I guess I just can’t relate. My husband is not the hanging-out-with-buddies type, and since he travels so much, we spend pretty much every spare moment we can together. I am actually more prone to having outside-the-house hobbies than he is. I just can’t imagine being cool with it if his hobby was some other woman (and I imagine my husband would much rather have me at my book club than out with another guy).
This one really needs thorough discussion, and you’re right to bring it up. But the concept “nuclear family” is not precisely identical to “married couple and their kids” – it means just them and no one else, regardless of the circumstances. It’s in contrast to “extended family” – meaning that a household might include a couple and their kids, a widow(er)ed parent of one of the couple, an unmarried sibling of one of the couple, an orphaned nephew or neice, etc.
My wife and I stayed for a month with a nice extended family of this sort. In a large old farmhouse lived:
[ul][li]A middle-aged woman and her third husband (two marriages having ended in divorce[/li][li]Her husband’s 80-year-old father[/li][li]Her ex-boyfriend, still a good friend to both of them, whom they’d help get back on his feet after an extended illness, and who served as an honorary uncle to the children (see below)[/li][li]Her adult son and his wife[/li][li]Their three kids[/li][li]Her adult neice, who was married to her son’s wife’s brother[/li][li]Her four kids, three fathered by husband and the eldest adopted by him[/li][li]The cousin of the son’s wife and neice’s husband, who was the original woman’s son’s closest friend[/li][li]His preschool daughter. [/ul][/li]
This was a wonderfully effective family. There were six income-producing working adults (plus a pensioner), at least two adults to care for children at all times (over and above the 80-year-old, still hale and hearty but excused from childcare ;)), enormous amounts of flexibility – if two women decided on the spur of the moment to go to Bingo one evening, there were several people on hand to deal with pressing household issues and childcare. Authority was easily defined – the middle-aged woman was a benevolent dictator; she made the household rules, which everyone was expected to abide by, but was kindly and flexible in their enforcement; each set of parents defined proper discipline for their own kids, and were primarily responsible for applying it, but all adults were free to intervene according to their standards as they encountered a kid needing it.
It worked. It worked very effectively.
My own childhood was vaguely similar – only child, parents living in half a duplex they co-owned with my paternal grandparents, who lived in the other half, along with my unmarried aunt their daughter. Mom and Dad disciplined me; Aunt June and Grandma spoiled me. (Grandpa would have been a stern old tyrant, but he was senile nearly as far back as I can remember, and spent most of his waking hours in one chair, just staring out the window.) I flourished under the attention, and got more or less good discipline (slight amount of overstrictness and demandingness, due to my parents’ own rearing being echoed in how they raised me).
Except for frontiers, this was the principal system until the 20th Century. A couple would have their own space, perhaps even their own house, but in a setting where there was intimate social contact with close relatives either in the household or living very much nearby.
That a couple on marrying was to set up a household in which no family was welcome except as guests, and have contact with their own birth families only as guests, is a social artifact literally newer than airplanes.
Yes, and the condemnation is against breaking marriage vows, cheating, sneaking an affair behind the spouse’s back.
Granted that the traditional Western marriage is customarily exclusive monogamy – one spouse, opposite sex, no romantic or sexual contact with anyone but the spouse. But notice that the idea of consensual relationships has not been broached in that. If the marriage vows are not “forsaking all others” but “covenanting my body to you and yours to me, to be shared with no others but by mutual consent,” then the intent behind the sin of adultery is not invoked.
In fact, if instead of Kelly, the man with whom lee had slept had been her sterile husband’s (hypothetical) brother, the Bible not only would not condemn the idea but in fact commands it. (Levirate marriage; look it up.)
I believe he was referring to eleanor, as I am neither married nor unhappy in my long-term relationship. Your first sentence, however, is exactly the point - just as problems in a monogamous marriage don’t condemn monogamy, problems in a polygamous marriage don’t condemn polygamy.
It seems I have been misread and misconstrued a bit. I have not said that polyamory is wrong–I have said I am puzzled by it. Logistically, emotionally, relationally, any number of other -llys.
Of course I am judgmental of it! We make judgements about everything, every day. Does my not approving of it make it wrong or bad or whatever? No-never said it did.
I do apologize for lumping the Talmud in with my other stuff in the last post. But I stand by what I said:
Yes, I am on record here as having an unhappy marriage. Not sure what that has to do with monogamy or polyamory, really. Polyamory is not the solution to what ails my marriage, trust me on this!
