can imagine how a child might routinely receive conflicting instruction. The child could be confused as to the parent’s hierarchy. The child might be over-supervised and grow up with a diminished sense of autonomy. Who knows? Of course there could be benefits to having extra parents, as well, particularly for the parents. No one is doubting that possibility. But it is not outlandish to consider that having as many parents as possible might not be optimal for a child’s development.
I’m surprised there’s so much pushback against the mere possibility that two parents, the exact number of bioloigical parents every human’s ever had, might be worth considering as one of the candidates for the optimal number.
>I don’t think there is any reason to doubt that if 2 parents are better than 1, that 3 is even better, or 10.
There are a number of reasons to doubt that, and they have been pointed out over and over in this very comment section. They could all turn out to be wrong, but they certainly exist.
Even if only two of the people are "real parents", having two more people that are willing and able to take over when one or both of the primary parents is sick or on a surprise work trip can often be huge (and I think this is how extended-family households usually work).
I was wondering how polyamory plays out among heterosexuals, for gender balance. I can imagine two scenarios. One, a polycule of couples, or so-called “swingers.” Each man-woman couple joins up, with a partner contributing their opposite-sex partner’s sexual availability to the polycule in exchange for sexual access to the opposite-sex members of the polycule. I feel like, usually, the contributor is the man and the contributed is his woman, but I’m open to the other way around. In this model, everyone would have a primary partner. I wonder how norms would be negotiated around mate-swapping. Swinging seems to reify almost a property norm in the primary relationship. Like, for it to work, everyone needs to acknowledge each other’s right to their primary partner and not poach.
The other model seems to be the harem. I’m thinking one man and several women, but sure why not an aspie cumdump. Equal opportunity. Perhaps the alpha rotates among partners equally, maybe one partner is primary. Maybe the partners serve different functions (conversation, wealth, hotness, fertility) so they aren’t directly competing. Perhaps the alpha invites a same-sex guest star, if he approves of the desire on the part of one of his opposite-sex partners. But a same-sex regular (a beta?) would seem to disrupt the dynamic if he had sexual access independently of the alpha, which is that the harem focuses on the needs of the alpha. If the beta were to become the effective alpha for part of the harem, (1) he would be stealing mates from the alpha or (2) the alphas would become “swingers” with respect to the opposite partner they share.
I’m not anti-polyamory! But the discourse seems oversold and misleading in the way it’s about individual fulfillment and autonomy. I question whether polyamory is ever individualistic and egalitarian, in practice. In swinging, the couple or the harem’s alpha is the autonomous unit. For a harem, one partner is the sun; the others, planets. Again, I don’t think these arrangements are inherently bad. But in some way they are less sexually liberating than the normal practice of hooking up slash dating then monogamy. I think polyamory gets oversold or leads to disappointment when people get into it without considering whether being swingers or being in a harem is right them.
I don’t have a problem with someone choosing polyamory over monogamy. Yay freedom! But the choice is between one set of social norms and expectations (one faithful partner) for another (swinging and harems), which constrain their participants in a different way.
I think a better model is: imagine a group of friends. You know how sometimes people in a group of friends pair off to play Magic the Gathering, or go to a concert, or edit each other's poetry, or whatever? Like that, except one of the activities is sex.
It's true that gender ratios affect the dynamics at *all*, but you'll have a much more accurate viewpoint if you anchor on "friendship, but with sex" rather than "monogamy, but with more people."
I guess.
I have a hard time believing it's exempt from the cruelties of the sexual marketplace, but I suppose anything's possible somewhere, even if it doesn't scale.
Sex is generally considered a much bigger deal than playing a card game. If there are people for which this isn't true, I guess that's up to them.
It still makes a big difference if pregnancies and kids are involved, no matter how little you care about sex as a core of a relationship.
STDs, too.
It seems pretty obvious that polyamory and having children are an ... interesting mix, evolutionarily.
Certainly there's an advantage to collaboration: for a man to help out with his friends' kids if the friend also helps out with his kids.
But if his friend is banging his wife and it turns out all the kids are actually biologically his friend's and none of them are his, that's clearly a big evolutionary disadvantage for the man.
Most? I mean, I'm sure the risk goes up, but I doubt it's a majority.
Yeah. But friendship may be crucial here. As Scott wrote, the poly relationships he endorses are more about something else than sex. Considering the autism spectrum epidemic and the fact that autistic traits are on the male side of behavior distributions, I suspect there are a quite a few women around nowadays who function socially a lot like men: Team bonding, value trust highly, don't care too much whom you fuck. Such women may well be happy in a polycule.
It may well be the case that most women on the spectrum can't. If there's enough of them, there'd be enough of the high-functioning kind to explain the cultural phenomenon. I really don't know the numbers, not even roughly. But something seems to be happening. I thought it was some co-evolution of intelligence and autistic traits. But accepting the autism spectrum as expression of some kind of brain damage, now I tend more to the suspicion it's something chemical. How have the numbers of low-functioning autists developed?
This is where paternity testing could be helpful.
In monogamous relationships, paternity testing is considered by many a dangerous thing, precisely because it can ruin the relationship if it turns out that one partner has cheated on the other.
Doesn't matter how many friends are having sex with someone's wife; as long as the tests show that the children are biologically his, there is no evolutionary disadvantage.
But think about the relationship dynamics. Let's say two guys and one woman living together, both guys having sex with the woman. If she has a kid, it only biologically belongs to one of them. Resentment about the other guy's baby is going to be huge. This gets worse if the same father has more kids, and the other guy doesn't. Maybe even worse is if they each have one or more kids, and then the fathers might develop a rivalry among the children. Bob's kids gets extra Christmas gifts or whatever - which is totally a thing that happens among divorced families with mixed parentage kids.
"In many, (though not all) polyamorous groups I've seen, kids are often an afterthought who are brought up by single mom's who often find themselves as satellites to several disparate polyamorous groups. The nature of easily picking up a new flame and dropping old ones makes it easy to pick up attractive but difficult people, and get rid of them (and their kids) when they become too inconvenient or unreasonable.{snip}
Raising healthy children who have stable family backgrounds could be a primary focus within polyamorous culture in the US if expectations were a little more codified and there were fewer individuals flying the polyamorous flag for hedonic sexual pursuits alone. Kids need a fair amount of support, stability, and need to have connections to people of all ages to grow up as responsible, strong minded people.{snip}
I'd be interested to see what effective polyamorous marriage would look like as a legal institution, as it could provide satellites who have kids more recourse. However, it still wouldn't solve the cultural issue of commitment to relationships, which is increasingly rare in monogamous couples as well.{snip}"
In terms of romantic relationships, society has moved from an obligations-based viewpoint to a more rights-based viewpoint. Traditionally, marriage included an obligation to stay beside the spouse, for richer or poorer. Now, many married people reject this interpretation of marriage, others never marry or marry later in life. More and more are in relationships where there's no moral obligation to remain. Instead, the focus is on the rights of the individual to pursue his or her own personal happiness. This parallels the rise of individualism in society more generally.
But this trend stops where children begin. Almost nobody thinks its morally acceptable for a mother to tell her ten-year-old, "sorry, but this relationship just isn't working out for me, have fun in foster care!" With polyamory, kids bum out the whole project, you don't want to raise someone else's kids, but you don't want to make explicit the attitude "DNA test or its not my problem," so you just shrug and say nothing.
Fundamentally, people don't want to raise kids that aren't genetically their own. I don't think this is destiny, at least some people could make polycule childrearing work, but it would likely require a lot of social pressure like you see in fundamentalist religious groups, not laid-back, whatever worksism.
Strong agree. Even the norm of adults joining and leaving the kid's lives can be very difficult for developing healthy relationships. Is the alternative that social pressure says that if a woman in your polycule gets pregnant, you have to stay until the kid turns [8? 12? 18?]? I don't see anyone accepting that - it appears to be fundamentally against the whole idea. But then the kids are stuck with adults leaving them potentially regularly and new adults entering the picture. Some Guy from the last thread had a lot to say about that, and the increased likelihood of abuse.
Adoption. Sperm donation for infertile men. Egg donation for infertile women. Loved stepchildren.
While people *prefer* raising their own genetic offspring, it's not an exclusive thing.
>Trans people in polycules tend to go either very well or very very badly, no in-between.
Now I'm worried, being trans and considering whether I am poly or not... are there some stories or anecdata about risk factors here?
Presumably you are not the first person in history to tell them that there's something odd or unusual about being trans. But they've probably settled their thoughts around that, and being poly is the thing that they're still not sure of, and thus might have novel worries about.
Yeah, pretty much. I don't know what the original reply said, but I get it, it's new and weird and makes some people uncomfortable. But transitioning makes me really happy like nothing else does, so I stick with it.
I think the big risk factors for it going bad are poverty, trauma, severe mental illness, and a charismatic person with bizarre political beliefs who becomes a cult leader.
Hmm. That's all? I'd think that that's the kind of thing that makes any polycule bad, not just trans ones. Are trans ones more susceptible to this?
I guess if that's so, then I know what to watch out for, then.
I think that trans people are more likely than average to be poor, traumatized, severely mentally ill, and/or in possession of bizarre political beliefs.
Fair enough, I suppose.
Knee-jerk reaction: While I have utmost respect for Scott, trans people in polycules are a minority within a minority. I'd like to know the sample size here! Concluding _anything_ might well be a mistake...
