“Polyamory doesn’t work,” said my friend. “I’ve just seen too many of those relationships crash and burn. You just can’t make it work.”

The problem with that is, of course, the goal of polyamory. What is it? It’s pretty clear for the other side, but poly’s a little more mutable.

See, as a non-poly guy in a monogamous relationship, I have the luck of not having every sexual interaction I have be the trial for my entire relationship style. When I had, oh, fifty failed relationships before I finally latched onto my lovely wife, I didn’t have to hear about how each of those fifty crash-and-burns were proof that monogamy’s innately substandard. (And thank God, because with fifty failed relationships, I evidently had enough problems floating around.)

Yet monogamy also has a culturally built-in end-goal. See, I got married. That’s what monogamous couples of all stripes are supposed to do – heck, there’s a war being waged so that gay couples can share in my monogamous uniting process. And marriage is designed to be forever, thanks to that whole “‘til death do us part” clause.

So if I make it to the end with Gini, and one of us dies before we get divorced, then I score a win for monogamy! I am now proof that monogamy works, because we clung to it all the way down. And that’s regardless of whether I actually signed on for that victory condition or not!

Isn’t that grand? Especially since we get to ignore the vast majority of people who don't get there, or the multiple failed relationships that generally precede a victorious marriage?

But poly has no clear end goal. I mean, is poly supposed to be eternal? I’ve seen any number of poly relationships end not with a bang, but with a whimper, as two people slowly lose interest in each other and move on without any hard feelings. It’s not a breakup, just two folks evolving in opposite directions.

Is that what poly’s supposed to do? Well, according to the monogamous goal of capital-F Forever, no. But should we judge polyamory by a one-relationship standard? I’d say not.

And more importantly, is every breakup bad? I’d say not. Certainly there are any number of marriages that fail not because the people involved are evil, but because two healthy people continually grow and change in the course of their lives. Sometimes, what you needed at age twenty is not what you need at age forty… And sometimes, two people diverge.

That doesn’t mean that your relationship failed. It means things changed. Ideally, your partner evolves along with you, but sometimes that’s not healthy. Sometimes, you can have a short relationship that doesn’t work out yet is entirely satisfying for what you needed then.

It’s not cool to say that your divorced ex-partner is still a good guy and you still love him – just not enough to stay. In a monogamous society, you’re supposed to find the blame and assign it straight away so you can figure out who broke the monogamy. Because it’s clearly a fault with you guys, not the system.

Which is not to say that poly doesn’t involve high drama from time to time. ‘Course it does! You’re juggling more people, and more people means more opportunities for things to go wrong. When poly relationships crumble, often they do so in an avalanche of hurt feelings as not just one, but several people are pulled into the maelstrom. Poly’s trickier to pull off in a stable way, and I don’t think anyone really debates that.

But I don’t think that every breakup is a sign of unhealthiness…. Just as I don’t think that every end-goal victory for monogamy is the sign of a strong relationship. Certainly we all know two desperate people who’ve latched onto each other and refuse to leave. There are a ton of radically unhealthy dynamics that can cause two people to unhappily superglue themselves at the hip through life, though one suspects they’ll be kicking their heels off in heaven once they’re finally released from that damned contract.

That’s not really a score for monogamy. If anything, it’s a checkmark against it, in my book.

The problem is that I’m loath to say that any relationship style flat-out doesn’t work. I’m not particularly comfortable with BDSM master/slave relationships in my own personal life, but I do know a few people that it seems to work for. And I’ve seen some long-term poly relationships that would terrify the shit out of neurotic, clingy ol’ me, but appear to be just fine for all involved.

People are individuals. I tend to think any blanket statement on any lifestyle statement is just a way of quietly asking others to tell you that what you want is not just okay, but actively good.

You know what doesn’t work? People. People are fucked beyond comprehension. And any time they manage to interact properly for any amount of time that makes them happy is something I have a hard time dismissing globally, y’know?