Balancing Relationships and Responsibilities in Polyamory

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 planning an orgy tailor to his preferences.

Oh what an a time sink Harem chats. My friends found a guy she super likes. I said, Hey, it sounds great. I can't wait to meet him. She was like, oh, you already met him. You had sex with him at your gang. Bang. They ended up getting engaged. My partner runs a gang gang bang squad called the werewolves, a group of vetted STI tested experienced men who when the summoned will all descend upon a lady who would like to experience a gang bang.

It's a great network that sometimes women I know call on if they need members for any particular service. That is interesting. But, but imagine that, I mean, I think a lot

Speaker: of women who have that particular sexual interest would love access to a resource like that. Oh, no. Yeah, I can see some guys huge amounts of money

Speaker 4: for access to a resource.

Like I, obviously I would never want to do that, but I can see some guys want to do that. Right.

Speaker: Oh, to participate in that.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, I wouldn't wanna line up to have sex with someone. It's like I don't wanna go to Disneyland anymore 'cause I don't wanna line up to go on a ride lines. So why would I wanna line up to

Speaker 2: with someone Lines, it's what we're Sex of

Speaker 4: Lines

Speaker: gang bangs, sex with lines.

Speaker 4: Alright, continue. Okay. And some direct quotes. I was at Susan's Garden party sheepishly admitting to just having had sex with someone in the closet. Susan overheard and said, well, you should f my husband and went over to get him. Oh, well at least she's trying. But I mean, the person probably did, but like, why?

Oh, you just had sex with someone. You should have sex with this other person. Well that's for the

Speaker: referrals. I, that's where I was thinking about your comment about the chase being an important part. Like if, if someone was just like, oh you should, you know, my friend here just had sex with someone in a closet at our gardening party.

You should. Also have sex with her. You'd be like, this wasn't hard. This wasn't Once I

Speaker 4: accidentally took too much G with one partner and then passed out, and then I woke up and I was super horny and I needed to hump something, but he needed to go pee because he had been watching me breathe for an hour.

Doesn't take that long to pee. So he called his roommate over so I could hump his roommate's leg while I waited for my partner to come back. Then he sent me home with my husband with picks and more G so my husband could enjoy. Honestly, sleeping with people who live together has been super convenient and nice.

God, I I just would not want that. I would not, I they'd send you back and I'd be like, you can keep her. I'm not interested anymore. Wow. Wow. Good to know. I'd really better not the, the fact that most of my friends are my ex-partners or ex metamours. I had to draw a diagram where I explained this all to my newest partner.

It, I didn't seem to use dating apps anymore because meeting people at sex parties has become more efficient. And this is something I actually really get back when I slept around a lot. It actually took me a really long time after I started dating Simone and stopped dating around much to make friends.

And I would still hang out on dating apps predominantly to make friends. 'cause it was the primary way I knew to meet

Speaker: people. I remember that. Yeah.

Speaker 4: And I just really struggled

Speaker: how do I do this? But I, I mean, I experienced the same thing when I was dating. I was just stunned by how. Like, I used it more to find friends and I made some really great friends out of it, and I didn't realize that dating apps would be so good for that.

Speaker 4: Well, I mean, they and I, there was even like a stage early in our relationship where we basically pretended to be polyamorous just to meet people, just to have

Speaker 7: friends. I know it was so bad and like San

Speaker 4: Francisco. But the thing is nothing sexy

Speaker 7: ever happened, like we just made a lot of friends,

Speaker 4: is I have an easier time convincing a woman to go on a date with me than I had convincing a woman to just hang out with me.

That is,

Speaker: that is true. I never thought about that before.

Speaker 4: I'm like, Hey, do you want to come for this? This brings him to the yard. And I'm like, Hey, do you want to come to just chat? They're like, eh, well, no. Do you think

Speaker: that's, women think that you'll pay if it's a date?

Speaker 4: No. Because they often insisted on splitting and stuff like that.

