Polyamory is on the rise!
According to OK Cupid 50% of users in 2015 were happy to consider dating someone who was already involved in an open or polyamorous relationship, a rise of 9% since 2010.
But before you all start rushing to the MakeMeScottish contact page, engagement rings in hand, I have some bad news for you. The UK has decided to buck the trend and opt for monogamy by divorcing itself from the EU. (If you consider monogamy to include a historical 4-way between Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England that is.)
The Scottish people are especially disgruntled by its enforced monogamy. After all, not only did the overwhelming majority of its free-loving population vote to continue a polyamorous relationship with Europe, many Scots voted against an independent Scotland in 2014 solely to safeguard their EU membership. With another independence referendum on the horizon, it looks like Scotland may well end it's 300 year old wedding vows with the UK and get OK Cupid with the 27 other member states in the EU.
With that in mind it is worth contemplating whether having so many lovers leads to over complicated relationships.
Although I consider myself an expert on the matter (you need only look at my abundant Tinder resume to also make that conclusion) I have decided against creating a questionnaire poll of my accumulated dates to address the issue. Let us pretend it was in the name of time efficiency and impartiality, not technical complications involving restraining orders and blocked numbers... mainly my blocked number. You get the idea.
Eve Rickert, a bonafide poly expert and co-author with Franklin Veaux of More Than Two: A practical guide to ethical polyamory, freely admits that 'poly is a lot of work [and] having a lifestyle where you enjoy casual sex and hook-ups is a lot less work.' Indeed, the UK's polyamorous relationship with Europe has certainly not been a 'Netflix and Chill' situation. Keeping the harmony between so many lovers has not always been easy task. However it has been a commitment which has aided positive international relations, enhanced trade deals, allowed freedom of movement, and most importantly, protected peace in Europe.
If polyamory is indeed off the cards, who will the UK turn to for it's next hook-up?
Will Westminster be swiping right at a Trumped-up USA?
And if so, will Scotland take the necessary steps to forge it's own poly path with the EU?