Originally Posted by Niara
As others have mentioned - Characterising Halsin, as currently written, as Poly is harmful and a destructive misnomer that does a fairly bad disservice to people who do live in poly situations. He's relationship averse, and if he refuses to think of or call what you have a relationship, then it's certainly not a poly relationship.

Niara and others on this. I have to make two prefaces:

1) I've not romanced Halsin and only seen the bits that people object to on youtube
2) I have the greatest respect for Niara and largely agree with her point about representation

But as someone who is poly I do consider relationship anarchism a type of poly. I even consider free agency at type of poly as long as doesn't include rules on avoiding loving attachments (as is sometimes the case with some lifestyle sorts)

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/relationships/a45467577/relationship-anarchy/

My experience - you don't have to read it.

Dating a relationship anarchist is challenging. I like know the boundaries of a relationship, what one can expect from another person and dating someone who likes to say things like "we have relationship that should be good enough why would put another label on it? what would that even mean? We're friends, we don't to adhere to roles created by someone else" It frustrated me to no end but we made it work for a while. In that - whatever we had - we talked about theory a great deal and that substituted for the formal agreements I wanted. So, I sincerely get why people would be frustrated by this fantasy relationship because I experienced this sort of frustration in my own life!

I tend to think of poly as broad tent because I'm poly-ish or poly-switch. I can do monogamy but in my experience mono relationships tend to have an expiry date. The BG3 line "let's have sex like a couple that's been married 10 years" both rang true and made me laugh. I don't think I should be excluded when I agree to have mono relationship any more than a queer person who gets involved in a het relationship stops being queer.

Now this not comment on other problems people have with Halsin - apparently he pushes after an explicit no - and that's sex pest behavior. But can someone refuse to commit - because labels come with (often unvoiced) expectations - and still be poly? I would say so, yes. I mean they end up on the same dating apps, share the same vocabulary, read the same books and, most importantly, recognize each other so . . . I remember one couple on OKC that lived together for 8 years agreed they were poly but refused to call what they had a relationship