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.
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!
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.
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.
This is the main reason I made the switch from poly to mono. I actually never had any bad poly experiences personally and it worked great for me. (So yes, it is possible!)
However, when I decided to get married and have kids, I decided with my rational brain on that monogamy was the better choice for bringing kids into the mix. This was because divorce is particularly bad for kids and I wanted to reduce the risk as much as possible.
This is not to say that poly with marriage is doomed - I have many poly friends who have kids and who have stayed married! But both the literature and anecdote suggest that monogamous relationships are more dynamically stable than poly ones, and for me the risk wasn't personally worth it.
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.
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
My experience as a secondary-only, introverted and very high me-time-needed man with poly: very positive. First of all, it might be ugly to say so but the primary does all the work, the emotional support and all, and I as the secondary are basically just doing quality-time vacations with my partners. A second and much more important fact is that the opportunity cost of choosing a mono partner is enormous, there is the opportunity cost of not dating all the potential people one could date, which is millions. The opportunity cost of spending a weekend with a secondary is merely the opportunity cost of not spending it with the primary, people might just do it for the sake of variety alone. This makes things incredibly easy for me as I don't have to offer a lot of value.
Sometimes it is a little hard on my conscience, sometimes I feel guilty. I mean it in the "no pain, no gain" sense? We are not supposed to get good things without effort? And being a "fair weather partner" is kind of selfish? But then again of course they are doing the same thing. Their effort is even lower than mine. One of them expressed condolences over my mom dying in a text message...
So guilt is really misplaced here. But there is something else. Isn't this a cheap, consumerist approach to McRelationships? If I invested more, I would get to experience something deeper?
On your half-locked post on why not more people are bi. Well, my body is ugly and therefore I expect other men's body be ugly too. Men just get away with putting very little effort into looks. The "fairies" invested just as much effort into their looks as women did. You will notice this has been true in every historic period where homosexuality was normalized. Roman emperors wrote tracts on preventing hair loss. I don't give a flying fuck about my hair loss, it is normal for cishet guys to be ugly in this culture.
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.
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.
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!
Unfortunately there's an obvious reason why I know more about the problems of people who are heavily involved in communities. :P
Hey kinda like the "friendship paradox"! On average, most people's friends have more friends than they themselves do.
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.
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.
This is the main reason I made the switch from poly to mono. I actually never had any bad poly experiences personally and it worked great for me. (So yes, it is possible!)
However, when I decided to get married and have kids, I decided with my rational brain on that monogamy was the better choice for bringing kids into the mix. This was because divorce is particularly bad for kids and I wanted to reduce the risk as much as possible.
This is not to say that poly with marriage is doomed - I have many poly friends who have kids and who have stayed married! But both the literature and anecdote suggest that monogamous relationships are more dynamically stable than poly ones, and for me the risk wasn't personally worth it.
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.
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
My experience as a secondary-only, introverted and very high me-time-needed man with poly: very positive. First of all, it might be ugly to say so but the primary does all the work, the emotional support and all, and I as the secondary are basically just doing quality-time vacations with my partners. A second and much more important fact is that the opportunity cost of choosing a mono partner is enormous, there is the opportunity cost of not dating all the potential people one could date, which is millions. The opportunity cost of spending a weekend with a secondary is merely the opportunity cost of not spending it with the primary, people might just do it for the sake of variety alone. This makes things incredibly easy for me as I don't have to offer a lot of value.
Sometimes it is a little hard on my conscience, sometimes I feel guilty. I mean it in the "no pain, no gain" sense? We are not supposed to get good things without effort? And being a "fair weather partner" is kind of selfish? But then again of course they are doing the same thing. Their effort is even lower than mine. One of them expressed condolences over my mom dying in a text message...
So guilt is really misplaced here. But there is something else. Isn't this a cheap, consumerist approach to McRelationships? If I invested more, I would get to experience something deeper?
On your half-locked post on why not more people are bi. Well, my body is ugly and therefore I expect other men's body be ugly too. Men just get away with putting very little effort into looks. The "fairies" invested just as much effort into their looks as women did. You will notice this has been true in every historic period where homosexuality was normalized. Roman emperors wrote tracts on preventing hair loss. I don't give a flying fuck about my hair loss, it is normal for cishet guys to be ugly in this culture.
Very insightful! Thanks for writing.
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.