There’s nothing in a non-monogamous relationship that prevents feelings of rejection or loss when a partner loses interest. It’s a very small comfort to have other partners when one you care deeply about adds distance.
I’ve been in a non-monogamous relationship for an extremely long time, and ‘there are tools’ or ‘read this book’ are both very simplistic attitudes about the challenges.
Isn't part of the issue that you need such a "toolbox"? It not only requires the usual maturity and mental preparation to deal with other people, there's also an entire set of extra complications and "conventions" (?) you (and any of your partners) need to get used to.
The glut of marriage counseling options, religious counseling, and relationship self help books indicate this is a more universal need than for just poly relationships.
Non-monogamy does not just come in one form, either. Kinsey showed that people are not so monogamous as everyone assumes, 50+ years ago. Social norms are still catching up.
Yes. Poly is great if it works for you but it's definitely relationship grad school.
The complexity grows exponentially with the number of people and the ways in which they are connected.
It's not unlike software. To torture an analogy, much of the "toolbox" and the conventions exist to provide standardized interfaces and help to reduce coupling between people/areas that don't need to be coupled.
Sometimes things can come naturally. In my poly prehistory I once wanted badly to go on a date with a cute girl who worked in an office next to mine, told my wife, and she said I should go for it.
Other times things don't go naturally and then is why we need "toolboxes" for relationships, no matter what kind.
For me I have been exploring my emotions and my ability to transmit emotions to other people. I plant feelings like seeds, kindle them into a roaring fire, can compress them into a ball and they hit someone like a lightning bolt. It's a power that brings responsibility because you can just easily if not more easily hurt somebody that way as opposed to draw them in.
There is a structure to falling in love and it's better to develop it than to be pushed around by randomness. Not a lot of people talk about it for a few reasons:
(1) The gap between desperation and being overcommitted is small
(2) Love is a dangerous game. Pickup isn't because people in casual situations wall off their feelings but no matter how much you expel hostility, sadistic tendencies and are sensitive to avoid accidental slights and interruptions of mirroring it's inevitable that you're going to hurt anyone who becomes attached to you because you're either going to break up or "death will do you part"
