Very cool, if true

It's a total non-result. Which is great, because some people have been saying that "Polyamorous relationships can never make you as happy as monogamous ones." - and now we can say "That's just not true."

From:

channelpenguin

Have they? Gosh. If anything I felt it was the other way round... (Your title implies the other way round too, but I assume that's deliberate?)

Edited Date: 2025-03-28 02:15 pm (UTC)

From:

Mine was deliberate.

But I've heard it both ways around. From very annoying people every time.

From:

channelpenguin

LOL. That I can totally believe!

From:

If I had to predict, it would probably be roughly this. There's a potential nudge effect towards polyamory caused by everyone there having made an active choice rather than being directed by social pressure, and a potential nudge effect towards monogamy caused by the reward derived from conforming to social norms. In the absence of any other data I'm satisfied that these balance each other out.

From:

Actually, this can’t be quite right. At least a few people must be in polyamorous relationship because they’ve been pushed there by a partner. But I would guess - emphasis on guess - that (1) they’re a relatively small proportion and (2) they aren’t the respondents in this research.

From:

I don't know numbers, but there's definitely a "thing" that I've encountered numerous times where one partner is pushed into it by another. It tends to go badly. But I agree that they're not likely to be respondents in this research.

From:

Everything I’m saying is speculative and should be treated accordingly, but I assume this isn’t a high proportion. I don’t see how polyamory could be surviving and growing if it weren’t predominantly a consensual movement.

From:

I suspect it mostly is. It's become much easier to meet like-minded people in the last decade, and that will help poly people to meet each other.

But I'm not convinced it's growing that fast - I do think that people are more open about it than they used to be though.

From:

If the paper referenced in this article is to believed, it is pretty big. I do not know this field and can't critique the research methods (bet you can) but the source is reputable, I believe.

From:

I'm not surprised it's big. I just think it's always been big, but people were less open about it.

From:

I do not know. I would guess it’s bigger because (1) more people know about it (2) more people can do it without fear of retribution. But once again all speculative.

From:

I agree on both counts, but I'd like to see some figures on how much bigger. The problem being how to measure something that was going on but people were very invested in keeping hidden!

From:

I am intrigued that you think there was this much going on, almost entirely hidden. That contradicts Occam’s razor. (I don’t necessarily dispute it due to aforementioned lack of data, but it definitely wouldn’t have been where my reasoning would have taken me.)

From:

Because I've been aware of it happening, quietly, amongst people for decades.

Because "swinging" was a thing decades ago.

Because exactly the same thing happened with homosexuality, where it turned out that lots of people were doing it behind closed doors, or wanted to do it but couldn't find a way most of the time.

And so it doesn't feel to me like suddenly people have become polyamorous, it feels like the hidden parts of the iceberg are being slowly revealed. (With some growth on top of that, obviously.)

From:

danieldwilliam

I also wonder if we are still in a bit of a social transition. In the past monogamy was strongly expected and monoamory was the norm (in the sense of an ought statement, not an is statement) but there still seemed to be plenty of people who were doing something different.

I wonder if part of what is going on is that we still have a strong expectation of monogamy (formal or informal) and our society is still not fully okay with people who are not that in to being in long-term monogamous relationships. So we end up still with people who default to monogamy and then transition to polyamory when perhaps they'd just be happier living alone.

From:

I think that this is what is currently being described (in that part of the world) as "solo polyamory".

From:

(I've posted the article rather than linking to the paper directly because it too might be your sort of thing.)

From:

It was very interesting, thank you!

From:

A related thing I've seen is where a monogamous person falls for someone who's already in a relationship and in some sense pushes themselves into it. Which also didn't end well, but again, I don't think it's especially prevalent.

From:

Yeah. There are always going to be some people who bend themselves out of shape for a relationship. Hopefully not a big proportion though.

From:

danieldwilliam

I know a few people who have found themselves in "polyamorous" relationships after their partner declared that they now had an open marriage - or similar such unilateral decisions. The relationships didn't go well afterwards.

From:

cmcmck

When I was going through the gatekeeping process they constantly pushed towards straight, monogamous relationships. A girl goes with a boy, end of story.

That happened to be how it worked out for me but it needn't have been so!

From:

Well, exactly. People should be allowed to work out what works for them.

From:

bens_dad

There was an episode of Ally McBeal where a couple petitioned for a second woman to join their marriage. After a legally unusual home visit, the judge decides that the wife doesn't actually want a three-way relationship; she is choosing half of her child's father over none of him.

Does the paper have an angle on the oft-repeated claim that married men have better health (or longer lives) than single men, whilst marriage makes little difference for women ?

From:

Not that I can see.

From:

Yeah, the fact that I was in a same-sex relationship was mentioned as a 'concern' in some of the assessments at CX. Fortunately it wasn't enough to actually derail things, and 15 years later I'm happily married to the same guy so.... I declined to mention that we're non monogamous.

From:

cmcmck

It's funny how CX played (and I believe still play) these games while I went private and none of these things even got mentioned as being none of their business.

From:

It was definitely a bit of a mixed bag there. Lorimer was great - unlike our fuckwit of a health secretary, I got the impression that growing up queer in the 80s and 90s helped him empathise. Barrett was a knob, but much less so to me than a lot of other people (because white, middle class, Cambridge educated, and willing to pretend to be binary-gender-conforming)

From:

cmcmck

I was lucky to get a young Russell Reid ('they' hated him so he had to be good and was) with a young Michael Royle as my surgeon just starting to do experimental stuff.

From:

Can I ask what CX is?

From:

Oh, yes, of course. Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic. Which I think has now been replaced by/subsumed into the Tavistock Centre/other clinics outside London, but in the 00s, it was where everyone in the South of England/Midlands went for NHS ~~gatekeeping~~ treatment.

From:

Ah, gotcha. Thank you!

From:

And my sympathy

From: