= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Polyhacking
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:
- 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 eventually want to get married. (This one isn't in the works as of this time, but isn't precluded by anything I'm doing now. Open marriages are a thing.) Relatedly, I want to produce spawn within wedlock, and to have reproductive exclusivity (i.e. no generating half-siblings for said spawn on either side of the family). [MBlume was fine with this mattering to me.]
- I want to be able to secure attention on demand - even though I didn't anticipate needing this option routinely. My model of myself indicated that I would feel more comfortable with my primary going off with other girls if I knew that I was entitled to keep him home, for status- and security-related reasons. Actually requiring this of him in practice is rare. [We invented the term "pairbonding" to refer to designated periods of time when we are not to be distracted from one another.]
- I want to be suitably paranoid about STIs. [We worked out acceptable standards for this well in advance.]
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:
- She got to date MBlume. (This one was important.)
- When I considered who else besides MBlume I might want to date if I lived in the relevant area and was poly, I found that I had a list. In several cases, the people on the list were folks I couldn't date if they were going to be 100% of my significant others or if I was going to be 100% of theirs - some had the wrong gametes or other features for hypothetical future spawn-production, some were already thoroughly poly and weren't about to abandon that (or, where applicable, other partner(s)) for me, some were incompletely satisfactory in other ways that I'd find frustrating if they were my sole partner but could overlook if they were supplemented appropriately. Imaginary Model Alicorn could date these people and wouldn't have to rely on hypotheticals to learn what it would be like.
- She acquired a certain level of status (respect for her mind-hacking skills and the approval that comes with having an approved-of "sensible" romantic orientation) within a relevant subculture. She got to write this post to claim said status publicly, and accumulate delicious karma. And she got to make this meta bullet point.
- She had a way to live comfortably in the Bay Area within arm's reach of lots of her friends.
- She had a non-destructive outlet for her appetite for social drama3.
- She had firsthand information about both ways to orchestrate her love life, and even if she wanted to go back to monogamy eventually for some reason, she'd be making an informed decision.
- She had to check fewer impulses and restrain fewer urges to remark on the attributes of people around her, because the consequences for being interpreted incorrectly (or correctly) as expressing romantic or sexual interest in arbitrary people weren't as big a deal.
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:
- My aesthetic keening for a perfect, pretty, self-contained monogamous setup4.
- Resentment that I ought to have to self-modify to get some things I wanted, instead of the universe being set up so I could comfortably retain my factory settings.
- The difference between "top priority" and "exclusive priority".
- My impulse to retain the right to claim victim status if certain things went wrong (e.g. if I were faithful in a supposedly monogamous relationship, and then I wound up with an STI because my SO slept with someone else, I would be the wronged party and could tremble my lip at my faithless partner and demand the sympathy of my friends, instead of being a casualty of an accident yielded by allowable behaviors and entitled to nothing but a sigh of regret).
- Anxiety about the possibility that my primary would be stolen away by some more appealing secondary.
- Loss aversion, which wanted to restrain me from giving up the potential to date people who would consider ever having been poly a dealbreaker. (Note: I implemented what I believe to be a reversible hack, so I didn't have to worry about not being able to enter a monogamous relationship if that ever seemed called for).
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):
- Replacement. Cultivated a new aesthetic according to which polyamory was the "prettier" style. (Each aesthetic has the weakness of working primarily when the people around me are all doing the same thing, and I don't know how to fix that yet; but I was going to move into an area and subculture with lots of poly people anyway.)
- Rolled my eyes at myself and listed prior self-modifications I'd undertaken, then asking if those goals were less important to me than getting the benefits of being poly or if I regretted those prior hacks.
- Raised an eyebrow at myself and asked what, exactly, was the added value of exclusivity. Question dissolved on sufficiently skeptical inspection.
- Pointed out that victim status is not actually particularly valuable. I have acquired a better caliber of friends than I had when this brainbit appears to have crystallized, and could reasonably expect sympathy from most of them whether or not I was technically the victim of someone else's wrongdoing. And I can tremble my lip as much as I want, for all the good that will do.
- Weighed the badness of losing an SO to someone vs. just plain losing one due to dissatisfaction; determined difference to be insignificant, at least without more detailed information about the "someone" which I could not generate ex hypothesi. Noted that I would hardly improve my odds of retaining an SO by demanding a relationship style dispreferred by said SO. And the relevant individual had indicated his preference to be polyamory.
- "Who exactly are these people? Do I know any of them? Not any who I'd want to date in any recognizable scenario. Okay then, the class as a whole is to be counted a less valuable opportunity than the class of poly people (which notably includes MBlume)."
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.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Comments (603)
My favorite part, at which there was actual LOLing:
"•[Imaginary Model Alicorn] acquired a certain level of status (respect for her mind-hacking skills and the approval that comes with having an approved-of "sensible" romantic orientation) within a relevant subculture. She got to write this post to claim said status publicly, and accumulate delicious karma. And she got to make this meta bullet point."
Sometimes, I find myself just smirking at this community with the sense of 'I fukken love this place'. Often I find it pulling out vague thoughts and concepts I hadn't fully thought out, and then add to it. This is one of the more useful thoughts that has been fleshed out for me; that polyhacking is a possibility and quite possibly worth considering in the future. It could be a way to suit something to myself, because monogamy seems impossible to work into a successful scenario. I would like some intimate romantic company, without the responsibility of being the one sole person to satisfy anothers' needs, and not being grounded to one person would keep me from getting bored and exploring more. Self-hacking is a fun practice, although I prefer the term 'mental rearrangement'
Since I first read this about a year ago, it had had an interesting side effect. I am less able to enjoy fiction where the plot requires a monogamous assumption to function. Plots and Tropes like "Love Triangle", "Who Will Zie Choose?", "Can't Date Them, Not the One", and some "Cheating Spouse" and "Jealous Spouse" now seem weird and artificial to me (unless the poly option is considered and discarded).
I was never a huge fan of romance or romantic comedy, so this is no great loss. It is an interesting minor memetic hazard though.
That kind of story doesn't assume that polygamy is nonexistent. It only assumes that polygamy is rare enough that it's pretty unlikely as a solution. If a similar percentage of people are willing to participate in polyamory as are gay, that's around 5%.. The odds that three random people in a love triangle, who aren't already selected for polyamory, are all polyamorous will then be 1 in 8000. That's small enough that the story really doesn't need to consider and then discard the option.
Judging from how many nominally monogamous people switched to being nominally polygamous in my social circle as the social norm changed, versus how many didn't, I strongly doubt that a plurality of the population is sufficiently exclusively and innately monogamous that considering alternatives is a waste of time.
Then again, I also doubt that 95% of the population is exclusively and innately heterosexual. OTOH, I've never lived in a normatively bisexual community, so I have minimal data
Amusingly, I find I'm subject to this effect despite being happily in a monogamous relationship myself, simply by virtue of living in an increasingly poly-normative social environment. Culture-default handling of traditional gender roles often have this effect on me as well.
By analogy with an Idiot Plot which dissolves in the presence of smart characters, a "Muggle Plot" is any plot which dissolves in the presence of transhumanism and polyamory.
Shortly after generalizing this abstraction, someone at a party told me the original tale of the Tin Woodsman, in which there are two men vying for the attention of a healer woman who gives them replacement metal body parts while constructing a whole new body out of the spares. In the end, she decides that the men she's been healing are mechanical and therefore unloveable, and goes off with the new man she's constructed.
"Ah," I said, "a Muggle Plot."
They're surprisingly common once you start looking. I originally generalized it while watching the romantic subplot in Madoka. Blah blah, not a real human, blah blah, love rival..
As cool as that term sounds, I'm not sure I like it. I think it's too strongly reinforcing of ideas like superiority of rationalists over non-rationalists. Even in cases where rationalists are just better at things, it seems like it's encouraging thinking of Us and Them to an unnecessary degree.
Also, assuming there is a good enough reason to convince me that the term should be used, why is transhumanism-and-polyamory the set of powers defining the non-muggles? LessWrong isn't that overwhelmingly poly, is it?
I thought for a while, and I really can't imagine any cases of works which would be unsuitable for all LWers that arn't worth hanging around and arguing about. I agree. We should be calling these people ignorant and criticising their work, not assigning them a permanent class division, shaking our heads, and going back to our camp.