I think that Whynot is spot on and I am deeply wedded (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) to the tradition and ideal of monogamy. I truly can’t wrap my head around equating a sexual or romantic relationship with softball. Or any other “hobby”, for that matter.
The reason I wanted honesty is because it would help make this real for me. So, no one ever gets jealous? Is the romantic new person introduced to the spouse? The kids? What if–there are a thousand of them in my brain about this. This never gets ugly or hurtful or (fill in here with other strong, normal human emotion/action). I don’t believe that for a minute. I asked–and didn’t get much, but it’s none of my business, so ok.
I actually value this thread-for exposing me to something that I never knew existed outside of rural Utah. I notice that this subject is not explored more–perhaps with good reason, but I bring it up to show that this way of life can get as nasty as any dysfunctional marriage. Like any human endeavor, its ideals or purposes can become distorted, inequitable and damaging.
How negative I a tonoc! Sorry, but I like to know of the underbelly of things, as well as the “pink fluffys”. Not because I share a misery loves company mindset–I am not miserable (well, in my job, but that’s another thread), and I only like fun pity parties, but because I can’t shake the feeling that anything less than than applause is not welcome. Maybe that is just me–and maybe with my queries re the downside (and everything has a downside) make people here think that I am waiting to say “gotcha!”, but I’m not.
To put in on a very silly level (and no disrespect intended), for me it’s like watching someone go over Niagra Falls in a barrel–sort of reluctant amazement and a desire to ask questions about what motivates someone to do such a thing.
Hope this helps, because I am now officialy brain dead. Off to bed.
Trust me, my mother never lived her life like softball was a hobby. She took that more seriously than marriage, her only child or anything else for that matter. I was raised to do the same, which is why I said my vows on the field, in between games. 
As a note: I don’t think anyone on here is suggesting that it would be; merely using you as an example of how a rocky monogamous marriage does not mean monogamy is bad (or unworkable, or inherently unstable). That’s all.
I agree that an extended family is a wonderful thing, with many benefits to everyone involved. Although I notice that neither your farmhouse anecdote or your own family included “Mommy’s shack-up honey” as part of the extended family equation.
As far as the historical prohibition against adultery, I am not a Talmudic scholar, so obviously I can’t argue with authority one way or another, but I don’t think that “cheating” was the sole reason to warn against it. More than likely, family cohesion, and yes, “the best interests of the children”, also played a part. YMMV.
That’s cool, and as always, I’m happy to tackle specific questions as they come up. It’s just hard for me to give a Primer, because I don’t know what to include (my posts are so long as it is I know they’re only half read.) This is my first open relationship; I’m no expert. I can only answer how things are for me or how I’ve heard of others handling them. All I ask is that you don’t insinuate that I’m lying if you find the answers hard to believe.
Yes, we get jealous sometimes, we’re human. As I explained in another thread (yesterday, I think), when one of us gets jealous, we pay attention. Are we not spending enough time together? Do we need to focus more on one another? Is another person threatening our relationship? Is the jealous one just having a spazzy moment of silliness? Most of the time, an honest conversation about why we’re feeling jealous reveals the underlying issue, and we deal with it. Only once has a bit of jealousy been insurmountable, and that relationship was ended out of respect for our relationship. And no, I’m not telling who the jealous one was.
In my relationship, we’ve never become hurtful or ugly about being poly. We’re not an idyllicly perfect couple by any means. We bicker a lot, it’s just our way. I’m sure one could dredge up threads where I’ve complained about something he did or said (there was one incident around my weight gain that got real ugly, and made me not like him much for a couple of weeks.) No, we don’t have the “perfect” marriage, whatever that is. But being poly has never, not once, been part of our negatives. If anything, we’re closer and more at peace with one another when at least one of us is seeing someone else.
I have met a few of my husband’s girlfriends, and he’s met a few of my guys. It’s not usually something I look forward to, as I don’t generally have much in common with the women he’s attracted to, so things are sort of awkward. In one thread recently, I was told that this is evidence of my hypocrisy, that I’m OK with the theory of his being with other women, but not the flesh-and-blood reality. I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s just that I don’t like the awkwardness of being introduced to new people period. I’m horribly shy IRL, and meeting anyone new is hard for me.
