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Individuals in polyamorous relationships report more commitment and investment with their primary partners and report more time spent on sex with their secondary partners, a new study authored by Western researchers has found.
While previous research suggests that consensually non-monogamous relationships do not significantly differ from monogamous relationships on a number of relationship-quality indicators, this is one of the first studies to examine potential differences in the relationship dynamics between an individual's multiple partners, said lead author Rhonda Balzarini, a PhD candidate in the Psychology.
The authors asked 1,308 people in online questionnaires (drawn from polyamorous affinity groups on social media) about the dynamics of their polyamorous relationships.
"The study suggests people who are 'primary' partners – those who share a household and finances, for example – experience greater commitment and investment in the relationship. However, the secondary partnership experiences greater proportion of time spent on sex, and this remains a factor even when we account for relationship length and living arrangements," she said.
Does this explain why kings and sultans had harems?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:28AM (32 children)
There are laws against it because it completely fucks over the other people out there. The FLDS has to routinely find reasons to kick out 2/3 of the men in order for the remaining men to get their 3 wives. Everytime a husband takes a second wife, they're depriving another man of the opportunity to find love as there's now one less woman out there looking for a husband.
These sorts of arrangements really shouldn't be encouraged.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:33AM
"These sorts of arrangements really shouldn't be encouraged"
Encouraged and legal are very different policies.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:52AM (4 children)
That's quite a bit strange.
First of all, most men and women are probably more comfortable living in a monogamous relationship, so two-thirds are off the bat.
Secondly, why would only men have three wives? Many women would prefer to have openly sexual relations with many men. And what about, say, two wives for three husbands, with women strictly heterosexual, one man gay and one man bi? How does that count in the imbalance scenario?
BTW, if You equate marriage with love, then You need to get out more.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Friday June 30 2017, @04:09AM (2 children)
He mentioned Mormons (FLDS). They're probably not too fond of teh gayz.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 30 2017, @06:44AM (1 child)
Their marriage strategy essentially forces some men to be gay or monks..
(or just extramarital material)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @09:55AM
Or to defect their religious community, or to recruit more neophytes (the latter was probably the main goal)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:48AM
There's several issues with that. For one thing, bi and gay men aren't anywhere near that common. If they did go together it would be through coercion or because they had no other choice.
Additionally, it's usually 3 wives to a man in the FLDS for reasons that are too stupid to go into. But, if they went with 4 or more, it would just compound the problem as boys and girls are born and roughly the same rate. Every man that marries 4 women would deprive 3 men of the possibility of having a wife.
Additionally, the main religious groups that still engage in this sort of thing are the FLDS and some Muslims in some parts of the world. Neither of which has a particularly good reputation for tolerating homosexuality. And the Mormons and Muslims that do tolerate or accept homosexuals aren't typically ones that are tolerant of polyamory.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:57AM (5 children)
Looking solely at the polygamous marriage people, mostly life is great. Women have to share, which is a downside at times, but they also gain benefits. They build non-sexual relationships with each other and support each other. They are able to obtain a higher-value man on average, meaning better DNA for the kids and generally less stupid shit. There is always a babysitter. The men win via status, sexual variety, and a full team to do housework. Perhaps there is a slight loss for the very most desirable women, but of course most women aren't that.
There is one more upside. Keeping the failing men out of the gene pool is really beneficial; we are breeding for something, and I happen to think that the "something" should be intelligence rather than stupidity.
Obviously, the failing men are not happy.
