Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
"Traditional" meaning "the last 2,000 out of 300,000 years"... Not to mention how it was only the norm because it was forced thru powerful organizations and not everyone just choosing it.
Monogamy and Abrhamic values are nothing but a fad on the timeline of human existence.
We ain't built for that shit. Some people are and that's fine, some aren't and that's cool too.
There's a reason we're not all built the same.
Abraham himself wasn’t monogamous.
Nor all muslims, who are following an abrahamic religion
It's almost like everything in nature is random
Less random and more "shotgun approach".
Can’t speak for anyone else but I will never do an open relationship. Either you are with me or you aren’t. Your choice.
I chose to be with you.
You're not a weirdo are you, SatansMaggotyCumFart?
Now kith
And that's totally fine to have your preference. It's not just a "your choice" situation. Communication at the onset and throughout a relationship should help weed out others who are not monogamous.
My wife and I have been poly from the start of our relationship and it's been great. That said we've also long held a commitment to healthy emotional management
It’s only risky business if your relationship is defined by sex. People who would stay together even without the sex (because they like each other that much anyway) are generally going to be fine.
I'm not against different relationship arrangements and it's often argued that you shouldn't dump all your emotional needs on one person.
However... That being said the more people you add to the mix the more complex and more emotional energy you have to dictate to the situation. A lot of people are genuinely not ready for such a thing even if they think they are. Because while you might have mor emotional needs met, you're also faced with higher emotional and social demands from your partners. Some people don't seem to understand that you can't avoid giving more of your emotional self to others when you give it to more than one person. In my experience, some of the people pursuing these kind of relationships are actually seeking less personal emotional investment, and I think that grossly misunderstands the situation and is a bit selfish, at best.
I think these situations can be healthy, but I also think healthy ones are more rare, just like healthy traditional relationships are often rare.
Finally, I am not shocked at people opening up to the idea of throuples when two parents can barely afford to raise a child. Three incomes starts to take the weight of the financial cost off just a little. Not a lot, but a little.
As someone who used to be poly, I agree 100%. Poly people can be emotional wrecking balls if they don't put in the work to build and maintain healthy relationships. Poly drama story time!
The worst of my poly primaries believed she had infinite love to give, so she saw no reason to limit herself to one partner. While her love might have been truly infinite, her time, emotional capacity, and sense of commitment were not. She frequently overextended herself with multiple new interests and had her desire for attention and validation fulfilled far beyond reason without the capacity or apparent intent to fully reciprocate.
Her interests were typically less socially adept men who didn't have much luck in dating, so they threw themselves at a charming, intelligent woman showing intense emotional and sexual interest, unaware or uncaring that she hid her flaws with equal intensity. (She had this thing about fucking virgins: hey, I don't kink shame!) I saw her break a few hearts when they realized they weren't going to "win" her for themselves, but only toward the end discovered that this wasn't due to self-delusion as she claimed, but instead her failure to clearly communicate firm expectations and boundaries. Sometimes that they weren't communicated at all. I also learned after the split that there were far more men than I knew about. Uggggh.
Eventually she began breaking the rules we established for our relationship and chose to leave me when I insisted we close the relationship to work on ourselves, as we promised to do when we first became committed. She opted instead to begin fucking two mutual friends, one of which immediately ghosted me while the other, a newly former virgin, soon called off our friendship so he could, in his own words, "have a clear conscience while pursuing a lasting relationship with her". I'm sure I don't have to explain how successful he was.
Chiming in as another poly person, having been poly and monogamous in different parts of my life (currently poly). A lot of people that want to be in a poly situation do not fully comprehend the responsibility involved. It can be easy and casual, but I've seen multiple polycules fall apart (dramatically) due to insufficient communication and poor management of expectations. It's totally possible to be poly, and in a serious, committed relationship. I was. It's also very very difficult. It takes a lot of work, communication, and trust.
Like you said, I've been in relationships with people that truly believe they have infinite love to give, which even if that were true, no one has infinite time and emotional bandwidth. I've had a longstanding rule that I've set for myself, that any committed relationship I am in must have a rock solid foundation of communication and trust before polyamory is possible, and I always close off my poly relationships until I am at that point in a relationship (obviously assuming my partner is okay with that). People need to communicate their desires going in, and should regularly check in and discuss boundaries, expectations, and hopes for the future in any relationship, and much more so in poly ones.
Fucking talk to each other, people. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and extend the same level of honesty and trust that you wish to receive. If I and my past partners always approached relationships with a communication-first perspective, we would've avoided a lot of pain and heartbreak.
Who the fuck gives a shit anyway.
I've dated two women. Two. And you know what I've learned?
Jack fucking shit. The first woman abused me for a decade, the second was only one date.
