Is being polyamorous a real thing?

This is absolute bollocks. I don’t know why this gets spouted so much. Romeo and Juliette is about romantic love. And that was written in the 1600s. There are references in the Hebrew Bible using romantic love as a metaphor for the relationship between God and his people.

Throughout literature and time and cultures you will find references to romantic love.

Do you really think we have ‘invented’ an emotion that we now all feel? How did that happen? Did evil scientists make it in a lab 100 years ago and release it in a smoke over the world?

How can you know they aren't hurting anyone? Who knows what impact it has long term on one of the partners, or any children involved? How can anyone be sure that one partner isn't coerced, or goes along with it because the alternative of being alone seems unbearable to them? I guess you could say the same about manogamy. I'll admit it proper rattles my cage though, i dont know why, i'm usually pretty live and let live.

There’s at least a post a month on here bashing polyamory on here. It’s so tiresome.

I’m not that way inclined either, but it’s got sweet eff all to do with you or anyone else. You don’t have to understand it. You don’t have to ‘get it’.

Romantic love and "the one" has been round in various verisons since courtly love in the middle ages. It's hardly a new invention, but clearly reality shows it doesn't work for many.
@PermanentTemporary sadly I know these women. They all wanted a dream poly group child rearing life. They got disney dads and no real support. It was so shit and we don't see the men involved anymore.

I think if you are secure in your relationship its fine to have another person who you fancy and can have fun with.

The problem is when you are the "+1" then the other person must have really attractive about them, for you to forgo any type of relationship (and in my experience they are usually both incredibly average and a bit self obsessed)

Do you know that the current version of “love” is a societal construct that’s only really been around for the last 100 years or so, before that no one really expected love, you got married for family reasons. Lust is definitely a thing or the species would have died it but as PP said that’s about getting an infant through the first couple of years.

Some species do mate for life. Wonder if there is an evolutionary reason for that.

Read about a polyamorous relationship once,two men, two women, two children, none knows who the children’s bio fathers are.

There’s an alien species on Star Trek where the men have three wives and the women have three husbands. Imagine having three sets of in laws!

This is a bit harsh. There is no need to do something down because you don’t understand it. I don’t either, but they aren’t hurting anyone so what’s the issue.

Do you know that the current version of “love” is a societal construct that’s only really been around for the last 100 years or so, before that no one really expected love, you got married for family reasons. Lust is definitely a thing or the species would have died it but as PP said that’s about getting an infant through the first couple of years.

Live and let live I say.

It is definitely a real thing, but hard to manage right. I guess some people can really love one another person but also find their core relationship is helped by sexual variety, or a variety of relationships around it.

What if your plus 1 also has a plus 1 in addition to you ? Are you your plus ones main partner ( presumably not as you are married to someone else ) or are they married to someone else too and you are their extra person Presumably if your plus 1 is allowed to be with you then their partner is allowed a plus one also since you will be off with someone else at times. Just imagine all those germs. Hope everyone's using condoms.

I've moved from the Uk to the south of Italy. One of the biggest cultural differences is that men here are always trying to be unfaithful. It's literally a thing they are on the look out for non stop. They talk man to man with the full expectation that you will be of the same mind set, and they lie, and cover for one another like it's some kind of team sport. There is an undeniably strong drive there to have extra marital sex that i haven't experienced before, almost like their marriages are a prison sentance. I've also noticed they are much more patriarchal, possessive, jealous and controlling of their wifes. The phrase "i know what men are like..." gets spouted a lot. My point i guess is that for poly relationships to genuinely work, everyone involved would have to be very emotionally evolved, very secure in their own self worth, and well practiced at managing their emotions. Generally in people, that stuff is rare as rocking horse plop, and i suspect you can only discover your tolerance for such, by having a crack at it. I think i'd be lying if i said none of my self worth is rooted in my wife choosing me exclusively. I'm proud to be seen with her, proud of what we've built together and the depth of our relationship. It's the "forsaking all others" that gives it meaning to some extent. How do you even build marriage-like relationships with mulitple people? I'm judgementally in the "cake and eat it" camp, with a huge dollop of deluision to boot.

I know a couple who invited a third person into their marriage. I don’t think any of them have other partners.

well who knew people are different? I mean really, all you're saying is "I wouldn't / couldn't do this so can it REALLY be that others do?" You can say that about anything, rugby, spicy food, raves, mountain climbing. I suspect that actually if society could get more on board with this idea it might save a lot of marriages and family homes. I would love to have been able to keep my first husband when I met my second, but neither of them would have been up for it. Equally, I would not have minded "sharing" husband no2 when he met OW if it meant my kids could have kept their dad in their lives as more of a fixture but for him it was all or nothing. If I could find like minded men, I'd happily do what your friend does.

I know quite a few people who are into it to one extent or another. They seem no more or less happy than anyone else.

You can hardly call marriage uncomplicated.

A lot of people are saying polygamy is the norm and it’s just social conditioning which makes us think we are monogamous.

But if we were ‘naturally’ monogamous we would never have evolved to feel sexual jealousy. That emotion just would not exist. And it clearly does.

And children are not self sufficient at 3! Rearing children is resource intensive. For most of human history, getting enough to eat and sufficient shelter has been challenging. Marriage, gives women and their children some protection in that the man and his family remain responsible for helping them to survive.

