382 - Non-Monogamy Research Roundup Pt 1

Research roundup

There aren’t a lot of studies or research about non-monogamy, but what there has been done we have compiled together at multiamory.com/sources.

Today, we’re looking at some of the most recent studies done that focus on polyamory and ethical non-monogamy, specifically studies about who practices non-monogamy, what studies have found motivates people to pursue it, and how healthy non-monogamous relationships are in general.

Next week, we will have part 2, covering studies done about non-monogamy and its relation to mental health, sexual health, and the health of children raised by non-monogamous parents. Stay tuned for the next part of our research roundup!

Transcript

This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are going to begin tackling a daunting task that we've been wanting to cover for a long time. Today is going to be the first of a two-part episode where we're going to go through a roundup of some of the most recent research studies that have been done about non-monogamy. Since starting this podcast in 2014, the amount of researchers actually looking seriously at consensual non-monogamy has grown hugely and the way that they're writing about it is very different.

It used to be, "No one's researching this, so I'm doing this study," and now it's, "This is becoming a more and more common thing for people to research, so I want to add to the research in this way, which is really exciting." Today there's just way more information, way more academic papers being written about specific facets of non-monogamous relationships, the people who practice them, their health, the health of their children, and so much more.

Today we're going to start by looking at a group of studies about who is practicing non-monogamy, what motivates people to practice non-monogamy, and then also how healthy non-monogamous relationships are in general and comparing different ways of doing non-monogamy. Then next week, we're going to continue by looking at studies about non-monogamy and how it relates to mental health, sexual health, and the health of children being raised by non-monogamous parents.

Dedeker: This is an exciting day. I feel like this could be a fun practice for us to do what? Once a year, once every couple of years because especially as the case-

Emily: I like that idea.

Dedeker: -of research is increasing on this topic, I think there could be some pretty regular updates to give to the people. It's what the people want.

Jase: Yes.

Emily: It's what people need.

Jase: This is also something that we are planning to put on our website. We're going to have a page. I believe it's multiamory.com/sources where we're going to put up links to the studies as well as some basic summary information of what's in them so that people have a place to go to look for those things. We can continue to add to that as we discover research that we think should go on that list.

Dedeker: Yes. The hope is that if someone's ever trying to throw a bunch of Helen Fisher research at you that makes the claim that non-monogamy is just biologically impossible. There's just no way that--

Jase: Is that where it comes from? Any people.

Dedeker: Helen Fisher definitely contributed to that. Helen Fisher is all very much on this bent that our brains just physically cannot tolerate non-monogamy. There's no way that anyone could ever be happy in non-monogamous relationships. If anyone throws that at you, you can just go to our website where all these studies are nicely compiled and nicely formatted and just wham get into a little research fight.

Jase: Perfect.

Emily: Love that.

Dedeker: Anyway, we're going to go through each of these studies one by one. Of course, we have to give the caveats that we often give on the show whenever we're looking at research and studies. Again, we always have to be mindful of correlation and causation relationships. As in causation, if a study says this causes this, that means this factor being in place definitely caused X, Y, and Z to happen and there's a very strong link. Correlation is a little bit more unclear.

They can say that, "Oh, we found this correlation that people who painted their houses blue were also correlated with having a higher income." That doesn't necessarily mean if you go and paint your house blue, you're going to automatically have a higher income. Correlation means we don't know the direction of what's influencing what. It could be because you have a higher income, you can afford that really nice high-quality, low gloss bear paint, or whatever it is. Can you tell that I've recently had to go down a whole rabbit hole of shopping for paint?

Jase: Yes.

Dedeker: Anyway, just bear that in mind. We're going to do our best to be clear when a study has talked about a correlation and really clarify that is not necessarily causation.

Jase: One other caveat with these studies is when it comes to getting participants for these studies, all of them with one exception were almost predominantly all White people. We're talking 85% or higher people who identify as White in the studies. What is interesting though, in the studies that acknowledged that they did find that when they were looking at it, they did not find that race had any effect on the answers. As in they didn't find different results for non-White races in their studies and so the studies don't talk about race as a factor with one exception which is a study specifically about African American polyamorists that we'll get to later.

