“I am speaking over Zoom to Luke Brunning, a philosopher at the University of Leeds whose research focuses on relationships. He is explaining an idea he called the “paradox of prevalence”. “It’s such a common experience to feel attraction to more than one person at a time romantically, it’s something that perhaps most people have experienced,” he tells me. “And yet there’s a kind of social taboo on that. It’s something that’s very easy for people to be interested in and to be outraged by and to be afraid of.” The shame and guilt that we are encouraged to feel about desire for others is perhaps one of the reasons that monogamy has remained the default form of relationship for so long. Plus of course, the socioeconomic factors: society is still overwhelmingly set up to favour the monogamous couple as a unit: in housing, in legal rights, right down to getting cheaper train tickets as a pair.” https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/society/62157/from-open-relationships-to-polycules-polyamory-is-monogamy-over