I agree with you.
Note: “polyamory” will be in the next revision of the OED, as far as I’m aware. I don’t know when the changes will go through, but discussion about input went through a number of poly communities some time ago and I believe I’ve seen the text of the entry.
Second: Diogenes, there are folks (such as myself) who are incapable of having a stable monogamous relationship. I think avoiding putting myself in situations that aggravate my tendency towards depression and emotional instability is a more mature and moral choice. I want commitments to two partners to be stable; I have commitments to two partners, and thus am stable; I also have a family that’s actually a great deal more stable and secure with four members than any of the dyads were alone. (I’m also not sure why you’re ranting about swinging.)
If I understood the OP, swinging wasn’t necessarily what was being addressed. Polyamory doesn’t imply swinging - swinging implies emotionless sex among otherwise disconnected persons. Polyamory implies committed relationship between more than two individuals.
So DtC’s rant about horny self-serving immature men and accomodating women just doesn’t seem to fit.
And I suppose I should address the OP: Damn good question, and I have no idea as to the answer.
Current US society is much more understanding of extra marital relationships - including cheating - than of polyamory. It makes no sense, other than tradition. And that tradition is derived from religious roots (albeit, not Biblical).
I assume you have a cite for that? My gut reaction is that it would depend on the people involved - sometimes that third person (or fourth, or whatever) can fill a need in a relationship and stabilize it.
As for the OP’s question, I’d think that Loopydude (and upon preview, AZCowboy) had it right - out of sight, out of mind. Not that I think it’s right or anything…
And to follow-up on magog’s line, a study by Rubin & Adams in 1986 found no significant difference in the marital stability of polyamorous unions and monogamous relationships.
When a polyamorous relationship ends, many will point, as DtC does, to the pursuit of the “more inherently unstable” relationship paradigm, but funny, when a traditional couple splits, no one suggests it was due to their choice of monogamy.
Diogenes the Cynic:
Not necessarily. Depends on the understandings intrinsic to the paradigm.
The most stable committed relationship is the intentional community (within which sexual ties may come and go, or may be exogenous). In a community of 12 people, if one person leaves, the community persists. If a couple leaves to set up traditional housekeeping by themselves, the community persists. In fact, even a non-committed community, in which the participants have not by and large ever indicated that they intended on spending the rest of their lives in this environment, can outlive many marriages and other couples arrangements: I moved into one in 1991 and it was still extant in 2000 when the landlord gave notice of intention to turn the building into a museum office. (If we’d been a committed community we would have probably remained intact and relocated).
The unavoidable problem with the couple is that if one person leaves, there is no “it” remaining to survive the loss of that person.
Personally, I fall into the “I would absolutely choose monogomy without question” camp. However, I have a friend who lives polyamourously, and I wanted to explain what she told me about the situation.
This friend became the second wife (or whatever - it wasn’t religious, and it wasn’t legal, it just was) of a guy living several states away. The guy’s first SO was not just happy, but absolutely thrilled and supportive of my friend’s joining their happy home. My friend had found true love, and the guy was very happy.
Knowing that I would love to spend a marriage on one man and wanting him to spend it with me, I asked her about jealousy and sharing. She said that sometimes she needs emotional space. Sometimes he will be in the mood, and she won’t. Why should he go without? And the same is probably true for the first SO.
They also share the house with another couple. They are not sexually involved (anymore) with my friend’s SO and his other SO.
There are also children in this house, from various and sundry coupling. According to my friend, the adults are looked at lovingly by the children. It is totally beyond me how to make this work, but for all of the deviance that I see, it is a remarkably functional situation.
The situation is entirely beyond me, but despite what reservations I may personally feel about this type of arrangement, everyone is happy. Men, women, SO’s in various and sundry variety, and children. The children are cared for, and I don’t know what goes on in their heads about this whole deal.
I don’t get it, but they like it. In theory I agree with Diogenes. Still, these people (not swinging with anonymous sharers of sex) seem to have thought lots of things through.
I don’t know. The idea is squicky to me, but it seems to work for them.
I would amend that statement to read “The more men added to a relationship-paradigm, the more inherently unstable that paradigm becomes”
A good part of the world practices polygamy where affluence permits and these relationships appear quite stable. The key of course is enough money, which can undermine many a monagamous reationship.
If a man is left out of an evening of sex because a male relationship partner appears to be preferred, resentment is bound to mount. Men are not as good at sharing as women are.
Of course I’m generalizing here, speaking for 51 percent plus of the population, male and female.
Goodness, grienspace, you must know much more friendly and generally amiable women than I do.
It all depends on which people are involved. Some people work well in particular structures; other people can’t handle those structures at all. I haven’t observed (in my time observing poly relationships, my own and others) any significant gender biases on this subject.
Can I get a cite? I’m no expert, but I know that a very large percentage of marriages end in divorce. Isn’t a mutual multiple-partner marriage by definiton more stable, since it can deal with one partner breaking up with another without actually losing anyone, and with the loss of a person with remaining people?
robertliguori, Diogenes’s assertion is the “conventional wisdom” but as AZCowboy points out, that’s all it is.
I think this is part of what the OP is getting at: there seems to be visceral objection to polygamous relationships, far stronger than the general objection to having “flings” in addition to maintaining an established monogamous relationship. Why is this?
Methinks it threatens many folks’ complacency with their unquestioned choice of monogamous relationships.
Flings they’ve done; or, even if they haven’t, they don’t perceive them as an alternative to marriage / coupledom (because they aren’t, they don’t address the same needs and circumstances at all).