Our kids have met a couple of our partners, but they’re introduced simply as “friends”. When we go out, we go out “with friends.” If the kid wakes up for a glass of water and asks for Daddy, I’d say, “Daddy’s out with his friend Rebecca, but he’ll be home when you wake up in the morning.” We’ve got a 13 year old boy and an 18 month old girl, so she doesn’t know anyone from anyone at this point. He knows that we think monogamy isn’t for everyone, and his best friends have three parents - he knows what polyamory is and that we think it’s best for some people. He knows we go out with gender-of-choice people. He, in short, has all the puzzle pieces to put it together as soon as his psyche lets him actually consider his parents’ sex life. I answer every question honestly, and when he asks if we’re poly, he’ll get an honest answer.
I’m a stay at home mom, he works a 9-5. We’re have breakfast and dinner together every single day - real sit-down, family meals. Generally (when no one is suffering the pink fluffy stupids), he goes out on Friday nights and I go out on Saturday nights. Sometimes these are “dates”, more often it’s just hanging out with platonic friends. Other nights are up for negotiation, but not before the kids go to bed unless it’s a very special reason - like a concert that starts at 7 or something. This isn’t to hide anything from the kids, but to lessen the childcare burden on the parent staying at home, as well as giving us most of the evening together. Whether he’s here or out, I’m in bed by 10:30 and asleep by 11, so we’re not spending meaningful time together after that anyway.
What’s the downside? As I said, overall, there isn’t one, or I wouldn’t still be doing it. Every year, at our anniversary, we discuss whether or not we want to keep it open for the following year, and every year we have. Does that mean all is puppies and hugs? Nope. But it’s the best not-always-puppies-and-hugs relationship I’ve ever had.
If you want some other perspectives and information, I highly encourage you to check out this website, as well as the oldie but goodie, the alt.polyamory FAQ
Property rights probably played a bigger role.
Actually, I thought of that, and you’re probably right.
My experience is that jealousy is a pointer emotion to a problem – it’s an emotional response to feeling that something which is mine is threatened with loss or being taken away from me.
Further, my experience is that there are two broad categories of jealousy – the one in which I am being a domineering bitch, and the one in which something is, in fact, threatening my stuff. When I’m being a domineering bitch, the issue is that I’m treating something as ‘mine’ that has never been given to me, that I have no rights to, even if I do get part-time use of it; generally, when I recognise I’m doing this, I can back the hell down and stop being an asshole.
When something that’s mine is actually being threatened it gets more complicated, because fixing the situation depends on the other person acting in a way that protects my stuff. I prefer for it to be a matter of “make my stuff secure”; there are times, however, where I have said “If you can’t actually secure my stuff, at least stop distributing it to someone else.” (That was the nasty round of jealosuy where my ex was failing to be emotionally supportive of me, to whom he had the obligation, but was offering the same sort of emotional support to a mutual friend – my basic response was, 'If you can’t take care of me, at least don’t show off that you’re willing to do for her what you’re blowing off where I’m concerned.) Or we can renegotiate so that the ‘mine’ thing is no longer mine – which can mean ending the relationship.
One of the things that has made poly easy for me is that I have never felt that a partner’s time was automatically mine. I’m not of the joined-at-the-hip school and never have been. So it’s always been ‘the time we spend together’ and ‘the rest of the time’, so if ‘the rest of the time’ includes another relationship, whatever.
I rarely get jealous in my relationship with my husband – but that’s in significant part because I have complete confidence in the security of our relationship. I’m not threatened by other relationships, and I don’t see how I would be without us suddenly developing serious problems. I was frequently jealous in dealing with my ex, because he would say on the one hand things like “I want to be with you” or “I’m committed to you”, but could never answer a query about what that meant with anything other than “I don’t know” and also had the time management skills of a goldfish. I was frightfully insecure, and thus many, many things were threats to me. (Including his PhD thesis, which I consider the Other Woman that broke us up. 
)
A more frequent issue we’ve had has been envy. Like the times one relationship is running smoothly and another partner is sort of sulkily going “Why can’t our life be like that?” Because we have stuff to work through, that’s why. Or – this was a while ago, by which I mean 1998ish – the time I had a boyfriend who was intensely kinky, and was exploring my own kink actively for the first time, and my husband was sort of ‘But I want to do that stuff with you too’. This is stuff that can be worked out if people talk about it.