The real problem comes from the fact that failing men don't just disappear. They are idle, with nothing to live for, so they will tend toward risky behavior. They won't have the pacifying influence of women and children to care for. Their sexual need is not met. The result tends to be violence, both sexual and otherwise. The high levels of sexual violence in society causes a need to take extra measures to protect women. This effectively takes rights away from women. Women have to live as they do in Saudi Arabia, even if there is no law that requires this. Their own safety demands it. They have to stay locked indoors with family, sometimes escorted outside while well-covered and guarded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:34AM
VR and teledildonics will save the day! [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @08:29AM
Only because the pathetic illiterate Mormon bastard is collecting welfare for four or five wives and their attendant demon spawn. This is how the Republican party grows votes in Utah! Parasites of Latter Day Snipes! I say, make 'em all work for a living, instead of just fucking for salvation.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday June 30 2017, @07:43PM (2 children)
...or the failing men follow the Japanese model and sit at home all day comfortably by themselves, and your whole argument falls apart.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @08:11PM (1 child)
There is a testosterone difference, as you might guess from the difference in body hair and testicle weight. The Japanese, and Asians in general, have less than the rest of the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @09:32AM
Because Genghis Khan was a stay in the basement geek uninterested in girls. Naturally all his decedents are too.
Handwave the whole reason he had so many descendants...
Also don't notice there are over a billion Chinese. That doesn't usually happen without plenty of sex. Except that one time, (ask your priest.)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @04:22AM (19 children)
You're not entitled to a relationship with another person, and this is none of the government's business. If someone would rather be with someone else, that's their choice. In reality, other men are not being "deprived" of anything because they are not losing anything they actually owned. Quite an entitlement mentality you have.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:42AM (12 children)
Who said anything about being entitled to have a relationship? Short of a court order forcing people to pair up that's never going to happen. The only situation I can think of where that would even be a possibility would be in a post-apocalyptic world where that's necessary to keep from going extinct.
The point you're deliberately ignoring here is that we all have the right to try to partner up if we want to get married and have kids. Or even just have a long term relationship without kids. The problem here is that each time a man marries two women there are now two women that are out of the dating pool rather than just one. A shift of a relatively small number of women with respect to the men can have huge consequences when it comes to the ability of a man to find a woman that's willing to accept what he has to offer.
Similarly, in situations where women are allowed to have multiple wives you have the same sort of a problem.
A situation where you've got both going on is just a huge mess with lots of people being put into a position where are pressured to consent to things they probably don't want to consent to or wind up locked out.
The one man one woman thing for heterosexual couples exists in large part because it balances the power and multiple marriages historically are mostly confined to situations like the LDS early on where that was needed in order to ensure that all the women could get pregnant and grow the community after they were exiled from Illinois. The LDS has stopped that practice and it had been on a decline for decades before it ultimately stopped. In the FLDS where that has continued until recently, they had to specifically remove men from the community in order for the remaining men to have the 3 wives they required.
No matter how you look at it, multiple marriage is deeply problematic and multiple dating arrangements like this are barely any better. They sort of work without too many problems only if it's something that's being done by a fringe minority or if it's something everybody is doing. It doesn't take very many people engaging in it to infringe on the rights of others by removing the possibility to find anybody.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @04:59AM (7 children)
You have the right to try, but there is the possibility that you will fail.
Too bad for them, then. People are just engaging in consensual relationships and rejecting others they don't want to get into relationships with.
See now, this is why I mentioned entitlement. What is this nonsense? No one is infringing upon your rights, because people are acting completely of their own volition by engaging in 100% consensual relationships. You do not have a "right" to be in a relationship. At most, you have a right to try to convince someone to be in a relationship with you, and you would still have that right (the right to try, not the succeed) even if there were a large number of non-monogamous relationships.
The only time anyone's rights are infringed upon is if the relationships are not consensual, but that is another matter entirely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @02:41PM (6 children)
The fact that this bullshit was modded up makes me weep for humanity.
You're completely full of shit if you can't acknowledge the fact that there's a huge difference between having a population where there's roughly equal numbers of men and women available for dating and one where there's half as many of one as the other because there was multi-dating and multi-marrying going on.
We all have the right to try and find that special somebody, but having a small number of men with all the women is definitely a huge problem which is the main reason why you don't tend to see that in developed countries. You mostly see it in places like the early Mormons when there weren't enough men to go around and they needed to keep the population up.
