A growing segment of millennials and Gen Z are forming “anti-hierarchal” relationships with multiple partners and friends, according to a new study by the dating app Feeld.
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“A lot of people will tell me, ‘oh, I wish I could be polyamorous or a relationship anarchist, but I just get too jealous.’ And it’s like, well, I get jealous too. I’m not void of that emotion. I also experience jealousy. If my partner is talking to somebody new, I feel threatened by that. But the way to deal with that is not to make some rule about how your partner is engaging with other people. It’s to figure out what you need to do for yourself,” they say. “It’s really fucking hard, actually.”
This is a good point. It’s one of my peeves when people are like “oh i’m too jealous” and leave it at that. That’s a flaw and time bomb you can work on.
A friend of mine told me about how a guy in her friend group broke up with his girlfriend because he didn’t like that she was dancing at a concert. He just leapt all the way to the idea that she was cheating on him. The insecurity would be laughable if I wasn’t low grade worried he’s going to do violence to a woman in the future. Just chill out, my guy.
In college I was dating someone, and she was like “What would you do if I made out with a guy at a party??” I thought about it for a while, and asked “Are you going to come back to me after? We’ll still be together?”. She was like, “Yeah.” I thought about it some more and went, “OK. So long as you show up for our plans, and are safe, it’s not a problem for me. I want you to be happy.” She didn’t like that answer.
I think the dating apps are all trash, though, and are making everything worse. It creates the illusion that they’re a means to meet people you’ll like, but their incentives are only engagement and subscriptions. Actually introducing you to people you’ll get along with is a secondary concern at best. Some of them have options to specify monogamy or not, but none of them are especially good at it.
The study is like a zine article. Is this just an ad for the dating app?
The kids are alright.
And I don’t mean anything derogatory here. Simply that people well over half my age have figured out they don’t have to follow the rules my generation (and those before me) have set up.
Good on them. thumbs up
Interesting! Very interesting. I feel like all these ‘anti-rules’ of relationship anarchy are just as difficult to manage as those of monogamy. But idk, never done relationship anarchy, so just an outsider’s perspective.
As a thus-far-monogamous person, my understanding of ENM is that the point isn’t to be easier, but to respect each person’s right to engage in relationships however feels right to them. One benefit I see is that for ENM to be ethical it requires open communication. It forces conversations about consent, satisfaction, curiosity, jealousy, priority, etc. All of those issues exist in monogamous relationships, but we’re allowed to avoid talking about them by saying for example, “It doesn’t matter if I feel jealous because the contract says we won’t have other relationships.”
That’s part of why you don’t see more of us, we’re all so busy maintaining all our relationships that we don’t often hit the club scene (or wherever it is that people mingle these days).
I think about everything was tried in the 70s so I doubt much new comes from this.
Humanity has been around for thousands of years, at least. I really feel like we’ve done it all well before the 70s were even in the distant future.
Not technically a relationahip anarchist, but my partners and I have been an item for more than 20 years. Feels weird that the bleeding edge of popular culture is finally catching up to where I was back in high school. XD
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