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posted by martyb on Friday June 30 2017, @02:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the Search-the-personals? dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:17PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:17PM (#533487)

    You're not understanding at all. The one and only reason sex is so enjoyable is because it's an evolutionary imperative. You think you're controlling it, but in reality the genetically encoded instincts control you. For instance when asked to rate a woman's attractiveness by smelling a shirt they had worn men instinctively select the shirt that came from women who were ovulating. Obviously they had no clue they were doing this and probably thought the whole thing was just a hilarious experiment, but it again goes to show that your instincts control you more than vice versa. All of our behavior is fundamentally driven towards procreation and natural selection. And it's completely invisible to us.

    And yes issues with fertility are much a reason that serious relationships break down.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:33PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:33PM (#533541)

    You seem to be projecting values onto natural selection and mysticism into instincts.

    Evolution doesn't care that you want a purpose or want to make sense out of how humans developed.
    You say that sex is enjoyable because of evolution, then why is birth so painful? You also miss that evolutionary fitness is not only dependent on procreation.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @06:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @06:46PM (#533619)

      What I am stating is exactly how natural selection and evolution works. It is entirely about procreation. Characteristics that result in a greater ability to procreate get passed on. Characteristics that inhibit one's ability to procreate do not get passed on. The way we evolve (and continue to exist for that matter) is procreation. Absolutely everything that gets passed or not is 100% decided by its effect on the ability for one to successfully procreate.

      The comfort of birth (or not) would only be a selected trait if it had any meaningful impact on the probability of someone successfully procreating. On this there are two things to consider. Given that men are typically the dominant ones sexually, the trait would have minimal to no impact. However, at the same time - it could have at one point. You are assuming that the current state of birth is not comfortable without contrast it to hypothetical alternatives. All sorts of animals have a wide array of sexual habits. In some the female regularly dies once procreating, in others the male is killed by the female during procreation, some give birth to one young - some given birth to tens or hundreds. Everything from the reason we have mammary glands and give live birth instead of laying eggs are all just products of evolutionary selection. It's both wonderfully arbitrary and amazingly effective.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @09:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @09:30PM (#533708)

      Birth is not universally painful, that meme mostly exists in western European areas where the women don't have wide hips...