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Notes -
MonoPoly Restricted Trust
Two months ago (an eternity in podcasting, I know) I was on the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast to discuss polyamory with Aella and Eneasz, both of whom are hella fucking poly.[1] I favor monogamy without moral objection to polyamory, yet its appeal eludes me. Given the caliber of my interlocutors, I walked away feeling uncharacteristically frustrated with our conversation, largely because I think we lack a shared understanding of each other's vocabulary.
This post is a belated attempt to remedy the miscommunication, and not one that necessarily requires listening to the episode first (though it helps of course). I address the definition of polyamory, how we talk about 'restrictions' in relationships, and where trust comes from.
Return of the Antipodes
We started by rehashing my ongoing disagreement with Aella and her idiosyncratic definition of 'polyamory'. While this definition offers a new perspective, it's important to consider how it aligns with the broader understanding of polyamory and its impact on communication:
I previously addressed why I really don't like this 'antipodal' re-definition, in contrast to the straightforward and commonly-accepted "the practice of or desire for multiple concurrent romantic/sexual relationships" understanding.[2] Aella has subsequently stated that her position is best expressed as a 2D chart, which nullifies a lot of my criticism. If you had to compress the spectrum down to just one, Aella favors the 'restriction' axis as more fitting while also acknowledging that some information is lost in the process. I agree that a chart allows for more nuance, but disagree with re-defining polyamory to focus away from the 'interested in many' axis for multiple reasons:
The risk of confusion by the re-definition is very high
The information conveyed by the re-definition is very low
The 'restrictions-on-partner' framing can get incoherent
It's totally fine to use words with semantic ambiguity (e.g. light, right, match) when their meaning is clear enough in context (e.g. "You made the right choice by striking a match in the dim light"); and it's totally fine for Aella to want to express a perspective that doesn't align with mainstream understanding of polyamory. But it's really confusing to use a word with an obscure interpretation that forks away from its pre-existing common understanding. Consider the outrage if a politician ran on a platform of "green infrastructure" only to deliver oil refineries painted green. Sure, the election promise wasn't technically false, but the confusion is significant and foreseeable enough to deem it intentional.
The re-definition could be justified if it had compelling benefits, yet it ends up conveying less information. If someone said "I'm a vegetarian" everyone would interpret this as describing their personal abstention from eating meat. But if this person privately redefined 'vegetarian' to mean they're okay with others not eating meat, it shifts the emphasis from a direct expression of one's own attributes to an indirect reactive stance regarding others' choices, leading to a conversation that feels needlessly convoluted. It certainly can be relevant to know what the vegetarian will tolerate, but that's rarely ever the most relevant information. Similarly, if someone hitting on me tells me they're poly, my first thought would be "they have a desire for multiple relationships" and definitely not "if we were in a relationship, and if I had a desire for multiple relationships, this person is willing to tolerate me pursuing these relationships". What purpose could this circuitousness possibly serve?
It's trivial to conjure examples of how the 'restrictions-on-partner' framing devolves into incoherency. One man has a harem relationship with 50 women who he forbids them from seeing anyone else, while they're fine with him sleeping with whomever (If you're following along on the chart, he would be on the top left while they would be on the bottom right). The women are all considered "poly" according to Aella's 'restrictions' re-definition, but the man is not. If he wanted to expand the harem, seeking out "poly" women to add to the roster would be unnecessarily frustrating for everyone involved, because it's just not how people use the term.
One of Aella's objections to focusing on the traditional 'wanting multiple relationships' axis is that it isn't distinctive enough, since almost everyone has some semblance of that desire. This is true but flattens far too much. Her survey data is the gold standard here, and it does show mild interest in banging others among the monogamous.
There's a meaningful difference between an errant desire to bend the barista over the counter, and playing calendar tetris with a dozen of your secondaries, such that it doesn't make sense to cleave "want to pursue extracurricular intimacy" into a neat yes/no binary. There's no dividing line under the classic mono/poly definition, it's a gradient spectrum ranging from "fleeting thought" to "overriding purpose in life". Aella has written about how the 'restrictions' axis also falls along a spectrum (poly couples often have rules on condom use, emotional boundaries, or not fucking your partner's dad) which means it's not immune from her own criticism.
Overall I have a very high opinion of Aella's integrity and have no reason to believe she's intentionally duplicitous, but the re-definition appears motivated by propaganda purposes. She's very transparent about believing polyamory to be the more virtuous path in contrast to monogamy (as is her right!), and it's often useful to use language to influence social dictate, but no one has to agree with accepting terminology with baked-in beliefs. Remember how protestors against the Dakota Access Pipeline insisted they be referred to as 'water protectors'? Given the negative connotations attached to promiscuity (which, as a former slut myself, I neither share nor endorse) there appears to be an aversion to advertising 'polyamory' too much under the "wanting multiple partners" framing. Instead, it's marketed under the much more palatable "not wanting to restrict others" framing.
However, the same accusations of wielding definitions as an ideological cudgel could be fairly levied against me. She rightly pointed out that our primary concern should be the accuracy of the definition, rather than focusing excessively on avoiding ideologically charged framing.[3] When I was asked if polyamory did indeed place fewer "restrictions" on people, I said yes but as I'll expand upon in the next section, I'm retracting my answer because I don't believe we have the same understanding of the term "restriction". Otherwise I agree with prioritizing accuracy; I don't care what specific words we use so long as they're useful at conveying information to others.
The ultimate question for vocabulary choices should always be "Am I reasonably certain that my listener has the same understanding of this word that I do?" Based on the multiple reasons I outlined, the focus on 'restrictions' is too confusing and too ambiguous to pass this test.
