So, I have a friend who has decided that he wants to be poly-amorous. In an attempt to try and be non-judgmental, I did some research on the subject.
Polyamory, for those who don't know, is the practice of being in love with multiple people, where all those involved are aware of this and agree with it. What it isn't is "an open relationship" necessarily, nor is it "permission to cheat" meaning being in a committed relationship, but being allowed to have other sexual partners, that is more what I would call "swingers," but that's a whole different topic.
Now, in theory it seems like polyamory would be the bee's knees. There is more than one person that loves you unconditionally, and you get to love more than one person. Maybe one person enjoys some of the activities, and the other nicely fills in the gaps. I don't know, I'm not polyamorous, nor do I ever intend to be.
In my head, legitimate consensual polyamory is about two things, unconditional love and communication. In order to be in a real polyamorous relationship you would need to make sure that every person in the group knows exactly what is going on with everyone else, and be honest about it. What if one person in the group doesn't like another? What if your time starts to get spread too thin with everyone involved? What if you start to favor one person over another? What if you want to break up with one person in the group but not everyone agrees?
It seems like the more people, the more complicated a relationship becomes, rather than the other way around.
Now I really really don't want to bash this kind of lifestyle, because I'm sure with the right people it works like it's supposed to, but it seems like there is a lot of room for manipulation in this equation.
If you aren't someone who knows how to love someone unconditionally yet than calling yourself "polyamorous" is just a way to say that you don't want to commit to one person. But if you can't love one person is it really going to be easier to love more than one?
If your boyfriend or girlfriend doesn't enjoy one aspect of your life, instead of sacrificing or finding a middle ground it's easy to just say "Hey just go find someone else that can do that with you." But is that anyway to fix a problem? If you love someone shouldn't you want to try and enjoy the things they enjoy? Why can't that just be a part of your life to have with friends or something to do alone?
It seems like this kind of relationship requires more trust and understanding than the average human is capable of. And besides, so few people are polyamorous anyway, and then you have to find multiple people of that already limited group to be in a relationship. The statistics of a "perfect group" must be astoundingly low. And if you do find a couple people to love, you have to all agree on where to live, if you want kids, who will stay home, if you ever want more people to join, etc etc etc. Normal lifestyle questions suddenly becomes 2 or 3 times as complicated.
Now this friend of mine, he's still young and seems like he has a lot to learn about himself before he can commit and love one person, much less many people. I don't want him to feel like he's sneaking out of fixing his problems by dubbing himself the almighty polygamist and moving on.
That being said, if you are or have been in a polyamorous relationship and it's worked, let me know and I will gladly hear your story :)