Insight required - if your partner had another partner, what would your feelings be?

[Downinthebottomofthegarden]

I'd appreciate any insight or advice with regards to a strange scenario.

Try and imagine your partner also had another partner. Not an affair, or secret fling, but someone who they'd been close to for a long time. I guess what could be described as a polygamous relationship.

How do you think your feelings towards your partner would be? Would you still love them the same? Would you still feel as close to them? Do you think it'd be possible for you to love them in the same way as you do now, given that they'd be sharing their love, energy, time with someone else that they love.

@WaningMoon

Thing is, promiscuity is good for you and more people should do it. It's particularly good for women

Bollocks. (No pun intended!)

Promiscuity is not “good for you”, besides the risk of spreading disease, unwanted pregnancy and the emotional impact of having sex with multiple partners it is also basic biology- Homo sapiens are hard wired for pair bonding (even males, because despite what society tries to tell us biology tells a different story!)

I love sex, I have a fulfilling sex life with my DH, prior to meeting my DH I had sex with many people, some relationships and some one night stands, and the best sex I have ever had is with my DH and it is because of the emotional bond we share.

We heard all this free love stuff back in the 70s and it was just as bollocks then as it is now.

I'd say based on the wide available stories of people having affairs, I think overall it seems (I could be wrong) humans are not ment to just be limited to one partner.

Human beings really aren't hard-wired for pairbonding. Anything which was 'hardwired' into us would not need to be so brutally enforced (don't forget that there are still some cultures where the penalty for breaching monogamy is literally death), nor would there be so much propaganda in favour of it.
You get evolutionary psychologists trying to argue that women are naturally monogamous because of giving birth, waa, but evolutionary psychology is a pseudoscience and its practitioners are nearly all inadequate men trying to argue that women are naturally inferior and submissive and if they would only surrender to men everything would be all right.
There have been one or two studies done which seem to suggest that promiscuity, particularly in women, is actually pro-evolution in that it's a way of making sure that the best sperm fertilises the egg which is at least no more ridiculous than the insistence that women basically exist to be owned by men.

Human beings really aren't hard-wired for pairbonding

@Wreath21 how on earth can you prove or disprove 'hardwiring' of something like this? What kind of research would it involve? What kind of device would detect 'hardwiring' in the brain?

We actually cannot measure 'hardwiring' We can however say for sure that life time pair bonding is practised by the majority in every society in every part of the world, and has been perhaps since the beginning of time. Not only that, but a great number of animal species pair bond too.

@Horological

Human beings really aren't hard-wired for pairbonding

@Wreath21 how on earth can you prove or disprove 'hardwiring' of something like this? What kind of research would it involve? What kind of device would detect 'hardwiring' in the brain?

We actually cannot measure 'hardwiring' We can however say for sure that life time pair bonding is practised by the majority in every society in every part of the world, and has been perhaps since the beginning of time. Not only that, but a great number of animal species pair bond too.

Meh. Bonobo chimps, for example, most definitely don't. And many cultures didn't go in for pairbonding at all - it was imposed mostly with the arrival of monotheistic, male-dominated superstitions. Also FFS every society which officially endorses monogamy has to enforce it because... lots of people don't like it, don't want to do it and therefore repeatedly disobey its rules. Monogamy fundamentally benefits men at the expense of women.

OK, so if you disagree with monogamy existing because of biology/evolution etc then we won’t get anywhere because it just becomes an argument about whose research you can find which backs up your theory, so if we view your argument that monogamy is a social construct then we need to look at it through an anthropological lens :

Monogamy fundamentally benefits men at the expense of women

How ?

@WaningMoon

OK, so if you disagree with monogamy existing because of biology/evolution etc then we won’t get anywhere because it just becomes an argument about whose research you can find which backs up your theory, so if we view your argument that monogamy is a social construct then we need to look at it through an anthropological lens :

Monogamy fundamentally benefits men at the expense of women

How ?

Ok - if monogamy is natural, instinctive, superior etc why do so many people find it difficult? Monogamy benefits men because it gives them ownership of women and their labour. Monogamy-fixated societies also tend to make it very difficult for women to live independently (ie refuse to be owned by a man) in order to make sure men all had the option of owning a woman.