I’d be kind of stunned if either of my partners turned up interested in someone I didn’t already know. We’re the sort of people who are only interested romantically in friends; we spend a lot of time in the same social circles. I mean, I’ve known husband’s local girlfriend for probably… a bit more than four years now? (They’ve been together for a bit longer than a year.) She and her longer-established partner had a poly relationship system ~6 years ago, he fucked some things up significantly, they closed the relationship so tight I never knew it had been open when I met them (despite the fact that I saw the fallout from their poly hell, which amuses us all these days – I think I have a pretty clear sense of what happened, if the story would be of use). She wound up falling for my husband (despite previously considering herself monogamous-partner-of-poly-person); a few months later her partner and I started our relationship. Which does make scheduling easy.
When I have kids, they’ll be brought up with the awareness that these people are part of what we consider family. (Our extended family is actually notably broader than this; the kid I refer to as my ‘niece’ is actually, for example, the daughter of a friend from college. Doesn’t make me not her aunt in practice, we’re just not related by blood.) What specific relationships people have with children are matters of negotiation with those specific people. (For example, husband’s LD girlfriend and I are agreed that we are not parents to each other’s hypothetical children, but our relationship is closer than ‘aunt’. We don’t have a useful noun for this.)
It seems you’re choosing poly over the welfare of your son. How can it possibly be good for him if Dad is “out with Rebecca” four nights a week? Shouldn’t a Dad be at home with his kids?
And aren’t you setting a really bad example for his future relationships with women? As in “Mom didn’t care if Dad screwed around, so why should my girlfriend/wife care if I do”?
Seems creepy, to me.
Out of curiosity (hijack), is there anything in your relationship that would be considered cheating or betrayal? For example, is there some line that your spouse cannot cross (emotional attachment to others, spending too much time with one other partner, etc…)? In other words, what are the limits of the relationship? It would seem that any social arrangement some sort of limits must exist that still make everyone in the relationship feel secure in the integrity of the marriage.
If I am prying to much, feel free to disregard, but I am very interested in the social dynamics of this situation.
As I believe I mentioned in the other thread where this came up, I’d feel that being introduced to someone solely because they were involved with a partner of mine was a weirdly artificial way of going about things.
I mean, in the unlikely event that one of my partners wound up involved with someone I didn’t already know, that person would likely wind up coming into our general social circle eventually anyway, except if they’re a long-distance relationship that didn’t come to visit. I’d rather meet them through normal social Brownian motion rather than some sort of artificial thing.
I don’t have any particular interest in meeting random people. If they turn up at a games night, sure, we can play cards. If they happen to share an interest, introduce me because we have something to talk about that might lead to an interesting friendship in our own right. “We’ve seen the same guy naked!” isn’t a sound basis for a friendship.
Starting a relationship without keeping me informed would be the big cheating thing. Ideally beforehand, and I would be kind of surprised if anything developed without being mentioned to me at least in the “You know, so-and-so is awfully cute” level.
Other things that I would consider cheating are “Significant changes in relationship status without being informed” – whether that’s sex, commitments, whatever. When I decided I was interested in pursuing a kinked-in-a-particular-way interaction with my boyfriend I talked it over with my husband before I broached the subject with boyfriend – partly because it was a potential status shift and he needed to be informed, partly because of the aforementioned envy issue. Other thing: sex without barrier protections (condom or other such thing) outside the people we are agreed to barrierless sex with.
Whatever other specific agreements are made in the relationships. My ex told me that he couldn’t be involved with me if I smoked; if I’d ever picked up a cigarette when involved with him, that would have been cheating. (That was an easy agreement for me to make, since I don’t find that sort of thing appealing.) Or weird emotional things – I would feel that I was cheating if someone other than my husband trimmed my hair, which is one of those completely irrational things and not something we’ve agreed to (and he’d probably laugh his ass off if he read this, but I don’t think he’s keeping track of the Dope these days).
For serious betrayals, it would be the sort of ‘violation of trust’ or ‘undermining the foundation of the relationship’ stuff which is near impossible to come up with concrete examples for. It’s like, y’know, one can rattle off “domestic abuse”, but that’s not what you’re asking. And it comes down to – when I’m feeling that something is threatening a relationship, I mean seriously threatening it, I go to the partner in question and tell them and see if it can be fixed. And if it doesn’t get fixed, eventually I get tired of throwing good effort after bad and leave. (I’m not always smart about cutting my losses in relationships, though I’ve gotten better about that.)