I don't really see the inherent superiority idea. Seems like there should be plenty of interesting ways to mess up everything with polyamory and transhumanism as well as with monogamy and bioconservatism, just like muggles and wizards both have failure modes, just different.
Plots which are just about people not being rational are a subspecies of "Idiot Plots". Plots which are about people not behaving like SF con-goers are "Muggle Plots".
http://oz.wikia.com/wiki/Nimmie_Amee
The retconned version is a bit more of a transhumanist story. Nick Chopper abandoned Nimmie Amee after his series of cursed injuries deprived him of his heart — construed here as the seat of the emotions. He was (some time later) fitted with a new heart; but it was a kind heart, not a loving heart, and so he didn't return to her.
Aside from the anatomic specifics, it's a problem of maintaining goals under self-modification!
Requesting clarification on a point in reply to this post because it doesn't deserve it's own Discussion post but I want to know, and since the core question is Muggle Plots I can't think of a better point.
Basically, I'm not sure whether the following hypothetical scenario counts as a "Muggle Plot" (in Elizier's sense of a plot a rationalist would easily be able to avert) or not. The scenario:
-An individual, A, splits into two individuals (called B and C for distinction). This is a philosophical style fission- in every sense in which it is physically possible, B and C are each identical to the original.
-A was and B and C are selfish individuals. B and C get into a serious fight (let's say a fight to the death, though I think that's peripheral) over Selfish Gain X, a gain which one of them can have but not both by it's nature. There is no intelligent solution to the problem of X that gives both of them even 50% of what they want.
Although many people here would argue that this is a Muggle Plot as B and C are the same individual, I see no contradiction in B and C's semi-utility functions in acting selfishly and ignoring the other's desires. However, given arguments that A, B, and C are the same person some people might call it irrational.
Not what I'd call a Muggle Plot, no. See also, The Fate of the Phoenix by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. Can be read without its predecessor novel.
Yeah, I have this problem too. I can still write mono characters, but I'm more thoughtful about it than I used to be. (I suspect I'd enjoy reading thoughtfully-written mono characters more.)
I'm considering it, but I do have some concerns. Mainly, the community that I reside in would probably find it low-status, since the majority aren't interested in that. I'm wondering if anyone else encountered this and how they handled it.
I'm reminded of this.
If you don't like something about your community, you can put up with it, you can change your community, or you can... change your community.
Can we get a follow-up about how this working a year later?
Works great! Primary relationship still strong, have also three other boyfriends (primary has two other girlfriends). I am well pleased :)
How about now?
We got married almost a year ago :D. I can't keep track of who-all spouse is dating (it fluctuates a lot) but I have three other nodes on the Big Unruly Chart Thing, one of whom is also dating spouse. Going very smoothly :)
Congratulations!
I might just have to go try it now.
Are you polysaturated yet? Most people seem to find 2-3 to be the practical limit.
I don't see very much of the two boyfriends who don't live in my house, so no. (They have other girlfriends to keep them occupied.)
Brilliant. Have you read Ethical Sluts? great book for poly folks. Also, Sex At Dawn is a book that shows quite a bit of evidence that humans are very bonobo like and aren't really that prone to monogamy. It is not deniable that monogamy is the cultural norm for most of us, however, it seems pretty clear to me that it is a product of socialization and can be changed. Beautiful work, this post, both the words and the content.
Sex at Dawn is weaker than its citations. Its conclusions appear sound but you will find Dark Arts in it.
Details?
Not today.
I supplied a very short summary because that's all I wanted to write. You may read the book with a skeptical eye or ask a friend with a skeptical eye to read it for you or make a friend with a skeptical eye to that end or find someone with a skeptical eye online who has already read it and written a review.
If it were my job to respond to this I would say, "I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you." But it isn't and I'm not sorry at all.
If you don't want to answer something it's probably better to say nothing rather than offer a somewhat rude refusal. Takes less time.
I thought my brevity spoke for itself. When I learned it didn't, I did.
This article had a big impact on me! I had never even considered the idea that mono vs. poly was a setting you could change, and I discovered that I didn't have nearly as much of an attachment to monogamy as I had thought.
One problem I'm having is getting started with polyamory in practice. I'm worried that adding another constraint on top of other requirements (i.e. women interested in men, around my age, in Tucson, looking for a romantic relationship, who are rational) will make it hard or impossible to find someone. Any tips?
Assuming you haven't gone and made irreversible deep hacks in your brain, you could add it as an option instead of a constraint. Find someone you like without paying attention to whether she's poly or mono; then, find that out, and be whichever she is and carry on from there. Or, if you strongly wish to be poly, look for polyamory groups in your area or something. (I don't actually know if Tucson has any. But it might.)
Yeah, that optionality is effectively what I'm doing right now, using OKCupid. I don't see myself checking out polyamory groups any time soon, just because I'm much less sexual than my cached idea of a poly person is and the whole idea still makes me feel somewhat awkward.
I've also found proposing a poly relationship is a nice alternative to dumping someone. I just stopped seeing a girl who I would be happy to be date, just not to the exclusion of everyone else (due to availability and pacing differences between us). If she had been amenable to poly, that would have been great, but the mutual break-up went very smoothly.
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.
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.
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 my perception that poly does indeed involve more drama than monogamy.
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.
Raised an eyebrow at myself and asked what, exactly, was the added value of exclusivity. Question dissolved on sufficiently skeptical inspection.
Could you expand on "sufficiently skeptical inspection"?
Okay, imagine two of me standing facing each other in a blank space a la Elspeth so as to chat.
Skeptic: *raises eyebrow* Okay, so what is the extra value of exclusivity above and beyond top priority?
Flailing Brainbit: It is special! And and and exclusive.
S: Top priority is also special. And calling exclusivity exclusive is not informative. Come on. You can trust the rest of this brain, right? When we figure out what we want, we arrange to have it; we're not going to gang up on you unless you decide you want something more destructive than monogamy. We just need more detail for this one so we can see if there's a simpler way to get it.
FB: Uuuum, it would mean that he wouldn't go around kissing random girls.
S: Yes, I know, that's what it means, but why does that seem important?
FB: Um. Um um um. He would be miiiiiiiine.
S: Okay, so if I ask him, "Would it be a correct summary of the model of poly we're considering to say "you're mine but I'll share"?" and he says yes, will you calm down? We count as ours lots of things that we share, even things that we feel socially obliged to share.
FB: ...Maybe?
S: Okay, we'll ask him that, then. ...Say, look. He said that sounded good to him. You okay over there?
FB: Meep.
S: Are you going to give us any more problems?
FB: No...
S: Okay then.
Hee, I didn't know the backstory to that one =)
Well, I had imagined something like "taking infidelity into account, monogamy's conception of exclusiveness doesn't seem to work perfectly either". I guess that another person might have just been irked by the prospect of not being considered, by herself, "(good) enough" for the person who made a move on her, (in retrospect, you seem to find nice that, given new information, he would have agreed to a monogamous relationship, meaning that he considers you sufficient to satisfy his romantic expectations). Focusing on that would have been counterproductive, in this instance, since it would have probably made it impossible for him to date you at the time.
Just out of curiosity, could you expand on that "Question dissolved on sufficiently skeptical inspection."? I think I understand what you mean, but I would like to be sure.
I can think of another disadvantage to becoming polyamorous: you lose the ability to deflect would-be suitors by telling them "I already have a boyfriend/girlfriend".
"Poly" <> "available".
It would be technically accurate for me to turn down someone I had no interest in by saying "My boyfriend wouldn't like that." Since of course he would not prefer me to date people in whom I am uninterested. I could also just, in fact, say, "I have a boyfriend" - for the same reason I can say "I don't own a telephone". (I have a phone number, but people won't work hard enough to avoid needing it if they know it exists right off the bat.)
But perhaps you meant among people who know me - in which case yeah, I do have to utter words to the effect of "no thanks". And then they ask "why?" and I say "do you want the nicest sufficient reason or an exhaustive list of relevant factors?".
The answer I would make to "why?" (but have never had to, as women tend to be much less clueless than men about dating) would be something like: "Because it seemed as though you were the sort of person who would feel entitled to ask me why, instead of merely accepting my answer."
It's none of someone's business why unless you choose to volunteer that information, and needing to know why you've just been turned down is a massive low-self-perceived-status signal.
