Why I Believe in Polyamory, But Still Feel its Problematic
I love the idea of Polyamory. (Polyamory means honest non-monogamy… and no don’t confuse it with polygamy, which is a patriarchal construct where only men can have more than one sexual partner)
#1 Reason Pro Polyamory
I love it because I just like rebelling against society’s norms 😉
#2 Reason Pro Polyamory
I love it because it clearly embraces feminism and equality.
#3 Reason Pro Polyamory
I love it from a practical stance – so few people seem capable of easily upholding monogamy, and they just end up cheating and hurting people they said they loved.
#4 Reason Pro Polyamory
But more than anything, I love it from a spiritual stance – in that, if we are spiritual beings whose base essence is ‘LOVE’… and love knows no boundaries… then who are we to even imagine that we puny beings could possibly limit loves expression to only one other physical form??
So heck, that’s a lot of plusses. But heck, I also perceive a few fundamental negatives.
I’ve tried it myself; I’ve hung around poly communities, and helped scores of poly people with their relationships over the last 10 years of a 22 year career in counseling/coaching. But I have a fundamental concern. …
My sense is that we have not evolved enough as a species in terms of emotional intelligence to be successful with poly relationships.
To live poly-amorously requires enormous emotional intelligence – ie the capacity to know yourself, transcend and include your ego, excellent communication skills, capacity to hold boundaries, feel empathy, be organized and highly responsible etc.
It also means that you have the willingness and capacity to hang in there when the going gets tough.
What that means practically, is if you are not doing well with one partner, don’t run off and make yourself feel better with your other lover. Instead, hang in there and solve your issues together. It requires a deeply skilled capacity to play win-win
That means, no, you don’t have the ‘lets open up our relationship’ discussion with your long term spouse, and then introduce your new girlfriend a week later. (Heck, doesn’t it usually take longer than a week to decide if someone is your girlfriend? So, doesn’t that likely mean that you were going out with her before the ‘conversation’?)*
So that’s a perfect lead in to the fundamental requirement of all relationships, whether poly or mono – TRUST. To build trust requires absolute honesty and transparency. There is a huge risk in jumping out of the safer confines and understood limitations of monogamy, so trust is even more paramount in poly relationships.
It also requires lots and lots of time and a great ability to plan and schedule.
If you are one of those people who highly value freedom (and if you are attracted to poly, then you likely are)… then be prepared to commit lots of time to discussing, negotiating, organizing and scheduling and creating guidelines and boundaries etc. All essential stuff if you don’t want to fall off the poly perch.
Most people find it too difficult to manage their chemicals.
And no, I’m not talking about alcohol and drugs… tho’ abuse of drugs is also a sure-fire killer of relationships. I’m talking about the ubiquitous NRE (New Relationship Energy). When people meet someone new and all that glorious serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine are coursing through your veins, how easy can it be to forget or ignore your other companion. How easy can it be to spend all your spare cash on the new person, and leave your other companion to languish… no holidays, no long weekends, no flowers, no planning for childcare. (* these comments refer to real life examples*)
Okay, I could wax more lyrical, but its probably all been said previously in some excellent poly manuals. In essence, I think that as we evolve, we will tend more to enjoy having the choice of poly… as well as mature or love-based monogamy. But until then, the vast majority of us need to recognize that for every degree of freedom we would like, we also need to be more aware and responsible.
And my experience has been that the vast majority of us just don’t quite have the skills and capacities required. So I suspect we will continue the joy and tears as we experiment and learn our way to greater consciousness and connection.
PS. I am looking forward to being proven wrong 😉
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There is more evidence, just in simple psychology of human interactions and the very nature of love and human attachment alone, for the reality of humans naturally mating for life, aka being “monogamous”, rather than this idea that we are naturally polyamorous. If we were “meant” to be with multiple people, then the natural, primal “jealousy” reaction, wouldn’t happen, plain and simple. But it does. Jealousy is not a social construct or product of conditioning. It is a deep primal reaction to someone else going after your mate. It’s not about “ownership”, it’s about the fact that, naturally, we imprint on and bond, deeply, with our chosen mate. We bond with that mate, and develop strong feelings of love and attachment to them, we want to care for them, to protect them, and ultimately, to make babies with them. That all happens for a reason, and it is one of the most fundamental core aspects of human beings a pack creature.
A healthy relationship requires that you give all of your love, and all of yourself, to that one person. That is how it works, that is how it was meant to work. You cannot give all of your love nor all of yourself, to multiple people. You just can’t. And if it’s just all about physical pleasure, well then……I’m sorry, but in my view, if you feel like you have to go looking outside of your relationship for something that’s “missing”, you’re either with the wrong person, or the two of you simply aren’t as connected and communicative as you should be. In any healthy, thriving relationship, you form a symbiotic unit in a way, in that you take care of each other, in every conceivable fashion, and should be left wanting for nothing, because you provide for each other, help each other, support each other, etc.
