I think that the issue here is something Alicorn explained in her post.
"I want to be someone's top romantic priority, ideally symmetrically. [This is satisfied by me and MBlume having an explicitly primary relationship instead of each having a bunch of undifferentiated ones.]"
I guess that the original poster didn't mean to say "special", but rather "unique" or "exclusive". In Alicorn's post, it is made clear that they don't have a "bunch of undifferentiated" relationships, but in my opinion, that's what the first commenter understood, and probably, thinking about it, the idea of being so easily repleaced made him think "she considers me like a car's wheel: I am not there? No problem, someone else will be". That doesn't have anything to do with his perception of himself, but with the perception of him he believes his partner might have.
Maybe I should not have put there those comments about children's behaviour, because they seem to distract fromt he main point, I just wanted to note that even in a situation where fear of abandonment is not justified (the mother in question will always be their mother, even after the birth of her new child), there is still jealousy, as well as a subconscious fear. As pointed out by Alicorn, and considering adults and romantic relationship (which can, in fact, end), there is "Anxiety about the possibility that my primary would be stolen away by some more appealing secondary.". In this case, we are talking about an event that could actually happen, and has to be accounted for. In the end, Alicorn concludes that the odds of their relationship ending because her boyfriend might prefer another woman to her would be lower than those of them breaking out because of simple loss of interest.
Also, in the thread where Alicorn's partner talked about his view of the experience, occasional feelings of jealousy had been mentioned. Who said that emotions were rational? When had they ever been? Just because you intellectually know that you matter to a person, and repeat to yourself that you shouldn't be jealous, doesn't mean that you cant control what you are feeling. If being happy or angry, or sad, or jealous, was a simple matter of sitting down and pondering the situation, then it would be much easier. What could the original poster have been thinking about? I will try to make a wild guess: "if she loves me, shouldn't she want me to be in her current lover's place?" Or "how can I call this special, how can I believe that I truly matter to her, knowing that, had not I been there, she would be doing the exact same thing with someone else? How can I treasure this moment as if it was unique, knowing that I could easily be switched with any other element of a small set?" Or, even, "am I lacking something? Why am I unable to satisfy him, to not make him desire to be with other people? doesn't he love me enough because of some inadequacy? then maybe I am not the right person to be with him... ".
I am not saying that those feelings and thoughts are what one would call rational or logical, but I can easily see how they could arise. A simple bias? Maybe. Note that I am not stating that as a proto-argument against polygamy, I am simply trying to see where the original poster might have come from... I mean, try to think back to the time you first decided to give polygamy a try... did everything go well the first time, without problems or roadblocks? Reading some of the post in Alicorn's boyfriend's thread, it certainly doesn't seem to be that way. Jealousies, attrites, conflicts, all augmented by the sole fact that, well, with more than two persons the dynamics are more complicated. Not that anyone should get discouraged because of such things, but from the posts of other polygamists, well... they all make it seem such a fluid, natural things to do, as if we were simply talking about getting rid of old intellectual chains and they "never" mention any roadblocks, acting as if they had always been above such silly, mundane emotions like jealousies or fear of inadequacy (i.e. from knowing that their partner thinks they are not "enough"). In particular, with regards to this last point, I should note that Alicorn herself considers "significant" that her boyfriend later told her that, knowing what he knows now, he would have agreed to a monogamous relationship in the past. It's nice to know, even if you don't intend to return to that situation. Others, reading the posts, don't seem to have that problem, and actually are happy to know that there will be other people to "pick up the slack", so to speak, when it comes to satisfying their partner's needs (sexual, emotional,...) I must admit that I find that view admiringly selfless, but that in my brief polygamous stint that was an advantage I never experienced (rather, I had to deal with hidden and inexpressed resentment, feelings of inadequacy -at the time it made me think of one of Dario Fo's work, in which a man asked his partner if they could have an open relationship, and then was distressed by the thought that he could be so easily replaced-).
Personally, the only thing I disagree with is the view of polygamy as this sort of panacea to save a relationship (now or in the future) from lack of interest. In my experience, the main issue in such cases is lack of communication. Without it, you could very well end up "alone in a crowd". I would say that that's where the problem originates most of the time, in monogamous or polygamous couples. If, as Elyzier said, the presence of more partners could help take some weight off your shoulders, it is also true that it adds a new layer of complexity to the whole situation, and I would say that the more difficult dynamics balance out the potential benefits.