Dedeker: Then the last thing, I know I painted this image of you being really triumphant in this research fight against Helen Fisher and I hope that you are. I genuinely hope that you are. However, of course, we have to remember that the purpose of studies and of research and of science isn't necessarily to prove anything. Our media really likes to grab findings from studies to say, "Science proved that your blue house is going to increase your income by $10,000 this year," or whatever it is.

That's really not the point. A well-written study is not going to make those kinds of claims that, "This just empirically proves that this is the case or empirically proves that this type of communication practice or relationship practice is superior." The whole point is that research builds on other research. Something that's baked into studies for those of you that don't know is a section where they talk about further avenues to be researched and talk about the ways that this particular study may be missed certain areas or where there's gaps in the knowledge.

Then also research it's all about uncovering new things and so it also will contradict earlier research and things like that. Basically just trying to say you can take some of this as a grain of salt. None of this is trying to be a cajole to insist that one particular way of practicing relationship is the right way and that means every other way is the wrong way. Even though there's evidence here and there's research, it doesn't mean that this is just a hard irrefutable fact.

Jase: Actually, we're going to have a neat example of this in the very last study that we're going to talk about today where even in their own research, they find certain things that contradict between multiple studies they did and when they looked into why, found some surprising things. It's actually a good example of how continuing to do research and refining. What we understand is the whole point of it rather than, "Oh, I did this thing and now it's proved and you don't question me, just believe it."

Emily: We're going to jump right into our first section of research which is motivations for non-monogamy. This first study that we're looking at is a 2021 study by Moors, Gesselman, and Garcia called Desire, Familiarity, and Engagement in Polyamory: Results From a National Sample of Single Adults in the United States. It was published in psychology faculty articles and research. The methodology and the demographics we'll start out with here, it was collected as part of the annual Singles in America, SIA, study run by Match.

That's really interesting to me. Match.com, it makes sense that they would be making studies like this.

Jase: Studies about singles.

Emily: Exactly. That's primarily what they're looking at. All of the people in the study were over 18. They were single as we said and they were English speaking. It included 3,438 respondents and they filled out a full survey of 11 questions.

Jase: One thing to clarify here is that this study is not by Match. The data was collected by Match and then that data is made available to researchers. These researchers are not affiliated with Match because Match doesn't really study polyamory. As far as I know, they don't even-

Emily: They're not interested in it at all.

Jase: -acknowledge-- They put questions about it on their survey I guess but they tend to not be fans of it because they employ, Helen Fisher.

Emily: Oh, there you go. Well, of course. She is like, "No." These were some of the things that they were trying to determine within the study. First, they were trying to determine if people had engaged in polyamory before. For example, "I have been in a polyamorous relationship before and I would like to be in another, or I would not be in another." Something along those lines. They also were trying to determine if people are interested in trying polyamory like "I would consider being in a polyamorous relationship if it were more socially acceptable," or "I will only consider polyamorous relationships."

Then finally, they were also trying to determine if they know anyone polyamorous and how they feel about it. For example, "I know someone who had or who is currently in a polyamorous relationship," or "I respect polyamorous people, but I could not do it myself," something along those lines. Their findings were interesting. 16.8% reported a desire for polyamorous relationships. That's close to that 20% that we talk about.

Jase: Yes. Supposedly there's the 20% of people who've ever done some kind of non-monogamy. What's interesting to note about all of these findings is that this study is specifically with people who identify as single. That's who the research is about. Which it is an interesting thing in non-monogamy.

Emily: Because a lot of people open up their already existing relationship, and that's their gateway into it.

Jase: Or maybe if someone does have a breakup, it's somewhat unlikely that they would get back down to zero and count themselves as single and be involved in this study. Also maybe where they were getting their sample from is maybe match.com subscribers which are less likely to be polyamorous people. It's all just stuff to keep in mind. I don't know exactly those answers.

Emily: I feel specifically young maybe. If you are calling yourself single, maybe you're younger, it's skewing younger, or also maybe you've just gotten out of a long-term relationship, who knows?

Jase: We'd have to check and see.

