Individuals in polyamorous relationships report more commitment and investment with their primary partners and report more time spent on sex with their secondary partners, a new study authored by Western researchers has found.
While previous research suggests that consensually non-monogamous relationships do not significantly differ from monogamous relationships on a number of relationship-quality indicators, this is one of the first studies to examine potential differences in the relationship dynamics between an individual's multiple partners, said lead author Rhonda Balzarini, a PhD candidate in the Psychology.
The authors asked 1,308 people in online questionnaires (drawn from polyamorous affinity groups on social media) about the dynamics of their polyamorous relationships.
"The study suggests people who are 'primary' partners – those who share a household and finances, for example – experience greater commitment and investment in the relationship. However, the secondary partnership experiences greater proportion of time spent on sex, and this remains a factor even when we account for relationship length and living arrangements," she said.
Does this explain why kings and sultans had harems?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Friday June 30 2017, @02:43AM (2 children)
Snow..... Comments?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snow on Friday June 30 2017, @04:37PM (1 child)
Haha.
I need to do another journal entry. It's been a while but I've been pretty busy. I suppose I'm more poly in theory, and less so in practice. It's really difficult to find secondary partners, although I have had some success.
I can say that when I am dating another woman, my relationship with my wife improves. We have something new to talk about, and that inspires deeper conversations (rather than just the normal 'how was your day'). The positive energy that comes from meeting someone new does boil over into my relationship with my wife. Just little things like cuddling more or little touches.
While I can't be certain, I feel that there is a good chance that opening up the relationship actually saved and improved the relationship. I was feeling really trapped, and without something being done, I think that feeling would have intensified and would have eventually caused the relationship to end. Opening up allowed me the freedom that I craved. Even though in practice I rarely am able to line up a date, just knowing that the possibility is there makes a big difference.
It's like a dog and it's kennel. Keep the dog locked in the kennel, it hates it and it just wants to get out. But, if you leave the door open, the dog is able to wander around. They may realize that the kennel is warm, safe, and a great place to sleep. Instead of having to stay in the kennel, the dog now sleeps there by choice.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday July 01 2017, @12:17AM
Ha, reminds me of our one dog: an outdoor dog for reals... there was one BITTER, BITTER cold night. We brought the dog into the house (normally it didn't want to be inside) so it could get warm.
All it did was whine and want to go back out, so we let it back out. Happy as a clam, that dog. Used to sit on top of it's dog house like Snoopy.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @02:48AM (45 children)
Polygamy has a bad reputation but I don't see why there are laws against it. I'd prefer that the government stayed out of marriage entirely and only recognised civil unions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:23AM
But teh gays! I'm religious and must compulsively control other people's lives!
er.. let me try this:
OMG gay marriage! Sodom! Gomorrah! Tradition! AIDS!
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 30 2017, @03:26AM (4 children)
Right or wrong, property and other rights are transferred/merged in a marriage. It's one reason that same sex commitments must be equally respected. Polygamy can confuse the situation a bit in the inheritance department.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:42AM (3 children)
There are plenty of complicated legal arrangements with very long contracts. I doubt that the insurance issues would be the most complex and joint ownership of assets is routinely delt with in a business context.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 30 2017, @03:46AM (1 child)
Well, marriage is a business, just one more reason the government is involved.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:19PM
When government gets involved, marriage becomes a violently imposed monopoly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @06:15PM
I believe it's been estimated that the legal implications of saying "I do" would need about 1,000 pages to express.
I think the government needs to be out of the marriage business. If two consenting adults want to enter into a complex, 1,000 page long contract, I don't see why I should stop them. It's not for me, though. When I love somebody, it's deeper than a legal construct could possibly express. I guess straight people are shallow in that way and need their legal construct.
As you indicate, there are partnerships and LLCs, which seem like a simpler approach to me if a legal construct is needed. For me it's good enough to keep my will up to date. The people I love have names, after all.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:28AM (32 children)
There are laws against it because it completely fucks over the other people out there. The FLDS has to routinely find reasons to kick out 2/3 of the men in order for the remaining men to get their 3 wives. Everytime a husband takes a second wife, they're depriving another man of the opportunity to find love as there's now one less woman out there looking for a husband.
These sorts of arrangements really shouldn't be encouraged.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:33AM
"These sorts of arrangements really shouldn't be encouraged"
Encouraged and legal are very different policies.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:52AM (4 children)
That's quite a bit strange.