I Want You to Want Me
Let's marinate into whether 'restrictions' is the best way to cleave the mono/poly dichotomy. Consider two scenarios:
You are cordially invited to contribute to a vegetarian-only potluck.
You are subject to criminal penalties under the Peter Singer world regime if you consume any sustenance of animal progeny.
The two pictures are not the same. Both, technically, describe 'restrictions', but this again flattens far too much under a single banner. The aforementioned "don't fuck my dad" rule used by poly couples is also a 'restriction', but it would be absurd if that's enough to void their polyamorous certification.
When Jonah Hill asked his then-girlfriend surfer Sarah Brady not to post bathing suit photos, he framed it as expressing his relationship "boundaries". Oh but isn't that just what a controlling abuser would say to whitewash his yoke? There's no bright line rule here, you can't delineate between "boundaries" and "abusive control" without having to conjure up an array of debatable and interpretative factors.
I was once in a monogamous relationship where my partner then expressed a strong desire to date other people. I had no desire to get in her way or otherwise be a hindrance, so I said "Ok!" and promptly broke up with her. I didn't tell her what she wasn't allowed to do, instead I unambiguously expressed my own interest in not wanting to be in a relationship with someone who has an active desire to fuck other people. Would skipping out on a vegetarian-only potluck because you're tired of quinoa count as a 'restriction' imposed upon the host? Under a very strict literal reading, sort-of-yes, but it's an incoherent use of the term that confuses more than clarifies.
The poly brigade's retort about how everyone wants to fuck other people doesn't fly. Granting that this desire widely exists, it does so on a spectrum of intensity. I've often found myself swept up by the nascent intoxication of a new situationship where the thought of pausing for a define-the-relationship talk seemed almost alien. My Tinder matches would be left fallow and rotting on the vine, because why bother? I want my partner to have the same overriding desire for me; not for them to reluctantly forgo others because of my say so. If I had to utter that kind of proclamation, it's probably too coercive.
When the county clerk stamped my marriage license recently, my touch neurons did not suddenly get cryptographically locked to only respond to my wife's DNA. I'm not pursuing hot people not because I somehow lost the ability to notice them, and I'm not fucking anyone else not because my wife forbids me, but because I just don't care to. My wife certainly could double-explicitly prohibit me from doing so, but that would be the equivalent of her forbidding me from taking up fly-fishing.
I wonder if there's a lack of imagination from both camps. I've had several casual dating periods, so I have some insight into the thrill and excitement of rotating through flings like a flipbook. But when I see my poly friends juggling a stable cadre of full-blown secondary relationships in addition to their primary, I feel vicarious exhaustion. I admit it, the energy devoted seems so excessive that I wonder how much of it is performative, motivated by the desire to showcase their apparent enlightenment,[4] or maybe it's to ensure they have enough board game partners. On the flip side, I wonder if they believe my assertions that I'm not interested in pursuing others to be genuine, or whether they assume I've been browbeaten by the dominating cultural narrative into accepting my imaginary handcuffs.
To be fair, the prevalence of cheating is very strong evidence that monos (especially men) are indeed dishonest about their desires for extra-relationship fucking, either because they're lying to themselves, or because they're willing to abandon this desire as a practical concession to finding a partner in a monogamy-dominated landscape. Honesty is good, and so I would heartily recommend polyamory to anyone who (for whatever reason) is irresistibly drawn towards breaking their exclusivity pledges. All this is also a strong indicator that polyamory is socially disfavored, so this potentially justifies using deliberate vocabulary re-framing as a balancing counter-force.
What is Trust? Baby Don't Hurt Me
Moving from the semantics of polyamory to its practical implications, let's delve into the pivotal roles of trust and jealousy in these relationships. The foundational problem we have to deal with here is humans' persistent proclivity towards lying, which remains because of how often it's personally advantageous to do so. Naturally, humans also developed a countervailing proclivity for detecting and dissuading dishonesty as a safeguard. It's impractical to live ensconced within an intractable and perpetual barrier of suspicion, so we have measures to let our guard down selectively.
Ideally we build trust over time through shared experiences and history, but there's also potential "trust shortcuts" such as costly signals and commitment rituals.[5] Basically, any actions that someone is unlikely to undertake unless they were genuinely committed count. In the context of romantic relationships, these can range from the extravagant (atrociously expensive weddings) to the mundane (introducing a new girlfriend to your friends). Though far from infallible, shortcuts retain some usefulness because the traditional method of building trust can be unreasonably and agonizingly slow.[6]
This nicely segues into the role of jealousy. It's considered a negative and disdainful emotion, and fair to say that the polyamorous are particularly proud of the cultural technology they've developed for dealing with it, but I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing here. If Alice sees her boyfriend Bob talking to Cindy and feels [negative emotion] in response, it could be a result of pure resentment (Alice hates seeing Bob receive attention from other women) or it could be a reasonable response to a lack of security and assurance (read: lack of trust). The problem is both variants (call them resentful vs rational) get shoved into the same "jealousy" laundry hamper without efforts to distinguish the two, and what would otherwise be a reasonable emotional response gets dirtied by proximity.
Consider another example with polyamorous couple Doug and Emma. They've been each other's primary partners for years and have mutually disclosed social security numbers. One day Emma jets off to Europe with a new fling without telling Doug, who only finds out about this through her LinkedIn updates. Upon her return she continues exhibiting increasingly detached behavior, spending less time with Doug and cancelling plans at the last minute with irreverent excuses, all while reassuring him he remains her top priority in life. Doug is no spring chicken and deploys an arsenal of polyamory tools as remedy (open communication, compersion seances, and even a meticulous line chart of their decreasing time together) but nothing works. Emma continues to reaffirm how important he is to her via garbled late-night texts, and Doug continues to feel [negative emotion].
