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Blueberry comments on Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous? - Less Wrong
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I would guess that poly relationships where one partner prefers monogamy, but is "settling" for polyamory to be with a particular person, are not likely to work well (and vice versa). But this ignores that some people, even "cute" people, may actually prefer polyamory, even if they can get monogamy.
del
This sets off my alarm bells. While evidence for such an anti-egalitarian position is possible and may even be correct, your assertion is general enough that it requires a great deal of supporting evidence. And such evidence is not generally acknowledged in the academic literature on the topic, so far as I've read, so I'm doubly skeptical.
You're also equating status with physical attractiveness, which is demonstrably not true, especially in men (in modern American society).
del
While this may be an accurate description in general of how people have evolved to behave, it's not "polyamory" as I understand it. Polyamory can be thought of as a conscious, explicit attempt to fight these natural tendencies.
del
Polyamory as popularly defined is basically a kick in the teeth to evolution. The reason that I brought it up here in the first place is that it is an attempt to use rationality to overcome perceived deficiencies in how we've evolved to form relationships. More than anything else, poly is seeing a love triangle in a movie and demanding to know why "both" isn't an option.
Polygamy by definition involves relationships in which one man has several wives. Polyamory excludes those relationships as unegalitarian (generally; there are always exceptions). You can continue to argue about evolutionary psychology if you want, but that field can never tell us what we should do, only who we are (and even then it's very easy to get it wrong).
Not necessarily. The fraternal polyandry practiced in Tibet is polygamy, and it would still be polygamy even if it were the only kind of polygamy in the world. You seem to mean "polygyny".
Thank you for the correction; I was indeed speaking of polygyny.
The principle of my point still holds for polygamy, however. Polyandry is no more egalitarian than polygyny; any relationship in which only one person is permitted to have other partners lies outside polyamory's accepted definition.
I often wonder about that, too.
To clarify the 'degree' relationship I should add that the relationship is not linear. The optimal status for the man to have is slightly higher but not too much. In fact, when the perceptions of status gap between the partners is too great the guy is well served by raising the girl's status or slightly lowering his own. People get insecure when they think they have no bargaining power at all, insecurity is dangerous.
Yes, this is exactly what I meant when I said that "settling" for polyamory was a bad idea. I was thinking of a non-monogamous relationship I was involved in where my partner strongly preferred monogamy, but settled for non-monogamy out of insecurity. It didn't work out very well.
I wish that people making such sweeping generalizations such as these would remember to note that these are statistical trends, and not necessarily applicable to any two specific individuals.
Agreed. However, it's also good to be wary of using this as an excuse not to update our priors, or to expect an exception without evidence which supports an exception from the trend. I frequently catch myself inching towards either.
Not that I strongly believe the quoted claim, for reasons such as WrongBot and Stefan's above exchange.
I've seen several relationships like this (both the "poly agreeing to be mono" and "mono agreeing to accept poly" variants) and you're right, that does tend to create more or less tension in the relationship. In some cases the partners do manage to adjust and everyone has a rather happy relationship, in other cases it's just a question of time when this difference will make the relationship fall apart.