#699 - Justin Mogilski - Will Non-Monogamy Fix The Dating Market?

29:17Is you make that agreement and you're saying, okay, this is how it's gonna work. Then you are having sex. You are talking to this person, you're creating that attachment, and then suddenly you say, you know, and I kind of want to do more. And so revisit that's why I think revisiting the agreement also helps because once you establish it things can change All right attraction disclosure Yeah, so this was actually the biggest one in Statistical speak it explained the most of variants and people's responses to the scale so and it was Most strongly correlated with some of our relationship quality outcomes satisfaction conflict What this is is if you are if you're in a relationship and you are attracted to someone outside of relationship.

30:01Tell your partner about it. So disclose that you're attracted to other people. Right now, I think the habit for a lot of people is, if you're attracted to someone else, just hide it. Don't talk about it. You know, brush it under the rug and just don't acknowledge it because, if you say that to your partner, the first reaction your partner is usually going to have is, wait, what, there's this other person and your heart rate goes up, they get all panicked, and that seems like an unpleasant experience. But again, what you're doing is you are giving your partner true information because the alternative is, let's say that your partner observes that you're talking with this other person that clearly you're attracted to them.

30:40Now they are free to just stew in their own simulations of what's going to happen between you two versus if they know that you're attracted to this other person, there's no mystery. So it sucks, but you can at least be confident that something is actually happening. Then from there, you can take other steps. Okay. So was this proposed by some people in the non -monogamous community as potential strategies for people in monogamous relationships to also try? They were nominated as the best, we asked for the best and the worst practices for doing consensual nominee. So they weren't even thinking should monogamous people do this, but what we found in our data set was that people who were monogamous, who did this, also tended to report higher relationship satisfaction.

31:34Have you got any idea which way the arrow of causality runs, though? That's unclear. So none of this data was experimental, none of it was longitudinal. We got one snapshot in time. My guess is that the... Because we asked it as adherence to certain behaviors. So the people that were asking how often do you do this? And so from there we can guess that the behavior may have led to greater satisfaction. The opposite is less clear to me if you're already satisfied that leads you to disclose your attraction more. maybe you're more comfortable doing that and that could be a possibility. But my guess is that engaging in the behavior leads to the satisfaction.

32:20Got you. Compulsion. So, compulsion, if you Google that, what you'll get is usually, it's how much you enjoy or like that your partner is currently involved with someone else, whether that's sexually, romantically or otherwise. And this, depending on who you ask, the scholar that you ask, what the definition will change. I think in general, it is if your partner is involved with someone else and they are having a good time, you can then be happy for them, right? You can actually feel that pleasure that they're getting what they need. This is kind of like being, this is a very platonic way of thinking about it, but this is kind of like being happy before a friend or a colleague or someone else who had a major Success in their life, right?

33:05They ended up getting the job they really wanted they ended up having say the vacation that they were really looking forward to etc You're just happy that they're having this positive experience and so it would be you are happy that your romantic partner is Having this very positive experience with someone else and so for example Say if your partner is involved with someone else you're happy at first But then you realize this person isn't very good for them or they seem to be stressed more They're crying more than they used to then and that person seems to be causing it You might feel less Compersion because now you know that they're not enjoying themselves So it's really about this appreciation for the other person your partner's experience Positive experience.

33:46Yeah, I mean we're running into all manner of pretty heavily hard -wired concerns here you know, my husband is getting really great emotional support and defection from this other woman. That's going to trigger an awful lot in most women. And my wife is getting sexually satisfied by that dude down the street or that guy that she goes to see in Dallas once every six weeks or whatever. Again, you know, like that. But compulsion seems like an ancestrally rare emotion to have felt, which is probably why no one's ever tried to spell it or write it before. Yeah, I don't think my guess is that, because there's very little that we know about compulsion, but my guess is that this is not something that spontaneously arise, at least not as spontaneously as jealousy or envy does, Right is I think that you have to do some degree reason yourself towards Compersion because at first you're feeling jealousy you're on your insecure about whether your relationship is gonna last or you're feeling Envious you really want what this other who's what's this other guy doing for my wife that I'm not able to do You're feeling that envy first and then from there you have to work your way and say okay despite the fact that I'm feeling this I know that she is getting something that that gives her joy, but then may not actually affect me, right?

