This isn't strictly related, but I was thinking about polyamory today and I was wondering something.
I've never experienced polyamory in real life, and while aspects of it seem cool, there's a major concern I would have with it. I feel like I would deplore a situation in which I have only one partner who in turn has multiple partners. I wouldn't be able to shake the feeling that I was getting the raw end of the deal, like I had been duped into becoming a willing participant in a sort of public systematic cuckoldry.
Given that fact, I feel like any polyamorous relationship with a "primary" would be a constant battle of sorts to ensure that I have a greater than or equal to number of dating prospects as my partner. But as a man (the username is a dumb joke), I feel like this battle would be stacked against me, as women tend to have an easier time finding dates. I imagine that this is doubly true in a rationalist community where the men probably outnumber the women by a significant amount.
I'm not sure if feeling this way says more about polyamory, or my own selfishness and insecurities. Anyway, I would be interested in hearing from polyamorous people if this is an issue that ever comes up, and if so, how it's dealt with.
polyamorous relationship with a "primary" would be a constant battle of sorts to ensure that I have a greater than or equal to number of dating prospects as my partner
Why would you want to do that? Don't you have anything more useful to do with your life?
I look at this hypothetical situation like this:
Situation: I have only one partner who in turn has multiple partners.
Pros:
Cons:
Related article: Polyhacking
Note: This article was posted earlier for less than a day but accidentally deleted.
Although polyamory isn't one of the "official" topics of LW interest (human cognition, AI, probability, etc...), this is the only community I'm part of where I expect a sufficiently high number of members to have experience with it to give useful feedback.
If you go looking for advice or articles about polyamory on the internet, you mostly get stuff written by polyamorists that are happy with their decisions. Is this selection bias? Where are the people whose relationships (or social lives, out anything) got damaged or ruined by experimenting with Consensual Non-Monogamy?
I'm posting this hoping for feedback, negative AND positive, on experiences with polyamory. I considered putting this in an Open Thread, but it occurred to me that many other LW readers might be interested in whether polyamory has drawbacks they need to be aware of. If you have experience with CNM (including first-hand witnessing, which has the added bonus of not requiring you to out yourself while still participating in the dialogue), please comment with your overall impression and as much detail as you would like to include (I am also putting my experiences there rather than in this post). If you've seen multiple poly relationships, multiple comments would make tallying slightly easier. I will try to upvote people who feed me data, a la LW surveys. If there are sufficient comments, I will periodically go through them and post a rough ratio of good to bad experiences at the bottom of this article.
PSA: The Username account is available for use by any who wish to remain anonymous. The password is left as an exercise for the reader. Hat tip... Username.