My dearest brothers and sisters,
This is Tunia speaking. I love you very much.
Today I would like to discuss polyamory (or poly in short). This is having multiple romantic and sexual relationships at the same time.
My overall message is that a good number of people who right now are practicing polygamy, would probably be happier with monogamy. Yes, polyamory indeed is the best relationship style for a small group of people. Yes, polyamory can work. However, just because something can work, doesn’t mean that it’s likely to work.
In fact, polyamory usually fails. Happy polyamorous relationships that last a long time are the rule, not the exception. Society has a distorted view about this because people love sharing: “I feel so happy in my polyamorous relationship”, while no one wants to share: “so I gave the OK for polyamory and my partner started having sex with someone else. I then felt horribly insecure or jealous. The relationship broke down soon afterwards.” Even though that last scenario is more common than people actually having a happy long-term polyamorous relationship.
And even if someone right now is genuinely happy in a poly relationship, that doesn’t mean that he or she will still be happy in a poly relationship ten years down the line. It is relatively doable to make a poly relationship work in the short term. It is much harder to have it work in the medium or long term.
Most people advocating for poly have never been in a long-term poly relationship. Sure they might say “I believe that my current poly relationship will last for the long term” but few people can actually say “my poly relationship HAS lasted for the long term.” That is because most polyamorous relationships don’t.
And then you could ask yourself: do you want to employ a dating strategy that likely leads to relatively short-term flings and resulting breakups and heartaches and then finding another partner?
The simple truth is that most people get jealous and / or insecure if their partner has sex with someone else. And yes, you can talk about that, you can express that, but doing so doesn’t always make the jealousy or insecurity go away.
Let’s suppose that Sally and Tom have a pretty good relationship, but things have gotten just a bit stale and predictable. Sally asks for polyamory, and Tom doesn’t really want that but he does want to make her happy and is afraid that she will leave if he refuses. So Sally starts having sex with someone else. Tom feels insecure or jealous and this isn’t going away after a brief conversation. Then Sally will feel quite tempted to spend less time with Tom and spend more time with her new, shiny, exciting second partner, because at that moment the second partner is more fun to be around. And then Tom feels even more jealous and insecure or abandoned. Usually that just leads to Tom getting really hurt and the relationship ending. But Tom was a pretty good partner for Sally, and him being jealous isn’t really a big character flaw — it’s actually very common. And now Sally is together with someone who she primarily selected for hot sex and being fun to be around. So this second person may not actually be a good relationship partner outside of some fun adventures together. And so it is entirely possible that in this scenario, both Sally and Tom end up worse off in the medium term.
It’s entirely possible that instead of introducing polyamory, Sally and Tom should just have worked on their relationship and tried out some new activities or spent a holiday doing something exciting or tried some new sex positions or sex toys. Movies and social media have given some people a skewed idea of how relations should be. It’s entirely normal that after a certain period of time, things start feeling a bit familiar and not as exciting anymore as they were when you were newly in love.
Or if from Sally’s perspective the relationship just isn’t ever going to work, then it may have been kinder for her to just break up with Tom, and only then start having fun with or dating some third person. Sure, if Tom was genuinely excited for polyamory, then absolutely you can try out polyamory. But in this example, Tom didn’t really want to be polyamorous. It can be cruel to force someone who you love or at least loved, to choose between either the pain of saying “no” to poly and disappointing their love and risking getting dumped, or saying “yes” to poly and having to deal with the pain of their love having sex with someone else.
In some cases when one person wants to introduce poly into the relationship, it would be better to either work on the relationship in a conventional way, or to simply end the relationship instead.
To convince him to agree to poly, Sally might have said to Tom: “don’t worry, you will be my primary poly partner and I’ll make sure that your needs are met first.” But then in practice, of course Sally will want to spend a lot of time with and attention on her fun, exciting, sexy new partner. And nearly everyone is overworked and tired and has a full calendar, so in practice this usually means Sally spending less time and attention on Tom and having less sex with him. And then Tom may feel on an emotional level that Sally betrayed him. After all, she promised that his needs would be met first, but now they’re not. And he also doesn’t really have any recourse here. It’s not going to work for him to tell Sally: “I demand that you keep your promise and less sex with your new partner and have more sex with me, even though you clearly at this moment you’re more excited about sex with this new person.” From Sally’s perspective, shouldn’t she be having sex with the person who she wants to have sex with? But if she does, Tom may feel, at least on an emotional level, that Sally betrayed him.
