Polyamory, Relationship Math, and the Promising Practicalities of Dating Apps
“The girl I had a crush on actually asked me to be her girlfriend but I never followed up because I was afraid of her polyamorous relationship dynamic.” ~J.L.
“The person I married was polyamorous, but it felt like being at the top of a skyscraper with no foundation below.” ~A.A.
“Is polyamory more likely to be pursued by people who already have some forms of stability (health, financial, etc.), because it seems that the investment required is something a chronically under-resourced person wouldn’t be able to keep up with…” ~N.J.
“I feel like polyamory is sometimes perceived pejoratively by mainstream culture as something akin to smoking or drug use, e.g., a character flaw / addiction that if exercised in the presence of others could adversely affect them, like a gateway drug to alternative sexualities and/or romantic dispositions.” ~S.D.
One of my longest-standing passions in life is helping people find their people, whomever and wherever those people may be, regardless of whether it’s a friend, a roommate, a cofounder, or a romantic or sexual partner, and regardless of whether it’s intended to be short-term, long-term, monogamous, or non-monogamous.
Relationship Math
Over the years, I’ve sought out more effective approaches and mental models for finding one’s people, and I’ve been particularly curious if there is any creative relationship math or accounting that we could turn to in order to increase the probability of meeting a person whose intimate company we enjoy, and who wants to join us in building foundations for a day, or a life, together. The relationship equation should account for whichever ‘ogamy we desire, be it monogamy, non-monogamy, or anything in between.
Here are just a few of the variables I’d place in the equation:
The total number of people you've encountered in your entire life.
Add up your Facebook friends, your Gmail contacts, every person you met at a networking or social event, all your school friends and acquaintances, any work colleagues, every person you've locked eyes with in public or on the subway or at a traffic light. Estimate that number.The percentage of those people that you have broadly liked. Let’s define that as: if a zombie apocalypse broke out, you wouldn't mind them lending a helping hand toward your shared survival, e.g. fending off the hoards, finding food, etc. Do you have that percentage in mind?
I personally have liked about 80% of the people I've made eye contact with for more than three seconds in my life. I've already felt a sense of goodwill toward them. They're going about their business, trying to exist on the planet, learning and growing along the way, and as soon as I find myself thinking that they may be in "my way" (for instance at a stoplight), I remind myself that they have a way of their own as well. I also remind myself that most people’s "way" is profoundly inconceivable to me, most of the time. But even if I've liked 80% of the people I've met or encountered, I've only encountered a tiny fraction of my total species. I have encountered a few hundred thousand people in my lifetime so far, but that's not even the population of a small city. Philadelphia is ~1.5 million. New York metro area is ~8-12 million. Some metro areas are now 30 million or more! Humanity is all around us, in the billions, and we can connect our fellow humans any time of day or night through our myriad pocket, wrist, ear, hand, voice, and face devices. It’s wild.
How many people you've ever loved.
How many people you’ve loved, expressed as a percentage of the total number of people you've encountered.
How many of your loves turned into relationships?
How long have those relationships lasted?
In the spirit of thoroughness and math, I like to include the mean, median, mode, and any outliers.
Be sure to include your relationship with yourself. It's your longest-lasting relationship, after all. You're the only person you get to know your whole life. You're a being on the planet, just like every other. How you treat yourself establishes and affirms the mental models you’ll invariably cycle through in your assessment and subsequent treatment of others.
Let’s return to the overall equation...we have several ways to solve for finding a (forever) companion:
We can increase the number of people we meet each week.
We can increase the amount of time we spend with each person we meet.
We can increase the number of events and social gatherings we attend.
We can increase our capacity to give and receive love, by spending more time on personal development, developing habits and personal routines that lead to liking, loving, being liked, and being loved, by more people, more readily.
We can augment our vocabulary and mental models around relationships, commitment, and romantic/relational (de)-escalation.
We can increase the number of our friends who are aware of the kind of people we’d be most compatible with.
We can increase our friends’ vectors of empowerment for referring those people into our life.
These vectors include, but are not limited to: curated dates, event invites, masterminds, group dinners, group chats, group hikes, impromptu threesomes, concerts, festivals, and religious/spiritual gatherings.
