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NancyLebovitz comments on Negative polyamory outcomes? - Less Wrong Discussion
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(Repost) Negative and second hand: Some couples were sharing a large house. One of the couples added a third person, who turned out to be very bad news. That marriage ended, and only one of the couples lives in the house now.
Positive and second hand: A triad which has worked well for many years.
Negative and second hand: Triad where the third was emotionally destructive and also brought in a very serious STD.
I've wondered about the risks of polyamory which aren't exactly about fidelity, but more about the risks of giving a great deal of trust to a person who might defect. The more people you add, the greater the risk of something like that happening.
It's not just that the risk of defection increases with the number of people, though that's certainly true. It's also that the dynamics for 3+ people are qualitatively different from the dynamics for two people -- if you're in a monogamous relationship, you can't play the other people off each other to your benefit, because there's only one other person.
(This is also technically true for couples with children, but children are probably less likely to be skilled at and inclined toward that sort of manipulation than polyamorists, and married parents (though IME not divorced ones) should be able to put up enough of a united front to prevent the obvious failure modes.)
It's almost like there's something qualitatively different about the tractability of interactions between two bodies and N>2 bodies... (sorry)
One could also make an extremely laboured analogy about circumbinary orbits, and the spontaneous ejection of one party into deep space.
Let me guess - you got no siblings? :-)