As you can see, things can get painful and very messy, very quickly in polyamorous relationships.
And these aren’t uncommon or super specific examples. It happens all the time that someone gets jealous or insecure, or that someone gets hurt because their partner isn’t spending that much time and attention on them anymore now that there’s a new partner in the mix.
Now sure, it may be the case that both Sally and Tom are genuinely excited about poly, and both find a very fun new person to be with, and everything is great and everyone is happy. Can that happen? Sure. If everyone involved is excited to try out polyamory, then go for it. I’m not saying that polyamory should never be practiced, or that it never works. Poly does sometimes work, and for some people, poly is indeed the best relationship structure. I just think that there are a bunch of people out there right now who are doing poly and who would be happier with a traditional, monogamous relationship structure.
It’s also true that some people genuinely aren’t jealous or insecure when their partner has sex with another person. But that’s a minority of people, not a majority. And so if your partner isn’t actively excited about polyamory, then you shouldn’t assume that they won’t become jealous or insecure if you start having sex with another person. In fact, some people are excited about polyamory, but then when their partner actually starts having sex with another person and also quite possibly has a bit less sex with them, then they may find that they become jealous or insecure anyway.
In most cases, you can talk about jealousy and insecurity, but after talking about it, it is still there. And if people can choose between having amazing sex with their shiny new second partner, or spending tons of quality time with their old insecure first partner to reassure them and mitigate their insecurity somewhat, well often people are going to go for the amazing sex with the shiny new partner. In that case, yeah, two people are probably enjoying themselves. And the third person is feeling awful.
Insecurity is deeply rooted in people and not easy to just “get over.” For one, society keeps implying that people are not good enough, for example by constantly showing pictures of beautiful and photoshopped models. Also, if a woman’s husband had sex with another woman in previous centuries, then it’s possible that he’d leave her and she and maybe their young children would starve to death. Similarly, it happens more often on Earth than people think that men raise a child that they falsely believe is their own, which is catastrophic from a passing-on-your-genes perspective. With all this ancestral trauma, it’s not so easy to just get over insecurity or jealousy.
This insecurity is further increased because in practical reality, polyamory often means that the bond between the two initial partners becomes shallower. The simple reality is that almost everyone is busy and tired and overworked, and few people have the time and energy to add another entire relationship to their life without reducing time and energy spent on their initial relationship. Few people have the time and energy to have two full relationships, plus work, plus hobbies, plus chores, plus other friendships, plus time for self development, plus exercise, et cetera. So adding another relationship often means not just spending less time and having less sex with the first partner, but also spending less time on asking how they’re doing, what they’re thinking, how their life is going, et cetera. You know, those deep, slower, more intimate conversations, where you sit down and really try to understand how the other person is feeling. Those moments are often sacrificed if another person is added, because well, there’s only so many hours in a week and only so much energy that people have to really pay deep attention to someone else.
Not to mention that some people think that deep connections are a bit scary, for example because they have a bad self image and it feels scary to reveal themselves and be seen. For these people, poly offers a very effective way to flee from deep connection. Namely, just go to your other partner and have some fun with them.
And then you can ask yourself: do you want one deep, meaningful relationship or two shallower relationships? Sure, having sex with a hot new person is more exciting. But will that ultimately make you happier?
Many poly advocates here will say that they DO have two deep, meaningful relationships. And sure, some people genuinely do. However for most people, mathematically speaking it’s a bit hard to see how people can fit two deep meaningful relationships into their schedule plus everything else, unless they spend their lives only doing work and relationships. And then you can wonder if it’s healthy to sacrifice all that other stuff — exercise, self-development, alone time, other hobbies, volunteer work, et cetera.
