I’m fine if others want to do it, but it’d be extremely unlikely that I’d take part.
I was also wondering this.
Hell no. I’m too single-minded when it comes to relationships to handle either my attention or my partner’s attention being split.
My wife and I have joked / talked about this.
We decided that if we could add a stay-at-home wife to our dual-working parents with two kids - it would be nice to have. However, the additional wife couldn’t want kids of her own, we don’t want more in the house. The end result would be I have one wife who works, and another who is the stay-at-home keep the damned household running wife. I might also get some additional sex (I have the higher libido / energy level of the two of us).
Reality - no way. I can’t see it working without too much drama. Especially since I describing a housekeeper / nanny “with privileges”.
I’d prefer to be in a monogamous relationship and marriage, but after my last girlfriend, I realized that I could be more flexible. While we were engaged, she wanted to introduce her best friend into the relationship as our mutual girlfriend, and lamented the fact that she couldn’t be our mutual wife. We all clicked quite well, and formed a pretty harmonious trio. In fact, my relationship with the fiancee was far more stable then than when we were just a couple, and I found myself agreeing that being a trio was the best arrangement for that particular situation.
Given that, it’d have taken not only a change in polygamy laws, but Indiana’s gay marriage laws, since the girlfriends wanted to marry each other in addition to me.
Nah.
Right. Having real-life multiple wives in the modern American sense would be a complete nightmare for a man. There is no way around that. The reality is very different from the dream. There is no need to talk about slavery though. Capitalism has its place to fulfill this dream. My father who is like Bill Clinton with much better taste in women has all the money he could want now and threatens to get a few girlfriends and and maybe another primary wife. I have veto power on that one and suggested the pay for services route but at the very high end. That could be a live-in high-class escort or three in the hookerbot category but the beauty of those is that there is an endless supply of them and, while wives age, the stable of those always stays the same age. If you run the numbers, it is much more cost effective than having true multiple wives and the class of service is much, much higher.
Coming from a culture where polygamy is legal (but very very rare and frowned upon)…
So one pleasant autumn evening family of AK84 is sitting in the TV Room doing what families do when… BANG BANG BANG.
AK84’s Mother: Whats that?
AK84’s Father: Sounds like .303 fire
Turns out that the guy who had two wives (who lived in adjacent houses) had seen a family disagreement which they were trying to resolve.
So yeah, oh hell no as far as the OP is concerned.
I don’t quite get the marriage aspect of the question. Here in my neck of the woods there are plenty of polyamorous/communal living situations and no one from the state seems to give a shit. Would I consider it for myself? I have nothing against it morally, but I crave a lot of time to myself, and a crowded living situation just wouldn’t suit me. The best thing about my marriage is that my wife and I spend so little time together.
Nothing to consider. We would, however, do the paperwork so the state could recognize what is established fact. After all, that way lies insurance coverage.
Yes. That’s about all I can say on it.
As a young bride I would have strongly resented sharing my husband with another woman. But as time goes on I can definitely see the advantages.
Here go the generalizations (with a degree of truth: )
Women are more inclined and more skilled at caring for those who are ill. There would be nursing care for the wives, which often doesn’t happen when there is only the spouse to help her.
As they age most people accumulate more household items and with them the tasks of taking care of them. No need for hired help as many hands make short work.
One could accept the household jobs which appealed to them and others the same.
The elder wives, rather than being put in nursing homes or sitting alone, could be grandmothers, keepers of the family history, catalysts for harmony, teachers and therefor retain a place of importance in the family. And with that seniority maintain a sense of purpose.
Companionship and conversation while hunter/gatherer husband went about his hunting and gathering.
And when he finally wore himself out some younger wife, who was still in practice, could change his diapers!
It’s interesting. These things you point to as advantages strike me as disadvantages. I would never get married in order to spend more time with women. I would get married to spend more time with a particular man.
I think that’s true for most younger women. After many years of marriage and discovering the joys of female companionship I see things differently than I did for the first forty-or-so years of my life.
Visit a nursing home and observe who gets the most company. It’s usually not the women. I see women who have spent their lives taking care of husbands, then children and then their parents. Finally they have an ailing husband and then when they get to have their turn no one is around to take care of them.
Many married people discover that after several decades of marriage you are not married to the same person you married and have grown in different directions.
Perhaps those observations are in process of changing but I haven’t seen it yet.
Of course your generation has a solution for all that - get a new husband! Guess it works also. And I see disadvantages to that.
Gotta say that the above post was written in my lightest tone and I doubt that I would accept those changes. Just providing another perspective. . .
I’ve already done the taking care of an ailing husband thing, and it was from the beginning in my marriage, so I undoubtedly come at this from a different perspective.
i think there is a practical aspect of multi (more than 2) adult households which could be result in polyamory or polygamy. it does certainly take the right types and right mixture of people so YMMV.
a multi adult household the work is shared and split. doing the work for 3 or 4 can be not a lot more effort than for 2. you might more easily be tasked with work you would like or not so much work you didn’t like.
in hard economic times it can be a help. instead of two people financing a home and vehicles it can be done by 3 or 4, lots of savings.
when it works it is really goodness.
I, as an individual, sure. Some of my parents are in a group not-legal-marriage, and it’s been great. I’ve been in an open marriage, and it was great for a very long time before it fell apart for completely unrelated reasons, so I know the multiple sexual partners thing isn’t a problem for me. I’ve lived for periods of time in communal living arrangements, so I know I like living with groups of the right people (as long as I do have my own space to retreat to when needed). I do think it’s better for the kids, better for the adults and better for the community than nuclear families, although I don’t know that it’s superior to extended monogamous families. It’s absolutely better for the pocketbook and the environment than nuclear families, due to economies of scale.
But at the moment, in my current relationship? No. I’m very happy to be monogamous, far happier than I ever thought I was wired for, and my partner isn’t wired for poly. He’s much more important to me than finding another partner or spouse.
I’d do it in a hot minute.
Would you like to say more about this? How it’s different and why?
I would, but Husband would have none of it.
I would need to not be the only female, though. FFM or MMFF would be fine - but MMF would only be agreeable if both guys were bi.