35:15As I think you make the assumption that this relationship is going to filter back and negatively affect me somehow, but there is a world where it doesn't. And so when you realize that that can be true, it gets easier. Yes, security of attachment must be a big mediator here. Okay, next one is you just said that jealousy regulation. Yeah, I mean, this is straightforward, right? Is if your partner is involved with someone else, you're going to feel jealousy. And the way that the items are worded for our measure is how well can you how how free do you feel to communicate about jealousy? Because I think you can find yourself in a situation where you know you're feeling this jealousy and and you really want to and and Even if you were to communicate it, you wouldn't resolve it.

35:58But the fact that you can just openly talk about your experiences with your partner. then leads you to be able to resolve the concern, right? Because if you're not talking about the jealousy, again, you are trying to deal with it yourself, you are trying to reason through it yourself, you're trying to, again, what is my partner going to be, going to be doing with this other person? So it's all, many of these are kind of part and parcel with this openness of communication, this honesty, just giving your partner the information that they need to work through whatever emotional or otherwise issues they're having.

36:38And so I think openness to talk about jealousy helps people resolve that. Have you learned anything, or did you discover anything during your research about how people can better manage sexual jealousy? So there are multiple strategies that identified some of the ones that are worse are avoidance. So I'll start with the bad ones, right? The worst one tends to be avoidance where it's you're experiencing this and you just say, you know what, I shouldn't be experiencing this and so I'm just not even going to address it, I'm not going to give it the light of day. A better way to a better way tends to be one of the ways is cognitive reframing.

37:21So in other words, rather than, so if you experience jealousy, the first place that your mind goes, is you focus on all the ways that this other relationship that your partner has could harm you. What you could do instead is think about all the ways in which that other relationship could actually enrich your life. So for example, this is kind of hard to see if you're really worried about your partner, but if your partner is spending more time with someone else, they are having a good time, that means they're going to be in a better mood probably. And so if they come home or you see them again, they're going to be better prepared to meet you where you're at.

37:58They're not going to be having this desire to go off and do other things. You're also getting more time. When your partner spends more time with someone else, I mean, that's more personal time for you. And I think some people, you know, if you're in a relationship and you're kind of following the traditional monogamous paradigm is you're pretty much up each other's asses all the time, right? And so that a little bit of distance can be a good thing. So when you kind of reframe what are the consequences after I feel this emotion, I think that tends to help. I almost think of it as a really as a type of mindfulness, right?

38:39Where you recognize that you're experiencing in emotion, it's rising up and rather than just follow the script and get possessive, get worried, start punishing your partner, instead you observe that emotion and think, is this emotion actually serving the purpose for which it's designed? Gelacy is meant to preserve parabands, preserve relationships, but there is jealousy that you can experience, especially if it's chronic, if it's misapplied, that it makes the relationship worse. So you have to ask yourself, is this jealousy motivating me say to address a problem that I have with my partner? Or is this jealousy just something that I'm experiencing?

39:23I'm running with the negative emotions, and it's not helping me at all. Yeah, it's interesting to think that... All right, I'd love to know if polyamorous relationships, Non -menogamous relationships have higher rates of domestic violence. Well, my guess is low. So I imagine you're thinking that just because when you have to make a... Yeah, jealousy make already. Yeah, that's all, that is all wrapped up in domestic intimate partner of violence. And so, yeah, to the degree that these emotions are poorly managed, Yes, I think that you probably see more of that and that's what you see in monogamous relationships, right when there's cheating People just are they feel absolutely valid and saying I feel jealous.

40:12I want to murder my partner essentially You're almost justified in doing that versus if You're successfully managing these emotions which my impression of most people who Who are polyamorous they are I don't think you would see more domestic violence. I would guess that They would be, they would probably have rates as common as monogamous people who are faithfully monogamous. Yeah, that's interesting. I just, I guess it all comes down to, it's a high -wire act, right? It's your purposefully putting yourself into a situation where there will be more jealousy, there will be more make -guarding, but how many people are accidentally finding themselves in a non -monogamous relationship?