Even poly advocates will agree that poly relationships take more time and energy than monogamous relationships. Well, are you actually in a place in your life where you have that time and energy available? Even if you do, is it smart to spend that time and energy on polyamory instead of for some say charitable or self-development purpose? Sometimes the answer genuinely is “yes”, but not always.
There’s also a subtle pressure on poly people to always act happy and always present a fun and sexy exterior to their partner, and to never show “difficult” emotions or insist on having a useful but challenging conversation. After all, if the person is not being fun and sexy, their partner has the option to simply temporarily abandon them and go to their second partner. This sounds like something that only an intentionally cruel monster would do if I put it like this, but of course people will often choose to spend more time with the partner who is more fun to be around. And so people are pressured to act fun and sexy all the time, no matter how they actually feel, because otherwise they could get abandoned temporarily (at least the fear of this is there). Needless to say, this can be psychologically damaging. And yes, some people who have been in poly relationships still carry this burden with them, this idea that they must be fun and sexy at all times, otherwise their partner will abandon them. Even if right now they’re in a monogamous relationship and their partner isn’t going to abandon them if the person is authentic and not “fun” or “sexy” at a particular moment.
Let’s look at some points that poly advocates often make. First, poly advocates may tell you that monogamy is not natural. Well, what does that actually mean? Yes, some humans and some animals don’t stay together for life. Others do. So why would one be natural and one not natural? Moreover, civilization itself is not “natural” in a conventional sense of the word, while murder is natural and it happens all the time in the animal world.
Some poly advocates love to imply or at least think that polyamorous people are more skilled or spiritually advanced than non-polyamorous people. I don’t think that’s true. I think people are tuning into these messages because they perceive me as pretty spiritually advanced in this current life, as compared to the spiritual development of average Earth humans in their current life. Well, my husband and I agreed that neither of us could start a relationship with someone else, or have casual sex with someone of the opposite gender (we can have sex with someone of the same gender). Hakann and his wife are in a similar arrangement, because all four of us are more sexually attracted to the opposite gender than to our own gender. Even for us there is a chance that our relationships could eventually be destabilized if we engaged in opposite-gender sex with other people, or if we started a second relationship. Now admittedly there are Pleiadians for whom polyamory is working, but still.
Yes, it is true that doing polyamory well is harder than doing monogamy well. But not everyone who advocates for polyamory or does polyamory, actually does it well. Just because someone is in a polyamorous relationship, doesn’t automatically mean that they are better at relationships than a monogamous person.
Moreover, doing something that has a greater chance of failure does not automatically make you a better or more skilled person than other people. We think very few Earth humans are actually highly emotionally safe to be with, as I explained in my previous relationship messages, which we Pleiadians see as a core skill to even be in a monogamous relationship. And if relatively few people are even able to maintain a monogamous relationship, with the current very high divorce rates, then is it smart to do relationships on hard mode, i.e. poly? To me, it seems a bit like trying to run before you can walk.
An argument that poly people use is that two consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want. And sure. I am absolutely not saying that poly should be banned. Indeed poly genuinely is the best relationship structure for some people. That said, in some (not all) situations, one person will ask for a poly relationship, and the other person may feel scared that the other person will leave. Sometimes the person asking for the poly relationship explicitly threatens to leave, and sometimes the person asking for a poly relationship doesn’t say that and doesn’t even intend to leave if the poly suggestion is refused, however the other person still feels threatened. After all, the thought of the person you love, leaving you, is a genuinely painful and threatening thought indeed. And so it often happens that the less-enthusiastic person agrees to poly, not because they want to, but because they feel threatened. And to what extent can you say that: “well, the less-enthusiastic person consented to poly after all”, if that person felt threatened that the love of their life was going to leave them? And then if the less-enthusiastic person gets hurt, and often they do, then usually it is said that they consented to this, after all. Yes they consented, but under what circumstances did they consent? If you quasi-threaten someone into consenting, is that consent still valid?
