Your opinions?

[garote]

Kinsey data on the number of people who declare themselves "poly" shows the number expands until about the age of 30, and then contracts sharply from then on. Why do you suppose this is so? What might it say about the motivations of the polyamorous?

Comments

[garote]

Damn, that seems to sum it up.

Yeah, my take on it was that by age 30, most people have both "figured out" what they want, at least in a broad sense, and have had a good helping of stuff they don't want, damping down their sexual curiosity.

Actually, I can be more specific than that:

I have tried to see poly arrangements as a sort of "love and intimacy" thing. Like, "it enhances my love and intimacy level, to new and glorious heights". That's what most of the pro-poly rhetoric is about, and I think it's the most altruistic portrayal of everyone's motivations. But when I place poly in its social context, I notice that it's possible to get an awful lot of love and intimacy through means other than placing actual dicks into actual holes and moving them about.

I am now very tempted to conclude that despite what people actually say, being "poly" is not about love and intimacy, which you can get all kinds of ways, and instead is very specifically about the desire to avoid feeling sexually deprived in a long-term relationship.

I think there are two solutions to that problem: Live with someone you are not passionate about, then fuck a bunch of people you are passionate about, ... or, live with someone you are passionate about - who is just as passionate about you - and find new ways to explore and renew that passion.

BOTH approaches require a lot of emotional intelligence to tackle, and I'm not surprised that people veer between them, or seek some compromise, as they go.

. . .

Then again, there's my other interpretation, which is even less flattering: Sometimes being ardently "poly" is a sign that a person is critically low on self-esteem, and wants to compensate for that with an avalanche of attention and drama.