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Skewed Views of Consensual NonMonogamies
Only talking with people in crisis can cast all CNM as a disaster.
Posted February 20, 2023 Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
Key points
- Some people, especially counselors or therapists, erroneously assume all consensually nonmonogamous relationships are dysfunctional.
- Generalizing from a small and specialized subset of a population to the entire population is bad science and gives inaccurate results.
- Poor sampling and generalizations have long plagued sex and gender minorities with erroneous and negative conclusions about their healthy lives.
- Sampling people happy in their successful CNM relationships gives a broader and more accurate image of CNM relationships.
Posting online and chatting with people on Twitter, Facebook, email lists, and other social media about the findings from my 25+ year longitudinal study of polyamorous families with children has drawn some significant ire and even outright attacks, both professional and personal.
Some people on social media seem to find two of my primary conclusions especially bothersome: 1) polyamorous relationships can be happy, healthy, and functional for the adults who attempt them, and 2) polyamorous families can create safe, positive, and loving environments for children.
Some of the most forceful pushback comes from marriage and couple’s counselors who have witnessed a parade of distraught clients come through their offices for years, clearly tormented by CNM gone dreadfully awry. Those clients have real and pressing issues related to CNM and may fare better in monogamous relationships or as single people who abstain from romance and/or sexuality.
They are not, however, representative of the entire world of CNM. For one thing, anyone who chooses a therapist specializing in marriage or couples already comes from a monogamous mindset. People seeking counseling for CNM that does not emphasize couples or traditional marital relationships are more likely to search for counselors and therapists who specialize in relationships and sexuality.
Perhaps more importantly, generalizing experiences from people in counseling to manage their malfunctioning relationships to all people in that same kind of relationship is simply inaccurate–for CNM or monogamy. It takes a specific subset of folks in distress and assumes that the entire population shares the same characteristics, which is bad science.
In previous blogs, I have explored some other reasons therapists and counselors might be biased against CNM–such as inadequate training, religious views, and personal or family experiences with cheating–and how to combat those biases in therapeutic practice.
Skewed Sample
My data on polyamorous relationships come from three sources: 1) my own mono/poly relationships that were painful and ultimately doomed; 2) my coaching practice of 10 years serving people who are having difficulties in CNM and BDSM relationships; and especially 3) my 25+ year longitudinal study of polyamorous families with children. If I assumed that my coaching clients and my relationships represented the entire population of folx in polyamorous relationships, then I would think that CNM is mostly a faulty relationship style damaging to the people involved.
Luckily, I have a much broader base for a research sample than the people seeking help with their broken relationships.
Findings from the sample from the Longitudinal Polyamorous Family Study that I started in 1996 indicate that some people can maintain healthy, happy, and fulfilling polyamorous relationships for decades–more than 60 years for some of the folx in my sample. Other research has repeatedly corroborated these findings, establishing that CNM relationships can be as satisfying, and in some cases more satisfying, than monogamous relationships.
Deciding that polyamory is unhealthy across the board because someone had a bad experience with it or the clients in their couple’s counseling practice are struggling with it is understandable on a personal level but erroneous on a larger scale. It is like a spinal trauma expert who chooses the field because their child was killed in a motorcycle accident and specializes in people injured in motorcycle accidents.
After seeing motorcyclists with spinal trauma every day at work, that doctor may well think that riding motorcycles is never safe and recommend that no one ever ride a motorcycle. That is an erroneous generalization because 1) they never see the thousands of riders who ride safely every day–they only see the ones who wipe out with disastrous results, and 2) they fail to consider how dangerous it is to ride in a car. Might riding a motorcycle be more dangerous than driving a car? Yes, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean that no one can ever do it safely or that driving around in cars is without risk.
Sex and Gender Minorities
A similar thing has affected populations of gay people and people interested in BDSM. When early researchers only sought study participants in either mental hospitals or prison wards, they found people who were mentally ill and criminals. From this specialized sample, they erroneously determined that all gay people and kinksters were malfunctioning and that it was impossible to be a happy, healthy person with positive relationships and be gay or kinky. It was only when researchers broadened their sampling criteria to include others who were not incarcerated, institutionalized, or had not problematized their gay or kinky relationships that research findings began to truly reflect the actual diversity of experience of these populations–including the possibility that it can be nonpathological.
Please note that these findings do not indicate that all polyamorous relationships are healthy or that all polyamorous families are ideal for children. Like every other relational form, some polyamorous relationships are fantastic, and a fabulous fit, and others are a complete disaster and a negative experience for the people involved.
I am not saying that CNM is perfect or right for everyone–anyone who has read this blog before knows that I am basing these ideas on evidence from research which clearly demonstrates that CNM is not a one-size-fits-all experience that is not right for everyone. However, some people assume that because it did not work for them or has not worked for their clients, CNM is not right for anyone and cannot work under any circumstances.
The assumption that CNM is always pathological is no more accurate than the assumption of CNM superiority.
To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
References
Hekma, G. (2014). A history of sexology: Social and historical aspects of sexuality. In From Sappho to De Sade (Routledge Revivals) (pp. 173-193). Routledge.
Conley, T. D., Piemonte, J. L., Gusakova, S., & Rubin, J. D. (2018). Sexual satisfaction among individuals in monogamous and consensually non-monogamous relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 35(4), 509-531.
Muise, A., Laughton, A. K., Moors, A., & Impett, E. A. (2019). Sexual need fulfillment and satisfaction in consensually nonmonogamous relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(7), 1917-1938.
Garner, C., Person, M., Goddard, C., Patridge, A., & Bixby, T. (2019). Satisfaction in consensual nonmonogamy. The Family Journal, 27(2), 115-121.
Sheff, E. (2013). The polyamorists next door: Inside multiple-partner relationships and families. Rowman & Littlefield.
