Polyamory = Fail

[joreth]

"I once dated someone who said she was polyamorous, but she burned me real bad, so now I think polyamory is bad and I'll never try it again"

*bangs head on desk*  What would you do if I said:

"I once dated someone who said he was monogamous, but he burned me real bad, so now I think monogamy is bad and I'll never try it again"

or

"I once dated someone who said he was christian, but he burned me real bad, so now I think christianity is bad and I'll never try it again"

or

I once dated someone who said he was Irish, but he burned me real bad, so now I think everything Irish is bad and I'll never have anything to do with the Irish again"

or

I once dated someone who drove a taxi for a living, but he burned me real bad, so now I think taxis are bad and I'll never ride in one again"


Did it ever occur to you people that maybe that person was just an asshole?  Or, more plausibly, that you two were just not compatible and the relationship configuration had nothing (or very little) to do with it?  If we were to base our opinions on activities and people and systems based on the very first time we tried something and it ended poorly, our entire society would not be fixated on monogamy, we'd never drive cars, we'd never play sports, we'd never hold jobs, we'd never do anything that didn't work out exactly perfect the first time we tried it.  It's a good thing for all you straight men that women don't take this attitude about sex!  If we gave up on things because we got hurt the first time we tried it, you'd never get laid again.

This is not a rant against people who prefer monogamy, this is a rant against the rationalization that polyamory is bad (or is not right for someone) simply because one time they met an asshole who claimed to be polyamorous.  Monogamy doesn't have such a hot track record either and I don't see too many people giving that up after the first relationship disaster, or the second, or the third, or the fourth, or the forty-fourth.  No, apparently, if it's poly, you can assume that one bad experience means the whole system is bad and everyone who does it are lying, cheating, insecure jerks like the person who made you feel bad, but if it's monogamy, you just keep plugging away at it, suffering setback after loss, after pain, after heartache until you die.

Because if he's monogamous and he hurts you, he's an asshole, but if he's polyamorous and he hurts you, it's because he's polyamorous.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

I once dated a human, and I got hurt. The whole thing didn't work out.

Humans are bad.

Maybe I should stick to stuffed animals. I've had a little pink stuffed dog that plays the music to a lullaby when I wind it. I've had it since I was extremely young. It's never hurt me or betrayed me or lied to me or refused to snuggle with me when I wanted snuggles.

[aclaro.livejournal.com]

I am, essentially, a polyamorous person choosing to be in a monogamous relationship. So this puts me in the awkward position of having people assume that my past relationships failed because I was the monogamous person in a polyamorous relationship. Therefore, they assume that I'll be right on board with agreeing that a multi-person relationship is just doomed to fail.
It is particularly annoying to me because from my perspective, things didn't work out because of life circumstances, specifically my school choices, and that's really pretty hard on me. So when someone says, "oh, well, of course it didn't work out because of that whole polygamy thing," I just blow a gasket, because I lost something precious and it had NOTHING TO DO with the relationship form.

[mosthings1z.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this rationalization. I plan on using some of your examples in the very near future. :)

[a-rowan-dryad.livejournal.com]

Being Poly-friendly (possibly poly just never done anything about it) I often lack for ways to explain the thought process about why I am polyfriendly. This helps a lot. Thank you! *hugs*

[joreth]

Yeah, I didn't turn into the Angry Atheist (or angry polyamorist) until people like this started finding me online. There's a reason my profile is so bitchy.

[joreth]

Love this one - gonna add it to my "this is why you're stupid" analogy library :-D

[joreth]

Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about it too. I've lost several things that were precious in my past breakups that had nothing to do with the relationship form and everything to do with personal choices and life circumstances. Even my monogamous relationships in the past didn't end because of the monogamy, they ended because we were ultimately not compatible in ways that had nothing to do with polyamory or because we made choices about our lives that took us in different directions.

[joreth]

:-) Now if only I could make these morons understand what I'm trying to say as easily!

[joreth]

Glad I could be of help! If I must suffer through idiots on the internet, at least I and other people can try to learn something from the experience!

[leora.livejournal.com]

This seems to be part of a general tendency to blame anything you disapprove of for any problems in someone else's life. I get this a lot, because people disapprove of many of my choices and I have a lot of problems in my life.

For example, I don't drink plain water because of a bit of a neurosis. It's irrational, but it's just easier to live with it and accept it and accommodate it than it is to try to force myself to change it. It doesn't affect other people and I deal with it on my own. I drink a lot of tea and a lot of tisanes ("herbal teas" and such, brewed beverages but not from the tea plant). I've had people assume this must be bad for me, even though I am getting adequate hydration and current research states that drinking tea is actually better for your health than drinking plain water.

I am also disabled, so I've been told, of course you have health problems, you don't drink water.

And various other things I do that are different have been blamed. In pretty much all cases, I've discussed these things with doctors and the doctors have told me they do not think there is any connection. The few things that now seem likely to be connected are all things nobody ever blames me for or tries to get me to not do. Things like being an overachiever in school that led to me being chronically massively sleep-deprived, but in a culture that valued hard work and viewed missing a bit of sleep as no big deal. Things like having a diet so low in salt that I didn't realize I wasn't getting my USRDA of salt for years, which probably weakened my body. Things like pushing myself to exercise and try to "build back my strength" early into my health problems, when it turned out what I needed was to rest more.

Nope, people go for whatever fits their personal agenda. And any failure, no matter how unconnected, will be seen as justifying their viewpoint. As will doing the things I need to do to be as well as I can, since I'm not getting 100% better clearly the reason is not doing whichever thing they think will work, regardless of any lack of statistics on the matter.

Yeah, bit bitter. But it's a huge general tendency people have. I think anyone who is out about being unusual in various ways is likely to face this. I bet if you're a heterosexual and get AIDS because your partner cheated on you, I bet people will tell you how horrible that is. And if you're homosexual and get AIDS because your partner cheated on you, I bet someone people will blame your lifestyle. Stupid double standards abound everywhere.

[joreth]

I don't drink plain water either, unless I'm dehydrated because I just don't like how it tastes. I drink lots of juice and occasionally watered-down gatorade when I'm working or in the heat and humidity. I get crap for that all the time, even though the doctor says "it's not 8 glasses of water a day, it's the equivilent of 8 glasses of water" and that "water" can be found in food and other drinks.

[joreth]

You can post it there if you'd like, but I automatically screen all my comments now because of those idiots, so you might want to consider the same. The only reason I haven't posted it there myself is because this post was sparked by an email I just received from someone and I haven't decided he's asshole enough to justify flaming him on my journal yet, but if you'd like to copy it, be my guest!

I'd recommend adding Leora's comment about humans too, though. I wish I had thought of it in the original writing.

[petite-lambda.livejournal.com]

"This seems to be part of a general tendency to blame anything you disapprove of for any problems in someone else's life."

Absolutely. Which is part of the general tendency of going for the low hanging fruit when searching for an explanation for anything.
Of course you're ill/depressed/unemployed/had a break up/got abducted by terrorists -- it's all because you practice BDSM/dye your hair/vote independent/haven't accepted Jesus as your savior. Whatever...
Problem is, we all do it, to some extent... I do it. It's natural to look for an explanation to something wrong that happened; it's natural to first consider the one that seems likely (even if it's because of some misconceptions of mine)... and then confirmation bias makes it very difficult to convince me otherwise.
And the only solution I see is the usual "try to be open minded" thing...