I will be better able to answer the question if you unpack the words “special” and “replaceable”.
I’ll try. Not sure I’ll succeed, though, as it screams obviousness to my brain, so it’s hard to understand the outside perspective wherein it is not clear.
A partner stating he or she would rather not be with me than be with just me indicates that I am not particularly significant. Not special to him or her. Replaceable, pretty easily, considering how doable it is to not live like a swinger (the other side of poly, emotional & intellectual connection = good friends, no line-crossing necessary).
I enjoy feeling like I am more important to my partner than anyone/anything else. I am under the impression that this is normal in humans, and that it feeds the default human tendency toward monogamy. Do you not enjoy this / prefer this to being one-of-many?
From a different angle: If MBlume (or whoever your primary is at a given time) would be with you either way, monogamous or poly, which would you choose, given all the non-drama/non-jealousy & other apparent ‘awesomeness’ of your poly adjustment? Would you prefer to stay this way, or would you prefer an MBlume who was happy to give up all other men/women to be with just you forever?
I just looked over my shoulder and asked. Turns out your question is a practical one—MBlume says he would go monogamous for me if I wanted. If he’d said this before I hacked poly, I wouldn’t have hacked poly. (He wouldn’t have said it then—he needed the information of how our relationship has gone for the past month.) Given that I’m now poly, and that we both have other partners/prospects who we’d be somewhat distressed to give up, I’m not planning to reverse the hack. It’s a matter of hassle and loss aversion mostly. But I do find it meaningful that he would monogamize himself if I were not sufficiently superpowered to have rendered it unnecessary.
But I do find it meaningful that he would monogamize himself if I were not sufficiently superpowered to have rendered it unnecessary.
Alternatively, he is able to offer this primarily because he knows it is unnecessary / your polyhack is an inseparable part of your value as a partner.
If he’d said this before I hacked poly, I wouldn’t have hacked poly… Given that I’m now poly, and that we both have other partners/prospects who we’d be somewhat distressed to give up, I’m not planning to reverse the hack.
Sounds like a pretty definitive answer to the “You just went poly for the guy!” objection.
People move city to be with people; is this necessarily any different? Especially when you know lots of people living in that city going “move here, we love it here!”
Sounds like a pretty definitive answer to the “You just went poly for the guy!” objection.
It does. Even though it doesn’t refute the “You just went poly for the guy!” assertion at all. It could well fit with “I just went with poly for the guy and it is awesome! You should try it!”
I do find it meaningful that he would monogamize himself if I were not sufficiently superpowered to have rendered it unnecessary.
Agreed. Yay. I am happier for you both now. (Is it strange that I have concerns about people I don’t know very well, because I consider them part of my extended tribe somehow? I need to ask more people if they feel this way.)
I certainly find the same on other forums and communities. I am not sufficiently part of the lesswrong community to feel a tribe-connection, but I would feel such concern for a person who went to my local RPG club (even if I’d never met them) or who attended my favourite LARP (as long as I had talked to them at least once or twice)
and that it feeds the default human tendency toward monogamy.
From what I understand the default human tendency is is medium term monogamy (with cheating) combined with extreme promiscuity, particularly by the highest status males. Some polygamy thrown in too.
I think that “humans tend towards monogamy” and “humans don’t tend towards monogamy” are both misleading, as they lump together two things which don’t necessarily go together: being monogamous, and requiring monogamy of others. Instead, I’m inclined towards thinking that there’s a tendency to require sexual/romantic monogamy from one’s partner while still wanting to have sexual/romantic relationships with others.
Though some people seem to be strongly monogamous (in both senses of the word) by nature, others seem to be strongly non-monogamous (in both senses of the word), and some fall in between. So if there is a strong genetic component, there’s also the possibility that some kind of frequency-dependent selection might be going on instead of just a universal tendency towards one thing.
Yes, humans are bad at plenty of things they want (or seem to / claim to want). Bad at rational action, yet members at this site strive to do better. Bad at ethical & consequentialist reasoning, yet many of us strive to do better.
So being bad at monogomy is not a particular good argument for abandoning it. But maybe you didn’t mean to imply that—I speak to it because I’ve heard that claim from a few poly folks before. If so, disregard.
If you just meant to clarify that, yes, humans are not perfect monogomists, then okay, we’re agreed on that.
If you just meant to clarify that, yes, humans are not perfect monogomists, then okay, we’re agreed on that.
Um, no. And not anything about arguments for abandoning things either. It was a straightforward description of the approximate default human instincts with neither practical or normative argument implied.
Replaceable, pretty easily, considering how doable it is to not live like a swinger (the other side of poly, emotional & intellectual connection = good friends, no line-crossing necessary).
To clarify: would you say that romantic love only differs from friendship in that you have sex with the one you love?
Because to me, there is a massive difference between the two. Friends with benefits doesn’t become romantic love instantly, and romantic love without sex is entirely possible.
It’s possible our brains are different, or possible you mean something else; or indeed, it’s possible that you’re wrong about yourself.
To narrow it down, I’ll give you a hypothetical: Imagine your hypothetical partner agreed to give up the sexual side of poly, and only have sex with you (perhaps you’re the best sexual partner they’ve ever had, and have just the right sex drive for them, so they’re perfectly happy with that situation). However, they keep going out on dates with other partners, spending romantic nights in with other partners, etc. Would you feel comfortable with that situation?
However, they keep going out on dates with other partners
Could you clarify how “going out on dates” is different from hanging out with friends? Dinner, hang-gliding, museums, movies. “Date” implies you’re considering a person as a potential physically-intimate partner. If that is ruled out (as you stipulated it is), you’re not going on dates, you’re hanging out with friends.