Lots of posters are referring to how ‘we’ used to be polygamous. But in all the major societies, it’s men who are ‘allowed’ to be polygamous. Particularly affluent men ( you know,,the ones who made the rules, so made the rules suit them). Islam, for example, institutionalized this. Fornification is banned ( it’s a speedway to hell) but men can have up to four wives, if they can afford to support them, and all the slave girls they can buy. Women can only have their one husband.

@TheWisePlumDuck , I’m the same

@turkeyboots isn’t it possible that the mothers dropped the male partners to a lesser level? I know Dh drove me mad when ds was tiny. A bit like the assumption that Boris Johnson ‘left’ Marina Wheeler when she had cancer - I’ve always thought it was equally likely that she threw him out.

I can't speak for anyone else but I am definitely built for 100 % monogamy.

I don’t really get the link to social history- for much of history women were chattels, chained to the sink and pushing out babies. Why would we look back at their life models for reassurance?

This is both very naive and rather condescending. Naive because "one true love" has been a societal ideal for the blink of an eye - it was only a few generations ago that marriage was primarily a tool of alliance between powerful factions, more akin to a trade deal than a Hollywood film. And secondly because your assumption that any given societal ideal actually mirrors what people want overlooks how societal ideals everywhere are constructed by those in power.

Condescending because it's one thing not to understand polyamory and quite another to say that those who practise it aren't capable of real love and are just pretending. The problem there is that you don't seem capable of understanding that other people are not like you. This is where the concept of the societal ideal comes into play again. It's a tool designed to encourage conformity and to erase difference. It's worked on you because you don't even understand the concept of difference.

I'm not poly. For much the same reasons as you, actually - time and effort. I once asked a poly friend when she found the time to be alone, between her three partners at the time, and she looked baffled and said she hated to be alone. Which explained a lot! By contrast I prefer being alone to being with even my loved ones. See, we're all different.

I get polyamory on an emotional level though. I don't feel sexual jealousy and I don't believe one partner can be everything to us - that's why we have friends as well. It makes more logical sense to me than monogamy. I just don't feel any great urge to make the logistical effort.

As far as lifestyles that seem baffling and alien to me go, though, polyamory makes a lot more sense to me (child-free) than parenthood. I look at poly friends and think, that seems exhausting but you seem to be having fun. I look at parent friends and think, that seems exhausting and also like eternal hell.

A lot of what we feel is heavily influenced by social norms though. The social norm is one pair bond at a time. These days the social norm is several pair bonds/serial monogamy rather than just one for life, which not many decades ago was considered absolutely the norm here. You’d be pretty upset if you found a new partner and your social circle assumed it can’t be real love, it’s a bit of a joke and your ‘real’ partner is your ex-husband.

If you read between the lines in social history you can spot a lot of different set-ups, some of which look like polyamory, but because they weren’t according to the norm either of the time or of the historian’s time, they aren’t written about as real relationships. They seem more likely to occur in circles with more money/resources, but then those people are the ones who get written about in historical accounts as well.

I don’t fancy polyamory - I’m as much a product of the norm as anyone else. Also it seems like a lot of admin. I also know a 23 year old who is in a 4 person polycule and it all sounds like the most Godawful nightmare tbh. But then I’m rarely looking at anyone else’s relationship and thinking, wow that looks great. I suppose if you are with 3 other people there’s at least a chance that one of them would be having a good day at any one time.

I've never met a poly relationship which survived the birth of a child. 90% of the handful of real examples I know, the man dropped the mother to a lesser relationship tier and concentrated on the child free women. Maybe it works better childfree, or with adult children?

If it works for them and they are honest with all parties involved, I don't see the problem.

My impression is that a lot of people in polyamorous relationships are desperate types who can't get anyone to commit to them exclusively, but can persuade a few people to have them as a second or third option for when their preferred partner isn't available. It also seems like the sort of thing which would naturally attract exploitative types.

They are not really committed to the second partner though are they? As they keep one constant partner and have a series of changing boyfriends/girlfriends.

I have no doubt that people can have affection for more than one person, but your friends’ dynamic sound no different from affairs. The secondary ( or affair) partner is simply used to keep the main relationship going. The secondary partners are disposable and temporary. Your mates are just having ( using) a series of affair partners, it’s just that they are doing it openly. I suspect quite a number of those partners get hurt.

In real life the couple of occasions I come across this, that is what happened. The chosen ‘secondary’ partner ended up badly hurt, because they really fell for the ‘married’ person. The married person had deliberately picked a really nice guy, the type of person who would fall in love with them. One ‘married’ woman admitted they chose men like this as it felt nice for them to get all that love. When the secondary partner gets hurt and says they felt used, the ‘married’ partner just shrugs and says ‘I was honest with you’. But thats shit isn’t it? You are still using someone to love you, when you know you love someone else more, and this other person is just there to keep your marriage going. It is using people.

So in the rare cases of genuine polyamory where the ‘nesting’ couple have permanent other partners, who genuinely are equals with the nesting partner, okay.

But your friend’s arrangement I think is just a series of affairs dressed up in a modern label and where the affair partner is used and risks getting hurt.