In yesterday's small-scale questions thread, @cjet79 asks why the song "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers has had such staying power, famously staying in the UK singles charts decades after its initial release. Some explanations (including my own) point to its compositional elements; others focus on its lyrics and subject matter. @100ProofTollBooth argues that it's a very universal and relatable song, as "The experience of infidelity (to some degree) is common to many (most? idk) people."
I'm curious if this is really the case, so I decided to go Aella mode and created a simple survey to find out about people's experiences with infidelity. It consists of a few demographic questions (age, sex, sexual orientation, relationship style), then asks you if you've ever had an unfaithful partner, then asks you if you've ever been unfaithful to a partner.
Completely anonymous, and I've set it up so the form doesn't collect email addresses if you're logged in.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
My answers are not likely to be useful and my concerns about most of the questions probably don't generalize...
(eg, what does "without your knowledge or consent" mean in an open relationship, where I might well consent to broad ground rules without needing or wanting to know about every ERP partner? I put that down as "no" under the spirit of 'infidelity', but by the strict text? On the other hand, most social conservatives would see the actual open-relationships as infidelity with more steps... or hot, given the natal sex of the partners involved.)
That said, "What kinds of romantic relationships have you had?" could probably use a 'mix of above' answer before Other. I would be genuinely surprised if there were as many people who'd only had poly relationships as who have had a mix of poly and mono ones.
((I don't think jealousy is strictly universal, but its absence is closer to a form of damage than a strength; even in poly relationships, people like the underlying relationship claim that it represents. The extent cuckolding as a kink tends to be a marmite -- normal people either absolutely hate it or really like it -- suggests at least the fear of infidelity is extremely common.))
The great myth of polyamory (broadly defined) is that it is the lack of jealousy, rather than the negotiation of jealousy against other goods and utilities.
Jealousy is never something you want to predicate a healthy relationship on unless you really want to play with fire and risk a complete dissolution of whatever happens to be good in your relationship. One built off “power dynamics,” and “who needs the other the least,” is one a normal person should probably leave. A lot of people in relationships are afraid to discuss their insecurities because of things like this. They’re afraid of the risk of saying something like “I don’t like it when you talk this way to other girls,” that the man they’re with will use that against them at some point. If I were in a relationship personally, I take the devotion I make to the other person seriously. If they outright said they feel jealous that I do X with another woman (provided it wasn’t an overt demand as a way to control my behavior in general), then I would simply stop doing it to preserve their feelings; and likewise I would expect the same with them.
An exception big enough to park a Mack truck. The list of irrational and impossible demands a woman, or a man, can put on you because it makes them jealous rapidly limits your life in ways that are incompatible with modernity. The harem and the chador are stable equilibria, everything else requires that someone eat some jealousy on occasion.
My point isn't that polyamory is built on jealousy, it's that the polyamorous (and I include in this category those pursuing a lifestyle of serial monogamy) are trading off the possibility of feeling jealous for things that they want.
The executive's wife who accepts her philandering husband is trading off her jealousy against having a stable marriage, husband who provides for her, her kids having a father. The husband in an open relationship is trading off his jealousy of his wife for his own opportunity to sleep with other women.
And most men and women, post sexual revolution in an environment of serial monogamy, trade the jealousy of knowing that their partner had lovers before marriage, for the opportunity to take their own lovers before marriage. Premarital sex is exactly this kind of tradeoff, it's merely temporal separation rather than physical.
Where polyamorous relationships typically fail is that it's really hard for people to get enough out of them to balance against their jealousy.
Well that’s always the problem. One way I remember this got dealt with growing up was whenever there was disapproval of the kind touched upon, your spouse would typically talk to someone on your side of the family about it in a fairly lowkey way, and then later on the guns get pointed at you from among your own relatives to keep you in line. And the same thing happened the other way around. It wasn’t uncommon for a boyfriend to talk to his girlfriends sister (or mother) about something she’s doing that he doesn’t like; or a girlfriend to talk to your brother or cousin or close friend about something you do that she doesn’t like.
For myself, I can tell you that having babysat neighbor kids growing up and a number of female relatives, one thing I’ve found is that as a general rule it’s best to teach women through the example of other women. Because their behavior so commonly exhibits a natural loathing and contempt of other women, if you manage to convince your wife (or daughter or whoever) that she’s behaving similar to a woman she despises, you can practically cure them entirely of an objectionable trait which is your desire to suppress (almost instantaneously; I’ve seen it in real time).
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