I must say that, for me, the experience has not been a very good one. Mainly because of the aforementioned problems, which I was not able to spot in time. Still, I am open minded enough not to base my judgement of all polygamous relationship on my failed one. Who knows, maybe it was not the right time, maybe I could even give it another try in the future... but, my experience has made it rather difficult to consider it somehow "superior" to a monogamous relationship. I would not say it is "inferior" either, just different. It has its own set of difficulties and drawbacks. Consider that the "inner monologue" was almost straigh out of my ex's mouth. I never heard a word of it while we were together (I noticed the unease, but, as people tend to do with uncomfortable truths, I left it alone at the time). All things considered I think that a polygamous relationship "could" work beautifully (some of them certainly do), and certainly, Elizier, for example, doesn't seem to be bothered by such thoughts (considering he never even mentioned something akin to "explicitly primary relationship instead of each having a bunch of undifferentiated ones"). However, I think that expecting every experience to be like that, and to go smoothly, without obstacles such as those mentioned above, would mean being a tad too optimistic.
I also dispute the fact that it should be considered inherently "superior" to a monogamous relationship. With respect to what measure? It seems like an awfully subjective judgement to make. If we took the ability of such an arrangement to keep everyone involved happy or satisfied, I would say that it does not fare better or worse than a monogamous relationship -it has its own set of "different" problems and complications, and I certainly wouldn't call it "fail proof"-. Apparently polygamy and bisexuality seem to be "better" from the point of view of "immortal superbeings". I must admit that I don't understand the reason why. Experimentally checking such a fact would be impossible (as there are no moral superbeings I know of), and I wouldn't know how to frame such a sketchy, undefined problem in a suitably formal fashion. The closest scenario I have ever seen depicted was Asimov's description of aliens with long life-spans, in his fictional works (and that sort of promiscous relationships did seem to carry its own share of problems -it seemed to make the whole business "devoid of meaning", as the original poster feared-, so I would call it a different, but not necessarily superior lifestyle). In general, when it comes to bisexuality or polygamy, I am open minded, but avoid attaching labels like "evolutionally superior" (as I saw in a post, I don't remember the exact wording) to them, and in general I cannot see how its diffusion could be tied to longer life-span and society's advancements (Ancient Greeks, for example, were largely bisexual, and yet nowadays, after Illuminism, and with much longer life-expectancy, that does not seem to be the trend, even in academic circles) or evolution (polygyny being the most common form of polygamy in verterbates, but polygamy being relatively uncommon amond human beings). Certainly, I could see how a more open minded society could be more tolerant towards those alternative lifestyles, and they could become more diffiused, but, for example, the fact that bisexuality is tolerated, nowadays, doesn't seem to be leading to a return to ancient greece's custom, despite the increase in knowledge and longevity, and the process of secularization.
I guess that the original poster didn't mean to say "special", but rather "unique" or "exclusive".
Ok, then I would ask how the OP feels if their SO talked to another person. Or became friends with. Or found attractive. Or flirted with. There are some things that we can expect to be unique or exclusive in just about any relationship. (Certainly there are many things that are exclusive in my own primary relationship!) So it's more a matter of changing where that line is drawn.
And as far as this: "Anxiety about the possib...
This is a post about applied luminosity in action: how I hacked myself to become polyamorous over (admittedly weak) natural monogamous inclinations. It is a case history about me and, given the specific topic, my love life, which means gooey self-disclosure ahoy. As with the last time I did that, skip the post if it's not a thing you desire to read about. Named partners of mine have given permission to be named.
1. In Which Motivation is Acquired
When one is monogamous, one can only date monogamous people. When one is poly, one can only date poly people.1 Therefore, if one should find oneself with one's top romantic priority being to secure a relationship with a specific individual, it is only practical to adapt to the style of said individual, presuming that's something one can do. I found myself in such a position when MBlume, then my ex, asked me from three time zones away if I might want to get back together. Since the breakup he had become polyamorous and had a different girlfriend, who herself juggled multiple partners; I'd moved, twice, and on the way dated a handful of people to no satisfactory clicking/sparking/other sound effects associated with successful romances. So the idea was appealing, if only I could get around the annoying fact that I was not, at that time, wired to be poly.
Everything went according to plan: I can now comfortably describe myself and the primary relationship I have with MBlume as poly. <bragging>Since moving back to the Bay Area I've been out with four other people too, one of whom he's also seeing; I've been in my primary's presence while he kissed one girl, and when he asked another for her phone number; I've gossiped with a secondary about other persons of romantic interest and accepted his offer to hint to a guy I like that this is the case; I hit on someone at a party right in front of my primary. I haven't suffered a hiccup of drama or a twinge of jealousy to speak of and all evidence (including verbal confirmation) indicates that I've been managing my primary's feelings satisfactorily too.</bragging> Does this sort of thing appeal to you? Cross your fingers and hope your brain works enough like mine that you can swipe my procedure.
