A downside of polyamorous relationships not mentioned here is that it removes guarantees of availability, which for many is an important (the most important?) value component of a long-term relationship.
For example, consider a couple X and Y. Let’s say X has a bad day at work. X knows that, when they get home, Y will be there to provide emotional support. This provides benefit for X in two ways—X knows that Y will be there for support later even while the bad day is playing out, and X additionally benefits from the actual support from Y once home. Y feels happy to be there for X. End result: everyone is OK.
Or, let’s suppose X is sick. They know that, if they need care, Y can be there for them. Yes, Y may have other obligations that need to be pushed aside (e.g. work) but it’s generally accepted for Y to take time off work for this kind of reason.
By contrast, in a polyamorous relationship between X, Y and Z, these guarantees no longer hold. X may have a bad day at work, but maybe Z has had an even worse day (or claims to). The result is that Y feels conflicted (but ends up supporting Z over X), and X feels unsupported. End result: 2 out of the 3 people are not OK.
There will always be (at least the risk of) competition for availability in a polyamorous relationship. This is a failure mode not present in the same way in monogamous relationships.
Yes, in polyamorous relationships one can unbundle sexual attraction, intellectual attraction, long-term companionship and childrearing to some degree and thus optimize those individually. But many in a long-term monogamous relationship already feel they are close (enough) to optimal on each of those dimensions already, so would not benefit from unbundling.
The benefit comes from clarity of priority. Polyamorousness per se does not preclude to be clear about priorities. If you know you are the 5th priority of 6 people then you know your support is unreliable. If you have even one person that you are the number one priority then you know you do have the support reliability. Whether those lesser priorities are work or other people is not that relevant.
And monogamous relationship does not prevent work from being a higher priority than the person. And not all needs are guaranteed to be in the same level compared to non-relationship priorities. Not skipping work for horniness but yes skipping work for health care.
Now there might be dynamics where being ranked creates negative feelings. And there can be drama from going from “X>Y” to “X<Y”. But how many people are involved does not affect that much how much pain this priorization causes (or whether undefined “plausible evenness” provides a more general positive vibe than emergency triage drags it down).
(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.
There’s nothing fundamental about polyamory that precludes guarantees of availability. You can certainly have 1 (or more) primary partners who you agree to be more closely bound to. And in fact, many poly people have exactly this, a primary “marriage” along with polyamory.
A downside of polyamorous relationships not mentioned here is that it removes guarantees of availability, which for many is an important (the most important?) value component of a long-term relationship.
For example, consider a couple X and Y. Let’s say X has a bad day at work. X knows that, when they get home, Y will be there to provide emotional support. This provides benefit for X in two ways—X knows that Y will be there for support later even while the bad day is playing out, and X additionally benefits from the actual support from Y once home. Y feels happy to be there for X. End result: everyone is OK.
Or, let’s suppose X is sick. They know that, if they need care, Y can be there for them. Yes, Y may have other obligations that need to be pushed aside (e.g. work) but it’s generally accepted for Y to take time off work for this kind of reason.
By contrast, in a polyamorous relationship between X, Y and Z, these guarantees no longer hold. X may have a bad day at work, but maybe Z has had an even worse day (or claims to). The result is that Y feels conflicted (but ends up supporting Z over X), and X feels unsupported. End result: 2 out of the 3 people are not OK.
There will always be (at least the risk of) competition for availability in a polyamorous relationship. This is a failure mode not present in the same way in monogamous relationships.
Yes, in polyamorous relationships one can unbundle sexual attraction, intellectual attraction, long-term companionship and childrearing to some degree and thus optimize those individually. But many in a long-term monogamous relationship already feel they are close (enough) to optimal on each of those dimensions already, so would not benefit from unbundling.
The benefit comes from clarity of priority. Polyamorousness per se does not preclude to be clear about priorities. If you know you are the 5th priority of 6 people then you know your support is unreliable. If you have even one person that you are the number one priority then you know you do have the support reliability. Whether those lesser priorities are work or other people is not that relevant.
And monogamous relationship does not prevent work from being a higher priority than the person. And not all needs are guaranteed to be in the same level compared to non-relationship priorities. Not skipping work for horniness but yes skipping work for health care.
Now there might be dynamics where being ranked creates negative feelings. And there can be drama from going from “X>Y” to “X<Y”. But how many people are involved does not affect that much how much pain this priorization causes (or whether undefined “plausible evenness” provides a more general positive vibe than emergency triage drags it down).
(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.
There’s nothing fundamental about polyamory that precludes guarantees of availability. You can certainly have 1 (or more) primary partners who you agree to be more closely bound to. And in fact, many poly people have exactly this, a primary “marriage” along with polyamory.