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Comment by Hossenffefer | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting how much these discussions are focused on the earlier, procreative stages of marriage. ‘Free love’ / freely connecting with people has a certain attraction but what about the commitments later in life? (see: declining health, aging parents…) Such responsibilities feel overwhelming with two sets of parents, it would be hard to imagine more. The flip side of commitment would have less takers i’d imagine

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When I was in a poly relationship, we were all very low income, so we'd help each other out with rent and emergencies. I helped someone's brother navigate the process of getting a GED and figuring out community college, the group as a whole helped another member kick his alcoholism, and we were there for each other during challenging times. I was only dating one other person in the core group, not everyone else, but it was like having a large extended family that truly had your back, and still is -- even though I'm in a monogamous relationship now, I'm still close to my ex and everyone else in that group. They're my chosen family

I think when practiced mindfully, this kind of relationship structure is really powerful. You don't have to go through things alone or with only one other person who'll always truly have your back.

I don't want to idealize it: polyamory is hard work, without which it becomes a toxic dumpsterfire shitshow. Being able to have a tight knit community like this and maintain it for years is tough, and requires lots of patience, honesty, vulnerability and mindfulness. But it's gone a long way towards showing me how flimsy the traditional family structure in the West can be -- particularly for those of us who have complicated relationships with the families we were born into.

Could you expand a bit on the link between free love, and later-in-life commitments? It seems a little like you're saying that people have a responsibility to make the next generation of caretakers?

To me as a late-30s person with no intention to reproduce, that seems a little like: damned if you do, damned if you don't. And, it leaves me wondering if I've missed out by not pursuing this free love thing.

They're not implying such a responsibility to reproduce, seems to me.

What I'm hearing from the parent comment is that they're weighing positives and negatives of focusing on commitment vs focusing on freedom, respectively, in different situations.

Hmm, I'm still not seeing the connection. How does a steady monogamous relationship, especially in that "procreative stage", make it easier (or harder?) to grow old, or deal with aging parents?

The web of responsibilities multiply. To your point, children are a choice and thus effect the shape of said web. As the reading mentions that some advocated for more romantic fluidity, moving with the heart. I saw this as a more youthful pursuit. As with aging, other issues, that have more to do with compassion and duty, come to the fore. I would say the hope of a steady relationship would be a partner to help navigate said challenges.

Thanks for the response - I like the sentence about the web of responsibilities multiplying, and I think that's kinda what I'm getting at.

Maybe I'm weird, or doing it wrong, but in my life so far, I just don't see a real tie between romantic relationships and those familial/aging/life responsibilities. My partner and I each have our webs of responsibilities; the edge between us goes both ways, and I can't see how it being labelled "romantic partner" has any bearing on the rest of the web. Sometimes that edge makes dealing with a particular family situation easier, sometimes it doesn't. I don't think it's even possible to say whether there's any net effect, since of course there's more to it than this, and the experiment only gets run once.

There are two straightforward contributors to younger people being more interested in that sort of romantic fluidity: hormones and energy.

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