The only exception to that rule would be someone that you already have a deep and long standing relationship (just not sexual or romantic) with. Such a person might be justified in starting a "Why" conversation as your friend. But even that is dicey, and the sort of conversation that could destroy the friendship, as it can so easily ride the knife edge of trying to make you defend your answer, or guilt you into changing it if you can't convince them that is both reasonable and not a negative judgement of them.
Okay, seriously? This kind of "No you can't know what you did wrong, asking means you're even lower-status" dynamic to sexuality has probably been responsible for a number of geek/Aspie suicides over the last century. The existence and popularity of PUA isn't so much a response to men who feel deprived of sex, it's targeted at men who feel deprived of sex and romance and any idea of what they're doing wrong and any known strategy for even getting started on fixing things. A major reason why people hurt is that there's no known gentle slope into sex, and not getting any feedback is part of that.
I've informed a number of male college students that they have large, clearly detectable body odors. In every single case so far, they say nobody has ever told them that before. (And my girlfriend has confirmed a number of these, so it's not just a unique nose.)
If you don't need to ask yourself, that's fine. If someone else does need to ask, try to be more sympathetic. And if someone asks you, TELL THEM.
Um... very often the real reason is unflattering.
"You are morbidly obese." "You are so tiny I feel like I'm crushing you." "You act like I'm your last hope of ever meeting a girl." "Your religion forbids premarital sex and that won't work for me." "Your conversation is just really boring."
Are you actually saying that people want to be told these things?
I'm sure you can find slightly nicer ways of saying atleast some of of the above. e.g. "I prefer people who are more physically fit" rather than "you are morbidly obese".
Well this place is pretty infested with truth/information fetishists, so it might not be a good place to ask.
If they're asking, they deserve to be told.
If they don't want to know, they shouldn't ask. Lying to someone "for their own good" is, to me, one of the most disgusting concepts in existence.
I've been lied to "for my own good" several times. And every single time, all it really did was allow the person lying to me to feel good about themselves, while simultaneously screwing me over.
If they're asking, it's often not because they actually want to know, but as a way of telling the other person off for having the wrong opinion. Telling them puts everyone in an extremely uncomfortable position. If I wanted to pass on such information to someone, I'd do so anonymously.
To illustrate, I'll go through some likely results of telling someone each of these things Vs. not telling them.
They are now aware that their weight is a major reason for lack of success. This is an extra incentive to lose weight. In addition, it's possible they weren't even conscious of how overweight they were previously. So, they gain health benefits.
They now know to be on the look out for either smaller partners, or partners who show signs of a crushing fetish, as opposed to continuing to ask large people who will turn them down.
You may need to give more explanation on this one; because it's likely that there's some specific part of their behaviour that's a problem. However, at least they are now aware that they are giving off vibes of desperation, and can try and change that (giving them more self-confidence, because they now know that the problem isn't something innate)
They get to feel morally superior to you.
Provided you are willing to explain why you find their conversation boring, this is helpful. Seriously, I'm friends with a lot of aspergics*, and every time I explain to one of them "you're being boring, the problem is that you are doing X" they have henceforth put effort into avoiding doing X, which has increased their success in socialising.
*(I suspect this is because I'm a borderline case myself, and therefore often end up acting as a "translator" between them and NTs)
They don't know why they were rejected; and likely find themselves wondering whether they'll ever be able to be successful, making them feel increasingly desperate and despondent about their chances with each rejection.
While the first few rejecters may successfully prevent this by using "it's not you it's me" type lines, it will soon become clear to the rejectee that these are, in fact, often lies.
From experience: this can lead to resonant doubt/panic attacks. It kinda sucks.
Good point. It can result in a kill-or-cure situation, either they take it as "I can solve this" and gain confidence, or that they can't, and lose even more.
This one may not be as good as you think. Fat people are generally told repeatedly that they're fat.
The risks of being fat are generally wildly overestimated.
I've read a moderate number of accounts by fat people who found that their romantic success improved when they stopped pre-rejecting themselves.
There were a few articles here on the limited introspection humans in general have. I assume they have less so for others and also are not necessarily able to express their reasons well enough to be understood.
My guess is that Aspergers (or generally people with internalized nonstandard interaction modes) have the best chance to get useful information from people who are also off, but less so.
Questioning a person about why they feel a certain way about you is weird in its own regard. And there is no safe way to communicate about communication.
Some do.
Some are stupid and will shoot the messenger even though they're emotionally better off knowing for certain than just wandering in an unhappy fog, wondering over and over what they're doing wrong.
If they ask directly, I'd say, tell them honestly.
Every time I have ever pointed out specific things I don't like in answer to "Why won't you date me?" (back when I was available) the guy has used my reply to insist that he will change and beg for another chance. Then I have to say, "No, I don't believe you will ever change in that way, and even if you did it wouldn't be anytime soon, and offering to change yourself for me is really weird." And then he argues that no, he can change right away, it's no trouble, please give him a chance. It's terribly unpleasant. I stopped giving specific answers, and instead said things like, "I guess we just don't have the right chemistry." Actually I think that's a perfectly good and honest answer, and it's the one that's always true even when there's no specific thing I can put my finger on.
I can't pick out exactly what about someone turns me on or doesn't turn me on because it's subconscious, it's my subconscious mind processing a million details all at once, and even when a person does have, say, bad BO, that's just something that I was actually able to notice consciously so I might think of that as The Reason but once they fix their BO, all the other stuff, the millions of details only my subconscious picks up, those will still be there and the person will be pissed that the "fix" didn't work. So I think actually giving a specific reason, or even two or three, is not as honest as just saying chalking it up to "chemistry" (which of course is shorthand for "it's too complex and subconscious to explain").
If I really wanted to try explaining a lack of chemistry, I'd probably be able to do no better than, "Some things about you, especially your para-language but other aspects of your behavior as well, though I can't put my finger on them, rub me the wrong way, or at least inspire no romantic response in me." Would anyone really find that helpful?
I would suggest establishing a personal policy of accepting only one romantic proposition per person-you-are-not-already-dating per week, or something along those lines. That way, if someone offers to change immediately, you can simply explain that you will not consider any such offers from them until the given time period has elapsed.
If they are bullshitting (as seems likely) and have little or no intention/ability to maintain such a change, the delay is enough that they will look elsewhere for short-term satisfaction; if their interest is genuine, persistent, specific to you, and the problems are as superficial and trivially resolved as they claim, 168 hours should be more than long enough to implement such a solution and clear your short-term memory for a new 'first impression.'
It would be nice of you to make sure the guys leave without his illusions about the power of introspection. They apparently think not only that they can instantly change whatever they want about themselves, they think you know and can tell them what would need changing.
Perhaps best summed up as "I don't want to answer because I want to avoid verbal overshadowing."
Edit: fixed negation
Perhaps you could start by saying, "I can only tell you if you're asking for information and you promise not to argue." I don't know how practical that is in real life.
LWers could have a convention for saying to each other, "Please tell me so that I know how I was perceived by you. I will not argue and tell you that you perceived me differently, I will not blame the messenger, and I will not subject you to the unpleasant experience of hearing me offer to change."
At first, I thought that making a new convention is the wrong way to go about it. How many conventions should we need to remember then? making new conventions all over the place for LWer's will be too difficult, too many different social rules to juggle.
For example, in such a situation, as in asking a person out, you would need to think about the LW community conventions and then normal conventions when deciding actions. But then, you couldn't do better unless you allow for change.
If a community is to be truly made, perhaps a set of conventions can be constructed so that, this convention will slot nicely into an easily searchable hierarchy: Relationships -> relationship changing -> approaches/dating requests. You could make an iPhone app so that the LWer looking for love (or wishing to do some social action) can quickly and discretely check up the currently accepted conventions/guidelines. If someone deviates, you can have all sorts of fun deciding to call them on it.
The problem isn't in remembering social conventions, humans naturally do it and you're using oodles of them now.
If there is a problem, it is in consciously calling for the new social convention, as it's the less common way they form. I don't think there's anything wrong here, though.
Hmm, how about shortening that to "SMK's request?" That's probably easier shorthand.
This is why last time I had cause to ask for an explanation, I specifically disclaimed that I would not be using her reasons to come up with some clever way we could get back together.
