Talk:Polyfidelity

Pros and Cons?????
Why is there a Pros and Cons section? Is there a Pros and Cons section in the page on monogamy? (No.) Pros and cons are always relative to one's purpose or perspective. They are not universal. They don't belong in an encyclopedia. Perhaps the information could be rephrased in neutral term?

DBooth 03:22, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Removed "Lifelong intent"
I removed the phrase "with a lifelong intention of relationship" from the definition, because fidelity is about faithfulness. It does not necessarily mean a lifelong intent of relationship.

DBooth 03:22, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

A 2nd opinion
Not noticing this "Talk"/comments section, on my last visit I edited the "Polyfidelity" item. (Since then, it's been largely restored by someone else.) Although that effort went well enough, I'd have rather used this comments space for my opinions --which are intended to be supplementary, rather than corrective, and which require simply talking about my own experiences (which doesn't make a good Wikipedia entry).


 * Most people and most polyamorists define "faithfulness" by the negative consideration of not sharing intimacies outside of a given set of relationships. Maybe I'm alone in my opinions now, but once upon a time my (then) lady and I advocated for a polyfi which defined faithfulness positively --in terms of the keeping, holding and loving of one's others. That assurance of holding on to each other worked well for us as we attempted to develop other relationships, even though our poly/communitarian efforts ended up bitter disappointments.

I hope we can agree that avoiding/minimizing STDs is much more a matter of prudence than it's any kind of a basis for bonding with another person (or not). Let's save that for other practical discussions, like birth control, financial matters, and such.

209.181.51.133 07:04, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, STDs are probably the reason why this type of relationship isn't the norm. Most "morals" and societal patterns like this evolved out of practical difficulties so long ago that everyone's forgotten the original reasons.
 * Compare and contrast with polyamory and fluid bonding. 141.155.10.134 01:12, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Huh? I don't understand this comment.  Polyfidelity *reduces* the risk of STDs (in comparison with non-fidelitous polyamory).  "Morals and societal patterns" like polyfidelity evolved out of practical difficulties?  Practical difficulties with what, monogamy?  "Original reasons" for what?  Are you trying to say that polyfidelity is not the norm because of STDs?  And that morals and societal patterns evolved out of practical difficulties with polyfidelity?  -- DBooth 02:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

"Polyfidelitous"?
The adjective form of "fidelity" is "faithful". Why are we using the ugly and roundabout "polyfidelitous" rather than the elegant and more correct "polyfaithful"? 216.52.69.217 15:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Because the purpose of Wikipedia is not to advocate for subjectively better terminology than is in current usage, but to describe accepted common usage. One can advocate for "polyfaithful" in other places, and if it becomes widespread (on a national or international scale), then enough qualifying sources documenting that usage (eg: books, magazine articles) will eventually arise which can be cited to support adding that usage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.36.130.110 (talk) 04:14, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, "216--217", for "polyfaithful", which I've already started using. Somehow, perhaps because of the heavy influence of Kerista, that term simply didn't occur to me --these past 40 years. Be my guess, it didn't occur to Brother Jud (Jud Presmont) either. / I send a warm embrace to all who enjoy, who have enjoyed, and who've struggled with the poly experience. Such issues of intimacy are at the heart of "intentional community" efforts, whether they're adequately addressed or not. There's no higher calling than enacting a design of how we should live and relate. Craigthing (talk) 05:57, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Nope – sorry. The term polyfidelity is actually properly attributed. Individuals who pop in here and declare that some term is "similar" or somehow "better" without even attempting to provide a credible supporting reference are attempting to impose original research. Appealing to aesthetics or some form of popularity is no better, and I would contend worse by dishonesty.

{Brother Jud --um-- operated Kerista. --Craig} — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.223.199.233 (talk) 21:57, 12 September 2020 (UTC)


 * As with anything else within polyfidelity, having good intentions is not sufficient.