I consider some allowance for those things as part of family/friendship. Soo… kiss = cheek, the way you’d kiss a friend or cousin, no open mouth clearly sexual “makeout” kissing. Hugging is fine. Cuddling/snuggling are kind of borderline. Depends on context. But typically people don’t sit around snuggling friends they aren’t sleeping with or trying to sleep with.
But typically people don’t sit around snuggling friends they aren’t sleeping with or trying to sleep with.
I do this all the time. When I hang out with the correct subset of my platonic friends we casually flop onto each other and braid each other’s hair and exchange backrubs. I have photographic evidence. One doesn’t have to be weird about those things.
But do you think it is common/typical/majority behavior?
I concur with your unintended implication that female-female groups do this (“braid each other’s hair, exchange backrubs”) more often than male-female and male-male pairs do.
I platonically snuggle with some of my male friends too. And I have photographic evidence of some guys I know who are not dating each other snuggling, too.
I guess I don’t know how typical it is. I don’t know many normal people and suspect they’re dull.
I concur with your unintended implication that female-female groups do this (“braid each other’s hair, exchange backrubs”) more often than male-female and male-male pairs do.
But typically people don’t sit around snuggling friends they aren’t sleeping with or trying to sleep with.
Perhaps not. But I am having to draw on an atypical hypothetical to try and find our exact point of disagreement. I hope you don’t mind?
Okay, so, refined hypothetical: The person you are dating is also, in their personal opinion, ‘dating’ an asexual man. This man has no interest in making out with them, let alone sex, but does enjoy romance, and cuddling up with them in order to share the feeling of emotional closeness.
Your partner considers this relationship equally important to the relationship between the two of you, and makes sure to schedule sufficient time to spend with each of you. They celebrate their anniversary with this other partner, and your anniversary with you, as well as wishing to spend time with this partner on valentines day.
They recently met this other partner’s family, going to his brothers wedding with him; as his ‘date’.
I am having to draw on an atypical hypothetical to try and find our exact point of disagreement. I hope you don’t mind?
Not at all.
Your partner considers this relationship equally important to the relationship between the two of you [...] Does this bother you?
Yes. No one should be as important to my partner as I am.
If you modify your scenario to involve an asexual male who likes to cuddle (or a gay male or a straight female, easier for me to imagine than a purely asexual male, although I know those folks do exist) and that that person is important to my partner but not as important as I am, then I would not have a problem with their cuddling at all, or being emotionally close.
That is very interesting, thank you for taking my hypotheticals seriously, and answering honestly.
What you are asking your partner to give up is not the “swinging lifestyle” as you thought: you’re also asking your partner to give up having anyone they consider as important as they consider you.
I hope you can now understand why people make such a big distinction between swinging (where they have other sexual partners, who aren’t as important as their romantic partner) and polyamory (where they have multiple romantic partners, who may not be sexual, but can be equally important to each other)
I hope you can now understand why people make such a big distinction [...]
I knew about the distinction before, I just didn’t realize how much polyamorous people disliked being associated with swingers, and phrased poorly as a result.
There still seems to be more overlap (more poly folks who permit one-night stands in swinger-ish manner than monogamous folks who permit it). Do you find this not to be the case? Most poly partnerships keep their sexuality limited to the 3 or 4 or 6 of them, and would look down on a partner having sex with people they didn’t intend to add to the long-term group?
polyamory (where they have multiple romantic partners, who may not be sexual
How common is it in your experience for the polyamorous to have non-sexual romantic partners?
There still seems to be more overlap (more poly folks who permit one-night stands in swinger-ish manner than monogamous folks who permit it). Do you find this not to be the case?
Hmmm, I’m not entirely sure. In my social circle far more monoamorous people #PRACTICE# one night stands (in a swingerish manner) than polyamorous people. The polyamorous people may #allow# it; but when you can date whoever you want, and aren’t forced to limit it to a one-night stand, why would you limit it?
My social circle is, however, distinctly atypical, and so cannot really be construed as evidence of much.
Most poly partnerships keep their sexuality limited to the 3 or 4 or 6 of them, and would look down on a partner having sex with people they didn’t intend to add to the long-term group?
Groups suggest a closed loop, which is uncommon. However many poly people I know are uninterested in having sex with anyone who they don’t feel a romantic bond with, simply because they have far more satisfying alternatives available.
How common is it in your experience for the polyamorous to have non-sexual romantic partners?
Maybe 10%, or so. Not massively common, but certainly not unheard of. Far more would be open to non-sexual romance, just haven’t had one.
knew about the distinction before, I just didn’t realize how much polyamorous people disliked being associated with swingers, and phrased poorly as a result.
The association with swingers is a problem due to the fact it leads to people, such as yourself, failing to recognise the differences, and making factually incorrect statements.
I’ll answer your questions shortly in a seperate post; but I have a point I feel I may have failed to make, so I’ll make it here:
The post I first replied to contained this line that I quoted:
Replaceable, pretty easily, considering how doable it is to not live like a swinger (the other side of poly, emotional & intellectual connection = good friends, no line-crossing necessary).
You have since revealed that there is a level of emotional and intellectual connection that you consider line crossing. This is an important change in your position, so I think it is important that you put those two beliefs together, and realise that one of them must be wrong.
Work out which one is wrong, and remove it; that is the purpose of this whole site :-)
It’s not a change; there was no explicit comparison between connection to others and connection to me in that statement, so I didn’t address it there.
