What is Daily Life Like for Polyamorous Women?

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm discuss the intricacies and lived experiences of the polyamorous community, using ALA's blog post as a case study. They explore the dynamics of open relationships, the culture of polyamory, and compare it with monogamous lifestyles. The conversation touches on the emotional transparency and unique challenges within poly communities, including social pressures, jealousy, and the pursuit of novelty. They also delve into contrasting personal perspectives on relationships and the productivity implications of poly lifestyles.

Speaker 4: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about the other side of polyamory.

Specifically what I mean by this is. Somebody who has gone into open relationships, polyamory you know, they are around our age and they have been as successful at this as a human can be. And they know everyone else who's really in this lifestyle. What is the life and who does it well,

Speaker: like, does well as best as you possibly can.

The perfect case study,

Speaker 4: of course we're looking at ALA here. Because she wrote a blog post about this recently. And not just that, but it was so fascinating to read because when I read it clearly from her perspective, it was a bunch of wins and awesome life moments. And from my perspective, it was.

I would never want that. And no, no, no, no. I think this is really useful because I think for a lot of people when they start thinking about opening a relationship or like seriously sleeping around with other people they think about it in the context of that individual decision instead of where it will lead them in life and whether or not, oh, what's the end game?

Whether that is, yeah, whether or not that's a place they want to be. Mm-hmm. And what I like so much about ALA's piece here is I think that if you are the type of person who wants to polyamory endgame, you will read, like, you'll hear this and you'll be like, that sounds fantastic. And if you're not, even if you're the type of guy who might be like, well, you know, but I should sleep around on my partner more often or something like this, this may scare you out of that.

If this is the endgame.

Speaker: Yeah. So basically, for some people, this, this actually really, truly is ideal. But many people who think it's for them, it really isn't. And this is a great blog post or a substack post to review if yes. Just, just to find out, to, to test the waters without necessarily destroying a monogamous relationship that could actually be the better alterna.

Well, and I think

Speaker 4: if you are monogamous, just from an anthropological perspective, you'll find this very fascinating. Mm-hmm. Like, especially if you're like us and like with a bunch of kids and your chickens and, and living on a farm this is another world that she's living in. That is

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4: As different as maybe somebody living in the 18 hundreds is from like our daily life.

I also really, well actually bring

Speaker: in some history here as we go more into this 'cause actually, okay.

Speaker 4: What I also really found it interesting. Yeah. In reading this was your core reaction to it. So Simone reads this, and it's not all the debauchery that gets to her, it's the wasted time. She's like, how do they have time for this?

And so I would want you to comment on that as we go through this. So the article is titled Anecdotes from the Slut Cloud. It works fine. A lot of people have opinions like No man would ever seriously date a w***e. Promiscuous. People have relationships that fall apart. This is setting everyone up for so much drama.

Slutty people are secretly suppressing their actual hatred of the lifestyle, et cetera. While our polyamory is full of nerdy memes about getting your molecule to play d and d, our monogamy is pretty angry at all. The non-MS, this most upvoted post includes stuff like. When you see two people in an open relationship, it's like, which one of you came up with the idea and which one of you cries to sleep every night?

And I note here, what I like about her going into this is she's saying that that's not actually true. There are actually people who like this polyamorous lifestyle, even if you would find it a living hell, like I, again, I read through her lifestyle and I'm like, oh my God, that is a living hell. But we'll get to that in a second.

But, but clearly she doesn't feel that way about it, and I know other people who don't. Mm-hmm. And next one here, I'd get bored is something so selfish to say about your partner. People you supposedly love don't exist for your entertainment. Did you I agree with that. I mean, I don't get bored with you and you do exist through my entertainment.

So, you know, I don't most mostly in the productivity enhancer and entertainment as a second. You know, people keep saying that we were gonna get bored of our conversations. You know, so, oh,

Speaker: well then we'd run out of things to talk about with this podcast.

Speaker 4: Well, that's what I thought when I started dating you and marrying you and spending almost all my time with you and doing all our companies together.

It's like eventually I must run outta conversations.

Speaker: Yeah, no. Especially not in this timeline.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Apparently not. Yeah. This, this is too crazy. Next was bored and took a small dive into poly relationship YouTube. And 95% of the videos are about training to not hear the little voice in your head telling you that something is insanely wrong.

Or responses to one of my poly friends tweets about polyamory. And so here are some responses. I'm going to invent a disease to eradicate them. They made effing around boring total a humanity. I swear. It's the video games, specifically RPGs, that impart upon nerds, this bizarre micro. Fascist structuralism to every interaction they need to be economically and socially disenfranchised.

