On August 9, 2013, Sex and Psychology published reader survey results about how people feel about non-monogamy. Those results describe people who chose to answer that survey. They do not describe a country, a city, or the guest list at a kink event. This article does not invent the tallies, the percentages, or the split between approving and disapproving readers. Those figures stay on the August 9, 2013 page. A feeling reported by a self-selected audience is not a population rate, and it is not your partner's answer.
A reader survey has a small door
- The August 9, 2013 column reports feelings from readers who responded. It is not a census.
- Do not recite results you cannot point to on that page.
- Approval of an idea is not a willingness to change a specific relationship.
- A blog audience is not the population of your town, your party, or your marriage.
- If you want a decision, ask the people who would have to live with it, not a poll.
Who a reader survey can speak for
Reader surveys invite an audience that already found the site. People who answer are people with time, interest, and a reason to click. People who are bored by the topic, offended by it, or offline that week are missing. That does not make the survey useless. It makes the survey local to its readers. Local results can show how that audience talked about non-monogamy in 2013. They cannot be stretched into "Americans feel this way" or "kinksters feel this way" without a different study design.
Self-selection is the main limit to remember when you are tempted to quote. The people who feel strongly are often the people who answer. Mild opinions stay quiet. A loud split in a comment section can be a split among the loud, not a map of the public. Sex and Psychology's column is still worth reading for what it actually collected. It is not a shortcut around that limit. If the column itself warns about who responded, keep the warning attached. Do not sand it off to make a cleaner speech.
Feelings are not a rate of behavior
A question about how you feel is not a question about what you do. Someone can feel fine about non-monogamy in the abstract and keep a closed marriage. Someone can feel uneasy about the idea and still be in a carefully negotiated open relationship. Someone can feel curious and have promised a partner they will not act. The August 9, 2013 survey, as a feelings survey, cannot be translated into how many people are non-monogamous. That translation is a different research question, asked in other columns, in other years, with figures that stay on those other pages.
Do not weld this survey to the May 7, 2015 column on how common consensual non-monogamy is, or to the May 30, 2016 column on who has ever had such a relationship, or to the June 29, 2016 column on rising interest. Each page has its own job. A feelings poll is the weakest possible stand-in for any of them. If your slide needs a rate, it needs the page that asked for a rate. If your slide is about attitudes among one site's readers, say that, with the date, and send people to the survey write-up.
Do not invent a result you half remember
Memory wants a tidy winner. Years later you may "remember" that readers were mostly supportive, mostly hostile, or neatly divided. Unless you have the page open, treat that memory as a story about you, not as data. This article will not confirm your story, because confirming it would invent a result. Go read the column. If you are teaching, screenshot or quote only with the source visible, and include the year so nobody thinks it is a fresh poll of your city.
Invented results spread because they are useful in arguments. A person who wants to open a relationship says "most readers were fine with it." A person who wants to shut the topic down says "most readers were against it." Both sentences are doing the same cheap work: borrowing a crowd that is not in the room. Your partner can see the trick even if they cannot cite the survey. Drop the crowd. Say what you want.
A poll is not your partner
The only feelings that decide your agreement are the feelings of the people in it. A reader in 2013 does not date you. Their comfort with non-monogamy does not obligate your spouse. Their discomfort does not veto a consensual arrangement you and your partners already built with care. Outsource the decision and you will pick whichever imagined majority helps your case. That is advocacy, not learning.
Ask directly, in private, with time. Do you want a closed agreement. Are you curious and not ready. Are you opposed to any outside sex, any outside romance, or only to a specific plan. Can you say no without punishment. A survey cannot ask those questions for you. If the conversation is stuck and you want a clinician who will not sneer at adult consensual non-monogamy, see how to find a kink-aware therapist. A therapist is still not a poll. They help you talk. They do not vote.
Attitudes at a party are still individual
Kink events collect people who already opted into a sexual or leather social space. That opt-in is another filter, on top of the filter in a blog survey. You should expect a range, not a mandate. Some guests will speak warmly about non-monogamy. Some will be monogamous and tired of being told they are behind the times. Some will be quiet because the topic is raw at home. None of those reactions updates the 2013 reader survey, and the survey does not explain those reactions.
Do not take a straw poll at the social table and announce that the community has decided. Straw polls in loud rooms reward confidence and punish nuance. They also pressure newcomers to clap along. If you host a discussion, frame it as a discussion of agreements, not as a measure of public opinion. Give people a way to pass. Repeat that monogamy is a valid agreement and that non-monogamy requires consent, not a majority.
House rules do not come from reader sentiment. They come from the venue. Consent at an orgy or play party does not get looser because a survey felt friendly, and it does not get harsher because a survey felt wary. BDSM consent practices are about the scene in front of you. A 2013 attitude item is not a safeword and not a waiver.
How to cite a feelings survey without inflating it
Use one sentence and a link. "On August 9, 2013, Sex and Psychology shared how responding readers said they felt about non-monogamy. It is a reader survey, not a population rate. I am not going to quote the breakdown from memory." Then stop. If someone demands the breakdown, they can read it. If they want to apply it to their boyfriend, tell them the boyfriend was not in the sample. Offer the practical pages instead: polyamory myths, polyamory and jealousy, and how to find a non-monogamous partner.
Presenters should put the limit on the slide in the same size as the claim. "Reader survey, self-selected, 2013" is not a footnote to whisper. It is the result's meaning. A big number with a tiny caveat is how attitudes get counterfeited into facts. This events article refuses to print the number at all, so you cannot scrape it from us. Scrape it from the source, with the caveat the source gives you, or do not scrape it.
Feelings can be information without being orders
It is reasonable to care what people feel. Stigma hurts. Curiosity is real. A column that takes reader feelings seriously can make a lonely person feel less strange, or can warn a careless person that not everyone is on board. Those are humane uses. The inhumane use is enforcement: you must open up because readers approved, or you must hide because readers worried. Feelings in a survey are data about those readers. They are not orders to your household.
Do not revise the survey from memory or from a group chat
Years have passed since August 9, 2013. Public talk about non-monogamy has moved. A newer project can ask a sharper question. None of that lets you edit the old reader survey until it matches what you see online this month. If you want a current picture, you need a current source with a date and a method. This article will not pretend the 2013 replies matured into a new data set. Time passing is not a method. Fresh opinions in your life are not a re-analysis.
When someone says the survey is old and offers their group chat as the update, they have left the column behind. A chat is a smaller door than a blog poll. You can learn what your friends think by asking them, and you should call that friendship, not research. Do not call it a revision of the Sex and Psychology reader survey. That survey closed when the column was published. Your friends remain a separate conversation. They are allowed to like you, wish you well, and still want monogamy in their own homes.
If you teach, date the slide and state the limit in the same breath: reader survey, self-selected, feelings rather than behavior, August 9, 2013. If a student wants to know whether "people" approve, ask which people. If the answer is "readers who responded to that call," send them to the column. If the answer is "my partner," close the laptop and let the partner speak. Those two answers do not borrow authority from each other.
If you are the one with a strong feeling, own it as yours. "I am interested." "I am afraid." "I do not want this." Those sentences are stronger than "a survey says." They can be met with care, a no, or a plan. A survey result can only be met with another argument about the survey. You came for a relationship or an event, not for a methods debate in the hallway. Read the August 9, 2013 page when you want the reader results. Leave them there. Then ask the only people whose feelings can change your agreement.