It's, it's, it's, I think it's a contextualization of what they wanna spend their time on. Or maybe

Speaker: they, they, they, they feel more desired. Yeah. Maybe like it's just a friend thing. It, it almost, it's an insult because I think maybe some women instinctually feel in, instinctually feel like men can't have woman friends.

And is there, I don't think

Speaker 4: that that's it at all. I think it's that they just, they're either going to just talk with somebody or they are going and they know what the guy's interested in, in their mind, which is sex. So they feel like they know what's up. They know what the whole thing is. They're mm-hmm.

And, and they can get multiple things out of the interaction. Not just a conversation, but possibly sex, which to them is important. And or

Speaker: nce new relationship energy. Yeah. That thrill.

Speaker 4: Me and a partner. I remember that was fun boyfriend, me and a partner's boyfriend used to send each other cute photos of her when she's with the other and we coordinate on how to cheer her up and surprise her with something

Speaker 7: that's really sweet.

Speaker 4: It's sweet, but not something I would ever want. This is the other thing like, well, doesn't

Speaker: sound like too much work for you. We're very

Speaker 4: aspirational from a perspective of somebody like her and horrifying from the perspective of somebody like me.

Speaker: Why horrifying? Why is that horrifying?

Speaker 4: The idea of me getting picks of somebody else sleeping with somebody I'm sleeping with as like a fun little thing.

Oh, I would not find that fun. Oh, right. That the part

Speaker: of partner sharing would disgust you. Yeah, I was, I was overly focused on the whole like cheering her up thing.

Speaker 4: Once I was sad after not getting banged enough at an orgy, my two boyfriends trying to cheer me up, coordinated to have sex with me at the same time, even though they're not really in to mm f threesomes.

Which again sounds sweet within the context of the community to me, but here you

Speaker: are thinking like, I would feel obligated to do that and I would feel very uncomfortable. That's, that's your kind of

Speaker 4: reaction. This is like people hugging me who I'm like not interested in hugging me. I'm like, it's not that I hate hugs, I just wanna hug my kids and wife.

Being with one partner and texting pics slash video of us having sex to another partner who is brimming with delight. I mean, they have the thing here. Is that hot off the presses? Yes. Especially for you. You're such a good girl. Don't let me get between you and sucking that. C, see you tomorrow.

Beautiful. Thank you, sir. I'm so lucky. And then more video. I have a pick open while doing the task. Holy. SF There's something so special about seeing it right after it's recorded. These people must just have entirely sexual profiles in me.

Speaker: Yeah, no, what I do think it's kind of popular a, a popular thing for people to like, enjoy this.

Like public sex is a big, is a big arousal pathway for many people. But this is

Speaker 4: watching somebody and I think voyeurism in sleeping with somebody else, like public

Speaker: sex and voyeurism is big. And it may for many people be bigger than the instinct against sharing partners.

Speaker 4: And then to get a new, one thing I think is cute is people sharing tips on how to have sex with other shared partners.

Like I believe there exists a How to Have Sex with Me document that I didn't write because it was co-created by a few people I sleep with. Wait,

Speaker: no, this makes sense. This makes sense because I, I

Speaker 4: started seeing someone in June that I really quite like, and I discovered he hadn't been particularly slutty, but had slutty aspirations.

And I immediately started to think how slash when do I start promoting him to my hot friends?

Speaker: Oh,

Speaker 4: that's really, and this happened to me when I was younger as well. Women really will share you among your friends if you're like a good at s person and you are into the stuff that women are into that most guys aren't into, which again, as I've said is the, the much more like.

Dominance focused, harder core stuff. On the, the, the chat people were like, oh, what sort of person likes being choked? And I was like, well, one, the statistics show that actually more women prefer that than don't prefer that. But in addition to that just as somebody who slept around a lot, I have seen that a hundred percent new woman.

I mentioned one of the cases that I, I, I still remember very vividly is a girl, this is in, in high school, she comes to me and she goes, look, my boyfriend is being a big pussy. He was choking me and I passed out and now he's all freaked out. And I've heard you're like way hardcore and cool. So will you like, have real sex with me because I can't find like a good guys with, and I'm here like, okay.