Every game cube will be smashed next fluffy in bio. Oh. I guess they're saying he's a furry quote unquote, poly people aren't people. Those are really mean. Yeah,

Speaker: the, the, the hate that she, that she screenshotted and shared in her essay is, is so unfounded. But I think also it's stuff that I see.

She's not just selecting the most extreme, random, very unusual response. No, I, I absolutely see this all the time. Well,

Speaker 4: and there's a reason for it. As well, especially from women. Well, and for men. So, okay. We, we, I, I should get into like why people slut shame. Slut shaming is a very useful tool in securing partners.

When women just sleep with anyone especially attractive women, just sleep around with anyone. A lot of other women lose one of the core values they feel they bring to the PA table that they can use to attract a partner, which is sexual access. And so. You know, if you're in a dating market and some of the most attractive women in the dating market are just giving away sexual access for fairly little or even like monetary, which can be even worse for you because then they've discreetly priced what sexual access to somebody like them is worth.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: You can really struggle to secure the attention of some of the men who you otherwise would've been able to secure the attention of.

Speaker 6: Absolutely.

Speaker 4: And for men, there's also a reason to do this because you do not. Yes, you may enjoy like in the moment sexual access, but what you really want, what all men really want at the end of the day, except for this one rare category of men, is, you know, a long-term partner to have kids with.

And if, if other women are normalizing this behavior, especially if they're not sleeping with you, which is fairly common, I mean, a lot of these people who are out there like, you know, poly whatever, are like awful. They're the type of people who only like fat poly women would sleep with if they're men or they're the type of people who just don't gain access to, to the attractive poly women.

Mm-hmm. And so they don't understand like, there, there is a degree of benefit to gatekeeping this behavior because if you can enforce monogamy among attractive men, especially then more women sort to you because you know, right now all the attractive women are just sorting to the top men. Even they don't realize that that's what's happening.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 4: So it, it's not that they're acting, you know, out of line with like logical or even cultural evolutionary motivation. But it, there is a lot of cruelty to it. I, I, I can see that. But there is an intentionality behind the cruelty. I'd also note here and, and perhaps even an intentionality that could lower overall social dysfunction.

But I don't know if they can win this market anymore. Like they're never gonna dissuade the poly normalized people from being poly No. With the source of tactics. No. Now what might is something like our EA to sex work pipeline that goes into the effective altruist movement and the poly normalization and how this leads many women to sex work.

And yeah, I think

Speaker: discussion of long-term ramifications and how they may or may not align with the long-term goals people have. Absolutely.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker: That could be convincing.

Speaker 4: So to continue. And this all feels so bizarre to me. I live in a culture where none of the slutty people are unhappy and failing at relationship thing is true. Or rather, no, more so than it is for the non slutty cultures. It seems like it's hard for people to envision how life might work, where there's high contingent of happy slutty people. Mm-hmm. And so what's really fascinating to me about reading ALA's posts in regard to this stuff is I feel like I know, like I can personally pull up the various people she mentions anonymously.

Mm-hmm. Based on the context clues she's giving around them. And so yeah. At least a

Speaker: bunch of them,

Speaker 4: some of 'em, right. But what's important about this to me is it means that I have the same view into this culture that she has into this culture. You

Speaker: have, you have some insight into it.

Speaker 4: No, I have, I have some insight, but I'd make a few notes here.

Yeah. First, she is not wrong. That there are a lot of people in this culture that have at least seemingly healthy and happy relationships that are otherwise successful. And that are you, you know, do, do partner sharing in everything that are very

Speaker: successful, that are sexually fulfilled and in very good supportive, and I would say wholesome relationships that are also poly that also involve a lot of sex.

But, and yeah, but it's so just to be very clear, we know some of these people and she's absolutely right,

Speaker 4: but, but few enormous caveats I'm about to add to this. All right. Okay. First, every one of these relationships that I know that is stable, the guy is extremely famous and well liked and well known.

Speaker: Not always, not always, not always.

Speaker 4: Who are you thinking of? Are, are you thinking the Miri guys aren't super famous? They are extremely famous. No, I'm

Speaker: thinking of other ones. I mean, like, they're, and it's not, I, I wouldn't say necessarily famous, but well known within the community, respected of the community, attractive, wealthy, and professionally successful.

So, okay.

Speaker 4: That's the point I'm making. Okay. Is every one of these instances, the guy is among most measures a 10. 10. Yeah. And

Speaker: if, if they're not super famous, then they are super attractive.

Speaker 4: Yeah. They're not super famous or super attractive. The point here being is this only appears to look like it's working to her.

My, one of my perceptions is because she is around. Very, very, very successful people. Yeah. And what she doesn't realize is the poly thing is working for these guys because they're sharing lots of women more so than women are sleeping around as much. And women are still sleeping around within these circles, but it is a lesser phenomenon.

