Ugh. By "now in a bad way" I mean, maybe we learn things we might not learn if everybody were monogamous, and that makes us more able to decide if we want to be friends with a person, due to their actions/morals.

Keeping this vague, to protect identities. But I recently learned that someone in my community has lied about safe sex practices. The good news is that everybody involved gets tested regularly, so the chance of an STI being passed along is actually pretty close to nil.

The bad news is that this person betrayed the trust of four people directly (her four partners), and...I dunno how many people indirectly (once you factor in the other relationships that each of those four partners have). There is some other shitty stuff that's come out too.

I guess obviously if everybody was monogamous, this wouldn't have happened, or if it would have, it would have been straight cheating. I'm not sure that as many details would have come out to so many people, if it were a monogamous situation.

Since it is a polyamorous situation (and a person I'm dating is one of her four partners), I learned some details because I'm on the chain of people who should double-check STIs. I learned other details because my partner found out about some lies that they were told by their partner.

I'm seeing a lot of heartache up close right now, from a number of people. The one who lied is also upset, and has apologized a lot, and said some things that indicate that she truly is sorry and going to work through in therapy why she said the things she said.

Contrasting with my monogamous friend groups, I feel like I've gotten far more details about the whole thing than I would in a similar monogamous situation. And I honestly don't know if I can be friends with my friend anymore. Some of the stuff that came out was just so shitty that...I'm stunned. A lot of people are stunned.

Anyways, for me, I'm kind of glad that I know the details I know. If my (possibly former) friend is this shitty of a person, I don't know if I can be friends with her. I really don't. And while that sucks, I'd rather find this out and know than have not known. It's actually reminding me of several situations I've had in life where I got to be friends with someone who was a dirtbag, found out they were a dirtbag after going through significant harm myself, then had other friends be like "Oh, I'm so glad you're not friends with X anymore. S/he is a dirty bag and did <totally unethical, fucked up thing> to me, and I was afraid s/he'd do it to you too" and I was like "Why the FUCK would you not tell me this BEFOREHAND?!" And the person was like "oh, I didn't want to get involved/didn't think it was my business/thought s/he had changed/didn't want to gossip" and I'd think to myself FOR FUCK'S SAKE Y'ALL, WARN SOMEONE FIRST.

(In one case, I moved in with a fucking drug dealer, who I didn't know was a drug dealer, but around half a dozen of my friends did. I almost got arrested, because of the fucking drug dealer, but luckily I found out before he lived with me for a month, so I was able to evict him very quickly - he had no renter protection yet. I ended up stopping being friends with everybody who knew he was a drug dealer and didn't warn me, because I was too upset to even look at any of those assholes anymore)

So yeah. That's where I'm at.

Does anybody else feel like they end up knowing more details of polyamorous friends/community members than they would with monogamous friends/community members? Any feelings on if this is a good thing or bad thing? Or is it just a thing that happens when you're more intimately tied to many people?