Pretty much exactly what I was getting at … I was part of a MFMFM relationship quite a few years back, where we all more or less moved in together. (Divorced male at the middle had more house than he reasonably needed. My wife and I had our own apartment, but we sometimes wouldn’t see it for weeks at a time. The other legally married couple in that relationship were staying there until they found a place of their own … which didn’t seem to be happening.) Lovely for a while, but after a few months with five adults, four children, two dogs, and a cat in one building all the time!!! Just got a bit nuts.
Whereas today, sometimes my wife will go spend the night at her boyfriend’s, and I have a nice, quiet night to myself.
Yep, me too. Did some further reading on my own, and picked up a couple of books for a lit course that featured multidisciplinary writing on love, marriage, and child rearing worldwide.
It happens like that sometimes, but definitely not always. Nominally, at least, men make the decisions in most polygamous cultures, and husbands can and do make unilateral decisions about marriage. But I’m pretty damn sure that a wise man confirms that his wife or wives are okay with adding someone new to the family. Mohammed, in his famous Koran quote said basically, you can marry one, two, three, even four women, as long as you treat them all the same.
If you grew up in a household with at least two sisters, or if you have daughters of your own, you know how demanding of a requirement that is. That’s why, for me at least, I might consider multiple marriage as okay intellectually, but actually doing it would be very difficult. That’s why I just joke about it. (That, and I can’t afford the wife I already have.;)) I don’t know, maybe my sisters were just huge bitches, but I don’t think I’d really want to go through all the trouble of keeping two women happy all the time. If they were anything like the women I knew growing up, it would be almost impossible sometimes.
No, I’m far too selfish and hard to live with - as is my husband. The chances we’d find more people willing to put up with the two of us in a stable fashion and that we’d be willing to put up with are slim. Fortunately for the two of us, we deal with each other very well - but since we can’t even take our friends in doses for much longer than a long weekend, I’m not seeing additional spouses as something that will work out.
I believe polygamy should be legal, and do not understand the prohibition.
However, for me? No. It’s a 24-hour a day job keeping the wife I have happy. I can’t imagine anything, besides absolute lunacy, that would cause me to want to add another burden to my life. Sex? Hah! The older she gets, the more she wants it. Why the heck would I want more of something I can barely keep up with now?
I wouldn’t object to it in principle, but I imagine that trying to come up with a legal boilerplate set of rights and responsibilities for a multiple marriage (such as exists currently with mono marriages) would be nigh on impossible. There are so many different possible permutations, that a boilerplate document couldn’t possibly cover them all. Marriage of three? Are they married as a “triad” or a “V”? Marriage of four? Are they married as a quad? Partner-swapping? A V with one of the “tails” having an additional spouse? And so on and so on, getting ever more complicated as the number of partners go up…
I think it would be a lot less complicated for the people involved to hire a lawyer and draw up their own household contracts for shared property, power of attorney for healthcare, children, etc., in the manner that best suits their particular circumstances. As far as I know, it’s already perfectly legal to do this.
I wouldn’t want another wife. For one, I would have no control over her reproductive abilities. With my boyfriend, we can agree together on how many children we are responsible for. If another woman is added to the mix, I can’t control how many kids she will want to have or end up having. I also believe that a strong relationship with the father is important to a child, and her kids will demand attention from my spouse that could be going to my kids.
If it’s a younger wife, I wouldn’t believe for a second that she’d be taking care of me in my old age. I’d suspect she’d rather bump me off so she could get all those resources for herself. I instead hope to raise my kids right so they’ll take care of me the same way as I plan on taking care of my parents.
Another man I possibly could do, but I doubt my boyfriend would agree to that and relationship are harder the more people you involve.
For those who are saying that extra people mean less chores, how many of you have lived in group living experiences? I grew up in a large family and I lived in a co-op type house and it was miserable. Maybe if I lived with people who were bigger neat freaks than me it would’ve worked, but it seems like everybody expects others to do the work. I felt like I was constantly cleaning other people’s messes.