People talk a lot about how impossible it is for regular people to have families in this late-stage capitalist hellscape, but then it becomes all the more fascinating how Ultra-Orthodox Jews have an *average* of 7 kids each (often in New York apartments?). And these aren't even well off Jews I take it, lacking much secular education. According to the economic perspective these families must be suffering greatly, but it seems like people get used to living at pretty much any economic level as long they're not poor relative to their community.
And before anyone says "community support", consider how much the kids must outnumber the adults if every generation is 3.5 times the size of the previous one. Grandparents? Good luck helping out with your 49 grandkids. Older kids can care for younger kids, sure, but any community could teach their kids that.
There are so many factors here. Among them is that, if you get married and start having kids quite young, and you don't have much of a secular education, and your English may not even be great, and the only culture you know is your own, and if you leave your community will fight you on having access to your kids -- it's not exactly easy for you to get out. Like, we can contrast the Haredi with Modern Orthodox Jews, who are both observant and well-educated, and family size looks really different. It's still relatively high and I absolutely think there are things to learn from cultures which are successful at having kids! But it's not 7 kids in an apartment as a normal thing. To get people to do that....a lot of things need to line up, and they're not necessarily things you want.
And then, on an individual level, of course you can't really just enact these things in your own life without also separating a lot in other ways. Like, try having your older kids regularly minding your younger kids while you send them to your local public school and see how fast they come home with the word "parentification." Or send them to a playground together, just them, and they will get approached by well-meaning adults, and possibly someone will call the police. You really need to do this on a community level, so even if it might be theoretically possible it doesn't really negate the whole "impossible for regular people" thing. (And barriers to becoming Haredi are very high!!)
There are people outside such communities who do manage to have large families though.
"When we got to 20 kids we thought enough is enough but..." - https://youtu.be/Cjvsb3ORskc
I think that even if kids outnumber adults, just having more than two adults around is going to be helpful. Two parents alone can handle 90% of situations even with many children, but those 10% where it might be helpful to have an additional person to step in can happen even with just one child. It's possible that these situations where an additional helper is useful are more common with more children than with fewer, but the growth may well be sub-linear.
>Do you think it’s bad for someone to have a second child? Surely if they really love their first child, one should be enough for them!
It could actually be bad from the point of view of the child, and it might indicate that a selfish biological imperative is overriding the best interests of your current child.
There are of course also countervailing arguments. Mostly variants of, "Having a second child would be good for my current child actually." which, to the extent it is true, renders the point moot.
It doesn't render the initial point moot, as the question or whether two guys "sharing" the same girl is good for either of them is an open question. Siblings being good for each other is a much more common result, though obviously not always. I've known families who decided not to have more children because a current child is unusually needy or problematic (severe disability, especially emotional outbursts) to have around smaller children. That's actually closer to my mental picture of most guys trying to share a single woman.
If a woman says, "I love my current husband but I'm thinking of getting a second one as well because I think that would be good for my current husband." then to the extent that is true, (not just a rationalization based in self-interest) it does seem to moot the point.
I agree that it does strain credulity though. I was mostly trying to invalidate the analogy rather than do a reductio on the original point in my prior comment.
> I challenge you to operationalize this in a way that we can test on future (or existing) surveys
Well the one I'd like to see is "people who think polyamory will work for them but haven't been sifted yet". So right now when you compare people in monoamorous relationships to people in polyamorous relationships, the monoamorous group contains people "built for polyamory" who have never seriously considered polyamory while the polyamorous group won't really contain many people "built for monogamy". This is exacerbated by the fact that "people currently in poly relationships" don't include many of the people terrible at polyamory who drop out. Whereas people terrible at monogamy don't drop out of monogamy at nearly the same rate.
So look at people who believe they are poly but who are just starting to look or have been in such a relationship <1 month. Follow them out for a few years.
If polyamory statistics are heavily improved by "survivorship bias" this n00b group should do poorly as it is unaffected by survivorship bias. It would be the proper group for someone considering taking up polyamory but who wants to see stats.
"I want my wife to definitely be the most important person in my life and vice versa. But I find I can carve out a category “secondary partner” that doesn’t interfere with this, any more than her having friends , hobbies, children, etc interferes with this. Probably other people’s psychology doesn’t work this way, and those people wouldn’t enjoy being poly."
I can't help but think of the "secondary partner" here and how they view this. Does that person also have a primary partner to whom they're the most important? If so, there's no problem, but otherwise, I can't imagine that this can't result in at least one person feeling pretty bad (and the others feeling at least a bit guilty over it) unless they're not interested in attachment much or just care about occasional sex.
Often they do have a primary, but also a lot of people who don't have a primary prefer a secondary relationship to being completely single.
Right. That's what's behind all these ladies with two or three nerd boyfriends. A humorously logical solution to the geek gender gap...not enough women to go around...OK, we'll share!
If it works reasonably well for everyone, I can't complain. Life is full of suboptimal solutions that are still better than the pessimal solution. I mean, like it or not, sometimes, as in the old Christopher Cross song, love is the best that you can do. Absent a lunar collision with New York, of course.
I can't help but wonder how much the success of that arrangement requires long term and consistent use of birth control. In terms of raising a child, child support in cases of separation, etc. it sounds like a nightmare.
It is common for many people to have primary partners, while being secondary partners of others. There are also people, who often use the term "solo poly", who like being a secondary partner but also like being able to go home and be alone.
I enjoyed reading this more than the original post, go figure. The polls at the start were particularly interesting. That said, I think you're interpreting them a bit too favorably? Polygamy is largely an opt-in method of romance, while monogamy is the default, something you opt out of. I'm pretty sure that boosts the satisfaction numbers for polyamory, since anyone who doesn't like it will just, y'know, choose a different style of romance. Meanwhile, miserable monogamists remain monogamous, yet still the group as a whole is relationally satisfied and generally happy. Comparable outcomes actually favor monogamy as a superior option, at least on the macro scale.
Still, I think the data supports a lesser form of your argument, the idea that polygamy is valuable as an available alternative to the norm. Seems like it can make a select group of people happier than they might otherwise be. Good ole market economics at work. Except with love I guess.
Technically the default is not being in a relationship at all... an option more people seem to be choosing every year.
Decent point, though a little part of me wants to give you pushback anyway. Not eating food is also technically a default option, but anyone who picks the "default" isn't going to be around for very long. Romance is sort of like that, but on a larger scale. Any individual person can "default" to having no relationship, but that just isn't sustainable for a population. Inevitably, we have to default to some method(s?) of romance, not an avoidance of it altogether. Or we could collectively decide to be the last humans, I suppose, but where's the fun in that?
Well a lot of people are counting on a singularity within our lifetimes to make the point moot without necessarily turning out as human extinction. (Or if not the full transcendent-silicon-gods package, at least technological advances i.e. artificial wombs that will fundamentally alter reproduction trends much more than sexual mores could hope to.)
Alright, fair enough. I hadn't considered the route of technological usurpation. Maybe there is a way forward that doesn't involve romance as the default option.
One relevant statistic from Aella's survey that this post didn't include is the percent of survey-takers in each group:
Fully monogamous: 59.5%
Mostly monogamous: 22.4%
Slightly monogamous: 7.7%
Slightly polyamorous: 3.9%
Mostly polyamorous: 3.7%
Fully polyamorous: 2.9%
If you buy the story that it's best to be at an extreme and bad to be in the middle, it's notable that most (66%) of the people on the monogamous side of the spectrum are at the "fully monogamous" extreme, while only 28% of the people on the polyamorous half are "fully polyamorous".
You could also think about this in terms of the intention-to-treat vs. per-protocol distinction. Of the people who intend to be polyamorous, what fraction manage to follow the protocol, and how do things go for the ones who do and the ones who don't? And similarly for the monogamy treatment? The surveys didn't exactly ask these questions, but we could use the spectrum question as a rough approximation of the answer, assuming that the "fully" people are the ones successfully following that protocol and the mostly/slightly groups are the ones with the intention who aren't following the protocol. On that interpretation, both protocols work pretty well if followed, and the monogamy protocol is much easier to follow.
The graph of children by length of relationship is fascinating. It shows that poly relationships' number children jumps up for relationships longer than 18 years, compared to anything lower. It seems highly unlikely that poly people just decide to start having kids that long into a relationship (especially with how it becomes harder to have kids after your early 30s--for 18 year relationship starting when you're 20, you'd be 38 at least by this point). So I think this graph is strong evidence of one or both of cohort effects (e.g. polyamory is rare, but becoming more common over time, so the average poly person in 2003 and even in 2008 might be very different) and selection effects (the kind of people who stay in poly relationships for 2 decades are different from those who stay in them for even 15 years). The former intuitively seems likely to be stronger to me; does anyone have any idea which one is bigger or why? (There could also be overlap between these 2 effects--i.e. are you the kind of person who was poly in 2003 *and* stayed together 20 years, or the kind who was poly in 2008 *and* stayed together 15 years?)
It could also mean that people become poly later in life, perhaps after their kids are adults?
Hmmm, if someone is in a long-term relationship, starting out mono, but become poly, I wonder how that's reflected in the data? I guess it's all self-report. I also wonder how selection effects of the poll itself impact these results. Scott has pointed out that overall, polls of selected subsets often show correlations that hold up in broader samples. But Aella's polls are mostly done on Twitter or other websites; maybe there's stronger selection effects among older people? Not sure how that would select for people with kids though.
A couple thoughts -
1) “fully poly/mono people are more satisfied with their poly/mono relationships than people who are not fully poly/mono” feels like a tautology, and therefore kind of a meaningless result.