And yes, they are infringing on people's right to look for somebody. Imagine being a man in a village where 99% of the other people are men. What do you think the likelihood is of finding a woman? Pretty damn low. How it is that you got an entitlement to find that someone special from that is beyond me, but you're completely full of shit to suggest that situations where you're losing significant numbers of women to men that already have them wouldn't make it harder to find women that are single, let alone actually interested.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday June 30 2017, @04:14PM (2 children)
Wow, you're dumb.
First, in non-religious polyamory, there's nothing preventing one women from "marrying" multiple men. So if you're not cool enough to get multiple women for yourself, you can always try to convince a partnered woman to accept you as an additional partner.
Secondly, in modern polyamory, it's frequent for every person involved to have multiple sex partners. That means no one is "hoarding" anyone of the opposite sex; with both men and women having multiple partners, there's no hoarding going on at all, just a lot more sex and a lot more relationships. The main danger to this scheme is that extremely undesirable men, such as yourself, are much more likely to get left out in the cold, because everyone else has more options. A lonely woman doesn't have to settle for your sorry ass because she can't find someone better; instead, she can hook up with some other guy (who already has one or two other female partners) at least as a part-time partner, or even move in with a group of mixed-sex people. Why would that other guy want to spend time with her? Because his other (primary) partner has another boyfriend she likes to spend some time with. So basically, everyone has more friends and more sex partners, except the really miserable and unlikable people like you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:31PM (1 child)
Wow, you're dumb.
First off, that's not what we actually see in real life. Women go after the top 10% or so of the men regardless of how many of them are already taken by other women or aren't interested. You're deluding yourself if you think that would change in a system where those men would be able to have more than one. The only reason that most men that get married are able to find somebody at all is because women are forced to accept less than the top tier men or wind up alone.
Same goes for men to some extent. Yes, most men would prefer to have 10s that are also good in bed and willing to do the cooking and cleaning all of that. But, there's not many women like that around, so men are willing to settle for a bit less if need be.
Secondly, that's a complete load of crap. That works out fine because there's a relatively small number of people engaged in it. So, there's a viable option to say no. If that number were higher, it would become a huge problem for people who don't want to engage in that as there'd be more and more fighting for fewer and fewer choices.
If this was such a great thing, then why is it that there's nowhere in the world that this is the norm? Even polygamy is virtually extinct because it's such a problem. There has been some liberalizing of marriage laws, but interestingly, that's not led to polygamy, polyamory or similar being legalized.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday June 30 2017, @08:05PM
I find this argument fallacious via non sequitor; sure, everybody pursues the best they think they can get, by and large, but this does not mean that having equal access to available partners is some kind of right. "Tragedy of the commons" and similar effects are certainly something to keep in mind, but that is a social cause, not an explicitly constitutional concern.
But it brings up an interesting parallel I've been chewing on for awhile. There are only so many high-paying (e.g. CEO) jobs. Yet we continue to insist that "anyone has the opportunity to be rich" in capitalist societies when, clearly, this cannot actually be true for everyone simultaneously; and thus the ridiculous income inequality is defended.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @06:17PM (2 children)
What do you mean? I don't deny that there's a difference; I just deny that you somehow have the right to guaranteed success in finding someone, or the right to limit other people's relationship choices to increase the chances of finding a partner.
People engaging in 100% consensual relationships with one another are infringing upon your rights? This is complete and utter nonsense, and you really do have a huge entitlement mentality. There is no right to guaranteed success in dating, since that necessarily would involve infringing upon someone else's right to choose their own relationships.
I don't care, since it's not relevant to your rights.
Because you're claiming that other people engaging in certain types of voluntary relationships are somehow infringing upon your rights by doing so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @08:09PM (1 child)
In other words you're an idiot. Got that.
I never said people had the right to find somebody that wanted them. But, your argument is basically the same thing as saying that you have the right to fish in a lake with no fish. That entirely misses the point. If there are fish in that lake you may or may not actually succeed in catching one, but it's at least a theoretical possibility. Fishing in a lake with no fish because some other assholes were catching multiple fish is more or less what you're arguing for here. It makes no sense, to argue that you don't have the right to catch a fish, so if other people over-fish the lake that's too bad for you.
