My observations are mostly the opposite. I’ve seen a bunch of abusive relationships over the years, and in general poly seemed to reduce the incidence of more abusive relationships by making it easier for partners to have periods of temporary distance, and because other partners had the opportunity to sanity-check what was happening.
Most of the worst relationships I recall in the Bay Area and other parts of the rationality community were monogamous ones.
I have the opposite observation on abuse in poly vs mono relationships. I’m interested in discussing further but I think that requires naming names and I don’t want to do so in a public forum, so maybe we should discuss offline.
Davis said harmful and habryka said abusive, which aren’t synonymous. It’s entirely possible for poly to lead to a lower chance any particular relationship is abusive, and yet raise the total amount of harm-done-by-relationships in a person or community.
2. Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that it’s in direct contradiction, just that I have the most data about actually abusive relationships, and some broad implication that I do think that’s where most of the variance comes from, though definitely not all of it.
My observations are mostly the opposite. I’ve seen a bunch of abusive relationships over the years, and in general poly seemed to reduce the incidence of more abusive relationships by making it easier for partners to have periods of temporary distance, and because other partners had the opportunity to sanity-check what was happening.
Most of the worst relationships I recall in the Bay Area and other parts of the rationality community were monogamous ones.
I have the opposite observation on abuse in poly vs mono relationships. I’m interested in discussing further but I think that requires naming names and I don’t want to do so in a public forum, so maybe we should discuss offline.
Davis said harmful and habryka said abusive, which aren’t synonymous. It’s entirely possible for poly to lead to a lower chance any particular relationship is abusive, and yet raise the total amount of harm-done-by-relationships in a person or community.
1. Sure, happy to chat
2. Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that it’s in direct contradiction, just that I have the most data about actually abusive relationships, and some broad implication that I do think that’s where most of the variance comes from, though definitely not all of it.