What is Daily Life Like for Polyamorous Women?

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm discuss the intricacies and lived experiences of the polyamorous community, using ALA's blog post as a case study. They explore the dynamics of open relationships, the culture of polyamory, and compare it with monogamous lifestyles. The conversation touches on the emotional transparency and unique challenges within poly communities, including social pressures, jealousy, and the pursuit of novelty. They also delve into contrasting personal perspectives on relationships and the productivity implications of poly lifestyles.

Speaker 4: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about the other side of polyamory.

Specifically what I mean by this is. Somebody who has gone into open relationships, polyamory you know, they are around our age and they have been as successful at this as a human can be. And they know everyone else who's really in this lifestyle. What is the life and who does it well,

Speaker: like, does well as best as you possibly can.

The perfect case study,

Speaker 4: of course we're looking at ALA here. Because she wrote a blog post about this recently. And not just that, but it was so fascinating to read because when I read it clearly from her perspective, it was a bunch of wins and awesome life moments. And from my perspective, it was.

I would never want that. And no, no, no, no. I think this is really useful because I think for a lot of people when they start thinking about opening a relationship or like seriously sleeping around with other people they think about it in the context of that individual decision instead of where it will lead them in life and whether or not, oh, what's the end game?

Whether that is, yeah, whether or not that's a place they want to be. Mm-hmm. And what I like so much about ALA's piece here is I think that if you are the type of person who wants to polyamory endgame, you will read, like, you'll hear this and you'll be like, that sounds fantastic. And if you're not, even if you're the type of guy who might be like, well, you know, but I should sleep around on my partner more often or something like this, this may scare you out of that.

If this is the endgame.

Speaker: Yeah. So basically, for some people, this, this actually really, truly is ideal. But many people who think it's for them, it really isn't. And this is a great blog post or a substack post to review if yes. Just, just to find out, to, to test the waters without necessarily destroying a monogamous relationship that could actually be the better alterna.

Well, and I think

Speaker 4: if you are monogamous, just from an anthropological perspective, you'll find this very fascinating. Mm-hmm. Like, especially if you're like us and like with a bunch of kids and your chickens and, and living on a farm this is another world that she's living in. That is

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4: As different as maybe somebody living in the 18 hundreds is from like our daily life.

I also really, well actually bring

Speaker: in some history here as we go more into this 'cause actually, okay.

Speaker 4: What I also really found it interesting. Yeah. In reading this was your core reaction to it. So Simone reads this, and it's not all the debauchery that gets to her, it's the wasted time. She's like, how do they have time for this?

And so I would want you to comment on that as we go through this. So the article is titled Anecdotes from the Slut Cloud. It works fine. A lot of people have opinions like No man would ever seriously date a w***e. Promiscuous. People have relationships that fall apart. This is setting everyone up for so much drama.

Slutty people are secretly suppressing their actual hatred of the lifestyle, et cetera. While our polyamory is full of nerdy memes about getting your molecule to play d and d, our monogamy is pretty angry at all. The non-MS, this most upvoted post includes stuff like. When you see two people in an open relationship, it's like, which one of you came up with the idea and which one of you cries to sleep every night?

And I note here, what I like about her going into this is she's saying that that's not actually true. There are actually people who like this polyamorous lifestyle, even if you would find it a living hell, like I, again, I read through her lifestyle and I'm like, oh my God, that is a living hell. But we'll get to that in a second.

But, but clearly she doesn't feel that way about it, and I know other people who don't. Mm-hmm. And next one here, I'd get bored is something so selfish to say about your partner. People you supposedly love don't exist for your entertainment. Did you I agree with that. I mean, I don't get bored with you and you do exist through my entertainment.

So, you know, I don't most mostly in the productivity enhancer and entertainment as a second. You know, people keep saying that we were gonna get bored of our conversations. You know, so, oh,

Speaker: well then we'd run out of things to talk about with this podcast.

Speaker 4: Well, that's what I thought when I started dating you and marrying you and spending almost all my time with you and doing all our companies together.

It's like eventually I must run outta conversations.

Speaker: Yeah, no. Especially not in this timeline.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Apparently not. Yeah. This, this is too crazy. Next was bored and took a small dive into poly relationship YouTube. And 95% of the videos are about training to not hear the little voice in your head telling you that something is insanely wrong.

Or responses to one of my poly friends tweets about polyamory. And so here are some responses. I'm going to invent a disease to eradicate them. They made effing around boring total a humanity. I swear. It's the video games, specifically RPGs, that impart upon nerds, this bizarre micro. Fascist structuralism to every interaction they need to be economically and socially disenfranchised.

Every game cube will be smashed next fluffy in bio. Oh. I guess they're saying he's a furry quote unquote, poly people aren't people. Those are really mean. Yeah,

Speaker: the, the, the hate that she, that she screenshotted and shared in her essay is, is so unfounded. But I think also it's stuff that I see.

She's not just selecting the most extreme, random, very unusual response. No, I, I absolutely see this all the time. Well,

Speaker 4: and there's a reason for it. As well, especially from women. Well, and for men. So, okay. We, we, I, I should get into like why people slut shame. Slut shaming is a very useful tool in securing partners.

When women just sleep with anyone especially attractive women, just sleep around with anyone. A lot of other women lose one of the core values they feel they bring to the PA table that they can use to attract a partner, which is sexual access. And so. You know, if you're in a dating market and some of the most attractive women in the dating market are just giving away sexual access for fairly little or even like monetary, which can be even worse for you because then they've discreetly priced what sexual access to somebody like them is worth.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: You can really struggle to secure the attention of some of the men who you otherwise would've been able to secure the attention of.

Speaker 6: Absolutely.

Speaker 4: And for men, there's also a reason to do this because you do not. Yes, you may enjoy like in the moment sexual access, b