I know I sound like I'm very down on poly relationships but I don't think it's that. I'm suspicious of romantic relationships in general. Any where people might refer to each other as romantic partners in some way I think are things to be cautious of.
I started feeling this way about mono relationships - because that was all that I knew at the time. I notice that they are hard work for the people involved. I feel the effort myself now that I am having a mono relationship. I consider the work to be worthwhile but still - my romantic relationship takes up more time, thought and emotional energy than any of the others in my life. I know that I'm not alone in this. The notion that these relationships take work and effort is pretty much universally accepted.
I have a close relationship with a being who isn't even human. C and I can't speak the same language. He enjoys doing things that I don't have the sensory apparatus to even perceive. And yet I find my relationship with him to be less work than any romantic relationship I've ever been in.
The stats around how badly romantic relationships go wrong are shocking. One in four women experience domestic violence at some point in their lives. (
http://www.nationaldomesticviolencehelpline.org.uk/support-a-friend-or-family-member-experiencing-domestic-violence.aspx) Men experience it too and they aren't even included in that statistic. When women are murdered the most likely person to kill them is either their current partner or an ex partner (from
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.
This stuff is so common place that it barely gets talked about. What tends to happen, in my experience, is that abused people are seen as being individually responsible due to bad decision making and the abusers are similarly seen as individual bad apples who may be able to be helped through drug therapy or counselling.
I could believe that if it was just an occasional thing but it isn't. Serious violence in romantic relationships is common and so also are lesser struggles to communicate and feelings of resentment etc. This is a weird thing to happen in a species who live closely together and need social contact with each other.
I think that romantic relationships are an odd way of relating to each other. I think they tend to breed this sort of thing. If they didn't, people would find them easier and they just don't.
I had thought, on hearing about poly that it might make the difference. Maybe the problem is just having one romantic relationship? Maybe being free to have more than one would solve this issue.
It seems that it doesn't. There are so many stories on here of people struggling regularly, being lied to, cheated on and controlled. Plus some really frightening tales of abuse crop up every so often.
If poly worked better, I'd expect to see way less of these and way more success stories - especially given that the people writing here are mostly committed to poly and want to be successful.
So this makes me think that my initial assumption about romantic relationships is more likely to be correct - they are just a weird and difficult way to go about things.
I know that I am in one - and I'm happy to be so (I can't take my socialisation out of myself and there is a big part of me that sees this sort of relationship as a good, normal thing). Still - given my deep suspicion about the wisdom of being in romantic relationships at all, it seems to me a better idea to stick to one of them. One is enough risk, work and effort. And joy and love and all the happy stuff too.
Multiplying it into more than one seems to me to be a bad idea given the issues with romantic relationships.
I think I'm neither mono or poly really.
IP