41:00Like, they're very much first principles, anti -culturing their way into this kind of relationship setup. So they're probably doing at least some of the cognitive work to be able to, okay, and what do I need to think about and what are the risks and what are the benefits and what are the costs and what are the so on? And I guess it's a balancing act of is preparing for the fire whilst going further into the fire, which one is more effective, you know? Right, right. Yeah, I think it's preparation. I think it's also how you handle yourself along the way, right, because I think, so one of the things I'll say about the practices that we've identified is, even if I think you followed all of them and you were going into it as prepared as you could be, there are going to be experiences that you're not prepared for.

41:48And I think it is about managing in the moment how you respond to what's happening and keeping your eye on is what is happening over here between my partner and someone else, how is that actually going to filter back and affect me? Because I think it's less defensible to restrict a partner's behavior with other people. If it's really just to make you feel better about your jealousy or make you feel better about your fear, we wouldn't really do that in many other situations where my partner just doesn't want this for some undisclosed reasons, so I'm not going to do it. I think that's part of keeping track of that.

42:32The other thing that you're commenting, maybe, think of is for a long time, I've been thinking about the degree to which people in monogamous versus polyamorous relationships differ on intelligence. And intelligence would probably aid in helping to, again, be aware of what's happening as you're being nomenogamous, keeping track of what's happening and then devising these kind of novel creative solutions to dealing with jealousy or whatever's happening. I don't know of any data on that, but I'd be curious. Yeah, okay. Pot and hierarchy. Okay, so this is one of the things that you'll observe if you ever get, if you ever kind of like tipping your toe and the polyamory and all that is that people will essentially label their partners as primary versus secondary or tertiary.

43:24And this is the idea. The primary relationships are going to look more like the traditional monogamous relationship, where you have deep investment with one another. You have shared goals together. If you buy a house, this is the person that you're buying the house with, that you're sharing, you know, you're taking care of children together. And then secondary might fill some other role. But they're usually treated. they have maybe their voice in some cases may matter less. So if the primary partner puts their foot down and says, no, this is not okay, the secondary may not have much of a say in that.

43:57And so this really gets at to what degree are you more hierarchical or are you more non -hierarchical where you, not that you treat partners exactly the same, but you don't go into the relationship already having specified who's gonna be primary who's going to be secondary? People who are non -hierarchical, what they tend to do, what they tend to say is, is you want the kind of natural relationships that arise, the chemistry between people as it arises to guide how much time you spend, what you do with each partner, etc. So letting it follow your preference rather than imposing that structure from the beginning.

44:41That's interesting. Okay, sexual health maintenance. I mean, that's that's straightforward, right? Is if you're having one of the things that we know it's well documented is if people have denser sexual networks, you have sex with a greater number of people and they all have sex with multiple people, the risk of contracting an STI is higher. And so you see this in polyamorous communities getting tested regularly is is very, very common. It's expect it's it's almost a it's a moral imperative in these communities where if you're not doing this, you are introducing risk. So it's that it's preventing spread of pathogens, but also making sure that you use safer sex tools to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

45:25Because if one partner gets pregnant, I mean, that's its own drama, and there are a lot of issues that come from that. So the idea is take away all the risks that can come from having sex with multiple people. You should have extra past sexuality. Ah, yeah. Okay, so this one's fun because this is including your partner in the sex that you have with other people. Right. And so that could look like, I think what most people are probably familiar with is, I think it's more common, for example, for partners to watch pornography together, where you're including a third partner in your sexual, you're including it, essentially a third person in your sexual fantasies, but of course it's someone else who's far away who's a fictional character, you know, porn star that you're never going to meet, right?

46:14But it could also include, once you start getting involved with someone else, you also get involved with them. And my thinking here is that this is going to produce less conflict, and that's what we see is that so associated with lower conflict and relationships. To the degree that you're both getting something out of that third partner, you have less reason to really complain about it or to find it as a, to see it as a negative, right? You are getting something from it and, you know, again, with, with any collaborative kind of endeavor, if, if, if all people are on the same page, they're all working towards the same goal, you tend to see better cooperation.

