Badly...unless you can regulate jealousy with hormone therapy. No matter how you try to make it work, sooner or later someone is going to get jealous and then your whole space hippie commune goes to crap.
I’d start by researching polyamory in all its forms, especially by looking at any cultures where it occurs, or looking at individuals that have been in those types of relationships. A bunch of folk out here on the internet can only tell you why it wouldn’t work for us, but not why (or how) it worked for others.
Polyamory is difficult. Kim, Pat, and Dakota are in a thruple, but Dakota stops getting along with Kim. However, Dakota wants to stay with Pat, and Pat likes Kim. No spacefaring can solve that.
A whole lot of ways, but some things to consider: First, is it limited, either by social custom or by practicalities? Historically, having multiple wives was something of a status symbol for rich and powerful men, and it might be that a polyamorous relationship is something that only one social group seriously participates in. Second, what are the legal practicalities of that? A 3-way relationship has triple the potential for drama and messy breakups of a 2-way one, and when money, children, ownership of property and businesses, etc come into play, that's going to be very important! Maybe there are different tiers of relationship, at least in legal terms. Third....make sure you acknowledge the imperfections, rather than glossing over them with "oh, we're too enlightened for jealousy!". For a lot of gold age sci-fi writers who toyed with the idea of cultures like that, you can really see the thirst showing in their free-love utopias.
Two things to keep in mind: There’s already different marriage and social customs (when it comes to multiple partners) IRL. There are different types of polyamory. It isn’t as simple as monogamy versus free love. There’s cultures where it’s normal for a man to have multiple wives, but not normal for women to have multiple husbands. There’s cultures where men can only have one wife, but it’s expected for them to have mistresses. There’s cultures where marriage isn’t a thing. In IRL modern-day poly… there’s hierarchical poly (where one partner is the “nesting” partner, who you have kids and a house with, and then there’s multiple other partners). There’s relationship anarchy, which is exactly what it sounds like (no rules). There’s closed triads, where three people are in a closed relationship together and do not interact with others. So… There’s a lot of options, and you can always make up more options. I’d suggest you start by figuring out how reproduction works in your society, because “who takes care of the kids” is often a major determining factor for how this stuff works.
Heinlein did that in Stranger in a Strange Land and possibly other stories. He also tried to live it, but apparently it didn't go so well. H G Wells was very committed to the idea of free love, but I don't know if he wrote it into any stories?
It seems people are confusing polyamory with polygamy, when they are distinctly different. 'Multiple wives' has nothing to do with polyamory. You can also be polyamorous and only be married to one person.
Unless there's something I'm missing it seems the only way they could be different is due to cheating or loveless marriage? My understanding is that in either case (monogamy or polygamy) the marriage is a way of codifying the romantic/sexual practice.
More common than you think. I know of a few married couples that live with a third person. Or incorporate others on a fairly regular basis. Or three or four unmarried people living in some sort of romantic milieu. Of course, I always wondered at one point things skewed from casual domestic fuckfest to an actual multi-axial relationship. Wayyyy too complicated for me.
I wasn't saying it's rare, I'm saying the only difference I see between polyamory and polygamy is due to cheating or loveless marriage. If you remove those, they're the same thing. In other words, if the marriage actually reflects the way the people involved feel, then they're the same thing. I'm having trouble expressing it (that seems to be a common theme with me lately) but I'm trying to say that polygamy is supposed to be the same as polyamory, just as monogamy is supposed to be the same thing as loving and having sexual relations with only one person. It seems to me when they're different it's only because of either cheating or loveless marriage.
Assuming the presence of another person denotes cheating or lovelessness, which people who do it don't necessarily feel. Not for me, but others seem to like it, though the drama potential has to be crazy. But maybe that's part of the attraction.
Maybe a batter way to say it—polyamory is to polygamy what single-partner marriage is to loving and having sex with only one person. In each case they're supposed to reflect the actual feelings and practices of the people involved, but in reality it isn't always true. So that in principle they're supposed to mean the same things, but in practice they sometimes don't. And maybe this is all Selbbin was saying?
I'm confused. If you're married to a person you don't love, then the marriage does not reflect your actual feelings, right? This is what I'm saying, but I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. And if you marry a single person (monogamous) but have sex with someone else, then again, your marriage doesn't reflect your actual feelings. Sorry, it's possible I'm just totally missing what you're trying to say. And it's possible we're saying the same thing in different ways and I'm just totally baffled about your way of saying it.
If Selbbin was only saying that being married to someone doesn't mean you necessarily love them or have sex with them, or that you won't have sex outside of the marriage, then I would agree to an extent. But I don't agree that polygamy and polyamory are totally different, as Selbbin seemed to be saying. To me they bear the same relationship as monogamy to love and sex—the marriage is supposed to reflect the actual feelings but sometimes it doesn't. I wouldn't call that totally unrelated. Lol, and this is all I was trying to say with all these posts. Just took me a while to work it out.
To me a lot has to do with the expectations and rules. In polyamory, I would think communication is key, but no one should be surprised when a partner expresses a desire to start a romantic relationship with another person (or couple). In polygamy, specifically polygyny, which is the most common, the wives are not expected or allowed to seek romantic partners outside the marriage but I think in some cultures it's understood that it may happen but is always done secretly. And in some polygamous cultures the husband may be limited to the number of wives and may even need to seek input from his current wives to marry any additional wives (this may be out of practicality and not necessarily any rules). But in polyamory the rules seem more flexible as long as each partner is honest about it beforehand. This is just my understanding, I'm not an anthropologist.
Thanks @Bruce Johnson that does make some sense. I still see that as what we all already understand about the differences between marriage and love/sex. It's really more of a difference between monogamy and polygamy than between polygamy and polyamory. I'm guessing that's all Selbbin was talking about.
Heinlein also did both polyamory and polygamy in 'the moon is a harsh mistress' that worked out okay in that setting
Ok not totally different. That's hyperbole on my part. But peeps were referencing one when meaning the other. Married couples involved in polyamory aren't cheating, as it's open and by mutual consent. It's part of their way of approaching their love and sex lives.
