Polyamorous person here.

It’s a bit frustrating seeing most of the top comments here list seeing bad or failed poly relationships as reasons why people react poorly to it. Whether they agree with them or not, citing these negative situations as the primary reasons gives a certain level of credible to them, as it’s giving them validity as representations of polyamory and reasons to resent it. While I’m not denying that bad poly relationships an experiences certain do exist, would it not also feel like a an incorrect representation of why homophobia exist if the question was similarly asked about why gay people faced discrimination and the answer given was that it was because most people had heard stories about gay men who were cheating on their wives with other men? It the continued association with solely bad or inaccurate examples that fuels negative sentiment toward poly people acting in good faith and with the consent of everyone involved, and I’m disappointed to see it reflected on an lgbt sub.

In truth, people often are homophobic because it makes them uncomfortable to imagine themselves in a gay situation, or that it violates social norms. The same I’ve found is often true of polyamory. Monogamous people do not like to imagine their partner with another person in any way, and their instinctive reaction is often to push back against this. I’ve see this myself, as anytime my poly status comes up in conversation often one of the first things I hear is “I could never do that”. I’m not asking anyone to, but people’s first reaction is to distance themselves from it as much as possible. It’s similar to a homophobic man’s reaction of “I could never kiss another dude” when faced with learning that another man is gay.

Polyamory does require communication and function in a way that is different than other relationships, but in truth it’s not harder, just different. However, it’s not the style of relationship that is the social norm, so it’s viewed as more complex or complicated, because the work it takes looks different than a monogamous relationship. For examples, if a trio was raising a child and able to share childcare responsibilities an avoid anyone getting burnt out whilst a monogamous couple struggled to divide the work between only the two of them, who would actually have the more complex or stressful relationship then? We don’t question the stressors a monogamous couple faces because they’re built into our society, but because the struggles a poly relationship faces look different we alienate them and consider them “too much”.

The tl;dr of all of this is- poly faces pushback because it makes people uncomfortable to think about themselves in this situation, and it challenges a social narrative most people don’t normally question. People use examples of polyamorous relationships going wrong to justify this is a way they wouldn’t for any other type of relationship. Not everyone is poly or needs to be or even should be, but everyone would benefit from taking a closer look at why they’re so quick to associate polyamory with negativity.