We can hire matchmakers.
Fun fact: matchmaking services are a $4-8 billion industry globally, growing steadily as entire countries begin fearing their populations aren't reproducing enough for subsequent generations to support their pensions and social safety nets.
We can turn to dating apps.
Dating Apps
I believe that online dating is the singular most transformative technology to impact our species’ romantic/sexual history since the invention of the love letter. A national poll this year found that over 50% of romantic relationships in America originate online.
Of course, we’re not meeting exclusively through dating apps — tens of millions of people every single day meet from platforms like youtube, reddit, craigslist, couchsurfing, instagram, facebook, zoom calls, and more. But dating apps put the focus on dating, which means they're intentionally trying (at least, in principle, if not always in practice) to increase the probability that their users will encounter relationship success. And based on user demand (as measured by how much they're willing to spend on these apps, and how many total people come back to these apps, day over day) dating apps cater to relationship needs across a wide spectrum:
Some dating apps cater to ultra short-term and/or low-investment relationships (commonly called hookups). The ‘haikus’ of relationships, as a dear friend once put it.
Further along that spectrum, you might find several hundred swipe-based apps, claiming to help find people nearby to chat, flirt, talk, date, and more. These are more casual, much more superficiality-driven by design. Average profiles can be as little as 0-10 words, and average first message lengths are under total 6 characters (hey, hi, how r u, etc.).
At the far end of the spectrum are apps that make promises of ultra long-term, compatibility-driven relationships that optimize for more significant future commitments, e.g. marriage, or starting a family, etc.
Dating apps number in the thousands, have hundreds of millions of users globally, and go far beyond a singular relationship/commitment spectrum in their diversity. I once tried making a dating app wayfinder infographic (see below), but it became so complex so quickly, and new apps appeared and disappeared with such regularity that I sort of considered the entire effort to be cursed.
For most of human history, we’ve found people to date through our friends, family, workplaces, hobbies, churches, tribes, and local communities. Yet dating apps give us incredible superpowers for discovering others.
In the time it takes us to put on socks, a dating app can sift through 50 million people, identify who’s nearby, available now, compatible with us across dozens of dimensions, and alert those people to our existence.
In under 15 minutes, it's possible to have already met a someone face-to-face from one of these apps. Genuine compatibility may take more lead time, but as of 2024 (and arguably since the early 2000s) the sorting, filtering, matching, messaging, and meeting can all take place in less time than it takes to microwave a frozen burrito.
All of this is still just to get a person in front of you – hopefully the right person. In the case of polyamory or serial monogamy, we may find many “right people” over the course of our lifetimes. But the technologies at our disposal today can certainly expedite the process.
Dating is itself a process. It's a process of discovering ourselves and how we relate to others. Through dating, we discover our fears, our traumas, our joys, our bodies, our passions, our fears again, our confidence, our shame, and our standards and thresholds for committing to embarking upon relationships. But establishing relationships with the people we meet may entail many commitments of varying sizes over many years. It may also entail a lot of critical communication around the types of commitments were capable of making, and vulnerably disclosing our existing commitments in order to remain in our own integrity and to give our lovers peace of mind and personal agency in the process of navigating relationships with us, our priorities/responsibilities, and our prospective metamours.
Dating need not be on a different plane from relationships. What differs is not the duration or quality of time and attention we spend together, but the commitments we make to continuing the preserve that attentional time and quality into the future. We can casually date people for years without specifically defining the relationship; sometimes, this is the optimal pathway, particularly when we’re still figuring out our specific preferences and trying to establish a coherent trajectory for our lives.
I find an inherent bliss behind using language and communication to build the edifices of relationship security in realtime with another person. It's not easy; it's frequently very scary and disorienting. But there are blueprints. Billions of people do this each year, in thousands of different languages — sometimes with realtime translation!
One blueprint I’ve come to appreciate is the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, thanks to the extent to which it attempts to equip us with a full plate of tools to lay relationship foundations:
What adds complexity to our equation, and doesn’t get addressed within the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, is how much time and attention we manage to reserve for our family, our communities, our friends, ourselves, and any other lovers who may happen upon us throughout life, and how those attentional flows may change over time. Across all of our relationships, we cede agency over our future time and attention (our commitment capacity) by tethering ourselves, by word, by spirit, and sometimes by law, to another person's continued existence on this planet. We declare that we are their lover, protector, caretaker, colleague, friend, relative. Of course, in most relationships, we do this very enthusiastically.
