Hacker News Reader

Comment by freeflight | Hacker News Reader

Imho you add an additional problem by formalizing the relationship through marriage.

With that comes a ton of expectations and pressure, internally inside the relationship, and externally from society.

These are not present to the same degree with less formal relationships because the stakes are generally considered not as high because there's no formal divorce to go through if it shouldn't work out.

Thus married couples might be more likely to suffer from "performance anxiety" in their relationship compared to less formal relationships.

Different values/desires will always be an issue, but if two people can agree on those, why shouldn't three people be able to? The only reason some are so opposed to this idea is due to old religious stigma enforcing the idea that we have to be monogamous no matter what.

View on HN

By the time you're making decisions like buying a house or having children you cannot treat the relationship that informally anyway.

As for the last question: because the more people you add the more mutually incompatible desires are in the picture.

If there's nothing but religious stigma at work, why aren't the Mormons still polygamists? (there are exceptions but I think we can round them off for the purposes of this discussion)

> By the time you're making decisions like buying a house or having children you cannot treat the relationship that informally anyway.

You can still treat it less formally than if it'd be an actual formalized relationship.

A lot of this boils down to societal expectations and norms which are not set in stone, but rather constantly evolving. The nuclear family, with their own house and dog, used to be ideal but at this point, it's a pretty outdated ideal that doesn't work with current economics, thus alternatives might be more viable.

I'm also not convinced that adding more people to a relationship inevitably will make it more difficult no matter what. People are way too individual for that to universally hold true and there's plenty of historical and modern examples of non-monogamous relationships as counter-examples.

> If there's nothing but religious stigma at work, why aren't the Mormons still polygamists? (there are exceptions but I think we can round them off for the purposes of this discussion

Because afaik there are still US states with laws banning polygamy? These are societal norms in large parts formed based on religious dogma, they ain't some "natural law" that can't be broken or changed, just like the nuclear family ain't necessarily the ultimate smallest societal unit.

> You can still treat it less formally than if it'd be an actual formalized relationship.

You can, but it is not wise.

>If there's nothing but religious stigma at work, why aren't the Mormons still polygamists?

The Federal government gave them hell about it, going so far as to seize any assets of the LDS church. Utah wouldn't have been granted statehood if they hadn't condemned it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com