 * Unless polyfaithful and polyexclusivity can be PROPERLY justified, I'm going to remove them and impose conjugations of polyfidelity. Weeb Dingle (talk) 18:55, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
 * These have been removed. Please do not revert without relevant citation. The point of WP is objective truth, not in shaping truth to make people feel better about themselves. Weeb Dingle (talk) 15:57, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Fluid Bonding?
Is this a euphemism for something? At the moment it just redirects to Polymer science. 154.5.119.176 (talk) 06:22, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reporting the problem. I looked it up and it is indeed a euphemism for unprotected sex, per here and here. (Actually, I'm not sure what the non-euphemism would be...) The Wikipedia articles on the topic was recently deleted due to a chronic lack of sources. If some reliable sources could be found then the article might be undeleted. In the meantime, I've added a link to bareback sex and removed the mislinked "see also" entry. We can add more here if there's anything about it in the sources.    Will Beback    talk    06:55, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

confusion remains
Amongst people who consider themselves polyfidelitous, I have encountered some who have stated that since polyfidelity and polyamory "are pretty much the same thing," their vision of polyfidelity therefore can be used to define others' practice of polyamory -- in at least one instance denouncing people undertaking sexual relations without intent of lifelong commitment as "immoral."

As this (in my opinion) flies directly against the mission of any proper encyclopedia, I need to push against that tide of (potentially self-serving) illogic. As I also feel that superficiality haunts many Wikipedia articles and actually prevents any sort of authoritative discussion, I'm going to briefly tear this one apart.

There are questions that may in the end be unanswerable but must in some way be at least publicly mentioned, if not discussed. For instance, is polyfidelity a practice? If so, then people who find the idea interesting but have never actually experienced even a short-lived committed triad aren't polyfidelitous; they should not in any way be considered authoritative in the discussion.

But if polyfidelity is a philosophy, then certainly it can be undertaken not just by those with no actual life experience, but indeed by those who will never actually attempt it and in fact may be purposefully committed to a way of life that explicitly prevents nonmonogamy -- for that matter, may themselves vehemently and publicly condemn all extramarital intimacy (of which sex is but a portion). After all, there's no requirement that someone who "embraces a philosophy" thereby actually applies it to daily life.

Perhaps it is a weltanschauung, a world view. But even that Underhill divides into five categories: "world-perceiving, world-conceiving, cultural mindset, personal world, and perspective."

How are those couples who are actively "seeking" the same as those who aren't? and how is it that hopeful singles are on the same ground as a statutorially married couple? For that matter, how is it that an unattached single person can be the same as one in a "committed" and "monogamous" marriage who secretly harbors hopes of "finding a third"?

Like both polyamory and monogamy, there is no "acid test" for polyfidelity: people are free to grab hold of the term and subsequently do whatever the hell they desire -- even claim that their actions are "part of polyfidelity" -- and there is no clear common set of standards (much less some sort of Standards Committee) that can be applied to establish the utterer's credibility. There is no standardized curriculum, much less any sort of widely accepted basic seminar or such.

There is apparently no established meeting place for those actually involved in polyfidelitous relationships. This suggests a root misapprehension that somehow polyfidelity is an all-correcting mindset, perhaps even a faith not unlike the "salvation of grace" provided by evangelicalism, but rather than coming together in mutual support and to assist one another through inevitable difficulties, those who claim polyfidelityseem dedicated against wider community with peers. As more than one couple has said, "we're only here until we find our third."

Lacking stable definition, there can be no remotely-reliable estimates of how many people "are polyfidelitous."

In the end, the term "polyfidelity" (and its various conjugations and alternatives) is divisive -- in my opinion, its only purpose is to somehow set it off from polyamory even though closed-boundary polyamory is apparently a perfectly acceptable definition. This seems to intentionally (if unconsciously) create an opening for moralizing and a sense of superiority, with no burden to prove any basis.

In the end, my opinion is that any subsequent changes to this article ought to reflect the foregoing screed. Weeb Dingle (talk) 13:37, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

the "fluid bond" superstition
Years ago, a triad created an organization (Polyfidelitous Educational Products) and a newsletter (PEPtalk) as a means of supporting sales of their self-published book, originally known as The Polyfidelity Primer but also appearing as The New Faithful: a polyfidelity primer and Loving More: the polyfidelity primer.

A claim made in the books was Polyfidelity is AIDS-safe! This was in fact a section heading and appeared in page headings.

This claim was problematic, being based in multiple assumptions that have always been blatantly faulty if not outright false... and this foundation reappears in this Polyfidelity article.

The only way that "relative safety regarding STDs" can reflect any faint reality is if two conditions are met: AND
 * everyone involved has NEVER EVER been physically intimate with any other person -- for instance, even being kissed once by Grandma might have passed herpes simplex
 * none of the people involved CAN EVER be physically intimate with any person outside the relational walls.