Like even if that's hot, like, i, I know about sticking it in crazy, right? Like, and this is clearly a red flag warning right here. You know, he, he endangered, he was a little worried about endangering my life. And I know that you're not the type of guy who worries about that. And I'm like, Hmm, you know, you're probably right, but that should be a wake up call for me.

But, but what I mean is this, this is actually what happens, like this is coming from the women, not from the men. The, the, the number of guys I know, and this is actually in the, in the Discord thread as well, where they're like, look, I actively as a guy find this a turnoff. I've had to do this with multiple women just to get them to not break up with me choking.

Well, I bet

Speaker: you're glad I'm not into that. That would be stressful.

Speaker 4: You haven't been dis into it. Like it's, it's one of those like, oh, you have to do it every time and then it becomes a risk.

Speaker: I'm into, I'm into broad dominance, but I don't need choking. Yeah. I think some people are very specifically into like that lightheaded feeling you get.

Speaker 4: No, the the, and this is, this is what people get wrong. People who aren't into this, they'll come into it and say, oh, they're into like auto asphyxiation and the lightheaded feeling and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you have not been with many people who are into this. What they are into is knowing their partner could kill them.

That's what the. Point of it is,

Speaker: I don't know. I think that's, that's sometimes it, I think there's, there's a bunch of things going on.

Speaker 4: It is the vast majority of the time it, Simone I, I know you haven't slept with a lot of people who are into this. You don't understand the context of the way that they want this.

Oh, it is not to be choked out. Okay. If it is to be choked out, it is only insofar as knowing that the partner might actually attempt to kill them. Wow. That is why they like getting to that stage. It is not the lightheadedness they want to feel like they are with somebody who is that level of aggressive.

Okay. That level of back,

Speaker: because a lot of people, like a lot of the auto fixation deaths that take place are people doing men who do

Speaker 4: not women. Not women going to look that up. Actually look at the statistics. Okay. You can look at the statistics while we're talking here, but auto asphyxiation deaths are almost exclusively male.

And this is a very different phenomenon than women liking to be choked.

Speaker 3: Okay. I.

Speaker 4: A couple of years later at an orgy, we decided to so, so this, this one is crazy. I thought I met my crush Ella at an orgy in France. Years later, I invited her to my wedding dinner, and at the dinner my girlfriend announced, Hey Ella, did you know Fred had a crush on you?

She was like, no. Is this true? I admitted it was a couple years later at an orgy, we decided to start writing together. When I wrote the opening of what would become our first co-authored novel in a fountain pin on her back. Remember you didn't realize it was on her back. We've now published five novels together with a six coming out in two months, and two more do next year.

I wonder if anyone reads these. Yeah, that's

Speaker: what I'm very curious about. Like, are these successful novels or are they just like, yeah,

Speaker 4: you know, Google Docs. Okay, so what you find with ai, am I right?

Speaker: You were more right than I ever could have imagined. Male to female ratio of over 50 to one has been reported in some analyses, meaning males account for approximately 98 to 99% of cases while females make up only one to 2%.

Speaker 4: Women do not like being choked for the lightheaded reason. It is for the same reason they want a vampire to bite their neck in a vampire book. It is for the same reason they want to date a werewolf and a werewolf book. It is because they want to know that the person they are with, they could kill

Speaker: them, but

Speaker 4: they don't No could and might kill them.

Oh gosh. You are thinking about twilight here and not Anne Rice, which is the OG vampire writer, and you're forgetting that in Twilight, while Edward didn't want to potentially kill her, the other hot vampire who was into her dead.

Speaker: There was another hot vampire that was into her.

Speaker 4: Yeah. He's from one I thought

Speaker: Edward didn't like, he was like, no, stay away from me, because he, he wanted to kill her.

And that that was the hot thing.