Monogamy benefits men because it gives them ownership of women and their labour. Monogamy-fixated societies also tend to make it very difficult for women to live independently (ie refuse to be owned by a man) in order to make sure men all had the option of owning a woman

That isn’t anything to do with being in a monogamous relationship though-

You could remove monogamous relationships and women would still be owned by men- except it would be a number of men rather than one.

There are billions of adults in healthy monogamous relationships where the woman is not owned by the man. (Or vice versa)

Everything about the way sexual relationships are structured was designed to benefit men rather than women.
Again, though: why is monogamy so strongly enforced, and why do so many people struggle with or outright reject it, if it's so 'natural'? It clearly doesn't work for large numbers of people.

Wreath21

You keep coming back to the thread but don’t engage with any questions- you keep reiterating your opinion but don’t explain why you think that, or how anything supports your theory.

Can you explain in what way Everything about the way sexual relationships are structured was designed to benefit men rather than women ?

Personally, I would not want to be in a relationship with someone who was not fully committed to me.

However, I have a close friend who is in a long term non monogamous relationship and her and her dp are definitely in love and closer than a lot of couples i know.

As long as everyone is completely honest and upfront that's all you can ask. It's then for the partner to decide if that's the type of relationship they want or not

I'd leave him. I'd never actually be in that situation as I'd never accept it.

@WaningMoon

Wreath21

You keep coming back to the thread but don’t engage with any questions- you keep reiterating your opinion but don’t explain why you think that, or how anything supports your theory.

Can you explain in what way Everything about the way sexual relationships are structured was designed to benefit men rather than women ?

Are you really this dim? Men cannot have children without the participation of a (fertile) woman; societies could have been structured around female choice but every socioeconomic structure and every type of sexual 'morality' across all contemporary societies is based on male ownership of women's labour and reproductive capacity (backed up by male-invented imaginary friends who made it that way, honest, yes they did: women are servants and incubators because Skydaddy says so). Every social structure has been set up to deter or prevent women from having bodily autonomy or independence from men. While some individuals may well find that a monogamous relationship works best for them (and that's fine, live as you see fit so long as you can find someone else who is enthusiastic about maintaining a monogamous relationship with you) the 'ideal' we are supposed to aim for is effectively a woman shut in a house, providing childcare and domestic labour and sexual and emotional services to her owner, who goes out into the world and earns money. Capitalism depends on all this domestic service work being done by women, for no money, in order that men can carry on working (so yes, there are drawbacks for men as well but the rewards of this model include the fact that, while they might have to obey a boss at work, in their homes they are kings.)

When it comes to polygamy (as distinct from modern polyamory) that model was, again, about male ownership of women and tended to become acceptable in places where there were more women than men and, again, it was for men's benefit.

Wreath21

Resorting to insults doesn’t strengthen your argument, it highlights that you have no argument.

You still haven’t explained the problem with monogamy. You have so far equated monogamy with religion, and with patriarchal societies, - history and anthropology tells us that monogamy doesn’t exist because of those things , monogamous relationships existed long before Christianity, and exist is matriarchal and other non-patriarchal societies, And as monogamy exists outside of those things then how do you quantify your statement?

You are the one who appears to have no argument. First you announce that human beings are 'hardwired' for monogamy, then backtrack and claim there is no such thing as hardwiring in humans, then you say that animals pairbond (some do, most don't), then you suggest that the opposite of monogamy is 'many men' owning one woman. The only example of this which comes to mind is, um, Smurfette in the Smurfs. I would be quite interested to see your examples of polyandrous societies that were successful.
And you are the one repeatedly ignoring or not answering the most important question - if monogamy is 'natural' why do so many people reject it and why is there so much propaganda aimed at coercing people into monogamy?

I never backtracked and claimed there is no hardwiring in humans? Because there are many many things that humans are “preprogrammed” with, we mostly think of this as our instincts but it goes much wider and deeper than this.

And most people don’t reject monogamy- majority of relationships are monogamous, just because people get divorced or split up doesn’t mean they reject monogamous relationships.

It’s fine for you to reject monogamy, but it’s really odd that you are so determined to argue that humans aren’t designed to be monogamous and the majority of humans are wrong for wanting to be in monogamous relationships- why does it in anyway affect you or bother you how other people conduct their relationships?

