The Monogamy Filter

The Selection Problem Nobody in ENM Talks About

The first polyamory meetup group that I went to was an educational / support group, Poly 101. The meetings had themes: dealing with jealousy, avoiding triangulation, hierarchical vs. non-hierarchical non-monogamy, etc. This one was a little more social; the theme was “your polyamory origin story.” There were probably 30 or so people in the room. We went around and gave an introduction and a brief story about how we came to polyamory. I was there with my (now ex-) wife who had asked that we explore polyamory.

There was a common theme among all of the participants there. Every single person had a variation on the same story, and they all involved the storyteller fucking up a relationship with a great partner, either by cheating or as they tried to navigate their way into polyamory. Every. Single. Person.

This didn’t bode well in my mind.

Monogamy is the cultural default. Unless you are one of the tiny minority that had openly non-monogamous parents while you were growing up, it’s generally assumed that you’ll have monogamous relationships. Or that if you don’t, you’ve failed at relationships. Our laws and customs are all set up for that structure. There are lots of opinions on whether this is good or not, but for the purposes of this article, it doesn’t matter — it’s simply a fact.

Allow me to draw a parallel. Most of the world is right handed. Only something like 10% of people are lefties. Nowadays it’s normal for someone to be left handed. Other than some fairly minor things like the default stringing on a guitar or the scarcity of scissors that fit your grip, you’re not punished for being left handed. But only a few generations ago, everyone was taught to write and do many other things right handed and punished for using the left hand. There was no room for being left handed so you just were kind of awkwardly bad at stuff that most people weren’t bad at.

There’s quite a bit of discussion around whether being non-monogamous is a choice or if it’s simply how some people are wired. There are arguments for both lines of thinking, but I’d suggest that for at least some people it’s not really a choice. They don’t thrive in monogamous relationships the same way that lefties couldn’t fully thrive in an exclusively right handed world. For others, they could function in either monogamous or non-monogamous relationships. They choose one or the other, or sometimes drift between the two.

Now, if you are in a world that drops you into monogamy by default, and you’re one of those people who could go either way, guess what: you’re very likely to land in a monogamous relationship because that’s just the default. And since you’ve landed there, you’re probably not going to be especially inclined to try a non-monogamous relationship as a serious long term thing because, as I pointed out, our culture is not well suited for that kind of life.

But if you’re not wired for monogamy, your early attempts at monogamous relationships are likely going to be a mess. You’ll either cheat or get bored and end what look like perfectly good relationships. And as a result you may think you’re broken, and you probably don’t get a whole lot of practice with healthy long term relationships as a result.

Further complicating things is the fact that many folks who don’t fit well in monogamous relationships are a little different in many other ways too. When you don’t fit well into society in one way, it’s pretty common that you don’t fit well in other ways. This space is full of misfits of all stripes, which can be lots of fun when you “find your tribe,” but also extra challenging because everyone tends towards being extra-unique in their needs and wants.

As people who are not good at monogamous relationships get filtered out of that space, they often find non-monogamy and think “ah-hah! I’ve found the answer to my problems! I’ve been trying to do monogamy and I’m not cut out for that, so this must be the answer!” But the pool of people who are entering that space have had little practice because their attempts at relationships were a disaster despite their best intentions.

One of the interesting things about non-monogamy is that it is “relationships on hard mode.” People in this space are dealing with several often difficult relationships at a time. That means you get a lot of practice, fast. So there’s this weird dichotomy of people who are bad at relationships and people who are really, really skilled at relationships because they’ve had a lot of practice in a short amount of time.

There’s a final category of people in this space that warrants a mention and a word of caution. Among the folks that land on “monogamy isn’t for me!” are folks with significant personality disorders. Those people tend to not be willing to look in the mirror, and imagine that the problem must be with other people or the system. So they’ll get deep into the trenches of working on relationships without actually working on themselves. To the untrained eye (i.e. most of the people coming fresh into the ENM space), they can look like they’re good at relationships. They have the language down pat and they can talk a good game. This creates a ton of room for fuckery. Predatory behaviour, manipulation, love bombing, etc. And because there’s that filter I mentioned earlier, there seems to be a disproportionate number of people who fit that description in the space. We’ve all heard about narcissists; what better space is there for someone who thrives on attention than a place where they’re not penalized for having many partners and many of those partners are learning the ropes and can be easily manipulated by someone with charisma and confidence?

If you spend enough time in this arena, you see the people that get a reputation for being that person. But if you are a fresh face arriving, it’s easy to connect with the first person who takes a fancy to you. This is an exciting new world after all, full of promise to be different from the world that didn’t fit you well. Abusive people are often quite charming.

The upshot is that coming into non-monogamy spaces can initially feel very refreshing, like you’ve finally found something that makes sense in a world that mostly hasn’t for you in the past. But you will very likely find that this space has its own set of unique challenges and can be a potential minefield that’s not any less free from trauma inducing events.

None of this is to say that you shouldn’t explore this space. But if you come in the door and look around and think “wow, there seems to be an awful lot of dysfunction here,” you’re not imagining things.