This is a space for the discussion of polyamory, a movement that is attracting attention, especially in America, that raises fundamental questions about conventional relationships and the norms and taboos that surround them. Some of us have been following the Polyamory Diary which, apart from what it says about poly, gives a fascinating insight into man-woman dynamics.
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Intersting that you bring up that particular example. Annette put up a link on this site to an article abour Sarte and de Beauvoir that quite muddies the waters by suggesting fairly convincingly that de Beauvoir put up with a lot in the relationship and made the best of it, but that it veered at times surprisingly close to emotional abuse— which that she accepted because she valued her relationship with him. Furthermore together they seem to have been rather unpleasant to others who they pulled into their circle and seemed to torment for their own amusement. They may have both been wonderful writers but their relationship seemed far from wholesome.
A counter to the rather narrow but somewhat pervasive view that polyamorous women are merely making the choice to please their pleasure seeking male partner. Jean Paul-Satre and Simone de Beauvoir had one of the most long-lasting relationships (51 years) arguably because it was an "open-relationship". http://polyinthemedia.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/polyamorous-women-aren...
I read recently - on the BBC site, i think - that a recent evolutionary theory suggests that monogamy developed in species that have extended infancy in order to minimise infanticide. Without a protective male at her side the female in such species was vulnerable to other stranger males coming along and killing her off-spring in order to mate with her and implant their own genes. We thus see monogamy in some apes, some other mammals, dolphins etc.
This is an interesting theory. I'm not sure how you could prove or disprove it. It seems to me that it might explain sustained relationships rather than monogamy as such. I am thinking of the case of lions, for instance. Lions are polygamous. One or two males have a harem of females. Sometimes, if the male becomes old and weak, another stronger male will come along and take over the, to him, ready made harem, driving the old king lion out. When this happens the new king will have to establish himself with the females and in the process he is liable to kill all the existing cubs. Often what happens in fact is that one of the lionesses leaves the pride and takes all of the cubs with her to live in the wilderness so that they do not get killed.
I think the lion example shows how the female needs an enduring relationship with the father of her children but it does not have to result in monogamy necessarily as polygamy achieves exactly the same result. Perhaps there is some other factor that I am missing from the theory.
In any case, it is interesting to adapt the idea to the human situation. Nowadays there is not a lot of risk of infanticide. It is now common for men to form committed relationships with women who already have children. Being a step-parent is not always that easy but it is now very common. This may mean that the fundamental biological reason for monogamy no longer pertains. It is, therefore, interesting to speculate whether this will simply sustain the present trend toward serial monogamy or whether a more fundamental change in human mating and family formation patterns will eventuate.
On our travels we encountered a woman who is handicapped by an injury. She told her story, which, in outline, was as follows. She was cared for by her husband, whom she loved, and also by her best friend. The predictable thing happened and the husband fell in love with the best friend and vice versa. Following the norms of our society, the husband then told the woman whose story this is that he could no longer be with her as he was now in love with somebody else. As a result our woman now lives on her own. Most people who heard about the incident said that the new couple were both bad people. Consequently, everybody suffered. Eventually the new couple broke up and all three live separately.
Now it occurs to me that if poly were more part of the norm of our culture this could all have gone differently. here were three people who all loved each other and there is no logical reason why they could not have all lived together. in that scenario the injured woman would have been better cared for, nobody would have been pilloried and the final outcome might have been very different.
Of course, all three have no doubt learnt much by going through this ordeal, but much of it may have been unnecessary.
Nice comments, thank you.
But his other question about learning and challenging v.s. slipping into self-indulgence is interesting. What is the appropriate level of reflection to lead to growth and when do we get caught in self-obsession and narcissism? Certainly relationships were traditionally formed and held together for many reasons: child-rearing and general survival being two important ones. In agrarian societies one worked from dawn to dusk. There was very little time for self examination. In a sense, the meaning of life was self evident. From this perspective it could be argued that most moderns are narcissistic with too much time on their hands. It begs the question: what is it we are trying to figure out? On reflection it can make many of us look childish. Yet, from a Buddhist point of view the time to reflect becomes the doorway between the animal and the human realms. Precious human birth. A place where we have the correct conditions to reflect, lost neither in the bliss of the god realms nor in the struggle for survival. The Buddha left his comfortable place in an earthly god realm to search for truth. This makes it easier for us to accept his search as valid. If he had come, instead, from a small subsistence framing family, history might have coded him as a self-absorbed narcissist.