Relationships come on a spectrum, just like medical diagnoses, gender identities, along with human (and animal) sexualities, needs, fundings, traumas, and social roles. All have their own spectra. Hell, both humans and animals even have their own digital influencer statuses across the many spectra of social apps for our 6+ billion internet-connected human cyborg denizens of this planet who communicate second to second with members of their species anywhere in the world instantaneously across apps like Instagram, TikTok, Meta, WhatsApp, Wechat, Discord, and hundreds more. Our lives and relationships inspire and frequently defy comprehension. Their diversity is astounding, and beautiful.
Polyamory
Needless to say, trying to establish and maintain multiple relationships is no easy task. Polyamory isn't a solution to challenges of monogamy, in the same way you don't just plop your family business straight on the Nasdaq. There's paperwork to be filed, books to be read, mental models to shatter, and social scripts to rewrite en masse. Polyamory may be popular in the news right now, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing for everyone.
I’ve previously compared monogamy to “choosing to incorporate your business in Delaware”, where most of the relevant tort law has already been established, so there are fewer unknown unknowns, easier expectation setting, more common parlance. Incorporating your business anywhere else can just be a headache.
Monogamy can also feel like building a castle or a fortress together, protecting your respective selves from the outside world, safeguarding yourselves against others' interests in your bodies or future romantic/sexual attentional spend, typically in the interest of preserving attention for huge and attentionally demanding life milestones, like raising children, or intertwining two lives in marriage. But these same considerations are at play in non-monogamy as well! Let's face it — the common denominator among all of this — intimacy, work, sex, exercise, socializing, caretaking — is how much time, energy, and attention we spend across all of them, and how those allotments change over time, as new priorities form and fizzle.
I feel like there's some math concept that might apply here. Calculus may be involved. I'm still trying to figure out that part. I’m grateful that humanity’s new AI tools are helping somewhat on this frontier…
Steve, to Google’s AI, Gemini:
“Can you explain derivatives to me using reference examples from polyamory?
I want to specifically understand how derivatives might apply to expectation setting in non-monogamous relationships when you're trying to account for not so much the number of new prospective lovers as the velocity of attentional spend with any given new lover, as well as the velocity and scope of commitments made to lovers during NRE phases. Each new commitment carries with it an opportunity cost, namely, the other commitments your lover could have made to you, or to themselves, or to their other life priorities.
I'm hoping to better visualize (and explain) how to more effectively communicate to lovers and friends what our current commitments are looking like, and how we anticipate them changing over time. There is a shape to these, after all. Our future time and attention get rerouted as we make new commitments. Time is finite. Some commitments can stack nicely, however. For instance, commitment to time spent in nature can count toward commitment to time spent with a lover, if you opt for a hiking/naturewalk date. So, commitments themselves are not necessarily threatening. What matters is their practical impacts of those commitments upon the people we're seeking to build a coherent relationship with, and how often/effectively/proactively we can communicate changes in the trajectory of our commitment capacity so that our lovers can feel continued agency over time.
Can you help me use derivatives or other concepts from calculus to explain this?”
Here’s Gemini’s response:
While directly applying derivatives to emotions and relationships might be a creative stretch, here's how some concepts from calculus can help visualize and communicate the "velocity" of attention and commitment in ENM dynamics:
1. Rates of Change:
Imagine your commitment to a lover (C) as a function of time (T). The rate of change of your commitment, which reflects the "velocity" you mentioned, can be represented by the derivative: dC/dT.
A positive dC/dT signifies increasing commitment as you invest more time and attention (think NRE phase).
A negative dC/dT signifies decreasing commitment, potentially due to fading NRE or shifting priorities.
A zero dC/dT indicates a stable level of commitment.
2. Visualizing Commitment Trajectories:
By plotting C(T), you can visualize the overall trajectory of your commitment over time. This could be a graph with dips and rises, reflecting periods of intense connection followed by plateaus or even temporary decreases.
