Why I think polyamory is net negative for most people who try it

This is crossposted from my Substack TL;DR: -Most people cannot reduce jealousy much or at all - It fundamentally causes way more drama because of strong emotions, jealousy, no default norms to fall back to, and there being exponentially more surface area for conflict - For a small minority of people, it makes them happier, and those are the people who tend to stick with it and write the books on it, creating a distorted view for newcomers. OK, let’s get into the nuance. Background: I was polyamorous starting with my first boyfriend and was polyamorous for about 7 years. I was in a community where probably over 50% of the people around me were poly. Unfortunately, poly was extremely bad for me due to its very nature and structure, and my experience is not uncommon but it is not commonly publicly talked about. Poly makes some people very happy. I am sharing why I think it was bad for me and many other people in the hopes of letting people make an informed choice. Premise #1 - Most people can't just stop being jealous If you look into the poly literature, you’ll always find some variant of the story “yes, jealousy will suck at first. But if you work on yourself, eventually it’ll go away or reduce a ton. Maybe you’ll even start feeling “compersion”, where you feel happy that your spouse is falling in love with and having sex with somebody else”. I have no doubt this happens to some people, but it is by no means the norm. I was poly for 7 years and I was trying to fix my jealousy for almost that entire time. And not to brag, but I am good at self-improvement. I’ve reduced my anxiety by about 85% and my sadness by 99% over my life. I have an emotion spreadsheet I’ve filled out nearly every day for the last 11 years. I'm pretty good at optimizing my emotions. And that was my downfall. I just couldn’t admit to myself that I couldn’t change this part of me. After all, I’d read Ethical Slut and More Than Two and they’re full of stories saying “I used to be like you. But I just worked on being a more confident person and trusting my partner and did some CBT, and now I have compersion!” And that just seemed so much more enlightened. If they can do it, surely I can too. But the thing is, most people can’t. Even for all the stories you read there, you’ll find that they usually say they just reduce jealousy, not eliminate it. Or they started off with a low baseline of jealousy to begin with. Or they found one configuration of poly that’s working for them at the moment but later, you find out it exploded in an awful mess, but they don’t write about that update. The thing is, jealousy, whether it’s biological or socialized (and my bet is mostly on biological), is hard to change. Most people just dip their toes into poly, feel intense jealousy or experience jealousy from their partner, then go back to monogamy. Or they try for a bit, continue to feel like shit, then go back to mono. You just don’t hear about them as much because they don’t write about it. Premise #2: poly causes way more drama Poly causes drama due to its very nature. Which, people say, happens in monogamous relationships too. To which I say sure, but at different scales. It’s like saying that sure China has put approximately 1.8 million Uyghurs in prison camps, but the USA has Guantanomo (around 780 people total). Yes, they’re both bad. But one is much worse. Scale matters. And my claim is that poly causes a whole different scale of drama compared to monogamy. First off because it’s dealing with the main source of drama - humans with strong emotions. And poly brings up strong emotions. Of course there’s the intense jealousy. Some of my worst emotional experiences have been being wracked with jealousy and shame for even feeling jealous in the first place. Then there’s the strong emotions of falling in love. Which would be nice, except you’re feeling jealous because your partner is falling in love with somebody else. But don’t worry, you just need to work on yourself. Obviously they won’t leave you for this new shiny person (which, btw, is a lie. This happens all the time. People are very bad at predicting their emotions. It’s one thing to promise they won’t leave when there’s nobody to leave to. It’s a different story when they’re in love). Then there’s all the secondary emotions that stem from these. Anger and resentment. Stress. Fear. And poly causes more drama because there’s exponentially more moving parts. When your partner starts dating a new person, that person can’t just have drama with your partner. They can have drama with you. And your partner can have drama with their other partner. It gets complicated fast. I remember once I had drama caused by my boyfriend’s wife’s boyfriend’s girlfriend’s girlfriend (my meta-meta-meta-metamour). There’s just exponentially more surface area for drama. And it shows. It’s actually the primary reason I decided to become monogamous. I remember once in our polycule there was an explosion of proportions that can o