What exactly is “messed up” about open relationships and making out with strangers?
In most cases this is pretty much cuckoldry under a neutral or "hip" label, as women can get laid without effort and men have to work pretty hard for sex, so the woman has her fun with the myriad of choice she has on dating apps (she doesn't even have to pay for dinner), while the guy is barely getting any.
If you're looking for such a relationship, I'm sure you'll find a mate on those terms. But don't claim that this is the only way. And please accept that other people may prefer other setups.
I'm not talking just about relationships, I'm talking about the asymmetric access men and women have to sex. This is an undeniable fact of life. If a man wants to get laid tonight, he will have to work hard, and his chances are not that high. That's why ~80% of the prostitutes are women... most women just don't need to pay for sex.
Your point of view is so informed by your situation and has so little empathy that you don't even acknowledge the large portion of women that are not deemed to be fuckable by men and are derided for that, whether because of age, or body type or sometimes because they talk too loud
So you may just not know what your friends are up to, because why would they tell you of all people? If you allowed a bit of nuance, you could learn surprising things about humans.
I wonder who would enter a relationship build on these foundations?
Can you explain why you think "loosing your partner" is bound to happen when they have sex with other people?
What about them falling in love with a co-worker (no sex required), dying from a car accident one day etc.?
How do you assume these things are less likely than when sex enters the picture?
Your emphasis on sex and what meaning it carries in relationships (particularly successful ones) seems to be be completely disproportionate to reality.
People in open relationships tend to give more assurance to each other.
Jealousy always exists. I can be jealous because my partner goes to her "girls night" and I don't get to spend time with her.
Why would I be more or less jealous than if she had a date that night that involved sex?
Once you think about this for a bit you realize that the choice/reasons for jealousy are mostly arbitrary/cultural and can be overcome. Like any bad habit.
As for access to sex: there are options for men to balance the sheet. Just take up some sort of social dancing; tango, swing, salsa etc. Or sport. Climbing gyms are playgrounds for singles.
And these options also open the door for "having sex with a stranger/recent aquaintance tonight".
If that is so important to you.
Monogamy exists because of a strong bond between two people. Sex is part of that bond. If you "love" another person, then obviously you would fear of losing them, and so would they. A bit of jealousy is healthy in a relationship, and there should be certain boundaries set (so called "red lines").
> Can you explain why you think "loosing your partner" is bound to happen when they have sex with other people?
The fact that I have to explain this is already outrageous.
> Jealousy always exists. I can be jealous because my partner goes to her "girls night" and I don't get to spend time with her.
There's jealousy and there's her actually fcking a stranger. My gf should know that going for a "girl's night out" to some night club is not OK, just as it would not be OK for me to do the same thing. I have personally hooked up girls who were on trips abroad while they had a bf waiting at home... if your gf insists on going on such a trip, she's for the streets.
> Once you think about this for a bit you realize that the choice/reasons for jealousy are mostly arbitrary/cultural and can be overcome. Like any bad habit.
You can't just erase culture like that. Culture is not born out of thin air, it is partly based on our psychology. Biology -> Psychology -> Sociology. If you don't mind other men fcking your gf, then you are clearly in the minority of men, and that's OK, there's a minority for everything. But don't go around claiming that mate guarding is just purely cultural (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_guarding_in_humans).
> As for access to sex: there are options for men to balance the sheet. Just take up some sort of social dancing; tango, swing, salsa etc. Or sport. Climbing gyms are playgrounds for singles.
It's not even close. Believe you me. Maybe it is where you live, but where I live the competition is so fierce that these places are just sausage fests.
Maybe you are mistaking your love for someone with your fear of being alone ?
Open relationships, and poly relationships even more, are difficult for many reasons I can't bother to detail here. There is of course a certain inequality in the access to sex that you are pointing out even though you are leaving out many other very important parameters in your example. But there is also a great inequality on how people are able to decouple intimacy/sex with a strong bond with someone, which can make someone suffer even if he or she did not think it would, leaving behind a mess of hurt feelings. But believe it or not, different people experience feelings for people differently and just calling them cold robots is just an easy way for you negate their existence, as some believed lesbians could not exist, they had to be frustrated heterosexual that had not met the right man.
Anyways your vision of the whole thing seems to be pretty much informed by your resentment (They are not even paying for dinner!) and it is not that hard to find someone to have sex with you as a man. Having some emotional intelligence, basic social skills, not having a definite vision of what gender roles are, and in general not being an asshole will help a lot, adding to that women are for cultural reasons less sensitive than men to attractiveness. What's funny with incels is that they complain they can't get laid but what they mean in general is that can't have sex with the most attractive women and make fun of less attractive women, in doing so revealing that what they are after is the social status of being validated by them and not to get to share a moment of pleasure and intimacy with someone else.
No. Loving your sister and loving your wife are two different forms of love. You are equating them both.
> Open relationships, and poly relationships even more, are difficult for many reasons I can't bother to detail here.
I don't think they are possible without exploitation, period. There are plenty of horror stories online about these types of relationships, and rarely an honest appraisal.
