11 Comments
Apr 29, 2022Liked by Ozy Brennan

To be honest, these are *such first world problems*! (well, most of them, I'm not talking about the discrimination) I'm poly, I have 1.2 lovers and 0.8 meatspace friends, and I've been socially deprived for years and years. I *wish* I had the sort of community which has this much drama!

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May 24, 2022Liked by Ozy Brennan

I thought of a few others from my specific experiences as a happily polyamorous person. Though, maybe they are challenges more-so than cons:

* It is hard to allocate time to bubble with an individual partner (where they are the only person in the world for you), without having to pay it forward with other partners later or doing some relationship gardening during the bubble. This is a challenge for folks who have multiple high-attachment relationships. In monogamy, there is a much clearer model of your partner being someone that society supports you having copious bubble time with. It is a lot easier to run off for 3 weeks to honeymoon with someone, when they are your only high attachment person. Even when I was bubbling with one of my people, 5% of my time/brain was allocated towards tending to my other relationships, making it difficult to ever fully be with someone.

* This is part of Marginalisation, and unique to not being part of a poly community, but that awful moment when you had a wonderful threesome with your wife or are falling in love with someone new, and have absolutely nobody you can share this joy with. You can feel a slight disconnect from your monogamous friends because you cannot tell them about the most important things in your life.

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May 14, 2022Liked by Ozy Brennan

As someone who is poly and was contemplating major life changes involving relocation: there's also the thing where, in a monogamous relationship, it's totally reasonable for the two of you to decide to up and move to Somewhere Else Entirely (another city, another country). In a poly relationship, it...mostly isn't? You're definitely not moving the whole polycule, someone is definitely leaving behind a partner that they like a lot. And like, yes, airplanes exist, but long-distance relationships can kinda suck. Honestly, this is a combo of the long-distance relationship point + people being all up in your business.

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My wife is pretty active in the SCA (sometimes called the “Society for Consenting Adults”) and *her* perception of polyamory is heavily influenced by seeing polyamorous marriages fall apart when someone ends up preferring their shiny new partner to their spouse. That has not not been a major feature of polyamorous communities *I* have observed, so I’m wondering if you have any ideas about the difference in experiences here.

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A lot of these seem to be problems specific to ‘being part of a large polycule/having many partners’. I am polyamorous. I have a girlfriend, my girlfriend has another girlfriend that I talk to sometimes. That’s it. Both me and my girlfriend are on the asexual spectrum so we don’t have casual sex partners (we don’t even have sex with each other, so no std concerns). I’m also on the aromantic spectrum so I’m unlikely to end up wanting to date many if any other people (she is currently the first and only person I’ve been fully and completely in love with) Maybe most poly people end up in large polycules eventually? I’m not sure, I’m obviously not experienced enough in the lifestyle to know. But I also know there are people in, for instance, committed triads who don’t date outside of that arrangement, and they I imagine would have almost none of these issues.

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Very insightful! Thanks for writing.

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Great article! Couple little things: living in a small town presents very similar conflicts to those mentioned in your last article (eg your doctor is also your friend, your partner may be your manager etc). Also, I invite you to consider examining the idea of being America/Euro centric; I always know the time in Australia because I live there. Thanks again for the insightful and amusing article on what is generally a neglected topic

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For people who don't do long distance relationships very well, moving a large distance (alone or with one partner) could potentially be a good break point for someone to turn from poly to monogamous.

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