MatchboxVagabond wrote:
Perhaps, but polyamory has some pretty significant issues related to personal choice. It completely breaks the guarantee that there be enough potential partners out there for everybody. It can sort of work in specific situations, but even a slight disturbance in the number of available men and women can lead to some pretty obnoxious and abusive behavior patterns developing in whatever sex it is that's in demand.
This is in contrast to things like same sex couples or kink where it doesn't really impact people that are choosing not to participate.
Based on my university biology classes, humans have evolved to be monogamous (like many animals) due to child rearing, however it's somewhat controversial. Humans evolved from the same ancestors as chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are not monogamous. They are generally polyandrous, meaning they have a promiscuous mating system where both males and females mate with multiple partners usually preferring an alpha/dominant.
Based on this its likely monogamy originated as a social construct. Hunter gatherer societies follow something called serial monogamy where ostensibly there is pairing, however females will cheat, especially with a more dominant male. In almost all societies dominant males almost always attempt to mate with as many women as possible. while successful/alpha single people going through multiple partners hardly registers any surprise anymore, however, polyamory between married couples is universally considered philandering and socially judged.
I suspect polyamorous couples develop some level of dissonance over their life decisions due to social judgement. My own take is people can live however they want, provided the polyamory is between consenting adults and the lifestyle doesn't cause harm to anyone. I'm not a conservative right winger who seem to be obsessed/judgemental with what other people do in the privacy of their homes.
I think the most natural situation for people is probably something along the lines of serial monogamy, I seem to remember that often times humans get together long enough to raise children long enough for the children to have some ability to participate in society. Beyond that, couples often times seem to have issues keeping it together and it's a bit debatable as to whether there's any real benefit in doing so.
Like a lot of things, there's a spectrum from largely informal groupings to ones where it's formally required to have a specific ratio like they had with the FLDS and outright kicking out boys to maintain the 1 to 3 ratio they needed. People are going to be judgy, but the more formal it is, the more of a practical reason there is for being judgy. Especially in modern societies where sleeping around and having kids out of wedlock doesn't have the taboo it used to.
05 Jul 2025, 11:53 pm