46:56You do need to have someone who's at least slightly malleable in the sexual orientation. Well, do you? I guess it depends who's doing what with who in the bedroom, specifically the nuts and bolts and mechanics of what's going on. Yeah, so if you're actually involved with the other person, yes, but if you're present and you're just playing a part, you could, for example, say if it's two guys, one girl, you could still be having sex with your partner and you're getting something from just being there. This is actually one of the, I see this a lot where if your partner's off having sex with somebody else, you're again simulating thinking about what's going on, what's that, what's that like?

47:34If you're actually there, you see what that's like. You see the dynamic. And if that can be, yeah, give me traumatizing or it could be. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. I'm not convinced that there's many, many people going, yeah, no, I just keep it in my mind. It can't be as bad in my mind as it is in reality. I don't know. Yeah, maybe you'll discover or something you don't want to know. That is possible. So I think the first step is really your present now you know. And this is true with all these practices. You know this information now. But that's only the first step. The next step is what do you do with that information?

48:11And that's where you get into thinking about, I want to be my, if you're present and you're experiencing jealousy envy because of actually watching, say, other people have sex, well, what do you do with those emotions that you experience, right? Do you channel that into your own sexual satisfaction? Do you channel that into anger and aggression? Do you realize that it's, again, this is not going to something that's got harm you, et cetera? That's going to lead to that, I think, is what leads to different kind of positive or negative outcomes. Got you. Reputation management. That is the way that we measured it was we asked people how often they hide their relationships from other people.

48:53So that is from people outside of their current relationship. This is managing, do other people know that you're consensually nomenogamous? So people who are consensually nomenogamous, they tend to be more secretive about their relationships and that's associated with, again, having worse experiences overall. Because for example, if you're in a relationship with someone and they're a secret, let's say that they do want to be a greater part of things they want to maybe hang out in a public setting with all of your friends if they want to, you know, be brought to a family event. Now they can't do that.

49:27And that's important for a lot of people. And I think that's a key stone part of many romantic relationships. So you're taking away that opportunity to be public about it. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I suppose the branding problem. Sure. That we were talking about early Ron. And I don't know, there's just, if it was more accepted in why to culture. If it was not even more accepted, if it was somehow held in high esteem, reputation management would be a totally different task. It might be playing it up even more because then we're going to gain a little bit more social status from doing it. Resource distribution.

50:08So this is whether you think about how you spend time, give attention, share physical resources among your partners. One of the things that pops up is that you're in a relationship, you're in maybe an established pair bond with just two individuals. And then someone else comes in. At first, and this happens with all dating, you're now going to up your game and try to shower this other person with presence, with attention. There's that new relationship energy, the initial courtship, where you're investing more effort than you otherwise would. to your current partner who maybe you've been past that stage for a long time, what it's going to look like is you're spending more time, you're giving them more stuff than you ever give me.

50:55And so that is a source of jealousy as well. And so if you think more carefully about how each partner is, whether they're getting what they need, the ideal might be, yes, you're kind of embracing this new relationship energy with the new partner, but then maybe you should also be considering that your partner is going to feel a little bit more threatens. They may be more jealous. And so maybe you need to up your game with your current partner as well. The idea is you don't want to neglect one in favor of another because that's where you get a lot of rivalry. Yeah. So this is your big matrix of strategies that were most likely used.

51:33Was there anything else that you learned just while going through this big fat piece of research? Well, I think I've mentioned just in passing bits and details, but I kind of want to visit the branding point that you keep bringing up, which I think that, again, when you hear something like polyamory, swinging, open relationships, et cetera, there is that initial reaction because there aren't really scripts. There isn't really a playbook for how to do consensual nominogamy in a way that's ethical in a way that doesn't potentially harm somebody, right? And so I think people are having almost a, it's a justifiable reaction where you say, well, there's gonna be this other person, how's that gonna affect me?