Emily: 16.8% had reported a desire for polyamorous relationships, 10.7% had been in one before, 6.5 knows someone who is or has been in polyamorous relationships, 30.4% of people who had been in one previously would do it again. Then of those who had tried it, 21.1% said that they were too possessive to cope with it. That's an interesting turn of phrase that they were just too possessive specifically to cope with it. 32.8% said that the emotional aspects of polyamory were too challenging.

Jase: I think that was worth noting that the lower number is the jealousy one, only the 21.1 said it was effectively because of jealousy that they were too possessive. Do think that's interesting because that's the one people would assume is the main one and that the larger answer they got was just the overall emotional aspects of managing multiple relationships was too challenging.

Dedeker: That is interesting. Also with 30.4% of people who'd been in one previously would do it again, I'm like, "Okay, so it's like a third-

Emily: It's a nice amount.

Dedeker: -retention rate?"

Emily: There you go.

Jase: You could look at it another way and say like one-third-ish of people who had been in some sort of polyamorous relationship and were now totally single, would still pursue that. Maybe that's another interesting way to look at the question. This study is a weird interesting one which is why I wanted us to start with this.

Emily: Additionally, men and people with lower education levels compared to women and people with higher education levels were around two times more likely to have been in a polyamorous relationship before, but there are no other significant correlations.

Dedeker: Interesting.

Emily: Yes. That's an interesting one for whatever reason.

Jase: Really flies in the face of this idea that it's also only for highly educated-

Emily: Yes, that's true.

Jase: -people and that it's dominated by women. Though again, depends how they got their sample and how these people ended up on the study. Who knows?

Emily: Totally. Perhaps, I don't know, sometimes I think men will pursue it more openly initially, but then women are the ones in that more retention category maybe. I don't know.

Jase: Potentially. Yes. What a good question.

Dedeker: Maybe potentially. That's an interesting hypothesis for your study, Emily.

Emily: Oh, yes.

Jase: We're going to come up with so many studies to do.

Emily: Oh, yes, I know. For sure. Also, men were three times more likely than women to report desire for polyamory. There you go. Non-heterosexual people were two times more likely than heterosexual people to want polyamory.

Jase: That tracks with other things we see.

Dedeker: That definitely tracks with I think what we see in the community that there is this big overlap between the non-monogamous people and the queer people.

Emily: The queer people, for sure. Also, young people and non-heterosexual people were more likely to know someone polyamorous. That doesn't surprise me at all. Significantly, political affiliation and age did not correlate with prevalence of practicing or desiring polyamory, but they did correlate with being more accepting of other people being polyamorous, even if they were not personally interested. Democrats and young people were more likely to approve than Republicans and older people.

Jase: Isn't that interesting though that--

Dedeker: the anecdotal evidence.

Jase: The first part though, that they did not find, in terms of people wanting to do-

Emily: Yes, political.

Jase: -polyamory or having had done it that age and political party were not correlated with that, but then-

Emily: More accepting.

Jase: -they're more likely to disapprove of it. That was interesting.

Emily: That's fascinating. I have no idea why. That study did go all over the place, but that was really fascinating. I think a nice buffer and a first study to look at for all of this.

Dedeker: Definitely, it set the scene there. We're going to talk about another study. This was also in 2021. It's a study by Murphy, Joel, and Muise, I'm sorry if I'm butchering your name, but it's called A Prospective Investigation of the Decision to Open Up a Romantic Relationship. This was published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. Basically, this was two surveys that they gave to their participants and they gave about two months apart. This technically accounts as a longitudinal study, is that correct Jase?

Jase: Yes, I think so because it's anything over time where you have multiple time points. Just not very longitudinal.

Emily: No. Not like Elizabeth Chef doing really huge longitudinal studies.

Dedeker: For many years. This was over the course of two months. They gave these surveys to 233 individuals that was made up of 80 men, 143 women, and 10 non-binary people. These were all people who were considering opening up their relationship. Now, the average duration of the relationships that these people were in was about 8.4 years. We're looking at an average of, I guess, what we would consider a long-term relationship. About 55% of them were married and the rest were in some variation on a dating relationship or engaged.

For the surveys, they were looking at three different areas for each person at both the first and the second survey. Then they were also looking at what are these people's reasons for wanting to open up their relationship. They were initially measuring relationship quality, sexual satisfaction, and life satisfaction as well. Of all the reasons that people might have for opening up, basically, only two reasons emerged that had satisfactory data. It doesn't mean these are the only two reasons that people open up. It's just these were the ones that had data significant enough for them to pay attention to.

