Comparing Relationship Quality Across Different Types of Romantic Partners in Polyamorous and Monogamous Relationships
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Polyamory is the practice of having multiple emotionally close relationships that may or may not be sexual. Research concerning polyamory has just begun to determine how relationships among partners in polyamorous arrangements may vary. Most of the research assessing perceptions of polyamorous partners has focused on primary-secondary configurations; however, non-hierarchical configurations exist and can involve having multiple primary partners or having only non-primary partners. The current research is the first to examine perceptions of partners and relationship quality in various polyamorous configurations and compares results for each configuration to monogamous partners. Results from online convenience samples suggest that co-primary and non-primary configurations are common among polyamorous participants, with approximately 38% identifying with one of these configurations in 2013 and 55% in 2017. Furthermore, our results suggest that while relationships with partners in co-primary and non-primary structures still differ in some ways (e.g., investment, acceptance, secrecy, time spent having sex), they are closer to their ideals on several psychologically meaningful indicators of relationship quality (e.g., commitment and satisfaction). In other words, despite rejecting hierarchical primary-secondary labels, many of the same relationship qualities differ systematically among partners in non-hierarchical relationships. Furthermore, pseudo-primary partners and primary partners in these relationships are more comparable to monogamous partners than they are to secondary partners. We discuss how these results inform our understanding of polyamorous and monogamous relationships and suggest future directions based on these findings.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".