Speaker 4: Well, and that, and again, this is part of the thing Yeah. Women, she was like this yummy that we like to pretend that they don't, but like you watch the books that they're reading, you look at what they're asking guys to do, even guys who are like clearly uncomfortable about this.

And that's why for this girl who reached out to me, you know, when I was younger and she was like, oh, when my, when I passed out, my boyfriend got worried. That's why that ruined the entire fantasy for her's. Why she never wanted to sleep with her boyfriend again after that.

Speaker: Oh, because, because yeah. She knew that he would never actually, yes, he didn't.

And, and the plausible deniability was what was hot for her. Exactly. Oh, dear me. Okay. All right.

Speaker 4: Simone, female psychology here. You are, you are missing the girls who are into this and trying to. E even you, who is into, you know, fairly, you know, more extreme things than I think other people have this fantasy that people aren't as debauched as they are and they are de botched.

Speaker 6: Okay. For

Speaker 4: years I maintained a signal group called Redacted where people, I would, and for people who are wondering, oh, why would women be into this? Again, we've pointed out like, this is very obvious evolutionary reasons. If you look at the amount that town tour rated historically, women, especially women who are already having a lot of sex.

And you can look at our thesis of where I think that women who don't have any sexual partners tend more towards tender sexuality, or at least not the extremes of BDS sexuality or like, you know, the more extreme forms of dominance and submission and, and violence. I, I think a lot of this is due to polyamory signaling to a woman that she is in an environment where she's being passed around or an a slave, which is what it would've meant in a historic context.

Hmm. And a lot of women were in that scenario in a historic context. It wasn't like a rare thing, meaning it would

Speaker: be evolutionarily adaptive to, to be more into that. Yes. In many

Speaker 4: evolutionary environments throughout human history, the majority of women having kids were essentially slaves. So the idea.

That, you know, you, you wouldn't have some adaptability by knowing not to fight back in aggressive situations. And aggressive situations are within, you don't wanna fight back the most because that's when they're most likely to kill you. Mm. So that is why in those situations specifically, you would want some sort of counter signal.

Speaker: Again,

Speaker 4: I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm just explaining why humans are built in. It's a survival thing.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Weird way. For years I maintained a signal group called Redacted, where people I was sleeping with would talk about topics related to dating me and occasionally AI safety.

Speaker: Okay. Let's

Speaker 4: just talk about Xin AI safety. And then I have a shared Google Photos album where my Metamore and I share saucy pics of our mutual partner it's called, but obviously everything it's, I think

Speaker 7: that's

Speaker 4: cute.

If she goes on to say, obviously everything is not perfect. We're human, and sometimes there's conflicts. A friend of mine's Metamours, a partner's partner, two girlfriends and boyfriend are metamours with each other. Recently got uncomfortable with my friend's relationship and it caused painful issues.

I've had partners break up with me because they found someone else and wanted to be monogamous with them and they picked her over me. One couple I know opened their relationship and there was some rocky months where one of them found a partner faster than the other. Jealousy and insecurity are real, but they don't usually manifest in the way you'd think.

Almost none of the list of anecdotes about jealousy. As far as I know. Usually it pops up in different ways. Like my partner just recently let me know he'd be spending time with other girls during a time. I'd be visiting him on a trip. I haven't gotten to spend much time with him as recently as I wanted, and the skints of scarcity part sparked jealousy in me.

That's a real jerk thing. If she's flying out to see this person, why is he sleeping with other individuals?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 4: I expressed this by sending him a lot of Soviet era propaganda posters that I customized with relevant texts with like me and her, and the guy is stabbing the other girl. And it's like, it's such a cute wave

Speaker 7: of reacting, of

Speaker 4: being like, you're being a jerk, but he is being a

Speaker 7: jerk.

Speaker 4: Yeah. This isn't like a polyamory thing. This is a, this person's being a jerk. She's like, I don't actually hate the other girl stealing him away. I was trying to convince my partner to not see them, but I'd learned that suppressing jealousy when I feel it in order to seem cool, is a terrible unsustainable, no good move.