2) All the results you show from the Aella survey are referenced to the primary partner. Does this provide an accurate picture? Having a secondary partner could impact your overall life satisfaction independent of the quality of your primary relationship. Or maybe a bad secondary relationship would make your primary look better by comparison. What about people who are nobody’s primary?
Thanks for this - especially your last question. That's something that was bugging me but I didn't put my finger on it. Presumably there are lots of people in poly communities that are not a primary and don't have a primary. Continual third wheel types. Surely this is a less-good situation for them, but I haven't seen anything about them from Scott or elsewhere.
I think for a lot of people, being in relationship(s) without being a primary partner is an ideal situation that fits their needs.
Different people have different life balances and different needs, not being someone's primary partner often opens up a lot more freedom to find a mutually beneficial balance.
Granted, for some people it's probably not ideal, but I think it's a question of comparing that to a counterfactual which isn't necessarily obvious.
Two possible survey questions can shed light on some of these unknowns in the future.
1. If you could enter into some form of a multi-marriage legal status, would you do it?
Obviously this is already legal in many places around the world, typically in the one male to many female format. But I think it is fair to say we're talking about poly in the western context where this is generally illegal. This could elucidate if the polycule structure exists and has a true level of commitment behind it for legal, social, etc. status or opinons about that type of status.
I think a genuine group marriage would be legally very difficult to administer if by marrying one person you had to marry everyone else already in that marriage. What rights and what fraction of resoruces could be claimed in a divorce and why? If you get 1/3 by breaking up a 3 way marriage, do the same rules of 'dependency' apply with alimony etc. with or without kids for a 'certain lifestyle' or whatever.
How would a divorce work? If a woman married into an existing male-female marriage out of interest for the male...would the other pre existing female owe alimony payments to the other woman if she left? Would she be married to the other woman? If this is a choice, what does marriage even mean or convey with such diverse subsets of rules for each scenario? Cheating can't exactly be a set of clear cut grounds for divorce in such a situation, unless it is sex with someone outside the marriage trio, which draws into question how the poycule formed in the first place. Is this already true in a de facto way to some degree in serial marriages where the new wife loses out on resources sent to the old wife?
Anyhow it would show if there were any kind of genuine and long term financial and familiar desire to legally link themselves through multi and or group marriage structures. I'd guess this would be quite unpopular in practice and we'd see even lower rates of utilisation of such a legal arrangement compared to same sex or opposite sex 2 person marriages.
2. If you have children, how many years of your child's life have been spent with you, or the other parent, as a single parent household? Plus age and number of children to help with statistics on this question.
And
2b. How many significant romantic/sexual partners have you had during your children's life while they were under 18 who are no longer present in the same way?
While poly people may have fewer children, the issue of understanding children's welfare could be better understood. We currently have a huge data set on the impacts of divorce and other factors in mono relationships on children's welfare and mental health, but we mostly have hand waving speculation about western poly childhoods, however limited in number they may be. Looking to polygamy in some religious communities tends to not shed much light on the status of polycule children, but I noted the other commenter talking about single mothers hanging out in the orbit and fringes of poly groups as lower status and temporary partners and this is concerning.
This question set can be parred with poly vs mono status and others to tease apart the impacts on children in a direct way. Even with serial marriages or multi person poly situations, the rate of introducing more people into your child's life is a factor creating instability. A stable mono or poly situation with the same 2 or 3 adults in a child's life the whole time is very different than some mono situation of a new husband or wife every 3 years or a poly situation where adults are a revolving door of abandonment for the child.
By anecdote what I've seen is disorganised communities of single mothers and children leading poor quality lives with many half siblings and various deadbeat dads, abusive or disinterested step parents, and distracted mothers in a lower income hippie community practicing poly, free love, Osho, etc. While single child status has grown, not so much in these scenarios and the tenuous or missing relationships with various half siblings and step parents or partners coming and going has had significant detrimental impacts on those children whom I know as adults from a somewhat still ongoing Osho related community with a diverse palette of poly structures and its fallout.
The ephemeral and abandonment issue for children is explored here along with the sheer number of such encounters. To truly get into this issue would require several questions likely unsuitable for most surveys, but this can be a good indicator of how much disruption and abandonment a child is experiencing due to their parents appetites for serial mono or fluid poly environments.
In general we have structural information in how few children are had in poly relationships as a percentage and how often questions around children and their welfare seem to come as a surprise or are things people in poly situations haven't seem to thought about very much.
That sort of fresh faced and somewhat startled 'huh'? one tends to get from poly people around children is indicative of the life focus and goals of those in poly vs mono in my view. Children seem like an afterthought and pre-planning their welfare and circumstances with sacrifices in lifestyle made by the parent for the children has not been a dominant and or even extant concern or topic of conversation, at least not beyond the hypothetical. Not to say every mono parent is focused on their children and many are self-indulgent or drug addicts more interested in the bottle. But still, I'd argue the question of how children will fit into your life as an urgent priority with practical impacts on ones' life is more of a focus in mono vs poly western relationships, though with subpar outcomes as seen in high divorce rates and single parent households.
Fundamentally one can be more focused and dedicated to creating a life focused on creating and raising children or one can be more focused on their romantic and sexual partner. This isn't a clear mono vs poly dividing line and many people are raised by parents who are more interested in other things such as work, their own ego, hobbies, friends, sex, romantic partners, other family/siblings, prior or new marriages, status, or other factors than the child or children.
While poly remains a more fringe cultural element in the west, it seems likely it has attracted those who are more interested in personal satisfaction and relationship dynamics with other adults. Perhaps that could change, but it seems doubtful poly would ever become widespread or common in the western context as a polycule or group marriage structure.
This is compared to a polygamous arrangement of multiple wives in Islam where the goal and social customs are focused on having more children raised to worship god and sister-wife relationships instead of sexual exploration, though this is admittedly rare and more of a high status/wealthy person situation in modern Islam from what I understand and while I've met many Muslim people I don't know any families who have multiple wife marriages. The goal of most western polycules does not seem to be on maximising the number of children they have or honour god. Their primary focus is on their adult relationships in my experience.
1. I suspect the alimony situation would be resolved in whatever manner most benefited the lower-earning partners, i.e. usually the women. In practice this would serve as a disincentive to high-earning men to maintain multiple wives as they would then face double alimony if things go south. Theoretically you could see high-status women having the same problem, i.e. if Taylor Swift decided to have two husbands and they both broke up with her she might have big bills to pay. (Though Taylor Swift in particular would never do that...too off-brand.)
2. Yeah, that was always my big concern. I actually do think Scott and his wife and whoever they're dating will work this out, but I wonder once this goes mainstream if you're going to see more of exactly what you've described.
Self-identified comparisons between poly and mono seems incredibly biased, since identifying as poly will be disproportionately affected by survivorship bias. Many more people have probably attempted to be poly and given up than vice versa.
You are polling high openness, highly educated, high income individuals who are actively in successful polyamorous relationships and comparing them to, well... everyone else.
I would also say that certain failure modes for poly-like activities are not identified as poly - for instance pretty much all cheating could be identified as poorly-conducted poly (not talking to your partner first or whatever), but is instead identified as a failure to maintain monogamy.
I was thinking about the woman who complains that her husband is jealous about her male bestie who speak chats with once a week. Um wtf??? She’s cultivating a back-up husband to his face. Women look for the same things in men for romance as for friendship. So, the bestie is definitely competing. The bigger issue is that she feels the need to cultivate the bestie. Like, she might value her husband but she is definitely looking to add another man.
Yup.
I'm friends with a bunch of my exes, but if ever forced to the altar I'm sure that would end pretty quick!
There are plenty of happily married people who stay friends with exes. Exes are also sometimes co-parents as well and so it's something more than friendship. Once you've really committed to someone and built something solid, exes don't present a threat.
Also, "forced to the alter"? Ick. You have agency, yeah?
Pretty much, I've avoided it this far.
I used to hear about it all the time, but it rarely seems to happen nowadays.
I thought that whole scenario was weird. Like, the guy is way over the top controlling, but she's giving him really good reasons for that in the specific case! It's not like she has a group of friends that includes some guys (perhaps a group hobby). She's straight up having a very personal relationship with a single specific guy.
I don't look for the same things in men for romance as for friendship. I grew up with lots of brothers and I like men in that friendship way and am in no way cultivating a back-up husband. I want different things from my husband. This is like 25 years in, so long track record.
Your comment and some of its replies gave me some insight into what people think. I had read that example as an example of clearly unhealthy and toxic behavior on the part of the husband.
I guess it speaks to how varied the default assumptions may be, and the importance of communicating these expectations prior to it becoming a point of conflict.
Yeah, it seems like one person's "toxic monogamy" is another person's "perfectly normal."
There is a possible effect where, because monogamy is the default, a higher proportion of its practitioners do it per-protocol - in which case equal outcomes would mean an advantage for monogamy. (Because if someone tries poly and it goes catastrophically they'll likely not try it again, whereas monogamous people would likely keep at it.)
Or the opposite effect could be true due to poly people being much more analytical towards their relationships?
I imagine the way to try and look for this is asking several concrete questions about social and economic status but also about "love languages" sort of thing, plus the sorts of questions already asked. And then you could do a sort of Prosperity Score Matching analysis on responses to see whether these results are still there when sufficiently similar people are compared. Not sure how big a sample you'd need to do this properly though.
