Episode Details

In this candid discussion, we explore the nuances around polyamory and open relationships. We look at how polygyny historically existed among elites, the market forces leading more high-value men to pursue open relationships today, and the differences between cheating vs consensual non-monogamy. We share our own open relationship dynamics and how radical honesty helps us maintain a strong marriage.

Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to discuss an interesting topic, which is polyamory. We have discussed it in the past. But we didn't really go too deep on the topic. Yeah. And I think it deserves a deeper dive. One, because it's becoming increasingly common. Within especially the urban monoculture, like the, the, the urban populations and the progressive movement.

Malcolm: But I've also seen it among many of our more successful conservative friends for a different reason. And we can get into why we're seeing it in those circles as well. Hmm.

Simone: That sounds good to me,

Would you like to know more?​

Malcolm: but first we should do a little history lesson because I think that there's this perception.

Malcolm: That we, you know, if you're talking about the Western tradition more broadly has been historically a [00:01:00] monogamous tradition. And that is true to the extent that most people have been monogamous. Yeah. I thought you were going to

Simone: say, this is true for poor people.

Malcolm: It's true for poor people.

Malcolm: When a culture is polygynous, one man, many women, there's actually been no stable culture in history with anything close to what we call polyamory in our society. Usually, when you have a multiple partner culture, you have polygyny, which is one man, many women. However, there has been one case I know of, of many men to one woman and this was like in Tibet, like it was in a high resource, scarce region

Simone: of the mountains.

Simone: But, and it's also, I think, commonly with brothers. Yeah, it was basically

Malcolm: only done with brothers. And, and it makes sense why that would work because then the guy knows that the kids are related to him. And it was meant as a form of population control was in those cultures. So that's, that's how it ended up developing and being intergenerationally successful.

Malcolm: It was also cultures that didn't need to worry about neighbors raiding them because they [00:02:00] lived in extremely like they were not competing with their surrounding cultures. They were more competing with their environment. Which is why it was able to become stable, but certainly no culture that's ever really spread.

Malcolm: But why this is relevant. So if you talk about long lived Stable polygynous cultures. There's some Jewish groups that fall into this. There's some groups in Africa that fall into this. Some Muslim groups fall into this. You're typically looking at around 5% of the population will have multiple wives.

Malcolm: People assume it's much more now. Historically, there has been short lived polygynous societies like the Mormon population group where this number was higher at the, the height of, of that part of Mormon history, I think around 20% to 23% of men had multiple wives but it was still the vast minority.

Malcolm: Now where this gets interesting is if I look within our existing culture right now, like the various cultural groups, probably one of the ones I'd say is, is most pro what [00:03:00] we'd call monogamy is the Catholic group, right? However, if you look historically speaking, so we're looking to traditional Catholicism.

Malcolm: