Man, I wish I had kept stats!! It would be so interesting now....
Psychologically, fear of punishment is a stronger motivator than desire for reward. It exaggerates our response to "I don't like you anymore" type responses out of proportion to the reality of the math.
This is my memory at work, and subject to a few disclaimers on that score, but I think the ladies would back me here:
We have spoken with hundreds (say 2-300) of people about our lifestyle. I could count on my two hands the number of extremely adverse reactions we've had. Maybe one hand depending on your definition of "extreme". The strongest negative reactions come from categories that I refer to as "professional Christians" and "damaged goods".
Professional Christians are the pastors and teachers that have been to seminary or have some other reason to think they are keepers of the One True Faith. The gatekeepers. The people that know they can't be wrong for whatever reason, and are not willing to examine the possibility that they have been misled. The people that think it is their job and their God-given right and duty to straighten out people who believe such heresies.
Damaged goods are the women that have been hurt by "unfaithful" men. I put unfaithful in quotes because of course I mean unfaithful in terms our culture understands: they tried to love two women at the same time. It is not usually the man who rejects his wife for his new lover (if he wanted to do that he would have already divorced her and there would be no need for lying and cheating). Last time I checked most divorces are initiated by women and most of those are over the issue of another woman (although the reasons have become more frivolous and arbitrary recently, hence the term "frivorce"). Women that for whatever reason have issues with men tend to take as dogma that "men are no damn good" and "men just want multiple wives so they can have more sex".
No point in debating a closed mind in either case.
Behind "extremely adverse", there's a category I would call "socially awkward". These are people that have partially withdrawn from fellowship/friendship simply because they are confused and embarrassed and don't know how to relate their relationship with us to their relationships with others that don't know us that would disapprove of our lifestyle without investigation or even a hearing. They tend to be friendly when we run into them at the grocery store, for example, but the relationship has obviously cooled, or has obvious-if-intangible boundaries around what sorts of things we do together. That could be (rough estimate) another 10-15% of responses. I really don't mind these guys, for various reasons, including that I think I understand their issues and would probably do the same thing if the roles were reversed. Most of us can think of people that are nice people with interesting characteristics that are just "too weird" to be friends with, we just have different brands of weird.
Altogether, it's probably a normal distribution (bell curve) of mostly "who cares? it's your life" as the average, with "that's kinda cool" and "that's kinda uncomfortably strange" about a standard deviation on either side of that, and "socially awkward" (see above) and "I'm cool because I'm tolerant" (see below) outside of that, and old friends and relatives lost (relationships of blood, childhood, or adolescence) and great new friends found (that I wouldn't have met but for this lifestyle) as the outliers.
I don't think I'm making that up or remember a story to fit a pretty graph. Best I can remember it, that's the life we've lived so far.
[Note: With "I'm cool because I'm tolerant", I'm referring to a class of people that thinks it's hip to have gay friends, or other-race friends, or whatever shows that you are a socially progressive person. "This is cool because my friends will think it's cool that I know a polygamist" corresponds roughly to "I can't really be friends with these people because my other friends won't approve".]
Psychologically, fear of punishment is a stronger motivator than desire for reward. It exaggerates our response to "I don't like you anymore" type responses out of proportion to the reality of the math.
This is my memory at work, and subject to a few disclaimers on that score, but I think the ladies would back me here:
We have spoken with hundreds (say 2-300) of people about our lifestyle. I could count on my two hands the number of extremely adverse reactions we've had. Maybe one hand depending on your definition of "extreme". The strongest negative reactions come from categories that I refer to as "professional Christians" and "damaged goods".
Professional Christians are the pastors and teachers that have been to seminary or have some other reason to think they are keepers of the One True Faith. The gatekeepers. The people that know they can't be wrong for whatever reason, and are not willing to examine the possibility that they have been misled. The people that think it is their job and their God-given right and duty to straighten out people who believe such heresies.
Damaged goods are the women that have been hurt by "unfaithful" men. I put unfaithful in quotes because of course I mean unfaithful in terms our culture understands: they tried to love two women at the same time. It is not usually the man who rejects his wife for his new lover (if he wanted to do that he would have already divorced her and there would be no need for lying and cheating). Last time I checked most divorces are initiated by women and most of those are over the issue of another woman (although the reasons have become more frivolous and arbitrary recently, hence the term "frivorce"). Women that for whatever reason have issues with men tend to take as dogma that "men are no damn good" and "men just want multiple wives so they can have more sex".
No point in debating a closed mind in either case.
Behind "extremely adverse", there's a category I would call "socially awkward". These are people that have partially withdrawn from fellowship/friendship simply because they are confused and embarrassed and don't know how to relate their relationship with us to their relationships with others that don't know us that would disapprove of our lifestyle without investigation or even a hearing. They tend to be friendly when we run into them at the grocery store, for example, but the relationship has obviously cooled, or has obvious-if-intangible boundaries around what sorts of things we do together. That could be (rough estimate) another 10-15% of responses. I really don't mind these guys, for various reasons, including that I think I understand their issues and would probably do the same thing if the roles were reversed. Most of us can think of people that are nice people with interesting characteristics that are just "too weird" to be friends with, we just have different brands of weird.
Altogether, it's probably a normal distribution (bell curve) of mostly "who cares? it's your life" as the average, with "that's kinda cool" and "that's kinda uncomfortably strange" about a standard deviation on either side of that, and "socially awkward" (see above) and "I'm cool because I'm tolerant" (see below) outside of that, and old friends and relatives lost (relationships of blood, childhood, or adolescence) and great new friends found (that I wouldn't have met but for this lifestyle) as the outliers.
I don't think I'm making that up or remember a story to fit a pretty graph. Best I can remember it, that's the life we've lived so far.
[Note: With "I'm cool because I'm tolerant", I'm referring to a class of people that thinks it's hip to have gay friends, or other-race friends, or whatever shows that you are a socially progressive person. "This is cool because my friends will think it's cool that I know a polygamist" corresponds roughly to "I can't really be friends with these people because my other friends won't approve".]
