When you’re going off of personal observation, how do you distinguish whether preference for number of partners is a (relatively) hard-coded variable in the brain like sexuality, or if it’s something highly malleable like e.g. preference to live in a rural or suburban area? Obviously empirically there are people who prefer to be polyamorous, people who prefer to be monogamous, and people who could go either way, but it doesn’t necessarily seem obvious to me that there are a whole bunch of people who inherently long to be polyamorous that are being stifled by our monogamous society. (Not sure if that’s what you’re claiming.)
it doesn’t necessarily seem obvious to me that there are a whole bunch of people who inherently long to be polyamorous that are being stifled by our monogamous society.
I have seen people end up in monogamous relationships, later on realize that loving one person doesn’t prevent them from falling in love with other people as well, and then be unable to even really talk about the issue with their partner, since Western culture tends to interpret falling in love with somebody else as an automatic sign of the relationship having fundamentally failed.
When you’re going off of personal observation, how do you distinguish whether preference for number of partners is a (relatively) hard-coded variable in the brain like sexuality, or if it’s something highly malleable like e.g. preference to live in a rural or suburban area? Obviously empirically there are people who prefer to be polyamorous, people who prefer to be monogamous, and people who could go either way, but it doesn’t necessarily seem obvious to me that there are a whole bunch of people who inherently long to be polyamorous that are being stifled by our monogamous society. (Not sure if that’s what you’re claiming.)
I have seen people end up in monogamous relationships, later on realize that loving one person doesn’t prevent them from falling in love with other people as well, and then be unable to even really talk about the issue with their partner, since Western culture tends to interpret falling in love with somebody else as an automatic sign of the relationship having fundamentally failed.