Why polyamory isn’t more evolved

If you venture into the organized polyamory community for long enough, or even talk to people about polyamory online for long enough, eventually you’re bound to encounter someone who describes polyamory as the Next Stage In Human Evolution…assuming you don’t first encounter someone who says that poly is fine in theory, but human beings simply aren’t evolved enough to make it work.

Either way, there’s an idea floating around some corners of polydom that thinks of polyamory in terms of evolution (or spiritual enlightenment or something along those lines).

This idea is a bit rubbish. What’s worse, it’s actively harmful, especially to folks exploring polyamory for the first time.

The line of reasoning usually seems to go something like this: successful polyamorous relationships require good communication, good introspection, self-knowledge, expectation management, patience, flexibility, and a whole lot of other attributes that are, when it comes right down to it, sadly thin on the ground. Since one does not often meet folks who have these traits, it shows (depending on whether you’re a glass half full or half empty sort of person) that either it’s the Great Leap Forward of the human condition, or it requires a stage of evolution that we simply haven’t reached yet.

In actual point of fact, while it can be argued that the skills required to make a go of polyamory aren’t as common as they should be, there’s nothing particularly magical about them. All the things we talk about as being prerequisites for successful polyamory–communication, self-actualization, empathy, flexibility, emotional intelligence and so on–have one thing in common: they are learned skills.

Now, to be fair, we live in a society that teaches us very little about managing romantic relationships beyond “Once you meet your True Love, you will gaze into their eyes and  be happy forever. Here endeth the lesson.” So it’s not surprising that we end up with quite a few people who struggle with the most basic parts of making relationships work.

But these skills aren’t special. They’re no more a product of evolution or spiritual awakening than the ability to ride a bicycle, or read, or shoot pool. They are entirely learned. Like reading or shooting pool, some of us learn them more easily than others, but anyone can become better at these skills.

There’s a danger in seeing polyamory as “more evolved” or “more enlightened.” Believing that we must be “evolved” or “spiritual” in order to have these skills is a bit of a cop-out. It excuses us for not developing them: “Well, I don’t have very good communication or conflict resolution skills, but it’s not my fault, you see–most human beings just haven’t evolved that far.”

Just like riding a bicycle, reading, or shooting pool, we develop these skills by practice. We try, we fail, we learn, we try again…and before you know it, we’re doing things that used to look like magic. In a society where nobody was taught to read, books might very well seem to be magical, and in a society where we’re taught little about relationships beyond “when you meet The One you’ll live happily ever after,” managing poly relationships can look like magic too. But they’re not. They’re skills, and the wonderful thing about skills is that we can all practice them.

Now, I’m not saying everyone is polyamorous. Far from it: different people want different things from relationships, and no one model works for everyone. But everyone can learn to be better at these skills. And they are not poly skills; they are relationship skills! Learning them will make any relationship, monogamous or polyamorous, better.

So when you hear someone talking about poly “evolution”–and sooner or later, you will–remember, you learned to read, right? Polyamory is no more evolved than literacy.

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