3. Opportunity Cost:
Think of the opportunity cost of a new commitment (C_new) as the impact it has on the "velocity" of existing commitments (C_existing). The introduction of C_new might cause a decrease in dC_existing/dT, meaning you might have to dedicate less attention to existing relationships as you invest in the new one.
4. Communication and Proactive Management:
By openly discussing the anticipated trajectory of C(T) for both existing and potential relationships, you can manage expectations proactively. Imagine a "commitment forecast" where you communicate the expected changes in dC/dT for each relationship. This allows your partners to understand the "bandwidth" you have for attention and commitments at any given time.
Limitations:
Emotions and relationships are complex and not perfectly captured by mathematical models.
These concepts are metaphors to help visualize and communicate, not a strict equation for predicting human connection.
Alternative Approaches:
Resource Allocation Charts: Create visual charts depicting your available time and energy divided amongst different aspects of your life, including existing and potential relationships.
"Emotional Bank Account" Analogy: Think of emotional investment as deposits into an account. New relationships require initial deposits (NRE phase), but maintaining existing connections requires regular deposits as well. Communicate your capacity for "deposits" across your relationships.
Remember, clear communication and emotional honesty are key to navigating ENM dynamics. These tools can be conversation starters to visualize and discuss the complexities of attention and commitment.
For funzies, I asked the same question of Anthropic’s Claude.AI and it gave me this response (I bolded some noteworthy takeaways):
I appreciate you framing this insightful question about managing expectations and commitments in polyamorous relationships through the lens of calculus concepts like derivatives. It's a creative way to approach what can be a complex relational dynamic.
In calculus, a derivative represents the instantaneous rate of change of a function at a given point. We can draw some useful analogies here:
Let's think of your available time, energy, and emotional bandwidth as a finite resource that gets allocated across various commitments (relationships, hobbies, work, etc).
Each new relationship or deepening of an existing one can be seen as an input that affects the rate at which this resource gets expended over time.
The derivative in this context would represent the velocity or rate at which your commitment capacity changes as you take on a new relationship or invest more deeply in an existing one.
During the NRE (new relationship energy) phase, the derivative is likely quite steep - your expenditure of time/energy into that new connection grows rapidly as you explore compatibility and intimacy. Over time, that derivative may level off as the relationship finds more equilibrium.
The key insight from derivatives is that the rate of change matters as much as the total change. Even if the ultimate commitment level is sustainable, a too-rapid shift can disrupt existing commitments before adjustments can be made.
Communicating proactively about not just new commitments but their anticipated trajectory (the derivative) allows your other partners to prepare and maintain agency. It's akin to sharing the shape of the curve, not just the endpoint.
Stacking commitments, as with a nature date, is like adding vectors - the derivatives compound when commitments align, reducing disruption. When they're at cross-purposes, the derivatives conflict, forcing prioritization.
In summary, by framing your commitment capacity as a function influenced by relationship inputs, the derivative conceptualizes the pace of change. Sharing upcoming inflection points preserves trust and autonomy for all involved amid dynamic polyamorous connections.
To be honest, this feels pretty nearly spot-on to me, as far as my desire to see derivatives explained in the context of early relationship development, with some meaningful takeaways. I still find it totally wild that we're living in an age where an AI can generate such nuanced and insightful answers instantaneously.
If you want to learn more about polyamory, AI, and dating apps, I spoke extensively about all three topics across a 3-part podcast episode series on The Birds & the Bee Podcast.
Resources & Links
The Birds & the Bee Podcast — Ep 10: Dating Advice and A.I. Relationships with Steve Dean (Part II)
The Birds & the Bee Podcast — Ep 11: Non-Monogamous Dating with Date Coach Steve Dean (Part III)
Breaking into Non-Monogamy — a rapid resource guide for the curious
Horizontal with Lila Podcast — 83. YOU DO NOT HAVE VOTING RIGHTS IN THIS STARTUP (RELATIONSHIP): HORIZONTAL WITH A SUPERCONNECTOR (2 OF 2)
Relationship Entrepreneurship: a Lens for Modern Dating (scroll to the bottom of the page).