Well, and I also

Speaker: wanna point out that, that this also works because you have extremely educated, extremely self-aware, high caliber people who are wealthy living in, in an almost post scarcity society. Because there is one place where I am very familiar with the dynamics that she's talking about. Can you imagine?

It's, it's, I read a book that was about this, this social environment three times. 'cause I loved it so much.

Speaker 4: It was what, the uglies or something?

Speaker: No, it's not sci-fi.

Speaker 7: It's real history. Lots of primary sources.

Speaker 4: Oh, this is a court, the Louis the 14th or something. Yeah, Louis

Speaker: the 14th Court. Antonio Fraser wrote this great book called I think it's love in Louis the 14th, the Women in the Life of the Sun King that talks about the court.

And it is like this, it is people who are attractive, largely attractive, competent, well educated, well, lots of leisure time, and they are sleeping around like crazy.

Speaker 4: But I, I would note here that. As somebody who explored Silicon Valley, not entering it as a celebrity like she did Uhhuh. I also saw the group houses, the people being passed around, the women who were less attractive.

The men who were not successful and engaged in this, very few of them had happy relationships. Well, and

Speaker: there was

Speaker 4: also a problem in the French Court in the 17 hundreds. Right. But I'm, I'm, I'm pointing out here that part of this looking like this is working to her is due to the filtering of the community she sees.

The second is I do not feel she knows a lot of happily married people and has gotten to see them interact as somebody who has seen both sides of this. I would say that if you had only seen people from within the San Francisco ea poly community, you know, au au Austin community you'd be like, their relationships are fine and stable and they're happy.

Speaker 5: Yeah. If.

Speaker 4: I contrasted any of these people with the stable married couples we know who have lots of kids, their relationships are nowhere close. And these people could, like, they have the emotional intelligence, they have the bond with their partner, they have everything they need to have a relationship as high equality as our married with lots of kids, couple friends.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: They just sort of. I, I don't know how to put it. It's like their relationships are in sort of an unstable dynamic. They're held together by the partner's attraction to each other compatibility the, the social normativity of what they're doing and off the status of the man. But. This, this orbit is is not stable in the same way that a lot of the married with lots of kids, couples we know are.

Another really interesting difference between the two groups is and I suspect that this might be a core thing that causes this is how extroverted are you? Every one of the married with a lot of kids, couples I know who's in a really stable relationship are basically Hako Moores. Those are people like us who basically live on a farm, we're shut in, believe ever

Speaker: really stressed when we're around people

Speaker 4: or they live in like small group houses, was like a few other people and basically never talk to anyone outside

Speaker: this 'cause Ala is also pretty introverted.

At least she says she is. She spends long stretches of time alone. She

Speaker 4: is, but she goes to big events and interacts with people and I mean, I think she's got an introverted bone in her. Maybe,

Speaker: maybe it's about tolerance, not just for yeah, no, maybe not introversion, but tolerance at all. I would say tolerance for stimuli because.

Both you and I really don't like being touched. Like, you know how my parents used to troll you by insisting that you hug them for 10 seconds, they'd like literally count hate and you would just like die on the inside. And I'd like, if anyone, me, I like hugging our kids

Speaker 4: though, which is, I didn't expect.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. That is odd. And I feel the same way, but like, yeah, no, anyone else, like, especially if they're not you or our kids, I feel deeply uncomfortable. Do. And what's even worse is like I'm, I'm fairly good at masking and I know I'm supposed to not be deeply uncomfortable, so I act like I love it, which means people think that, that, I think it's okay 'cause they don't see me freaking out, which means that they do it.

And then, then I, I really just can't be around people. 'cause like there's no way that that Oh yeah. Not torture. Torture. I find it

Speaker 4: really, I Oh, oh, people like this idea of like cuddle parties or something. Oh, I'm like, oh, I would not enjoy that.

Speaker: Torture, torture, torture, torture. But yeah, I mean, for some people it's, yeah.

So I think some people really enjoy that physical contact. Then you and I would rather, but I

Speaker 4: wanted to start by validating what she's saying here. Yes. That she's not lying. That from her perception there are a bunch of people in stable relationships like this. Absolutely. Okay. So to continue, so to help visualize, here's some instances from the lives of myself and people, I know names are changed, some of the details are slightly altered to preserve anonymity.

Mm-hmm. We know a lot of each other's friends, I've been horny lately, says A girlfriend of mine Oh. Says a girl group chat. I'd recommend trying to bang Mike. He's really into the thing you're into, but another girl chimes in. Actually, I'm not sure. Mike is definitely into X, but I think you're actually more into Y and it might not work out.