I’m all about free will. Good call on personal experience, Eric, and also to the rest of you that pointed out problems in monogamous relationships (divorce rate, duh!). Personally, the idea of a woman sharing herself with another man is unattractive to me and I’d expect her to feel the same way, but with all these fantasies running amuk in conjunction with an entire textbook of recognized sexual orientations (Straight, bi, gay, lesbian, trans, two-spirit, etc.) make it impossible to have a “standard” or dare I say “system” of desired sexuality. Between that, you have to throw in physical aggression. Every woman I’ve been with I’ve had to “steal.” That’s an invitation to fight. I can’t imagine sharing with someone like that. Keep in mind this isn’t a moral argument, but I’m not above my internal need to gravitate towards loyalty, and avoid situations that will spurn jealousy and manipulation – It’s childish b.s.
I don’t see how any of the negatives you’ve listed are not also applicable to monogamous relationships! Time management, hanging in there when the going gets tough, “managing your chemicals”…. these are all applicable to any relationship. It’s really frustrating to me when people dis polyamory by bringing up problems that are universal. You might as well just say that any and all relationships are “problematic”!
First, sorry for my bad english.
I think people like to see only the pros of ideologies they trust. So, is interesting to remember that those ideologies have negatives. Some people like me had gone to polyamory from a monogamous relationship, and i can tell its harder to handle. Small troubles can become into a tragedy so easy if the partners dont comunicate efectively….
Again, you can say the same thing about monogamy. I’m not saying one is better than the other, I simply don’t agree that either one is “more likely” to cause problems. It all depends on your mindset and communication style. I’ve had plenty of “small troubles” that became major issues in monogamous relationships, while polyamory has been remarkably easy for me. People just need to be aware of what kinds of issues are likely to crop up in whatever kind of relationship they happen to be in, and be on the lookout for them — whether it’s co-dependency, jealousy, time management, etc.
my thesis: the necessity for poly-amory is cultivated in doubt.
the obvious reality is that monogamous relationships cause more problems. this is precisely why i prefer them. poly-amory is a kin to masterbation. its too comfortable, its too easy, theres no risk. love is an adventure about finding love, not finding sexual partners. poly-amory induces a psuedo-love, that of universal love. you spread your energy thin. if you focus on 2 or multiple people you are defacing the power of particular love. its similar to diet-love, an easy choice as to never harm yourself in the commission of a “love”. we can have more individual loves, as was the lesson with fat free turkey, since its fat free, we can enjoy more! let us wear condoms, and be okay with that. (but is that okay? when something in our actions, of love, necessitates essentially shielding us from the germs, from the backlash of our love, was this love? can you love someone you don’t know or trust enough to penetrate flesh only? i doubt it)
i want to comment further on the original post, something about love knowing no boundaries, even posited in the form of a question. yes love must create boundaries, this is obvious, in fact maybe a little diminishing of love could be useful to a truly monogamous relationship. the point im making is that an excess of love usually turns violent, extremely-so and hateful even! best example i could think from the top of my head is the infinite love a father has for his child, often perceived as over-bearing and cruel to the child, regardless of the trial and authenticity of the fathers true love.
the debate imo could be further reduced to a question between, monogamous love, fully polyamorous, partially amorous, and even a potential 4th category of limited poly-amorous (not to mention possibly a million other alternatives to what polyamory could be) fully poly meaning essentially dtf, ready to go at a moments notice, partially poly meaning open to the prospects of any new love, but discriminatory against the majority, and limited poly, meaning having a select set of partners that does not change.
imo poly-amory creates a newer, much more evil problem than that of lost passion and the loss of the essential value of love. it makes you fake the actual usage of the word “love”. when you say “i love you”. what you are really saying is that, “I love you now, but soon i will love x, and then i will love y and then i will love z, you are one item in a set of many, and when i come back to you, the image and shape of our love will forever be different, i am in love with you now as i am, but this love does not imply eternity, it has limit.” so as to discover that while a particular love actually was infinite, actually was eternal, poly-amorous love turns finite.
this is why perhaps love is too deep of a word to attatch to purely masterbatory sexual relationships.
I kind of don’t even know what to say to this. It sounds like you’re confusing polyamory with promiscuity (i.e.,”down-to-fuck,”) which is isn’t. The second half of the word (-amory) means love, and many polyamorous relationships do, in fact, involve committing to partners and not sleeping around (see = closed triad). Anyone who thinks polyamory is “too comfortable” or “too easy” has likely not spent much time interacting with polyamorists. Learning to meet the needs of multiple sexual partners (sometimes at once) is hardly “masturbatory”.
I’m going to give you a pass on this one because it sounds like you genuinely haven’t looked into the subject. But your equating love with “over-bearing” and “cruel” worries me a bit. Please bear in mind not everyone shares your definition of “love” is, and that some people are, in fact, not looking for “infinite” or “eternal” love. Just as people have different thresholds of pain or sadness, people have different ways of experiencing love, and unless you’re a trained psychologist, it’s not your place to interpret those emotions for them.
Crap, u just wanna sleep with A lot of ppl, lolz, that’s not bad, just don’t make drama telling them u “love” them, hahah