So, in terms of statistics I’m not going to try to isolate the experiences; I have too many friends involved in poly relationships to do a representative sampling without more work than I feel like dedicating to this comment.
Just to be clear, I’m counting as “poly” relationships those where at least one partner has at least two partners who know about and are reasonably OK with each other for at least some period of time, and where such partners are understood as in-principle acceptable. I’m counting as “monogamous” relationships where such partners are understood as in-principle unacceptable, including ones where partners have had affairs but claim to feel bad about them.
This creates an excluded middle of “poly in principle but not in practice” and it’s likely that a lot of relationships I consider monogamous fall in that excluded middle (arguably including my own) but I don’t really care.
There’s also “nominally monogamous but in practice poly” relationships mediated by affairs which are eventually confessed and forgiven, about which I don’t have much to say but am counting here as monogamous.
If I had to guess about statistics I’d say that maybe 15-30% of the long-term (say, a decade or more) monogamous relationships in my cohort have tried the poly thing and concluded it isn’t for them, and about the same proportion of the LTRs in my cohort are poly and seem happy enough with it. (Which is not to say they don’t have relationship problems; they do, sometimes involving third parties and sometimes not. So do the monogamous LTRs, and the single people.)
I haven’t noticed either groups’ relationships failing more often, though I see a lot of relationships of both sorts break up on third parties, which in poly relationships usually looks like a triad destabilizing, and in mono relationships usually looks like an unforgiven affair.
One highlight: one of the best marriages I know of (in terms of how well the spouses work together and support each other and make each other happy and achieve their own goals and raise their child) has been poly for about a decade now; they’ve each had secondary partners during that time who last a few months to a couple of years and then break off amicably.
So, in terms of statistics I’m not going to try to isolate the experiences; I have too many friends involved in poly relationships to do a representative sampling without more work than I feel like dedicating to this comment.
Just to be clear, I’m counting as “poly” relationships those where at least one partner has at least two partners who know about and are reasonably OK with each other for at least some period of time, and where such partners are understood as in-principle acceptable. I’m counting as “monogamous” relationships where such partners are understood as in-principle unacceptable, including ones where partners have had affairs but claim to feel bad about them.
This creates an excluded middle of “poly in principle but not in practice” and it’s likely that a lot of relationships I consider monogamous fall in that excluded middle (arguably including my own) but I don’t really care.
There’s also “nominally monogamous but in practice poly” relationships mediated by affairs which are eventually confessed and forgiven, about which I don’t have much to say but am counting here as monogamous.
If I had to guess about statistics I’d say that maybe 15-30% of the long-term (say, a decade or more) monogamous relationships in my cohort have tried the poly thing and concluded it isn’t for them, and about the same proportion of the LTRs in my cohort are poly and seem happy enough with it. (Which is not to say they don’t have relationship problems; they do, sometimes involving third parties and sometimes not. So do the monogamous LTRs, and the single people.)
I haven’t noticed either groups’ relationships failing more often, though I see a lot of relationships of both sorts break up on third parties, which in poly relationships usually looks like a triad destabilizing, and in mono relationships usually looks like an unforgiven affair.
One highlight: one of the best marriages I know of (in terms of how well the spouses work together and support each other and make each other happy and achieve their own goals and raise their child) has been poly for about a decade now; they’ve each had secondary partners during that time who last a few months to a couple of years and then break off amicably.