Worth trying though. Exclamation mark. Like imagine that like, I mean if, if your

Speaker: hobby is that like if your hobby, sex and different, different like arousal pathways or kinks. That, that's great. I mean, if you just replace this with like knitting terms, like, you know, he's really in, like, he's really good at this.

Okay, let's, like, I really wanna do this kind of stitch. Oh, I think so and so knows how to do this kind of stitch. Actually, he's not really good at that, but I think you actually really wanna do this kind of stitch. But you can ask him anyway, like if you just replace that with knitting or with fly fishing or with anything else.

All right.

Speaker 4: All right, let's continue here. I'm chatting at a group of girls at a housewarming party about whether or not a mutual friend is coming. I realized with amusement that all the girls in the conversation have had sex with him. I'm hanging out with a group of friends and one of them has to stick a pill into her for medical reasons.

Someone asked, quote unquote, can I watch? So she says, sure. Pulls her pants down, spreads her legs, and the whole group of us watch as she shoves the pill. In two of my friends I describe as frenemies, who seem to have had a lot of sex compared to how much they find each other. Annoying. Okay. So just, I mean, a lot of

Speaker: this, like, if you're really bored in life, this would be very entertaining.

Speaker 4: Well, no, that's another thing about this is it seems like such a distraction first. All of this is like groups of friends. Like, do we don't do that? I don't ever, ever hang out with a group of friends, except when I'm like with ala, like, ALA is like the one instance when I'm like hanging out with Ala or like some of my San Francisco friends do.

I hang out with like a group of, of of other people who are friends and I actually like, don't get it. Like, the only other time this happens to me, and you can see our episodes of why did Jews Have Friends, is when I'm hanging out with Orthodox Jewish friends I have, or conservative Jewish friends I have they, they are the only other group I know that regularly ambushes me with friends.

And I'm like, why? I don't wanna meet your friends. What, what are you doing? I just want, like, I understand that like, you don't want to take time. Like for some of these individuals it's like, okay, because they're famous or whatever, and if they're gonna take time with me, they're gonna take time with a few other people.

Right? Like I get that right. But I would never do that no matter how famous I think I get what I want to. I mean, I guess we sort of do it with our New York parties and stuff like that. Where to cut down on the time we interact with people. We host events where we have just tons of, you know, high profile people come to these secret parties and they've become like known about by newspapers now.

And the DC parties, but I don't really consider those people friends. Like, I consider them friends individually, but I don't consider it a friend to get together because what we always focus on at those parties is intellectual conversations

Speaker: well and connecting people with each other. 'cause they don't know each other yet.

So, yeah. Yeah. Like business stuff, everything

Speaker 4: to like chill and hang out. Another thing that I thought was really interesting when we were going through these separately is you were like. I talk to people in group chats, but I never talk to anyone about something without utility. It is always, and when I say I am speaking on behalf of Simone you're like, it's always about how to make money, how to get a book done, how to go, yeah.

Like

Speaker: tactical, like, you know, how, how do you, how are you addressing this? Or you know, can you tell me about this? Or, or you know, how can I help you move forward with this thing? It's never just idle socializing.

Speaker 4: Well, yeah, the only time it is idle socializing for us, and I think this is just like us being like weirdo otus is when we send people like, Hey, I see you're getting attacked a lot online right now.

Like, I hope you don't let it get to you or whatever. That's not

Speaker: idle socializing, that's us extending support for people that we care about. Yeah. So it's

Speaker 4: really only either emotional support for people who we see are going through a lot or tactical questions and nothing else. And, and when I say nothing else.

I really mean nothing else. There's like a few people who send us memes, but we don't really mean back. You know, which is fascinating to me is even with my parents, I almost never talk about anything else. I'm like, here's what I'm working on now. Do you have any tactical? And when they try to go into other stuff, I'm like ending right now.

I don't. I do not care. I, I don't care how you're feeling sometimes. But so they, they're describing like an entirely different type of social interaction than the one we have. But I was also commenting to Simone about this this morning is how lucky we are to have found each other. Because if we had craved this type of social interaction, a relationship really wouldn't have worked as well.

And yet you know, we are from, I guess, you know, as we say, like we're culturally or maybe genetically different from other people and we really just are focused on trying to make the future a better place. Like, that's it. That's everything that we focus on. Right. You know? And I would be so disappointed in you if I saw you wasting time like this.

But to continue here an escort friend of mine married one of her clients. My boyfriend met another girl on a dating app. He was staying at my place for a few months, so he brought her to live with me during the period that they were going to see if they wanted to try a serious relationship. I was just vaguely around the house as they had sex, talked for hours in each other's arms, et cetera.