First of all, most men and women are probably more comfortable living in a monogamous relationship, so two-thirds are off the bat.
Secondly, why would only men have three wives? Many women would prefer to have openly sexual relations with many men. And what about, say, two wives for three husbands, with women strictly heterosexual, one man gay and one man bi? How does that count in the imbalance scenario?
BTW, if You equate marriage with love, then You need to get out more.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Friday June 30 2017, @04:09AM (2 children)
He mentioned Mormons (FLDS). They're probably not too fond of teh gayz.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 30 2017, @06:44AM (1 child)
Their marriage strategy essentially forces some men to be gay or monks..
(or just extramarital material)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @09:55AM
Or to defect their religious community, or to recruit more neophytes (the latter was probably the main goal)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:48AM
There's several issues with that. For one thing, bi and gay men aren't anywhere near that common. If they did go together it would be through coercion or because they had no other choice.
Additionally, it's usually 3 wives to a man in the FLDS for reasons that are too stupid to go into. But, if they went with 4 or more, it would just compound the problem as boys and girls are born and roughly the same rate. Every man that marries 4 women would deprive 3 men of the possibility of having a wife.
Additionally, the main religious groups that still engage in this sort of thing are the FLDS and some Muslims in some parts of the world. Neither of which has a particularly good reputation for tolerating homosexuality. And the Mormons and Muslims that do tolerate or accept homosexuals aren't typically ones that are tolerant of polyamory.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:57AM (5 children)
Looking solely at the polygamous marriage people, mostly life is great. Women have to share, which is a downside at times, but they also gain benefits. They build non-sexual relationships with each other and support each other. They are able to obtain a higher-value man on average, meaning better DNA for the kids and generally less stupid shit. There is always a babysitter. The men win via status, sexual variety, and a full team to do housework. Perhaps there is a slight loss for the very most desirable women, but of course most women aren't that.
There is one more upside. Keeping the failing men out of the gene pool is really beneficial; we are breeding for something, and I happen to think that the "something" should be intelligence rather than stupidity.
Obviously, the failing men are not happy.
The real problem comes from the fact that failing men don't just disappear. They are idle, with nothing to live for, so they will tend toward risky behavior. They won't have the pacifying influence of women and children to care for. Their sexual need is not met. The result tends to be violence, both sexual and otherwise. The high levels of sexual violence in society causes a need to take extra measures to protect women. This effectively takes rights away from women. Women have to live as they do in Saudi Arabia, even if there is no law that requires this. Their own safety demands it. They have to stay locked indoors with family, sometimes escorted outside while well-covered and guarded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:34AM
VR and teledildonics will save the day! [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @08:29AM
Only because the pathetic illiterate Mormon bastard is collecting welfare for four or five wives and their attendant demon spawn. This is how the Republican party grows votes in Utah! Parasites of Latter Day Snipes! I say, make 'em all work for a living, instead of just fucking for salvation.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday June 30 2017, @07:43PM (2 children)
...or the failing men follow the Japanese model and sit at home all day comfortably by themselves, and your whole argument falls apart.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @08:11PM (1 child)
There is a testosterone difference, as you might guess from the difference in body hair and testicle weight. The Japanese, and Asians in general, have less than the rest of the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @09:32AM
Because Genghis Khan was a stay in the basement geek uninterested in girls. Naturally all his decedents are too.
Handwave the whole reason he had so many descendants...
Also don't notice there are over a billion Chinese. That doesn't usually happen without plenty of sex. Except that one time, (ask your priest.)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @04:22AM (19 children)
You're not entitled to a relationship with another person, and this is none of the government's business. If someone would rather be with someone else, that's their choice. In reality, other men are not being "deprived" of anything because they are not losing anything they actually owned. Quite an entitlement mentality you have.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:42AM (12 children)
Who said anything about being entitled to have a relationship? Short of a court order forcing people to pair up that's never going to happen. The only situation I can think of where that would even be a possibility would be in a post-apocalyptic world where that's necessary to keep from going extinct.
The point you're deliberately ignoring here is that we all have the right to try to partner up if we want to get married and have kids. Or even just have a long term relationship without kids. The problem here is that each time a man marries two women there are now two women that are out of the dating pool rather than just one. A shift of a relatively small number of women with respect to the men can have huge consequences when it comes to the ability of a man to find a woman that's willing to accept what he has to offer.
Similarly, in situations where women are allowed to have multiple wives you have the same sort of a problem.