Oh FFS. It bothers me because monogamy is pushed at people so hard and so consistently: women are told over and over again that they must first attract a man, then keep hold of him ie devote the majority of their time to pleasing him so he doesn't seek other women - and, equally, men are told that if a woman seeks other men it's OK to stalk, beat and even kill her for rejecting monogamy.
And why it's bad for women? Between the fear of violence, the manufactured fear of being rejected unless you obey and please and prioritize your man (up to and including having more sex with him than you want to have) and the idea that all other women you meet are a Threat to The Relationship, women's time is wasted and their lives made miserable by the obsession with monogamy. Far better to have fun, fuck who you want, enjoy your own life and have a group of friends/family around you to share childcare etc with if you even want to have children.

Wreath21

I don’t know how many other ways to say this but what you are describing isn’t anything to do with monogamy or being in a monogamous relationship!

You need to take your emotions and feelings out of the equation and examine it from an anthropological lens.

@WaningMoon

Wreath21

I don’t know how many other ways to say this but what you are describing isn’t anything to do with monogamy or being in a monogamous relationship!

You need to take your emotions and feelings out of the equation and examine it from an anthropological lens.

That's exactly what I'm doing, though. The fact that some people enjoy monogamy is about as relevant to the institution of monogamy as some people's enjoyment of sex in a bathtub full of cold spaghetti. Anthropologically, monogamy was invented to enable men to exploit women's sexual, domestic and reproductive labour. Monogamy as a personal preference is just a personal preference - no one wants to force the monogamy fetishists to abandon their preferences. The issue is the monogamy fetishists insisting that everyone who doesn't share their particular kink is a bad person.

Monogamy was never invented -
Mammals (including humans) pair bond, this is science not social conditioning.

Your use of the word “kink” makes me suspect I have been duped by someone on the wind up though.

I always think this kind of relationship works better for men than women. Most of the cultures which embrace multiple partners, polygamy seems to e far more common than polyandry.

If you went in to a relationship like this eyes wide open, then I guess it might work, but if you started off in a committed monogamous relationship then one partner decided they wanted to introduce a third person then that would be a big no.

I'd like to know if individuals in this sort of relationship always have one partner they love/like more than the other and how the third person feels about this. I know people say they love their children equally, but does the same apply in these relationships.

What happens in a polygamous relationship where one partner is older and the other young and with the physical attributes of a younger person (especially as seen from a male view).

But no, not for me.

@EthicalNonMahogany ''I have a husband, a long term lover and two to three casual/exciting fwbs''

Do you have a lot of free time and no other interests beyond casual sex? because that sounds simply exhausting and frankly boring...

Or children? because that might work if you are child-free but I can't see that going down well with your kids to be honest.

I think a lot of people have re-branded their inability to be happy and faithful with one person or basic sex-addiction as 'polyamory ' because it sounds less harsh than 'I want to sleep with as many people as possible'...

Here in Denmark they have very high levels of female initiated split ups- even with women with children. The reason?? Very very reasonable childcare available to all plus a flat allocated for you (if you areDanish) at social rates— you can then keep that flat and subject or use it — makes a great life back up— and some of them are really nice too . So many women (and men too) end up paired up or staying paired up because of affordability factors of being single or childcare issues.

I live with the father of my kids we aren't "together" we co-parent
I have a Fwb and I suspect he does or may have had too

I'm only with him to keep a nice home for my kids no other reasons and it means we each get our own time to do as we please and then other looks after the kids

@wingscrow I share your curiosity about why anyone would make multiple sexual relationships the primary focus of their life - and with that number I can't see how they wouldn't be but maybe they are super time efficient in other ways! However I take issue with polyamory as an excuse for an inability to be faithful. I'm perfectly capable of it and was for 18 years before and during my marriage. Since my divorce I've realised that I'm much happier not promising anyone anything and retaining my freedom to do what I want, with whom I want, when I want. This includes nothing, when that's what's right for me. Non-monogomy isn't necessarily a shag fest.

[quote wingscrow]@EthicalNonMahogany ''I have a husband, a long term lover and two to three casual/exciting fwbs''

Do you have a lot of free time and no other interests beyond casual sex? because that sounds simply exhausting and frankly boring...

Or children? because that might work if you are child-free but I can't see that going down well with your kids to be honest.

I think a lot of people have re-branded their inability to be happy and faithful with one person or basic sex-addiction as 'polyamory ' because it sounds less harsh than 'I want to sleep with as many people as possible'...[/quote]
You seem to see wanting to have sex with lots of different people are a terrible thing. If it doesn't appeal to you, you don't have to do it - but lots of people do enjoy having a lot of sexual partners.