You're a good man, and it clearly hurts your feelings when people criticize polyamory, so I don't want to feel like I'm piling on. Yet, as one of the few women of the ACX commentariat, I'm going to emphasize something that other commenters haven't really focused on:
On average, straight men and straight women differ in their sexual/romantic preferences. For obvious evolutionary reasons, men's sexuality is optimized for variety/novelty/as many partners as possible, while women's sexuality is optimized for emotional attachment/find the best man you can and get him to stick around and help care for your babies. (Obvious disclaimer: I'm talking about trends and averages, not every man/not every woman, blah blah blah.)
For this reason, I'm worried that a widespread embrace of polyamory/open relationships would be a disaster for women. Sure, you'll say that polyamory is all consensual and based on negotiated agreements, so what's the problem? But it's not so simple, and people who are emotionally entangled find it hard to make logical choices, and people are good at lying to themselves. "I can totally accept polyamory as the price of holding onto the man I love! [six months later] I'm so jealous and miserable and I keep hiding in the bathroom so he won't see me crying, but all open-minded people do polyamory nowadays, I can't let this get to me, I'm with the man I love, this is totally the right choice... excuse me while I get another box of tissues..."
If polyamory catches on in society at large, we'll see, at minimum a lot of tearful letters to advice columns from women saying things like, "Dear Abby, my husband wants to open our marriage, I really hate the idea of him being with another woman but I don't want to be an old-fashioned prude, plus I'm afraid he'll leave me unless I agree, but the thought makes me so unhappy, what should I do?"
Other commenters already mentioned the potentially negative effects on children.
To paraphrase something you, Scott, have written in one of your old SSC posts: Going from monogamy to polyamory is not "solving a problem," it's "replacing one set of problems with another exciting set of problems."
This theory doesn't match what's found in reality of social dynamics. Polyamory is mostly driven by women. In my 18 years of experience, the majority of polyamorists I have known either were (or were dating) a woman who was in a monogamous relationship to a man, she wanted to open a relationship, her husband agreed to it, she got lots of dates, and he did not.
90% same in my personal observation, but I think this is just the old taboo against polygamy pushing down the male-driven numbers. That'll go away eventually if polyamory is normalized, and then it will be at least a 50/50 male/female driven thing.
As Arnold says, polyamory is mostly driven by women, and your odds are much better of finding dates from an open marriage if you are female.
However, it is entirely possible that polyamory benefits women more than men within it, and that it makes women overall less happy...if you have two different groups of women! If polyamory destroys the expectation of pair bond, a small fraction of women, say group A, will benefit from being able to force their boyfriends/husbands to let them sleep around, while a (likely much larger) group B will be unhappy because they can't get the stable monogamous relationship they want.
The game theory does point in that direction, yes, though I find it very puzzling that it's mostly women pushing for this and the man can't get any dates (it's strongly suggests that the woman just partnered with a sub-standard male and wants an excuse to ditch them without ditching them.)
It's well-known that at least some men will go for sex under almost any circumstances. This is much rarer for women. So you can find a lot of men willing to be a woman's sidepiece; a woman will (usually) only accept sidepiece status if she thinks she can be the main squeeze later on, or the man is very attractive or wealthy.
I may partially withdraw my statement about mostly women pushing for it; there are plenty of men who think they're going to get lots of tail on the side and get disappointed. It's mostly *advantageous* to women (who want to have outside partners) as currently constituted.
Hi Scott,
You're a good man, and it clearly hurts your feelings when people criticize polyamory, so I don't want to feel like I'm piling on. Yet, as one of the few women of the ACX commentariat, I'm going to emphasize something that other commenters haven't really focused on:
On average, straight men and straight women differ in their sexual/romantic preferences. For obvious evolutionary reasons, men's sexuality is optimized for variety/novelty/as many partners as possible, while women's sexuality is optimized for emotional attachment/find the best man you can and get him to stick around and help care for your babies. (Obvious disclaimer: I'm talking about trends and averages, not every man/not every woman, blah blah blah.)
For this reason, I'm worried that a widespread embrace of polyamory/open relationships would be a disaster for women. Sure, you'll say that polyamory is all consensual and based on negotiated agreements, so what's the problem? But it's not so simple, and people who are emotionally entangled find it hard to make logical choices, and people are good at lying to themselves. "I can totally accept polyamory as the price of holding onto the man I love! [six months later] I'm so jealous and miserable and I keep hiding in the bathroom so he won't see me crying, but all open-minded people do polyamory nowadays, I can't let this get to me, I'm with the man I love, this is totally the right choice... excuse me while I get another box of tissues..."
If polyamory catches on in society at large, we'll see, at minimum a lot of tearful letters to advice columns from women saying things like, "Dear Abby, my husband wants to open our marriage, I really hate the idea of him being with another woman but I don't want to be an old-fashioned prude, plus I'm afraid he'll leave me unless I agree, but the thought makes me so unhappy, what should I do?"
Other commenters already mentioned the potentially negative effects on children.
To paraphrase something you, Scott, have written in one of your old SSC posts: Going from monogamy to polyamory is not "solving a problem," it's "replacing one set of problems with another exciting set of problems."
This theory doesn't match what's found in reality of social dynamics. Polyamory is mostly driven by women. In my 18 years of experience, the majority of polyamorists I have known either were (or were dating) a woman who was in a monogamous relationship to a man, she wanted to open a relationship, her husband agreed to it, she got lots of dates, and he did not.
That is 100 percent of the (handful of) polyamorist households I have been acquainted with.
Yeah, I also became polyamorous because the woman I wanted to date at the time was.
90% same in my personal observation, but I think this is just the old taboo against polygamy pushing down the male-driven numbers. That'll go away eventually if polyamory is normalized, and then it will be at least a 50/50 male/female driven thing.
As Arnold says, polyamory is mostly driven by women, and your odds are much better of finding dates from an open marriage if you are female.
However, it is entirely possible that polyamory benefits women more than men within it, and that it makes women overall less happy...if you have two different groups of women! If polyamory destroys the expectation of pair bond, a small fraction of women, say group A, will benefit from being able to force their boyfriends/husbands to let them sleep around, while a (likely much larger) group B will be unhappy because they can't get the stable monogamous relationship they want.
The game theory does point in that direction, yes, though I find it very puzzling that it's mostly women pushing for this and the man can't get any dates (it's strongly suggests that the woman just partnered with a sub-standard male and wants an excuse to ditch them without ditching them.)
It's well-known that at least some men will go for sex under almost any circumstances. This is much rarer for women. So you can find a lot of men willing to be a woman's sidepiece; a woman will (usually) only accept sidepiece status if she thinks she can be the main squeeze later on, or the man is very attractive or wealthy.
I may partially withdraw my statement about mostly women pushing for it; there are plenty of men who think they're going to get lots of tail on the side and get disappointed. It's mostly *advantageous* to women (who want to have outside partners) as currently constituted.