We both ended up breaking up with the boyfriend and now are good friends with each other. Aw, okay. So Well, okay. They made friends with each other, but that's, that's also really interesting. I don't want like somebody having like random sex when I'm, you mentioned like her, like sitting around reading a book and you're like, you can't imagine yourself having the time to do that.

Like not just reading a book, but, but then somebody sits down next to you and starts having sex.

Speaker: Yeah. I've never, I don't, I can't remember the last time I've sat on a couch. For any reason other than, you know, one of the journalists is visiting our house, and I have to, but normally I'm up and cooking or something.

Yeah. We really can't bear, we only

Speaker 4: socialize for journalists these days.

Speaker: That's the only time I'm, or I sit, the only time I actually sit in a chair for an extended period of time is for this podcast. I, I can't,

Speaker 4: yeah.

Speaker: Like to, not, to not work. I can't,

Speaker 4: And she really means it, by the way, she finds it quite distressing.

It's not a, you know, an exaggeration or a ploy or something. Yeah. De

Speaker: deeply unpleasant.

Speaker 4: And it's, but I mean, just in general,

Speaker: I mean, you, you also like, kind of really struggle to not like to just hang out. It's not something we do.

Speaker 4: Oh, no. If I am, like, with a group hanging out, it, it's not that I'm as productive as you, but I'd always rather be like chatting with AI or playing a, an adventure game or mm-hmm.

You know, drinking and watching anime or, you know, anything. And so I just don't have these desires, right? Or, or I always have some higher order desire, even if I get some in the moment. Pleasure. She goes on. I know a poly couple who's been married for decades with three kids. They haven't really done much outside dating recently because they're two distracted with the kids, but they spent time on their relationships beforehand, and I anticipate they'll likely spend more time after, once the kids stop taking up much of their attention.

And, yeah. This is something I often see with, with poly individuals is once they start having like a reasonable number of kids just poll stops making as much sense. And I've noted that this isn't because sex isn't good, it's just that kids are generally better.

Speaker: Yeah, that's sort of underrated that I think a lot of people couldn't imagine anything that would be more enjoyable for them to spend time doing when they could, when they know how enjoyable sex is.

And you only hear about negative stuff with, with kids. Plus when you're around other people's kids, it's like nails on a chalkboard. It's just so unpleasant. So you couldn't imagine ever wanting to hang out around your kids, but we have

Speaker 4: the best kids

Speaker: similarly. Well, I think, but I, I mean, I do think a lot of people love their kids and, and they would never guess that literally spending time with your kids could be as enjoyable or more enjoyable than sex.

I think most people are like way, and, and this, where I

Speaker 4: think that they're wrong is this. As the kids get older, I think that they're gonna wanna spend more time with them. Because our kids just get cooler as they get older.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 4: And I certainly, you know, wouldn't want to leave my kids to you know, cultivate another relationship unless I was just really like the person for other reasons.

But, you know, that's rare. Like, I, I just don't build that many friendships outside of my relationship.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: And again, the, the funny thing about all this is, is in the context of I'm allowed to sleep with people outside the relationship if I want to. It's just a, a matter of is it ever worth the time?

And when I look at this, I see why I, that isn't something I have interest in aggressively pursuing.

Speaker: I guess it's one of those you can, but should you?

Speaker 4: Yeah. At a nerd meetup, I noticed a guy used the phrase, my wife and my partner in separate conversations, and I figured he must be Polly. I casually referenced him as Polly shortly afterwards, but this freaked him out.

He pulled me aside and said, no, please don't talk about this. He hadn't, quote unquote, come out yet and didn't want word of this getting back to his job or friends. He was afraid of what might happen, which I think, I remember,

Speaker: remember we had we had a, a poly friend whose husband was like that, where like they were super closeted about the fact that they were poly.

But when you look at the bias against poly couples, that does not me at all. Oh, I remember. Yeah. In Dallas, remember? Yeah. They ended up breaking up. Right. They did end up breaking up, but still, and, and getting divorced. But still he was extremely nervous about it. And I think part of that is because they were in Texas and he worked for a more conservative company.

But

Speaker 4: I don't, I don't think that, that's the only reason. I think that there is a huge difference of a guy sleeping with a lot of women outside the relationship and a woman sleeping with a lot of guys outside the relationship.

Speaker: Mm. Yeah. Like his male peers would be like, sweetie, you're cued. Yeah.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Especially in Dallas, Texas.

Speaker: Fair. Fair. Okay.

Speaker 4: No matter how much you're into it, I, I wouldn't wanna deal with like, even if I was into getting cocked, I wouldn't want to deal with this social fallout of something like that. Oh yeah.

Speaker: Like that conservative guy who, who was just really open and transparent about it and was just completely def fenestrated for it.