People engaging in their own practices regularly infringe upon other people's rights. If that weren't the case, then we wouldn't need all those laws that regulate things like how and where people drive. In this case, there is a huge societal problem that happens when this kind of behavior gets to be more than a few random people engaging in it. It very quickly gets to the point where it has real impacts on other people. The fact that you don't get that is rather astonishing. Even a shift of a couple percentage points can have huge implications for how men and women approach, sex, relationships, love and possibly marriage.
On a side note, that name is rather fitting considering that your head is rather far up your ass. Might as well keep the bread there.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @10:20PM
Then what are you saying, moron? You mentioned multiple times that other people's rights are being violated when many people engage in consensual poly relationships. Are you saying that people have the right to try to find a relationship? I agree. The right to have a relationship? I don't agree, since that involves violating people's rights. The right to have a chance at a relationship? What does that mean? It sure seems like that involves limiting people's relationship options to give you that chance (at least if the situation became dire enough), so that is unacceptable since it violates individual liberties. You simply do not have the latter two rights; they don't exist. That is, fundamentally, a type of entitlement mentality.
Fish are in no way related to people engaging in consensual relationships, and rights are a different topic than abilities.
It's at least theoretically possible that you could convince a person in a relationship to go to you instead. But I don't care even if your chances are zero, since it's 100% irrelevant to your rights.
Don't try to change the topic with false analogies. Let's say many men engage in poly relationships. What rights of yours are being infringed upon in that scenario? Specifically name the right and explain it in detail, then tell me why you believe you have that right. Don't bring up societal issues, since that has nothing to do with individual liberties.
The fact that you actually believe we should limit people's relationship options because otherwise the situation may become unfavorable to many men is what is truly astonishing. You don't own other people. You don't own the "possibility" of finding a relationship. These rights do not exist. The only thing you have a right to do is to try to find a relationship, even if that is futile. That's how it is.
I think the main problem is that you're borderline mentally retarded and don't understand what rights you actually have and have absolutely no comprehension of what I'm saying or even what you have said thus far. Then you keep bringing up nonsense about how society would be in trouble if many people engaged in poly relationships, but that is completely irrelevant to the topic of what your rights are even if it is true.
You keep bringing up a nonexistent right; it's a total waste of time.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday June 30 2017, @07:46PM (3 children)
Your argument is grounded in the archaic assumption that in particular a woman who is paired is removed from availability (I'll grant you that male privilege is an underestimated bias in western culture and give you the benefit of the doubt here). In modern polyamory, this is explicitly not the case - ANYONE can be available, subject to compatibility and resources (time, transportation, etc.). While a great many people (not only men) are jealous and have difficulty with the idea of sharing their partner, this is largely a learned behavior resulting from the shift of hunter-gatherer to permanently homed agricultural society and the concept of land ownership. With greater awareness during upbringing (and education in general) these issues can be mitigated.
Further reading: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7640261-sex-at-dawn [goodreads.com] (note: rather a long read, but thorough on this topic)
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @08:19PM (1 child)
Oh great, more of that postmodernist bullshit that I keep seeing everywhere.
This isn't learned behavior, this is behavior that's encoded in our DNA. I didn't want to have kids at all until I was an adult and my hormones told me that that's what I wanted. Being a man, I count on a woman being honest with me about whether or not I'm the father to know. In this day and age I have the option of an accurate paternity test, but those are really awkward to get as you're basically telling the woman that you think she's a liar.