If someone says: “hey, if you don’t agree to move to Portugal with me, I may leave you,” then everyone would call that a not okay way to treat your partner, and if the trip to Portugal then went poorly they’d put the blame on the Portugal-pusher. However if people say that same phrase but then replace “move to Portugal” with “be poly” then suddenly it’s acceptable, and then suddenly both parties are equally responsible for the success of the polyamory.
A less-enthusiastic partner can also feel really trapped and absolutely miserable in a poly situation, because in their own mind they “consented” and so they should accept the current situation. But they’re miserable. And their partner is off having a lot of fun and sex with their new partner, so those two people are happy, which makes the less-enthusiastic partner feel more alone. This less-enthusiastic person might remain trapped in an agonizing way for quite a while like this, if he or she can’t bring themselves to break up with the person whom they love. Which is also painful to do, of course. People can really get hurt very deeply this way.
So, how do you avoid these consent-issues? Well, if possible, mention your poly-preference very early on. It’s not super fair to first make someone fall in love with you and then dump on them that you want to have sex with other people. If a relationship is okay but not great, consider just working on it in a conventional way instead, or simply ending it. Personally I wouldn’t try to convince someone to have a poly relationship with me, even if I loved poly, if that other person isn’t actively excited about poly themselves. If they don’t seem thrilled at the thought of poly, then poly probably isn’t going to work out.
Also, it’s not easy to raise children in a polyamorous context. Yes, that can succeed, but just because something can succeed doesn’t mean it’s likely to succeed. Do you want to gamble with your children’s wellbeing?
Poly advocates may also say that poly is fair because both partners can have sex with other people. In the case where we’re talking about a man and a woman being poly, this isn’t actually nearly as fair as it sounds. The average Earth woman is able to find attractive Earth men to have sex with. Meanwhile the average Earth man is not able to find attractive Earth women to have sex with. And no, the explanation for this is not “men suck and need to step up.” On average Earth women are simply less interested in sex outside of committed, monogamous relationships than Earth men are. Which means that the average poly woman gets to have sex with one or more attractive partners, while the average poly man doesn’t.
There’s also the scenario where the man is conventionally very attractive and pushes his female partner into polygamy. And in this case, it’s possible that he has a ton of casual sex, while she’d much rather just be monogamous with him — but maybe she doesn’t dare say this out loud, out of fear of getting dumped or at least being labeled “needy.”
Yes, it can be the case that both the poly man and the poly woman have a great time with. But again, this is the exception and not the rule.
Having two relationships also means that there are twice as many people who can experience hardship in their life, which could mean that you may need to spend more time supporting people — if you actually want poly to be good for everyone involved, and aren’t just planning on leaving your partners alone if they are suffering (which unfortunately does happens).
Furthermore, we all know that some guys are just horny and want to sleep with multiple women for a while, but eventually they realize that they are happier in a stable monogamous relationship. Right? Well, now in 2023 those men — or women — may present themselves not as just being temporarily horny and hedonistic, but rather as simply inherently being poly, and people should accept them for who they are, and in fact they might even be more spiritually advanced than non-poly people. Well, it is true that a few people genuinely are wired to be poly and won’t be truly happy any other way. But there’s also a lot of people who consider themselves to be poly, when really they’re just in a horny and hedonistic phase in their life. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but 1) that doesn’t make you superior to other people, and 2) don’t be too quick to claim that your polyness is an unchangeable fact and that you can only be happy in poly contexts for the rest of your life. Maybe an amazing monogamously-minded partner comes along, and in this case, don’t be too quick to reject him or her just because you trapped yourself in the box of your own self-concept. Saying “I am X” can often limit you from seeing other opportunities.
In a lot of cases, polyamorous guys are just following their dick, and we know that it’s not always smart for guys to follow their dick. Similarly, in a lot of cases, polyamorous women are just following their vagina, and it is equally true that it’s not always smart for women to follow their vaginas. Polyamorous people may dress up “following their genitals” in flowery and inspiring language, but at the end of the day, men following their dick and women following their vagina do not always end up in a good place.
