But it is how people should all react to their emotions. It's how emotionally mature and self-responsible people behave - which frankly isn't most people. The fact that our culture largely doesn't support that is a huge problem. We're even taught by monogamy that jealousy equates to real love, and that it's someone else's job to manage that - not us.
All relationship paradigms and subcultures have fundamental precepts. Kink communities believe in "safe, sane, and sober" for example. They believe that on-going active consent is imperative. That doesn't mean every single person engaged in kink follows that all of the time but it is the widely accepted ethos of that subculture nevertheless. If the people you know and read about aren't following the precepts of polyamory, then that's the issue right there in a nutshell.
In monogamy these are about an expectation of exclusivity, ownership, and control. In polyamory, there is absolute freedom to co-create your relationships in any way you see fit, at long as that is done openly, with honesty, and by taking responsibility for your own emotions. As I said before, most people aren't up for that, even amongst those who claim to be poly because it's a lot of work, and largely goes against everything about how most people were raised to think about relationships in a monogamy oriented culture. Most of the time, problems arise in polyamory because people are trying to live out the monogamy paradigm with multiple people and it doesn't work - because the fundamental precepts are different .
My husband and I were happily monogamous for 20 years before we decided to open up and become poly. We had a very close relationship with good communication all those years - or so we thought until suddenly we had to really up our game when we went poly. When there are no preset rules that everyone knows to fall back on as with monogamous marriage, suddenly you have to discuss and negotiate absolutely everything. It's way, way more communication than even people in very healthy well-functioning monogamous relationships have to do, simply because there is no inherent structure for you to rely on. It has to constantly be invented together. And that isn't always easy, but it does lead to a lot of intimacy because you've had to be vulnerable to each other in a way that most people (even really close and happy people) mostly haven't had to do in monogamy.
I'm not saying that poly people are necessarily better or stronger. A lot of people who attempt to engage in poly are fuck-ups or simply don't know better. But the relationship paradigm itself is healthier than one based in control and co-dependency. And in theory, a couple could stay monogamous and engage in all of these same precepts - but the fact is, overwhelmingly they don't. They just engage in the same old relationship structure that their parents and grandparents did and then they wonder why they aren't as happy as they could be, or why their relationship is stale 7 years in.
It sounds like the people you know who think they are engaged in polyamory aren't really. They're just doing monogamy with more people and then wondering why it doesn't work out so great. They aren't engaged in the fundamental precepts of a different kind of relationship structure. Which is why this all sounds like bunk to you, I think. But those people aren't really poly, just as the people the author described in the OP weren't really poly. Just as someone isn't truly a part of the kink community if they don't believe in the generally accepted parameters of that, someone isn't truly poly if they don't buy into and try to live the generally accepted parameters of that relationship style.
Look, I don't really expect that I'm going to change your mind but it is kind of interesting that you are so sure you know more about this from the outside looking in than people who actually live quite happily like this. It's as if we can't possibly know what we're talking about regarding our own personal lived experiences. It's almost as though you think we're making it up somehow, which just kind of makes me chuckle. Sure, people are human beings with human foibles, many of which are exacerbated by living in a culture based in a dominance hierarchy which constantly pits us against each other in order to gain rank and pecking order. But that's a social system - it's not "natural human behavior." Embrace a different kind of social system, and there's a lot more room for different kinds of behaviors. Contemporary Western relationships are not the only sort that exist or the only sort that have ever existed. In fact, they're only a few thousand years old where they do occur - and that is hardly universal worldwide even today. Open your mind up to that reality and the rest of this becomes more digestible.
"In most of rural Africa children wander in and out of the homes of unrelated adults in their villages, where they are treated as family. This stems from a more community-oriented lifestyle in general, but also from a lack of concern for parentage because sexual exclusivity is not prioritized. In fact, in some cultures, it is considered downright stingy."
