I agree completely, knufferlein and LennyAngel.

I'm of the same mind as knufferlein. If it's consensual and nobody gets hurt, it doesn't bother me any what they do.

But I am quite monogamous. I am insanely territorial over mine and my husband's bodies, and he's only slightly less jealous than I am. Even if he was alright with us having an open relationship, I'd probably slug the first guy that came near me. XD

Ha ha ha, that is very interesting. I'd love to see a study done where they ask people to rate what drives their monogamous behavior on a scale of 1-10 including categories such as:

Possessiveness
Jealousy
Tradition
Expectations of Society
Upbringing
Religion
Wishing to Maintain a Sense of Chastity
Consideration of Partner
Lack of Interest in More Than One Partner

I'm sure there are more good categories that could give us insight into the differences between people.

Very true. I would just assume that people openly exhibiting polygamous behavior would go opposite on everything, but it certainly would be good to be thorough and ask everyone first hand. Especially since not everyone is open about it.

I'd be very interested in sources for those numbers. O.o Seems like they might be skewed. 80% seems high for the amount of people that would cheat. Was the survey done on a large enough sample size? What was the age/gender variance? Those things make a huge difference.

And, I'm not accusing the OP of doing this, but it does annoy me when people who are poly cite numbers like that and say it's "natural" or "right" for people to be poly and try to tell me that being monogamous really isn't *my* choice, it's the choice society has made for me. I mean, wtf is "natural" anymore? If you've been raised in a culture that emphasizes monogamy, then it's quite possibly that being poly will never actually FEEL natural to you. I'm in a happy monogamous relationship. Maybe someday I'll be poly, maybe I won't. It's not right for them to tell me to be poly any more than it's right for me to tell them NOT to be. (Sorry if that got a bit ranty, but I have a few poly friends who just don't seem convinced that I'm as happy as I could be and it pisses me off...)

As long as everything's consensual and everyone's open about what's going on, then poly, monogamous, swinger, one-night stands, whatever, all are fine. It's when you start lying and deceiving people that I have a problem.

Mine is quite natural. I'm very possessive. What's mine is mine is mine, and I don't like to share. And I really don't have the patience to cook and clean for two men. Next time I'm getting a cat, they make less of a mess.

I think it's already been made very clear that some people are naturally monogamous and that most people are naturally not. Even the survey here confirms that most people are not strictly monogamous and this is a site of mostly females who are notoriously more monogamous than males.

I agree, it's very unfair for people to assume you're only monogamous for one reason or another when it's possibly just your natural setting. I did post links to studies that includes stats such as:

"Out of 238 [human] societies around the world, only 43 are monogamous. And, throughout history there have been reports of wealthy and powerful men having hundreds, if not thousands, of concubines. This was accepted practice in past societies and the children from these unions were all considered legal and could inherit property."

I'll repost them for you:

http://www.livescience.com/32146-are-hu ... amous.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... veals.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 172244.htm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/1 ... 87009.html

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... y-research

http://www.healthcentral.com/sexual-hea ... -supposed/

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/ ... n/1000085/

One of those does go into detail about why monogamy is more prevalent in certain societal circumstances. Things including lack of resources and a prevalence of men who kill kids in order to have more mating opportunities and more resources for their own. It's possible that certain monogamous genes became more prevalent in areas where this was an issue because more children of monogamous people would have survived. One also goes into how weaker men would have preferred monogamous women because their children would have had a higher chance of survival and a higher likelihood of being theirs. It seems to be a trait more specific to europe. Even so, europe is not historically known for it's overall monogamy. Very interesting stuff in these scientific articles from the experts.

Personally, I would be okay with an open relationship, where the people involved are free to be with others, but I would not be okay if only one person could be with multiple people, if that makes any sense? That might just be me though. *shrugs* Like I've thought about this whole thing before, and this is the conclusion that I've come to.

But yeah, I have to go with the main idea that as long as it's consensual, it's okay.