Would anyone dispute Doug has valid reasons for trusting Emma less? Yes, she says he's a priority, but her actions indicate otherwise. He has ample reasons to believe Emma is gasp lying. Maybe she's not, perhaps this is all just a misunderstanding with an imminent denouement. But if Emma was indeed lying, what can be done to maintain the relationship? After such a grievous betrayal, it wouldn't be tenable for Doug to carry on as usual, nor would it be practical to proactively commit to the uncertainty of rebuilding trust via the traditional slow-burn accumulation. Only trust shortcuts --- within the grand lineage of romantic serenades perhaps --- are likely to be viable options here, if anything.
I never expected any of the above to be a point of contention, but it was! Again, humans routinely lie, especially about sex and relationships. Emma could have been lying to Doug about her commitment to their relationship just to stall for time until she meets an upgraded Doug replacement. Poly relationships commonly organize around having a primary partner, and even relationship anarchists necessarily express a hierarchy through the inescapable constraints of the attention economy, all of which are potential opportunities for trust to erode. Around 25 mins mark, I asked my poly interlocutors how to ensure someone isn't lying to you, their responses were a variant of "just trust them bro". Ok, but how? The point here is that trust cannot appear out of thin air, it has to come from somewhere,and this is true regardless if it's a polyamorous or monogamous relationship!
This is another area in particular where I worry that a polyamorous framing saturated with righteousness could lead one astray. If you've inculcated your lifestyle as inherently virtuous because "jealousy" is either non-existent or adequately contained, there's a risk of aligning all suspicion (not matter how reasonable) as inherently sinful or indicative of moral failing. Sometimes it's good to distrust.
We should use words that other people know the meaning of. We should avoid creating unnecessary ambiguity by flattening distinct phenomena under the same banner. Prioritizing clarity is particular important when dealing with something as complex as human relationships, whether polyamorous or monogamous.
Now, let's play some board games.
[1] Throwback to 2020 where I also discussed polyamory with Aella on episode 12 of The Bailey podcast.
[2] If you only trust our future robot overlord, here's also what chatGPT said: "It's fair to say that the definition of polyamory you provided is not widely accepted in its entirety. Polyamory, as commonly understood, involves more than just not forbidding extra-relationship intimacy. It typically includes aspects of ethical, open, and consensual engagement in romantic or sexual relationships with multiple partners. The definition you've provided focuses primarily on the aspect of non-restriction, which is a part of polyamory but doesn't encompass its full scope."
[3] At the 16mins mark, Aella said "I think the question should not be 'Are we trying to avoid virtuous framing?' but rather 'Is this accurate? Are poly people in fact placing fewer restrictions on their partners?'"
[4] I've also previously written in Cuckoldry as Status Jockeying about concerns with the way polyamory is framed socially, and how that might discourage transparency about one's desires.
[5] I take responsibility for contributing to the confusion with how I discussed 'costly signals' in relationships. The classic example of a costly signal is the peacock's extravagant tail, a reliable indicator of overall fitness precisely because it's so gratuitously expensive to maintain. When I described 'commitment rituals' as 'costly' on the podcast, I meant it in the sense that they impose social costs. Public declarations like pledge ceremonies and weddings "work" not because they physically prevent the oath-takers from subsequently breaking their commitments, rather the aspiration here is the pomp and circumstance of the ritual comes laden with sufficient social pressure to encourage ongoing compliance.
[6] The galaxy-brain take here is to tally up all the "trust shortcuts" we grudgingly rely upon on a daily basis and imagine how you'd cope without them: online product reviews, uniformed police officers, food safety inspection grades on restaurant windows, bank logos on ATMs, and on and on. The point is not that these shortcuts are infallible, they can and are indeed frequently exploited, but that's not enough to throw them all away.
I've heard this joke over and over, some sort of variation on a theme. "Two wives? I can barely handle one? Hyuck hyuck hyuck".
I'm not polyamorous, but frankly, it's not difficult to manage more than one relationship at a time if you don't have kids. Plenty of people don't want to hang out with each other 24/7, and many young women don't want undivided attention. In modern dating, it codes as clingy. During college, having ~3 partners available at a time was absolutely the best way to avoid being called an over-emotional freak.
Yes, there was also the benefit of being desired by multiple people at the same time. I don't see how that can be considered unexciting or not worth some minor scheduling effort. Variety in personality, body types, and tastes is intrinsically pleasurable.
Maybe I just was not built for it. I've had several periods where I was casually dating two or three women at the same time and after a week or so (I know, I know, it's a stupid complaint) I was genuinely physically exhausted from the amount of sex. I couldn't wait to just play video games by myself.
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I think I understand where Aella's definition (A-poly) comes from and why it's more useful than yours (Y-poly). Who can join an existing polycule? A Y-poly person can't unless they are also A-poly. An A-poly person can.
A Y-poly person that isn't also A-poly can't form a complex polycule, they will create a trivial harem of pure A-polies. If there are no A-poly people, their harem will have to be non-consensual.
So pure Y's don't contribute anything to polyamory, A+Y's form the backbone of successful polycules and pure A's both keep the size of polycules manageable and form the bulk of their ranks. If in a polycule all members except one (or more likely all of them) are fine with their partner(s) being in multiple relationships, then it makes sense to call this its defining characteristic, even though you need at least one member (or a few) with an interest in multiple partners to serve as a nucleation point for the polycule.
Consider the answers to your questions rephrased: Who wants to join an existing polycule? Y-poly does, but A-poly doesn't care except through their partner. Ditto for who wants to form a complex polycule.
I'm ok with the definition that heralds both axes in tandem, and I'm fine with the argument that the A-poly dimension is vital to ensure that a polycule ecosystem can function without devolving into harem fiefdoms. Ultimately what I care about is whether the word accurately communicates the idea to the listener.
