Lazy Monogamy

I’m in a few Facebook groups about polyamory. I’m a monogamous-by-default person learning about it from the outside… or so I felt at the start.

Eventually I noticed that the groups that had poly + mono (or one-sided consensual non-monogamy) people posting in them are full of monogamous people complaining that they feel like they have to “do all the work” when it comes to the relationship.

I’m sitting here — someone who’s contributed to multiple somewhat-successful long-term relationships, read dozens of books, followed podcasts for years, and gone to couples counseling all with the goal of working on myself and understanding the points of view of my partners — reading this, and these people come across so incredibly lazy to me.

Every poly person in these groups had to do the work to learn about poly’s very existence. No one who grew up in western culture has been conditioned into anything but monogamy.

These posts have big “mono fragility” energy. Like if they can’t learn everything they need to know about having an adult relationship from episodes of Friends or How I Met Your Mother, then they ain’t havin’ it.

Over and over, I find myself siding with the poly people. Their understanding of love and relationships resonates much more naturally with me than I expected. I’m not sure if I’m definitely poly yet, but reading their comments and stories feels much more like my people so far.

Conversation

Is part of that attitude a result of them feeling coerced? I remember how Dan Savage talks about it where a lot of poly relationships are one poly person and one person that didn’t want to lose them so they became poly too. I wonder if it’s a common first step to feel that way when first exploring it for someone else. I can see how the person would have the impression that they’re doing the work and changing because they didn’t see the work the other person did prior to becoming poly. I could also see how it feels like work when it’s not their natural state. A poly person, I imagine, feels free and themselves when able to exist as they are and monogamy would be them doing work that doesn’t come naturally to them.

Anonymous

There are some in that Facebook Group who definitely got “poly-bombed” (an existing monogamous relationship where one partner gives the other an ultimatum that they want to open the relationship or break up). There’s also plenty of other relationship stories where it’d always been unhealthy (neglect, gaslighting, dishonesty, abuse), but the monogamous person blames its dysfunction entirely on their partner being poly.

But the common posts I’m specifically reacting to here are where a monogamous person meets a poly person who tells them from the beginning that they’re poly. Then they want to believe that they can “do enough” to make that person stop being poly. Then they resent that they can’t change their partner and feel they have to begrudgingly grow and learn.

Most of these people need to break up, and that’s usually the advice they get in the groups.