Negative Polyamory outcomes?

Deducing this account's password is left as an exercise to the reader.

Hint: It rhymes with shmassword.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

It would be more convenient and coherent if you could collect all your replies to your own thread in a single post.

Do you think this outcome would have been different if you had not agreed to a poly relationship?

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.

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.

Possibly in your deletion enthusiasm, you seem to have deleted the whole post! :p

Negative Polyamory outcomes?

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Also, "letting" them get into polyamorous relationships? Way to take away the agency of half the population.

You seem to be assuming that most women will limit themselves to one partner while attractive men accrue harems. This is the opposite of my experience.

Given women's real preferences in men, letting them get into poly situations with the minority of men they prefer results in the rejection of more and more other young men who in earlier times would have have better opportunities for pairing up with women.

Oh, they'll keep the "beta chumps" around to provide emotional support and to take care of the alpha's children.