Geoffrey MillerVerified account

It's evolutionary, which doesn't mean it's good. Before birth control, if a woman cheated, her man might end up raising another man's child. Women face different risks, like abandonment while pregnant or with kids. This is why male and female jealousy is so different. https://twitter.com/R2daOH/status/963115716361601025 …

Darwinian pacifists: 'Hey, we could use cultural innovations to minimize the harmful effects of aggressive anger!' Everyone: Yay! Darwinian polyamorists: 'Hey, we could use cultural innovations to minimize the harmful effects of sexual jealousy!' Everyone: Wut?

How did come to the conclusion that “polyamory” generally reduces sexual jealousy? This isn’t what I hear from members of of the poly community, who spend far more time on communication to reduce the likelihood of jealousy.

Open relationships build jealousy-management skills in a way that monogamy doesn't. This is a complicated issue, and there's not much good research on it yet. What there is, I reviewed in my recent class on poly: https://www.primalpoly.com/s/syllabus-draft-june11.docx …

Don’t disagree that it build jealousy-management skills but it does it largely by increasing exposure to situations where you’re likely to encounter jealousy. It’s essentially exposure therapy.

If I have acrophobia, I can better come terms with it by exposing myself to heights repeatedly. That doesn’t, however, suggest that I’m suddenly better off than someone who is still acrophobic but never finds themselves exposed to heights.

I’d speculate that in fact, the person who has removed the phobia stimulus entirely is less likely suffer than the person who has learned how to cope with the phobia but still deliberately exposes them self to the stimulus.