Those two were intrinsic reasons, so as in, being non-monogamous is my identity, or it's just what I want. This is just a part of me and that's why I'm interested in opening up my relationship. The other reason that they looked at was sexual incompatibility reasons. As in just my partner and I have different sexual needs, different levels of sexual desire, or different sexual fantasies, or sexual interests, or things like that.

This is what they found, that in the time between the first survey and the second survey, again, this is just a period of two months, about 67% of the respondents had opened up their relationships since the first survey. Then they compared the two groups, the ones who had opened up in the meantime and the ones who hadn't. They found that those who did open up their relationship had significantly higher relationship satisfaction and life satisfaction, however, it wasn't that different from before they opened up. It just turned out that these people who seemingly came in with already high relationship and life satisfaction were more likely to just actually open up. That's really interesting.

Jase: I think that's a cool one that would surprise a lot of people too. Especially if they look at opening up as the stereo stereotype of, "Oh, it's not working, so we're going to try opening up." The relationships that were already happier and people who were happier were the ones more likely to actually open up in this particular study. I just thought that was really interesting.

Dedeker: Along those same lines, the study confirmed that opening up for these people, it did not decrease relationship satisfaction or life satisfaction, but it also didn't necessarily increase it. It seemed like everything stayed pretty net- what? -neutral, net zero, I don't know what you'd call that.

Jase: Neutral to a little bit positive is what they found, but definitely at least showed evidence that it doesn't make it worse so that's good.

Dedeker: However, they did find that opening up did tend to increase sexual satisfaction while sexual satisfaction went down for the people who had not opened up in that interim. This was especially true for those people who identified specifically sexual incompatibility as the reason for wanting to be open, which I suppose makes sense. You already are feeling maybe sexually frustrated, or one or both people in the relationship feel like there's incompatibility. We feel motivated to open up our relationship for that reason.

Two months have gone by, it's still unopen. I guess chances are pretty good that you'd still be feeling pretty sexually frustrated unless something, I don't know, some surprise solution presented itself in the meantime, which happens for some folks. Now interestingly, in the study, they didn't find any evidence to support that people with the intrinsic motivations were more satisfied with life or with their relationship after opening up than those with the other motivations. Overall basically whatever people's motivations were, your chances of still having a satisfaction with your life or with a relationship seems like that was pretty neutral or had a pretty neutral effect in this particular study.

Jase: This one's really interesting and later we'll get into some studies that found slightly different things, but I think what this study really brings up is how important it is to note what they didn't find, that a negative is also interesting. Say you hypothesize that the people who wanted to open up just for their own reasons versus some sexual incompatibility issue would somehow end up happier when they did open up and they didn't find that. That's interesting.

The fact that they didn't find something is also sometimes significant. That's one of the cool things about science. This next study here that's still on this same topic of people's motivations for opening up. This is a 2021 study by Wood, De Santis, Desmarais, and Milhausen called Motivations--

Emily: That was lovely.

Dedeker: So French with that chase.

Emily: I don't know if it's a French name or not, but I'm from Arkansas.

Jase: We just felt bad to say like Desmares as the name.

Dedeker: You can say it both ways. Just cover all your bases.

Jase: Desmarais or Desmahigh or some variation on that and Milhausen. This is called Motivations For Engaging in Consensually Non-monogamous Relationships published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. I like with that one, the title's real straightforward. Just this is what we're doing. This one was an online survey. You'll find that pretty much all of these studies that we're talking about today are online surveys of some kind. This one though is specifically targeted to people in consensually non-monogamous communities like the Reddit polyamory and Reddit non-monogamy groups, followers of sexuality, educators on Twitter, things like that.

That's how they tried to seek out respondents who were non-monogamous.

Emily: Maybe you out there.

Jase: You might have been part of this. I know.

Emily: Yes. You may have been part of those.

