PSA: The "Username" account isn't just one eclectic user with no imagination, but an account you can log into for making anonymous posts. Deducing this account's password is left as an exercise to the reader.
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.
Regarding defection: In my experience, approaching someone with the information that I'm poly and would like to ask them out can be stressful, beyond the usual fear of rejection, because they might react extremely negatively and out me to people I don't want to know about my relationship status.
The more people you add, the greater the risk of something like that happening.
I'd believe that, for example, any given relationship participant has some arbitrary likelihood of one-place defection, and the likelihoods stack proportional to the number of participants. But I'm not sure that any given participant is more likely to defect the more people they are also in a relationship with -- if defection is two-place, it seems like cooperation should be too.
No-one commenting here has mentioned children, and I don't think I've ever seen mention elsewhere of poly families with children. Does it work as an environment for bearing and bringing up children?
I have heard (secondhand) that when one has children, maintaining a single relationship with an adult becomes very difficult, and maintaining multiple impossible. But it also seems like some of the labor involved in parenting could be shared, and 'communal parenting' work out easier for everyone involved. (Or differences in parenting styles, already problematic with 2 different people, will explode when there are n different people.)
I am poly with a toddler. Polyness doesn't seem to come into my parenting much beyond that there are more people who care more strongly about my child's well being. (My co-parent and I provide all the care.)
Meta: are you interested in identifying "any negative outcomes in any poly relationships" or "negative outcomes that were caused by the poly-ness of a relationship"? I ask because "relationship crumbled due to mental health issues" seems orthogonal to "relationship is poly".
Separation of factors is noble but in this case it's pretty much impossible. How do you separate someone's mental health from desire to be in a poly relationship?
I'd be more interested in the effects of various types of poly relationships. For instance, are poly relationships with one man and several women more stable and positive than one woman and several men? I suspect the answer to be yes.
Um. I think those are non-central poly relationships for this community. Usually it seems like both men and women (and others) have or are interested in having multiple partners. Women appear to have more partners on average, but those that have exactly one are more likely not to be looking for more. Unfortunately the sample size is kinda small, so that's probably not very meaningful. (data from the 2013 survey)
Update from the 2014 data - with the introduction of "and possibly open to more relationships partners" the number of poly people (except of nontraditional genders) with one partner who are currently not looking for more relationship partners dropped significantly. Women 6:4→2:12:5, Men 27:37→11:39:21, Other 1:5→4:5:2.
How do you separate someone's mental health from desire to be in a poly relationship?
I'm fairly certain you didn't mean it, but this is pretty insulting.
Interested in negative outcomes caused by poly-ness, but I've posted all my experiences, including the two that seem to have issues unrelated to being poly, because I think more data are better.
I apologise that this is not first-hand but Patri came out arguing his experience with polamory had been negative a while ago.
He didn't exactly say that though, did he? He seems to just be saying that he doesn't think it's viable for achieving a certain kind of relationship. It's not clear to me that he even had a poly experience at all. Upvoted for relevance though.
His position is summarized in the following two paragraphs:
I think that polyamory - multiple consenting partners - is a relationship style that can work well for some people in some life situations. If you want to prioritize freedom (keep your contracts minimal and short), variety (of personalities you interplay with), or exploration of types of partnerships, it might make sense.
However, if you wish to prioritize true love (depth of intimacy with a hopefully forever partner) or a stable family, I think polyamory is a style which is at best deeply challenging and at worst fundamentally opposed to those goals. So I want couples with these priorities who are considering polyamory to make sure they aren't ignoring the tradeoffs in a setting where the cost of failure is significantly more than a broken heart.
Negative experience: I met someone who was in an open relationship with her husband and a boyfriend. Over the next few months I watched her marriage explode as her husband adjusted poorly to anti-depressants. They are in the process of divorcing, and she is on-again off-again with the boyfriend. My impression is that both she and her husband have emotional issues that may have contributed to this outcome.
It would be more convenient and coherent if you could collect all your replies to your own thread in a single post.
How do I delete comments? Is that not an option anymore?
ISTR you have to retract a comment, then delete it. (Trying this now.)
Yes, and doesn't work with child comments.
It seems I can't with this one because you have replied. Hilarious. I also deleted all those upvotes. :-/
Positive experience: My monogamous relationship was suffering due to my partner's sudden drop in libido and the tension this caused. Although I had read Polyhacking, we didn't really consider Consensual Non-Monogamy until my partner met another person in an open marriage who framed it as a positive thing. Since we opened up, my partner and I have been much happier, although lately there has been stress due to my partner not currently seeing anyone else and wanting more of my time.