So, to clarify: My partner can have any level of emotional/intellectual connection with friends and family, as long as it remains non-sexual and I remain most important / without equal.
In the previous post your only restriction was that they not have sex with others. You have now stated that you have two restrictions*: that is a contradiction of your previous position.
*and the restriction requiring that they give up anyone that is of equal importance to you is a massive one, far larger, to me and many polyamorous people, than the sexual restriction.
the restriction requiring that they give up anyone that is of equal important to you is a massive one
That my partner would have anyone equally important to me in the first place is highly unlikely, because we are not poly. How would such a high importance relationship form against a monoamorous backdrop? So it’s really not a big deal in practice.
But you were talking about the hypothetical situation in which you were being courted by a polyamorous person, saying that you’d be upset about their unwillingness to give up their “swinging lifestyle”*, and therefore wouldn’t date them.
*(a description that was extremely inaccurate)
Had you forgotten that that was the root of this conversation?
But you were talking about the hypothetical situation in which you were being courted by a polyamorous person
No, I wasn’t. I think I see where that miscommunication happened.
I mentioned that it is pretty easy not to have multiple partners (which I wrongly lumped, off-handedly, under the non-term-of-art “swinging”), and so that someone being unwilling to not pursue multiple partners would make me feel replaceable.
I think you read my statement as “the person already has multiple partners, and I demand they give them up to date me.” I didn’t mean it that way. If someone already has a partner (or partners) that is (are) more important than me, I wouldn’t be pursuing them or demanding anything of them in the first place.
Aside: I mentioned earlier that I shouldn’t have used the term “swing*”, but you still seem hung up on it. Can we move past that? Apologies, again; I hadn’t realized it would be so offensive to the poly crowd.
The term itself is not the problem. The problem was that your original post claimed that the only bit you objected to was the sexual aspect. Clearly, this is not the case, but, for reasons I am uncertain of, you still seem to be standing by your original statement as an accurate one.
I am trying to make it clear to you that what you are asking them to give up is NOT just about the sex. What you are asking them to give up is the option to LOVE other people. Which is very different from just asking them to give up the option to FUCK other people.
for reasons I am uncertain of, you still seem to be standing by your original statement as an accurate one
No one asked me for a list of all conditions I place on relationships. So I stated one and not others. Accurate is different from complete. You are noticing incompleteness and accusing it of inaccuracy.
I was not surprised / learned nothing new about my preferences when I noted that I need to be the most important person to my partner.
[...] is NOT just about the sex.
Agreed. It’s also about relative levels of significance. Not sure why you think that is not clear. I hope it is now clear that it is.
What you are asking them to give up is the option to LOVE other people.
As long as they don’t love them as much as they love me, and as long as that love doesn’t become sexual/romantic, then no, I am not.
My partner can love her family and friends, as can I. But no matter how much she loves those friends, I would be quite surprised and hurt if she told me one of them were as important to her as I am.
No one asked me for a list of all conditions I place on relationships. So I stated one and not others. Accurate is different from complete. You are noticing incompleteness and accusing it of inaccuracy.
Incompleteness claimed as completeness is inaccuracy. Your statement referred to poly as having precisely two sides, the sexual side (which you had a problem with) and everything else (which you didn’t).
It turns out you DO have a problem with the everything else side.
That is incompleteness posing as completeness, which is inaccuracy.
My partner can love her family and friends, as can I. But no matter how much she loves those friends, I would be quite surprised and hurt if she told me one of them were as important to her as I am.
Why would you be hurt by this?: this is honest curiosity on my part, because I don’t understand that sort of thinking. I can’t see any harm to you, so I find myself confused.
Incompleteness claimed as completeness is inaccuracy.
Good thing I didn’t claim, in my original statement, to be stating anything precise about polyamory or about my own list of preferences. Else I’d be in trouble.
Why would you be hurt by this? [...] I can’t see any harm to you
It is the harm of not being Most Important. This is something I value—it makes me happy to be the center of my partner’s world, and her mine. I consider removal of things I value to be harms.
jmed, you seem to consider admitting previous inaccuracy a bad thing. This whole site is based around the idea that coming in, one will be wrong, and leaving one will be less wrong. Why is it so hard for you to accept that what you wrote was wrong?
It is the harm of not being Most Important. This is something I value—it makes me happy to be the center of my partner’s world, and her mine. I consider removal of things I value to be harms.
Would you feel similarly harmed if your partner revealed that she considered all of her friends and family put together (as a collective, but not individually) to be more important than you as an individual?
jmed, you seem to consider admitting previous inaccuracy a bad thing.
Considering I already, in the comments of this one LW post, apologized to various folks for being unclear and using terms inaccurately (“swinger”), you seem to be mistaken.
Why is it so hard for you to accept that what you wrote was wrong?
It isn’t hard, when I actually agree that what I write is wrong, which certainly happens enough.
Why is it so hard for you to accept that your interpretation can be wrong? Especially given all the oft-repeated basic LW knowledge on miscommunication and people-talking-past-one-another?
Would you feel similarly harmed if your partner revealed that she considered all of her friends and family put together (as a collective, but not individually) to be more important than you as an individual?
Hmm. I feel like I would not be as hurt by that, because social network is important, but I would be surprised by it. I think my partner would abandon them to stay with me if such a choice were forced (let’s say by some sort of relocation protection program whereby she is safe with me or without me, but once the choice is made, no contact with me or them can ever be made again).
Why is it so hard for you to accept that your interpretation can be wrong? Especially given all the oft-repeated basic LW knowledge on miscommunication and people-talking-past-one-another?
