Someone wrote to me saying they would like it if I wrote more about polyamory. I responded:
I would also like to write more about polyamory. I feel like I have 3 more good essays in me on it, at least. The problem is that everything I have learned comes from experiences I have had with partners and metamours, or experiences that I have seen friends have, that are quite private in nature. The more I go into details (to a point), the more instructive the essay, but I can’t go into details very much. So I have not been all that interested in writing more about it.
I’ve been poly for a little over 9 years now, and the two questions I’m most interested these days are:
- What kinds of traits are correlated with successfully transitioning to being poly?
- In a tolerant society where the two styles coexist, what is a “healthy relationship for polyamory to have with monogamy” given that within the ethical framework of poly, monogamous norms seem kind of immoral, and vice versa?
There are multiple difficulties in actually writing about this. The greatest one is that my opinions are based on personal experiences and my observations of other people’s relationships. Going into those experiences/relationships to validate my points would violate the privacy of too many people.
I’m not the only one in this position. There’s a great deal of poly metis locked up in the heads of exactly the people with the experience, community integration, and discretion to not share their full reasoning on their opinions.
This is not to say that there isn’t a huge amount of poly advice on the internet. There is, and plenty of it seems good to me. What I am claiming is that poly people face stronger privacy constraints than mono people, who often can be extremely honest about the problems and solutions in a relationship once that relationship ends, or is successfully repaired. Whether a poly relationship ends or is repaired after a problem, if the problem was poly-specific, it involved more than one other person. The probability that everyone will be fine with becoming an object lesson is low. If they’re not, and you write about it anyway, the repercussions extend further than with monogamy into your community. Into your dating pool.
I expect there’s a weak negative correlation between feeling socially free to talk in depth about one’s personal experience with poly, and success at making it work. If one has burned all their bridges, they can talk in detail about the problems you had (but beware! what applicability might the problems of that person have to you?…). If one is still on excellent terms with the dozens of people they’ve shared a partner or scene with, they probably don’t want to publicly talk about gnarly scenarios that those friends will recognize themselves in, even anonymized. Instructive failures and successes do not enter the collective lore by default.
There are bloggers who thread that needle well and bloggers who don’t; many, like me, don’t try at all, because what is most valuable to discuss is inextricably bound up with what is not fully theirs to say. It may not be obvious from the outside that there is much left out in the public discourse about poly. Price in the fact that poly anecdotes are drawn from drama-prone polyamorists even harder than mono anecdotes are drawn from drama-prone monogamists, and you will have a slightly better understanding of polyamory itself.
My post-autocompletion module is prodding me to end with advice somehow. I have no solution to the collective ‘problem’ except suggesting that we all bury our memoirs in the back yard, or encrypt them for a hundred years. I will, briefly, say some medium-confidence advice for individuals.
High quality poly wisdom travels easily in networks even though it is slower to accumulate publicly. There’s no beating finding a poly person who seems to have a personality similar to yours, showing discretion and pleasantness, and asking them for advice. If no one comes to mind, you might be hosed. Being near one or more healthy poly networks that have existed harmoniously for years is a big input into success. The person or couple considering polyamory, even if they are well suited to it, will have a bad time if they try to date in a random pool that did not select for skill.