Jase: These are all pretty recent. There's a good chance that some of our listeners ended up on these studies. In this, they ended up with 540 individuals who are currently in a consensually non-monogamous relationship and who answered all of their questions, and this one, they were open-ended questions. They ended up with an average age of 35, although the range was everything from 18 to 82 years old. Mostly Canadian and United States citizens, mostly White, as we mentioned before and 67% were in polyamorous relationships and the others were in some other kind of consensually non-monogamous relationship.

This was basically one question that they got to write however much they wanted to answer. The question was, please tell us about your reasons for participating in a multi-partner/consensually non-monogamous relationship and that's it, go. Do with it what you will.

Emily: You can do a study on something like that? That's really interesting.

Dedeker: I guess they're like a qualitative study, right? Like when people do something like this, or if you're bringing people in and sitting them down for interviews where it's less about checking boxes or tell me how extremely satisfied-

Emily: Finding percentages.

Dedeker: -to not satisfied or strongly agree, or only kind of agree. Instead of that, that it is more about this qualitative content and sifting and parsing data out of that.

Emily: So many of the studies we find are the opposite of that. This is just cool that it's simply one question and then go and we find different things from that. Very fun.

Jase: From my understanding of it, basically crunching the numbers and doing your data on a quantitative study. Something where people are answering like a five, agree, one, disagree somewhere on that scale, versus a qualitative study like this, where it's just having to analyze what people write. They mentioned it went everywhere from people who almost listed it like bullet points very succinctly and other people who wrote huge long essays about their history and all the story leading up to it and all these things. Finding having to go through all of that, read all of it, find ways to codify it, to classify it into categories is a lot of work.

They get there are pros and cons to each. Basically what they did was in looking through it, they tried to find themes basically, to find themes of what are the recurring reasons why people do this. They came up with six interconnected themes in the responses. The first one is autonomy, which basically encapsulates everything from no non-monogamy is just more natural for me. It feels more authentic to me. I don't want to be controlled or control others. Those sorts of answers.

Autonomy was one of the themes. The second one was their belief system. This tended to show up more as a negative belief in monogamy of this belief that monogamy is restrictive of developing authentic connections or maybe is even harmful, or it could be a belief that's more positive about non-monogamy such as it allowing more individual exploration or belief that one person can't provide all of the sexual and emotional needs for someone else. That's belief system.

The third one was relationality, which basically means because I want to focus on my relationships. Saying that non-monogamy helps them to form, enhance, or maintain relationships. Mostly this was in the context of sexual and romantic relationships, but the researchers did acknowledge that several people also mentioned specifically friendships that they were able to focus more on those. As well as creating community with like-minded people and for allowing more integrity in the relationships that they do have.

Relationality was the third theme. Fourth theme was sexuality. That's the freedom to express yourself sexually or to live your sexual identity, interest in variety, novelty, or just excitement in sex, or as we mentioned in a previous study that ability to accommodate discrepancies in sexual desires or preferences or things like that with a partner. Then the fifth one was growth and expansion. That's a desire for personal growth that's fostered in non-monogamy. That's something we've definitely talked about before on this show, that idea that you can learn more about yourself through different relationships.

It allows relationships to grow and change in ways that feel more natural. That's growth and expansion. Then the last one they called pragmatism, which was not pragmatism of it just makes sense, but pragmatism of this makes sense for me and my life right now. Maybe because work's busy and this is just what works for me, or I have a long-distance relationship that's important to me and this just makes sense as a way to keep doing that relationship, or there are some medical issues that are a challenge and that we're able to get our needs met better through non-monogamy.

The takeaway that the researchers came to from this is basically just that the reasons why people do it are a lot more varied and were more intrinsic than a lot of people assume. That there tends to be that assumption of, oh, it's just that they're looking for sexual excitement or maybe just some pragmatic thing of sexual differences. We'll see that a lot of other studies focus on those two because I think some early studies focused on those and everyone else has kept going on that theme. This study being more qualitative was able to explore this further and showed that there were a lot of other reasons involved than just those.

Emily: The hypothetical scenario where people say things like, "Oh, non-monogamy doesn't work. All the studies show that." I would love to show them this because I think that it's really interesting to have all of these very nuanced reasons as opposed to just thinking, "Oh, it's because somebody wants to sleep with whomever they want. I love that. I think it also brings perhaps a humanity to it that some people don't see right away, especially if they're super against it.