There are some cases where I have made factual errors in which I'd like to be corrected. Like, if a necessary condition of my not wanting to date someone is "I don't do long-distance relationships and you are about to move to Bangladesh", and in fact the person is not about to move to Bangladesh because there was some change of plans, this is in fact a fine time to notify me. Or even "my model of you implies that you would, under $circumstance, do $behavior, even though I've never directly observed you in $circumstance".
But yes, if it's "you have $personal_characteristic", offering to change it - unless it's really trivial, on the order of "you use the word 'splendid' annoyingly often", which would rarely if ever be the whole reason anyway - is not a correct answer.
I've had this kind of thing happened to me and have heard similar stories way too many times. For people who want to ask directly for reasons why they've been rejected please remember than an answer is not license to argue the point. Nor is arguing the matter a good idea. You will not argue your way into a healthy relationship- just take the person's reported feelings and update on that evidence.
"One specific thing I really don't like is people changing themselves for others."
Might not be helpful, might not solve that problem, but the look on their face will probably make the conversation slightly more bearable.
Ok, if it comes up again, I'll try that.
All but one of those are things that people can change. The most difficult one to change (being tiny) is something which people can adjust in part by bulking up and also carrying themselves better. Frankly, speaking as a really tiny male homo sapiens (slightly under 5'2) , if I were to ask someone out and to find out that that was the primary issue I'd be a bit relieved that it wasn't something else. On the other hand when I was told explicitly that people were not interested in me due to my height it has sometimes felt really awful. But it did cause me to focus more on people who were of below average height or not too tall and that seems to have lead to some success. So even that has been a general positive.
Oh, interesting. That's the first explanation/justification for PUA that hasn't seemed creepy to me.
There is a significant difference though between wanting an explanation and feeling entitled to one. Anything that suggests a sense of entitlement, particularly when that crosses a privilege asymmetry, risks seeming threatening. "I've already said no and they have not unconditionally accepted that" is not that far a step from "they are giving vibes that suggest they think my right to a no can be overridden by their desires".
I don't think it's actually that hard to signal "unconditional acceptance and a harmless desire for more information if you're feeling generous", but if we're talking about a population with insufficient people/social skills, that will not be easy for them.
I agree it's a virtue to donate information in such cases, but I don't agree they're entitled to it.
I agree with everything you said, and with everything michaelsullivan said. They're not in conflict. Barring a Friendly Singularity and CEV people with poorer social skills are going to have worse lives, and worse, improving your own social skills or improving other people's social skills is not going to change the fact that there is a bottom 10%, and life is going to suck harder for them.
Life is a bitch and it is quite abnormal to act on any sympathy one may have with the creepy/awkward/annoying person near you.
For any young geek reading this, here are a few ways of improving your social skills/ decreasing mild to moderate social anxiety
succeedsocially.com has a lot of reasonably useful advice too, and if you're a romantically deprived male there's plenty of instrumentally useful advice in the PUA subculture but the lowest hanging fruit is * Shower daily and use anti-perspirant. That's not negotiable. You needn't use deodorant but honestly you probably should. * Smile more, greet people i.e. say "Hi" a lot. * The more people you talk to the more likely you are to make friends; the more girls you talk to, and know, the more likely you are to find someone you're interested who is interested in you </end heteronormative> * If you can get into an exercise regimen, most people can make relatively large gains pretty fast for not much time or work. This will make you hotter and more confident. Some people are fucked genetically but they're a small minority. Try to get fitter * Learn how to tell if clothes fit and never buy anthing that doesn't fit again. There's much more to fashion but that is the single biggest gain you can make and it will take well under two hours. There's a guide here and plenty more good stuff here particularly in the sidebar.
Also, Everything gets better after you leave High School, and it can continue to get better for a looong time.
Awesome post, thanks for it.
Probably atypical counter-example: I'm pretty sure I had significant opportunities to get laid my last year in HS (which, being an idiot, I did nothing about), more so than I have since.
Well I know very little about you but if you're kind of nerdy and went to a co-ed high school then developed a much nerdier social circle on hitting university, and as a result had less opportunity you wouldn't be too atypical. On idiocy, did you know the opportunities were there and not take them or are they obvious only in retrospect? If the latter I wouldn't bother dwelling on it because you couldn't have known, and if you didn't take them for principled reasons you no longer endorse I wouldn't either. Values change. Now if you knew damned well you could have, wanted to, and still somehow couldn't do it, then yes, you were an idiot. Speaking as someone who was in that last category well after high school.
Also it got easier to hang out with other fellow geeks. It might be useful to learn the common stuff for the sake of getting along in life. But there is no need to actually spend too much time with people you do not enjoy.
What do you consider to be the comon stuff? Agreed that spending lots of time with people you don't get on with is mostly unnecessary, but a little social nous goes a long way, and in many situations it's a large force multiplier in your effectiveness.
Although I largely agree with what you've said here for the socially inept, I think the prevalence of the sentiment of that final statement may well lead to a great many people being disappointed when they arrive at university and find themselves more isolated than ever.
You are entirely correct. I could more accurately have said "For the majority of people with bad high school experiences, the post high school environment, whether in college or at work is much, much better. If this is not true for you then making a concerted effort to make the acquaintance of people who share your interests will, in the majority of cases, make your post-high school experience much better. If that doesn't worktry to improve your most basic social skills and go back to step 2, meeting people with similar interests."
Is that more or less accurate? How could it be improved?
I think, more or less, yes. But, just in case high-schoolers who have had trouble in the past are reading this, we should give as much specific advise as we can: Don't expect university to be easier in social terms; there are less people ready to score a quick status-boost from putting you down, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be charitable with their friendship. I think the most important piece of advise is "join a club." Really - it's the quickest and most effective way to hack yourself out of loneliness.
For me, it got worse.
Sorry to hear that. How and why? I'm under the impression that your over-riding, basic problem is that you would prefer to not be, maintaining this preference even under medication that makes the experience of being alive more or less pleasant. Is that impression accurate?
I suspect that the average person as intelligent and (perhaps slightly more) motivated than you, but without the outlook on life would end up with a dead end, not terribly well paid job with ample leisure possibilities, or on some variety of social welfare, and mostly satisfied-ish with their life, as evidenced by lack of action to change it. I say that because I am that guy.
<Other Optimising> How goes the moving out of parents' house? I strongly recommend it from my own experience. Even a pretty crap badly paid, low status job and pack of lose, mildly substance abusing, poorly socialised friends is a huge improvement. Freedom is, in my experience fantastic, and a social life makes it much better. </end Other Optimising>
Short answer: In high school I was "popular". In college I basically had to start over socially. I did okay with that in my first two years, but in my third year onward it kind of fell apart and I ended up fairly isolated. (It didn't help that I took six years to graduate and my freshman-year friends all graduated in four.) I also hated most of my classes, and the ones I didn't loathe were merely tolerable.
I trained myself to not give unrequested feedback anymore after some bad experiences. I find it a sad situaton but am not inclined to be the one telling others things they don.t really want to hear.
Gratulation!
Not telling is mostly about wanting to avoid the other party getting angry.
I wouldn't mind disclosing the reasons to someone if I was given some confidence they wouldn't get angry at me.
Thus most of the time one ends up using polite safe generic to turn away people.
I don't mind being asked why. I sort of prefer the presumption that I do have reasons and am able to articulate them and will be honest about them if asked. Also, assuming that these things are all true, it's not strictly impossible for someone to come up with ways around all my objections, status signal or no. If I felt the question were intrusive or something I could just refuse to answer, but why would I refuse someone feedback, if I believe they actually want it?
Contrast this with the institution of the bug report in software. In programming, everyone expects that there are going to be some errors. Everyone learns from them, programmers, current users, prospective users... I consider the social institution of nonjudgmental bug reports to be, in and of itself, a substantial benefit from computer science to society at large.
Actually getting the list can hurt a lot. Depending on how long and relevant it is.
"Could Not Reproduce"
At that point it's kind of too late to matter. The rejectee has already been liberated from the necessity to signal high status to that particular recipient. They are free to do whatever the hell they want and play whatever status they feel like in the moment.
Which is quite possibly a benefit, depending on the circumstances. Although there are less awkward, pointless and painful ways to go about it than 'why?' questions.
