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If you can make it work with one other person and have a fulfilling, understanding and well-communicated relationship that gives you both a feeling of reward and healthy challenge to achieving goals for both of you, you have accomplished one of the most challenging aspects of life. It's very hard to share and open your life with another person, that person also has to be on-board with the same goals and plans. It can take a lifetime to really fine-tune a good monogamous relationship to the point that you're both functioning smoothly with each other.
And if you can do this with TWO other people, and those people ALSO can do this, that's not just an accomplishment, that's a sign you should probably buy some lottery tickets, or you're actually the protagonist in a generic anime or manga and you don't need to worry about the girls because some kind of space monster is probably going to try to kill you.
Yes, but also some of polyamory is that not every relationship has to be "we cohabit and have kids and can deal with every single little quietly annoying thing the other does". Some relationships are focused on sex. Some are focused on breaking into aquariums together. Some are with people across the country and even though you are close it doesn't make sense to get together more than once a year. Although polyamorous relationships can look like monogamy*2, part of the point is that more focused, smaller relationships can also be romantic.
I would say most people look at the prospect of poly relationships in terms of monogamous relationships, and yeah I would expect there to be a wildly different dynamic in play for making it work with more than one partner, particularly under the same roof.
Most people look at relationships in terms of some very rigid ideals that were set millenia ago, and even though our society is changing at a breakneck speed, we're all still pining for the romance taught to us in movies and stories written centuries ago.
I think there is still a real place for traditional relationships, they are wonderful actually, but I think if we're to learn anything from people exploring multiple partner relationships, it would be that your relationship can look like a lot of different things, and no one pattern is perfect for everyone. What matters is you're with someone or people who make you happy and not longing for something else.
Just a small correction: most people look at relationships in terms of some very rigid ideals that were set a couple centuries ago at most.
I thought about that for a bit as I typed that out, and even though the social details of modern relationship standards were for the most part similar in male/female dynamic a couple centuries ago, the roots of how and why we preserve a lot of the gendered dichotomy originated in the much further past, and I tend to side with the theory that our feminine/masculine binary started somewhere around agriculture when there were actual tasks that needed to be divided, and the systems that resulted from those survival needs.
Since we don't need people managing the crops and defending the babies from cave bears while other groups go out to hunt or do war, a lot of the ideas we have about who "should" do what in relationships isn't a survival imperative anymore, but we still cling to a lot of the values that developed during those millenia.
That does make intuitive sense, but archeology shows otherwise. There was a much bigger diversity of gender roles and relationship structures/child rearing systems, including in agricultural societies.
The modern almost universal ideal of romantic monogamous nuclear relationships was born from romantic (as in the movement) puritan petit bourgeois ideals in the 19th century.
Working class women during the medieval age for example, worked and lived outside the home, had affairs etc. This changed around the 18th century with the hegemony of the bourgeoisie and working class mirroring of their ideals.
Basically while it’s true that patriarchal strictly dichotomous societies existed for as long as we can tell, And that they have prevailed and “won out”. But doesn’t mean they are the norm for humanity. Their universality is extremely recent.
Tell me more about this breaking into aquariums together?
What, are you a cop? No officer, I've never broken into an aquarium. Is there even an aquarium in town?
It's just something poli people do you wouldn't get it.
Fish get caught through the mouth
yes please us 3 could do it
I am currently in this actual situation!
It has been wild getting here, but i am married, and dating my wife's girlfriend. We're all grown, functional adults in our 30's, too!
It is delightful, and does make me feel like im a character in some really good smut, no lie. I am lucky. And happy.