So, and this is a

Speaker: really important point of one of the reasons why her community works so well as they're extremely emotionally self-aware, they're very transparent, and if you're not able or willing to buy into that, then you shouldn't play the game.

Speaker 4: Right. But the type of people, like when I read this list and we go through all of this, and the reason I went through all of this is the type of guy who thinks, you know, I'd really love to be able to regularly sleep with people who are not my partner.

Mm-hmm. I actually think a lot of guys fit that category. The type of girl who may occasionally think that, I don't think a lot of girls do, but I think a good 20% too. The number of guys or girls who after hearing this list of anecdotes as what successful polyamory looks like

Speaker 6: mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: And who are like, oh wow, that sounds like a good life.

I think that's 1.5%.

Speaker: Yeah. I guess because the, the unsaid part is that most men would love to sleep with additional women, but women who are only sleeping with them. Yes. That's the key problem. Right. And then the additional ancillary problems are like the sharing, the transparency, the social pressure. The risk of being expunged from the community if you're not seen as being a sufficiently generous lover, et cetera.

Correct.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I find this really interesting. I find the amount of time spent on all this very interesting as, as, as you pointed out this is a community that is just lower productivity than other communities we know despite being same intellectual horsepower. It's also, I've noticed poly groups are way more susceptible to viral memes than non poly groups.

Well, what do you mean?

Speaker: Like ai doism, like

Speaker 4: ai doism poly groups. Well, that makes sense because incredibly susceptible.

Speaker: It becomes this social echo chamber where suddenly, if everyone within the community believes it, then. You know, it's very hard to avoid, you know, like, and you don't have that If you were susceptible to like, if like everyone around you is saying one thing, it gets to you.

And if you lived in that community and you were also intimate with people in that community, it would be really hard to not Well, and you don't have that

Speaker 4: sanity partner, right? Like the thing. Yeah. There's no san of each or our other friends who are in like, you know, monogamous marriages is AI doism goes around, they go to a party where they hear people worried about it, they think about it and they're like, this seems really stupid.

And then they turn to their partner and they go, is this really stupid? Like, here are my thoughts. And their partner without worry about what other people in the community are gonna say about them is able to give an honest judgment. Ala doesn't have anyone she can go to with that,

Speaker 3: for

Speaker 4: example. The other people in these poly QEs don't have anyone they can go to and be like, I.

Is vector a cult? Is, is AI doism stupid? Is is, you know, shrimp welfare, idiotic you know, is negative utilitarianism, like a poorly thought through idea. They don't, because if these things have become status symbols within the community you know, they put themselves at risk by pointing out how dumb they are.

And I, I can say for example, if I was. Part of this wider molecule network that ALA's a part of, and I you know, took a stance of, you know, intellectual integrity and said AI doism is just a poorly thought through position. The other, I, I would lose sexual access. I'd lose a lot of sexual access.

Speaker 5: Mm. Even

Speaker 4: if I tried to do it in private, even if I tried to be like, because people would notice, oh, the people his metamours seem, you know, not as, as seem immune to the mimetic virus. Well, we, you know, we need to worry about this. You know, this is a really bad thing. So yeah,

Speaker: that's a good point. Yeah.

Yeah. You have to be more socially agreeable and that could get you Yeah. A little bit echo chambered. Didn't think about that part.

Speaker 4: Yeah. So there's, there's downsides that I think she's also not seeing. But to me the biggest downside is just the number of people who think this is going to be appealing to them because, oh, they're the hot person who wants to sleep with me, and they say, all I have to do is be polyamorous to enter.

This is, and I'm talking men here, women get involved for different reasons. They think, oh, this is what you do. This is normal. Versus the people who want this in-state is very small. Very, very few people want this in-state.

Speaker: Well, so I actually think that there is going to be growing relevance for these types of communities in a post scarcity age.

Like let's say UBI becomes pervasive, especially to the extent that people are very comfortable and they just really don't need to work and they're not working. I could see this becoming super common because you, you need to fill that void with something. And you can fill it with the drama and the new relationship energy and the negotiating new relationships and the, I'm bored.

