EA - Polyamory and dating in the EA community by va

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Polyamory and dating in the EA community, published by va on February 13, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Thank you to everyone who read this, commented and gave suggestions. This is very much an “it takes a village” kind of post. I’d love to hear more experiences to form a fuller picture- you can share your thoughts in the comments, or fill out this anonymous form. If I have capacity, I’ll aim to incorporate additions over the next few months. At the very least, I will share comments from the form as they come in (if I notice there are details that may de-anonymize folks I might remove those details).Please engage kindly in the comments on this post. I know that the topics raised here are going to be really important to a lot of people, but I do have faith in our community’s ability to have productive discussions on this topic.Why am I writing this?I’m writing this post because I feel there is (or was) an elephant in the room when it comes to discussions of polyamory (poly) in EA and adjacent forums that have largely focused on the Bay Area, and its implications for the EA community. I want to talk openly about my experiences as a woman who is poly and living in the Bay area. I’ve observed a number of conversations recently (and over the past year) where people have discussed issues in the community and specifically poly in misleading, confusing and sometimes hurtful ways. This frustrates me - I want people to make informed decisions on their involvement with the EA community based on accurate information. This post aims to inform people about poly in an approachable way, and discuss the challenges of polyamory in the EA community.For some context about me - I was monogamous for many years, and have been poly for some time now. I don’t think poly is right for everyone, and I’m not sure if it will always be right for me. I’m conflicted about my own role in complicating this issue, as someone who has (had) relationships with people in the community. The content in this post is based on my personal experiences (being monogamous and polyamorous), anecdotal observations and conversations with other (mostly highly engaged) community members. I also shared this post with several people who I think engaged in thoughtful discussions on the topic in the past (naturally, mistakes are mine).I hope this post will be a step on the path towards a more careful, thoughtful and kind community. This post aims to inform people about poly in an approachable way, and discuss the challenges of polyamory as far as I have experience including in the Bay-based EA community.I’m writing anonymously because 1) not everyone in my social network knows I am poly and 2) I expect that for at least some career paths I’m considering being openly poly and/or talking about it could make it harder to succeed in that domain.What is polyamory in the context of EA communities?If you’re unfamiliar with polyamory, I’ve written a very brief background with some common terminology in the appendix for reference.Most people in the EA community are not poly. Poly is most common (and sometimes assumed) in the Bay Area EA community where I’ve heard an estimate that maybe 60% of EAs are poly. The EA community in the Bay overlaps a lot with the rationality community, where poly is also fairly common. Some reviewers of this post suggested that early members of the rationality community thought people were monogamous by default, and if people designed their relationships intentionally a lot more people would be poly - see this 2010 LessWrong post and discussion as an example.Polyamory is fairly common in the Bay Area, but it’s more prevalent in the EA and rationalist communities than the Bay Area average. A higher percentage of the most engaged EAs are poly than the average in the community, and many eng...