If you're counting on a group being better off because they are unusually analytical, you should expect that effect to not scale.
Yes, hence the usefulness of trying to get more data to try and more easily compare like with like
>In either case, the ban is now expired, and the prohibition on polygamy rests on questionable legal footing.
It is important to remember that polygamy =/= polyamory. Polygamy, particularly as practiced by ancient Jews, was multiple women married to one man. So while it is possible polygamy is koshor for Orthodox Jews, if there isn't a marriage relationship and if there is more than one guy involved at a time then its not.
It makes sense that most societies used to be polygamous. It preserves family lines by ensuring each child in the family has the same father (vital in societies where inheritance travels through the male line, which is most of them), and from a reproductive perspective it's efficient. Adding another woman to a polygamous marriage means the family can have one more kid a year (realistically every two or three years based on weaning, but you know what I mean). Adding another male to a poly marriage doesn't increase the number of kids the family can have at all (assuming everyone is fertile).
Since polyamorous people today don't seem concerned with complicated inheritance situations, or having a lot of kids, there doesn't seem to be much parallel between historical polygamy and modern polyamory.
Commenter banned.
I am reminded of this old Less Wrong article:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wkuDgmpxwbu2M2k3w/you-have-a-set-amount-of-weirdness-points-spend-them-wisely
If I were a well-known writer with important things to say about rationality and altruism and x-risk and so forth, then I'd probably concentrate on spending my weirdness points writing about those, rather than pissing them up the wall defending polyamory.
I don't think that applies to writers. Writers get more readers if they say more interesting (that is, weird) things.
Agreed, but it may damage your credibility in other areas. Piss off enough people and you can actually get censored.
Imagine if he's arguing against a company that developed AGI in Congress and the software developer pays bots or trolls to spread rumors he's an asexual polyamorist, discrediting him on the right. (He already has a bad name on the left...)
Ah, but lots of rationalists/originators of A.I. risk thought/etc. are in fact poly, and Scott has no power to induce them to change that. Trying to defend polyamory's reputation might very well be necessary to getting those causes to be taken more seriously.
Many years ago, in a slatestarcodex subreddit comment thread I can't find, in response to my argument much the same as yours, Scott said (paraphrased, the fog of memory, grain of salt, etc) that polyamory only costs weirdness points with people he doesn't consider to matter, and it's neutral to positive with those that do. I assume his position has not changed.
I still think it costs too much (too bad Zvi never got around to finishing this sequence, particularly 4a: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/08/20/paths-forward-on-berkeley-culture-discussion/), but there's a lot of rationalization left in the rationalists and the costs are largely beyond their hedonistic horizons.
Re cultural selection:
"Treason doth never prosper? What’s the Reason?
For if it prosper none dare call it treason."
Yup. Look at the way all our old heroes became our villains. John Wayne? Thomas Jefferson?
The current dyspepsia over monogamy is just another facet of Epicurean self-absorption. It was all the rage in the early 1970s, but wore out its welcome pretty quick. Polyester bell-bottoms and mutton chops were in style.
> The happiest polycules I know are asexual people. The second happiest are people who have sex so frequently and compulsively that it’s impossible for them to be angry with their partner for sleeping around because not-sleeping-around seems as impossible to them as falling upward. Autistic is third (and sometimes overlaps with the previous two categories). Trans people in polycules tend to go either very well or very very badly, no in-between.
I don't understand how this is not at the top of every discussion about this subject!!! I feel like these obviously explanatory demographic facts take all of the mystery and intrigue out of it. Asexual people! And to think some want to make this part of the culture war...
> I found Some Guy’s concern about the abuse risk of having an extra person in the house to be thought-provoking and something I hadn’t considered before.
You asked hypothetically in your comment response in the thread if single moms should be discouraged from marrying. Here is my anecdote - I am a single mom of a girl and decided at the time of divorce a couple years ago that I will not remarry while my daughter is a minor for this exact reason. Stepdad abuse is so common that this is an obvious decision to me. Not cohabitating with a man for the next 15 years is a cost am willing to bear pretty easily, and it wouldn’t even break the top three in a list of sacrifices I have made for my child.
"I’m fascinated by how many people think there are two types of poly people, but disagree on what those types are."
There are two kinds: Toxic ones and not particularly toxic ones.
It takes a while for the latter to figure out who the former are.
You must have one of the most thoughtful comment sections on Substack. I thought I had read through most of the comments on the original post, but I guess I hadn't.
I'm not sure if this point has been addressed prior or not, but based on my very anecdotal evidence, poolyamory is more prevalent in the LGBT community. My wife and I are in a monogomous relationship however, I would say 80% of our gay male friends are in an open relationship, not necessarily 100% poly. Women and NB relationships are 50/50. When I see a same sex couple I now assume they're in an open relationship.
As far as I can tell, as an outside observer, when "done right" all of the partners seem to be extremely happy and satisfied with the relationship, unfortunately not many do it right (lack of education, communication, pure novelty, they were pressured into it, etc.) and it's cause for more drama than it's worth.
I always figured this was partly because LGBT people are already selected for willingness to challenge traditional relationship norms, and because there's less of a pre-existing cultural idea of how an LGBT relationship "should" look. Also potentially because they're less likely to have to optimize around child-rearing.
I suspect you're corect.
I think this is a really confusing topic because there's basically only one way to be monogamous, but there are multiple ways to be polygamous.
Like the children topic. I would naively expect that children in a closed commited poly household can access better parenting than in a closed commited mono household. Poly parents have access to more parents and are better placed to specialise and play to their strengths, while mono parents are basically stuck with wage-earner or childrearer (unless they're in really unusually good or bad circumstances - like households with access to non-wage income, or households where income is so low that both parents are primarily wage-earners and no one is doing much childrearing). The poly household would tend to have more flexibility - you could have one adult do full time childrearing and the other adults work, or one adult breadwinning and everyone else else do childrearing. In an idealistic utopia where polyam is legally and socially legitimate, more parents also means more access to in-law resources - experience, labour, inherited property, money.
It wouldn't shock me if, like mono marriage, poly marriages make the economics of house buying and childbearing actually attainable for a lot of people. Maybe this would be bad for mono families (poly households having a better ratio of wage earners vs mouths to feed and can better afford scarce housing?) but maybe this can be good in other ways (drives down cost of childcare if a % of households can afford to do childcare in-house).
I would speculate that a lot of the queer relationship anarchy type people make very low wages and those big open polycules allow them to live in high CoL areas on part-time pay - a member of a polycule is basically like a roommate you can't easily evict! Idk if this is widespread, but I also get the sense that a lot of these arrangements are possible due to one of the members having rich, open minded parents that let them stay in the house basically rent free. If you think about it in the find-somewhere-to-sleep way, having 8 partners is better than having 1 partner because the odds that your partner has a parent who owns a house and won't charge you rent is significantly and absurdly improved in the 8 partner scenario.
(This is what I think of the 20-something poly vs the 40-something poly, btw - I think a not insignificant portion of the 20 somethings are probably barely poly, and have a strong preference for not being homeless over a preference for their partner to exclusively sleep with them. The 40 somethings tend to be better at asserting boundaries because a bad breakup probably won't leave them homeless!)
I do agree with a lot of commenters pointing out that open polyam would probably be bad for children. I don't think having a constantly shifting cast of adults in their life is great for child development, regardless of how amicably their parents deal with parting - even amicable divorces aren't super great for the kids. Luckily for us, at the moment, the trend seems to be that people who prefer open relationships also prefer not to have kids.
Although, maybe I'm just speaking from a space of exhaustion in a mono household - basic household management when I was single was super difficult for me and improved a little when I coupled up. My logic is that, provided both me and my partners have the emotional competence to manage it, adding more adults to the household would only improve the ratio of housework and labour as well as the ratio of earnings vs expenses. On paper, a closed polycule just seems way more resource and labour efficient.
I suspect that less children in a poly relationship can have something to do with being less bored. A mono relationship means that you are mostly hanging out just with a single person and the only option to add someone else is to give birth to them. In a poly relationship you can just add an already grown up interesting person to hang out with which is much less trouble than raising a child.
I am bewildered what toxic people many of the comments talk about. I know a few poly people and constellation, and they are... well, pretty boring.
Whatever bubble Scott lives in, mine looks exactly the same. The poly constellations are mostly about multiple romantic relationships, not about sex. It's just a few people figuring out how to arrange their lives best given the desires of the partners. Sometimes, this works out pretty well for all sides, and gives a real surplus. For example, because A can live out their adventurous side with B, and their cuddling side with C, and all are happy about it.
Sometimes, not all sides get exactly what they want. For example, a good friend of mine would spend more quality time with B alone, but B likes spending their time with the whole group of partners. But that's pretty much the same as in mono relationships, where A would like to have more sex with B, or go on more adventures with B, and B doesn't want that.
Obviously, some people are good at negotiating their desires. It helps a lot to be open about their desires in the first place. I think poly relationship work really well for these people, and give a true surplus. I happen to live in a bubble where almost all people I know are pretty good at that. This goes for my family (which is *ridiculously* good at integration; my uncle cheated on my ex-aunt and had twins with a younger women; a few years later all five of them get along pretty well and come together to the annual Christmas celebration of the family). Also, basically all my friends are like this. Heck, from what I know, my colleagues at work are also like this. I really don't know a lot of people who are bad at this type of relationship things. I think most of them would find poly nice if they tried (some do), some of them would find it better than mono, but they get along well either way. On some level it's not the big life-changer for them, it's more on the level of having different flavors of icecream. I would be really sad if strawberry was the only icecream flavor that society would allow, but I would get over it and still be able to live a happy life.