Polyamory is not desirable for social reasons for the same reason that polygamy isn't desirable for social reasons. If it was so desirable, you'd think that it would be spreading to be more common rather than the reverse.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday July 03 2017, @09:08PM
Really? We've located the "jealousy" gene? Or are you just talking out of your ass based on "common knowledge"? I provided a book to read which refutes the notion of hard-coded jealousy - because that's not where we came from. Kindly provide sources or leave the debating to adults who have some actual knowledge.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday July 01 2017, @12:08AM
At the risk of being marked redundant, I'll add my recommendation. That's a great book, and could make you reconsider some of those "that's just how it is" ideas.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Mykl on Friday June 30 2017, @05:01AM (3 children)
(Playing Devil's advocate here)
You could argue that it is the government's business, as they "declared" that they had an interest in the happiness of the people:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
True, but they are being deprived of the opportunity. If there are 20 people in a room and 20 apples on a table, and I take 3 apples, that means that there will be at least 2 people that don't get an apple. Sure, I didn't choose who those people would be. True, nobody said up front that everyone had to have an apple. But the fact remains that I have taken an uneven share of a limited resource, leading to the inevitable consequence that someone else misses out.
Do you know why such a high proportion of suicide-bombers world-wide come from middle-eastern countries? They come from the lower castes of a polygamous society, and have virtually zero chance of finding a wife and therefore to have children. Having nothing else to live for, they are very easily radicalized. As a result, society as a whole suffers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @05:24AM (2 children)
That is far too vague and therefore not actionable. You could use that logic to justify giving the government the power to do anything, effectively removing any limits on the government's power. But that is from the declaration of independence anyway.
No, they are not. You can still try to convince people in a relationship to switch to you. Also, since they are being "deprived" of the opportunity due to each individual's own choices, no one's rights can be said to have been violated; it's sad for the losers, but that's just too bad. You have the right to try, but not the right to guaranteed success.
I don't really care. If you respond to your situation by committing acts of terror, then you are entirely at fault and responsible for your own actions; it's essentially a child throwing a very horrific tantrum.
There is nothing to be done about this, because any 'solution' would surely involve violating people's individual rights, which is intolerable. Just as terrorism will never get me to support unconstitutional mass surveillance, it will also never get me to support something laughable like government control of relationships even if I generously assume you're correct that a lack of partners is a large factor in what causes terrorism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @02:09PM (1 child)
You are silly. The outcomes of polygamy are self-evident the world over, yet you simply do not care for them, yet somehow cannot find a reason as to why someone who doesn't have their head up their ass would try to prevent these outcomes...
There exists study after study that would back-up the fact that give opportunity ALL WOMEN would only mate with top 10-20% of men. Do you not realize the result of this? In order for there not to be a whole-sale collapse of the government, the most of draconian measures would have to be introduced. Simply asking men to only have one wife is the least draconian of all.
Or maybe you consider yourself one of these elite 10-20%. Even if, such a man would get tired of dealing with BS of 5 women pretty quickly.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @06:32PM
I do not care about them because they are not relevant to your rights. If a bunch of people want to get into a relationship with a particular person, and if that does indeed decrease the amount of partners available to you, then that is just too bad; you don't 'own' those other people, and at most have the right to try to convince them to enter into a relationship with you. What part of this is hard to understand? As long as it's all consensual, these people are neither doing anything wrong and nor are they somehow violating your rights.
For this same reason, I don't care about the studies which you say exist, even if I generously assume that they are not just more unscientific social science garbage (like this silly online questionnaire), which they probably are.
Just like we 'have to' have mass surveillance to combat terrorism. Just like we 'have to' have any number of other authoritarian measures in order to combat Bogeyman X. Or you can choose to support individual liberty above safety.
But still far too draconian. And what are you going to do if people just engage in these types of relationships without marrying? Ban that too? You don't actually need marriage, you know.
What I care about are individual liberties, not your probability of finding a partner. I will not sacrifice individual liberties just so you can increase your chances of entering into a relationship with someone else. Stop being an authoritarian moron, something that is far worse than "silly".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @07:44PM (1 child)
The issue is that when you have too many bachelor males, you run into issues with civil unrest.
That is the reason that it is the governments' job.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @10:23PM
So what's your proposed solution, then? If it involves violating people's individual liberties, then it's dead on arrival and you're an authoritarian. The government has no business being in people's bedrooms, even to prevent "civil unrest".
By the way, if people do cause civil unrest by throwing a tantrum because they can't find a relationship, then they're the ones violating people's rights and they alone should be punished. Anything else is saying that people are not personally responsible for their own actions.