Dedeker: Looking at this list and these reoccurring themes of autonomy, one's belief system, relationality, sexuality, growth and expansion, pragmatism, I'm thinking about our interview with Lola Phoenix, a few episodes back where they were talking about finding your anchor, finding your reason why or finding what motivates you. This seems like I just end up working with a lot of folks who sometimes get a little lost, especially when they're new to non-monogamy of, "I know I want to do this, but I'm not entirely sure why, or like what actually excites me."

Especially people who are not partner necessarily who are single, who are still trying to navigate, "I know I don't want monogamy, but I'm not entirely sure what's the really exciting part here for me that even having this list of just examples, I think could really help people with brainstorming and getting a sense of, "Oh, what actually is in this for me? Does it feel like it's related to sexuality or is it about the autonomy?" I can see this as at least a good starting point for people I guess, to find some ground to put their feet on.

Emily: Our next study looks at kink. It's a 2021 study by Ellora and Sprott, which are two of the greatest names I've ever heard in my life called Consensual non-monogamy among kink-identified adults: Characteristics, relationship experiences, and unique motivations for polyamory and open relationships. It was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. These are results from two different studies. One was a US national quantitative study of 690 adults and one was a qualitative study of 70 adults in Northern California, which surprises me, not at all Dedeker. Finding all those Northern Californians that love polyamory.

Dedeker: Yes, back to my roots.

Emily: They looked at both studies to see how motivations to practice consensual non-monogamy may overlap with motivations for kink. They found that over 80% of participants indicated that they had at least two emotionally significant relationships. Around 58% had at least three and 43% had at least four. That's a lot of people.

Jase: It is worth clarifying that in this context, they're not necessarily someone that they would identify as a partner per se, but just an emotionally significant relationship. That's why there's a little wiggle room. It's not saying for sure 80% we're also polyamorous or something, but this is a good indication that somewhere close to that probably.

Emily: Yes, that they were involved with more than one person in various ways, emotionally significant. From the large study, the one with 690 adults, they found that participants' current emotional partners often included partners that they used to be sexual with, but are no longer. That's a really interesting specification there because again, you may not necessarily need to be sexual with someone for them to still be really emotionally significant in your life. Of the participants in relationships, 44.57% reported having at least one partner who is not kinky or did not share their kink interests.

Jase: That's interesting because it relates back to the couple of other studies talking about sexual desire differences but it could also just be kink differences. If I'm into this kink and you're not or you're not kinky, I am, how can we manage this? That that came up to a lot of these.

Emily: Of the 70 qualitative interviews, 29 of them spontaneously mentioned non-monogamy in their answers. That's cool. They weren't necessarily asked it, but they still spontaneously talked about it. Discrepancies in kinkiness or mismatch in kinks was a dominant, wink, wink, wink, wink, theme in desire for consensual non-monogamy of some kind, which again is kind of what you just said Jase.

Jase: Righ, that that was recurring, yes.

Emily: Yes, as something may be happening there and so that's why perhaps they want to be involved with more than one person, which makes a lot of sense.

Dedeker: I think that's something that doesn't necessarily get talked about I think quite often enough. I know sometimes when I bring this up in interviews, people are sometimes caught off guard or surprised but I do think that in our culture, especially when it comes to kink or fetishes or even someone's just sexual interests that on monogamous folks, we put a lot of pressure on you need to sexually perform and match whatever your partner brings to the table, whatever they want because if you're not able to do that, then I think the fear is then they're going to leave you or they're going to cheat on you or stuff like that.

There are a lot of people who do turn to consensual non-monogamy, not even because it's like, "Oh I have high desire and my partner has low desire," but it's just straight up that, that, "I like the idea of being able to free my partner to be able to pursue their kinks instead of just being disappointed in me because I'm not really into their kink."

Jase: Love that. Before we continue on to covering some more exciting studies, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some sponsors for this show and some ways you can support this show to help us keep all of this information coming to people in an accessible way for free. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to those and check them out if any are interesting to you.

Dedeker: We're back and now we're going to be looking at studies that are examining the demographics of non-monogamy. Just getting curious about who's doing this, who's getting up to all these non-monogamy shenanigans. First, we're looking at a 2019 study by Balzarini