Because I am looking at what you wrote, not what you think you wrote.
You wrote that you’d want a person to give up the sexual side of poly, but not the other side. This says that there are two parts to poly in your mind, and only the sexual part is a problem. This isn’t, in fact, true, the non-sexual side is also a problem to you; as the non-sexual part would still compromise your position of importance.
However I suppose this has dragged on long enough, and there is unlikely to be any value extracted from this part of the conversation, so you may feel free to state your piece, and I will read it, but probably not respond unless you request me to.
Hmm. I feel like I would not be as hurt by that, because social network is important, but I would be surprised by it. I think my partner would abandon them to stay with me if such a choice were forced (let’s say by some sort of relocation protection program whereby she is safe with me or without me, but once the choice is made, no contact with me or them can ever be made again).
Okay, thank you for the information. It’s a valuable insight into how other people differ from me. You are certainly the sort of person who I would call naturally monoamorous, and incapable of happy polyamory. By the sounds of it you and your partner are both happy with this, so :-D.
EDIT: I suppose, to avoid being hypocritical, I should apologise for my incorrect belief that you were unwilling to accept being incorrect :p
I’ve been making my way through this whole thread & haven’t seen a few of the responses I would have made, so I’ll just leave them here for posterity.
Also, I haven’t tried the quote syntax yet, so we’ll see if this works cleanly...
A partner stating he or she would rather not be with me than be with just me indicates that I am not particularly >significant. Not special to him or her. Replaceable, pretty easily, considering how doable it is to not live like a >swinger (the other side of poly, emotional & intellectual connection = good friends, no line-crossing necessary).
I enjoy feeling like I am more important to my partner than anyone/anything else. I am under the impression that >this is normal in humans, and that it feeds the default human tendency toward monogamy. Do you not enjoy this / >prefer this to being one-of-many?
There are a few things I would say here.
First, how does this really differ from monogamous relationships, other than in frequency? People get broken up with, neglected, and otherwise treated in bad ways in both kinds of relationships, not just the polyamorous ones.
If anything, I’d think that being dumped & seeing your ex with another partner would be far worse alone than with other people who still care. Or on the more trivial side, if my partner prefers to do something without me one night, I can’t call another partner to do something if I’m monogamous, because I don’t have one! (Which isn’t to say that I’m not cheating, the possibility of which seems like a huge mark against monogamy, at least if we’re just going to sit here & ask what could go wrong, and how badly.)
This is all to say that I feel just as replaceable & vulnerable in monogamous relationships as I do in polyamorous relationships.
But what about feeling special when you’re not unique to your role (at a given time)?
I think the analogy (sometimes not an analogy at all) of friendships is better than the one about mothers loving their children that I’m seeing thrown around here. It also illustrates the point that some people do come up short. Some people are not the best friend of anyone, just as some people might not be a poly-primary for anyone, and who probably wouldn’t have the easiest time finding a meaningful monogamous life partner either.
But let’s assume things go well in your love life & friendships. Just because I have other friends doesn’t mean I’m incapable of being exclusive best friends with just one person, or that that person can’t change over time. (This is, in fact, something I have had more success in with friendships than with monogamous relationships, despite fewer social expectations to guide it.) This is where the analogy to monogamy ends, but the analogy to polyamory goes all the way down.
At times in life, I’ve been fortunate to have whole little groups of very close friends, each of whom I would describe as best friends & each with different or similar merits. I never thought any of them less than special to me, nor did it even occur to me that I should, since they were important in my life. (And similar to polyamory but dissimilar to monogamy, nothing kept these friendships together past their due date, which isn’t to say that all of them have ended either.) I like to think that my friends got the same feeling from me, but certainly they made me feel special, lack of exclusivity & all.
I won’t spell out the rest of the friend/poly analogy, since it’s similar down through the other levels of closeness, but I will point out the one major thing I think it overlooks.
None of this can address the fact that monogamous people place a great deal of value on sexual exclusivity in a way that makes sex itself special. This is a fundamental difference which I think has something in common with orientation, though it seems more malleable than that. If you’re poly, chances are you don’t feel special because of the act of sex itself so much as the person sharing it with you. I don’t mean to diminish the former, or to say that the latter isn’t important to monogamous people, because it is; but I would say that there’s a marked difference in emphasis, at least from my experience. (A better writer could get at this more accurately.) The point, anyhow, is that in switching to polyamory, I found that the sources of my feeling special were distinct from what they had been. Not better or worse, just different. So as far as feeling special goes, I can’t say that I’m actually inspired to feel special by exclusivity, but there are other equally valid ways that I do.
And one last point not directly in reply to jmed’s post. Jealousy is a common problem often brought up, and rightly so. It’s destructive, powerful, involuntary, and difficult to manage, not unlike anger. I find it both interesting & odd that anger management is common, yet jealousy management is not.
With anger, there’s a widespread public consciousness that it’s possible (if difficult) to learn to move past it, even if that doesn’t mean we’re perfect at that; that there are plenty of programs & groups out there to help people do this; and that social expectations are so high in this regard that public outbursts of anger are hardly tolerated.
As for jealousy, there are small bubbles of consciousness (fortunately with a great deal of overlap with poly communities!) about similar control over one’s emotions, insofar as possible, but it doesn’t seem to be something many people work on, nor are they expected to do so. It is in this regard, and this only, that I view polyamory as preferable to monogamy, and not merely alternative to it. A cultural change would make it a moot point, but for now poly people seem to do a better job with it because, one, they’re forced to, and two, they get more practice.