Speaker 4: Oh yeah. What was his name? God, I can remember another episode. This guy was a beard and he was like a manosphere influencer and he is like, oh, it's so cool to have my wife sleep. And everyone was like, you, my friend. And, and, and as a lot of people up, which really goes to

Speaker: show, like, doing this gets you in trouble.

I mean, you can call it being cocked, you can call it poly, you can call whatever, right? But like society, a lot of people don't get it. And I think a lot of that also just comes from people. A lot of people have a sexual disgust reaction to it, and it's very hard for people to parse out the difference between a sexual disgust reaction and a this is immoral sign.

They just think that they're the same thing.

Speaker 4: Yeah. All right. To continue I am hanging out with a group of friends, which includes Bob and Alice, who are married. Bob and Alice are getting ready to try to conceive a baby. They've moved into a group house with other, soon to be parents for community support.

We've discussed birth control methods with Alice and how her sexual behavior is going to change once she enters an active conception attempts phase at one. I think I know of

Speaker: this house.

Speaker 4: Yeah, at one point somebody mentions how big Bob's member is. I've had sex with Bob and I agree that it's big. I say that whenever Bob approaches at orgies, the other guys tell me, oh, you're in for it now.

Most of the other women there have also had sex with Bob. Alice says something about how her husband's member is big, but she didn't realize it was that big. And then we all tease her about having high standards for member sizes. We discuss the one other person at the orgy who has an even bigger one.

What's his name? Someone remembers we agree that it's probably girth here, but not necessarily longer. What a, the, the conversa. What a pointless conversation.

Speaker: They, they can be funny conversations though. I mean, that sounds, you know, if, if you're stuck with a group of people I know. I out dick sizes. Yes.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that,

Speaker: although I feel kind of bad for these guy, I would feel very self-conscious if people were like talking about. I don't know, like my, my private parts, it would, I would, I would,

Speaker 4: I would, I would like uncomfortable, while I do not like the concept of being at an orgy, right? Like I do not, I find it actively un arousing because, you know, for obvious evolutionary reasons, a lot of guys are gonna feel that way because you do not want to see other people sleeping with people.

You are trying to get pregnant. But the thing that actually sort of horrifies me is I'm like, I might not just be a participant in an orgy, but I might be a participant in the orgy who doesn't have the biggest member. Oh. Like, that to me would be like an extra, and I didn't even think about that before.

Oh

Speaker 7: no. A whole new fear has been, a whole new fear has been unlocked. I don't think you need to worry about that.

Speaker 4: I, well, you know, you, you, you get enough crowds statistically. Yeah. I

Speaker: mean, yeah, I guess large enough sample, especially if people who are very confident about being naked and. Group spaces, you're probably gonna have probably a disproportionate number of men who are well endowed.

Yeah. So yeah, I guess the risk is relatively higher, but I would still not be too worried for you.

Speaker 4: Right. Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence. Two of my friends are a married couple together for 15 years. Their marriage is great. They have kids no longer small, and they decided to open up their relationship and now the husband has a girlfriend, the wife has a boyfriend.

They all sometimes hang out together. And of course, the respective boyfriend and girlfriend are people a lot of my friends have had sex with. Everybody knows this. Nobody tries to hide it. I personally am either directly or. A few sex partners removed from both the new girlfriend and boyfriend. A friend of mine is a mega slut with a body count in the multiple hundreds.

She has married a very successful guy, spent the marriage helping her husband get laid and has threesomes, and now is having a few young kids. I'm hanging out with a group of friends and their friends and I overhear someone saying, well, you guys might find this weird, but I'm actually monogamous. I remember one of our comments

Speaker: today was pointing out, like, remember when the left revealed this idea of radical monogamy?

Speaker 4: Yeah, that was so funny. They're like, we're doing this weird new sex thing called radical monogamy where you only sleep with one person, but it's because you choose to only sleep with one person. Not for like weird conservative reasons.

This person is really on the edge of debauchery, was their new monogamy idea. They're, they're so debas, they keep one partner just for their sexual gratitude. Well, I mean, in this community

Speaker: where it's not normative, you know, and I think it can become fairly insular where people are kind of like, whoa, wait.

You're, that's interesting. Well, and

Speaker 4: I think that people don't realize how much, you know, when you've culturally normalized to something and something culturally outside of that seems gross and weird to you, you're like, oh, how selfish to like think of partners. It's only about like arousal or whatever, or getting bored of them.

And, and this is what you think if you've normalized some mono anonymous culture, but like genuinely having been around this culture or knowing how they think, you know, I go up to one of them and I'm like, well, you know, my wife and I are in a monogamous relationship or something, and they're, they're genuinely like, what a weird, so what your wife is like your sex toy.

