I'd argue that what you're doing here is actually adding another layer of complexity and difficulty into the equation. Unless for you Discworld Fandom alone is sufficient to choose someone as a partner, you then have to divide up the group of people who are discworld fans, which is a significantly smaller number than the general dating population, out of whom only a percentage will be attractive to you, and only a percentage will be attracted to you. If you're then looking for someone to set up an equilateral poly triad within that cultural subgroup, you're also cutting the portion out of the herd who aren't poly, aren't bisexual, or aren't interested in exclusive relationships within poly.
Let's say the size of your social group of discworld fans is 100 people (about the size of most peoples' monkeysphere). And let's say that 50 of them are women, and by some utterly unrealistic coincidence all of them are also single and available for dating. Even if you fancy 100% of the women in your social circle, and 100% of those women find you attractive back, only about 10% of them (five women) will be poly or otherwise nonmonogamous. Of those women, about five percent will be bisexual. We're down to 0.5 women already. We then have to divide down further to find someone who's interested in setting up an exclusive triad situation... now obviously it isn't possible to date one twentieth of a woman. That is to say your social circle may not be large enough to encompass even one woman who is both compatible with you and your existing partner, and interested in a relationship of this sort.
Same goes, even if your social circle is *entirely* made up of poly people, the chances of finding someone who ticks all the boxes still diminish rapidly with every additional box that person is expected to tick.
I do agree that online dating could make the search a bit more effective, and I was being a little cheeky focusing only on the in-person search technique. But I really wanted to ram home that no social circle is big enough to guarantee finding that 'perfect third' in it.
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Re: Statistics
Date: 2014-09-10 02:41 pm (UTC)I'd argue that what you're doing here is actually adding another layer of complexity and difficulty into the equation. Unless for you Discworld Fandom alone is sufficient to choose someone as a partner, you then have to divide up the group of people who are discworld fans, which is a significantly smaller number than the general dating population, out of whom only a percentage will be attractive to you, and only a percentage will be attracted to you. If you're then looking for someone to set up an equilateral poly triad within that cultural subgroup, you're also cutting the portion out of the herd who aren't poly, aren't bisexual, or aren't interested in exclusive relationships within poly.
Let's say the size of your social group of discworld fans is 100 people (about the size of most peoples' monkeysphere). And let's say that 50 of them are women, and by some utterly unrealistic coincidence all of them are also single and available for dating. Even if you fancy 100% of the women in your social circle, and 100% of those women find you attractive back, only about 10% of them (five women) will be poly or otherwise nonmonogamous. Of those women, about five percent will be bisexual. We're down to 0.5 women already. We then have to divide down further to find someone who's interested in setting up an exclusive triad situation... now obviously it isn't possible to date one twentieth of a woman. That is to say your social circle may not be large enough to encompass even one woman who is both compatible with you and your existing partner, and interested in a relationship of this sort.
Same goes, even if your social circle is *entirely* made up of poly people, the chances of finding someone who ticks all the boxes still diminish rapidly with every additional box that person is expected to tick.
I do agree that online dating could make the search a bit more effective, and I was being a little cheeky focusing only on the in-person search technique. But I really wanted to ram home that no social circle is big enough to guarantee finding that 'perfect third' in it.