The big exception for me is my family-in-law, which is not good at relationships. So I know that there is this strange world of people out there who suck at relationships, and I get a glance every few months (they live far away). I assume these people suck at either poly or mono, but probably poly is worse for them because you can screw up with more partners. But I don't know a lot of these people. I can 100% relate to everything Scott describes about poly, because this is how it would look for almost everyone I know.
Unfortunately I know a lot of people like your in-laws and believe that they are a significant majority of all people. My fear is that you are correct that poly relationships are significantly worse for them as well, which means that whatever happens to increase the acceptability of poly relationships disproportionately increases it among people who will be least served by any gains and more hurt by any problems.
My bigger concern is that a more permissive society is burning through effective Schelling Points that benefit most of society but *especially children and raising a successful future generation*. No-fault divorce - maybe good for adults, bad for kids. Gay marriage - maybe good for adults, bad for kids (far fewer kids at least). Decline in marriage rates - maybe good for adults, bad for kids (far fewer kids again). More sexual partners in a lifetime - maybe good for adults, bad for kids (far fewer kids, more exposure to potentially abuse step-parents).
I don't actually think these things are good for adults either, but that's much more complicated and I tend to take a libertarian "let people make their own decisions" approach. I don't think there's much doubt that each step has been bad for kids, either the actual lives of the kids, or the fact that each contributes to there simply being less kids.
I see humanity moving towards lab grown children raised communally by people who are good at it and who like doing it. Good for adults, good for kids, good for humanity. The quality of life for most women will improve dramatically if we can turn off our reproductive systems.
"The quality of life for most women will improve dramatically if we can turn off our reproductive systems."
Yes, now they can freeze their eggs until their employer has squeezed the last drop of usefulness out of them so they can be discarded in favour of cheap younger labour or AI, and are now free to have a baby in their sixties, if they've saved enough money for IVF and hiring a surrogate.
https://www.businessinsider.com/egg-freezing-at-facebook-apple-google-hot-new-perk-2017-9?r=US&IR=T
The Song of Education
III. For the Creche
Form 8277059, Sub-Section K
I remember my mother, the day that we met,
A thing I shall never entirely forget;
And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am,
I should know her again if we met in a tram.
But mother is happy in turning a crank
That increases the balance in somebody's bank;
And I feel satisfaction that mother is free
From the sinister task of attending to me.
They have brightened our room, that is spacious and cool,
With diagrams used in the Idiot School,
And Books for the Blind that will teach us to see;
But mother is happy, for mother is free.
For mother is dancing up forty-eight floors,
For love of the Leeds International Stores,
And the flame of that faith might perhaps have grown cold,
With the care of a baby of seven weeks old.
For mother is happy in greasing a wheel
For somebody else, who is cornering Steel;
And though our one meeting was not very long,
She took the occasion to sing me this song:
"O, hush thee, my baby, the time will soon come
When thy sleep will be broken with hooting and hum;
There are handles want turning and turning all day,
And knobs to be pressed in the usual way;
O, hush thee, my baby, take rest while I croon,
For Progress comes early, and Freedom too soon."
I was referring to the elimination of hormone cycling, periods, and all the resulting impacts to daily quality of life. Having been on medication now for a few years that eliminates it all (to treat endometriosis), I am stunned at how different life is on this side. It makes me angry to be honest. Also - pregnancy and childbirth are horrific experiences for many many women (myself included). I feel a profound sadness that my daughter too will have to suffer through the bs of the female reproductive system.
Re: the productive worker bee stuff, that wasn’t my point at all.
I must admit that for kids I have little experience because most of my poly friends are gay and don't have kids. I only know one who is in a threelationship with kids (which works well).
I am unsure how it would turn out for kids in general. I think in principle kids profit from additional caretakers, which traditionally were other family members or (like for me) neighbours. It is not good for kids that this has reduced to a tiny core family, even though this means less people who can be at tension with each other. (And less sexual abuse. Uncles and other relatives are traditionally among the main child abusers.) Poly relationships act in the opposite direction and give additional caretakers, which is in principle a good thing for the kids. But if the constellation fluctuates a lot, then this counteracts the positive effects.
But I think a lot less rosy about the childhood of previous generations. My mother is psychologist and has treated abused and neglected children for almost 50 years. I agree that some of your points are not good for some children. But there are also lots of children who were beaten into permanent damage by abusive dads. Nowadays, it is a lot easier for women to escape from such a relationship, in order to protect their children. And if I look into the literature from the early 20th century, it seems that whole generations of children were traumatized by the coldness of their parents, especially their fathers'. Parents were a lot less attached to their kids. When my grandmother's sister, Maria, died, well, her parents just called the next child Maria because one Maria is as well as the other.
Apart from that, there are also new Schelling points. Corporeal punishments are now illegal in most (soon all) of EU, and have become a lot less common. If parents mistreat their children, then this is no longer the parents' proper right, but school and society and institutions are supposed to care about that. Even if it does not always work, there is a consensus in society that parents are not allowed to mistreat their children. I think this is a pretty new thing.
By the way, I would really avoid conflating "less kids are born" with "existing kids are less happy". Those are completely different categories for me, and it is not obvious to me that the first one is bad.
"When my grandmother's sister, Maria, died, well, her parents just called the next child Maria because one Maria is as well as the other."
Do you know this is the real reason, or are you just assuming that was the motivation? People often reused 'family' names, where there might be a set of names (like Maria or Thomas or James or Ellen) which were traditional in the family. So "one Maria is as good as the other" isn't because they don't care that the first daughter died. People used to use names of dead relatives as a means of honouring and remembering them.
Just glibly assuming that "we're so modern and cool and invested in our kids so that's why I have no kids, because I care *too* much; previous generations had tons of kids because they didn't care about them any more than dogs care about their litters" is a horribly snobby way of looking at our ancestors. Maybe your great-grandparents were uncaring, or maybe they just weren't 'creative' enough to name a daughter Kayleigh, Myqkella, or Sloan Butterfly X59 Traction Engine.
Indeed, nowadays you're more likely to run into the mindset that animals love their babies too just like humans - see the discussion on meat-eating about weeping cow mothers.
I'm old enough to remember when Scott spent time writing about the ever-growing plight of lonely, miserable, nerdy men... rather than trying to explain that we should change society so high-status, attractive, sociable people dominate the relationship market even more than they already do. But I guess being high-status for long enough makes you forget. I look forward to his future article on whether it's possible to eat too much caviar.
Caviar? He's going to talk about the right places to buy your own island, and how to best distribute the ownership of your mansion within your polycule.
It's true though. When you're successful long enough, you're usually surrounded by successful people, and their concerns become your concerns.
You either die sad and lonely or live long enough to see yourself become successful and popular
Bad news: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/style/caviar-cheaper-snack-doritos-china-farmed.html#:~:text=That's%20because%20the%20price%20of,produced%20by%20the%20European%20Commission.
Darn, I'm going to have to update my rich-person stereotypes!
Where does this idea, that normalization of polyamory will decrease nerdy guys chances at relationships, even come from?
The conventionally attractive high status rich people are dating each other now in serial monogamy equilibrium and will keep doing it just the same in a more polyamory friendly equilibrium. I don't see how it affects dating prospects of lonely nerds with poor social skills at all. The real difference is in the supply of women who are into nerdy men. Currently when one of them finds herself a nerdy boyfriend she is, at least temporary, removed from the supply. But if polyamory is an option - then she is not. Instead of a million pairs and a million lonely guys there can be a million 2 guys 1 girl polycules.
It would be nice if that were true, but there's no reason to believe the gender ratios that arise from free polygamous choice will happen to match the actual demographics. Why would the girl (who has many options) choose two guys less desirable than her, rather than joining a 1 guy 3 girl polycule with somebody really awesome? That's pretty much the way polygamy worked in the past - great if you're the Emperor or Sultan or Khan, not so good for the average male: https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/neolithic-culture-may-have-kept-most-men-from-mating/
> Why would the girl (who has many options) choose two guys less desirable than her, rather than joining a 1 guy 3 girl polycule with somebody really awesome?
Isn't it obvious? Because there are a lot of women who would rather have multiple admirers than be a fangirl №5. I would be moderately surprised if such women are not the majority of the population.
> but there's no reason to believe the gender ratios that arise from free polygamous choice will happen to match the actual demographics.
As a matter of fact, there are several. In general polyamory allows more degrees of freedom so better odds to fit a given demographics. More specifically, the ability to have several partners reduces the selection pressure for a particular partner and allows more specilization. Mono relationship push standards to the extreme. You would like a partner who is everything in one package because there is no option to divercify.
> That's pretty much the way polygamy worked in the past - great if you're the Emperor or Sultan or Khan, not so good for the average male
Average male in the past was a poor farmer. And average woman a trade good. It's not hard to notice that modern world is quite different. As the political and economical power between genders is more equalized and average wealth has skyrocketed, polyandry can be as widespreaded as polygyny. We went much closer to the bonobo part of the spectrum and these guys do not suffer from the lack of sex, to put it mildly.
So, I'll be honest, I was indeed making an unexamined assumption in my (bitter) initial post and you've made me think about it a bit harder. So, good work. But I still don't think you've countered my central point that there's no reason for local choices to match the global demographics, and the mismatch will massively increase misery.
