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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) by unauthorized on Friday June 30 2017, @03:32AM (1 child)
The explanation for that is much simpler. From an evolutionary perspective, for a male it's advantageous to spread his seed as far as wide as possible, with no regards to investing into the well-being of the offspring produced. Even if only a tiny part of his offspring survives and reaches sexual maturity, it would be a greater evolutionary success provided a sufficient number of mates over investing into a single mate who at best can only produce 1 offspring per year over 30 or so years, but more realistically less than one per 3 years even in the most rapidly growing societies.
In reality it is of course a bit more complicated as there are certainly things to be said about the quality and offspring to be produced, but nature does make abundantly clear is that greater breeding rate inevitably overtakes all other factors given our current environment. We like to think ourselves the masters of our world, and that might be true in a way, but there are far more successful species on this planet than us and they all share the paradigm of great proliferation rates and rapid maturity.
Of course, over a long enough period investment into higher quality offspring would snowball in a way which other species simply could not hope to compete (ie complete biosphere mastery and space colonization), but that's not an evolutionary factor yet and thus inconsequential when examining our ingrained instincts. The only reason we are the way we are today is because we are at a sort of an evolutionary plateau where changing this reproductive strategy to a more advantageous one would have been a short-term downside for our ancestors, and thus selected against since natural selection has no provisions for long-term planning beyond random chance, making any such adaptation highly unlikely.
In a way, we were lucky to develop the "inferior" trait.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:03AM
For most of us, the downsides outweigh the upsides.
1. inability to keep more than one (add one, and a previous one leaves)
2. violence from other males
3. inability to keep more than one from cheating
4. inability to support more than one