I imagine it has something to do with naturalized assumptions that polyamoury = swinging. That these relationships (unlike “normal,” monogamous, heterosexual ones) are all about sex, and therefore can’t function the way that “normal” ones do.
Also there are unquestioned assumptions that if more than two people are involved, then someone is getting exploited. Again, unlike “normal” relationships.
Plus the limited exposure most people have to the idea of polyamoury is in reference to the crazy sexist Mormons in Utah and those uncivilized savages in the Third World (:rolleyes:), so it’s quite easy to associate the lifestyle with people that we already think there’s something wrong with.
As far as I’m concerned it’s just another example of society marginalizing people whose lifestyles do not adhere to the norm.
I recently ran across this article published in the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Polyamory - What it is and what it isn’t.
While it doesn’t answer the OP directly, it certainly makes a case that polyamory should be more broadly accepted. It breaks down the arguments against polyamory, and refutes each argument. A very interesting read, for those interested in the subject. It also does a pretty good job of drawing distinctions between polyamory and swinging.
Firstly, as others have said, you haven’t really grasped the difference between ‘swinging’ and ‘polyamory’. ‘Swinging’ is casual or recreational sex; polyamory is having loving, sexual relationships with more than one person. Polyamory isn’t about sex primarily, it’s about love and friendship and intimacy.
Secondly, I won’t bother telling you that I’m a woman who enjoys sex with more than one person, since you’ve already decided that you know more about my state of mind than I do. All I want to ask you is: why do you think that you know more about polyamorous relationships than the men and women in them? What makes you so certain that you understand the dynamic without even listening to the views of the people who are in such a lifestyle?
Could someone please tell me why articles and suppositions so often rely on abstractions of what is “natural”? I mean, even that article in support of polyamory seems chock-full with “well in nature…”
Who cares? Don’t preying mantises consume their mates? Thats natural for them, but should we start gnawing on our S.O’s legbone? What other species do is interesting but not really very relevant to what we humans do. Furthermore, what one human finds quite natural is quite probably abhorrent to someone else. So who is right? Well why can’t they both be right for themselves?Why do we feel this GODAWFUL NEED TO BE RIGHT FOR EVERYONE? Both sides can be just as guilty between each other with one side proclaiming only monogamy is a “natural” and, therefore, honest state and the other side saying exactly the same about polyamory. I am me, a unique being although similar to other beings around me. Who I am, what I like, and how I act will not be quite replicated again even by me because I am also a creature in constant flux. So where do you, a creature who will never be completely me, get off saying you know better what is right for me because of your experiences? I can never be right because you must always be?
I don’t buy it. I don’t believe any one archetype will ever encapsulate all the drives and imperatives in every human being to allow some meta-understanding of a “natural state” for the human race. Thus, when someone tells me they’re happy in the state they’ve found and others affected by that state aren’t made unhappy by the external forces it causes I see no need to meddle or disbelieve until proven otherwise. Polyamory, I’m sure, is a fabulous, healthy, and productive way to find love for many people. Cheers for them all! I couldn’t be more thrilled that they’ve found affection which they can return. Ditto to all those monogamists out there. Why can’t we just leave it at that?
Huh? Perhaps you could quote the offending example. I couldn’t find “in nature” anywhere within the text of the article I quoted. The only area it seemed to be addressed was the section that was refuting the argument that monogamy is “natural” (and therefore, polyamory was “unnatural”). Otherwise, it said things like:
Polyamorists are likely to fully appreciate your point. Unfortunately, the laws of the land don’t support your view.
AZCowboy I may have jumped the gun a bit, but the turns of phrase in some of the statements about monogamy seems to indicate they don’t truly believe anyone is cut out for it.
And so on. Nothing terribly nasty, but sometimes rather snide and kinda crawled under my skin. I know many people for whom the attainment of monogamy is quite a viable and necessary state for their happiness. Some of them are religious, but quite a few aren’t so it stuck in my craw.
That’s one of the things that drives me insane, actually, Priam. It’s a common attitude in a lot of other minority communities I’m a part of as well, which is one of the reasons I hang out on the edges of those communities.
I think part of it comes from the all-too-human attitude some have that if one’s a member of a minority group, it’s because one’s hit upon a Truth that the normal people are too primitive, too unenlightened to understand. (The common phrase among polyfolks is “more highly evolved” such that in some communities it’s used as a shorthand for the entire attitude.) This is only enhanced by the persecution complex attitude that some people have – “They hate us because they subconsciously recognise that we’re better!”
I’ve also encountered people who can’t seem to justify leaving a philosophy or having a particular way of living without vilifying other ways. So some folks can’t be comfortable choosing to be poly unless being monogamous is Just Plain Wrong. And some people are startled by people who don’t have that attitude – I’ve several times had conversations that ran along the lines of, “So what’s wrong with monogamy, huh? What’s so wrong with it.” “Nothing.” “So why aren’t you monogamous?” “I don’t want to be.” “But what’s wrong with it?” “Nothing.” Repeat until stark raving mad.
Some of the literature doesn’t help either. Anapol’s Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits is bloody awful. It’s got the ‘more natural’, ‘new and improved way of running relationships’, smug superiority in spades, a New Age sensibility that makes me queasy, complete with what I tend to call “lifestyle polyamory”, the idea that being poly is some sort of movement, or, I quote, kidding you not, “Polyamory is less a recreational activity than an alternative way of life which often encompasses economic, nutritional, and political alternatives.” Nutritional?
I know people who are wired-up for a huge variety of relationship types, and people who don’t have any innate preferences at all. Variety strikes me as being the true “natural” state of humanity.
Polyfolks with conversion fever irritate me as much as any other proselytisers.