Yes, I know that polyamory isn’t only about sex, but let’s be honest, for most people that is a big part of it. If it was about being emotionally connected to someone or being able to practice a new hobby or go to new kinds of events, then you could also just be monogamous and maintain a tight friendship with another person. Sure, if your partner does not enjoy a certain activity and you do enjoy that activity, then it can be good to find some third person to do that activity with. But you don’t necessarily need to have sex with that third person. You can just find a friend to do that activity with.
Similarly, people will say that they like polyamory because they enjoy feeling so much love, but you can also feel mutual platonic love for and from a friend. Or you can feel more love by just spending more quality time with your partner.
The reasons that people state for being poly can often also be satisfied just by having a good friendship. Hence, often the desire for being poly is just the desire to have sex with more than one person. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. I, too, enjoy sometimes having sex with another woman. But I am honest about why I am doing it. I am not primarily associating with those women because I desire love, or because I want to practice a certain hobby together, or because I want someone to attend a certain event with, or because I’m simply poly and this is who I am. I have sex with those women because I want sex. I think they’re hot, and I want to kiss them and touch them and feel them. I like gently undressing other women and touching their breasts and feeling their skin and running my hands through their pubic hair and kissing their neck and hearing their breath quicken. I want them to desperately kiss me, like they are parched in the desert and my lips are the only source of moisture. And I want them to suck my nipples and finger or lick me until I can no longer ride the wave of pleasure and explode. Zero shame about that, but no pretenses about it either. I am honest to myself and others about why I am meeting up with those women. It’s not because I want a gardening buddy. It’s because I want sex. That’s it.
If poly people would more clearly communicate to their partner that they wanted more sexual excitement in their life, then maybe their partner would be able to satisfy that. A new sex toy is cheaper than a divorce. Yes I know that being in a polygamous relationship has more advantages than just sex, but a polygamous relationship certainly also has more disadvantages than just trying to spice up your sex life with your partner in the normal way. You can’t just look at the poly upsides and then decide it’s a good idea, without considering what can go wrong and if you are willing to risk your existing relationship.
Personally, If I noticed or was told by my husband that he wasn’t getting as much sex as he wanted, then I would immediately stop having sex with anyone but him. Also, even if I feel attracted to another man than my husband, I don’t act on that. I know which things are safe — having sex with other women — and which things could work out, but also could destabilize my relationship, and therefore are not worth risking, such as me having sex with another man. Perhaps if you and your potential poly partner are open and honest with each other, you can find certain areas that are safe to explore and to have fun with, but also certain areas that might work out but that also might not work out and that are therefore maybe not worth the risk. There are certainly more options and possible relationship configurations than either monogamy or classic polygamy. Just don’t be too quick to assume that things that could work out, actually will work out. Emotions can be unpredictable, after all. And just because something might work for a month, does not automatically mean that it will work out for the long term.
From my point of view, it is not wise to build a relationship structure that only works as long as your life is going relatively smoothly. Any relationship structure that collapses as soon as life throws some challenges or curveballs at you, is probably not a good relationship structure, unless you want to go through heartbreak and then through the process of finding a new partner every few years. Hence for most Earth humans at this current moment in time, I would just recommend monogamy. Frankly life is hard enough even without selecting some non-monogamous relationship structure, because those are more challenging and take a lot more time and effort. Even if you personally don’t get jealous and if you are amazing at communication, even then polyamory still takes significantly more time and effort than monogamy. Maybe you have that time and energy right now, but would you still have that time and energy if something else in your life went dramatically wrong?
Despite everything I have said in this message, it is still true that for some people, poly is the best lifestyle. And the criticism I have given about some poly practitioners, doesn’t apply to all poly practitioners. And yes, it is also true that some people are very happy in poly relationships for a long period of time.
As always, I am just sharing my perspective. I hope it was helpful. If you have a different perspective, or if you have experiences with polyamory, I would love to read them in the comments.
Now excuse me, I’ve gotten myself in the mood. I’m off to see if one of my female acquaintances is available. And I don’t mean “available for gardening.”
With love,