If asked in an honest (rather than a begging) tone it is a massive signal that they are a person seeking self-improvement.
Yes, this means that they have accepted that they have flaws, and therefore that their status isn't as high as it could be. But I don't see how that would be a problem?
Is it, in your eyes, better that someone accept that they are flawed, and seek to change that (by learning of their flaws, and fixing them) or that they believe themselves flawless?
Well, I suppose it's really a disadvantage to being known to be polyamorous...
Upvoted for your insightful description of your thoughts on polyamory and monogamy during this process. I think it's rare to find someone able to detail their approach to changing themselves with such exacting precision. Personally, given that I currently have no interest in being either polyamorous or monogamous, the specifics are not pertinent to my situation, but I think your approach to documenting them could be useful for many other types of changes.
Also, congratulations on increasing your utility!
Thank you for writing this. I've been wanting to discuss rationality and relationships for some time now, but my first attempt had several problems with it you seem to have avoided or solved. For example, your intro paragraph disarms (for many people, hopefully) a few objections that my own post did not, for example "I don't like gooey personal details" and "You sound self-righteous, as though everyone should try to be like you."
Those who haven't tried polyamory may be curious to hear my own polyhacking story, told using a structure similar to the one Alicorn used. (Like Alicorn, I'm considering "willingness that one's sole partner have other partners" to be a "low-key flavor" of polyamory.)
Motivation
I grew up a sexually repressed evangelical Christian, and therefore didn't date until fairly late (19, I think). My first relationship was traditional and monogamous and a rollercoaster ride of drama. I felt attracted to other potential mates but fought to remain faithful, we both experienced sexual jealousy, I started to feel trapped… you know, the usual.
When the relationship ended I realized that that kind of relationship didn't suit me. I didn't like sexual jealousy, I didn't like being solely responsible for somebody else's needs, and I didn't like having a kind of ownership over somebody else's sex life.
Self-Examination
What did I want that I had originally thought I could only get from monogamy? Pretty much everything: intimate connection, sex, cuddling, protection from STIs, the social status of that comes with not being single, etc. All these, I rather quickly realized, could be had with polyamory. I didn't want marriage or children, so those weren't issues. Nor did I care much whether I was somebody's primary romantic interest or whether I could get attention on demand.
Perks
For me, some perks of polyamory are:
Modifcation
Really, the only thing I had to modify was my evolutionarily-programmed sexual jealousy. This turned out to be easier than I expected.
When somebody I was attracted to slept with someone else or kissed them in front of me or whatever, I tried to feel happy for them. This was easy to do, but it didn't actually remove my feeling of sexual jealousy.
What turned out to be most effective for me was a different technique: I trained myself to think of Sexually Jealous Guy as being Not In Agreement With My Values and Not As Admirably Progressive As My Ideal Self and Not Exhibiting As Much Self Control As My Ideal Self. I developed a kind of moral indignation around the idea that I could be sexually jealous. And, as I recall, it only took a couple weeks for my sexual jealousy to fade.
Success
My sexual jealousy is so thoroughly extinguished that I am forgetting what it is like to feel it.
I've seen my current primary partner kiss another partner of hers in front of me many times, and I haven't felt a twinge of jealousy. My primary's two other current major partners are good friends of mine; the four of us have traveled together, slept in a hotel room together, and eaten dinner together. I've kissed my primary goodnight so she can sleep with someone else for the night, and I'm friends with a few others with whom she has chosen to intimately connect. My primary has some preferences I don't share, so she has explored those things with others. And at no time during all this have I felt any sexual jealousy. It feels great to be able to fully support my primary in whichever connections and experiences she wants to have.
Meanwhile, I haven't contracted any STIs, I pursue other women at my leisure, I don't feel trapped, I don't need to fulfill all my primary's needs, and that relationship is highly customized to my (and her) preferences.
Oh, and like Eliezer I feel "vaguely guilty about not being bisexual, since immortal superbeings clearly would be." I tried to hack that once, it didn't work, it's not a priority, it has much higher costs than polyhacking, and I'm not pursuing it.
Upvoted since I feel this post significantly improves several aspects of your previous post including sounding less self-righteous. It also benefits from mentioning the idea of polyamory earlier and going into more details about it. I read a single article on polyamory four or five years ago and didn't really see it mentioned much at all again until I visited this site. A lot of people will have no idea what this is, and some might confuse the word with polygamy.
I still sometimes confuse the word. Just never the concept.
What if you're wired in such a way that, when you strike up a romance with someone, the New Relationship Energy wipes out your romantic feelings for everyone else, and only when the NRE has run its course do romantic feelings for other people return? Is that something you can self-modify out of, or otherwise deal with in a polyamorous context?
I'm not such a person, but I've dated poly people who seemed to hyperfocus on their new love interests like that. One in particular stands out as someone who'd become deeply infatuated with the current object of attention, almost to the exclusion of others.
Said person was also very new to introspection, rather comfortably selfish (that's not a "boo!" signal, just a relevant and somewhat abnormal trait -- they didn't have much empathy or concern for the feelings of others if it didn't impact them directly and insofar as they knew it might cause others to feel hurt, didn't want to self-modify), and wasn't very able at the time to understand people feeling hurt as anything other than an attempt to manipulate due to a lengthy abuse history.
I'm sure that there are people closer to "baseline" (whatever the heck that is) who are poly and do this. I do get rather intense NRE, and my feelings for each of my partners are somewhat different, but it still doesn't wipe out the feelings for other people. I think the advice I'd give such a person, if they wanted to change this for the sake of their partners, would be to cultivate a lot of self-control, and maintaining perspective. Your new love may push different buttons than your old love, but what you're experiencing is a neurochemical rush which will not last -- when it passes, you and your existing loves will either be grateful it's over, or picking up the pieces. In short, I treat NRE as something on the order of puberty or psychoactive drugs in terms of its emotional intensity: be aware you're extremely biased in this state.
I like The Ferrett's take on it:
Also, his clarification in the comments:
Many polyfolk deal with this sort of thing, much as people in monogamous relationships deal with their partners becoming absorbed by a new interest, being assigned to six-month deployments overseas, driving trucks for weeks at a time across the country, having crushing deadlines at work, or otherwise having things come up in their lives that force their partnership to take second priority for a while.
The common thread in my experience is an acceptance that they are not the absolute top priority in their partner's life (partners' lives) 100% of the time, and that's OK, and the relationship is still positive and valuable.
So, yes, that is something that some poly folk can deal with in a polyamorous context.
Whether it's something you can self-modify out of (second person used advisedly), I don't know.
Being absorbed by a new interest or being busy or away aren't quite the same thing as not being into your partner anymore.
That's certainly true. But, again, IME being OK with not being the absolute top priority in one's partner's life 100% of the time helps one deal with all four of those not-quite-identical things.
I should also note that your first description made it sound like a temporary thing, whereas your second description makes it sound more like a change of the baseline; is that intentional, or am I just over-reading?
Temporary but lasting several months, I'm told.
I'm skeptical because of the huge differences in male and female dominant strategies for mating*. I think poly can work, but that a lot of people who consider themselves poly just haven't run into a highly frictional situation yet or have put their fingers in their ear and are shouting "lalalala".
*I should note that I'm also extremely skeptical of monogamy. The situation that makes men and women happiest seems to involve some (sometimes a lot) of unhappiness in their partners.
Valuable post. Self-revelation is hard! I commend your account in this kind of forum. There are many considerations here, first and foremost of which is that emotional makeup a) differs greatly between people and b) is more set than we care to admit; i.e. not subject to hacking. If Alicorn's is to this degree, more power to her. Before the rest of my comment (as a mono): this is most emphatically NOT a moral judgment about polyamory. Consenting adults, will defend to the death your right, etc.
Other considerations (for someone like me, which maybe you are or are not):
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. I didn't get that at all from Alicorn's post but it's out there, perhaps as a counteroffensive to monos who do express moral judgment. (Smart polys, police this so we can all have a real discussion!)