The idea of people dating is one thing. The idea of people hooking up is a different one. But The idea of people fucking outside of their committed relationship is so vastly foreign to my simple experience I'm beginning to wonder if the universe is conspiring to isolate me from humanity.
No conspiracy, let me shed some light. First, open and poly relationships don't work if anyone involved is especially possessive. I don't mean like a little jealous, or slightly insecure (that can be worked through) I mean one person expects a fair bit of say over one or multiple others lives.
Assuming you now only have a pool of a few reasonably well adjusted emotionally people (well adjusted socially is nice but not requisite) you can now just have N people agree they like each other and want to be together, but like occasionally hook up outside the group either under some arbitrary rule such as being in different zip codes from everyone else or just in general so long as proper precautions are taken. You have a core group of N people who are emotionally and financially intertwined and N+X people who happen to have all hooked up.
It's a fine system, have almost never been monogamous, and it's just like the times I was monogamous except no one is going to be upset about random hookups unless there was a generally accepted rule broken. I also personally find a core group of N=3 to be the roughly ideal number, but everyone's mileage will vary.
Though I suspect that societal normalization will be informed by the economic situation. The reality is if you can't afford to live without 3 incomes everyone will eventually organize around 3 person core households and society will defend the new tradition or whatever.
Of course somewhere in there a lot of people have to give up on religious and social hangups but that's already in progress if the number of articles like this coming out is steadily increasing (it is)
And then there's my autistic ass that just sees a fuckton of socialization rules there and I'm already panicking
You really don't need a lot of rules, I know a lot of people swear by stuff like relationship contracts and the like. But realistically that's never been something I've pursued and that does seem incredibly overwhelming. Current relationship the rules are as follows: don't bring STDs home, don't bring people over during normal sleeping hours without approval, preferably a couple days of notice; and don't become emotionally unavailable otherwise it's not really a relationship. That's it.
Bro I'm with you I'm not even autistic and this shit just seems emotionally exhausting.
Right there with you buddy. I struggle bad enough trying to figure out wtf I'm supposed to be doing in monogamous relationships. This polygamy shit is crazy to me.
I would love to have multiple partners so that more incomes are coming into the household
How do people have the free time to have multiple relationships? It sounds exhausting.
Somehow, the traditional model makes the rich richer, and that's why they push it so hard. That's all I know.
Why do people want so badly to have their government legally recognize their relationship? The legal contract does nothing but make it harder to separate when the relationship runs its course, whenever that may be. Have the ceremony, go on the honeymoon, get "married" but don't include a legal contract in it. You don't need it.
Primarily administrative privileges, at least from a practical standpoint.
It can be done without declaring it a marriage legally, with wills, medical proxies, etc. if you prefer granular control.
I just want my partner to not go through the nightmare of probate court and legal headaches should something happen to me, or be able to see me in the hospital without pushback. If one piece of paper covers 90% of that then I’m reasonably willing to sign it. On the flip side of that, I hate weddings and would prefer to spend that money on a more material investment lol
Everyone is different though, and there should be alternative options that aren’t such a huge hassle, so I do agree with you.
I went through the process of doing the wills and trusts stuff with my GF and it was about $500.
A marriage license is like $60.
Being hopeless romantics we did both.
There are absolutely legal and tax benefits for a legally recognized marriage.
You don’t need it.
Actually, you kind of do for all kinds of things.
Stability of partners and income makes it more predictable to pay for rent and taxes. That's pretty much it.
Over the years, monogamy meant predictability and trustworthiness. Generally speaking that's true. When there's fewer emotions in the pile, there's more predictable results. More emotions and people? More unpredictability. Landlords and banks don't like that when it comes to loans or rental situations.
Oh young people.
The silents and boomers tried this crap too.
Raised a generation of angry Gen-X kids through weekend visitation rights.
I had very few friends whose parents hadn’t been divorced from some form of this (cheating or swapping).
Some couples survived but the marriages were strained.
I'd rather be alone thanks
i dunno how i feel about this. on one hand, i wouldn't mind having a fuck buddy, but on the other hand i just feel like committal relationships are better because im a emotional person. i dunno but i don't have to worry becuase i know ill prolly be single and involuntary celibate for the rest of my life!
Big sigh. Every time this topic comes up, the same kind of questions come up. Usually there's a lot of ignorance and some malice, and it's kind of tiring. But, most people are probably talking in good faith , even if they're firing from the hip.
First off, not all non monogamous relationship types are the same. Swinging tends to just be about the meat. Open relationships often are hierarchical and have some people as secondary "fun but not serious", and often have one "primary" relationship. Polyamory and relationship anarchy tend to be less about hierarchy. But also sometimes people will use the same word and mean different things.
Common questions and responses
"This sounds exhausting"
Cool. So does rock climbing and marathon running. Don't do it if you're not interested.
"I don't have time for that"
Cool. I also don't have time for some things , so I don't do them. I don't think it would be appropriate for me to post on a topic about baseball that watching all those games takes up too much of my day.
