Polyamory Is a Luxury of the Affluent, Just Like Everything Else We Have and Do | Hacker News Reader

Polyamory Is a Luxury of the Affluent, Just Like Everything Else We Have and Do

freddiedeboer.substack.com

11 pointspaulpauper14 comments

This isn’t new, the common folk have been doing it for ages. Some religions like Islam and Mormonism have it built into them. In the U.S., we had the free love era of the 60s and 70s. Also, the common folk are plenty into what they’ve colloquially called “swinging”, and at any age. For example, senior swingers are quite prevalent even today. I think this author is missing a lot of historical context about polyamorous or multi-partner relationships throughout history. So I reject the premise that “affluence” has anything to do with an inclination or acceptance of polyamory.

Maybe what the author is confusing is the flexibility of partners to indulge infidelity in more highly prized, choosier mates (from the partner’s perspective, there’s no objective standard to this). I think this flexibility results from two social conditions:

1) the prized mates are highly desirable in their social circle, so there are some aspects of FOMO to this.

2) the need to please the highly prized mate(s) is born out of some learned insecurity about their status in the circle. If you think you’re lesser than someone, you are likely to acquiesce to their whims to keep their interest. So again, I reject the premise that thinking “monogamy is boring” has anything to do with this.

Over the course of history we’ve experienced the stability that monogamous relationships provide at any socioeconomic level—managing the emotions of multiple partners can get tricky. But again, if the power and status dynamic favors one partner over the other, then the one with the lesser power, status etc. is ripe for getting abused. Or at the very least they go along with it because they don’t have the power to say no or refuse. I am not sure polyamory is the “luxury” this author is making it out to be.

Maybe I'm missing context that is hidden in the rest of the article behind the paywall, but this seems like a weird angle to me considering (especially working-class) queer people are massively disproportionately polyamorous compared to everyone else...?

Do you have a source for that?

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/polyam...

"In her paper, published in the Journal of Sex Research this past June, Balzarini compared the demographic backgrounds of 2,428 polyamorous individuals and 539 monogamous ones by asking participants to take an online survey. Her team found that polyamorous people tend to identify more as bisexual/pansexual, are more likely to report being divorced, and make less money yearly than monogamous couples."

"When it came to monogamous relationships, 74 percent of straight respondents reported being monogamous compared to only 17 percent of bi/pan respondents. (The remaining percentage identified as gay/lesbian or other.)"

Also, this is entirely anecdotal, but in the various circles I'm a part of, every single polyamorous person I know is queer to some degree. Granted, a lot of that is because the people in my circles are disproportionately queer, but not nearly so much that it would be the sole reason for that.

Except what's the Venn diagram of affluent people and those who participate in such online surveys look like?

If it's two entirely discrete circles then this paper is irrelevant to TFA.

Here’s some stats relevant to the article: https://www.reddit.com/r/polyamory/s/LAArXpkU0A (not related to queer people in particular, just polyamory in general.)

Although the statistical methods are dubious, it does show that polyamory is on an upswing. Thankfully. Choosing a single partner for life is one of the most ingrained pieces of rhetoric in the modern era, and most people don’t even know you can choose anything else.

Still a bit sad that this topic is too divisive for HN. Last time I tried bringing it up, a half dozen people chimed in saying it can’t work, that it’s a bad idea, and so on. But maybe in a few more years it’ll get a nice discussion.

It obviously can work, forms of non-monogamy have been long term stable in many societies, there are negative consequences though.

Notably, it invariably results in more single men, more crime/societal instability, generally makes gender inequality more extreme, and results in less people doing parental duties.

From a "natural selection" point of view though it's probably a superior modality to monogamy, and monogamy is only really enforced through oppression in practice.

For what it's worth, polyamory might correlate to higher status within a society, across societies higher levels of polyamory correlate to lower status of that society.

I think a lot of these statements come from reasoning from first principles. It’s not so clear cut.

For example, I’m a parent who does a lot of parental duties.

It doesn’t result in more crime or societal instability for people to have multiple partners.

>It doesn’t result in more crime or societal instability for people to have multiple partners.

Sure it does. It tends to result in more single men and it's the single men who end up causing all the disorder.

There’s currently a single men epidemic, yet polyamory is a rounding error in terms of popularity. I’d be interested in evidence to the contrary, but it seems doubtful that multiple partners would cause the problems you mention.

That doesn’t address the cause: is the disorder actually caused by being single or do the same traits which are unappealing to potential partners also responsible?

It’s a concept that is challenging. I think adults should do whatever they want without hurting people, but in my experience human relationships get exponentially more complex with volume. It’s a hard lifestyle to sustain.

I’m acquainted with a few people in this world, but am not in it. From what they relate, there’s wide variety of participants with very different approaches and experiences. Everything from pure hedonists to people who can’t or won’t get divorced to various kinksters and fetishists.

I’d imagine with all of the recent media coverage, there’s a mini “eternal September” of dudes dragging their girlfriends into this.

There were a couple of related ACX posts recently for whoever is interested:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/you-dont-hate-polyamory-you...

Every polyamory person that I know is poor.

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