In my personal experience, many of the people who think they're capable of polyamory are not honest with themselves, and once a partner starts seeing someone else, they experience bad jealousy which they're uncomfortable admitting, because after all they're not supposed to; they're poly! Polyamory is going to TEND to favor a) people who become less attached emotionally in relationships; b) people who are very outgoing and popular (i.e. attractive people); c) women at younger ages (mid 20s) and men at later ages (30s onward). Sure, if you're Brad Pitt, be poly! Why not! Think of the population dynamics if everyone was polyamorous. Captains of football teams and cheerleaders as the primaries. The rest of us, gazing adoringly upon them while we wait for our turn on Tuesday night. Then back to the romantic ghetto. That's a bit extreme, but it's a serious thought-experiment about an all-poly-world.
Marriage is in large part an economic institution focused on child-rearing. Polyamory is a better arrangement for young non child-producing couples than for people who want kids. Are primary poly relationships, even like Alicorn and MBlume, as stable over time as mono? As good for raising kids, if that choice is made? As happy? (I don't think we know. Data?) And the whole idea of wanting someone as the primary means that, given enough time, you WILL meet a more amazing person years down the road, and one of the primaries will lose when you're overcome by the temptation to upgrade. Because of the way human brains relate attractiveness to fertility differently for different genders, this is going to give men an advantage over time as in c. above. One of MBlume's secondaries is going to knock his socks off and 12 years from now Alicorn might get demoted or fired. Or vice versa, but happens less often that way - again, personal experience, and we need data, but it was Alicorn who changed her lifestyle to be with MBlume, so it seems MBlume is the one with the upper hand, and this will increase over time. (Note: this is the main long-term reason I'm not interested in polyamory, at least for even half-serious relationships.)
Explicit symmetrical polyamory has never emerged stably in history so far. It's worth asking why. Maybe this is coincidence; maybe something has changed now that will be more conducive, but I think it's worth pointing out. For example, a higher prevalence of non-child-producing adults. More questions for actual studies.
So far I've been discussing polyamory as a hetero practice. I don't know any gay polys but it would certainly be informative to see what's different if anything about gay polys.
If you can do away with your emotional need for monogamy, why not do away with the need for mates and reproduction completely? I would frankly love to become asexual so I can think about other things for more than 2 minutes at a time! Not in the cards. (If you know a pill I can take or a meditative technique please hook me up. Then I can be nihilamorous.)
Finally, a lot of polys seem to be doing so partly because they get a buzz from being part of an alternative lifestyle community (affective death spiral, anyone?) While that was a bit of a low blow, I do think it's worth examining this in ourselves, especially with regard to whether choices we're presumably making for the rest of our lives are really sustainable. Kind of like diets, but even more important.
More likely they would end up a LOT of peolple's secondaries. Possibly with a mostly political 'primary' alliance with each other.
Can you elaborate on the model that leads you to this conclusion?
Captains of football teams and cheerleaders do not want to be the 'primaries' of lots of people. That's an awful lot of work. They also wouldn't make particularly good primaries - given that they are always so busy fucking other people. Furthermore, when it comes to 'primary' status they will want to reserve that for people who they gain status for being affiliated with - other elites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_castration
Not sure if it's available voluntarily, but you could ask your doctor.
Hormones have a lot of messy side effects. It's like trying to adjust the vertical hold on your CRT with a claw hammer.
A less drastic thing to try, which has helped many people with similar symptoms, is to deny yourself (maybe with a trustworthy outside observer for backup) access to all electronic-format pornography for a few months. See if that cuts back the drive a bit, clears your head.
I would expect a lot of people to realize they don't want to stay with the football player or cheerleader for very long. But in any case, you have to compare the result to what we have now:
Telling members of a social minority you're not part of what every member of that minority must do to be worthy of your time and consderation as a member of the social majority, is neither reasonable, rational or realistic. Just FYI. It's like asking "smart" queers to police the tendency of certain (stereotyped) gay men you have in mind to flame it up, or come to that, asking atheists not to be so militant...
Yes, many poly folks do think they're more evolved. Yes, this is just embarrassing at best, and sanctimonious and preachy at worst. No, the rest of us are not accountable to shut them down so you don't feel squicked by the whole thing.
This is a perspective some poly types share, that jealousy and polyamory are not compatible. I've never quite understood it; I experience jealousy sometimes (and I'm in five serious relationships; each of the people involved is seeing two of the others in some capacity), yet it never quite occurred to me that experiencing jealousy meant that the situation had to change...unless that jealousy was functioning as sort of an early-warning threat detection (I've been in situations I was clearly not going to be happy or functional in, with specific arrangements of other people given their own needs, wants and behaviors -- my interests were not being looked after by anyone else, and after interrogating my own emotions and their cause for long enough I realized that I wasn't comfortable with that).
Suffice it to say there is a diversity of actual opinions about this within polyamory and nonmonogamists generally -- some people experience jealousy, some don't; some experience compersion, some don't; some think these feelings should be primary drivers of their actions and communication, and some don't.
Given the divorce rate, should we care about this in a statistical sense? I mean, unless we're talking about your own children, the odds for or against a given family's long-term stability are not your business...
(I will note that what little research has been done suggests that polyamorous relationships are less stable, but should that really be surprising? They are more complicated arrangements of complex parts; as the number of people goes up, the number of failure modes AND success modes will increase, and the failures will probably outnumber the successes. My question is, why does this matter? You seem to be arguing against polyamory in general with it, and I can see no sense in that.)
As to the question of children's welfare, there's very little data because it's difficult to get funding for it -- what researchers are interested in asking the questions are finding it very difficult to secure the backing needed to perform studies. Speaking anecdotally, I've known plenty of people who were monogamous parents, openly-polyamorous parents, and closeted-polyamorous parents (meaning their kids aren't told). The welfare of the children seemed to have much more to do with their parents' social and economic standing than their relationships.
I think your theoretical understanding of human sexuality has left you ill-prepared for making predictions about real-world cases like this.
Having lots of experience with both hetero and queer poly dating and living: the differences seem to be much more down to the cultural influences on the people involved, and their individual personalities, than anything else.
Tell that to the people of Laguna Pueblo, prior to Christian missionaries. They'd be vastly amused to find out they never existed.
I think you're seeing what you want to see, there. Do people choose an "alternative lifestyle" because they get a buzz from being altie? Or do they get a buzz from finding someplace they suddenly feel like they fit? Having spent most of my life socially-isolated and largely unable to fit into mainstream society, I was much more stoked about finding a social "fit", which I stumbled onto just while going about my life.
What's your source for this? Not trying to challenge you factually (it's a reasonable enough claim given the diversity of cultures out there), but I've found non-romanticized sources on all but a few pre-contact cultures fantastically difficult to find short of asking actual anthropology departments, and it's an area I'd like to know more of.
Also, one little society isn't a very impressive track record. Monogamous societies and polygynous societies have ruled continents.
Leslie Marmon Silko's writing.
Thank you; I'll check that out.
I'll call people on the offensive tropes not because I feel responsible on behalf of the Poly Conspiracy to do so, but because they are offensive tropes.
We're almost playing Poly Trope Bingo now! (Although they don't actually seem to have the "poly = no jealousy" meme there, oh well.)
I have said that poly doesn't mean no jealousy; poly means additional tools in the repertoire with which to deal with jealousy. Perhaps I can draw a long bow and say just as some bi people might describe themselves as gender-oblivious while others might self-ID as gender-aware-and-interested-in-more-than-one gender, my experience has been that some poly people self-ID as "did not install the jealousy patch" while others can be jealous but don't regard that as fatal to poly. I cannot find any research on this.
Custody has been (successfully) awarded and children removed from parents in some (USA) areas simply by referencing open poly or revealing closeted poly. There are a lot of cultural and privilege challenges in poly for families with children.
I do too, when I encounter them in my social sphere (it's not merely offensive in my view, it's just a painfully stupid idea). What I dislike is the implied obligation to police a group of people with whom my only assured point of commonality is our nonmonogamy for their painfully stupid and/or offensive ideas so that a monogamous person feels better about poly people as a whole. How they feel about us is not my responsibility, and I'm already acting to counteract the stupid ideas bothering them for my own reasons.
That seems like an accurate summary.
As to the comments re: child custody, yeah, I'm aware of how grim it is for poly parents involved in a custody battle. :\ Several friends of mine have suffered for it, and a few remain on guard against the possibility.
I share your annoyance!
However I also have an explicit policy of doing (or continuing to do) something I have decided is the right thing to do, even if in so doing I apparently reinforce stupid/annoying entitlement. I thought I should not allow irritation to be so powerful as to derail me from my chosen behaviour.
