The limits of polyamory

After seeing Claire and Frank Underwood’s polyamorous behavior in House of Cards, I became preoccupied with understanding open relationships and how they might work in the real world. I started to wonder, “How could someone knowingly accept and allow a partner’s romantic relationship with another person?” Such behavior was incomprehensible to me. Are polyamorists somehow more mature for overcoming their insecurities?

When considering an open relationship, the biggest obstacle for most people is jealousy. Witnessing our partner merely flirting with someone else can be an uncomfortable experience. Some people shrug it off as harmless and others become so angry they commit double homicide. The polyamorous community, however, manages jealousy at an entirely different level. Their insecurities are checked at the door in the interest of romantic variety. They will often rhetorically ask the monogamous, “Why can’t you each experience love with multiple people?”

Sure, I’ll admit it is possible to have a soft spot for more than one person. Minor crushes are probably more common than most would care to admit. Plus, humans are capable of having sex with strangers at the drop of a dime or tequila shot, hence the nightlife. But a committed relationship is quite different than these fleeting encounters. Monogamy is a vulnerable experience where a special intimacy is cultivated over time and our fidelity presumably prevents interference by romantic competitors. The reptilian part of our brain makes us territorial. Therefore we are hostile to the idea of an outsider getting in our partner’s head or pants, which leads some to claim that monogamy is actually rooted in fear and possessiveness. Infidelity and rising divorce rates are often cited as evidence that monogamy is unrealistic, even unnatural. Add the uncomfortable truth that we never stop being attracted to other people regardless of the strength of our relationship, and some will assert that monogamy is old hat, with polyamory actually being our evolutionary destiny.

Some polyamorist literature coaches you to be happy that your partner experienced a satisfying encounter with another person. What is the difference between your partner enjoying a home cooked meal prepared by someone, and your partner occasionally enjoying another person’s loving? There are testimonies detailing how opening up a previously monogamous relationship saved that very relationship. So are we wrong to decry polyamory as just an excuse to sleep around? Aside from pointing out the obvious STI risk that comes with open behaviors like “swinging,” some of you might find it difficult to answer these questions, especially when they are posed by a progressive polyamorist with reasonable criticisms of monogamy’s limitations.

Here is my view. I believe the love experienced in polyamorous arrangements is limited compared to a monogamous relationship. Only by having walls up can someone really enjoy the polyamorous lifestyle without jealousy and emotional struggle. Anyone can refute this by saying something like, “Well, nobody can truly assess another person’s subjective experience of love, for even science is limited in its ability to measure matters of the heart. Who are you to say that people in open relationships aren’t as intimately connected to one another as those in monogamous relationships?” Perhaps they are correct. Life and love is complicated, all humans are wired differently, and I have not conducted brain scans of monogamists and polyamorists to compare their post-coital oxytocin levels. But I do have an opinion and this is the internet. So I’ll explain.

When you let your guard down and fall in love, you and that person exchange the keys to each other’s endorphins. We experience some of life’s most powerful emotions when we are in love. Love leads us to start families and create timeless art. It has the ability to give you the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. However, a polyamorist will reason that monogamy might facilitate codependency. Codependency is an excessive, unhealthy reliance on a partner where one’s self-esteem and happiness depends on the other’s affection and approval. So perhaps it would be healthier if we engage in romance with multiple people. It would make our experience of love less of an “all-eggs-in-one-basket” ordeal, where a sexual infidelity wouldn’t be as devastating and we’d eventually become a more even-tempered species. If we depend on multiple friends and family members for emotional support, why must romantic engagements also be limited to one person?

I believe I have an answer. Polyamory does not guarantee, in the same way that monogamy does, that your partner will be there for you during a harrowing life event. Romantic relationships foster a level of intimacy that platonic friendships simply can’t match. This very intimacy is crucial during our most trying times (e.g. illness, death of a family member, etc.) It would be incredibly inconvenient if the person you love can’t be there for you because he or she is instead on a romantic weekend getaway with another lover. Therefore the exclusivity of monogamy works best. It ensures that, at least in theory, life’s hardships come with a loving co-pilot. The least jealous person in the world can’t disagree with that. Even Frank Underwood needed Claire to leave Adam at the end of the day. They could have saved a lot more time if they just stuck together in the first place.

Many people face troubles alone without a loving spouse to provide support. Single people triumph over hardship every day, sometimes even better than those with loving support systems. The brain of a bachelor might actually function more easily, without any distractions or withdrawals for a lover’s pheromones. Polyamory is only feasible if you keep yourself in check by maintaining the neural networking of a person who is single, which is also referred to as having walls up. But the richest gifts of love are more readily available to the monogamous.