As an old aphorism has it that "liars lie, cheater cheat." Ongoing polling by NORC finds that today "about 15% to 18% of ever-married people have had a sexual partner other than their spouse while married” and "23 percent of men [have at some point] engaged in sex outside of marriage."

There's also indication that experiencing intimacy outside of (or after) a first committed monogamous relationship will significantly increase likelihood of further (possibly secretive) explorations: "Only 10 percent of married individuals engaged in sex outside of marriage while 23 percent of remarried, 31 percent of currently divorced and 38 percent of currently separated people reported having extramarital sex."

(No, I have no idea how the numbers manage to line up, but NORC can be somewhat byzantine in its logic.)

Unless polyfidelitous people are approaching sainthood, there's little reason to believe other than that almost one-fourth of the males have had extramarital sex, therefore not only are claims to "relative safety" at best questionable, but this likelihood increases with both experience and expanded awareness.

At root, the fact remains that there is no way to establish that any person is "STD free" (consider the occasional hysteria evoked by HPV), so any such claims inherently rely upon self-reporting, and a huge amount of faith. And here a further problem arises: for a number of people (and supposedly increasing), something that is "faith based" is set up as the diametric opposite of "reality based" and in fact made superior by not needing substantiation beyond blind trust -- in a leader, brain trust of elders, ideology, etc.

Just as there are those who believe that claiming to the doctrine of polyamory automatically lends skill at interpersonal communication (often claimed as a core necessity of successful polyamorous relating), there are those who believe that claiming to polyfidelity grants all the benefits including utter lack of STD risk and no worries about extracurricular sex.

I cannot see where "polyfidelity" comes anywhere close to being a substantive ideology. Therefore, it is at best a poor basis for faith -- ironic, considering the term's suffix.

And if (as the article indicates) the primary "advantage" driving people to seek polyfidelity is the belief that it's a main (the only?) route to achieve "fluid bonding" which therefore will make them all "relatively safe regarding STDs"... well, that'd be Wikipedia supporting a lie. Weeb Dingle (talk) 15:06, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

overstatements
New members may generally be added to the group only by unanimous consensus of the existing members, or the group may not accept new members. According to whom, exactly? Without a source, it's conjecture, and likely propaganda. Weeb Dingle (talk) 17:58, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * But I did add an actual link to consensus, though it was tempting to go right to groupthink. Weeb Dingle (talk) 18:03, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

The modern, broader term polyamory was coined later, in the early 1990s. Is this somehow significant to this article? or just a nugget of "gosh wow" trivia? I may cut it. Weeb Dingle (talk) 18:06, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

One commonly cited advantage is ironic seeing as there's no citation to support this otherwise empty claim to commonness. Weeb Dingle (talk) 18:08, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Clarified the Disadvantages blurb and added an actual link to open relationship. Could someone maybe offer at least one credible source to support claims made in this section?? Weeb Dingle (talk) 18:12, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I've removed the last line under Advantages: For some people, polyfidelity, like polyamory, is an identity, not a choice or an action. Justifying any misuse of the term by claiming widespread misuse of another term is intellectually dishonest, at best, essentially claiming that people are free to claim "polyfidelity" then do whatever they wish, which invalidates the entire article. The claim either needs elaboration or to be pointed to an analysis elsewhere, and preferably both. Weeb Dingle (talk) 18:21, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Per comments from User:DBooth (ibid), I am taking under advisement merging Advantages and Disadvantages. Not to give it some equal footing with (say) Monogamy (which perhaps SHOULD have a Disadvantages section), rather that "it's not as flexible" and "it's harder to recruit" applies to practically every offshoot faith, belief, lifestyle, etc. If there's ever discovered a list created by people experienced in polyfidelity as to inherent difficulties of living polyfidelitously, it would certainly belong here. Until then... Weeb Dingle (talk) 13:27, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Only now does it occur to me to ask how exactly is "polyfidelity" different from "group marriage"? Unless someone can make a case that one concept somehow contains the other, I'm getting the feeling they're functionally the same. And if they're inter changeable, then the only interest offered by the term "polyfidelity" is that it's the form of group marriage practiced within Kerista Commune, and therefore maybe queries for the term would more appropriately be redirected to Kerista and Polyfidelity be merged into that. Weeb Dingle (talk) 05:21, 18 April 2017 (UTC)