Comment by morbia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by morbia | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I'm gay and polyamorous so I have quite a biased view on these things.

I actually think that really deep down monogamy doesn't work for a fair chunk of the population. The model of having your one life partner to satisfy all of your sexual needs for eternity has a number of problems:

* We are not always in the mood for sex. Your sex drive can be low for days, weeks or even months and it be perfectly normal. Having the pressure to perform when you're not really in the mood is a horrible feeling. This has a side effects of resentment between the couple.

* Repeating the same sexual experience with the same individual with no changes (e.g. exploring kinks, new positions etc) gets monotonous. No matter how attracted you are to that person, monotonous experiences really impact sexual arousal.

I don't think these problems are new society, but I think there were non-ethical outlets in the past. To the first point for example, in a time gone past the good housewife barely had a say in consent. Prostitution, cheating etc were outlets for the second point.

People feel a lot of shame when talking about ethical non-monogamy, particularly slut shaming women. In reality it's the ultimate level of trust in a relationship. I don't want the pressure of having to satisfy all of my partner's sexual needs for eternity, I trust them to explore other individuals if I'm not in the mood.

To be clear, non-monogamy is also not a silver bullet to a failing marriage, nor is it for everyone. However I really think as a society we should be less judgemental and critical of people who have unconventional relationships and keep an open mind for your own.

edit: typos

To be clear, non-monogamy is also not a silver bullet to a failing marriage

There's even a name for that: RBAMP (Relationship Broken, Add More People).

The silver bullet, as it were, is open communication about your needs, wants, and fears. Sometimes, that leads to ethical non-monogamy -- when that is actually what you want, and when you can manage the genuine fears that come with that.

Sometimes, it reveals other issues that require other solutions. It depends on the partners, and how well they understand themselves and each other. The things you think you want are not always what you want.

It would definitely help to stop having society declare non-monogamy the ultimate sin, even if that's what the partners want. Relationships are hard enough without having to satisfy people who aren't even part of it.

> The silver bullet, as it were, is open communication about your needs, wants, and fears. Sometimes, that leads to ethical non-monogamy -- when that is actually what you want, and when you can manage the genuine fears that come with that.

I think you hit the nail on the head there.

The thing is you really need to dig down into what those fears are and determine if they're legitmate or not. My partner and I talked about opening our relationship for at least 6 months before we acted on it. We talked about it in great detail and found that a lot of our fears really are unjustified. Things we discussed were topics like:

"you might fall in love with someone else" - that is always a risk with relationships regardless of being open or not, and part of being in a relationship is the trust that they wouldn't run away with someone else. We took the pragmatic view that if it did happen, we were never meant to be together anyway and an open relationship allows us to get to that outcome quicker.

"I'm not good enough to satisfy your needs" - this is where I think societal pressure comes into play. People compare themselves to others a lot, and they see happy monogamous couples and think that their relationship is dirty or failing compared to the ultimate gold standard. You come to realise that monogamy is seen as the gold standard purely because that is what western society says it is. Instead, you should be truthful to yourself and your partners wants or desires.

There are serious and legitimate fears that need to be talked through, for example how much time you devote to others, or more practical concerns like STIs. This is where the communication part comes in and you ultimately need to decide if it's right for yourselves.

> It would definitely help to stop having society declare non-monogamy the ultimate sin, even if that's what the partners want. Relationships are hard enough without having to satisfy people who aren't even part of it.

Couldn't agree more.

I once told a very close friend of mine that we were considering opening our relationship and the hostility I received was crazy. His conclusion was that 'you just agree to cheat on each other'. To me, this misses the entire point of why cheating is bad. Cheating isn't bad because of the act of having sex, it is bad because you chose to lie to your partner.

After that incident we decided we'd never to tell heterosexual monogamous people again about our relationship, most just don't get it and it's not worth the risk.

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