Negative experience: A married couple who were living six hours apart opened up their marriage. When I met them they were not having any obvious issues with the arrangement. Eventually it came out that the husband was lying about partners both to his wife and to the other women. The rules of their relationship allowed him to have sex with other women as long as his wife knew about them, and yet he seemed compelled to lie whenever possible. The wife gains some comfort from the support of her lover, and has not yet decided whether to end the marriage.
Negative, first-hand: long-term cohabiting partner of a couple of years convinced me into polyamory. In spite of me explicitly vetoing my two best friends, the partner proceeded to implicitly bargain away this boundary while convincing Best Friend #1 I was totally cool with it. This blew up while Best Friend #1 and his long-term girlfriend were visiting us for Christmas. After fucking up our relationship, she proceeded to do the same with BF#1 and his girlfriend. She then moved onto BF#2, who she subsequently married under apparently monogamous terms. BF#1 and I don't talk all that much any more. BF#2 and I never talk any more.
The moral of this tale: careless, selfish people can deal exponentially more damage in a polyamorous environment. Also, don't break up with people over Christmas if you can reasonably help it.
Do you think this outcome would have been different if you had not agreed to a poly relationship?
The on-paper outcome of two break-ups and a marriage would probably not have been different. The ensuing drama/ruined friendships/trust issues, etc. probably would have been.
Why would your partner be expected to have respected your wishes when if they had remained "monogamy" given that your partner did not respect your wishes when they were "don't date either of these two people"?
(In the interest of full disclosure, I don't have very high priors on nominal monogamy preventing people from cheating.)
I don't know how much of this is clear from my original description, but the partner didn't actually want a polyamorous relationship. She wanted a guilt-free way of dating my best friend without having to break up with me. When that was denied, she broke up with me.
Per passive_fist's suggestion, I am collecting my experiences as replies to this comment and deleting the originals. I'm keeping them as separate comments so that they may be replied to individually.
Positive experience: My monogamous relationship was suffering due to my partner's sudden drop in libido and the tension this caused. Although I had read Polyhacking, we didn't really consider Consensual Non-Monogamy until my partner met another person in an open marriage who framed it as a positive thing. Since we opened up, my partner and I have been much happier, although lately there has been stress due to my partner not currently seeing anyone else and wanting more of my time.
Negative experience: A married couple who were living six hours apart opened up their marriage. When I met them they were not having any obvious issues with the arrangement. Eventually it came out that the husband was lying about partners both to his wife and to the other women. The rules of their relationship allowed him to have sex with other women as long as his wife knew about them, and yet he seemed compelled to lie whenever possible. The wife gains some comfort from the support of her lover, and has not yet decided whether to end the marriage.
Does this have anything to do with polyamory. It sounds like a lack of emotional maturity (I predict that he would have been cheating, regardless of the openness of the marriage.)
Actually, the current hypothesis is brain damage. I know that sounds like insulting hyperbole, but he had a serious head injury a few years ago, and his behavior has become more and more erratic recently. She's trying to get him to get a head scan. But no, I don't actually think the issue is polyamory.
Positive experience: I dated someone who knew both my primary partner and me. Doing so did not affect their friendship. I ended the relationship fairly amicably for reasons unrelated to non-monogamy.
Positive experience: I dated someone who was already in a primary relationship. They ended it fairly amicably because they felt that my primary relationship was affecting my relationship with them in a way they didn't like.
Neutral/negative experience: My partner has dated two people who would not describe themselves as being poly (they were monogamously interested in my partner). They knew that my relationship to my partner was primary, but still ended up with broken hearts when my partner broke up with them. My partner is fine. This doesn't look much different from the outcome I would expect if my partner had been monogamous.
Positive experience: A female friend of mine seems extremely satisfied with her poly lifestyle. She has been poly for several years, with a break for monogamy that she regrets.
Negative experience: I met someone who was in an open relationship with her husband and a boyfriend. Over the next few months I watched her marriage explode as her husband adjusted poorly to anti-depressants. They are in the process of divorcing, and she is on-again off-again with the boyfriend. My impression is that both she and her husband have emotional issues that may have contributed to this outcome.
Positive experience: A female friend of mine seems extremely satisfied with her poly lifestyle. She has been poly for several years, with a break for monogamy that she regrets.
Neutral/negative experience: My partner has dated two people who would not describe themselves as being poly (they were monogamously interested in my partner). They knew that my relationship to my partner was primary, but still ended up with broken hearts when my partner broke up with them. My partner is fine. This doesn't look much different from the outcome I would expect if my partner had been monogamous.
Positive experience: I dated someone who was already in a primary relationship. They ended it fairly amicably because they felt that my primary relationship was affecting my relationship with them in a way they didn't like.
Positive experience: I dated someone who knew both my primary partner and me. Doing so did not affect their friendship. I ended the relationship fairly amicably for reasons unrelated to non-monogamy.
Related article: Polyhacking
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 if you don't want to), 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. (ETA: I will also 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.