Blueberry comments on Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous? - Less Wrong

48 Post author: WrongBot 26 June 2010 02:50AM

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Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 29 June 2010 02:52:58PM 12 points [-]

I should probably provide a corollary to this. It's an interesting question and deserves more than a pithy one-word response.

Logistics:

It is difficult enough to coordinate the work diaries, social calendars, birthdays, anniversaries, dietary requirements, travel plans, in-laws, etc. of two reasonably busy people who live in close proximity to one another. The more people and locations you add, the more it compounds any orchestration problem.

Economics:

I claim romantic relationships do not enjoy the benefits of economies of scale, and the overhead of each additional relationship actually increases logarithmically. I also claim additional partners are subject to diminishing returns. In fairness, if this is accurate, it is less of a case against polyamory and more of a case against an arbitrarily high number of partners. Still, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the optimal number of typical partners for a given person is between 0 and 2.

"Love Anarchy":

Much like the international system, my lovelife has no police force. I am generally quite pleased with this state of affairs. In a monogamous relationship my partner and I each have a single trade partner for our romantic resources. The quantity of those resources may or may not be to our exact liking, but the distribution is not contested. This is a relatively stable system. Once a third (or fourth, or fifth...) party becomes involved, we have a negotiation problem.

There's no feasible method for someone to commit to a set distribution of time/effort/attention between partners. I'm not saying there should be, just pointing out that such things can't realistically be budgeted for or enforced. The absence of such a mechanism makes polyamory highly unstable compared to monogamy, though I suppose this only really sits in the pro-monogamy column if you place a premium on stability.

Comment author: Blueberry 29 June 2010 05:22:39PM 4 points [-]

You're right that the logistics are indeed more complicated in a polyamorous relationship; that's probably one of the hardest parts of polyamory. But I'm not sure I agree with:

There's no feasible method for someone to commit to a set distribution of time/effort/attention between partners. I'm not saying there should be, just pointing out that such things can't realistically be budgeted for or enforced.

Even in monogamous relationships there are time and energy conflicts. People need to schedule their time between their partner, friends, family, work, hobbies, and personal time. The only method I know for committing to and scheduling time is to make a schedule with your partner(s) and discuss it with them regularly to make sure you're keeping to it. You can schedule slots of time, and then if you're missing that time with them, there's a problem in that relationship and it needs to be reconsidered.

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 29 June 2010 05:39:34PM 5 points [-]

It's one thing to compete for time and attention against a hobby or a job. It's another thing entirely to compete for time and attention against another human being whose needs are essentially the same as yours.