Hopefully someone reading through this thread a year from now will get to this post & think “Aha! I was just wondering why no one brought that up.” Or maybe I’ll be the only one who stirs up old news.
A partner stating he or she would rather not be with me than be with just me indicates that I am not particularly significant. Not special to him or her. Replaceable, pretty easily, considering how doable it is to not live like a swinger (the other side of poly, emotional & intellectual connection = good friends, no line-crossing necessary).
What??! Oh my, how differently this works for me. I am attracted to many, many people, and they are ALL irreplaceable, nevermind relationships, my very attraction to them is irreplaceable! People are fascinating and unique, and in every case there is a mixture of common, less common, and unique features that contribute to the attraction, as well as memories of experiences I shared with them. The idea that by pursuing an attraction to someone else in anyway means that any given attraction is not special is an insult to my feelings! In many cases, I love these people more than I can even express and would, were it not for limitations of time and persuasion, do more things than there are names for with them, and indeed whole different sets of such things with each one, and that’s if I couldn’t persuade anyone to do them in larger groups. I am unspeakably sad that I almost never get to do any of things, and unspeakably grateful that get to do even the more mundane things I ordinarily do with my friends, and indeed to have met them and interacted with them at all.
I am not a very successful poly in real life, mostly I think because I have literally never met another poly and have therefore been operating on the basis of trying to convert monos, but when I occasionally have periods of success I am so elated that I barely know what to do with myself—alas, I fear in many cases I am not even able to communicate this to my partners. So please, please, if I love you, no matter whatever else I do, think anything but that you are not special to me!
I’ll try. Not sure I’ll succeed, though, as it screams obviousness to my brain, so it’s hard to understand the outside perspective wherein it is not clear.
A partner stating he or she would rather not be with me than be with just me indicates that I am not particularly significant. Not special to him or her. Replaceable, pretty easily, considering how doable it is to not live like a swinger (the other side of poly, emotional & intellectual connection = good friends, no line-crossing necessary).
I enjoy feeling like I am more important to my partner than anyone/anything else. I am under the impression that this is normal in humans, and that it feeds the default human tendency toward monogamy. Do you not enjoy this / prefer this to being one-of-many?
From a different angle: If MBlume (or whoever your primary is at a given time) would be with you either way, monogamous or poly, which would you choose, given all the non-drama/non-jealousy & other apparent ‘awesomeness’ of your poly adjustment? Would you prefer to stay this way, or would you prefer an MBlume who was happy to give up all other men/women to be with just you forever?
I just looked over my shoulder and asked. Turns out your question is a practical one—MBlume says he would go monogamous for me if I wanted. If he’d said this before I hacked poly, I wouldn’t have hacked poly. (He wouldn’t have said it then—he needed the information of how our relationship has gone for the past month.) Given that I’m now poly, and that we both have other partners/prospects who we’d be somewhat distressed to give up, I’m not planning to reverse the hack. It’s a matter of hassle and loss aversion mostly. But I do find it meaningful that he would monogamize himself if I were not sufficiently superpowered to have rendered it unnecessary.
Alternatively, he is able to offer this primarily because he knows it is unnecessary / your polyhack is an inseparable part of your value as a partner.
Sounds like a pretty definitive answer to the “You just went poly for the guy!” objection.
...I did just go poly for the guy. I just think that’s okay.
People move city to be with people; is this necessarily any different? Especially when you know lots of people living in that city going “move here, we love it here!”
I find this oddly cheerful. Go for it, then!
It does. Even though it doesn’t refute the “You just went poly for the guy!” assertion at all. It could well fit with “I just went with poly for the guy and it is awesome! You should try it!”
Agreed. Yay. I am happier for you both now. (Is it strange that I have concerns about people I don’t know very well, because I consider them part of my extended tribe somehow? I need to ask more people if they feel this way.)
I certainly find the same on other forums and communities. I am not sufficiently part of the lesswrong community to feel a tribe-connection, but I would feel such concern for a person who went to my local RPG club (even if I’d never met them) or who attended my favourite LARP (as long as I had talked to them at least once or twice)
From what I understand the default human tendency is is medium term monogamy (with cheating) combined with extreme promiscuity, particularly by the highest status males. Some polygamy thrown in too.
I think that “humans tend towards monogamy” and “humans don’t tend towards monogamy” are both misleading, as they lump together two things which don’t necessarily go together: being monogamous, and requiring monogamy of others. Instead, I’m inclined towards thinking that there’s a tendency to require sexual/romantic monogamy from one’s partner while still wanting to have sexual/romantic relationships with others.
Though some people seem to be strongly monogamous (in both senses of the word) by nature, others seem to be strongly non-monogamous (in both senses of the word), and some fall in between. So if there is a strong genetic component, there’s also the possibility that some kind of frequency-dependent selection might be going on instead of just a universal tendency towards one thing.
Yes, humans are bad at plenty of things they want (or seem to / claim to want). Bad at rational action, yet members at this site strive to do better. Bad at ethical & consequentialist reasoning, yet many of us strive to do better.
So being bad at monogomy is not a particular good argument for abandoning it. But maybe you didn’t mean to imply that—I speak to it because I’ve heard that claim from a few poly folks before. If so, disregard.
If you just meant to clarify that, yes, humans are not perfect monogomists, then okay, we’re agreed on that.
Um, no. And not anything about arguments for abandoning things either. It was a straightforward description of the approximate default human instincts with neither practical or normative argument implied.
