The Polyamorous Community’s Perfectionism Problem
The polyamorous community has a problem with holding itself to an impossible ethical standard, to the point where even genuine and honest mistakes (especially by newbies) are seen as such a PR disaster to the community that people are eating each other from the inside.
Ask yourself: what/who does all this infighting and shaming serve? Why are you more concerned with how monogamous people might perceive you, than the human beings who are just trying to learn and grow right in front of you?
Being polyamorous comes with stigma. People assume that if you're polyamorous, you have commitment issues, are sexually irresponsible, untrustworthy, insecure...the list goes on. If you're going through a polyamorous breakup, people will assume it was because you were polyamorous and "polyamorous relationships never work out", rather than looking at the compatibility of the people in the relationship like they would if you were monogamous. Therefore, some polyamorous people feel pressure to hide their struggles, breakups, or the less positive parts of polyamory so as not to "prove the haters right", and to perform "better" than our monogamous counterparts who don't experience the same scrutiny.
But...we're all human, and humans make mistakes. I've noticed that this pressure for all of us to "prove" that polyamorous relationships CAN be positive and healthy, has led to this idea that we MUST be happy, healthy, secure, and drama-free ALL THE TIME. This isn't realistic, especially if you're already working against a monogamous paradigm and unlearning stuff, and also simply because humans are messy and conflicts inevitably happen in all kinds of connections, even healthy ones. But I've found many folks have become less supportive, less forgiving, and less empathetic with each other, because they're obsessed with a mistake, however unintentional, "making us look bad".
This is nuanced - there are genuine bad actors out there who we don't want to associate ourselves with, but let's make more room for grace and compassion for honest mistakes. Ask questions and be curious rather than casting judgment. Inform people and give them resources to change rather than shaming them for doing things wrong. We're here to support each other, not to position ourselves as morally/ethically superior. Otherwise, what is community for?
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