52:18You know, there may be there are more STIs, maybe, you know, I'm gonna be neglected. And what we're doing by identifying these different practices is we're showing how there is a logic to how people in polyamorous relationships navigate these issues, that it's not just a free for all. And it's not just, you know, I'm going to be involved with someone else, suck it up. You got to deal with that. It is what it is. It's more of, there's a conscientiousness to how people approach these relationships. And I think that that were better known. If the process were better known, as much as it's well known for monogamy and how people should navigate monogamy, I think that if that were known, that stigma, that branding problem would start to go away.

53:02But of course, all that relies on, are these practices actually working? Our evidence, our data suggests they seem to be, but again, until we have experimental longitudinal data, we can't really say that they are. And so this is just a whole scientific endeavor that needs to happen, and we need to know whether what people in polyamorous relationships, for example, are doing actually has a positive effect as many claim that it does. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you think it is that people so heavily condemn consensual non -monogamy, like the wider culture? I think there's because there are legitimate risks to because of jealousy, because of envy, because the the probability that when you experience these things, you're going to be more combative.

53:58You're going to be more aggressive with other people. I mean, there's, for example, it's well known that, you know, if you talk to William the other time, you know, if you have in cells, like people who are having a difficult time for one reason or another, finding relationships, and it seems like, you know, everyone's flocking to the most attractive, most valuable relationships, and I'm not getting much at all, you're gonna see more animosity, more envy, more jealousy. And so I think the idea is if you maintain monogamy, it's almost like maintaining kind of absence, absence only education, right?

54:37Is just you're telling people, if you have these issues, you should just ignore them. So that we can avoid all of this envy, all of this jealousy, all this aggression that comes from being disappointed in the mating market.

54:53So I think that people are noticing that these can be issues, right? When you engage in nomenogamy, it can be messier. And so for it to be popular and for people to be getting into these relationships, you look at that and you say, well, this is going to affect my life. This is going to cause more chaos than I really want. and so I don't want to support that. I think the other legitimate concern is, and I've thought about, I've kind of tossed this idea back and forth a little bit, is, if I'm in a polyamorous relationship and you are monogamous, I'm saying it's okay for your partner to have sex with fallen love with other people.

55:41And so if you are committed and you say, no, I'm only interested in monogamy, I'm only interested in you, my love. And then they see that other people are being monogamous, or being polyamorous, they're being nominogamous. They say, oh, geez, that option's out there. Maybe I want to try that. And so I think there is, there's this fear that polyamory is a threat to monogamy. And I think in some ways it is. It permits a different way of approaching relationships. And so to the degree that you don't want that alternate option you might be motivated to not have it be popular. Yeah, the... I actually got it in my head that polyamory is kind of like an animal that's able to...

56:26you throw something at it and it just eats it and keeps on moving. Whereas monogamy is much more fragile. Polyamory is much more difficult to break, not impossible to break at all, but it's way more sort of flexible and robust than non -monogamy. and then monogamy is, I guess as well, you know, this intracextual competition has to play a big part of this, right? That I am in a relationship with my significant other and we are committed to each other, and that person over there is also in a relationship. Therefore, I can be pretty reliable in knowing that they're not going to try and steal my partner away.

56:59Whereas now, like I said before, my friend who was hit on way more when it was found out that she was non -monogamous than when she was single. Oh, there's some sort of sexual voodoo magician. They know all of these tricks from living in their polycules for the last few decades. They're going to invite her to her five some and she's never going to love me again. All of these concerns that we have, I guess, other reasons that I can spitball would be monogamy is a pretty good sexual redistribution strategy. People would be concerned about some sort of harem beginning by this one turbo Chad that's able to capture all of the women.

57:38I think there's still like a sort of vestige of Puritanism around sex and sort of what we're supposed to be doing sexually. There's still an awful lot of shame, I suppose, about what it is that people actually want to do and non -monogamy puts sex into the forefront of the conversation in a way that monogamy doesn't. For some reason, Again, because people, I think, often consider nonmonogamy to be primarily about the sex. So I think that probably contributes. Yeah, to the degree that people have to be mindful or put effort into dealing with the emotions that pop up, it really is more, I guess, the term for would be cognitive overhead, right?

