No, but I've heard poly people use the implication that monogamy isn't ~natural.

Poly people get the joy of being lectured by monogamous folk about how immature/irresponsible/misguided they are, while watching many of those same monogamous folk lie and cheat and screw up their own relationships. It's not hard to imagine they'd get a little smug after a while. (If wrongly so.)

I wish my older self looked more like my younger self, so I could get the kind of girlfriends myself would prefer.

It's definitely improved my social and scheduling abilities. When you have to juggle so much information about individuals, someone with a poor memory like myself has technology to rely upon, thankfully.

Religions, like polyamory, always look better from the outside than they do from the inside.

I've never heard a poly person suggest that a monogamous commitment isn't really a commitment or that two people in a monogamous relationship don't really love each other.

No, but they will tell monogamous people that they can't guarantee their partner is being monogamous and that if they don't think they want to be with other people, then they're lying to themselves. Both of which imply that being monogamous isn't a real and valid relationship preference.

Being a smug dickface is a human trait. Anybody can do it.

@5, How does that not apply to any relationship, Will.

Yes. How does the whole "monogamy is not natural" fit into this discussion?

Polyamory is a religion? News to me.

A personal, and unusual, story. My married best friend is infertile. I'm single, over 35, and lost my left ovary to cancer when I was only 26. Over 2 years ago, we started discussing the crazy idea of, as she put it, "Solving our problems and just being happy." Eventually we ended up in fertility clinics for testing and, to our and the doctors' surprise (given my tests results, in particular), got pregnant on the first try (her husband's sperm, my egg).

Our daughter is just shy of 9 months old, and she's a total miracle--crawling at 4 months, walking at 8, talking already, just crazy inquisitive, determined, and happy. She is an incomprehensible joy.

We've been friends for 7 years, living together since before she was born, and couldn't be happier.

Both my best friend (by now partner is probably more appropriate) and I are bisexual, so our little parenting triad exists somewhere between friendship and polyamory, and all three of us have tremendous love and affection for one another. However, we don't really know what to officially call ourselves, save just "a family," because we all are in agreement that no matter how our relationships to one another evolve or change (and we know they will) our primary focus and consideration is doing whatever we need to to provide our daughter with a stable and happy home. So we are "poly" in the romantic sense, but we are together first and foremost in order to raise our daughter. And we're most certainly not smug about it. Nor are we naive about its challenges (it's often quite hard to juggle 3 parenting philosophies, e.g.) but we love our daughter more than anything and our love for one another has grown and deepened because we've given each other such an incredible gift, one premised on trust and moving beyond so many smug presumptions of what a "Real" family should be and despite our own families' ongoing struggles to accept us.

We anticipated that resistance and, in some cases, ostracism. And we don't anticipate it getting much better over time. People with vested interest in "traditional" families can be remarkably hateful when they emotionally need to bastardize those whose lives threaten their beliefs.

What we didn't expect, however, was the outrage of folks we presumed natural allies.

Case in point: I lost one friend in the past 2 years as a result of my new family. She too found herself past 35 and desperately wanting a child. She was recently married, however, and her husband refused to have more children, having 2 from his first marriage. So she found a sperm donor on her own and after months and months and months of failed attempts, finally got pregnant. Early in the third trimester she was hospitalized with pre-eclampsia. Her premature baby survived and, to his credit, her husband agreed to raise as his own the baby that he didn't want and wasn't his. That baby is now in college.

I thought she was a logical ally given the lengths she was willing to go to become a mother and because she was married to a man who did a tremendous thing for her out of love for her (especially since what she did was, to my mind, grounds for divorce).

She has barely spoken to me since I told her I was pregnant, save to tell me that I'm crazy and that I'm gonna bring heartache and suffering to my daughter. She spreads our story like it's malicious gossip, not considering that we are happy and our daughter is thriving.

So... the lesson?

People are quite remarkable at convincing themselves that they are the only legitimate exception, regardless of what label they claim for themselves in doing so. While the defenders of "traditional" families do the most harm in their persecution of the rest of us, the rest of us can be, surprise surprise, smug dipshits too.

And, oh yeah: polyamory is not a religion. FFS.

"No, but they will tell monogamous people that they can't guarantee their partner is being monogamous and that if they don't think they want to be with other people, then they're lying to themselves"

Yes, this is the one that irritates me the most. The whole, "you just think your monogamous" tact. I'd sooner believe that my partner is an international super spy than that he is cheating on me, and not out of naivety. I just know him too well to believe he would, or for him to be able to get away with it if he did.

And I could easily hook up with any number of people I find attractive. If that's what I wanted that's what I would do.