2. In Which I Vivisect a Specimen of Monogamy
It's easier to get several small things out of the way, or route around them, than to defeat one large thing embedded in several places. Time to ask myself what I wanted. A notable virtue of polyamory is that it's extremely customizable. (Monogamy could be too, in theory, but comes with a strong cultural template that makes it uncomfortably non-default to implement and maintain nonstandard parameters.) If I could take apart what I liked about monogamy, there seemed a good chance that I could get some of those desiderata in an open relationship too (by asking my cooperative would-be primary). The remaining items - the ones that were actually standing between me and polyamory, not just my cached stereotype thereof - would be a more manageable hacking target. I determined that I could, post-hack, keep and pursue the following desires:
These things weren't the sole components of my monogamous inclinations, but what was left was a puny little thing made of ugh fields and aesthetic tastes and the least portions of the above. (For example, the first bullet point, being someone's top romantic priority, is 95% of the whole wanting to be someone's exclusive romantic priority. That last 5% is not that huge.)
The vivisection process also revealed that a lot of my monogamous inclinations were composed of the bare fact that monogamy had always been the specified arrangement. Being presumed by the agreed-upon boundaries of my relationships to be monogamous meant that if either party went off and was non-monogamous, this was Breaking A Rule. My brain does not like it when people (including me) Break Rules2 or try to change them too close to the time of the proposed would-be exception, generally speaking, but doesn't object to rules being different in different contexts. If I entered a relationship where, from the get-go, poly was how it was supposed to work, this entire structure would be silent on the subject of monogamy. Pre-vivisection I would have considered it more closely embedded than that.
3. In Which I Use My Imagination
Humans respond to incentives. We do this even when it comes to major decisions that should be significant enough in themselves to swamp said incentives. Encoding the switch to poly as a grand, dramatic sacrifice I was preparing to make for cinematic reasons (advance the plot, make soulful faces at the camera, establish my character to the rapt audience as some sort of long-suffering altruist giving up a Part Of Who I Am for True Love) was admittedly appealing. But it wasn't appealing to the bits of my brain that were doing the heavy lifting, just to the part that generates fiction and applies the templates to real life whenever possible. Better to find ways to cater to the selfish, practical crowd in my internal committee.
Polyamory has perks.
So I imagined a model of myself with one modification: the debris of my monogamous inclinations that were still left after I'd pared away the non-intrusive parts were not present in this model. Imaginary Model Alicorn was already finished with her hack and comfortable with plugging into a poly network. Contemplating how she went about her life, I noted the following:
So I spent some time thinking about Imaginary Model Alicorn. When her life started seeming like a pleasant fantasy, instead of a far-out alternate universe, that was progress; when it sounded like a viable plan for the near future, instead of an implausible flight of fancy, that was progress too.
4. In Which I Put Some Brainbits in Mothballs
At this point my interest in being poly was thoroughly motivated and I already had a comfortably broken-in new self-model to move into - if and when I managed the hack. It wasn't done. I still had to get rid of:
Respectively, here's what I did to get these brainbits to stop struggling long enough that I could box them up and put them into deep storage (forgive the metaphors in which I appear to make faces at myself. I did not actually need a mirror for any of this; those bits are symbols for the attitudes associated with the mental actions):
5. In Which Everything Goes According To Plan And I Am Repeatedly Commended For Having Magical Powers
Field-testing has confirmed that I'm doing something right: I'm happy and comfortable. (Also, spontaneously all kinds of popular. If I'd known I could get this many people interested by hacking poly I might have done it sooner.) I would reverse the hack if my primary decided he wanted to be monogamous with me, but otherwise don't see a likely reason to want to.
1I'm counting willingness that one's sole partner have other partners (e.g. being an arm of a V) to be a low-key flavor of being poly oneself, not a variety of tolerant monogamy. I think this is the more reasonable way to divide things up given a two-way division, but if you feel that I mischaracterize the highly simplified taxonomy, do tell.
2The details of what my brain considers to be Rules and how it protests when they are broken or self-servingly altered are mildly interesting but irrelevant to this post.
3I don't think I'd describe myself as enjoying drama, but it's interesting and I'm drawn to it, and if I don't keep track of this carefully enough I go around starting it without realizing what I'm doing until too late. Generating actual drama is a good way to hurt people, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the same appetite appears to be indulged by working out the intricacies of relationship parameters, and keeping track of the structure of a polycule in which I am an atom, even if no drama per se exists.
4If the comments I linked when I first mentioned this aesthetic don't adequately explain it to you, perhaps listen to the song "Somewhere That's Green" from Little Shop of Horrors. The exact details in the lyrics thereof are not what I ever had in mind (it's designed to highlight and poke fun at the singing character's extremely modest ambitions) but the emotional context - minus the backstory where the character currently has an abusive boyfriend - is just right.