Dating : Monogamy Vs polygamy
How many don’t mind sharing their partners? Please let us know if you are a m/f?
Personally, I am too jealous to share. My kind of relationship and love is to keep one girl in my life, give her all I have, take from her all I need. When I get in a relationship I always forget about all females and I expect my SO to do the same with other males… I don’t know if this is a cultural thing or genes or life experiences. What do you think?
I am with you 100%.
39F and I am a one guy kinda girl. When I’m with a guy no one else so much as turns my head.
I’m a bit traditional in some ways. To each his own but I don’t quite believe in open relationships or polyamory.
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If I want a relationship with someone, I want to be exclusive and expect them to be the same. Anything else appart from a hookup is a FWB situation for me, I’ll gladly keep and cherish the friendship but wouldn’t call it a relationship.
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But again, that’s how I think. If that works other people that’s good for them.
Polyamory is nothing more than a nice way of saying fwb. Its people wanting to sound more sophisticated than they really are.
I wouldn’t want polyamory personally. Been there and done that in my 20’s, it’s not for me, hard pass.
There’s some very interesting research on the psychological and evolutionary basis for polygamy as a natural consequence of the early tribal emergence of our species.
First, our babies are born weak, stupid, and helpless. We *need* parenting to survive. Parenting leads to better outcomes for the offspring when both parents are around. That is supported by noting that theres a chemical cocktail released during orgasm for both sexes that promotes good feelings. If there was no evolutionary advantage to partnering, that trait would be haphazard and random at best, or a detriment at worst.
*But* – and here’s where it gets weird – there’s also rather good evidence that when the number of males and females is unequal, multi-partner polyamory tends to emerge naturally. So when the ratio is unequal, we tend to self organize into a heirarchical power structure. We see it in Chimps and Bobobos as well. The alpha has a harem, the middle members may have one or two partners, and the lowest ranking males have to fight to keep their partners monogomous. This seems to be supported by human biology – the male reproductive member in humans has evolved to be knobby on the end to remove competing seed and very long relative to our body size compared to other animals to place your own seed in deeper.
Several economic studies have shown that both non-partnered (e.g. single) and multi-partnered (e.g. polygamous) people tend to have lower overall household wealth and wellbeing than exclusively partnered (e.g. monogomous) people. The takeaway might be that polyamoury isn’t for everyone, and very specifically might be best suited for only the wealthiest and most attractive among us – the « alphas » so to speak
TL;DR – monogamous partnering seems to be naturally optimal for child-rearing, but polygamy occurs naturally as well when the sex ratio of available partners is skewed, especially when there’s a social power dynamic at play.
Polyamory will become more common. If you can have more than one friend at one time, if you can overcome the petty jealousies that limit us, you can have more than one lover.