There is also the whole, "monogamy is hard" line. It may be for some people, but it's not for others. The whole thought of going through the finding, dating, getting to know each other, establishing a relationship phases with multiple people until you find one that is compatible with you is a total turn off to me, and I know for a lot of other people as well. I have no desire to go through all that again one of the benefits to me of being monogamous is not having any reason to. Just the thought of having to go through all that again makes monagamy a very easy choice for me and a very easily attainable state.

I'm all for people having what ever kind of relationship they want or that works for them. In fact I think it is a big mistake for people who aren't monogamous by nature to try to force themselves into monogamy. But the idea that monogamous people don't get shit from poly people is wrong. They may not come out and say "monogamy is wrong" but there are tons of more subtle messages being sent that it doesn't work, that we are really just conforming to social expectations, that we are not really doing what we want, and that we aren't really happy.

@10 I was getting to this point in my much longer post above, but let me say again: Of course some poly people can be smug to the monogamous. As can bisexuals to gays or straights. As can gays to "breeders." As can vegans to meat-eaters.

Have you ever spent any time around home birthers? HOLY SHIT...

I think the broader point deserves emphasis: those on the oppressive side of any binary you want to name can do more damage in their smugness. It's why we academics came up with an overused and annoying term for it: privilege. A smug person at Focus on the Family causes far more suffering than the asshole at your dinner party who lectures those at the table eating meat.

I think everyone should do what they want, leave everyone else alone, and shut the fuck up about it.
I think "poly-whatever" is stupid. So what? You might think being monogomous is stupid. I don't care.
Shut up.

but I've never heard a poly person suggest that a monogamous commitment

Not sure I'd call that kind of thinking "smug" - more like ignorance and prejudice.

No, monogamous couples don't tend to get mocked for being insufficiently committed. They get mocked for being presumably unrealistic, prudish, undersexed and restrictive.

To echo @11, of course people think that their own way of doing things is best. That's why they're doing things that way.

Okay, Dan, et. Internets, I have a hard time trying to understand something about Polys:

I get that 2+ people can be in love and in a relationship together, but how do they square the peg of equality under the law?
Maybe I'm getting this part confused, but with the term "Primary", that leads me to believe that someone is going to be labeled as "Secondary" or otherwise a lesser partner, which isn't an equal relationship.
Leaving that aside, what's the word on conflict of interest between two parties over the choices made on behalf of a 3rd, to use the common example, end-of-life as with Terry Schaivo. If a partner is unresponsive and does not have a will specifying treatment, and one partner wants to keep them on life support but the other doesn't, what is the deciding factor? Conflict of Interest can come in a lot of forms so how do Polys thread that needle with equal treatment?

Furthermore, I'm assuming that Poly means 2+ adults in an equal relationship and not one man or woman controlling a harem of wives/sister-wives/husbands/sister-husbands(?)

@15 There are poly people who have "primary" relationships and "secondary" relationships. There are poly people who don't hold any of their partners above any of the other partners. There are poly people who have an equal group marriage in which everyone is everyone else's partner. There are poly people where a man has two wives and the wives aren't with anyone but him. There are poly people where a woman has two husbands and the husbands aren't with anyone but her. There are people who are married and occasionally have casual threesomes and consider themselves poly without it being a major part of their life or identity. There are people who are celibate, but consider themselves poly because they romantically love multiple people at the same time. There are far more possibilities than I could list here.

Poly is a really, really broad category of people, so your assumptions are true about some people, but not all and probably not a majority.

People in poly relationships will sometimes (but not always) figure out what legal hoops they need to jump through to protect themselves, for dealing with situations like you described. What happens and what can be done will entirely depend upon the specific situation and what steps the people involved have taken.

You should totally get Charlie to come on your podcast as a guest!

@12 fuck yeah!

Well stated, Ms Maddie. And to Mr Savage, I'd suggest that we all have sampling bias. It would not surprise me at all that someone whose respect for monogamy is notably open to unfavourable interpretation would receive a large majority of feedback of the nature reported.

@16, thanks for the clarification and I figured I was going to toe the waters of a deeper pool than I imagined.

I'm still unsure about relationship-definitions past casual sex, but I'm not going to be a concern troll or care bear about it. It doesn't pertain to me or anyone I know and as long as all parties involved aren't being hindered or manipulated into unwanted situations, are free to leave however they want, etc. then I say best to all.

Being poly is more difficult than being mono, but the rewards are worth the effort I think. And some of the effort is ignoring peoples ignorance about what it is or what it means. We are a family and I think that is all that matters, I don't tell other people that they don't have a real family because they are based off the Neanderthal model- if they say they are happy I believe them. I don't like cilantro, I think it tastes like soap, but I don't tell people who like cilantro that they are wrong, only that I don't care for it.

Are you kidding? I've never had an in-person conversation about relationships with a poly person who DIDN'T imply that their way is better, more mature and evolved. I'll grant a small sample size - single digits- but still: 100%.
Poly and mono folks both should stick a sock in the smugness.