A situation where you've got both going on is just a huge mess with lots of people being put into a position where are pressured to consent to things they probably don't want to consent to or wind up locked out.
The one man one woman thing for heterosexual couples exists in large part because it balances the power and multiple marriages historically are mostly confined to situations like the LDS early on where that was needed in order to ensure that all the women could get pregnant and grow the community after they were exiled from Illinois. The LDS has stopped that practice and it had been on a decline for decades before it ultimately stopped. In the FLDS where that has continued until recently, they had to specifically remove men from the community in order for the remaining men to have the 3 wives they required.
No matter how you look at it, multiple marriage is deeply problematic and multiple dating arrangements like this are barely any better. They sort of work without too many problems only if it's something that's being done by a fringe minority or if it's something everybody is doing. It doesn't take very many people engaging in it to infringe on the rights of others by removing the possibility to find anybody.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @04:59AM (7 children)
You have the right to try, but there is the possibility that you will fail.
Too bad for them, then. People are just engaging in consensual relationships and rejecting others they don't want to get into relationships with.
See now, this is why I mentioned entitlement. What is this nonsense? No one is infringing upon your rights, because people are acting completely of their own volition by engaging in 100% consensual relationships. You do not have a "right" to be in a relationship. At most, you have a right to try to convince someone to be in a relationship with you, and you would still have that right (the right to try, not the succeed) even if there were a large number of non-monogamous relationships.
The only time anyone's rights are infringed upon is if the relationships are not consensual, but that is another matter entirely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @02:41PM (6 children)
The fact that this bullshit was modded up makes me weep for humanity.
You're completely full of shit if you can't acknowledge the fact that there's a huge difference between having a population where there's roughly equal numbers of men and women available for dating and one where there's half as many of one as the other because there was multi-dating and multi-marrying going on.
We all have the right to try and find that special somebody, but having a small number of men with all the women is definitely a huge problem which is the main reason why you don't tend to see that in developed countries. You mostly see it in places like the early Mormons when there weren't enough men to go around and they needed to keep the population up.
And yes, they are infringing on people's right to look for somebody. Imagine being a man in a village where 99% of the other people are men. What do you think the likelihood is of finding a woman? Pretty damn low. How it is that you got an entitlement to find that someone special from that is beyond me, but you're completely full of shit to suggest that situations where you're losing significant numbers of women to men that already have them wouldn't make it harder to find women that are single, let alone actually interested.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday June 30 2017, @04:14PM (2 children)
Wow, you're dumb.
First, in non-religious polyamory, there's nothing preventing one women from "marrying" multiple men. So if you're not cool enough to get multiple women for yourself, you can always try to convince a partnered woman to accept you as an additional partner.
Secondly, in modern polyamory, it's frequent for every person involved to have multiple sex partners. That means no one is "hoarding" anyone of the opposite sex; with both men and women having multiple partners, there's no hoarding going on at all, just a lot more sex and a lot more relationships. The main danger to this scheme is that extremely undesirable men, such as yourself, are much more likely to get left out in the cold, because everyone else has more options. A lonely woman doesn't have to settle for your sorry ass because she can't find someone better; instead, she can hook up with some other guy (who already has one or two other female partners) at least as a part-time partner, or even move in with a group of mixed-sex people. Why would that other guy want to spend time with her? Because his other (primary) partner has another boyfriend she likes to spend some time with. So basically, everyone has more friends and more sex partners, except the really miserable and unlikable people like you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:31PM (1 child)
Wow, you're dumb.
First off, that's not what we actually see in real life. Women go after the top 10% or so of the men regardless of how many of them are already taken by other women or aren't interested. You're deluding yourself if you think that would change in a system where those men would be able to have more than one. The only reason that most men that get married are able to find somebody at all is because women are forced to accept less than the top tier men or wind up alone.
Same goes for men to some extent. Yes, most men would prefer to have 10s that are also good in bed and willing to do the cooking and cleaning all of that. But, there's not many women like that around, so men are willing to settle for a bit less if need be.
Secondly, that's a complete load of crap. That works out fine because there's a relatively small number of people engaged in it. So, there's a viable option to say no. If that number were higher, it would become a huge problem for people who don't want to engage in that as there'd be more and more fighting for fewer and fewer choices.