"It's just cheating"
No. Cheating is when you break the agreed upon rules. If your rules say "you can fuck other people" and then you fuck other people, you have not cheated.
"It's just dating. I dated a few people before I met my spouse."
Not really. It's common for people to go on multiple dates before they go exclusive. In those cases it's typical for the emotional connection to be more shallow. You're just getting to know someone.
With some forms of non monogamy, people can form meaningful emotional bonds with multiple people.
Note that a polycule doesn't have to be a closed shape. A can date B, B can date C, but A and C can have any or no relationship to each other.
"I want an emotional connection"
Many polyamorous people form emotional connections with their partners.
"This all sounds complicated"
Many things in life are. Pathfinder is a complicated tabletop game, but you don't have to play it. Don't engage with it if it doesn't sound worth the effort. You can play simpler games instead and be perfectly happy.
"I knew a couple that did this and they broke up".
Cool. I knew a monogamous couple and they broke up.
"But they broke up because of the open relationship!"
Did they? Or were they unhappy for other reasons? Also, I knew a couple that broke up because of WoW. Does that mean WoW will doom a relationship?
"I've never seen one work"
I have. Also many poly people don't talk about it with strangers. You might know people who are happily non monogamous and they just never told you.
"I can't even find one relationship"
Yeah it's hard out there. It's mostly a numbers game, and location is a big factor. Don't believe incel or manosphere mythology.
Counterintuitively, pursuing non monogamy for me meant fewer dates. It's a smaller pool of candidates.
"I'm too jealous for this"
Thank you for sharing your character flaw. The first step towards addressing a problem is usually recognizing it.
That said, most people experience jealousy sometimes. A mark of maturity and strength is recognizing it and handling it well. Talking about how you feel insecure when your partner doesn't text you for a few days is fine. Stalking them to see what they're up to is not.
"What about STDs??"
Use protection. Single people dating get by. If you feel the risk is unacceptable, don't engage in non monogamy
"What about families? Kids??"
Kids are pretty flexible. The poly familes I knew, the kids were doing great. Everyone in the polycule loved them. It was like having extra aunts and uncles, mostly.
"But what if there's a breakup??"
When my aunt divorced Uncle Steve I was sad because Steve was cool, but my parents explained to me that sometimes relationships end. It's not different.
"You're being really condescending right now"
Yeah. It's one of those eternal September / for me it was Tuesday topics for me.
"But you made me feel bad, so I'm not really reading your content"
Yeah, that happens. Read this comic about it: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
Ok, I think I got all the common ones.
YES THANK YOU
was waiting for someone to say this
I'm not going to judge people who try open relationships, but I've literally never seen them work. It's also nothing new. Swingers were a thing decades ago. I've seen marriages implode, people end up needing therapy, and the like. I have a friend who is poly and has multiple people in her relationship group. She tried to tell me "how great it is" and then the next day I hear about the latest group drama. I'm like "yeah fuck that noise".
It's kind of like communism. I love the idea of communism. Equality for everybody and everybody has an equal say in the means of production. However, it only takes one prick not pulling their weight on purpose to abuse the system and it all comes crumbling down, which is why so many communist countries have a dictator forcing everyone to "be equal".
The same is true of open relationships. It only takes one possessive or damaged person to blow up the whole group. The weakest link in most things is the fact that some people fucking suck.
It seems you're ~~correlating~~ conflating "polyamory" (non-monogamous relationships) with "polycules" (relationships with more than two people). Not all polyamory is a polycule and not all polycules are necessarily permanent; nor have their members exclusive with each other.
Sometimes polyamory looks like a marriage where both members have okayed having sex with other people. Sometimes it's groups of "swinger" marriages where they "swap" members. Sometimes it's just a person who regularly casually hooks up with others. I'd argue that what people consider monogamous relationships have a bit of wiggle room. Life is complicated; people are complicated.
I think you mean "conflating", not correlating. I'm not comparing two disparate data points.
Both of the things you described are the same sides of a coin, but with the commitment slider moved around a bit. Much of what I said applies to both.
Polycules, in your description, might be more "successful", but that's only because there isn't any real commitment. If the relationship falls apart, oh well move on. That's barely a tick on the slider from a fuck buddy and two ticks away from one night stands.
Again, everybody should be allowed to do whatever they want. Freedom in sexuality is important. I just don't think these relationships are successful in the majority of cases and I prefer a stable relationship with someone I know will be there throughout my whole life. I have no doubt that I'll die before I ever considered leaving my SO because I'm in it for the long haul.
I mean, I've seen a lot of monogamous relationships fail too.
Not denying that. Monogamy between incompatible partners who don't communicate happens all the time.
My cousin and his wife did this and then one day my cousin and their new girlfriend dumped his wife