The Complexity of Relationships and the Pitfalls of Relationship Advice

I.

Yesterday I criticized The Atlantic’s recent invective against polyamory (subscriber-only post, sorry). Today I want to zoom away from the specific bad arguments and examine the overall form of the article.

The overall form was: “I read a memoir about polyamory, everyone involved seemed awful and unhappy, and now I hate polyamorous people.” This is a common pattern. Sometimes, if someone’s very careful, they read three or four books about polyamory. Everyone in all the books is awful and unhappy. Then they conclude they hate polyamorous people.

But this is an unfair generalization. They should hate people who write books.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/you-dont-hate-polyamory-you-hate