> In general polyamory allows more degrees of freedom so better odds to fit a given demographics.
Nobody's trying to fit the demographics, though! Everyone's just making local choices. To oversimplify (a lot), in monogamy, with a 50/50 split between men and women, you trend towards the most desirable 5% pairing up, the next most desirable 5%, etc. You can see why this is fairly stable. It still fails, mind you - in a smaller group like the nerd community you might have skewed gender ratios, leading to men having far worse and fewer options as all the nerd-friendly women get better matches. Thus misery.
Polyamory (and, to a lesser extent, hookup culture) makes this mismatch apply even to the global population. If there's some statistical trend that, say, 50% of women only want to polycule (or hook up) with the top 10% of men, then that happens, and you end up with large pools of men with absolutely no hope for love (or sex). And ANY statistical trend except perfect balance causes this. As far as I can tell this is exactly what's happened to the dating market over the last few decades, and widespread polyamory will make it even worse.
> More specifically, the ability to have several partners reduces the selection pressure for a particular partner and allows more specilization.
I agree that this is interesting, but I don't think it affects my argument. It just means that there's good incentive for all the desirable people making polycules to add more members (links in the graph). Doesn't really affect distribution, or help those of us in the outcast population.
Anyway, thanks for some good pushback. This is all just armchair philosophizing (not to mention massively oversimplified) and who really knows? Religion is mostly dead (good riddance), high-status hedonists run the world, polyamory is probably going to happen (because they - and Scott - want it), and in a few decades we'll have actual statistics to go on.
Perhaps related: https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/sorry-popular-kids-the-nerds-are?r=3fx694&open=false
1. I suspect that to really compare between number of kids between poly/mono people, you need to control for LGBT status. LGBT people seem to have kids much less than straight cis people, even when doing "traditional monogamy".
I would suspect (anecdotally) that LGBT people may also be more likely to be poly - some LGBT people I've known have in general been more likely to question common societal norms around sex and relationships, as they're already outside the mainstream in one way, and I'd expect this to correlate with poly status. (Also anecdotally, some LGBT people I've known have had big misunderstandings of straight cis dating culture, taking some things to be arbitrary which have good reasons, because they overlooked child-rearing completely.)
2. I live in a European country which is in some ways more gender-egalitarian than the US median but also has a substantial Muslim minority. I suspect that greater legal recognition for poly relationships would hit a major stumbling block with regards to this population for two reasons.
The first is that this population may practice polygyny in ways that are bad for women (I am not actually sure if it is but it seems that way from the outside to the broader culture). Muslim polygyny does seem different in some important ways from the more feminist-derived Bay Area poly culture.
The second is that there is already a (IMO overblown, but that's another question) panic about Muslim immigration, which could be increased if a man were allowed to bring over more than one wife, with more accompanying minors.
Does Jewish law prohibit a woman having more than one husband?
Yes.
On a lighter note:
Those were full of inside jokes as an 'Easter Egg' for the commenters. Hope some of you saw and enjoyed them.
"Becoming Fully Myself" is an ironic transposition of Richard Spencer's 'become who you are'. The joke is that removing context and changing wording slightly can turn a far-right slogan into a New Age title you'd skip past at Barnes and Noble.
"Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem" is an actual Gloria Steinem title from the nineties.
"Me/Myself/I: A Journey of Three and One" alludes to the love of postmodernists and some science fiction writers for slashes.
"Every Man and Woman is a Star" is, as Scott has said, a reference to Aleister Crowley's Book of the Law, a nod to an earlier 'sex-positive' ideology.
"Transgressing Boundaries: A Non-Binary, Non-Toxic, Non-Violent Journey" is a reference to the Sokal hoax, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity".
"Neutralizing Poison: The Fourth Level of Self-Healing (the first three being, of course, Curing Light Wounds, Slowing the Venom, and Banishing Blindness, and the sequel being Returning from the Underworld)" is based on 1st and 2nd edition D&D spells: Cure Light Wounds, Slow Poison, Cure Blindness, Neutralize Poison, and Raise Dead. A decidedly non-serious form of spirituality.
"The Love of an Influencer: Very Different from Conventional Love" is a reference to the Idiocracy quote, "The love of a pimp is very different from that of a square."
Thanks. I couldn't see any of those. "Becoming fully myself" is fine of course, except if you can become fully Chuck Norris.
I would like to know how many people in Aella's survey answered Fully Mono, Fully Poly, or somewhere in the middle. It sounds like a lot of commenters have noticed 'two types' of poly people that basically boil down to those who do poly well and those who don't. Then there seems to be concern that the popularization of polyamorous relationships will cause a lot of people to attempt some form of open relationship who shouldn't and have themselves a shit show. I know your surveys aren't a good representative sample of the population, but you could ask people on your next survey if they've had experience with poly or mono, what type, and whether it worked out for them. I think the more interesting dialogue about the topic isn't whether poly is always terrible or always great, but what works and for whom. Then again - people are going to try things and fall on their face and get up again. I certainly know people for whom poly worked out and people for whom it was a shit show. I hasn't seemed to me that trying and failing at poly is all that different than trying a failing at other romances or leaves particularly more scars.
As a comment on a comment...
>> I think the reason most people are uncomfortable with polyamory is that it subverts the dearly-held mythology of all-conquering “true love” between soulmates that pervaded western culture for a few centuries until the last decade or-so. Years ago, Jason Pargin (of Cracked.com, back when it was still relevant) said that outsiders looking back at our culture would see romantic love as our religion, and I think he was right.
The mythology of 'true love' between 'soulmates' has some similarity to the story attributed to Aristophanes in the the Symposium by Plato.
See here
https://theconversation.com/what-plato-can-teach-you-about-finding-a-soulmate-72715
That story gave a mythical-sounding explanation about how people were originally bonded together in a way that provided two faces, four arms, four legs...and were separated by Zeus and company. The separated couples wouldn't be whole until they found their other half, whom they could love.
This may be a cultural thread distinct from modern love stories, but it does show that the idea of a 'soulmate' isn't confined to the last few centuries.
My biggest concern would just be Chesterton's gate: monogamy comes with a set of rules that have more or less worked for most people, and with well understood failure modes. Poly relationships have to choose which rules to use, and may be more likely to fail in unpredictable ways. (As opposed to predictable ways.)
You could argue that recent changes to monogamy have removed most of the historical know how, so we're all in the same boat anyway.
i really doubt asexuals or supersexuals succeed either.
lets say im ace but romantic. here's the thing; romantic love isn't something that gets better with loving more people; there is just one me to give love. (this is applicable for sex with polygyny; the women are property because there is only one man to love and have sex with them).
the opposite for supersexual; there is no benefit to fixed partners because they crave novelty, or monogamy with a similar hi drive partner can be fine.
the thing here assumes a weird balance of being romantically or sexually promiscous but not TOO much, but in an equal sense when do relationships ever work like that?
the reality is still 2-1 power differentials. the asexual loves her partner but cant sexually satisfy him. the wife lets the husband cheat because she cant live without him. and big surprise, a big fantasy of women is being desired and doted on by two men, and of men to sleep with tons of women. if you receive or benefit its great, but i really wonder how many self-selected surveys are made of those people.
"here's the thing; romantic love isn't something that gets better with loving more people; there is just one me to give love."
This isn't obvious. There's lots of social dynamics where it doesn't follow like that. I would expect a friendship with someone to be better if they had other friends. I wouldn't necessarily expect a parent to be a worse parent per-kid given additional kids. I'd expect a therapist to be a better therapist if they have other clients.
You can argue that increased demands on scarce resources will only have negative impacts, but you'd have to be consistent and argue the same point for any resources spent on anything other than the partner. Does a close relationship with a family member detract from a romantic relationship? Is there something particular about romantic love that implies it's more subject to scarcity constraints?
Yes, it is particular. Sometimes a thing is unique; you can't compare it or universalize it.
Actually a common complaint towards men is being too close to the mother, causing friction in a romantic relationship. Another complaint is "emotional infidelity," which is being more emotionally intimate with a third party, sometimes on the sly. No sex at all.
i mean the history of deep romantic relationships hasn't shown that love can be multiplied; its weakened into promiscuity and less impact. if it were we'd have significantly less problems. its not comparable to the variety of family, kids, and friends.
We don't have a separate category for relationships in which there's no default restrictions on maternal bonds. The default is to accept maternal bonds unless it becomes an issue for the health of the relationship, in which case it's negotiated via communication. Similar to a poly relationship with additional romantic/sexual interests.
I think the idea of emotional infidelity is pretty unhealthy but fair enough if two people consent to those rules. I don't think it's typically applied to all types of close friendships.
As for your first and last point I just disagree. I don't think it gets close to showing that it's obvious that love between two people is inherently diminished by loving an additional person.
So Scott has challenged me to operationalize why I think polyamory is bad.
Challenge accepted!
I will make the following predictions (reasoning bellow)
1. Polyamorous relationships of more than 2 people will have a "rate of divorce" approximately 3 times higher than monogamous relationships
(where a "divorce" is defined as at least one member of the n-tuple no longer having a romantic relationship with at least one of the other members )
2. Polyamorous n-tuples are much less likely to share income or assets (meaning shared by all members of the n-tuple)
And this is related to
3. Polyamorous n-tuples having less children (already confirmed by the survey)
1. Is because in a 3 person relationship there are actually 3 binary relationships. Triple the binary relationships means triple opportunity for divorce
(technically though this means the expected rate of divorce would be 1-(1-p)^3
If p is the rate of divorce for monogamous couples than the rate of non-divorce should for troples should be (1-p)^3. Necessary caveat since otherwise point 1 would mean probabilities greater than 1)
2. Is expected from 1. If you think relationships might end you are less likely to risk losing your assets in that case.
3. Follows from 1 and 2 because having kids almost requires you share assets. For one thing major expenses like child care or a bigger house to fit kids are expenses everyone has. For another, if you aren't secure enough to keep a joint bank account, how could you expect to keep a kid together.
