1. Why do you believe what you believe? What would change your mind?
My beliefs are based on the simple and fundamental right of self-determination– people should be in the kind of relationship that they want to be in. Don’t want to be poly? Then don’t join a poly relationship. If people are happy limiting themselves to a single partner at a time, then they should do that. If people want multiples, then they should do that. As long as all parties are consenting, what is the problem? Poly people aren’t trying to stop mono relationships from happening, any more than gay people are trying to prevent straight people from marrying. The existence of poly relationships doesn’t hurt any other kind of relationships. However the permissibility of poly relationships means that people have the option if they want it. Nobody has to feel trapped or tied down to a mono relationship.
If there was some kind of AI that could measure everybody’s compatibility and assign each person their own soulmate, then there wouldn’t be a need for polyamory. It would be outmoded. But barring any major advances in romance technology, meeting the right person may lead me to choose monoamory for myself, but it will never lead me to ban polyamory for everyone else.
2. A monogamous person has a crush on someone other than their partner. In a healthy relationship, what would happen next?
In a truly healthy relationship, nothing. But then again, if it was truly healthy, their partner would be enough for them right? So there’s a good chance that their feelings will grow and they will become increasingly dissatisfied with their current relationship–eventually leading to a breakup or an affair. That’s not the legal only outcome but it happens even to healthy relationships.
3. What would happen if 90% of people in a society were polyamorous? (You may assume they all practice one style of polyamory, or different styles.)
The whole idea of being “trapped” in a bad relationship would go away. Instead of the default assumption that anyone in a long term relationship is unhappy and everyone telling the same old “ball and chain” jokes, the default assumption would be that everyone is with whomever they want to be with. If a person is in a relationship with any other, it’s because they want to be. No one would feel like they have to maintain a bad relationship for its own sake. Societywise, the rates of abuse and other domestic problems would go way down…because people would have alternative options where otherwise they would just be victims.
>A monogamous person has a crush on someone other than their partner. In a healthy relationship, what would happen next?
>In a truly healthy relationship, nothing. But then again, if it was truly healthy, their partner would be enough for them right?
This strikes me as very naive… everyone gets crushes, regardless of whether your partner is “enough”. From my conversations with people in such relationships, a healthy mono relationship doesn’t cause you to stop getting crushes, it causes you to think there’s something better and more important than pursuing those crushes. (The healthy response, these people say, is the perennial advice: tell your partner, and ask what they’re comfortable with.)
Whatever their viewpoint, I think this person may not have much experience with relationships at all. Whether they are pro-poly or anti-poly, I think the writer has a lot to learn before they are really qualified to discuss the issue. Sorry if that seems too judgmental.
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Please don’t read this comment until you’ve read it yourself and voted, lest it skew the results, and please don’t change your response after reading it either.
I think this author is pretty transparently anti-poly.
1. “If there was some kind of AI that could measure everybody’s compatibility and assign each person their own soulmate, then there wouldn’t be a need for polyamory.”
This reveals an implicit supposition that such a “soulmate” exists, and that soulmate comparisons are pairwise mutual. Your soulmate’s soulmate isn’t necessarily you! Given that possibility, enforced one-to-one relationships are almost always going to be suboptimal for one person in any assigned pair. (And if the world has an odd number of people in it, we can all surely feel sorry for the one person left without a partner.)
2. This response has no indication whatsoever that the partners could just… communicate with each other about their feelings. You know, communication, that cornerstone of any healthy relationship.
3. “The whole idea of being “trapped” in a bad relationship would go away.”
This ignores the possibility of feeling guilty about breaking up with someone. If their life would be worse without you in it, even if yours would be better, and if you genuinely care for them, then there’s some degree of guilt that will always be associated with a breakup. In this way, poly people can absolutely still retain a feeling of being “trapped” in a relationship.
“Societywise, the rates of abuse and other domestic problems would go way down…because people would have alternative options where otherwise they would just be victims.”
This also ignores the possibility of multiple (or even all) people in a poly relationship being abusive or exploitative in some way, and assumes that people in that situation are capable of seeking help autonomously. Being polyamorous doesn’t really solve either of these problems, something most pro-poly people would recognise. As such, I feel strongly confident this is an anti-poly author, maybe 95%.
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Yeah, agreed – there’s no sense in which poly is valued in itself here.
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To me this read as written by someone who wasn’t aware that there was a serious anti-poly argument that had to be responded to, and therefore could only be pro-poly.
Or to complify it for the hardcore rationalists on the thread, the pro-poly character the writer is playing as fails the ITT implied by writing as part of a public conversation. This means that either the writer is writing as themselves and fails the ITT, or the writer is anti-poly and their model of a pro-poly person fails the ITT (unlikely because people find their own views comprehensible.
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