If this was such a great thing, then why is it that there's nowhere in the world that this is the norm? Even polygamy is virtually extinct because it's such a problem. There has been some liberalizing of marriage laws, but interestingly, that's not led to polygamy, polyamory or similar being legalized.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday June 30 2017, @08:05PM
I find this argument fallacious via non sequitor; sure, everybody pursues the best they think they can get, by and large, but this does not mean that having equal access to available partners is some kind of right. "Tragedy of the commons" and similar effects are certainly something to keep in mind, but that is a social cause, not an explicitly constitutional concern.
But it brings up an interesting parallel I've been chewing on for awhile. There are only so many high-paying (e.g. CEO) jobs. Yet we continue to insist that "anyone has the opportunity to be rich" in capitalist societies when, clearly, this cannot actually be true for everyone simultaneously; and thus the ridiculous income inequality is defended.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @06:17PM (2 children)
What do you mean? I don't deny that there's a difference; I just deny that you somehow have the right to guaranteed success in finding someone, or the right to limit other people's relationship choices to increase the chances of finding a partner.
People engaging in 100% consensual relationships with one another are infringing upon your rights? This is complete and utter nonsense, and you really do have a huge entitlement mentality. There is no right to guaranteed success in dating, since that necessarily would involve infringing upon someone else's right to choose their own relationships.
I don't care, since it's not relevant to your rights.
Because you're claiming that other people engaging in certain types of voluntary relationships are somehow infringing upon your rights by doing so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @08:09PM (1 child)
In other words you're an idiot. Got that.
I never said people had the right to find somebody that wanted them. But, your argument is basically the same thing as saying that you have the right to fish in a lake with no fish. That entirely misses the point. If there are fish in that lake you may or may not actually succeed in catching one, but it's at least a theoretical possibility. Fishing in a lake with no fish because some other assholes were catching multiple fish is more or less what you're arguing for here. It makes no sense, to argue that you don't have the right to catch a fish, so if other people over-fish the lake that's too bad for you.
People engaging in their own practices regularly infringe upon other people's rights. If that weren't the case, then we wouldn't need all those laws that regulate things like how and where people drive. In this case, there is a huge societal problem that happens when this kind of behavior gets to be more than a few random people engaging in it. It very quickly gets to the point where it has real impacts on other people. The fact that you don't get that is rather astonishing. Even a shift of a couple percentage points can have huge implications for how men and women approach, sex, relationships, love and possibly marriage.
On a side note, that name is rather fitting considering that your head is rather far up your ass. Might as well keep the bread there.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @10:20PM
Then what are you saying, moron? You mentioned multiple times that other people's rights are being violated when many people engage in consensual poly relationships. Are you saying that people have the right to try to find a relationship? I agree. The right to have a relationship? I don't agree, since that involves violating people's rights. The right to have a chance at a relationship? What does that mean? It sure seems like that involves limiting people's relationship options to give you that chance (at least if the situation became dire enough), so that is unacceptable since it violates individual liberties. You simply do not have the latter two rights; they don't exist. That is, fundamentally, a type of entitlement mentality.
Fish are in no way related to people engaging in consensual relationships, and rights are a different topic than abilities.
It's at least theoretically possible that you could convince a person in a relationship to go to you instead. But I don't care even if your chances are zero, since it's 100% irrelevant to your rights.
Don't try to change the topic with false analogies. Let's say many men engage in poly relationships. What rights of yours are being infringed upon in that scenario? Specifically name the right and explain it in detail, then tell me why you believe you have that right. Don't bring up societal issues, since that has nothing to do with individual liberties.
The fact that you actually believe we should limit people's relationship options because otherwise the situation may become unfavorable to many men is what is truly astonishing. You don't own other people. You don't own the "possibility" of finding a relationship. These rights do not exist. The only thing you have a right to do is to try to find a relationship, even if that is futile. That's how it is.
I think the main problem is that you're borderline mentally retarded and don't understand what rights you actually have and have absolutely no comprehension of what I'm saying or even what you have said thus far. Then you keep bringing up nonsense about how society would be in trouble if many people engaged in poly relationships, but that is completely irrelevant to the topic of what your rights are even if it is true.
You keep bringing up a nonexistent right; it's a total waste of time.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday June 30 2017, @07:46PM (3 children)
Your argument is grounded in the archaic assumption that in particular a woman who is paired is removed from availability (I'll grant you that male privilege is an underestimated bias in western culture and give you the benefit of the doubt here). In modern polyamory, this is explicitly not the case - ANYONE can be available, subject to compatibility and resources (time, transportation, etc.). While a great many people (not only men) are jealous and have difficulty with the idea of sharing their partner, this is largely a learned behavior resulting from the shift of hunter-gatherer to permanently homed agricultural society and the concept of land ownership. With greater awareness during upbringing (and education in general) these issues can be mitigated.
