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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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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.