Okay. Good for you. That doesn't make the entitlement any less stupid or annoying.
Note that "Whether I am doing something about this" and "Whether I feel like calling out stupid/annoying entitlement" are seperate questions. It is entirely possible to be aware of both. It is furthermore not necessary for me to prove my credentials on this point to the person making the entitled demand of me (even if only by implication).
In summary: I know what I'm doing about stupid memes within the groups I frequent, including my fellow polyamorists, and I don't owe an accounting of that to a monogamous person who's ignorant and entitled enough to seriously demand, anonymously and in general, that "smart" poly folk police the memes he doesn't like so that "we can have a real conversation." For all he knows lots of poly people are already arguing the opposite to the "poly = more evolved" boosters -- how would he be able to tell the difference between people doing that, and being ignored or just having limited energy and desire and time in the day to spend all their lives seeking out and squashing that one meme that bugs him, and a world where they're not doing it at all? He wouldn't, because the meme is there regardless.
If after reading this reply you still fail to understand that I am against the meme in question and believe it is worth countering within our community, I ask you to let it go -- I am not interested in taking this conversation any further, if you can't understand what I'm saying.
I see I have written poorly. I understand you're against the meme and I have no problem with anything you've written about your conduct or attitudes. My apologies, it seems I have come across as combative when I was aiming for "musing collaboratively".
I think perhaps I had misread you as saying your motivation to combat the memes was reduced if that combat reinforced clueless entitlement. I thought that was an unfortunate result. Entitlement always annoys me, but I try to be explicitly suspicious of decisions I make out of annoyance, and I thought that was interesting in a more general case as well as for our subtopic. Perhaps I've been projecting; perhaps I shouldn't try writing on LW when jetlagged.
Ahhhh, okay. No, just that I don't feel it's necessary or helpful to signal my own participation to someone making such a demand, compared to signalling that they're being inappropriate.
Not a bad policy at all.
Thanks for reading my (long) comment. RE the Laguna Pueblo, I will read up. Certainly it's not something that we've seen often. Whether this is because "things are different than they were before" or something else less plastic is another question.
To be clear, my argument about the correlation between polyamory and child-rearing is not about how effective a poly environment might be at child-rearing. On the contrary, I'd be that a stable poly family would provide access to consistent capital and caretakers that a mono family cannot. However, the question remains of how it's in the individual parents' interests to enter into a given family arrangement. When it's not, they won't have kids, and the eventual parenting outcome remains moot; if moms and dads don't want to do it, it won't happen. My suspicion is that among those individuals so constituted that polyamory is a good match, having kids might not be part of their plan. (Again, early days, data needed, though this could be done with surveymonkey.)
My objections to your comments: my "hey smart poly people, round up the jerks" comment was intended as a humorous way to point out the sanctimoniousness that you also recognize, and which damages the discussion. It wasn't intended as a serious proposal for the Grand High Poly Council to take up. (Note: I also don't really think there's a Grand High Poly Council, but I think we understand each other by now.)
My second objection is to your statement that "[my] theoretical understanding of human sexuality has left [me] ill-prepared for making predictions about real-world cases like this". A less charitable person than myself might react to this as a personal attack. Suffice it to say, I must sadly report that I have a good track record of looking at relationships and identifying tensions that later end them. My predictions aren't based on personality clashes, but rather fundamental supply-demand tensions that would seem to be constant across any kind of arrangement where a person can be happier with one person than another. Maybe I hang out with awful people who act this way, or maybe I've just been around the block enough times to know where cynicism is warranted.
Leslie Marmon Silko is a good source there, re: pre-Christianization (and to some degree mid-and post-) sexual practices.
I'd find that an easier statement to accept if I didn't see many, many people routinely make decisions about parenting (or becoming parents) that did not appear to involve such analysis. The only times I've seen parents really think and act the way you describe, was when they were financially-stable and comfortable enough in status from the start that any such alterations would change that (and even then, many of them wind up divorcing anyway if things go poorly instead of staying together for the kids' sake, something which may or may not be in the child's best interest as well). And even then, I've seen parents in such situations adopt polyamory or whatever; either they don't agree with your assessment, or they're not thinking about the decision in those terms in the first place.
(FYI: This is what I meant re: your theoretical understanding of human sexuality -- it's not an attack on you, it's just me stating you appear to have an understanding of how people behave in these situations that's informed more by your big-picture theoretical beliefs about human behavior, than by a direct assessment of how people really behave -- at the very worst, I am accusing you of generalizing too broadly beyond the scope of what you know).
This is true. Poly requires excellent communication skills to pull off successfully, even more so than ordinary relationships. I keep emphasizing that poly is not for everyone: not only because you need to be emotionally suited for it, but also because it often takes much more work than a mono relationship. For most people, poly is hard.
I've heard this claim before, but I can't help feeling that it's still thinking in a mono pattern even while trying to think about a poly world. The whole point of poly is that X dating Y doesn't necessarily make either X or Y unavailable to others. If the captain of a football team has five women, that means that he only has one-fifth as much time for each of them, meaning that they're likely to be available to others as well. And perhaphs, since they're getting their desire for high-status übermasculinity satisfied from him, they'll also be more open to relationships with less masculine and lower-status men.
There are plenty of imbalances in dating-related gender ratios. A large fraction of men prefer women younger than themselves, so a straight man in his twenties faces competition from not only men his age, but men in their thirties as well. Add to this the fact that there are more men born than women, and we find that in a mono world a lot of young men will necessarily be left without the kind of a mate they'd prefer. In old age, the pattern reverses, so that it is the old women who have a hard time of finding a suitable partner. All of this is inevitable in a mono world, but in a poly world, there's at least the possibility that everyone will manage to date the kind of a person they want to be dating.
I'm not entirely sure about that one. Raising kids takes a lot of time and effort, often leaving the parents exhausted. It might be better for everyone involved if the kids have (say) three parents instead of just two.
At first sight it seems that those women are 4/5 available for other men in the group. But this assumes that men and women have the same sex drive on average. If we assume that men have stronger sex drive, or that their sex drive increases significantly when many women are sexually available to them (I am not a biologist, but I think both of this is true), then there is less than 4/5 availability of these women for the rest of group.
In other words, to make all members of a poly society equally sexually satisfied, this society must have more women than men. With the same number of women than men, less successful men will be frustrated, even if all women are satisfied. (Of course, if you are a woman, or if you are the most attractive man in your poly group, this is not your problem.)
EDIT: In essence, "one fifth of time" does not equal "one fifth of sex". A woman may spend one fifth of her time having hot sex with the captain, and the remaining time in just-friends mode, or 90% just-friends mode, with the remaining men.
Or perhaps, their demands will increase, and the remaining men will seem even more pathetic.
It seems to me that for most men monogamy is better. For women, two topics to think about: children and age above 40.
When the children are born, do you want to test paternity or not? (But even if you won't, some man will think that he is a father, and the others will think they are not. Or maybe, everyone will think that someone else was the father.) It seems like most men do not want to invest much resources into child that is not biologically theirs. Even if the man has one child with one woman, and three children with other woman, he may invest little into the first child.
If you are a young woman, it is important to note that the balance in "sex market" depends on the age. On average, younger women have higher sexual value than younger men, but older women have lower sexual value than older women. Thus we have so many young boys unable to find a girlfriend, and so many old women unable to find a partner (this imbalance is even worse because women on average live longer). Don't assume that your "sex market" value will stay constant.
Both monogamy and polygamy have their benefits and risks. The risks of monogamy are well known, therefore I wrote about the risks of polygamy. (Risks of monogamy: choosing the wrong partner and not having enough data to realize it; also if your partner dies or leaves you, you start from zero.)
I have come across a report of empirical observations that directly contradicts this assumption:
In his book "Polyamory: Roadmaps For The Clueless And Hopeful", Anthony D. Ravenscroft states the observation that women have the stronger sex drive - It takes 3 men per women to get the women fully satisfied.
I find that unsurprising, though folk wisdom suggests sex drive by gender varies greatly over age, so it's weird to not see a qualification there.
By the folk theory, which I have no idea if any research supports, that would be an unsurprising finding for male and female subjects in their mid-to-late-thirties, but the opposite would be expected for male and female subjects in the 18-24 range.
