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Comment by latchkey | Hacker News Reader

> I’m happy to see polyamory becoming more mainstream.

I've only ever met one single couple where true polyamory worked over the long term, and they just celebrated 20 years together. They are an odd awesome couple that are extremely well matched. [They don't have kids.]

I even worked for Kink[dot]com (NSFW) for 4 years and I've thrown hundreds of sex parties with hundreds of people going bonkers all night long (and often into the next day). I've tried it myself in a few relationships and I'm happy that people experiment with it.

But, I strongly doubt it'll ever be mainstream. I'm pretty convinced at this point that it'll always remain a fringe fantasy for the majority of the population. Especially outside of the bubble of certain very small parts of the world.

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Polyamory seems to be a tremendous amount of work that also requires a high degree of emotional maturity. You are balancing multiple intimate, emotional relationships with other people. I doubt that most people with the fantasy are interested in maintaining the reality for a very long time.

Oh, what's the joke - people think poly is just orgies orgies orgies, but in achtuality it's like nine hours of talking for every hour of sex...

...and then the punchline is that you should be doing that in a mono relationship, too.

People that have done it for significant amounts of time realize it's not even the talking that is hard - it's the scheduling.

So many conflicting calendars, and scheduling issues to deal with. Especially if some/all of you have children..

Something-something the actual poly flag is the google calendar logo in the poly flag rainbow

Critics frequently express the notion the polyamory is precisely the opposite of emotional maturity i.e. willing or being able to commit to a single other person (which inherently does mean a certain sort of sacrifice, not having a cake and eating it too style).

What do the critics have to say about why they think people should be motivated to commit to a single other person in the long term?

If you plan on having children, having parents in a stable monogamous relationship fosters a secure attachment in the child.

And yet there is much precedent for having a village raise children.

Many couples see the death of one partner, many couples lack a full and complete skill set to teach children all that they might want or need to to know, etc.

Leaving communities and extended families out of the picture is some post WWII idealised nuclear family fantasy.

It's not a fantasy in a good way: most parents (even in stable relationships) would prefer to have more support than they get. Communities are getting weaker as third spaces disappear, and people are far more likely to have to move far away from extended family (or have extended family move far away from them). The reality of the modern world is that the two parents and paid caretakers are often all that's available.

> And yet there is much precedent for having a village raise children.

But are all those other people on the same 'level' of attachment for the child, or is there a 'hierarchy'?

Further, not that having community is bad, but it can 'devolve' into tribal/clan thinking, which is probably not good for society as a whole (can lead to nepotism, which is generally highly correlated with corruption) and something the West is relatively unique in 'breaking out' of:

* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/joseph-...

* https://archive.ph/e7DJX

If having no parents is awful, single parentage is rough but barely navigable with money, and two parents seems to work pretty well… why would three parents not continue the pattern? Why shouldn’t a throuple be as much an improvement over a couple as a couple is over a single?

More people in a relationship introduces a larger surface area for interpersonal conflict. Communication is always hard even for two people, not to mention jealousy and the challenge of learning to live with another. It becomes exponentially harder when a third person is added.

That just adds to the chances of instability between parents. 2 parents is essentially a stable maximum

Have you not seen modern attention spans? More moving parts means more chances for things to fly apart.

I think so too. I'm "just" in a open relationship and just this already does need so much more trust to my partner, than in a normal relationship.

> Polyamory seems to be a tremendous amount of work that also requires a high degree of emotional maturity

So is real friendship (not like in "we just having fun together eventually").

I blame “The Ethical Slut” for a lot of the strange ideas people have around non-monogamy.

It gave people a whole bunch of rules and ideals for polyamory to replace their rules and ideals around monogamy. Rather than freedom, it’s just trading one dogma for another.

The Esther Perel approach of couples consciously co-creating their uniquely ideal relationship structure seems much healthier and applicable to broader society.

A self confessed sociopath involved in a an area kink/poly scene once described it to me as "mostly two women justifying their actions".

There are far better books out there now thankfully.

> I've only ever met one single couple where true polyamory worked over the long term, and they just celebrated 20 years together.

I recently found out that some elderly friends of mine have been in a polyamorous relationship for almost a decade (we should note that there is inherent bias in finding successful polyamorous relationship, since the social stigma means that people are likely to hide it).

This couple has been married for 50 years and raised two children. When the wife retired, she decided she was done having sex for the rest of her life. The husband still wanted to have sex, so they agreed that he would get a girlfriend (a widow of the same age bracket). By all accounts it appears to be working out for all involved.

I can't even wrap my head around the idea you decide you're done with sex for the end of your life.

I can, even as a man. As women get older, sex can become extremely painful for a variety of reasons. Who knows, maybe her partner was also very large sized. So yea, if it isn't bringing you enjoyment any more, why do it?

Out of curiosity, when you say "couple" do you mean a literal couple where both partners have other partners, or couple as in a throuple/fourple/etc?

I'm not poly so idk if people use couple beyond the literal sense of Exactly Two. (I also don't know if poly people actually say "throuple" or if that's just something the rest of us made up to amuse ourselves, lol.)

> do you mean a literal couple where both partners have other partners

this

Cool, thanks for clarifying!

I haven't met many monogamous couples under a certain age that have had things work out well either though.

My parents will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next year. I am pretty sure if they were younger there is no way they would not have got divorced. They are not unhappy but they are so different that there is no way one would not have thought they could do better if the early part of the marriage had been lived in modern times.

For me, being single is the ultimate form of being poly. I am committed to all the shorter relationships I have yet to experience in my life.

I have had several chances to be in true poly relationships but there has always been at least one, really annoying person with nothing else going on than being poly. Then every topic of conversation is about being poly and that is when I check out.

The idea of poly being mainstream is ridiculous because it is hard to find a single compatible person in time. True poly just multiplies the amount of incompatibility.

Something I think I've noticed is that our modern culture assumes exclusivity after the first date; contrast with (my very poorly understanding of), say, the Victorian era, where multiple suitors were common. People end up turning to poly because we don't do that early multiple-suitors period.

I have not encountered any expectations of exclusivity after a first date.

There is sometimes an assumption that you are not banging other people once you start sleeping w someone but even that is usually best left to confirmation.

> I have not encountered any expectations of exclusivity after a first date.

I have!

Agreed; Nassim Taleb's "Lindy" seems instructive here.

> I even worked for Kink[dot]com (NSFW) for 4 years

Interesting! Doing what?

Built their whole IT infrastructure from the ground up.

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