Let me try out a new kink. Like I think for a, a leisured class, whether it's the cur of Louis the 14th, or whether it's post scarcity AI communities, this could fill a really big void. Will these people inherit the future? No, because I don't think they're gonna be creating sustainable families that have descendants and that then yeah, therefore inherit the future.

So I think it's gonna be a very short lived kind of format, though. You see it in Star Trek. I mean like there's a lot of sleeping around in Stark. Well, I think

Speaker 4: a lot of kids who grow up as you did, you know, you sort of grew up. In this kind of warrior that polyamory was normal. Yeah. Among, like, that's how your parents met.

They didn't call it polyamory back then, as you always point out, but No, it was, my dad always points out, what,

Speaker: what does he call it? Free love. It was free

Speaker 4: love. The point being is that you didn't want that for yourself even when you started. No, but I didn't want any sex for myself. Right. But I have seen very, very few people who have grown up in communities where polyamory was normalized, that want polyamory in their own lives.

Polyamory is something I see almost exclusively and disproportionately in communities where they felt like extreme monogamy was enforced. Consider, you think it's more

Speaker: reactionary than anything up in an

Speaker 4: extremist Christian environment? You know, where she was raised that like her

Speaker: job would be a housewife raising kids at home, never having a job.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Our, our descendants of like Orthodox Jewish families they're typically first generation breakaways. It is not multi-generation exposure to this stuff. That's

Speaker: true. Do we know any second generation poly people?

Speaker 4: What,

Speaker: who, well, you don't have to.

Speaker 4: No, we wouldn't call him out. Remember that guy who grew up in a cult?

In his

Speaker: No, no, no. Because his father was polygamous

Speaker 4: and then kicked all the young boys out of the cult. Yeah.

Speaker: So that's not polyamorous. Yeah, that is not because he was actually sharing women with other men. So no, that doesn't count. That doesn't

Speaker 4: count. Yeah. Okay. I've never seen it once. And, and this to me says something about the intergenerational durability of this.

Speaker: In fact, he was actually, we will say he was reactionary to a very rigid sexual dynamic he grew up with.

Speaker 4: Yeah. No,

Speaker: that's still

Speaker 4: come on. Which is to say that we I mean this is, this is fascinating to me that I can't think of one. And it's been around for a while now. You know, it's been around since the seventies.

It's been around so much that you grew up around Yeah. Since like

Speaker: Yeah. My, my parents came out of one and yet no, like, I mean none of their kids. And actually the

Speaker 4: first 18 years of your a kids' life is a sales pitch to replicate the culture that they grew up with. Yeah. And this is just not a replicable culture,

Speaker: despite the fact that I never thought anything negatively about it.

Speaker 4: Yeah. No, no, no. This is how polyamory works. Polyamory only works if you think the idea that you can sleep with multiple people is novel and worth, you know, like it's worth exploring for its novelty. If you are given this idea without stigma attached to it, and you're like, okay, here are two lifestyles.

You can sleep around a ton or you can be monogamous. Which lifestyle do you prefer given the ups and downs of both? Most humans choose the monogamous lifestyle.

Speaker: Well, I feel like if, if I if I was living in a post scarcity society where, you know, I, I had never met someone like you and I did enjoy physical contact, this would be very entertaining, like drama, not really, because knowing

Speaker 4: I know you as well as I know myself.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 4: And. Well, you know, this might be something where like if we have a, you know, somebody who we're really close to or whatever, you know, there, there, there could be exceptions to something like this, the vast majority of the time I would always prefer to use ai like the vast, vast majority of the time.

Yeah. 'cause then also

Speaker: you're not gonna hurt a real person if somehow things go wrong. It's like, it's like,

Speaker 4: as they say in the lower deck, star Trek where, I can't remember, it's whatever. It's like that's the holodeck, you know, that's only meant for, for training exercises and weird sex stuff for the commanders.