Y-poly doesn't, because joining means your partner(s) will have more partners than just you. They have to be an A-poly to integrate into a polycule.
Yes, they have to be a Y-poly, but they won't form anything complex if they aren't an A-poly as well.
The poly community is overwhelmingly A-polies, some pure A, some Y+A, but being a pure Y must be frustrating.
The second big reason why this kind of definition is important is drawing the line between polyamory and other forms of polygamy, like having a mistress (deception), having multiple wives as a cult leader (grooming), fundie Muslim (economic coercion) or just having a literal Genghis Khan's harem of concubines (physical coercion).
When you point at the polycule and say everyone involved wants to be in there, unlike the things you think about when you say "multiple partners", and your opponent says not all traditional polygamic marriages are like that, they know a nice Muslim throuple where both wives are good friends and happy to share Ahmed between them, then you can say, "look, you've said it yourself, happy to share their partner, this is what makes it work, if only Ahmed was willing to share, too, then this nascent polycule could grow further".
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The core difference I see between people building normal relationships, and people attempting to build “polyamorous” relationships is that the poly people aren’t really.
Sex with my wife is certainly a property of my relationship with her, but it’s more of a manifestation of our relationship than it is the point of it. We have sex with one another as a result of the rest of it.
If I had to guess, I’d say >70% if my peer group engages in polyamory. I can think of 0 of them who are in long term stable relationships. But I think that make sense. The thing my wife and I are building is just categorically different than what polyamorous people are doing. The depression these people seem to almost always experience I think results from incorrect expectations about what they’re doing.
There is probably a comparison to be made here to the trans movement. The cycle is: a trans person engages in surgeries and drugs, but doesn’t get the results they imagined or were promised, so they become an activist who insists that the answer is to target younger people with more surgery, and more drugs. Of course this also doesn’t work, and the cycle continues until the answer becomes that the whole of society is broken and we need to completely tear down all of the structure of the world and rebuild it from scratch (which of course will also not work).
I see this behavior with poly people. You are not creating relationships in the traditional sense, you are creating transaction agreements, and when this doesn’t result in a relationship, the answer becomes bizarre activism, thinly (or not so thinly!) veiled attacks on your outgroup, or angry rants on social media.
Again I think that there is a comparison to the trans movement here in that poly people want to redefine various words to try and make sense of their behavior. This is where the attempts to redefine words (which just so happen to align with mean ways of talking about their outgroup!) like trust and jealousy come from.
What’s especially sad and insidious about this to me is that when these things reach their obvious conclusions (not working), the answer is to double down and recruit people, instead of warning them off of it.
As a broader comment: there is definitely something interesting there. Is there a name for this? It’s like “no I didn’t ruin my life I like this actually and we need more people to do it!”, and then a cycle of escalation that seems to end in “all of society is invalid”. This pops up all over the place in the culture wars.
I literally had to read your comment twice because after the first time reading it, I remembered that straight poly people exist and that might change my interpretation of your comment. I suspect this is selection effects of my friend group and straight poly people are in reality more common than queer poly people given there's a lot more straight people. In retrospect, it occurs to me that I do know some, and all of the straight poly people I can think of are either married or in relationships where I'd be surprised if they didn't get married. I can think of one couple that went monogamous when they got married. Of course, if they're not in a relationship, I probably wouldn't know if they are poly, so definite selection effects there.
But my point in highlighting that I think of poly as a mainly queer phenomenon, is that poly people may not have the same metrics for success in their dating life that you do (which from your post, I'm getting is to build a stable life-partner relationship?).
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I also have lots of poly friends (maybe 30% of my peer group) and most of them are in long term stable relationships. I can't claim that my sample is representative but generally they seem very happy and mature about their decision.
Can you pick one and describe them? Just some questions: how long have they had this arrangement, how long after they started dating did it start, are they married, do they have kids, etc.
The closest one I can think of is: has kids, married, but the husband openly resents the woman (who is substantially more attractive than he is, and obviously gets a lot more extra marital activity than he does).
The others were "polyamorous", but eventually got married, had kids, and are now monogamous.
The rest are as I describe: angry bitter facebook rants about people lying to them (and everybody knows exactly what they're talking about). Lots of eventually finding somebody they really like and entering a relationship with them.
Sure, the couple I know best has been engaged for almost 2 years now and have been together for about 4 years now. AFAIK they've always been poly. The girl is one of my best friends and tells me a lot about her encounters. She's bi & I've set her up with some attractive female friends of mine. The guy is also bi and so they regularly have orgies/threesomes and have what seems like an equivalent roster of secondaries. No kids but they intend to. Both are conventionally attractive, and though they're affiliated with rats they're of the rare variety who are socially outgoing. They're definitely an exceptional example.
Having been engaged for 2 of the four years they’ve been together, and intending to have kids but not doing it, and this is the exceptional example?
If you consider those to be failure indicators then a ton of monogamous couples would also fit the bill. Neither lack of kids nor a long engagement period would stand out as remarkable among my mono friends.
Yes there are lots of people in relationships which are not working. My point is that polyamorous relationships don't seem to work because they aren't trying to form relationships. Calling a group of friends who have sex with each other a "relationship" is intentionally confusing language.
We used to just call this "friends with benefits", and the people engaged in it knew that they weren't trying to create long term stable bonds.
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If you think of the relationship as a bargain, and suppose that the other half of the relationship isn't fulfilling what you thought you'd be getting in exchange for your monogamy, it's quite easy to imagine that the trade deal has no longer become worth its maintenance. If you're happy, the thought of straying doesn't appeal. If you're unhappy, you look for a quick fix of some kind of high to make you feel better -- emotional fulfilment, the feeling of being sexually desirable, just getting your rocks off, or whatever.
