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‘It’s risky business emotionally’: the social shift towards open relationships
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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I'm not against different relationship arrangements and it's often argued that you shouldn't dump all your emotional needs on one person.
However... That being said the more people you add to the mix the more complex and more emotional energy you have to dictate to the situation. A lot of people are genuinely not ready for such a thing even if they think they are. Because while you might have mor emotional needs met, you're also faced with higher emotional and social demands from your partners. Some people don't seem to understand that you can't avoid giving more of your emotional self to others when you give it to more than one person. In my experience, some of the people pursuing these kind of relationships are actually seeking less personal emotional investment, and I think that grossly misunderstands the situation and is a bit selfish, at best.
I think these situations can be healthy, but I also think healthy ones are more rare, just like healthy traditional relationships are often rare.
Finally, I am not shocked at people opening up to the idea of throuples when two parents can barely afford to raise a child. Three incomes starts to take the weight of the financial cost off just a little. Not a lot, but a little.
As someone who used to be poly, I agree 100%. Poly people can be emotional wrecking balls if they don't put in the work to build and maintain healthy relationships. Poly drama story time!
The worst of my poly primaries believed she had infinite love to give, so she saw no reason to limit herself to one partner. While her love might have been truly infinite, her time, emotional capacity, and sense of commitment were not. She frequently overextended herself with multiple new interests and had her desire for attention and validation fulfilled far beyond reason without the capacity or apparent intent to fully reciprocate.
Her interests were typically less socially adept men who didn't have much luck in dating, so they threw themselves at a charming, intelligent woman showing intense emotional and sexual interest, unaware or uncaring that she hid her flaws with equal intensity. (She had this thing about fucking virgins: hey, I don't kink shame!) I saw her break a few hearts when they realized they weren't going to "win" her for themselves, but only toward the end discovered that this wasn't due to self-delusion as she claimed, but instead her failure to clearly communicate firm expectations and boundaries. Sometimes that they weren't communicated at all. I also learned after the split that there were far more men than I knew about. Uggggh.
Eventually she began breaking the rules we established for our relationship and chose to leave me when I insisted we close the relationship to work on ourselves, as we promised to do when we first became committed. She opted instead to begin fucking two mutual friends, one of which immediately ghosted me while the other, a newly former virgin, soon called off our friendship so he could, in his own words, "have a clear conscience while pursuing a lasting relationship with her". I'm sure I don't have to explain how successful he was.
Chiming in as another poly person, having been poly and monogamous in different parts of my life (currently poly). A lot of people that want to be in a poly situation do not fully comprehend the responsibility involved. It can be easy and casual, but I've seen multiple polycules fall apart (dramatically) due to insufficient communication and poor management of expectations. It's totally possible to be poly, and in a serious, committed relationship. I was. It's also very very difficult. It takes a lot of work, communication, and trust.
Like you said, I've been in relationships with people that truly believe they have infinite love to give, which even if that were true, no one has infinite time and emotional bandwidth. I've had a longstanding rule that I've set for myself, that any committed relationship I am in must have a rock solid foundation of communication and trust before polyamory is possible, and I always close off my poly relationships until I am at that point in a relationship (obviously assuming my partner is okay with that). People need to communicate their desires going in, and should regularly check in and discuss boundaries, expectations, and hopes for the future in any relationship, and much more so in poly ones.
Fucking talk to each other, people. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and extend the same level of honesty and trust that you wish to receive. If I and my past partners always approached relationships with a communication-first perspective, we would've avoided a lot of pain and heartbreak.