With "superiority", I was not exactly referring to your post, but to a general trend I noticed in other posts, where bisexuality and polygamy were (I think, admittedly, half jockyingly) publicized as "evolutionally superior" (?), at least if we were "immortal superbeings". According to mdcaton's post (quote: "I'm often on the defensive when polys talk to me, because there is a good bit of evangelism and insistence that monos are morally inferior, emotionally immature, etc.") that does seem to be a trend, though the Alicorn's post, nor your review seemed to contain any sort of "zealotic" element.
To restate my opinion, I don't think of the polygamous arrangement as necessarily superior, nor inferior, mainly because it's a highly subjective decision to make, and what could work for someone might not work for someone else. On paper, it sure seems to solve many problems -which is why I agreed to give it a try in the first place-. To name a few: the fact that, through you might feel jealousy and some amount of fear (because of the potential risk that your partner might change her mind and unceremoniously "dump" you to enter in a monogamous relationship, which, considering sex and the general level of intimacy involved with "third parties", would in my opinion increase with respect to a "proper" monogamous relationship -by that I mean one in which the people involved are faithful and sincere with one another-, at least if said partner was not exactly sure about what she wanted from a polygamous relationship -so, arguably, this woudl not apply to a "proper" polygamous relationship either, I guess-... but that's debatable, and not really the issue here), cheating would no longer be an issue (though, if you were comfortable and open enough to sleep with other people in a polygamous, I doubt that would have been a cause of worry), and certainly, if something was to happen to one of the two, the other would have the support of third parties and you wouldn't need to worry about him/her facing the situation alone -in that sense, the support-structure seems to be superior-.
That often clashes with the reality of things, and emotions like jealousy, anger, inexpressed fears, competitiveness gone out of control. Of course, those negative aspect could be handled through good communication,which would likely be the key to even a successful monogamous relationship, and therefore a generally good strategy when dealing with unsatisfaction, etc. ... which was one of the reason you stated in favor of polygamy: more often than not, unsatisfaction does not arise from an to give your partner what she wants, but from the inability of even acknowledging that such a need exists, either because of inattentiveness or a general desire to act as if "it was all ok". It was what happened in my case (ironically, at the time we had a polygamous arrangement she was unsatisfied with), through of course that is not enough to make a genetal case in favor or against polygamy.
The only question that remains is: could it have worked, with proper communication, but the added pressures caused by the unfamiliar polygamous context? Or were there deeper problems? I don't really have the answer to that. I woulnd't go with the first answer or principle, because, to be fair, at the time "proper communication" was not exacly abundant (no thanks to my own unwillingness to acknowledge the problem, maybe spurned by the irritation that she had been the one to push me into that situation to begin with).
But in general... I don't know. For the moment, finding "one" right person to be with does seem like a difficult enough problem... falling deeply in love with more than one, and then trying to arrange a situation in which we could "all" be together? I definitively woulnd't say no on principle, despite the past experience (as a matter of fact, I think that it would be impossible to give a definitive qualitative judgement, and each situation should be judged on a case by case basis), but for the moment I don't like my odds (for me, in particular, "emotional" intimacy and the prospect to open up to another person do come easy, and the prospect of developing that kind of connection with more than one person does seem unrealistic, at least in my case -before, it was mostly a physical or intellectual connection, rarely at the same time-).
20 years... on one hand, idealistically, I would say "forever", but looking at the statistics, well... and yet, 20 years... that's almost twice my age, trying to predict what could happen in such a long time span would be impossible -as pointless as trying to predict where I would have been now more than two decades ago would have been-.
The conclusion, I guess, is that if you are comfortable with it, it would be a wonderful arrangement, but that it wouldn't necessarily appeal to everyone (Alicorn mentioned people with her "mental makeup", and indeed I think that part of it is a matter of natural inclination, or at least deeply rooted cultural influence -i.e. bisexuality in Anchient Greece-). At this time, for example, I certainly don't feel the need to give it another try, through that's just me: if anyone is thinking about it, focusing on the worse case scenario won't do them any good, and would probably just end up paralyzing them. People like Alicorn and Elizier certainly seem satisfied by the outcome, so there certainly isn't any reason to dismiss it based solely on peer pressure -always keeping in mind, through, that it's no magical formula to save a failing relationship, nor a fool proof method that guarantees success, or improves your chances (as I said, the benefits are balanced by other kinds of complications, so I woulnd't necessarily call it a "more easy to handle" arrangement -it could be, if you are prepared for it, open minded, not jealous, suitably trusing (when it comes to emotional intimacy, for example, I am not, despite efforts to correct that)-)-.
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.