> Anyways your vision of the whole thing seems to be pretty much informed by your resentment (They are not even paying for dinner!) and it is not that hard to find someone to have sex with you as a man.
It's informed by the fact that one side of the relationship usually has access to relationships without putting it any work (the woman), while the other part needs to put a lot of work. This obvious asymmetry makes this arrangement quite unfair to the man.
> Having some emotional intelligence, basic social skills, not having a definite vision of what gender roles are, and in general not being an asshole will help a lot, adding to that women are for cultural reasons less sensitive than men to attractiveness.
None of that helps much in a sexual market with strong competition (like where I live). Tinder barely works for most men here. You, like all leftists tend to make everything a cultural choice, so that you can go ahead and simply rewrite the rules as you see fit... I don't buy it, especially not for gender roles which have strong biological components.
> What's funny with incels is that they complain they can't get laid but what they mean in general is that can't have sex with the most attractive women and make fun of less attractive women
I don't care about incels - heck, I don't even know what they are. Men and women have different parameters for sexual attraction. Men are attracted primarily to youth and beauty and women are attracted to dominance and social status (this is not because of cultural reasons, as you claim). I wouldn't want to settle for an unattractive woman just like a woman wouldn't want to settle for a submissive man.
By the way, if you manage to find it, consider reading https://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Rule-Theory-Dominance/dp/0812.... Read the first review.
Poly relationships also open up effectively a new kind of family dynamic, in which metamours have a deep relationship that may not be sexual but allow a lot of trust and reliance.
Finally, even if it really were about who gets more sex, men become much more attractive relative to women in middle age. The silver fox effect is real... sex is also a lot easier for men with lots of social status, which can also come with age.
2. Not everybody thinks that's a good idea. Making out with strangers in a club is definitely trashy. It's the kind of thing that deceives everybody's expectations, also those of the bystanders, and can lead to a problematic outcome. You might want to say that that shouldn't happen in your particular ideal of society, but it does.
This post is part of a wider trend toward sex negativity. It's not predicated on any major social change - in fact young people are having sex later on average, having fewer sexual partners, and people of all ages are reporting less casual sex (at least in the US). But rather on reactionary moralising.
Murder, another completely culturally determined taboo. The (presumed, I might add) fact that something is cultural doesn't change its value. And using bourgeois as dismissive is so 1970s.
It is basically the middle classes that definitively require stable families. So unless OP is manor born -- the working classes do not have leisure time to spend time on HN -- OP is likely a product of a petite-bourgois family who has not really understood the vital necessity of sexual mores for their class.
> let's not ignore how your dismissal here
My point in the thread was against using "culturally determined" as a way to dismiss an argument. I'll repeat my stance: the fact that something is culturally determined or socially shaped does not alter its meaning or value.
Plus traditionally when you have a partner it’s like a form of property. An open relationship is like sharing your house or car with everyone but probably even worse.
The first objection you listed contains all the reasons to use protection. In general.
I live in Berlin. A city where open/poly relationships are perfectly normal and common.
The bday party I went to last Saturday spanned an age group of 20-50. Mostly hetero people. Of the ten people (give or take one, I just counted in my head) I spoke to, four were in open relationships
This came up because my partner was there too and we introduced our significant other to other people as "this is my primary partner, ...".
You use protection, you regularly get tested for STDs (free in Germany with public health insurance). I never caught anything in 20 years of this lifestyle nor do I know of any cases in my circle of poly/open relationship friends.
The second objection sums up pretty nicely why you should run for your life from what you call "traditional" relationship models/their assumed requirements.
My partner, who's an anthropologist, mentioned that genetic evidence for monogamy only exists for the last 10k years. And it's spotty.
People who believe this is normal or "traditional" (a term that requires context to carry any meaning) just need to brush up on the facts on this topic.
Also one may argue that what we call "monogamy" is (and always was) a lie.
Just look at statistics of cheating and divorce rates when economic/social pressure is removed.
Monogamy is as "natural" as being Christian or Muslim is "natural" when you are born in a country where this is the resp. prevalent religion.
If not, how many years were you single in Berlin?
Why was there no perspective? What exactly did you try?
In order to kill a jew you need a jew. So in order for a berliner to be killing one, the rest of the berliners had to have been nice enough that a jew was present. Unlike say Belgium [1]. Not to say killing a jew is a good thing (it's not) but areas like Poland ended up with a relatively higher concentration because they were more tolerant than western societies.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Belgium...
I assume you are joking because comparing Berlin 2022 with Berlin during the third reich can only either be a joke or an absence of basic understanding of European history between now and then so flabbergasting that it borders on imbecility.
I’m also of Jewish heritage and multiple members of my extended family were wiped out.
Like I said, Germans and Berliners particularly seem very tolerant of all sorts of extremist ideas. I count “open relationships” as one of them.
It’s like who cares about why things are traditionally the way they are, let’s throw out the old ideas and try new crazy ones. Whether it’s reinventing relationships or sexuality or murdering millions of people. Anything goes.
Not the other way around.