Like, and it's like that's what the point of the holodeck is, is weird sex stuff. But the the point being is that as AI gets better at simulating things I think polyamory is going to appear. More and more weird and and like a pointless waste of time. Hmm. No, but I think, I

Speaker: think the people who get involved in this community too, I think are uniquely physically responsive, which you and I again, aren't like people touch us and we're like, how can I get the scenario to end?

Speaker 4: I will be able to masturbate those instincts in the future. Come on Simon. We're talking about the next generation

Speaker: haptic suits. Bring it on

Speaker 4: haptic suits. Yeah. I don't wanna

Speaker: wear, I don't wanna wear a haptic. I don't want any, like if I could un untouch unfeel,

Speaker 4: I'm just saying if that's what they want. Yeah.

There will be better alternatives than having to date stinky humans. I don't know. I think for a lot of them it's also the smell.

Speaker: But sure. AI

Speaker 7: won't be able to simulate smells. I know, I

Speaker: know. I know. I know. I know. I know. Fine, fine. Fine, fine, fine. I don't know, maybe, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know. We'll see

Speaker 4: in a world where they can get all of this from an automated environment does, and I think that's a really interesting question for the next generation of polyamory. Does polyamory make sense at all?

Speaker: Well, I mean, I feel like a lot of this, and what is being discussed in this too, is she's not talking specifically about instances of like this particular time when we had sex, it was so amazing.

What she's actually talking about is all the culture, the ancillaries, it's the culture, it's the group chat. It's the shared experiences with a partner and getting to gossip about that partner and getting to share new people with that partner and getting to recommend people to that partner. And I think that's almost like when I'm taking away, what I'm seeing is the feature of all this.

A lot of it's that. Feeling of meaning and community and connection. And again, that's one of the things that's really lacking from modern society's

Speaker 4: thing like this is, this is like, I, I guess, yeah, because you and I have such a, a lack of a desire for that. And I don't mean a lack of a desire. I have an aversion to that stuff.

Speaker 7: Yeah, it's, yeah, lack of desire is not a sufficient, that's

Speaker 4: not the right word. I, I find this stuff really horrifying. No, I'm always horrified by my friends who have like drama and stuff like that. I try so hard to stay outta drama. And our friend, we ever,

Speaker: our drama's only ever been like logistical,

Speaker 7: like,

Speaker: you know, so and so died.

Were they, were they murdered?

Speaker 4: Yeah. But we also don't really share our drama with others either. No, no, no. And I really struggle with some of our friend network who has more drama and most of them are polyamorous. Because I just, it, it's not like I struggle with dealing with it. I struggle with worrying about their sadness and Oh, yeah,

Speaker 3: yeah, yeah, yeah,

Speaker: yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: Where I'm like, this is unfair to you. I don't like seeing you

Speaker: hurt. Yeah.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I wish you could just be with a trad partner. You know who, but

Speaker: I think it's unfair too, because trad partners have a lot of, I mean, just go to dead bedrooms on Reddit. You know, like a lot of people struggle with their relationships.

They're unhappy, they are unfulfilled. Like to, just to dunk on the, the downsides for people who are polyamorous is totally unfair. When, I mean, we would argue. That most people are in super suboptimal relationships where they like barely talk to each other. They have separate lives. They don't spend a lot of quality together.

I don's true of our generation.

Speaker 4: I think our generation is actually fairly good, like of our friend network. Once everyone I know who's married is in a really healthy relationship, I, I think that this is a Boomer thing. It's a boomer and urban monoculture thing,

Speaker: I guess, you know. But anyway,

Speaker 4: great chatting with you about this.

This episode's gone way too long.

Speaker: Sorry. Gossip. Right. But ALA's amazing. I think ALA's lifestyle is perfect for her. And I think this lifestyle for all the people that she's mentioned that at least I, I think I know, like it's perfect for them too. They, they do it well, they wear it well. And so like, let, let, I think in many

Speaker 4: instances they'd be better off going to live on a farm and I

Speaker: don't know.

