There's nothing saying cheating is good in the this. And honestly yeah, cheating is kinda weird to be on this, but I think it's just a statement saying "this is a type of relationship, a type with one person cheating on the other." It's as neutral towards cheating as it is towards anything else.

If we want to nitpick, "open relationship" uses the word "affair" which has a lot of negative context, and so open relationships must be bad right? I don't see this as endorsing anything.

Human psychology doesn't have a standard.

Monogamy is just one of a wide range of social arrangements that have existed all throughout human history, and continue to exist.

see: distribution of monogamy

Personally, I've been in multiple partner relationships. Are they perfect? No, absolutely not. But neither were some of the monogamous relationships I've been in.

I think the comic is a little off too, and I agree with you about how it portrays cheating, but it doesn't make sense to shit on all forms of relationship that you don't agree with.

Yeeeah there's nothing in human psychology saying we should be monogamous. You just don't like polyamory, and that's fine, but it doesn't take too long to see that monogamy isn't, like, THE way it should be.

Throughout history, and even to this day, you have a wide range of relationship types, but there has ALWAYS been non-monogamy. From kings spreading their seed far and wide, to people just fucking around, and people cheating, and even today with religions such as mormonism.

The existence of it throughought history pretty well makes it clear that it's not just a modern thing, and not at all based on biology or psychology. To be clear, none of the examples I mentioned are without their issues. Power structures in religion, or lies and secrecy with cheating and sleeping around. All that shit sucks. But you can be polyamorous without ANY of that.

Monogamy is the SOCIETAL standard. Primarily due to puritanical views as the country developed. As more and more sex education becomes available, and more knowledge is learned, the taboo-ness of polyamory is losing a lot of traction, because it is unnatural to a lot of people.

It's hard to imagine there's one person in existence who can meet every one of my physical, emotional, intellectual, etc. needs, and even harder to imagine I could be that to someone. I also can't dream of EXPECTING that from someone. That's a lot of pressure, and I think it's a lot more natural to say, "hey I love you. But I also love this other person, for other reasons."

Some people make that work, and it's AWESOME for them, but I think that it truly working, and not just working because "society says we should be together so I guess we'll tick around even though the resentment grows daily." are MUCH smaller than the number of people who tries to make it work because that's all they know.

And to be clear, before you loop back around I Still think that cheating should be removed from the comic because yes, sleeping around without your partner knowing is bad because it violates their trust.