Like, she's not allowed to like do whatever she wants. Like what are you even talking about? Like you, how selfish can you be that you're not letting your wife, the person you claim to love more than anyone else in the world, do what makes her happy? You know, like the, I'm not saying I agree with this framing, but I'm saying you need to understand that this framing is totally normal in these people's heads.

Yeah. It is not like a contrivance. It's not like a defense mechanism. This isn't normal for them. Now we can get to the question of whether or not it works, but it is normal for them. Also in general, lots of swapping stories at Orgies was friends. Carl did the thing to me. Did he do that to you too? Oh my God.

I know Dave and I aren't usually as compatible as you and Dave, but last week he did this move I never expected. My boyfriend is having a girl. He's dating over, he's mentioned he's interested and move. What, what moves are people doing? Like how many moves are there? Like, I apparently a lot, as we slept around a lot, I did not feel like there were that many moves.

There were specific scenarios I could set up and things I could do. But in terms of like moves, moves, like these people must pick up like a whole new repertoire of like ways to be good at arousal and stuff like that. Yeah. In, in sort of their, but I wouldn't even want to, like if I knew that I was being judged this way for sex,

Speaker: I, that's true.

Yeah. There's a whole new layer that I got away that from this, that. Oh, and they're all openly talking about their intimate experiences with these other people. And I would feel so self-conscious about that.

Speaker 4: I just wanna have sex people. Like, I don't want the moves. I don't want, oh, you didn't even use a move.

I'd be like, no moves. Sorry I didn't collect my, my Pokemon cards to play all the right moves. Didn't deploy. Deploy, ah, activating my trap card. Anyway, God, my boyfriend is having a girl he's dating over. He mentioned he'd be interested in banging her casually in the open. And I say, sure. They're sitting on the couch with us and he starts having sex with her in front of me with her consent.

With her consent. Oh yeah. Just to

Speaker: make it clear that this isn't messed up. It

Speaker 4: looks nice. So I asked the girl if she'd like me to take a few photos of them. She says no. But about 10 minutes later, still in the middle of getting railed on the couch, she says, actually, I changed my mind. Some photos would be nice.

I'm like, draw. Okay. And I get a lot of photos of them having kinky sex and I text That's really sweet. Afterwards.

Speaker: It's both really sweet. But this was what I was commenting about that like I just couldn't imagine like sitting on a couch long enough for like someone else to sit down and do anything, like turn on a TV or start.

Railing each other. Like, I just, I'm like this, that is what feels weird about this scenario. It is a different rule, not the fact that they were going at it, but like the fact that someone could sit on couch long enough for, you know, you know,

Speaker 4: actually now that you mention this that is something that really distinguishes our, our, our poly friends from our high agency married couple friends Hmm.

Is all of our poly friends have like major problems getting stuff done. And they are much slower to complete tasks. Hmm. And our married friends typically have like five major projects at once.

Speaker: Well, and this is also why like reading this just reminded me so much of the French court of Louis the 14th.

I'm like, wow, this is so familiar. What? Oh, that's it. Which is also so interesting because there, even with all like the online hate that poly people receive, like, oh, I wish we, you know, could just make a disease to eradicate them. A big underlying theme of this they did, it's called aids. Sorry, continue is the Catholic church.

And the Catholic church is basically prude Twitter, like being like, well, I'm not gonna give you the sacrament because you, you're, you're sleeping out of wedlock with someone. Wait, were they doing

Speaker 4: this in the Louis Church? Or, or Louis. Louis.

Speaker: Yeah. In, in the court of Louis the 14th the, the, like Cardinals and everything had like very serious problems with Louis the 14th, having these open female lovers, it being OI mean, he had multiple children with several of his female lovers.

One of them sort of became the defacto nanny who would like, have the kids come over to her estate and she would raise them like this. It was a whole thing. And like keep in mind like, it, it, it wasn't just one of these things where it was a harem for him. There were lots of, there, there was all sorts of like mixing and matching it.

It felt very. Polly. Like keep in mind for example, that one of the lovers of of Louis, the, the IV was Arietta of England Anne. Mm-hmm. And she married King Louis, the Fourteenth's brother, and likely during the time when she was married to Philippe, the first Duke Dilan, the, the, the, the brother of Louis, the xiv well, also like Philippe, I first this brother had, you know, multiple male lovers and then like one, one really well known one, the Valier de Lorraine.

So like, there like effort, there's just, just like all this, the sleeping and the, you know, man on men. And

Speaker 4: really interesting about this is as a guy, and even as a guy who, you know, when I just slept around a lot, you know, had a, a high sexual appetite, I, I would not have enjoyed this. The, they're like, oh, you wouldn't enjoy like just a world where there's attractive women and you can sleep with them whenever you want, and not if everyone else can sleep with them.