58:22You have to think about more. And so with every interaction that you have with a person, yeah, if you're monogamous, everyone's monogamous, you know that sex is off the... No one's eyeing each other up and they're gonna get romantically involved. Versus your right, if you're opening that up now, not only are you holding a business meeting and you're talking about non -sexual things, but you're maybe in the background having these obsessive and truce of thoughts about way as she's looking at him in this way and et cetera, et cetera. I think that that's avoidable. I think that again, if you get good enough at handling those emotions, I think that it's less effortful and that comes into play less.

58:58I think also if you the more of an attachment you have with your partner the more that you trust that your partner is not going to pursue anything In a way that is directly harmful to you That becomes less it becomes less costly that something could happen between them and someone else, right? so it's it I think the fear really isn't that Sex with someone else or emotion with some or emotion attachment with someone else is going to happen it's that it's going to happen and then there's going to be this consequence. But if you can cinch up that consequence, then the act of it will matter less, if that makes sense.

59:38That does make sense. I'm trying to sort of pass apart in my mind, my imagined envy. Is it how much of it is because of something inherent in the act itself and how much of it is because of what the implication of that act has down the line. It almost gets into, this conversation almost gets into questions of sacredness and kind of like axiomatic truths and virtues and honesties and chastity in and of itself, commitment in and of itself. It is a good. From there, you need to scale it out into binding the local community together, binding the entire civilization together, helping to tamp down some of the more base instincts.

1:00:30Is this a slippery slope for everyone to just be sniffing ketamine at three in the afternoon and not getting anything done? It's a very, it's like kind of like a flashpoint for a lot of human nature's more like visceral, hedonic, immediate pleasures. I'm definitely a consequentialist, yeah. I focus on what what outcome is this going to have. And I think that's the way to look at it because and I agree with you that beyond just the romance, you do have to coordinate how these kinds of relationships are going to affect the larger society and how people get along and how stable societies will be.

1:01:14And to the degree that the consequences can be addressed effectively. at least as effectively as what we currently have. The current paradigm is be monogamous. That's the equivalent, again, I say this again, it's like abstinence only education, right? Just solve the problem by ignoring it altogether, but just don't even expose yourself. This is more of, it's almost like teaching safe sex, right? It's how do you safely have multiple relationships? And I think that we just don't know, We don't know all the joints at which doing that is going to affect our personal lives, our social lives, our communities, etc.

1:02:03We have really good models for predicting how monogamy versus non -monogamy tends to affect or how we predicted affect society. But I don't think that we haven't tested how these more innovative, kind of contemporary versions of Namanagami, if they have actually solved some of these problems for themselves, it's just not well studied. Yeah, and I suppose the, it's not just can some people make it work, right? It's kind of everyone make it work. You mentioned earlier on, you know, what about the potential link between intelligence and preference for relationship setup. You know, it may be the case that people who are in the upper 40th percentile and above of intelligence are able to, on average, engineer themselves into this, but it's not.

1:03:02It's about, okay, what does this happen across an entire society? And there's even a question there about, you know, like, again, egalitarianism in terms of quality of life. You know, if we then make more widespread and more accepted a Setup of mating which benefits few at the cost of perhaps more or many That's not particularly good and then what if you end up again with this sort of like Squeezing of sexual desire up and across to whoever the most desirable social sexual few are and then you've just got everybody else is fucking orbiting these black holes of sex and pleasure or something. So to comment on the harem idea, right, that one or a few extremely attractive men are going to get all the women, I'm actually, I tend not to be convinced by that, particularly in a modern environment where people have more individual choice, they have more individual freedom, for example, the big fear is women will all go for that one guy, right?

1:04:05But women are more independent. They have more resources. They have more choice than they've ever had in many societies throughout history. And so it's not that they would need to get into a relationship with the Chad to support themselves, right? That is the paradigm for polygamous marriages where you have one extremely wealthy man who has to provide for multiple lives. But if you're living in a society where the women can take care of themselves, they are independently empowered, yes, maybe they'll have some relationship with the most attractive man. But that doesn't mean that they won't also, by their own accord, have relationships with other people because, say that one very attractive man says, no, you can't have sex with other people, she can say, fuck you, no, I can.

