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Well, there's poly for the right reasons ("because I actually am a high-decoupler and am unironically capable of treating sex as a toy or tool"), and then there's poly for the wrong reasons ("because I'm not attracted to -> don't want to primarily pair-bond with my husband or wife, I just want to be able to have my cake and eat it too, and my partner doesn't have enough self-respect to call me out for doing it").
I think there are significantly more people who are poly for the wrong reasons- and people who are just trying to get out of doing the work they're supposed to be doing tend to be substandard partners. As for the people who are poly for the right reasons, their standards for a partner are going to be higher than normal, so they're going to pair up -> have kids less.
I mean, how many high decouplers are there really? Even among very intelligent people it’s rare, and some degree of significant intelligence is likely a prerequisite, so we’re talking about less than 1% of people.
They're also intelligent enough to keep quiet about it and are probably too busy enjoying the sex to post about it; you're more likely to hear it as "friends with benefits" from them... because they're usually also smart enough to know saying "poly" is a blunt instrument typically used by the people who are doing it for the bad reason I mentioned in the other comment.
(Same thing with every sexual expression that isn't "I'm straight and normal", really; the phrase to expose the other capabilities is probably more along the lines of "but if it's you, it's OK".)
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What, specifically is "having my cake" and "eating it" referring to here?
In this case, "enjoying the stability (emotional, financial) of a husband/wife relationship" and "fucking whoever I want on the side".
In other words, the people for whom "poly/open relationship" means "cheating is bad only because it's not discussed up front; I don't like you enough to commit exclusively but I still want you to pay my bills". It's an attempt to actively exploit a power imbalance in the relationship and people who do that are generally bad people.
This is why "swinging" is generally viewed slightly more positively than "poly", since it can be a good-faith attempt to fix marital problems (age related and otherwise) and implies an already established track record of "turning my partner into their best selves"... whereas poly is [currently] the "cash up front" equivalent.
I think I understand. Someone having their cake and eating it too is someone who hypothetically would commit, or can commit, because they don't see sex as a toy. But they might try to abuse someone's infatuation to get sex without putting in commitment.
On the other hand, swingers view sex as a toy and keep that decoupled from their emotional attachment to their spouses or whatever.
What exactly is unethical about the first case though? It sounds like taken to it's logical conclusion, hookups and casual sex are unethical for normal monogamous non-swingers. Or is it only unethical when there's a "power imbalance" (which is really just an infatuation imbalance)? Clearly this cake-having cake-eater is capable of decoupling sex from commitment, because that's what hooking up is?
Maybe I'd be more sympathetic to poly if both partners go to a bar and one partner is actively wingman-ing for the other depending on the day. Which to me is the key difference- swingers read to me as "I want you to get as much satisfying sex as you can because I am happy when you have sex you enjoy (but I'm not going to get locked out of what I want, and if it starts to grate on the relationship it's always up for discussion/give-and-take"), while poly reads "I want me to get as much satisfying sex as I can; what my partner does is simply not my concern, and if I'm not in the mood for them or if they aren't getting as much sex as I am they can just fucking deal with it".
Perhaps that's an abuse of the term(s), but swinger is not [claimed to be] an orientation, whereas poly is, and orientations have "they can just deal with it, I was #bornthisway" baked in by definition. Not that that's inherently a bad thing- straight people do that all the time, after all- but "fucking whoever I want whenever I want is my orientation" has the ability to destroy a relationship in a way no other orientation does (though "I'm not a [gender I was born as]" or "I'm not attracted to you" can do it for mostly-but-not-completely-unrelated reasons).
I don't want to say it's unethical to be poly, or inherently abusive even (and negotiating it up front is probably the best thing to do in that circumstance anyway)- but that most people that invoke "poly" as "inviolable/orientation" are only doing it when their interest in being exclusive to their partner runs out, and that is not the mark of someone you want to continue to trust. The people you do want to trust are those that have been committed for a long time and can actually take their partner saying "no" for an answer... which is why swinging is something they do, not someone they are.
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Fuck around and not lose at least 50% of joint assets.
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