I think it's much more accurate to consider cheating, in many cases, a symptom of a failing relationship. Not always -- some people just want to have their cake and eat it, some people are genuine sociopaths and so on. But a lot of the time, the pull of sleeping with someone else isn't strong if you're not already quite unhappy. Similarly, asking to open a previously monogamous relationship is basically the same thing, since poly is just "cheating, but with permission" the request comes up in much the same situation; if this ever happens, the relationship is already doomed. I have never seen a previously-monogamous relationship survive becoming open.
Consider a parallel to religious doctrine; the urge to sin is always there, nobody never feels the urge to sin and no religion really expects you to, it's the ability to resist that makes you virtuous. This would make the equivalent of a poly society one where theft and murder are fine morally because who is anyone else to tell you that you can't do that stuff?
I one hundred percent reject this framing from the outset. Jealousy implies value. If someone is jealous of something you have, that means it is worth a lot to them. If lots of people are jealous of something you have, that means it's worth a lot in general. This goes completely unsaid in normal life because it doesn't need to be said -- yes, you're jealous of the guy with the fast car because you want it for yourself but can't have it due to cost. You're not jealous of the guy with a bag of apples because you can just go to the shop and buy your own bag of apples. The more exclusive something is, the more value it has. If I make a great achievement, it's in my interests that that achievement stay difficult, or else it becomes devalued.
If it became well known that the world's hottest 11/10 woman would fuck literally anyone who asked, fucking her wouldn't be considered very much of an accomplishment, nobody would be jealous of anyone who did it (because they could just do it too) and she wouldn't be considered to have much value. Men congratulate and envy each other for getting to fuck not the hottest women per se, but the most exclusive women, and the women are the most exclusive because they're the hottest and can therefore afford to pick and choose to the highest degree. In the same way that getting into a prestigious university (used to) mean that your academic ability is higher than the rest, getting to sleep with such a woman means that your attractiveness is higher than others; or, that you have more value.
In my estimation, then, if poly practitioners don't feel jealousy, it's not because they have evolved to an enlightened phase, it's because they simply don't value any of their partners enough to particularly care if they lose them to someone else. There are always more, right? Perfectly interchangeable. This is in the same way that a lot of people with Masters degrees and so on can struggle to find minimum wage work; if you have a specific degree, it's relatively obvious to the store you're applying to that you're going to drop them the moment something better comes along, so they don't want to waste their time integrating you in the first place; this is how I imagine poly relationships are all the time. You're the "primary" only until the ever-rotating pool of partners washes up a better prospect than you, and then you're immediately sidelined.
Not exactly. When you mentioned the concept, the first thing I thought of was that in the early days of my relationship, we were dating long distance, which is obviously fraught with trust issues from the start. But how I consoled myself was through costly trust signals; we kept driving the 4 hours each way to visit each other every weekend. I reasoned that this was a considerable outlay of time, effort and money if he was just planning on using me for a quick fuck and cheating on the side. There was no way he couldn't have found someone closer to use. It must have meant something because he was willing to put in the time and money to do these things that wouldn't have been necessary otherwise. There was no other explanation for going to such costs.
You can think of costly trust signals as ritualistic sacrifices of resources to prove devotion. I don't think social pressure particularly comes into it. Who shames divorces anymore, anyways?
Damn this stings. You might be on to something.
I don't disagree at all. The part about social pressure was only one aspect of enforcement, and really only applicable to commitment rituals.
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Did you keep in touch and know how that turned out? Did she date multiple others (genuine slut interest) or gravitate to a an upgraded ymeskhout replacement (opening the relationship was an excuse to shop for something better)?
No, I cut off all contact and explicitly asked my friends that knew her not to update me on her life. The situation was more complicated than I alluded to. She had a history of severe manic episodes and part of the problem at the time was I couldn't tell whether this new desire of hers was a genuine expression or just a symptom (among others) of imminent mania.
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Don't discuss impossibilities, it ruins the debate.
surely there is a MAGA ymeskhout out there, right?
Have ya seen Yassine? Impossible to improve.
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I feel oppositely.
Her entire brand is attention seeking behavior through discussion (and sale) of sex. She got attention and advertising by redefining a thing in a way that you found interesting enough to podcast and effort post about.
Oh hey look, it's capitalism.
If 'seeking engagement' is a disqualifying criteria for bloggers, then you may as well just give up on blogs altogether.
Big difference between seeking engagement and seeking engagement by deliberately misrepresenting your position for clicks.
Yup. I also don't understand the efficacy of saying something deliberately dumb in the hopes that someone significantly more obscure pipes up about it. If the goal is attention, she already has direct access to a bountiful trough that doesn't require deliberately saying dumb things.
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It sounds like you just want 'poly' to be an identitarian sexual/romantic orientation, and Aella wants it to describe a relationship model?
I think there should be a term for both things, and yes it's confusing that we're currently using the same word for both.
But I do think that if we have to choose one, applying it to relationship models is more useful.
First of all, because we already have too many sexual/romantic identity labels. Their main utility was in serving as a rallying point for political organizing and civil rights fights 20-60 years ago, and most of them have served that purpose already. Today they're mostly pushing people into boxes and limiting our imaginations, while creating the normal identitarian culture-war problems. I generally oppose making new essentialist identity labels for this stuff, rather than just describing what you do/like as an individual (unless there's a political fight happening that needs a rallying point, but I don't think poly is there right now).
But second, because the relationship model version is what other people need to know about you most of the time.