This is what I meant by my last sentence, that humans are not perfect monogamists. Sorry I was unclear.
Ahh. Agreement!
Monogamous (for how long?) is probably a very important question in discussions of to what extent monogamy is natural for humans.
Is there a convenient term for raising that sort of question and/or filling in that sort of blank?
To clarify: would you say that romantic love only differs from friendship in that you have sex with the one you love?
Because to me, there is a massive difference between the two. Friends with benefits doesn’t become romantic love instantly, and romantic love without sex is entirely possible.
It’s possible our brains are different, or possible you mean something else; or indeed, it’s possible that you’re wrong about yourself.
To narrow it down, I’ll give you a hypothetical: Imagine your hypothetical partner agreed to give up the sexual side of poly, and only have sex with you (perhaps you’re the best sexual partner they’ve ever had, and have just the right sex drive for them, so they’re perfectly happy with that situation). However, they keep going out on dates with other partners, spending romantic nights in with other partners, etc. Would you feel comfortable with that situation?
Could you clarify how “going out on dates” is different from hanging out with friends? Dinner, hang-gliding, museums, movies. “Date” implies you’re considering a person as a potential physically-intimate partner. If that is ruled out (as you stipulated it is), you’re not going on dates, you’re hanging out with friends.
Same as above, examples please.
Thanks
A question before I continue: would you consider kissing, cuddling, snuggling, fussing, etc. as things you’d allow a partner to do with others or not?
Just so I can cater my examples to the exact region of the distinction.
I consider some allowance for those things as part of family/friendship. Soo… kiss = cheek, the way you’d kiss a friend or cousin, no open mouth clearly sexual “makeout” kissing. Hugging is fine. Cuddling/snuggling are kind of borderline. Depends on context. But typically people don’t sit around snuggling friends they aren’t sleeping with or trying to sleep with.
I do this all the time. When I hang out with the correct subset of my platonic friends we casually flop onto each other and braid each other’s hair and exchange backrubs. I have photographic evidence. One doesn’t have to be weird about those things.
I want to be your friend!
You are my friend! You just live far away.
I need more friends like your friends.
I think I need to hack to be more like her friends. Snuggling and braiding sounds healthy!
But do you think it is common/typical/majority behavior?
I concur with your unintended implication that female-female groups do this (“braid each other’s hair, exchange backrubs”) more often than male-female and male-male pairs do.
I platonically snuggle with some of my male friends too. And I have photographic evidence of some guys I know who are not dating each other snuggling, too.
I guess I don’t know how typical it is. I don’t know many normal people and suspect they’re dull.
It isn’t. I know a few normal people (“normal” along this particular dimension of personality/behavior, at least).
You are correct in your suspicions.
Upvoted for this.
Ditto.
Especially the braiding the hair part...
Guys are less often braidable but I ask when they are.
That reminds me. My hair is just about long enough that I’d be able to accept if asked. Definitely due for a hair cut!
Perhaps not. But I am having to draw on an atypical hypothetical to try and find our exact point of disagreement. I hope you don’t mind?
Okay, so, refined hypothetical: The person you are dating is also, in their personal opinion, ‘dating’ an asexual man. This man has no interest in making out with them, let alone sex, but does enjoy romance, and cuddling up with them in order to share the feeling of emotional closeness.
Your partner considers this relationship equally important to the relationship between the two of you, and makes sure to schedule sufficient time to spend with each of you. They celebrate their anniversary with this other partner, and your anniversary with you, as well as wishing to spend time with this partner on valentines day. They recently met this other partner’s family, going to his brothers wedding with him; as his ‘date’.
Does this bother you?
Not at all.
Yes. No one should be as important to my partner as I am.
If you modify your scenario to involve an asexual male who likes to cuddle (or a gay male or a straight female, easier for me to imagine than a purely asexual male, although I know those folks do exist) and that that person is important to my partner but not as important as I am, then I would not have a problem with their cuddling at all, or being emotionally close.
That is very interesting, thank you for taking my hypotheticals seriously, and answering honestly.
What you are asking your partner to give up is not the “swinging lifestyle” as you thought: you’re also asking your partner to give up having anyone they consider as important as they consider you.
I hope you can now understand why people make such a big distinction between swinging (where they have other sexual partners, who aren’t as important as their romantic partner) and polyamory (where they have multiple romantic partners, who may not be sexual, but can be equally important to each other)
I knew about the distinction before, I just didn’t realize how much polyamorous people disliked being associated with swingers, and phrased poorly as a result.
There still seems to be more overlap (more poly folks who permit one-night stands in swinger-ish manner than monogamous folks who permit it). Do you find this not to be the case? Most poly partnerships keep their sexuality limited to the 3 or 4 or 6 of them, and would look down on a partner having sex with people they didn’t intend to add to the long-term group?
How common is it in your experience for the polyamorous to have non-sexual romantic partners?
Hmmm, I’m not entirely sure. In my social circle far more monoamorous people #PRACTICE# one night stands (in a swingerish manner) than polyamorous people. The polyamorous people may #allow# it; but when you can date whoever you want, and aren’t forced to limit it to a one-night stand, why would you limit it?
My social circle is, however, distinctly atypical, and so cannot really be construed as evidence of much.
Groups suggest a closed loop, which is uncommon. However many poly people I know are uninterested in having sex with anyone who they don’t feel a romantic bond with, simply because they have far more satisfying alternatives available.
Maybe 10%, or so. Not massively common, but certainly not unheard of. Far more would be open to non-sexual romance, just haven’t had one.
