Flutterby™! : Group marriage memoirs

Group marriage memoirs

2008-06-05 02:58:01.777501+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments

I was a normal 9-year-old boy with two parents. And then, after a fateful camping trip, I had four.

[ related topics: Sociology Travel Salon magazine Marriage ]

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#Comment Re: made: 2008-06-05 12:43:59.515648+00 by: petronius

I read this piece, and the letters that accompany it. The author seems to be going out of his way not to criticize open marriage/polyamory, even though it was a disaster for his family. The letters seem to say that polyamory is some sort of ultimate ideal in relationships, but its attainment is ever elusive. Yes, a lot of people seem to know some people who work it out, but its rarity argues against it. Conventional relationships are hard enough. While 50% of first marriages fail, another 50% don't (I'm in year 31, my parents made it to 54 years). Can polyamory claim results even that good?

#Comment Re: made: 2008-06-05 13:23:27.58908+00 by: Dan Lyke

I don't know if anyone's collected such numbers. I've known swingers and polyamorists who've made it work, and I've known those for whom it hasn't, on the other hand my counter-example is that I've known plenty of people who've been miserable in decades-long 'til-death-do-us-part committed relationships, so I don't consider that 50% of first marriages ending in divorce statistic to necessarily say that 50% of first mariages fail.

Despite participating for legal and economic reasons, I'm not generally a fan of marriage as a cultural phenomenon. My first long-term romantic relationship lasted for seven and a half years and I don't consider it, or its ending, a failure. I think it served us both well during that time, and when we grew in directions that it no longer supported we went our separate ways. We still talk, but we're different people than we were way back then, and failure would have been trying to pretend that we were still on the same path.

I'm also under the impression that while poly triads can be pretty stable, quads are almost certainly doomed.