Imagine a more impoverished Sid saying to his elderly relatives, his wife and his young children "sorry guys, I really need to find myself. I am going off to look for the meaning of life, you're just going to have to manage without me... ". It would not have gone well. Hindsight might judge him more tolerantly... But how do we judge ourselves and our own motivations?
Coming back to the concept of Polyamory, it may be hard to see good motivation from the outside, it may look like narcissism and self-indulgence. It may be almost as hard to trust it from the inside, as human are notoriously good rationalizers. Sticking with the convention of monogamy smooths things over, but can support stagnation.
Polyamory pushes us out of stagnation but will absorb more of our time as we push ourselves into the unknown; participants certainly risk falling into narcissism. If a man has several women and he wants to try and satisfy them all he needs a fair amount of time to do it... Yet, we might say the same thing of a Buddhist practitioner keeping up any intense practice. If I set out to do 100,000 prostrations it will take a not insubstantial time commitment. In both cases it might be important to know why we are doing it.
One could do 100,000 prostrations with correct focus or intention, but one could do it as a way of avoiding other areas of ones life. Can one take on polyamory as a conscious practice, in the same way one might work with any other meditation practice? With more conventional practices one might go back to a teacher to check in. Here it seems that life itself must provide the "check in" that you are not losing yourself in narcissistic stagnation and self-indulgence.
Reading some of the accounts of poly relationships on the web it seems that there are some common pitfalls. Although people may adopt a poly style for all sorts of reasons, they often seem not to have really changed over to a poly value system. For instance, some poly situations are generated by two couples getting together. However, it seems to be quite common that what is actually happening is that one or both couples are using poly as a short term solution to try to solve a problem in the monogamous couple, and still holding onto the idea that sorting out the pair is better than really joining the four. Again, many of the comments that appear on, say, the Facebook polyamory page seem to be rather judgmental - all that has happened is that people have made poly into a new rule set by which to pass judgements on others, whereas the essence of poly is really, I think, supposed to be about letting such judgements go. This, it seems to me, is the real challenge, poly or not. How open, honest, free, can one be? How much are we doomed to be run around by insecurity? Probably quite a bit, but it is surely worth the effort to reduce it.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments. Both main points you make are important to me. The idea that polyamory can be about being in love with the whole world; with beauty and even (classically) truth is something to contemplate. Are we drawn to the idea of having multiple lovers because we are trying to regain a visceral depth to our experience that often seems drained from our modern technological world? We sense a loss but may struggle to understand what it is. We may look to sexuality as a place where we recognize that joy and pleasure can be found. Your other point about the difference between the ideal of openness and the reality of making it work is well-taken. It doesn't mean it is impossible but unquestionably it can be difficult. It is all too easy to try to short-cut and simplify thorough deceit. Often deceit works well in the short term but, in my experience it causes far more suffering ling term. Short-term payoff, long-term suffering. It takes a major commitment to the project to be willing to be honest and deal with the consequences up front. It has to be about higher goals than just sexual satisfaction certainly.
Yes, i think this discussion does open a space to ask questions about fundamental aspects of relationships of all kinds.
The conventional idea seems to be that "true love" is virtually defined by its ability to make everybody other than the love object invisible or uninteresting, as in the Beatles song line "I couldn't dance with another when I saw her standing there." This is the attitude that put you in the no-win situation, i think. Agreeing to have an open relationship does not necessarily mean that the people agreeing have actually abandoned traditional attitudes.
While narrowing of attention to one is a real phenomenon sometimes on the dance floor, it may not persist indefinitely. There then arises the question you are addressing, which is, what should one communicate. I have been in relationships where if I were attracted to somebody else (1) my partner wanted to know every detail and was genuinely interested (2) my partner was intensely jealous and did not want to hear a word about it (3) my partner would regard it as a matter of no importance (4) my partner was anxious about it and gave a lot of unclear messages, etc. So it is difficult to generalise, except to say, on the one hand, that communication always involves sensitivity and, on the other, that it does not solve all problems.
Regarding, "even when one has mutually agreed to have an open relationship, it is hard to trust that it really is okay to be honest and that the relationship could survive" I think this touches on a universal problem, not just a poly one. People in couples must spend a lot of time agonising over whether they can or cannot tell their partner something that is emotionally loaded. The more i think about it the more the "problems" of poly seem to turn out just to be the problems of all relationships - namely that they are inhabited by bombu human beings :-)
Responding to the other part of what you are saying, I agree that being willing to endlessly re-examine our stories about ourself - so long as it does not slip over into self-obsession or narcissism - can be really important. In fact, in all "modern" relationships it is surely the case that a major raison-d'etre is the personal growth that can result.
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