The association with swingers is a problem due to the fact it leads to people, such as yourself, failing to recognise the differences, and making factually incorrect statements.
I’ll answer your questions shortly in a seperate post; but I have a point I feel I may have failed to make, so I’ll make it here:
The post I first replied to contained this line that I quoted:
You have since revealed that there is a level of emotional and intellectual connection that you consider line crossing. This is an important change in your position, so I think it is important that you put those two beliefs together, and realise that one of them must be wrong.
Work out which one is wrong, and remove it; that is the purpose of this whole site :-)
It’s not a change; there was no explicit comparison between connection to others and connection to me in that statement, so I didn’t address it there.
So, to clarify: My partner can have any level of emotional/intellectual connection with friends and family, as long as it remains non-sexual and I remain most important / without equal.
In the previous post your only restriction was that they not have sex with others. You have now stated that you have two restrictions*: that is a contradiction of your previous position.
*and the restriction requiring that they give up anyone that is of equal importance to you is a massive one, far larger, to me and many polyamorous people, than the sexual restriction.
That my partner would have anyone equally important to me in the first place is highly unlikely, because we are not poly. How would such a high importance relationship form against a monoamorous backdrop? So it’s really not a big deal in practice.
But you were talking about the hypothetical situation in which you were being courted by a polyamorous person, saying that you’d be upset about their unwillingness to give up their “swinging lifestyle”*, and therefore wouldn’t date them.
*(a description that was extremely inaccurate)
Had you forgotten that that was the root of this conversation?
No, I wasn’t. I think I see where that miscommunication happened.
I mentioned that it is pretty easy not to have multiple partners (which I wrongly lumped, off-handedly, under the non-term-of-art “swinging”), and so that someone being unwilling to not pursue multiple partners would make me feel replaceable.
I think you read my statement as “the person already has multiple partners, and I demand they give them up to date me.” I didn’t mean it that way. If someone already has a partner (or partners) that is (are) more important than me, I wouldn’t be pursuing them or demanding anything of them in the first place.
Aside: I mentioned earlier that I shouldn’t have used the term “swing*”, but you still seem hung up on it. Can we move past that? Apologies, again; I hadn’t realized it would be so offensive to the poly crowd.
The term itself is not the problem. The problem was that your original post claimed that the only bit you objected to was the sexual aspect. Clearly, this is not the case, but, for reasons I am uncertain of, you still seem to be standing by your original statement as an accurate one.
I am trying to make it clear to you that what you are asking them to give up is NOT just about the sex. What you are asking them to give up is the option to LOVE other people. Which is very different from just asking them to give up the option to FUCK other people.
No one asked me for a list of all conditions I place on relationships. So I stated one and not others. Accurate is different from complete. You are noticing incompleteness and accusing it of inaccuracy.
I was not surprised / learned nothing new about my preferences when I noted that I need to be the most important person to my partner.
Agreed. It’s also about relative levels of significance. Not sure why you think that is not clear. I hope it is now clear that it is.
As long as they don’t love them as much as they love me, and as long as that love doesn’t become sexual/romantic, then no, I am not.
My partner can love her family and friends, as can I. But no matter how much she loves those friends, I would be quite surprised and hurt if she told me one of them were as important to her as I am.
Incompleteness claimed as completeness is inaccuracy. Your statement referred to poly as having precisely two sides, the sexual side (which you had a problem with) and everything else (which you didn’t).
It turns out you DO have a problem with the everything else side.
That is incompleteness posing as completeness, which is inaccuracy.
Why would you be hurt by this?: this is honest curiosity on my part, because I don’t understand that sort of thinking. I can’t see any harm to you, so I find myself confused.
Good thing I didn’t claim, in my original statement, to be stating anything precise about polyamory or about my own list of preferences. Else I’d be in trouble.
It is the harm of not being Most Important. This is something I value—it makes me happy to be the center of my partner’s world, and her mine. I consider removal of things I value to be harms.
jmed, you seem to consider admitting previous inaccuracy a bad thing. This whole site is based around the idea that coming in, one will be wrong, and leaving one will be less wrong. Why is it so hard for you to accept that what you wrote was wrong?
Would you feel similarly harmed if your partner revealed that she considered all of her friends and family put together (as a collective, but not individually) to be more important than you as an individual?
Considering I already, in the comments of this one LW post, apologized to various folks for being unclear and using terms inaccurately (“swinger”), you seem to be mistaken.
It isn’t hard, when I actually agree that what I write is wrong, which certainly happens enough.
Why is it so hard for you to accept that your interpretation can be wrong? Especially given all the oft-repeated basic LW knowledge on miscommunication and people-talking-past-one-another?
Hmm. I feel like I would not be as hurt by that, because social network is important, but I would be surprised by it. I think my partner would abandon them to stay with me if such a choice were forced (let’s say by some sort of relocation protection program whereby she is safe with me or without me, but once the choice is made, no contact with me or them can ever be made again).
Because I am looking at what you wrote, not what you think you wrote.
You wrote that you’d want a person to give up the sexual side of poly, but not the other side. This says that there are two parts to poly in your mind, and only the sexual part is a problem. This isn’t, in fact, true, the non-sexual side is also a problem to you; as the non-sexual part would still compromise your position of importance.
However I suppose this has dragged on long enough, and there is unlikely to be any value extracted from this part of the conversation, so you may feel free to state your piece, and I will read it, but probably not respond unless you request me to.
Okay, thank you for the information. It’s a valuable insight into how other people differ from me. You are certainly the sort of person who I would call naturally monoamorous, and incapable of happy polyamory. By the sounds of it you and your partner are both happy with this, so :-D.
