Negative polyamory outcomes?

In my experience people who have recently gotten into poly are evangelical, claiming that it is easy and for everyone, while people have done it for years say it is hard and not for everyone. But you hear a lot more from the people with the new partner infatuation. Experienced people complain even about this dynamic.

Largely negative experience: person A (female, bi, well-known by me but I have the story second-hand) was in a poly relationship with a couple. The guy had other women on the side, with his partners' knowledge but only grudging acceptance. The two women had occasional female secondary partners themselves. This lasted for around a year. Person A had a fling with another guy; her primary guy went jealous and awful over it. He's now out of both women's lives; they're not dating anymore but are still friends.

EDIT: I should point out that while all of this was permitted by the rules of the relationship (except the jealous fit and its fallout), there wasn't as much communication as there probably should have been. "Other women are OK, other men aren't" perhaps should have been a rule, but maybe the guy didn't know he'd get so upset over it.

(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.

I have a friend who's tried it on two occasions. The first time, she and her best friend shared a boyfriend. It didn't last terribly long, but it seems to have ended amicably. The second time, she and her then-boyfriend decided to merge up with another couple into a foursome. Her original boyfriend eventually ran off with the new girl, leaving her and the other guy single(they weren't as into each other, and decided not to bother continuing after their other partners left).

Overall, she's mostly unhappy with her experimentation, and has said she intends to remain monogamous in future.

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.

Negative experience, I know all the people involved but didn't observe any of this firsthand and it happened before I knew some of them: A good friend of mine (call her person B, female, bi, married) and her husband (person C) once tried dating another married couple (also friends of mine, call the guy person D). Everything went swimmingly as far as the sex and the hanging out together as friends went, but C got uncomfortable about the growing romantic attachments and amicably broke off the inter-couple relationship. Unfortunately, B had already fallen hard for D (though not to the exclusion of C) and ended up cheating to have one more night with him. When she told C about it he got pretty mad, blocked D out of his life (and got a promise from B not to be alone with him again) and pretty much swore off polyamory (at the time). This was over three years ago, and it was only in the last year or so that C has started to forgive D and they've moved towards being friends again.

B and C are still married, though it was rocky for a while there (D and his wife aren't, for many reasons of which this cheating incident was plausibly one). B really doesn't do monogamy well, and the compromise for a while was swinging with other couples (just sex, no dating in the usual sense) every now and then. That seems to have worked out, though B wishes it was more often.

Related question: should I include swingers in the list of people I know in poly relationships? The boundary is a bit fuzzy but many people would count it as CNM even if it's just for sex.

Poly seems ubiquitous enough among people I know (mostly young, techies, living in the Bay Area or otherwise with some connection to it) that it's hard for me to even keep track of which people I know are poly or have been in poly relationships.

My general sense is that things often go well, sometimes go badly, but when they go badly poly is usually not the main reason (but sometimes it's an aggravating factor.) When things do go well, you're less likely to hear about it than when they go badly, too.

I also know several people who seem to have had poly phases at one time or another, but now seem to be practicing-monogamists; as well as at least one poly person who went through a monogamy phase (for a partner) but couldn't deal in the end and is back to poly.

I've tried polyamory several times, in several permutations, and it Just. Does. Not. Work. for me. I'm male and bi so there are many permutations, although I have not logically exhausted them all. Yet! First experience was with a female partner who started seeing someone else, also male. Much jealousy and unhappiness all round, despite much talking. Everyone was happier when we stopped doing that. A later one with a primary male partner and we both saw other people, fairly casually, mostly other males. Again, much unhappiness merging in to insecurity, despite talking, though less than in the first one. Then later a four-way two males two females all bisexual in theory thing that never worked right. Who was finding who really hot kept changing over time, which seems like it ought to have worked. But, long story short, A never had the hots for B when B had the hots for A, for all values of A and B, and nobody was getting any.

My two big monogamous relationships were much less hard work (one male, one female). Less visits from the Drama Llama is awesome. And the latest of those is very long term and happy and we now expect the relationship to end by death, if at all.

Maybe there's a typical mind fallacy thing going on. Some people get on with polyamory, some don't. I know people who love it, others who crashed and burned. I say give it a go, but be ready to call a halt to the trial as soon as you have enough evidence to show it's not working for you.

So, in terms of statistics I'm not going to try to isolate the experiences; I have too many friends involved in poly relationships to do a representative sampling without more work than I feel like dedicating to this comment.

Just to be clear, I'm counting as "poly" relationships those where at least one partner has at least two partners who know about and are reasonably OK with each other for at least some period of time, and where such partners are understood as in-principle acceptable. I'm counting as "monogamous" relationships where such partners are understood as in-principle unacceptable, including ones where partners have had affairs but claim to feel bad about them.

This creates an excluded middle of "poly in principle but not in practice" and it's likely that a lot of relationships I consider monogamous fall in that excluded middle (arguably including my own) but I don't really care.

There's also "nominally monogamous but in practice poly" relationships mediated by affairs which are eventually confessed and forgiven, about which I don't have much to say but am counting here as monogamous.

If I had to guess about statistics I'd say that maybe 15-30% of the long-term (say, a decade or more) monogamous relationships in my cohort have tried the poly thing and concluded it isn't for them, and about the same proportion of the LTRs in my cohort are poly and seem happy enough with it. (Which is not to say they don't have relationship problems; they do, sometimes involving third parties and sometimes not. So do the monogamous LTRs, and the single people.)