Like, I I Oh,

Speaker: so like the, the scenario, like you are a scenario in which you were banging one woman while another attractive woman is, is sitting on the couch. Like, it would just be ruined by the fact that you knew that those women were sleeping with other men too.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, and the, the sexual access was so easy.

Speaker: Like, oh, too easy.

Speaker 4: 95% of the fun for me back when I used to sleep around was the hunt. The 5% was a sex, the sex was largely irrelevant. I mean, these people work on it, don't they? They do. And they get the, the, you know, risk with new relationship energy and everything like that. Mm-hmm. But there's also a huge aspect as we'll see going on here where there isn't a lot of work.

You know, they're going, oh yeah. There's like, oh, you should just sleep with so and so.

Speaker: Yeah. Like. Oh, just this person. Yeah.

Speaker 4: And I don't know if I could gain any, and, and, and again, this isn't necessarily if it's casual

Speaker: as like a referral to a lawyer

Speaker 4: Yeah. Because it's hot. This, this isn't necessarily a positive thing for me.

Exactly. It's a bit like in a video game, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I like video games, right? Sometimes when you enable the cheat mode in video games, the video game just becomes immediately unfun. Because the challenge was the point.

Speaker 7: Mm-hmm. Right?

Speaker 4: The, the social challenge, the convincing somebody, the, all of that, the seduction.

And when you turn that off, the game isn't fun anymore. Yeah.

Speaker: Well, whereas I don't know, like my favorite. Stage of rollercoaster tycoon, like the one video game I ever played, computer game, PC game was like that one park with unlimited resources. I just loved that park. I just played that one over and over.

So I think for some people, so maybe you're

Speaker 7: meant to be poly, therefore, I am

Speaker: poly. No, but I, for some people this works and I think that's, that's the nuanced conversation that isn't being had, that should be had is that people need to recognize, I don't know. I

Speaker 4: don't know. I don't know. I'm push back there, but let's keep going here.

Okay. Okay.

Speaker: Okay. Okay.

Speaker 4: At an event, I'm chatting with a girl. When I realized that she's about to go on a date with a guy that I've been considering going on a date with, I ask her to tell me how it goes afterwards, she texts me how the date went and said she was sexually disappointed and anticipated I'd be disappointed too.

I thanked her and did not hook up with this guy. I. That is the saddest thing I've ever heard. Like I, I, I am so scared as a guy dating in this community, oh, I disappoint one girl. All of a sudden she calls all the other girls and is like, eh, he wasn't good enough. He wasn't, you know, and I didn't consider these girls like kinky sex a lot, so they're like, oh, he wasn't rough enough.

Oh, he wasn't, you know, didn't do enough of the hardcore stuff. No, but I mean,

Speaker: like in contrast, women who are dating in monogamous dating markets, which aren't even monogamous, they just pretend to be, don't have trust networks, referrals and reviews of men. No, but

Speaker 4: what you're missing here, okay. Like, okay, as a guy who's even into the, like, hardcore stuff, right?

Mm-hmm. Even when I was sleeping around and stuff like that.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: I getting up to that maybe a third of the time because it is so much extra effort. I don't, well, and also

Speaker: also it takes a lot to know, like, it either you have to do a lot of talking in advance or have a woman who's very self-aware or it's extremely risky.

Not

Speaker 4: really, really. I mean, there's idiots who get involved in it in ways that are risky, but there is no way, like from my experience, that I'm gonna hook up with a girl and I don't know what she's into to begin with.

Speaker: Oh,

Speaker 4: okay. I, I wouldn't the, the conversation. So you're just

Speaker: saying it's just sheer laziness on your part.

You're like, I don't wanna bother. If

Speaker 6: isn't that you

Speaker 4: underestimate the effort involved. The point I'm making here is if I knew that, if I didn't, like, basically you lose access if you're in this market, it's like sex wherever you want it. Mm-hmm. But you lose access to just sex. It just like normal, lazy relaxed.

Oh yeah. No,

Speaker: no lazy sex allowed. Well, I don't know though. Like, it seems like a lot of the sex can be pretty like. Sorry, that's couch. I

Speaker 4: don't have to worry about be being lazy with one person and then them calling up everyone else. That's true. And being like, Hey, this is you know, the first time I tried, I just wasn't up to snuff.

Not, not, not a filet mignon. I demand a filet mignon perfectly cooked every time. So, so next year some of my friends have harem chats where the people they're dating all coordinate with each other. I'm running a harem chat with one of my partners and we'll probably be plann