I completely agree with your last paragraph. I would never dare to ask you to qualify the “violation of trust” notion that all relationships encounter in life. It does not matter if it is monogamy, polygamy etc…, the nature of a relationship goes far beyond sex and I appreciate your response.
As for the rest, thank you for your answers. It was interesting to hear the individual nuances. Setting up those boundaries must be a very delicate matter at times. It seems, monogamy would be less complicated in that sense, since there is really only one ultimate form of sexual betrayal.
If I may inquire further, do you find that your relationship is constantly exploring new boundaries? In other words, are the times when an issue comes up with another BF/GF and one of the parties in the realtionship gets upset and then a new discussion must ensue about setting a different boundary?
If so, is this frequent or are these ground rules pretty simple? For example, I was thinking along the lines of something like this: When a person has a sexual partner, and they develop a relationship with that person to support that sexual experience, there are certain intimate revelations and practices that accompany that developing relationship. Meaning can be found in many different actions, gestures and expressions. I think of seeming little things, that can quickly become a source of great contention. Such as, having a particular pet name for each other. Like, your husband always calls you “princess” but you hear him refer to a lover with that term. Or, he gave you a special gift that really meant something because you felt it was a unique expression of his love, but then you learn he gave the same thing to someone else.
There seem like a thousand little things that can be overlooked by one of the partners and a miscommunication to result. How frequent is this? How frequent is the envy? How frequent is the sense of insecurity?
It seems that there must be a threshold that exists that makes you the wife, and the others lovers (and vice versa). I hope I am phrasing my inquiry atriculately enough so as to not offend.
It happens on occasion. When the people involved are self-aware and honest about their internal states, that sort of thing comes up less often, just because people aren’t surprised by reactions as often. That isn’t a universal, of course – stuff comes up and hits people in ways they don’t anticipate. But it helps to be both generally aware and practiced communicating about this stuff.
Practiced communicating is the hard part, really – a lot of these things are close to very vulnerable places, which makes articulating them both really tricky and very emotionally risky. For example, I personally have a hard time with asking people for things, including things I need to be emotionally stable in a relationship; it’s easier for me to deal emotionally with needing something and not asking for it (thus near-ensuring that it never happens) than needing something, asking for it, and not getting it. This has gotten me into some bad patterns in the past, especially since I tended to only ask for things when I needed them to not have some sort of emotional meltdown, rather than ask in lower-stress situations where I’ll be fine if, say, three of five requests are actually met.
I would note that that set of skills is something I think are good for any relationship setup; it’s not something poly-specific.
For the most part, I prefer to rest my sense of ‘specialness’ in each relationship of itself. Each of them will have certain interactions or responses or running jokes that will be part of that relationship, each relationship will have its own quirks.
Like the thing with the hair – I don’t have any sort of agreement that that’s Our Special Thing. (This isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds – I know some people who did have that as their special thing, which is probably the only reason that I noticed I felt that way about it.) I just … he’s been trimming my hair for me for seven or eight years now. It would be so weird for someone else to do it! It just feels wrong to me, so I don’t do it that way.
I tend to think that if people feel strongly about certain things being just theirs, they should talk about it. And I know people who do that sort of thing – who don’t take other people to Their Restaurant, say. Or I saw some people who had in their rules that only the established couple were allowed to use “platypus” as a pet name. Husband and I spend our wedding anniversary together (we’re thinking of renewing our vows on that date this year, actually), but forget each other’s birthdays all the time.
I would say both envy and insecurity depend on the stability of the relationship and how strong it is in the relevant area.
I was stunningly insecure all the time with my ex, because I wasn’t at all sure what our relationship was, what I could depend on, what he intended for the long-term. He would make commitments but not be able to articulate what they meant to him. He’s … a very sweet fellow? But a complete flake, and not good at reading social fallout. (Think ‘ivory tower nerd’ / ‘absent-minded professor’ personality here.) I need a certain amount of dependability and security – eventually I just didn’t feel there was any stable ground for a relationship at all, and he couldn’t fix that.
At the same time, my boyfriend and I have no commitments. (Not only does he have commitment issues, but he and I agreed that we wouldn’t make any before we had been together for a year. So we’re committed to our lack of commitment.) But I am secure that we have a relationship, that it is well grounded, that I have space in his life and he wants to be a part of mine; he is reliable, he doesn’t say things that he hasn’t thought through, and the lack of promises doesn’t change the fact that I feel much more secure with him than I did with my ex.