1:04:53And if you aren't going to support, I can support myself, right? So I think there's like a traditional power dynamic where women have to get into these kinds of relationship. They have to be with certain men because they provide the most resources. But as soon as you more widely distribute and make the resources available to everyone, more people have choice. And I think we would see fewer harem -like situations for that reason. Given that your area of expertise that you came up through was evolutionary psychology, and what we've been talking about today are these different ways that people in a modern world with confluent relationships that highly prioritise individual happiness, individual enjoyment, freedom at all costs is something which should be maximised, we are still working largely with ancient programming, right?

1:05:51Source code is however many hundreds of thousands of years old. How much is ancestral polygamy a myth in your opinion? Well, I don't think it's a myth at all to the degree that... Sorry, are you talking about just men with multiple women or just the kind of multi -male, multi -female? Yeah, the multi -male, multi -female sharing of everything. That's what largely, it seems like what you're talking about here, that people have managed to find a particular relationship setup that allows them to get something out of it, that they couldn't get out of a traditional monogamous relationship. therefore they have hacked or somehow improved on a situation that may have only come about because of the last 10 ,000 years of human sort of culture.

1:06:48And was it the church? Was it because of trying to control kinship? Was it trying to be strategic? You can get the farmers daughter next door to Mario. You know, I'm trying to work how much is this kind of like the paleo diet for human mating and how much is this like you know fast food for the soul? I think ancestors really we were a mix of monogamy, polygyny, polyandry and then multiple women with one man multiple not as much but multiple men with one woman and I think it really depended on the environmental context. For example you know you look back to the onset of agriculture. Agriculture did a huge bit for marriage systems because now you see a concentration of wealth, men can support potentially multiple wives, versus if you're in an environment where no one can monopolize resources as well, you start to see this more even distribution of relationships.

1:07:45And so what I would guess is, yes, clearly we have wealth inequality. There are people who control far more wealth than other people in the world, but we also, I think individuals have access to greater wealth, or at least the ability to live up a minimally very satisfying life than ever before, and that could almost be seen as a flattening of the ability to monopolize resources. You know, if you're someone who's just looking for a partner that you can have consistent enjoyable sex with, that you have an attachment with, and that you can kind of plan a life with, I think that's more available in some ways than it's ever been for a person to reach that point.

1:08:24And so I in and assess really where we've clearly been a mix. I think since we've been able to concentrate wealth monogamy has been far were well since we've been able to concentrate wealth. I think we see more ability to monopolize mates as well. But I think we've been a mix and I think will continue to be a mix depending on the circumstances. And I think maybe the circumstances favor some of out of a non -monogamy right now. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I definitely see, at least my current, largely uneducated, deeply opinion is sort of a serial monogamy seemed to be the most common relationship setup.

1:09:08You know, there seems to be a kind of three to seven -year window in which pherbons begin to dissolve a little bit. Again, not to say that people can't stay together for life, which they obviously do, and people can't get sick of their partner after six months, which they obviously do. But it seems to me like that makes the most sense. I can see why it would be the adaptive story that that tells me is the, I think the most compelling. You still get the benefits of alloparenting and the bodyguard hypothesis and the grandmother hypothesis. All of those things get folded in without needing to try and somehow overcome mate guarding and jealousy and male parental uncertainty and, you know, did the entire litany of reasons why we're worried about infidelity.

1:09:53So what I, with that in mind, my thing, I'm kind of bemused, but I'm pretty amazed by the fact that so many people that I know are able to do this and make this work. And maybe it's just that I haven't jumped in at the depend and gone through the nine steps of non -monogamy or whatever it is. But yeah, from a personal perspective, I think I would struggle. And from an adaptive perspective, it's one of those things where the story to me doesn't make quite so much compelling sense. Well, we might see that polyamory looks a lot more like serial monogamy than we think. because what I think is, you know, a situation you could see is your polyamorous, you get involved with one person, you really like them, you really get involved with them, you are essentially acting like you are monogamous, you are pair bonded to this person, but then you're also maybe kind of flirting on the side, but maybe you're not as interested, right?