I haven't noticed either groups' relationships failing more often, though I see a lot of relationships of both sorts break up on third parties, which in poly relationships usually looks like a triad destabilizing, and in mono relationships usually looks like an unforgiven affair.

One highlight: one of the best marriages I know of (in terms of how well the spouses work together and support each other and make each other happy and achieve their own goals and raise their child) has been poly for about a decade now; they've each had secondary partners during that time who last a few months to a couple of years and then break off amicably.

Largely positive experience thus far: my current relationship is technically poly, though so far it's mostly been limited to when one of us is out of town for a week or more. General rule is "anything goes as long as you're safe and it doesn't cut into the time we have with each other." Travel (I'm a consultant) is one obvious case, but we live far enough apart that it's hard to see each other except on weekends. She's had one fling with an old fuckbuddy mid-week while we were both in our respective hometowns; I so far have not (only when traveling) but have considered it.

When we are with each other we have largely acted monogamous so far, and things may change if she moves closer (as she is planning to do). We have discussed (her suggestion) adding a third person for a fling, though. We appear to have implicitly rejected expanding the primary circle. Current relationship age is over seven months and this has been the rule since the first month.

Negative: a couple decided to go poly after some years in a stable monogamous relationship. It seemed to go well for a few months, but the guy apparently told a few white lies here and there, which then got completely out of control and eventually resulted in a disaster for pretty much everyone involved.

Neutral/negative: a couple was poly for maybe half a year or so, then decided it was "too much trouble" and returned to monogamy. I don't know them well enough to be able to provide more details, but they have been together for a few years after that and are now having a child, so nothing terrible probably happened.

I know plenty of other poly people as well, but don't know as much of what's going on in their individual relationships. The general feeling I get is that while a healthy poly relationship certainly isn't impossible, they are only rarely very stable and often seem to require significantly more attention and work to succeed even when they do (which of course are not negative things to everyone, and it can be worth it anyway in case the freedom and additional partners bring a lot of value). Problems arising from insufficient honesty are pretty common, even among those who would generally seem to value trust and openness, so that's probably an important thing to watch out for.

My only experience with poly was negative. (There were details here, but I removed them for reasons.)

I have decided that poly is way too complicated for me and I have no intention of pursuing a poly relationship in the future. I left this feeling more like a piece in a collection than a human.

Repost: I apologise that this is not first-hand but Patri came out arguing his experience with polamory had been negative a while ago.

I think it's pretty hard to know whether poly gets credit or blame in any given situation.

For example, I know of one relationship that opened up largely because it wasn't a good relationship and then later ended. In my best guess (not very confident), the open relationship hastened the end while also making it somewhat easier to do.

At first glance, that can look like "poly ruined their relationship!" or at least "poly might mean your relationship isn't good and so don't do it or it'll fall apart!", but in this case the transition from husband/wife to friend/friend was unambiguously a good one - and to the extent the open relationship brought it to an end more quickly, it gets credit, not blame, for helping them accelerate into the crash. (Yes, this is their stance too. They were considering having a celebratory "divorce party" before just merging it into another party they had at their house)

The main negative aspect of my ongoing experience (20 months so far) has primarily been in increased awkwardness around acquaintances and family members. I'm predisposed to that anyway, and actually doing something nonconformy (and not really having much sense of how acquaintances and family members feel about it, even those who are aware of the relationship) has heightened the phenomenon.

It's definitely net positive overall, though. :)

edit: deobfuscation

Swinging having been described as "definitely CNM", I'll mention some other folks I know where there are others in their sex lives, but only for the sex.

Another couple I know (hetero couple, but I'm not actually sure how they would define their own orientations) have a very kinky sex life and routinely take part in sex acts with participants outside the relationship (for example, two or more people together tying up / dominating a third). They've been together for something approaching three years now (and co-habiting for over a year), talk openly and happily about their sex life, and in general seem happy and committed to each other.

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:

I've been poly for 3 years, had 10+ poly relationships, and while all but 4 have ended problems caused by polyamory has never been the cause. I'm currently in a triad for 9 months, been with one of the people in the triad for almost a year, and have been in another relationship for a bit over a year. Polyamory has literally never been anything more than a tiny issue in my current relationships, and only once was it ever anything close to a serious issue.

Personally: Overall positive experiences. I'm polyamorous by nature, and have never had a relationship that wasn't poly. In my friend circle (bay area rationalists) there's a fair bit of polyamory. It seems like there's more + happier relationships, as well as more + calmer breakups, when I compare to the current relationships of my acquaintances from high school.

Negative data point: someone I know tried polyamory for (I think) 10-25 years, had a lot of difficult life experiences some of which related to her relationships, and has lately skewed towards relationship anarchy but with one primary romantic partner.

Data point in favor of poly, but sad: I know a person who left a 10-year relationship last year due to (her own) cheating and has been cheerfully doing CNM since then.

The market rate for swingers parties for single males is the same as the rate for prostitutes. Damn, I was looking for an arbitrage opportunity!

Back to my point. Given the similar rates, that would suggests swingers probably attract the same population of single males who go for hookers. As one such individual myself, and having met LessWrong and regular poly's, my experience is such that the latter represent a very different population that either Johns or hookers.

I think you are using the wrong words that describe a different situation.

I do not see a reason to dwell too much on relationship styles. But I do honestly believe that with a bit of reason you can solve EVERYTHING. But from what I gather people are often more emotional than rational in relationships and therefore reason is thrown right in the fire.

But if I do have something to say.. I often feel poly folks are basically epicifiying what I think is "I just wanna fuck".