And I would posit that this shows that polyamorous people are not as committed as they say. Meaning that, the reason they aren't having kids is because they are not committed.
The realtionships might last long (atleast 1 out of the 3 might last long or longer than the average binary marriage)
But if it's not the case that "all 3 of the relationships" are expected to last than that reduces the sense of security of all 3 of them. One of the 3 may last by dumb luck. But it was not a "lasting commitment" that lasts because it was expected to from the outset.
And to me this goes to the core of what relationships are "supposed" to be about. They are about being able to invest in each other: emotionally, financially, physically etc even when it is not the case that both partners are "gaining" from the investment. It's about being able to sacrifice for your partner because you have the expectation that this relationship will last for your whole life and in the course of the next 70 years your partner will sacrifice for you.
Scott:
"The happiest polycules I know are asexual people. The second happiest are people who have sex so frequently and compulsively that it’s impossible for them to be angry with their partner for sleeping around because not-sleeping-around seems as impossible to them as falling upward."
I think that points to an issue with sex-mediated long-term attachment. Apparently during sex significant amounts of oxytocin are released and that is related to long-term bonding. Asexual people might lack in this due to low sexual activity, while compulsive sexual behaviour might decrease oxytocin release in each act (as the ability to produce oxytocin is likely limiited).
This seems like a testeable hypothesis.
It might also have a genetic component, and someone could find a polyamory polygenetic score.
In any case, this type of biological explanation might make everyone happy: normies can rest assured that polyamory will not work for them or most people because they lack the unusual oxytocine (or whatever it is) phenotype, while polyamorous people can claim that they polyamory works for them because they are different and should be respected.
Responding to your response to my quoted comment.
The point about having a second child is a good point, and one I'm not precisely sure how to answer. Roughly, though, there seems to be a major difference between creating someone and then loving them, and loving someone who already exists. Why people have children is a complex question, but I would assume and/or hope that a selfless desire to bring someone into the world and give them a good life is at least as important as a personal desire to have someone else to love you. In any case, what I'd like to know is *why* people have a desire for a second partner. What's wrong with their current partner, why are they not enough for you? It's definitely not like a friend who is, by definition, not a maximally close relationship; if they were they'd be a lover. Much like abortion, if there's a good reason for it, and crucially *if people recognise that they need a good reason for it to be acceptable!* then my attitude to it will be *inconceivably* different to when it's "I don't need a reason, I can do whatever I want".
Do you accept you need a reason, and if so what are the reasons people think they need to be polyamorous?
I'm not convinced about it not being mostly about sex. The asexuals could be an exception, but it's 5%! And measuring sex drive is meaningless when there could be numerous people with high sex drives in monogamous relationships who are controlling it, or finding a way to channel it into their existing relationship. Indeed, there *should* be numerous such people; that's exactly what anti-polyamory people are saying you should be doing! (not eliminating your sex drive). Also, lots of people are bringing up incompatible sex drives within monogamy as a reason for polyamory, in these comments. You're saying it's not about sex but the pro-poly comments are saying otherwise! I wonder if those people realise that conservatives are the ones who advocate sexual obligations within marriage; sexual frustration is the fault of the progressive ideology where the highest moral law is always "whatever *I* want".
And *also*, even if it's not about sex right now that won't remain so. Say it's 2010 and a feminist says that all rape accusations should be believed without question. And let's say you have ironclad evidence that there are absolutely zero false accusations being made currently. Do you support that policy? No you don't, because you can be sure that that will change once accusations start being automatically believed. Currently polyamory may be fringe enough that it's attracting principled people who aren't just looking for more sex (though see my doubts above). But you're trying to normalise it, to make it less fringe. What could possibly make you think that that won't be accompanied by a massive rise in people using it as an excuse to cheat, sleep around, and otherwise indulge their base and selfish desires?
I honestly think part of it is that we have made (1) romantic/erotic love the be-all and end-all, *this* is True Love and other loves are in second place or not even considered as such (2) marriage is, or should be, *only* for romantic love and (3) marriage has become the basket into which *everything* is stuffed. Your spouse is not only your spouse, now (the ideal is) they are your soulmate (I *hate* the damn notion of soulmates), your best friend, the person who is your primary emotional support, the one who shares your interests, the one who goes along with your fun hobbies, and the one who completes you (whatever the heck *that* is supposed to mean).
That's an awful lot to dump on a fellow human who is struggling with work and family life themselves! And while I won't say it's *impossible* for someone to meet all that, I think it's hard and maybe harder than it needs to be. So people can't be all that, so one or the other partner goes looking for something outside that. Often that results in cheating, because we've bigged up romantic love so much (and the problem of jealousy; see the complaints about 'my wife is spending too much time talking to her male best friend' and the comments about 'she's setting up a backup husband') and that breaks up marriages, or results in the r/otherwoman sub-reddit where women are in long-term affairs and complaining that he won't leave his wife for them.
More honest/cynical people just have an open marriage or some other arrangement where "you sleep around but be discreet and I pretend I don't know". Like our friend Saph, very open about "if I want sex with this person, I'm going to have it, and if my spouse objects that's a them problem and I'll just cheat".
The more idealistic types go for polyamory. Now they can have Partner who shares my niche interests, Romantic Partner, emotional support Partner, and spouse/primary/whatever they want to call it too!
I think if we were a little more relaxed about "if you have a problem, you're going to talk to your best friend Mike or Sue first, not me, and that is not emotional affair or cheating", we'd take a lot of the impetus out of "I'm not 100% happy in 100% areas so I need an affair/open marriage/divorce".
As for the rest of it? Yeah, it's sex (for guys and unknown percentage of women) and emotional connections (for women and unknown percentage of guys). The talk about New Relationship Energy is that pink fluffy clouds stage of being in love, and since we've made romantic love this big idol of life, now if that wears off (which inevitably it will do, to make way for more settled, deeper, mature love) once that goes, the notion we've inculcated is that this means you don't love your partner any more and must find new partner who this time you surely will always feel the romantic tingle.
To quote 1941 letter of Tolkien to his son Michael:
"This 'friendship' has often been tried: one side or the other nearly always fails. …The other partner will let him (or her) down, almost certainly, by 'falling in love'. But a young man does not really (as a rule) want 'friendship', even if he says he does. There are plenty of young men (as a rule). He wants love: innocent, and yet irresponsible perhaps. 'Allas! Allas! that ever love was sinne!' as Chaucer says. Then if he is a Christian and is aware that there is such a thing as sin, he wants to know what to do about it.
There is in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times are inimical to it …Yet I still think it has dangers. It is not wholly true, and it is not perfectly 'theocentric'. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the young man turn cynical.) To forget their desires, needs and temptations. It inculcates exaggerated notions of 'true love', as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a 'love' that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts).
…No good pretending. Men just ain't, not by their animal nature. Monogamy (although it has long been fundamental to our inherited ideas) is for us men a piece of 'revealed' ethic, according to faith and not to the flesh. Each of us could healthily beget, in our 30 odd years of full manhood, a few hundred children, and enjoy the process. Brigham Young (I believe) was a healthy and happy man. It is a fallen world, and there is no consonance between our bodies, minds, and souls.
However, the essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called 'self-realization' (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify & direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him – as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are told that — even those brought up 'in the Church'. Those outside seem seldom to have heard it. When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find. The real soul-mate too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along. Someone whom they might indeed very profitably have married, if only —. Hence divorce, to provide the 'if only'. And of course they are as a rule quite right: they did make a mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgement concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to. You really do very little choosing: life and circumstance do most of it (though if there is a God these must be His instruments, or His appearances). It is notorious that in fact happy marriages are more common where the 'choosing' by the young persons is even more limited, by parental or family authority, as long as there is a social ethic of plain unromantic responsibility and conjugal fidelity. But even in countries where the romantic tradition has so far affected social arrangements as to make people believe that the choosing of a mate is solely the concern of the young, only the rarest good fortune brings together the man and woman who are really as it were 'destined' for one another, and capable of a very great and splendid love. The idea still dazzles us, catches us by the throat: poems and stories in multitudes have been written on the theme, more, probably, than the total of such loves in real life (yet the greatest of these tales do not tell of the happy marriage of such great lovers, but of their tragic separation; as if even in this sphere the truly great and splendid in this fallen world is more nearly achieved by 'failure' and suffering). In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an unfallen world. In this fallen world we have as our only guides, prudence, wisdom (rare in youth, too late in age), a clean heart, and fidelity of will."
"It's definitely not like a friend who is, by definition, not a maximally close relationship; if they were they'd be a lover"
Sex isn't inherently something that happens given a certain level of closeness. You can define it that way, but people won't agree with your definitions.
Monogamous people tend to think polyamory is about indulging base lust. Poly people think monogamy is about indulging base jealousy.
Actually...assume that there are some number of people who are poly solely because they want more sex. What's wrong with that?