Saying that you're gay, straight, or bi is mostly useful to other people because it tells them whether they have a chance with you, or who else you might be interested in that they could introduce you to, or who they might expect you to show up with at Thanksgiving. In terms of poly, those things are not determined by your personal identity, they are determined by the relationship model you are in. If you desire other people but are committed to a monogamous relationship, then the answer to all of those questions is more accurately conveyed by saying that you're not poly.
As far as teh objection of 'it's confusing to change the meaning of the term midstream, stop that' goes, my impression is that poly is neither mainstream enough nor used consistently enough at this time for this to be a big issue. Basically, most people have no fixed or nuanced idea about what it means to begin with, and the people who do use it are already using it inconsistently anyway. So there's still time to settle on the most useful definition in the future, which I think is the relationship model definition.
What do you mean by "relationship model"? I just googled polyamory and this is how it was defined:
Yeah, to me that is about right in terms of how I thought about polyamory. It describes "relationship model" as that of open relationship, it also explicitly says that it is non-monogamous and also that it is practiced. I do not get the "identarian" argument here - to me polyamory can also mean that both partners openly and consensually bang other people. Also to me what Aella pushes can also be viewed as an identity -
Isomeone can identify as nonrestrictive person although his partner never expressed any desire to fuck other people other than him. But he still may hate even a thought of him putting some restrictions on his partner hence he identifies as polyamorous despite him and his partner both living in exclusive and committed monogamous marriage for over 80 years now.Plus this "identity" vs "relationship model" distinction is not as smart as it seems. A different example I saw somewhere recently are attempts at redefinition of gay/lesbian identity as something akin "sexual model" mostly in order not to offend trans people since "same sex attraction" as identity can be a thin ice to skate on nowadays. Supposedly saying "I enjoy fucking vulvas" is viewed as more hip in some spaces. It is not as if it is your fault that vulvas are attached to females, that is just a coincidence and it definitely does not tell anything about your "identity" and especially its relation to archaic concepts such as biological sex (as opposed to non-biological sex I guess?).
80? We got a centennarian on here?
Sorry, it was just bad writing. It should read something like "Hypothetical person identifies as nonrestrictive ...". It is common to use "I" in hypothetical examples in my language but maybe it seems weird in English.
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I assume they meant "80 years between us".
I’m guessing it was a typo, and he meant to to say 8 years.
We should get a pool going.
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I'll try to respond to more of your post later, but this definition is just nonsensical to the point that I can only assume it intentionally throws mud in the water.
Defining an orientation or proclivity based on non-nullifcation of your partner's activity is such an unintuitive and messy way to approach it. If you're not defining polyamory by what you like/do, you're not offering an honest definition. Aella is obfucating and virtue signalling, by trying to frame the core of polyamory about generosity toward others' preferences, not one's own.
Imagine if I said that the cleanest definition of being a fan of action movies is not vetoing your partner/friends from choosing an action movie on movie night. It doesn't matter if they like action movies or not, it doesn't matter if you don't feel like picking action movies when it's your turn to decide, as long as your partner could pick an action movie if they wanted, then to me, that's being a fan of action movies.
Does that defintion make any fucking sense? it's hard to be interested in engagement past such a goofy and self-serving opener.
Right, but it's you assuming that the word refers to an orientation or proclivity.
Aella is using it to refer to a relationship model.
And this is a completely intuitive and straightforward way to describe a relationship model.
I think using it to refer to relationship models makes the most sense. Otherwise someone with expansive desires who has chosen to commit to a monogamous commitment has to say 'I am polyamorous and monogamous', which is awkward and bad.
If they just say 'I am currently monogamous' or 'I am currently in monogamous relationship', that tells people what they want to know.
Ultimately, polyamorous is broadly understood as the opposite of monogamous, and monogamous refers to a relationship model, not an orientation or proclivity.
Not buying it. That's an extremely idiosyncratic and unituitively gerrymandered way to describe it.
Are you suggesting that polyamorous refers to the relationship model and the relationship model alone?
People describe themselves as polyamorous all the time. Proportionally moreso than people explicitly identify themselves as monogamous. So we've got 3 options
#1 upends the idea of "clean" defintions proving my point, #2 makes your objection moot, and #3 is observably false. The central concept of a person looking for a poly relationship, is not general permissiveness that the other person might seek outside relationships. (Yes some people have a cuck fetish, but that's not 1:1 being polyamorous and it's not even what Aella's defintion describes)
You might further object then, that the polyamourous person is seeking a reciprocal relationship of Aella's model defintion. But
4 Aella didn't describe reciprocally in her definition. She used you pronouns, which linguistically imply a personal defintion not a relational definition.
The definition of 'polyamorous' that I find cleanest, for me, is not forbidding your partner from having extra-relationship intimacy. should be:
The definition of 'polyamorous' that I find cleanest, for me, is not forbidding eithe partner or "one or both partners".
Describing it as your partner makes the claim that it's describing a relationship rather than a person suspect.
Regardless, even if Aella just used poor wording, her defintion isn't described reciprocally, so again should we take it as implied or not necessary. If not necessarily reciprocal, then we're back to the issue with #3. The "cleanest" way of defining something doesn't even capture the core part of what many people are looking for in a poly relationship.
5 If it is necesasrily reciprocal, beyond Aella not describing it that way, it's now fails to capture many actual polyamorous configuirations. Is 'mormon style' polygamy now not polyamorous? Or even worse, the girlfriends who have only the one partner are technically polyamorous, but the man with multiple partners technically isn't? This is a very backwards definition.
At the end of the day, wouldn't it be much cleaner, to, instead of hi-jacking polyamorous to mean something ideosyncratic, describe the relationship model with the already existing word, "open relationship"?
No? Because Aella isn't describing an open relationship, she's producing nonsense.
I'm proposing that this would be the most useful way to use the term.
