Theorycrafting the Ideal Polycule
We recently came across an article stating that happily married couples tend to do better financially in the long-run than everyone else. Upon further examination, the situation is not quite so simple. It depends on a variety of specific factors whether or not marriage is actually a better financial decision than, for example, merely living together. However, this got us thinking: if a relationship between two people is good economically, would a relationship between more than two people be even better?
Without access to data, all of this analysis can only ever stand as a hypothesis, or an opportunity for experimentation. We can only hope that generations from now, data will be available to confirm or deny these ideas. Moreover, given our current laws surrounding marriage, in most situations it is impossible to marry multiple people at once (& thereby gain benefits). How does a polycule file taxes? Very carefully!
Before we begin, we have to define our terms. First of all, this analysis is rooted primarily in economics, in terms of both efficient use of resources as well as financial gain. Moreover, we are defining “polycule” as a group of people where each member is in an active romantic relationship with each of the other members. Let’s begin with the size of the polycule.
The Ideal Size
The first question that we have to tackle will determine everything else, which is important. How many people ought to be in the ideal polycule? Our lower limit, of course, is 3, as I am hesitant to consider a couple a polycule, though it’s certainly possible. Our upper limit is twelve, because according to an economics textbook it’s impossible for twelve people in a room to agree on everything. Beyond these limits, what more can we determine?
Well, it makes sense for the number of members of the polycule to be even, as an odd number of members suggests that, in any situation where the polycule must break up into couples (e.g. rides at Disneyland), there will be an odd one out. This may add unnecessary strain on the relationship, which affects the probability of continuous commitment.
Then we have the actual amount of space that a polycule needs to live. In order to gain the full benefits of marriage, they ought to live together, as sharing rent/food/utility costs greatly lessens the strain. However, this also means that they need room in a house to live and sleep. Beds take up space, and at best you can fit three people on a bed comfortably, but even that is rare. So, we have to assume two individuals to a bed. Since most rooms can only fit one bed, that means that a given polycule needs one room per two people. Plus one if they want kids.
If your polycule is too big, then it limits your living options. Apartments with more than two or three rooms are extremely expensive (perhaps even above and beyond what is likely for the polycule), so the most stable option would likely be 4 or 6 people. It is possible to find a 2 or 3 bedroom living space in most places. Any more than that and the issue of space becomes especially pressing, in our opinion, and may require too many concessions from other members to work out.
Division of Labor
A group of people that decides to divide the work that needs to be done is supposedly more efficient than a group of people who all do pretty much the same thing. Therefore, the ideal polycule would have division of labor. However, how ought this division of labor come about?
First, we need an idea of what kinds of jobs are actually involved in housemaking. These can be sorted into two main categories: earning money to pay for expenses on the one hand (income-earners), and keeping the house running smoothly on the other (home-makers). These roles cannot easily be switched, as their skillsets are fundamentally different. As such, when building the polycule in the first place, care must be paid to what role members wish to take in the household before they join on. Someone being stuck with a job that they don’t like is a recipe for stress and eventual exit.
In order to increase stability, there should be more income-earners than home-makers. That way, if one loses their job (temporarily or not), there’s plenty of leeway. This means a 3-1 split for a 4-person polycule and a 4-2 split for a 6-person polycule. However, in a 4-person arrangement, this puts quite a bit of stress on the odd person out to take care of the house: cooking, cleaning, arranging repairs, grocery shopping, and keeping up with the day-to-day logistics of the home. If children are included, then this becomes even more salient. One person dedicating all of their time and energy to taking care of children is very hard! In this arrangement, then, the other three members of the polycule must make time to assist in some amount of home-making. This makes the 6-person polycule slightly more attractive. Two people sharing care of the home, with four incomes, creates a lot of leeway.
Having several income-earners takes the stress of money off of each individual. Meanwhile, having someone dedicated to home-making guarantees that things will not fall into complete disarray. This is an advantage of a polycule over just having roommates: you may share expenses with roommates, but who wants to clean up after them? And it’s not weird for your husband to come into your room and collect your trash or dirty dishes, while it would be weird for your roommate to do so.
The Money Shot: Commitment & Love
The most important thing by far seems to be a commitment between multiple parties to be together forever. This commitment is represented by marriage itself, but its economic certainty is revealed in the financial status of divorced parties. The general trend is for divorce to negatively impact a person’s financial situation, and so it ought to be avoided at all costs.
This makes the ideal polycule very difficult to develop, as it needs to be stable enough that every individual can stay pleased with the relationship so that it stays an economic benefit. This mean that, ideally, it is a machine that never quits. The moment that the boat is rocked and someone leaves, the apparent economic windfalls disappear with them. The reasons for this are multiple: their share of finances disappear which changes the economics of the household and, more generally, it forces everyone else involved to reconsider their position within the unit! Break-ups are generally difficult to go through and one person exiting a polycule means multiple break-ups at once.
A 4-person polycule is less likely to break-up, as it only has to maintain six relationships. A 6-person polycule must maintain fifteen unique relationships! Despite adding only two individuals, that more than doubles the complexity of the polycule! If we reframe our upper limit as a limit on unique relationships, then the 6-person polycule becomes seemingly impossible… unless we update our understanding of a polycule to include situations where some members are not actively involved with every other member, but at least tolerate them. This seems much more possible, so long as jealousy and other romantic impulses don’t get in the way. However, it means that our ideal polycule loses out on the allure of the idea of a bunch of people in love. If our primary goal is to be economic about our living situation, why bring love into it at all unless it actually adds something to the equation? In our opinion it does, so a polycule that lacks love between all parties may suffer in the long run.
Under these guidelines, a 3-person polycule seems a very attractive option as well. It would have only three unique relationships. However, care would have to be taken to ensure that every member was given equal attention, and there would have to be some solution to the Disneyland roller coaster problem. With only two incomes, a loss of one income would put strain on finances unless they lived well within their means or one of the income-earners made an extreme amount of money. Then there’s the problem of living space, where equality suggests one room per person, which is relatively expensive, or all three of them in a singular room, which is extremely cramped (though this depends on the actual architecture of the space, three people in a studio may fit comfortably for example). It’s hard to imagine this as an ideal scenario, with so many practical problems to figure out, but it certainly can be done, and has been done. So it gets a special mention here at the end.
Overall, our ideal polycule has 4, or 6 members, with a majority of them income-earners. They’re deeply in love with one another, but are willing to be broken apart into couples in order to share beds or roller coaster cars. They’ve all specialized in different skill sets so that they’ve min-maxed their potential as a group, but they’re willing to pick up the slack of each other where possible. We haven’t talked about the possible downsides of this arrangement at all, but problems such as ensuring an exit strategy for each member ought to be worked out if such an experiment were to be tried.
Does such a group exist? Please let us know. Could this model be generalized to how to best run a home or other group? Yes, it’s possible, but it would require explicit agreements between members of the household and a level of comfort which is difficult to find. With a 44% divorce rate, it seems impossible to forge even one single committed relationship, let alone six. Even true love may be too rare to develop a polycule of the required size. For now, we have no choice but to act as mad scientists, exploring the fields of love to our hearts’ content.