1:10:58Because you're absorbed with this one person and not so much with other people. And so you behave almost the exact same as a serial monogamous where several deers, years down the line, you then say to yourself, I'm just, I wasn't as much of a match with this person as I thought. I have these other flirtations going on. Now I start to put more energy towards someone else because I just met them. They're a better fit. The equivalent of that would be your monogamous. You meet someone else and then you have this horrible breakup, right? There's this huge, these huge emotions that come out and you have to absolutely separate from the other person.

1:11:34If you're married, if you own property together, there's divorce worst proceedings where all I guess, and it's just a huge headache. This is almost, in a way, it's almost like it could be serial monogamy except there's this built -in assumption that you could, or your partner could start investing more effort into someone else if that's their preference. As much as that's true for anyone who's a man who's a man, that's really true. Yeah, the pot and a hierarchy thing, I guess would come into play here. When I think about consensual nonmenogamy, the typical setup that I think about is basically a couple and the couple have varying degrees of freedom to go and do things themselves.

1:12:18So I not convinced that it fixes the product. The breakup is still going to hurt, the divorce is still going to be whatever. Maybe there's even more vestigial concern about how God I knew that I shouldn't have let Let him sleep with that fucking guy of that girl, whatever, you know, like there's maybe even more degrees of what ifs that get opened up. So yeah, I mean, I can see why you're fascinated to study this. It's a really interesting way to kind of illuminate our, the sex differences, our predispositions, our fears and our concerns. And you really need a good grounding in the EP world before you can then start to see these things for what they are.

1:13:00What are the thermodynamics of this system? Why are the physics of this set up in a particular way that people need to do this? Oh, well, that's because they need to counteract mate guarding. Why do they do this? Oh, well, that's because they need to sew and so forth. Yeah, I think those concerns are really front and center, right? With monogamy, they're there, but you kind of ignore them. Now it's front and center, how do you deal with it? At least as time goes on. Oh, yeah. What are you doing next? What's the next studies look like? Well, to be honest, I mean, there's a lot of data here. I need to write up this data.

1:13:29I need to get it published. I need to get it out. So all of my projects revolve around kind of this in several ways. Some of the other papers that we're working on, for example, is there's a distinct lack of information about parenting and consensually nominogamous relationships and how that works. So we have some data on that. I'm writing that up with one of the big names and kind of PolyMRS research is Elizabeth Sheff. And so she and I are taking the lead on getting that data together. But one of the things that I really want to do is in my mind, because this is a stigmatized type of relationship, and there are many false beliefs, my idea right, my plan right now is really, let's, if there's gold here, if there's something to be learned, and there are ideals here that we could take from concentric nonmanogamous relationships, maybe even planet, you know, use them from a monogamous relationships.

1:14:27If we can kind of present the steel man of polyamory, right, the best reasons why it works. My next step is I want to start looking at what are the ways in which it goes wrong and in particular when it is exploited. So some of the other research that I've done in the past is looking at dark personality traits, narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism. And I think when you start throwing some of the so in general these describe a willingness to exploit other people for personal gain I think when you start throwing those personality traits into this dynamic There are so many opportunities for people to exploit one another and I think that that's probably happening more than Maybe we want to admit or people in the polyamorous community want to admit there are plenty I mean you go on to any Facebook Facebook group reddit group there plenty of complaints about it but you just don't see that much research on it.

1:15:19So I'm wanting to kind of set up the steel man of the best versions of consensual nominogamy and then I'd really like to say okay, yes, but here are some of the issues that are not resolved or that can arise because you have bad actors. Very interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. Justin, I love your work. I'm very sorry that I missed your talk at HBES. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with all of the stuff that you're doing? Uh, well, I'm, I'm on Twitter. I'm on Facebook. I am also on research gate. Research gate is turned into my where if you want the, if you want the updates on the actual hard science, that's where you should go.

1:15:57But I announce these things on Twitter and Facebook. So feel free to friend me, follow me, et cetera. As long as you don't mind some, some weird posts every so often. Oh, yeah. Justine, I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you.