I don't know. I mean, I, I would love for some of them because they're such brilliant minds to be more productive. That's my one gripe is that I, I wish they produced more. Work and had more of an impact on the world and had a farther reach because they are, a lot of these

Speaker 4: people have a very far reach the most,

Speaker: I guess you'd like some of the AI doomers to have less of a far reach.

So you should just be Encourag. I'm poll are stuck in these poll, have more sex, you guys,

Speaker 4: we do that. I think it's part of why AI dors ever get anything done is because

Speaker: they're too busy and they're poly relationships.

Speaker 4: Yeah. We, we, we did a application for funding from a EA grant and we were like, we actually need to work on the AI safety stuff because the AI doomers get effing nothing done.

And it's not that there's no threat from ai, it's just that these people are stuck at orgies 24 7.

Speaker: No, you didn't say that on the application.

Speaker 4: Well, you know, that's what I secretly believe. He always

Speaker: good have said that. I guess.

Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe if you actually thought AI were gonna kill us, you wouldn't spend a third of your time dealing with orgy logistics planning.

Anyway, love you to death, Simone. Have a good day. Good day, sir. Do you wanna do another one or do you want to go down and do dinner?

Speaker: Gosh, it's 4 0 3 already. Some people in the comments, Malcolm pointed out that the, the book I'm reading now, all systems read by Martha Wells, looks like it has a, like an Apple TV show coming out called Murderbot. So I'm excited, I'm, well, I guess we don't have Apple tv, so nevermind. I'm not excited, but that's fun.

Speaker 2: So that show that you liked, it's got a, a app? No, the book

Speaker: I'm enjoying looks like there's gonna be

Speaker 2: about Murder or already

Speaker: is the TV series called Murder Bot

Speaker 4: Very on the Money. Who doesn't love naming? I mean, a lot of people are gonna want to see a murder bot and they're gonna see a, what is it like a sweet show about a robot that like shows?

Speaker: I don't know. I don't know if it's gonna be adorable. Like in the book. I don't know if he's gonna be socially awkward and autistic. So I guess we'll see, but I'm excited for it.

Speaker 2: I am excited to get a chance to talk to you. It's the perfect time of day, the time of day that everybody waits for.

Speaker: I'm, I love, I I love our conversation so freaking much.

They're just the best. They, they might, they're my happy time, even if we don't run them, but now we can just run the stuff that's too spicy on Patreon, so we don't have to worry so much. I'm, I'm glad. Well, I mean, the,

Speaker 4: the, the channel's been doing really well. The, the episode today was seven out of 10, but it was still above the normal normative range of views.

Speaker: That's awesome.

Speaker 4: So even one that's doing lower in our recent episodes is doing unusually well. I mean, I think it's because we've done a number of Good Beatty episodes in a row, to be honest, I, I don't know if it's anything other than that. You know, but

Speaker: Yeah. Oh, hold on. Just sorry. One moment while I get India in a position where I think she's more likely to fall asleep 'cause she, it is her nap time.

She just go,

Speaker 3: sorry girl,

Speaker: Okay. All right. Okay. Ha, I think I, I, I've been looking forward to discussing this all day. Like, as soon as I saw the email in my inbox, I was excited about it. So let's go.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 4: Oh things to talk about, by the way, just so we remember. Yeah. And we'll do this with the next episode. I wanna talk to you about the categories we're thinking of using for the game system. Woo. Okay.

Speaker 8: beautiful. And it inside. Oh, it's beautiful. On the inside. Okay. So it says, happy Father's Day. And it's beautiful here too.

Speaker 9: Yeah. It says. Uh, dictated. I just want to give you a big hug. I made this drawing for you. Love Torson. You want a big hug? Yeah.

Speaker 10: Aw, what a Father's day hug. You're cute. Now here's Titans. Okay, let's do Titans. Hey, no Torsten. Come on. Hey, there's some more. Come on. There is more. We've got one for Indian, one for mommy.