I think this broadly aligns with your point 3, and I'm having trouble parsing your objection to 3. But, yes, I think the point is that someone who describes themselves as poly is looking for a relationship in which both partners do the thing that Aella is quoted as saying is poly, allowing the partner lattitude.
I guess that saying 'I'm poly, I want to be in a poly relationship' sounds weird at first, but 'I'm a miner, I mine things' is not actually confusing. It's pretty standard to overload the same term as both a description of a person and a description of an activity... a surfer surfs, a bowler bowls, etc.
I mean, not in the 2 sentences that OP quoted, no.
Obviously those 2 sentences aren't going to convey her entire nuanced position here.
If you've actually read and listened to everything she's said on this topic, and know that it doesn't jibe with how I'm summarizing it here, then I concede to greater expertise and change my argument from 'I think this is a fair summary of what Aella means, and I think it's a good proposal for how to use the term' to 'This is my proposal for how to use the term.' I'm not actually invested in defending Aella or anything, I'm trying to stake a position about the object-level question.
If like me your only knowledge of Aella's position is reading OP's comment, then I don't think my interpretation is incompatible with what was quoted there, keeping in mind that short qu0tes pulled out of context never give the full picture of someone's argument and there's a lot of lattitude in what the actual position could be, reading backwards form the quote.
Other replies to my comment seem to think that yes, it's not. So it's at least a live question.
For me, I dunno, I don't see why everything has to be this precise?
If a single person says 'I'm poly', and you're thinking about dating them or setting them up with a friend, you can just ask them 'does that mean you want a mutually poly relationship where both partners can have outside partners, or that you're a cuck and only want your partner to have other partners, or that you're selfish and only want yourself to have other partners?'
And then instead of relying on identitarian labels to categorize people into warring factions that admit of no variance or humanity, you can actually, like, have a conversation with a real person and get to know them as an individual, and learn a little more about how these things are nuanced and subtle and complicated on an individual level, instead.
So basically, yeah, I don't think the fact that someone saying 'I'm poly' leaves you with, like, ONE more question you need to ask before 100% nailing down a fully detailed image of the relationship model they want, is a big drawback. I think it's kinda good even.
See here, I think it's important (very useful) to maintain a distinction between 'Exclusive romantic relationship between 2 partners plus guest-stars for sex sometimes' vs 'Open romantic relationship where people have multiple committed romantic partners.
Confusing those two things would be especially dangerous/disruptive.
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I slightly disagree. Opposite of monogamous is non-monogamous as there are more models. There are different types of non-monogamous relationships such as for instance polygamy or polyandry which I viewed differently from polyamory. Also for monogamy you can have various models ranging from lifelong commitment that can even carry beyond death of your spouse to serial monogamy including hookup culture.
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Yeah, that's a very specific definition of "polyamory" and what makes that different from an open marriage, or from those kind of "you can have your mistresses but don't involve me, keep it discreet, and it's acknowledged I'm the wife and you are not throwing me over for some bimbo" arrangements?
I think that what is at play here, in this specific community that Aella is part of, is not sex, it's about wanting to be Nice People. I know that sounds dismissive, but let me develop it. You know all the jargon around "compersion" and how jealousy is just not even on the radar for the Bay Area Rationalist Polyamorists? Mm-hmmm. It's the EA influence at work again; being good and moral and ethical based on compassion and generosity. So "I don't tie my partners down with restrictions about what they can do" is all part of being generous and non-judgmental and not trying to control or dictate how their partner should behave or feel or think. And that's why it then does not matter if the partner never dates anyone else, because it's not so much about "yippee we can all have as much sex with as many people as we want!", it's about formalising the mutual recognition that you are both Nice People who don't put limits and bonds on the other free adult there. Affection, trust and that bloody Big Five Openness stuff is what is at the root of it.
Also the slight aura of smugness about "we're not like those normies who are so jealous and possessive because they're so unevolved, the poor dears" but uh, that's not the part that's said out loud.
I think this is 80% of the way there, but doesn't properly consider the actors involved. Which isn't that surprising, neither the newlywed OP nor a devout Catholic should be expected to understand sluts.
I agree with you that the goal of Aella et al's definition is to convince people that polyamory is "nice," but the target isn't self-deception (sluts fundamentally do not care about that, making love is self-justifying), nor is it the broader public (who will never be convinced). The target of deception is the cuckolded partner at home. They are the audience, and as long as they are persuaded, the system works. One is able to be a slut in a partner-approved way. This is why Aella's definition makes a lot more sense than @ymeshkout's: the difference between polyamory and cheating is the cuckolded partner's reaction.
For reference, here is an old SA
[Note: I'm going to engage in some unwarranted psychoanalysis of our man Scott based on his decade old work. I don't know if SA still defines himself as Asexual, or if it was a passing-phase or a temporary side effect of pharmaceuticals. I don't recall him mentioning it recently, the article is a decade old, and more recently my man got married and has been more socially conservative in general]
Now, compare SA's writing at the time, how he situates himself. At the time, at any rate, much of his schtick was nice nerdy guy who can't talk to girls. Many of his early bangers are explicitly situated around a failure to get girls. At the same time, he defined himself as asexual, as lacking libido. Let's flatten that character into a type within the poly discourse: your nerdy, nebbish, herbivore. Not particularly libidinous, not particularly attractive. He doesn't really desire multiple partners, he barely desires one partner. But, he can be convinced to allow his partner to pursue multiple partners.
Aella, taken as a type, does not require the intellectualizing exercise of creating polyamory. She can just fuck. Fucking is self-justifying: it is pleasant and therefore it is good.