My husband sometimes feels envious of the smoothness of some parts of boyfriend’s and my relationship. (Basically, a big part of that is that boyfriend and I haven’t been together long enough to have bad relationship habits that irritate the hell out of each other. I expect it’ll happen eventually.) He and I deal with that by working to address our bad relationship habits – something we need to do anyway.
Heh – the only thing is that I’ve got a certificate filed in City Hall. I don’t do prescriptive heirarchy – I’m not attached to being The Wife and keeping other relationships of lesser status. Some people are, and that works for them, but it so would not work for me, even setting aside the fact that if I weren’t interested in multiple life-partnership type relationships I almost certainly wouldn’t be poly.
One of the things that I say sometimes is that I want to let relationships with people settle at their stable levels – they take minimal effort to maintain there, and produce much less drama. One of the things that I had to learn the hard way was just because there’s mutual love doesn’t mean there’s compatibility that can be used as the basis of a marriage.
For the overwhelming majority of people, even people I spend a lot of time with, the stable point I have with them is somewhere in the friend/acquaintance zone. There may be other stable points off elsewhere, but I don’t have any particular urge to go looking for them or expectation that I’ll find them if I try. Some other relationships may be stable as lovers, as romantic friendships, as whatever terminology you want for that, but would make the people in question completely insane if they, say, moved in together.
One of the things that I like about being poly philosophically is that I don’t need to reject the valuable parts of a relationship (such as the one where I learned the hard way) just because we’re not suitable marriage partners for each other. That relationship can be valued as it is, without having to be restricted to ‘just friendship’ or expected to pay out into a marriage certificate. It doesn’t have to lead anywhere or signify anything other than what it is.
It goes the other way too; some relationships that are started out expecting a fairly casual or low-commitment interaction wind up not being stable there. Happened with my boyfriend. :}
I know from experience that I’m unlikely to develop interest in another partnership while I have two healthy partnerships; that seems to be the way I’m wired. (Like some people just stop being interested in other people when they have a monogamous relationship. I’m like that, but my valence number is two, not one.) I may develop more casual relationships, but in practical terms those can be treated as the friendships they are slight variants on. (Including sexually; I have never had a secondary relationship in which a sexual relationship was appropriate.) I’m comfortable saying “I’m not likely to develop another serious relationship while we’re together” (aside from the fact that I seem to be wired duogamous, I don’t have the time), but not “I promise that I will not develop another serious relationship while we’re together.”
I suspect that I have gotten progressively less coherent as I worked on this, because it’s now past my bedtime. I hope I answered more questions than I raised, at least. :}
Not necessarily, my mother has been a SAHM since before I was born and I can truthfully tell you that most of the time she was a much better mother when she had scheduled stuff to do outside the house than when she didn’t. Most of the time because there were a couple years when she overdid it.
So long as it was:
1 afternoon out with Rita
1 afternoon out with Adriana
1 afternoon out with Resu
1 afternoon teaching sunday school
it was fine.
When it was
1 afternoon out with Rita, then Caritas
1 afternoon out with Resu, then Parents’ School (as a student)
1 afternoon out with Adriana, then Caritas
1 afternoon teaching sunday school
1 afternoon Parents’ School
then yeah, it was too much.
Lilairen and WhyNot, just curious…how old are you, your husbands and your “Other Guys?” How old were you when you realized that you were best suited for poly relationships? Was it a gradual understanding or did a lightbulb trip in your mind?
Where’d you get support for this point of view? Since you’re talking about “sin” I’m assuming you’re advancing this as a legitimate religious position. Who gets the option of spiking the Church-sanctioned marriage vows in favour of a set that gives them the option of fucking around? And if vows can allow for consensual extra-marital relationships, why not vows that toss the entire fidelity issue out of the window as a tiresome inconvenience?
Who needs to? But you missed out a few ifs there. Levirate marriage would oblige mr lee’s hypothetical brother to step up and do the square thing by the widow lee, on pain of all his descendants being called “Johnny No-Sandals” in perpetuity. But if my granny had four wheels, a diesel engine and seating for 63 passengers with 12 standing, she’d be a 'bus. The law on levirate marriage would have presumed mr lee fertile during his lifetime, and wouldn’t have allowed lee to “open herself” to being poly only to fall in love with a woman who, by happy coincidence, turned out to have a fully functional set of male reproductive apparatus. Sorry, but you’re reaching here, Polycarp. 