Poly Women Respond

... that women just aren't well suited for polyamory, that it goes against a woman's basic nature when there is sexual/romantic involvement. He said he thinks women are just biologically driven to be possessive and desire exclusivity in love.

I would say to Sean that he needs to stop reading those "popular evolutionary psychology" books by Desmond Morris and co. This to me smells very much like the argument for "philandering men and clingy women". In case somebody hasn't heard it a thousand times already, this pet theory of certain (mostly male) scientists goes like this:

1) Pre-historic Earth is a tough place where men hunt big game and women hang in the homey caves, cradling babies and being highly vulnerable to predators, other males and incapable of finding nutrition on their own, because they are practically invalids for the duration of pregnancy and breast-feeding, which is also pretty much the only thing they do.

2) Big tough men have something called "selfish genes". The genes want to spread as far as possible. They have, like, gadzillion spermatoids ready to impregnate any woman they can successfully land on.

3) Women's selfish genes, however, have interests directly in opposition to that. Because of their general uselessness, women need men to bring home the big game to feed them and their babies. Of course, one man can only feed one family at a time. So women compete amongst themselves in trying to secure the economic services and manpower of "their" man, promising sexual fidelity and unlimited sexual access in turn. Men are not exactly happy with this, but they take the risk of providing for a child not necessarily their own because they really need somebody to cook for them and a male heir to inherit, well, their stuff. While men police their women's sexual behaviour, they philander themselves to ensure that despite this unhappy compromise, their genes have a fair chance of spreading and their offspring being conveniently raised by some unsuspecting cuckold.

So shockingly, this "scientific" explanation of pre-historic mating behaviours that have supposedly survived to this day becomes the mirror image of the 50's white middle-class America. This is also the theory behind the commonly asserted assumption that men are more troubled by the idea of their women sleeping with someone else and women more troubled by the idea of their man falling for someone else (and thus removing his precious economic contribution to the family in favour of someone else).

There are gaping holes in this theory. Actually, big game hunting has never been such an important part of pre-historic hunter-gatherers' diet as these caveman visions would imply. Their diet has mostly consisted of foraging, trap-setting and small-scale primitive agriculture, meat used mostly for ceremonial purposes. Studies of surviving hunter-gatherer cultures show that foraging for food takes a much smaller part of the day than the average day job of the modern world, and leaves plenty of free time. Also, societies like that don't organize along the one man-one woman-their kids-principle, and food and other resources are divided communally, not inside nuclear family units.

Moreover, pre-historic milieus could only support human communities of 100-150 people at maximum at a time, so in times of excess food and declining child mortality, fertility needed to be controlled through taboos, gender segregation, institutionalized homosexuality and abortions/abandoning of newborns. Actually, it seems that for whatever reason, it is men who biologically programme females to bond with them and their offspring. Sperm contains oxytocin which encourages bonding and works against depression (presumably also post-partum depression).
 
ha I just had a discussion with my partner that I felt more women are poly minded and more men dont like to share (their women with other men) Heck i know PLENTY of women who have complaints their their male partners wont allow them to have a GF unless he's "in on it" grrrr
 
At my house we have 2 couples. Me and my H are both in relationships with other people. My biggest issue is time spent with my H. H on the other hand does not like the fact that I love someone else too. He understands and tries not to have a double standard but it is still hard on him. When we just had an open relationship and it was just sex he was kind of ok with it. Mainly, I think, because I rarely did anything with someone else. Love on the other hand is harder on him. He has the fears of me leaving him, which will not happen, he is stuck with me :D but it is still a fear.

I really just think it is a person to person difference. Every person is different in how they look at life and the problems they face. However in my case it is definitely the man who has possession issues.
 
I think it sounds like generalization. I have been having discussions with a staunchly mono male lately and he is trying to say I am just confused that I just haven't met the right person, if I had I wouldn't be polyamorous. I find this kind of interesting. What I said to him is being everything to someone is tiring and a huge responsibility. But his retort is simply, I just haven't met the right person. I think all of us want initially to be everything to everybody, like no one will be "better" and that someone couldn't possibly love someone else because "I'm all that" to them. Especially if sex is involved. But I think that's true of both sexes. By in large anyone I speak male or female that is not poly amorous does not understand it. That's just the way it is.

I also think it depends on where the people are in the relationship. Both parties will be a little more possessive in the thoes of NRE than say a year or so later... (but then I could be wrong, I haven't met the right person yet. LOL)

MG
 
I've been thinking about this question for a few days now, in conjunction I've also been thinking about masculine vs. feminine and how we have to develop both aspects within ourselves. So my latest conclusion is that poly requires that women develop the masculine aspect of autonomy, freedom and independence - normally a male characteristic; and men develop the feminine aspect of expressing emotion and emotional intimacy. Both are a struggle for either side and go against the grain of society. I think many men find the emotional investment of intimate relationships to be a big deal and a lot of work and can feel very vulnerable in the undertaking of that investment so are wary of it. Women on the other hand find that this aspect of themselves comes fairly naturally.

disclaimer: the question itself is a basic generalization so the answers swerve into generalizations. I think we all realize the danger of generalizing but understand the purpose in this context.
 
social conditioning

If any generalizations can be made, it is that men tend to be much more possessive than women are -- because they have been conditioned for so many centuries to think of women as their property.

NY C...this is so true....as is the reverse...when a woman begins to feel the sun shining on her freedom to be who she is....maybe poly, mono or "omni" (thank you redpepper for that great term!) a social conditioning response may kick in within HER subconscious...that says "but i NEED to be 'someone's', don't I?

Life is not for the faint of heart.
Neither is learning not to "hide" in social conventions
 
everything or nothing

being everything to someone is...a huge responsibility.

...and can leave one feeling, unjustly, like a failure, if your partner is NOT "happy"...
 
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