The high libido, attractive partner doesn't need a justification for having multiple partners, any more than the rich capitalist needs a justification for owning multiple large houses while the poor patch up their hovels. The capitalist doesn't need capitalism, indeed he will continue to have his beautiful mansion even if he goes to church and prays "Blessed are the poor" or even if he participates in a communist government. The person who needs to be convinced is the poor. Capitalist propaganda isn't designed to get capitalists to buy things, they will do that on their own. It is designed to get the prole to feel that it is right that the capitalist has much and he has little, it is designed to keep the proletariat from taking action to equalize things. Polyamory is the natural concomitant of Capitalism: to each according to their ability. Monogamy is the natural concomitant of Socialism and Democracy: to each according to their need.
Poly propaganda isn't designed to convince hot, horny people to have more sex, they will do that on their own. It is designed to persuade nebbish, nerdy, borderline asexuals to let them do it, without doing anything about it. Hence the naturalization (Sex at Dawn, everyone wants to do it, things can be no other way we're just being honest about it), hence the moralization, hence the justification of everything. The only party that matters is the SA's of the world, the meek partners who accept; the Aellas of the world will act on their own.
While you have something there, I do think that the Bay Area set (to use that label as a signifier of things I'm vaguely gesturing at with regards to the liberalism, nerdiness, possible clusters of neurodivergence, certainly very involved in 'alternative lifestyles' but with more emphasis on the theoretical underpinnings and philosophies of same, so not yer basic hippies, high earners or in the sphere of high earners, techie, STEM-y, rationalist/rationalist adjacent) are not just the usual swingers or players with a few hot people wanting to persuade lots of lower attractiveness but available (and desperate?) partners to accommodate their cheating under the guise of "this is not cheating or being cuckolded, this is poly and being open and generous and evolved above jealousy".
It does seem to me to be more the "nebbish, nerdy, borderline asexuals" who are persuading each other about this, and it does seem to be more about the vaunted New Relationship Energy (that is, an unceasing - so long as you can find new partners - source of the fizzy, exciting, pink fluffy clouds early stage of infatuation and romantic attraction that dissipates once the novelty wears off). It's not simply sex, it's this romantic attachment they're looking for, and the rest of it is the subsequent rationalisation by theory about how this is totally not old-fashioned cheating or affairs or sleeping around or polygamy/harems and so forth, it's a totally new way of evolved, respectful, open-minded and open-hearted relationships to do away with jealousy and drama and boredom etc.
Sex-positivity is aligned with that, but a separate thing on its own. For the mainstream, as you say, the hot and horny will have no trouble finding people to fuck, and no qualms around fucking, and it will probably go the way of "persuading my partner to give me permission to cheat" rather than the elaborate rituals and hierarchies of the poly as currently practiced bubble. But the current polyamorists are the theoreticians (ethical slut etc.) and very high-minded about it. Compersion, doncha know! Limerance! More jargon! (But ordinary people going poly seems to open the door for all kinds of extra drama, e.g. the trope of the guy who thinks he'll be drowning in pussy if he can just talk his reluctant girlfriend into opening up their relationship, then he finds out she's getting dates every night and he can't score with anyone; people who do 'go poly' and then one of the couple dumps the other because they've found a new love instead, and so on).
As it goes mainstream, well, this song fits 😁
Oh I think Poly has already burst containment and is a common memeplex from the Bay Area to Portland Maine.
My contention is that it has almost no impact on the actual rates of extramarital sex. What it has impacts on is the attitude of the cuckolded partner.
Which is why Aella's definition works: it focuses on the cuckolded partner rather than the cheating partner. In the same way that Financial Capitalism is, in a sense, not about the existence of rich bankers, rich bankers exist under any system, it is about the broad mainstream view of society being that the bankers deserve to be rich. Rich bankers existed under feudalism, but they were despised, subject to sudden expropriation if a king had a mind for it. Cheaters exist whether you have the poly framework or not, at best their justification is a backwards rationalization of what they were doing. The difference with Poly is the view of cuckolded partner on the situation.
Call me Pangloss, but I don't really think all this matters much, things will be as they have always been, some marriages will break up or descend into misery. Since time immemorial it has always been thus and thus shall it always be. Doctors run away with Nurses, Lawyers run away with Paralegals, Bankers run away with Secretaries, Farm Wives run away with Traveling Salesmen while Rich Wives run away with Tennis Instructors, Fathers run off with Babysitters, and Bartenders run off with...well just about everyone what the fuck were you thinking marrying a barkeep to start with? Infidelity is as old as marriage, or maybe even older.
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This is an amazing post.
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Don't forget the bay area virtue of believing in complex things to signal your ability to understand complex things. The more elaborate the definition of ones relationship style, gender identity, or flavour of leftism, the more intelligent one must be.
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I generally understand open marriages to allow sex but not love and dating. A single partner plus guest stars, not a primary and a secondary partner, or several coequal metamores.
I've seen the refinement of solo polyamory and my kneejerk reaction there is "how is this different from cheating/affairs" (if you have a partner) or just "being single and sexually active" (if you don't) but I suppose I'm just too stupid and lacking in Big Five factors to get why this is a different thing altogether 😁
Isn't "metamour" your paramour's partner? As in Alice is dating Bob, who is dating/married to/partnered with Carol. So Alice and Carol aren't involved, but since they're both involved with Bob, this makes them metamours. I really am not cut out for this high falutin' relationship style since I'm too confused about all the jargon!
Same! I regularly had "solo poly" women come up on Tinder and I had no idea how to parse it. It does indeed seem indistinguishable from "just casually fucking for now, not looking for anything serious" and the link you had doesn't offer any insights except that people have an attachment to the "poly" label. It also follows the typical template of doing everything possible to avoid gatekeeping ("just because you're solo poly doesn't mean you can't get married!")
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