As a pollster, I loved seeing the data! Strong takeout that if you’re going to go Poly, go full Poly. But the challenge here is that this is a pretty extreme lifestyle, esp in the context of a family unit, so while it is easier for a 25 year old to explore, it seems the data implies that if you’re a married couple with kids, it is probably best not to try. As you’re unlikely to (be able to) make the full jump.
> This isn’t really how things work for me. I want my wife to definitely be the most important person in my life and vice versa. But I find I can carve out a category “secondary partner” that doesn’t interfere with this, any more than her having friends , hobbies, children, etc interferes with this.
Forgive the prying personal questions, but this is actually really important considering you are publicly using your own life as testimony to support a trend that will have dramatic consequences for other people's lives. Questions: 1) Is your wife actively having sex with other men? 2) Is she actively going on romantic one-on-one dates with other men?
I ask this because if your wife is not actively in romantic or sexual relationships, you are not actually doing polyamory (even if it is the case that you have given her permission to seek other relationships but she chooses not too). You are doing ye olde "man has wife and dalliances or mistresses on the side" which is obviously quite functional and sustainable for the man, and historically may not even bother the wife that much as long as he invested sufficient resources and romance into the wife. You owe it to your readers to tell us whether you are actually finding success in "ethical polyamory" or success in being a Charles II/Louis XVI/Allan Dulles/ Magic Johnson-style chad philanderer (you being a chad because of your prominence and success within a certain circle).
It's also a relevant question, because from what I have seen in life, men have no problem loving more than one woman at the same time, but it is far more rare for a woman to feel intense sexual/romantic love for multiple men at the same time. If a woman falls in love with a new man, the previous man often becomes less attractive and something of an annoyance.
1. Not sure, I haven't pried into this, but plausibly yes.
2. Yes, although her conception of "romantic" is weird (one of her other partners took her to a corpse dissection at a local college - I'm just mad I didn't think of that one).
"If you’re monogamous, you have to fight the natural human urge to desire people other than your partner"
What? No you don't. The rule isn't that you don't desire other people, it's: desire all you like, but stay faithful. Nobody ever said monogamy means becoming blind to every other attractive person.
I'm pretty sure a very important person has said exactly that - see Matthew 5:28.
More recently, I hear people complain that their partner is "looking at" or "thinking about" other women/men, or watching porn.
> Commenters agreed with this, and said their experience was that polyamory was mostly female-driven. This is my story too; I became poly because the woman I wanted to date at the time was.
Isn't it widely agreed that it's easier for women to find partners than men? From that you'd expect poly women to have more partners than poly men (who often end up with a single partner). So women benefit more and are obviously going to drive it?
Having just now read deep enough in the article, I want to respond to the "limited resources" argument: that it's feasible to have multiple lovers because it's feasible to have multiple children, multiple friends, multiple people at your Christmas party.
For some people, those may be comparable situations, but for me they definitely aren't. For me, a lover is a major commitment in a way a friend is not. If I don't see a friend for weeks, maybe even months, on end, no harm is done, but ignoring a lover that way would seem pretty hurtful. (And if you think a person only counts as a friend if you see them all the time, then I've only had one friend at a time my entire adult life, which makes me a serial monogamist as a friend, not a polyamorist.)
When I first started dating my wife-to-be, I warned her that I was too busy (work, volunteer activities) to have a real relationship. But the pull of romance rapidly moved her up my priority scale, and I found myself reworking my life. My other activities had to move back on the stove burners a little. I would not, could not, risk the same thing happening to my primary relationship if I started a secondary.
As for multiple children, those are at least all living with you at once, so it's a little easier to juggle them. But, at the same time, sibling rivalry rooted in jealousy over amounts of parental attention is a classic problem. Handling multiple children turns out to be difficult! Just like handling multiple amorous relationships is.
I don't think there is any rational justification for it. It's a depraved state of living that harms the soul long term.
You can get to any set of beliefs by asking "why not" enough. I sincerely believe that people doing this alienate themselves from God and so lose part of what it means to be fully human in the pursuit of their desires.
After all if we see sex as a positive it should be no retraction to pursue meaningless sex. And I the same light, all relationships as positive, then there should be no negative reaction to unlimited relationships.
And yet there is on both sides. It's clear the pursuit of our desires is just a form of idol worship. Whether that involve sex or a sexless harem.
Even the women who were sex positive understood boundaries of consent. And so saw how irrational desire hurts this.
Equivocation with jealousy doesn't change the fundamental nature of idol worship.
The question of benefits is unimportant if the loss of the soul is final.
To involve others is just to commit adultery with license. Rather than in a world where adultery is wrong. It is to inculcate the lie.
I cannot and never will support polyamory. If God does not approve of it, then the loss of the soul to satan is enough to cause an infinity of suffering post death.
And no possible earthly benefit is worth that.
If you are an athiest then your lack of knowledge of the divine doesn't preclude the risk you expose to souls.
It just means you would do it with impunity in pursuit of benefits.
For example what if you went to a witch and they performed craft on you for wealth. An athiest can always say "at worst I lose nothing" because they do not believe.
But there are far too many possessions and demonic oppression for this to be even remotely true. He loses everything thinking he lost nothing.
To me people contemplating polyamory are just peering over a cliff.
Their angel warns them not to jump. But the devil says the water is warm.
If they jump they don't die so they think it's not bad.
Human nature is just this kind of easily decieved thing without the holy spirit.
I wonder what the monogamous response to the person who can't stop cheating on her partners would be? If you think cheating is wrong, and you accept that there are people who find it very hard to be monogamous, would you advocate that those people just remain celibate?
I'm not exactly poly but not exactly monogamous - married and planning to start having kids soon, attend sex parties together and occasionally have sex/go on dates separately. Separately we live with another couple and a single person who are all long term friends. We are not sleeping with each other (outside of the couples) but we are planning to have kids and help each other raise them. I would not generally recommend non monogamy nor be happy if it became trendy because it seems to require very specific personality traits to be successful. Neither my husband nor I experience sexual jealousy. We have consciously prioritized each other, so that either of us could end the non monogamy if we felt that it was causing issues, but it has not. I do expect to be largely monogamous for the time we are raising young children just because of the time and energy required (maybe we'll go to the odd sex party when we can get a babysitter/housemates are planning to watch kids). I have seen poly with kids both go very well and very poorly, and I think it requires lack of jealousy, emotional maturity, impulse control, and common sense (for example, don't go on a date with a new person when your wife is 39 weeks pregnant!)
There's many kinds of love, like selfless love and selfish love. I think the first fits polyamory well while the second doesn't. I also consider the second one to be real love (Nietzsche said that if you can't hate, you also can't love, and criticized the selfless, all-too-logical type.) Thinking logically rather than emotionally about relationships is a sign that one is more casual and hedonic, less invested. I think autism correlates with this trend of thinking of relationships in terms of utility.
Perhaps I just don't like polyamory, in the same way that I don't like porn addicts. I want great things to be sacred so they don't lose their value. Desensitized people rub me the wrong way. I'm reminded by an old 4chan rule, which went "Nothing is sacred" (know rule34? well, there's more rules). Perhaps this lack of sacredness is what degeneracy is, and what purists fight against. But I will be the first one to admit that these things aren't harmful, at least in the way that spending hours on liveleak doesn't hurt anyone. It just makes me think "Please don't do that to yourself. Your stoicism blunts positive emotions along with the negative ones. Is my puppy love stupid and immature? You bet, but it's a shame you will never experience it".
> In the 2017 SSC survey (the same one cited above), about 5% of polyamorous people described themselves as asexual (having no sex drive) compared to about 3% of monogamous people.
I suspect that comparing these numbers directly relies on a too-naive theory of how people end up ace or poly. I don't want to be insulting about people's identities or practices or suchlike, but I suspect that the same kind of person is more likely to adopt these labels, and many more like them.
I wonder what the crosstabs are to various other factors: I would not be surprised if these people had high "Other" as gender identity and sexual orientation, young age, high autism, high anxiety disorder, and high IQ.
Me, Myself, and I: The Holy Trinity of Narcissism
I would be cautious about applying data about the dangers of unrelated adults living with children to polyamory. I think a lot depends on how well the studies control for socioeconomic status.
When I was poor, the modal household children seemed to be raised in was: Mother gets knocked up while underemployed by underemployed boyfriend and convinces herself he's The One to avoid getting an abortion. Baby daddy leaves her not long after, often to go to jail. Obviously mother has roommates because she can't afford an apartment of her own (and not because she lives in a major city with a housing crisis, just because she's poor for an American), roommates are often very dysfunctional. Mother continues to make bad decisions about dating, and a series of dysfunctional men make their way through the child's life. Things like divorce rates being anti-correlated with income point to this experience being more than anecdotal.
Studies find that most Americans born in the poorest 20% leave it by early adulthood. In my experience the ones raising children in it generally have specific personal problems holding them back or are downwardly mobile because of specific personal problems. These problems make it far more likely that the non-related adults are dangerous to the children.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but…
> However, they only have about half as many children.
The survey asks how many children they have *with their primary partner*. I'm not certain this is a fair proxy for the total number of children among each group. Stepparents and secondary partners may confound the data. I think a better question for getting at the total number of children would be "how many biological children do you have?" (Although surrogates and adoptions may confound that data?)
I'd love to have more relationships of the form "Polyamory without the sex part". Like... Friends who love each other and are delighted to spend time together and eager to cook for each other or help each other move house or look after each other's kids. Every relationship I've ever had of this kind has been overwhelming wonderful.