I have no qualms declaring that claim to be blatant bullshit.
I have yet to meet a woman who required sex more than three times daily (on an ongoing daily basis) in order to be satisfied and I would assert that women with that degree of insatiability or more would be rare outliers. Yet even that kind of pace is not hard to keep up (so to speak). While for most males the overwhelming biological imperative to seek sex is satisfied by less sex than that it takes only a modicum of accommodation or a hint of male pride to maintain a higher rate of sexual output.
I'm not here denying that women may have a higher sex drive. I would not even deny the possibility that some people may require being successfully pursued by three different partners (by count of number of mates not the potential sexual output thereof). I am saying that Ravenscroft massively undermines his own credibility when he tries to claim that it takes three males per woman in a given sexual system for the women to be fully satisfied. I deny that he has data that supports that and if he did produce such data I would defy it - with the expectation that it would be overwhelmed by other contradictory findings.
Wait, no, I take all that back. Women have ridiculously more powerful sex drives and can't help but throw themselves at guys at every opportunity. <My personal experience as an extraordinarily attractive potential mate has provided such a significant selection effect that it has completely biased my view of the world.> Not only that but when in relationships women need massive volumes of sex to be satisfied. <Such is my prowess at eliciting attraction.>
Unfortunately, after writing a long reply I accidentally discovered that accidentally pressing Ctrl + W closes Firefox without asking. So I will repeat the essence:
When monogamy is a society's official norm, polyamory is self-selected minority. Maybe the selection process now causes something that would disappear if more people become poly. For example, maybe for women with higher sex drive polyamory is more attractive. Also maybe for sexually passive men who enjoy the idea of their love having sex with another male (while emotionally staying in love with them) polyamory is attractive. This could explain how one woman could satisfy three men... if two of them are only watching.
Maybe women have the same sex drive as men, but still they are more picky. Even if a women would be able to fully sexually satisfy three top-quality men, I don't assume that an average woman would do the same thing for three average men. Maybe she would rather wait in line for her "five minutes with alpha". Most men would like the opportunity of having sex with many average women; women don't dream about having sex with many average men.
But this is all just a speculation. I would like to see a polyamorous society that survives 10 years.
Or you could just adjust the bisexuality / homosexuality rates... I dare say an all-men all-homosexual polyamorous group would have to be entirely stable, at least so long as we're playing entirely to gender stereotypes.
(Is there any actual research about women being less interested in sex, by the way? I've heard that dismissed as a myth a few times, born primarily of cultural conditioning, but never with any actual research either way)
I find that my (female) sex drive is incredibly mutable; I've been perfectly happy going a year with no sex, and at other times, in other circumstances (and with different available partners), been motivated to have sex daily. I suspect that the female sex drive is much more situational and partner-dependent than the male, and to model women as like men, but less horny, is a mistake.
Now I will do the Subjective Speculation Dance of Shame.
(electric slide) I like to shake my butt, I like to make stuff up (electric slide) Is there published data? Maybe! Doesn't matta! I'll pull it out of my butt! (butt shake!)
You guys I think I made the shame dance too fun.
I looked it up, but I still don't understand what the electric slide is. I second Jack's suggestion.
This is my new favorite comment. Thank you! ^_^
Please consider writing full lyrics and choreography and putting this on youtube.
This is awesome :D
This is possible, though I would note that sex is just one of the things one gets from a romantic relationship. Even if a poly society would leave more men without sex, it might provide more men with things such as close companionship. It is not obvious which one is more important. (Companionship is far more important than sex for me, though I'm probably atypical for a male in that regard.)
Another possibly atypical male here:
To me, sex is a craving I occasionally get, but is no more pleasurable than any other fun activity.
Companionship is a constant need. I don't always need someone there, but I always need to know that there would be someone with me if I needed them.
Another, seperate point on biology:
The 5 women that are spending so much time with this alpha male will find their menstrual cycles becoming synchronised (assuming, of course, that they allow natural menstrual cycling). This will therefore mean that they are all at their most sexually active simultaneously.
Assuming that the peak sex drive of a woman is more than 1/5 of the constant male sex drive, this means that at least one of those 5 women will be unsatisfied during her days of peak sex-drive.
Which is an important fact in the context.
Menstrual synchrony is controversial.
I will note that, from my own reading, I am under the impression that (among animals in general) males will invest resources in any child that might be theirs, while ignoring/killing only those children that are definitely not.
As such I would be moderately surprised to discover that humans differed from this pattern, and cared only for children of known paternity.
The words "invest resources" mean something different for animals and humans. For animal male it simply means: allow the child walk on your territory; protect the child from predator attack; give the child some food. I would expect similar instincts from a human male.
The difference is, we expect much more from human males, which has no base in instincts. We expect human male to find a better-paying job (with longer working hours or less pleasant work), and use the money to support child's various needs, such as e.g. education.
If you have a piece of bread in your hand, and there is a hungry 3 years old child (possibly biologically yours) near you, the instinct tells you to give the bread to the child. But the same instinct does not tell you to change your job so you can pay your 18 years old child better college. We give our children far more than what our instincts say, and we also care about them much longer.
This is a little bit more complex.
Sexual desires are not a constant for each invidual person.
It seems (in the poly community) that awesome sexual experiences with one partner make one want more sexual things with the other partners rather than less.
I was unclear on this point. As clarified above, I think you're probably right that 3 parents are better than two, for the kids. But ultimately, it's whether the arrangement is serving the parents' interests that will determine if kids are produced. The same person who loves being in long-term, child-free poly relationships might not want to be in a child-ful poly relationship, and in fact my intuition is that a lower proportion of people who are emotionally cut out for polyamory would eventually want kids. Need data.
If you're saying that the kinds of people who typically wish to be poly are the kinds of people who typically don't want children, that might be so, though I haven't seen any evidence for that hypothesis. Anecdotally, the "wants children" / "doesn't want children" ratio seems about the same as in the general population, or maybe as in the general high-IQ population. Your original comment seemed to talk about the suitability of poly for raising children, given that the people involved want children, though.
But I actually think that the main benefit of having three parents is for the adults, not the kids. Child-raising is typically really, really tiring, at least when the children are still young enough to need constant supervision. Having a third person around would really help make things easier. At the same time, there are all kinds of studies around saying that most of the things we'd expect to have an impact on the long-term outcomes of the children actually don't, and I'd guess that this would fall into the same category.
speaking as a parent (and someone who is poly) if it helps the parents, it helps the kids. And kids like having more adults around as resources.
Can you please give examples of this? It sounds fascinating.
The Nurture Assumption covers a lot of ground, reviews a lot of the scientific literature, and concludes that for many, many traits of interest you can divide the factors effecting them into non-parental environment and genetic factors leaving squat for parental effects. It's a great book.
Primates (including humans) raised in stable, supportive environments are more friendly, trusting, willing to take risks. Those who grew up desperately alone, or with only a few allies-of-convenience who might run off as soon as costs outweighed benefits or better prospects appeared elsewhere, are less friendly, trusting, and willing to take risks. This mechanism evolved because using either strategy in the opposite environment means being isolated from the support of your peers and/or murdered at a young age, which is strongly selected against. Polyamory requires a large population of friendly, trusting-and-trustworthy potential partners; modern economic and political developments have produced an environment (in some parts of the world, anyway) sufficiently stable and prosperous that such a population can emerge and thrive.
As far as I know, explicit symmetrical anything hasn't existed for very long...
There's been a lot of discussion about how the reproductive function of sex might have shaped institutions of love and relationships. But I think an equally salient thing is that people age deteriorate and die. That one is pretty symmetric.
Right, that's the noise in these questions. Some things have changed since the paleolithic, so are we talking about conventions that fit with old social norms and economic systems, or something less plastic. I don't know that we know yet.
Editing tip: the bullet points in Section 4 should be numbered or else they are unnecessarily hard to match up (I was curious to see what your solution was to bullet point 5, and this required a lot of counting). That probably means the other bullet points should be numbered too, even if there's no need.
The analogies between transhumanism and late-19th century socialism are unmistakeable. http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/07/unintended-consequences-19th-century-socialism-and-21st-century-transhumanism/
They called it "free love."
I have no idea if that means anything, but it is interesting to see how many similarities there are.