Comment on Anon watches a romance movie
angrystego@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Infidelity is widespread, because it comes from human nature. Instead of vilifying it we should strive to find and normalize forms of relationships that allow for more liberty without the necessity of lying and cheating.
Your exact same argument could be made for murder, for sex crimes, for hate crimes, etc. Just because some people might occasionally want to commit these acts, does not make them okay, because they hurt people.
Open relationships already exist. There is no limit on what kind of relationship you can define with your partner, so there is absolutely no “necessity of lying and cheating”. That is just an excuse for people who don’t give a shit about hurting people.
It sounds like the point they’re making is more: “we internalize and understand relationship norms through serial monogamy, and maybe more people would benefit from reconsidering if that is what they want.”
Not: “You wanna cheat on your partner? Just do it lol.”
Maybe I misunderstood it then, it seemed like they were presenting this as a defence for people who cheat, like “don’t blame them, blame the society which ultimately causes it”.
I think the “it” there can also be the human nature to want to love/fuck many people, not just a single partner. I’m being charitable as I don’t think that’s the point they’re trying to make, but I’m not the commenter, so idk.
That’s just not true. Open relationships do exist (I’ve seen several work out nicely) but the overall opinion on them in most cultures is they’re weird, doomed or plain wrong and evil. Unless it is normalized that sex is not something fatal, it’s ok among consenting adults, we won’t move to a really sexually tolerant society.
What does it matter though? Do what you want, I don’t see why society as a whole needs to know about your sexual habits. Feels weird to proclaim sexual oppression when in practice it’s more like sexual privacy. I don’t need to know that you are in a consenting polyamorous relationship unless you want me to get with your wife.
I agree with the part that it’s really up to people. I don’t agree it’s ok to want people to hide their relarionships. And they do have to hide them or face problems. People who decide to live in uncommon relationships are a target for others. They often get questioned uncomfortably even by rather liberal people and attacked and bullied by conservative ones. It’s really hard to do this openly. In such circumstances, I do think it’s oppression. It’s also not really about me. But I have eyes and empathy.
Studies show that more open relationships do not decrease cheating, because the openness of the relationship is not the draw of cheating.
You are 100% right, there is such thing as ethical non monogamy, and if people want to have a loving relationship and not be exclusive then we should normalize it. The comments here saying “next you’ll say murder is ok because it’s human nature” is the same type of shit people said when gay marriage was allowed. “Next we’ll be saying it’s natural to marry animals!” 🙄 It’s all the slippery slope fallacy
I think there’s a big difference between fucking consenting adults while their partners are OK with it, and fucking children.
I shouldn’t have to spell that out but here we are.
PotentialProblem@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
What’s to stop anyone today from having an open conversation with their partner about opening their relationship? In the examples above, no one is vilifying having an open relationship… it’s vilifying lying and dishonesty.
Even if we were to normalize infidelity, that doesn’t mean anyone should be beholden to accepting it in their relationship. Your argument is akin to saying “lying is widespread because it comes from human nature” so we should just normalize lying.
F that noise.
Machinist@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Healthy open relationships at scale will require some pretty big changes in society.
Communication, critical thinking, self-actualization, Maslow’s Hierarchy; all those things will have to be improved both in society-at-large and within the educational system. Most of the world will not function well in polyamory without basically redoing society.
QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Most notably the fact that comparitively few peopple want them would have to change.
Machinist@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Eh. Humans are cheating serial monogamists for the most part. I don’t think lifelong monogamy is something we evolved for. Trying to keep it as the standard leads to all the problems we have. The whole patriarchal model that dominates the world is a result of monogamy and inheritance.
It’s pie in the sky utopian stuff, at this point.
Fleur_@aussie.zone 6 days ago
I mean the. Catholic church, patriarchy, most Major religions come to think of it.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
It goes so far that a lot of the very same people vilifying open relationships are the ones cheating on their partners.
angrystego@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I think normalizing having more partners even in a stable relationship with one partner would make it much easier to actually talk to your partner and discuss it openly, because the percentage of partners that see it as something terribly wrong would be much lower and people wouldn’t feel like speaking about such things is risky. That would reduce the need for cheating, although it wouldn’t make it disappear (as it’s not the only cause, as someone’s correctly pointed out).
PotentialProblem@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I see where you’re going, I just don’t agree. I’d rather normalize having open conversations with your partner(s) about sensitive and taboo topics, which I think is a prerequisite for multiple partners anyway. (Two people in a relationship can be tricky enough. Attempting to deal with the insecurities, feelings, and values of multiple partners seems like it would require open dialogue to have any real chance of success.)
I have a knee jerk negative reaction to your argument because it sounds like “I’d like to sleep with multiple people but my partner is brainwashed by society/their friends to believe we shouldn’t have multiple partners. If society decided this was normal, I wouldn’t have to work through this difficulty.”
(I fully support people having multiple partners if that’s what they want to do.)