(Apologies if in writing this response I have missed your point.)
I don’t believe that in most polyamorous relationships there are clear (i.e. fixed) priorities. I think most people will appreciate that priorities will change depending on the situation. The point I was trying to make was that this kind of ‘emotional availability uncertainty’ is specific to polyamorous relationships. Yes work can be a higher priority than the person in some relationships or at some times, but this is similar regardless of relationship type. The specific failure mode in polyamorous relationships that I was describing was that—even assuming all parties act in good faith and act with the best intentions—X loses the guarantee of Y’s emotional availability, because Y also feels a duty to respond to Z’s needs (or Y’s perception of Z’s needs). (Repeat for all permutations of X, Y and Z.)
In a monogamous relationship there is no need for any emotional prioritization between multiple people. This failure mode is totally absent. Yes, the other factors like work are still in there to get in the way, same as in a poly relationship.
It may be that this ‘emotional availability guarantee’ is not that important to some people, in which case they can achieve something asymptotically equivalent by having lots of partners in a poly relationship, and then presume that at least one of them will probably be emotionally available at any given time.
There is also the edge case when emotional availabilty to one person does not interfere to be emotionally available to another person. That is, Y is responding to Z and X needs stuff then XYZ have a emodwelling pit. Priorization becomes redundant once again.
(Apologies if in writing this response I have missed your point.)
I don’t believe that in most polyamorous relationships there are clear (i.e. fixed) priorities. I think most people will appreciate that priorities will change depending on the situation. The point I was trying to make was that this kind of ‘emotional availability uncertainty’ is specific to polyamorous relationships. Yes work can be a higher priority than the person in some relationships or at some times, but this is similar regardless of relationship type. The specific failure mode in polyamorous relationships that I was describing was that—even assuming all parties act in good faith and act with the best intentions—X loses the guarantee of Y’s emotional availability, because Y also feels a duty to respond to Z’s needs (or Y’s perception of Z’s needs). (Repeat for all permutations of X, Y and Z.)
In a monogamous relationship there is no need for any emotional prioritization between multiple people. This failure mode is totally absent. Yes, the other factors like work are still in there to get in the way, same as in a poly relationship.
It may be that this ‘emotional availability guarantee’ is not that important to some people, in which case they can achieve something asymptotically equivalent by having lots of partners in a poly relationship, and then presume that at least one of them will probably be emotionally available at any given time.
There is also the edge case when emotional availabilty to one person does not interfere to be emotionally available to another person. That is, Y is responding to Z and X needs stuff then XYZ have a emodwelling pit. Priorization becomes redundant once again.