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alexflint comments on Polyhacking - Less Wrong
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Thank you for sharing this!
My own concern with being polyamorous is that having N times as many relationships seems like it will involve at least N times as much relationship drama, and the drama of one relationship seems to be about as much as I can handle. Much of the drama in long term relationships seems uncorrelated with jealousy, so it's far from obvious to me that poly relationships would involve systematically less drama.
Can you give some examples of the sort of drama to which you are referring? It may be that some of the poly people here will be able to shed some light on how/if they deal with such things.
Also, with the extra practise they get, some polyamorous people can offer excellent advice on relationship issues.
Alexflint is right, in a sense -- the more people involved in a romantic relationship, the more potential points of stress and failure there are. Not to mention, poly people are often operating without a net or a manual, so to speak -- there's little cached wisdom that might help us specifically, and a wide variety of possible configurations into which any poly group of N people might fall.
It has been my observation that there's also more potential (if not in direct symmetry with the increased failure modes) for coping strategies, supporting those in a difficult time and generally things that make a relationship robust. Some drama is harder ("you aren't spending enough time with me and all your other partners are getting your attention"), some is easier ("I have no interest in seeing/doing this with you"). Eliezer mentions the comfort he gets knowing that if he can't do something with his girlfriend, she has other paramours who are happy to do it instead.
It's my perception that poly does indeed involve more drama than monogamy.
I have found that a reliable way to reduce relationship drama is to explicitly prioritize alternative conflict-management and -resolution tools.
Plus, you know, filter for low-drama people. Poly is an advantage there, as there is opportunity to observe their drama-generation and -mitigation. And one can carry out more reference checks.
Eeheehee. Is it considered poor form among poly folk to respond to "Want to go out with me?" with "Can you provide references from your past and/or current partners?"
I can only report from direct experience, and experience reported to me, that there certainly seems to be at least one geeky poly loose social web where this is said with a smile and a laugh... but is followed up with "you're welcome to contact them directly".
I have seen mostly-joking forms to do this in text, too. Yes, really. Again, while it's mostly not serious, there is a serious signal of "no skeletons in the closet".
I suspect this is more about a certain kind geeky attitudes and aptitudes than it is about poly. q.v. "geek flirt".
Oh, and I've also seen "references available on request" after an amicably resolved breakup. Again, within the sub-communities that have this geeky approach to sex and to relationships, it's a powerful signal.
(Enjoying the meta of posting this during a trip to the USA where I'm seeing LDRs, amicable exes and friends within these geeky sub-communities. There's a presentation in a tech conference in there somewhere too, but it's mostly about poly and friends-known-through-poly.)
It's actually O(N^2) if you think about it. 2 people = 1 relationship; 3 people = 3 relationships; 4 people = 12 relationships.
This assumes context-insensitivity. If I'm in a triad and my relationship with #2 is different depending on whether #3 is around or not, then 3 people have six relationships.
Of course, once I acknowledge context as mattering, I'm very close to acknowledging that even dyads aren't simple. If my relationship with my husband is different depending on whether his dad is around or not, then 2 people have an uncountable number of relationships.
That seems more consistent with my experience with relationships.
I conclude that the kind of relationship that can be counted with the kind of math you propose here is fairly irrelevant to my actual relationships.
Uncountable? Really? You have as many relationships as the cardinality of the real line? In that case you could end infinitely-many relationships and still have the same number left.
Snark aside, you're just redefining what a relationship is. My friend may not behave exactly the same in various contexts, but he's not a different person and it's not a different friendship. I don't have a thousand parents (or a thousand "parentships") just because my two parents interact with me in different contexts.
A much better point to make would be that people manage O(N^2) friendship relations without apparent difficulty. Yet it seems pretty clear to me that a romantic relationship requires much more effort (more "emotional resources" we might say) than all but the closest of friendships.
I endorse setting snark aside.
I agree that we understand relationships differently. Whether that's due to me "redefining" relationship away from some default baseline that previously existed, I'm less clear about, but I don't suppose it matters much.
I agree that you don't have a thousand parents. Neither are there twelve people in a quad. Whatever it is you're counting, it isn't people.
I agree that people manage lots of friendships without apparent difficulty, and I agree that most romantic relationships require more effort than most friendships. Whether that's a better point to make, I'm less clear about, but I don't suppose it matters much.