EDIT: I suppose, to avoid being hypocritical, I should apologise for my incorrect belief that you were unwilling to accept being incorrect :p
Ditto.
Yup yup. And :-D to you figuring out what makes you happiest, and finding others with whom to live that way.
Accepted, and thanks again.
I’ve been making my way through this whole thread & haven’t seen a few of the responses I would have made, so I’ll just leave them here for posterity.
Also, I haven’t tried the quote syntax yet, so we’ll see if this works cleanly...
There are a few things I would say here.
First, how does this really differ from monogamous relationships, other than in frequency? People get broken up with, neglected, and otherwise treated in bad ways in both kinds of relationships, not just the polyamorous ones.
If anything, I’d think that being dumped & seeing your ex with another partner would be far worse alone than with other people who still care. Or on the more trivial side, if my partner prefers to do something without me one night, I can’t call another partner to do something if I’m monogamous, because I don’t have one! (Which isn’t to say that I’m not cheating, the possibility of which seems like a huge mark against monogamy, at least if we’re just going to sit here & ask what could go wrong, and how badly.)
This is all to say that I feel just as replaceable & vulnerable in monogamous relationships as I do in polyamorous relationships.
But what about feeling special when you’re not unique to your role (at a given time)?
I think the analogy (sometimes not an analogy at all) of friendships is better than the one about mothers loving their children that I’m seeing thrown around here. It also illustrates the point that some people do come up short. Some people are not the best friend of anyone, just as some people might not be a poly-primary for anyone, and who probably wouldn’t have the easiest time finding a meaningful monogamous life partner either.
But let’s assume things go well in your love life & friendships. Just because I have other friends doesn’t mean I’m incapable of being exclusive best friends with just one person, or that that person can’t change over time. (This is, in fact, something I have had more success in with friendships than with monogamous relationships, despite fewer social expectations to guide it.) This is where the analogy to monogamy ends, but the analogy to polyamory goes all the way down.
At times in life, I’ve been fortunate to have whole little groups of very close friends, each of whom I would describe as best friends & each with different or similar merits. I never thought any of them less than special to me, nor did it even occur to me that I should, since they were important in my life. (And similar to polyamory but dissimilar to monogamy, nothing kept these friendships together past their due date, which isn’t to say that all of them have ended either.) I like to think that my friends got the same feeling from me, but certainly they made me feel special, lack of exclusivity & all.
I won’t spell out the rest of the friend/poly analogy, since it’s similar down through the other levels of closeness, but I will point out the one major thing I think it overlooks.
None of this can address the fact that monogamous people place a great deal of value on sexual exclusivity in a way that makes sex itself special. This is a fundamental difference which I think has something in common with orientation, though it seems more malleable than that. If you’re poly, chances are you don’t feel special because of the act of sex itself so much as the person sharing it with you. I don’t mean to diminish the former, or to say that the latter isn’t important to monogamous people, because it is; but I would say that there’s a marked difference in emphasis, at least from my experience. (A better writer could get at this more accurately.) The point, anyhow, is that in switching to polyamory, I found that the sources of my feeling special were distinct from what they had been. Not better or worse, just different. So as far as feeling special goes, I can’t say that I’m actually inspired to feel special by exclusivity, but there are other equally valid ways that I do.
And one last point not directly in reply to jmed’s post. Jealousy is a common problem often brought up, and rightly so. It’s destructive, powerful, involuntary, and difficult to manage, not unlike anger. I find it both interesting & odd that anger management is common, yet jealousy management is not.
With anger, there’s a widespread public consciousness that it’s possible (if difficult) to learn to move past it, even if that doesn’t mean we’re perfect at that; that there are plenty of programs & groups out there to help people do this; and that social expectations are so high in this regard that public outbursts of anger are hardly tolerated.
As for jealousy, there are small bubbles of consciousness (fortunately with a great deal of overlap with poly communities!) about similar control over one’s emotions, insofar as possible, but it doesn’t seem to be something many people work on, nor are they expected to do so. It is in this regard, and this only, that I view polyamory as preferable to monogamy, and not merely alternative to it. A cultural change would make it a moot point, but for now poly people seem to do a better job with it because, one, they’re forced to, and two, they get more practice.
Hopefully someone reading through this thread a year from now will get to this post & think “Aha! I was just wondering why no one brought that up.” Or maybe I’ll be the only one who stirs up old news.
What??! Oh my, how differently this works for me. I am attracted to many, many people, and they are ALL irreplaceable, nevermind relationships, my very attraction to them is irreplaceable! People are fascinating and unique, and in every case there is a mixture of common, less common, and unique features that contribute to the attraction, as well as memories of experiences I shared with them. The idea that by pursuing an attraction to someone else in anyway means that any given attraction is not special is an insult to my feelings! In many cases, I love these people more than I can even express and would, were it not for limitations of time and persuasion, do more things than there are names for with them, and indeed whole different sets of such things with each one, and that’s if I couldn’t persuade anyone to do them in larger groups. I am unspeakably sad that I almost never get to do any of things, and unspeakably grateful that get to do even the more mundane things I ordinarily do with my friends, and indeed to have met them and interacted with them at all.
I am not a very successful poly in real life, mostly I think because I have literally never met another poly and have therefore been operating on the basis of trying to convert monos, but when I occasionally have periods of success I am so elated that I barely know what to do with myself—alas, I fear in many cases I am not even able to communicate this to my partners. So please, please, if I love you, no matter whatever else I do, think anything but that you are not special to me!