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.
For the first decades of my life, we were so immersed in it that it didn’t occur to us that it was strange compared to other times and cultures to believe in and focus on finding your “true love,” mutually “falling in love” with a soulmate for an eternally-passionate, all-satisfying, exclusive marriage that transcends and conquers all problems. Most of our popular stories reinforced these myths, from Disney’s “Happily Ever After” twists on ancient fairy tales that originally had dark endings, to hero’s journey stories that required the crucial step of “getting the girl,” to more-disturbing stories like Punch Drunk Love. It was so pervasive that it was shoehorned into the ending of Fight Club, where we barely even noticed that it didn't make much sense.
As these myths have been breaking down in recent years, movies and TV shows have started moving away from them, but to the many people who still hold these romantic myths as dearly as a religion, hearing about people who don't share them can be as frustrating as hearing about the "new atheists" was to fundamentalist Christians in the early aughts.
Yeah, true love might not really be the norm in relationships, but the vast majority of pre-modern societies weren't consent-based sexual free-for-alls either. Marriage was enforced by stigma and social convention and was seen more as a mutually-beneficial business arrangement than anything else, assuming the bride was consulted at all. Even non-monagamous societies still had very strict rules regarding these transactions. Love would be nice and all, but it could (A) develop over time, and (B) wasn't really the point per se. Reproduction was.
Very true, and of course, most people who have religious feelings for monogamous "true love" mythology would be irritated by heretics in their culture abandoning it for any other system, whether consent-based free-for-all or any of the other historical, often-coercive systems. There just aren’t many westerners practicing/advocating a return to those historical systems, so it doesn’t come up as much. Similarly, modern Christians rarely get upset about ancient Greek mythology but would if people around them started believing in it.
There's a version of True Love that's dumb and toxic, where it's implied that Your Special Someone is a girl/boy you'll just coincidentally lock eyes with across a room and settling for anyone else is a betrayal of your needs (and yeah, the older Disney films kinda reinforce this), but there's a more defensible version of the myth where you're expected to work on developing a stable relationship with your spouse that develops into a deeper affection over time. Ideals being lofty isn't a problem in and of itself- your aspirations have to be a bit higher than the norm or the norm degenerates over time.
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.
For the first decades of my life, we were so immersed in it that it didn’t occur to us that it was strange compared to other times and cultures to believe in and focus on finding your “true love,” mutually “falling in love” with a soulmate for an eternally-passionate, all-satisfying, exclusive marriage that transcends and conquers all problems. Most of our popular stories reinforced these myths, from Disney’s “Happily Ever After” twists on ancient fairy tales that originally had dark endings, to hero’s journey stories that required the crucial step of “getting the girl,” to more-disturbing stories like Punch Drunk Love. It was so pervasive that it was shoehorned into the ending of Fight Club, where we barely even noticed that it didn't make much sense.
As these myths have been breaking down in recent years, movies and TV shows have started moving away from them, but to the many people who still hold these romantic myths as dearly as a religion, hearing about people who don't share them can be as frustrating as hearing about the "new atheists" was to fundamentalist Christians in the early aughts.
Yeah, true love might not really be the norm in relationships, but the vast majority of pre-modern societies weren't consent-based sexual free-for-alls either. Marriage was enforced by stigma and social convention and was seen more as a mutually-beneficial business arrangement than anything else, assuming the bride was consulted at all. Even non-monagamous societies still had very strict rules regarding these transactions. Love would be nice and all, but it could (A) develop over time, and (B) wasn't really the point per se. Reproduction was.
Very true, and of course, most people who have religious feelings for monogamous "true love" mythology would be irritated by heretics in their culture abandoning it for any other system, whether consent-based free-for-all or any of the other historical, often-coercive systems. There just aren’t many westerners practicing/advocating a return to those historical systems, so it doesn’t come up as much. Similarly, modern Christians rarely get upset about ancient Greek mythology but would if people around them started believing in it.
There's a version of True Love that's dumb and toxic, where it's implied that Your Special Someone is a girl/boy you'll just coincidentally lock eyes with across a room and settling for anyone else is a betrayal of your needs (and yeah, the older Disney films kinda reinforce this), but there's a more defensible version of the myth where you're expected to work on developing a stable relationship with your spouse that develops into a deeper affection over time. Ideals being lofty isn't a problem in and of itself- your aspirations have to be a bit higher than the norm or the norm degenerates over time.