What’s to stop anyone today from having an open conversation with their partner about opening their relationship? In the examples above, no one is vilifying having an open relationship… it’s vilifying lying and dishonesty.
Even if we were to normalize infidelity, that doesn’t mean anyone should be beholden to accepting it in their relationship. Your argument is akin to saying “lying is widespread because it comes from human nature” so we should just normalize lying.
I think normalizing having more partners even in a stable relationship with one partner would make it much easier to actually talk to your partner and discuss it openly, because the percentage of partners that see it as something terribly wrong would be much lower and people wouldn’t feel like speaking about such things is risky. That would reduce the need for cheating, although it wouldn’t make it disappear (as it’s not the only cause, as someone’s correctly pointed out).
I see where you’re going, I just don’t agree. I’d rather normalize having open conversations with your partner(s) about sensitive and taboo topics, which I think is a prerequisite for multiple partners anyway. (Two people in a relationship can be tricky enough. Attempting to deal with the insecurities, feelings, and values of multiple partners seems like it would require open dialogue to have any real chance of success.)
I have a knee jerk negative reaction to your argument because it sounds like “I’d like to sleep with multiple people but my partner is brainwashed by society/their friends to believe we shouldn’t have multiple partners. If society decided this was normal, I wouldn’t have to work through this difficulty.”
(I fully support people having multiple partners if that’s what they want to do.)
Healthy open relationships at scale will require some pretty big changes in society.
Communication, critical thinking, self-actualization, Maslow’s Hierarchy; all those things will have to be improved both in society-at-large and within the educational system. Most of the world will not function well in polyamory without basically redoing society.
Eh. Humans are cheating serial monogamists for the most part. I don’t think lifelong monogamy is something we evolved for. Trying to keep it as the standard leads to all the problems we have. The whole patriarchal model that dominates the world is a result of monogamy and inheritance.
What’s to stop anyone today from having an open conversation with their partner about opening their relationship? In the examples above, no one is vilifying having an open relationship… it’s vilifying lying and dishonesty.
Even if we were to normalize infidelity, that doesn’t mean anyone should be beholden to accepting it in their relationship. Your argument is akin to saying “lying is widespread because it comes from human nature” so we should just normalize lying.
F that noise.
I think normalizing having more partners even in a stable relationship with one partner would make it much easier to actually talk to your partner and discuss it openly, because the percentage of partners that see it as something terribly wrong would be much lower and people wouldn’t feel like speaking about such things is risky. That would reduce the need for cheating, although it wouldn’t make it disappear (as it’s not the only cause, as someone’s correctly pointed out).
I see where you’re going, I just don’t agree. I’d rather normalize having open conversations with your partner(s) about sensitive and taboo topics, which I think is a prerequisite for multiple partners anyway. (Two people in a relationship can be tricky enough. Attempting to deal with the insecurities, feelings, and values of multiple partners seems like it would require open dialogue to have any real chance of success.)
I have a knee jerk negative reaction to your argument because it sounds like “I’d like to sleep with multiple people but my partner is brainwashed by society/their friends to believe we shouldn’t have multiple partners. If society decided this was normal, I wouldn’t have to work through this difficulty.”
(I fully support people having multiple partners if that’s what they want to do.)
Healthy open relationships at scale will require some pretty big changes in society.
Communication, critical thinking, self-actualization, Maslow’s Hierarchy; all those things will have to be improved both in society-at-large and within the educational system. Most of the world will not function well in polyamory without basically redoing society.
Most notably the fact that comparatively few peopple want them would have to change.
Eh. Humans are cheating serial monogamists for the most part. I don’t think lifelong monogamy is something we evolved for. Trying to keep it as the standard leads to all the problems we have. The whole patriarchal model that dominates the world is a result of monogamy and inheritance.
It’s pie in the sky utopian stuff, at this point.
I mean the. Catholic church, patriarchy, most Major religions come to think of it.
It goes so far that a lot of the very same people vilifying open relationships are the ones cheating on their partners.