Further reading: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7640261-sex-at-dawn [goodreads.com] (note: rather a long read, but thorough on this topic)
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @08:19PM (1 child)
Oh great, more of that postmodernist bullshit that I keep seeing everywhere.
This isn't learned behavior, this is behavior that's encoded in our DNA. I didn't want to have kids at all until I was an adult and my hormones told me that that's what I wanted. Being a man, I count on a woman being honest with me about whether or not I'm the father to know. In this day and age I have the option of an accurate paternity test, but those are really awkward to get as you're basically telling the woman that you think she's a liar.
Polyamory is not desirable for social reasons for the same reason that polygamy isn't desirable for social reasons. If it was so desirable, you'd think that it would be spreading to be more common rather than the reverse.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday July 03 2017, @09:08PM
Really? We've located the "jealousy" gene? Or are you just talking out of your ass based on "common knowledge"? I provided a book to read which refutes the notion of hard-coded jealousy - because that's not where we came from. Kindly provide sources or leave the debating to adults who have some actual knowledge.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday July 01 2017, @12:08AM
At the risk of being marked redundant, I'll add my recommendation. That's a great book, and could make you reconsider some of those "that's just how it is" ideas.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Mykl on Friday June 30 2017, @05:01AM (3 children)
(Playing Devil's advocate here)
You could argue that it is the government's business, as they "declared" that they had an interest in the happiness of the people:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
True, but they are being deprived of the opportunity. If there are 20 people in a room and 20 apples on a table, and I take 3 apples, that means that there will be at least 2 people that don't get an apple. Sure, I didn't choose who those people would be. True, nobody said up front that everyone had to have an apple. But the fact remains that I have taken an uneven share of a limited resource, leading to the inevitable consequence that someone else misses out.
Do you know why such a high proportion of suicide-bombers world-wide come from middle-eastern countries? They come from the lower castes of a polygamous society, and have virtually zero chance of finding a wife and therefore to have children. Having nothing else to live for, they are very easily radicalized. As a result, society as a whole suffers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @05:24AM (2 children)
That is far too vague and therefore not actionable. You could use that logic to justify giving the government the power to do anything, effectively removing any limits on the government's power. But that is from the declaration of independence anyway.
No, they are not. You can still try to convince people in a relationship to switch to you. Also, since they are being "deprived" of the opportunity due to each individual's own choices, no one's rights can be said to have been violated; it's sad for the losers, but that's just too bad. You have the right to try, but not the right to guaranteed success.
I don't really care. If you respond to your situation by committing acts of terror, then you are entirely at fault and responsible for your own actions; it's essentially a child throwing a very horrific tantrum.
There is nothing to be done about this, because any 'solution' would surely involve violating people's individual rights, which is intolerable. Just as terrorism will never get me to support unconstitutional mass surveillance, it will also never get me to support something laughable like government control of relationships even if I generously assume you're correct that a lack of partners is a large factor in what causes terrorism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @02:09PM (1 child)
You are silly. The outcomes of polygamy are self-evident the world over, yet you simply do not care for them, yet somehow cannot find a reason as to why someone who doesn't have their head up their ass would try to prevent these outcomes...
There exists study after study that would back-up the fact that give opportunity ALL WOMEN would only mate with top 10-20% of men. Do you not realize the result of this? In order for there not to be a whole-sale collapse of the government, the most of draconian measures would have to be introduced. Simply asking men to only have one wife is the least draconian of all.
Or maybe you consider yourself one of these elite 10-20%. Even if, such a man would get tired of dealing with BS of 5 women pretty quickly.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @06:32PM
I do not care about them because they are not relevant to your rights. If a bunch of people want to get into a relationship with a particular person, and if that does indeed decrease the amount of partners available to you, then that is just too bad; you don't 'own' those other people, and at most have the right to try to convince them to enter into a relationship with you. What part of this is hard to understand? As long as it's all consensual, these people are neither doing anything wrong and nor are they somehow violating your rights.
For this same reason, I don't care about the studies which you say exist, even if I generously assume that they are not just more unscientific social science garbage (like this silly online questionnaire), which they probably are.
Just like we 'have to' have mass surveillance to combat terrorism. Just like we 'have to' have any number of other authoritarian measures in order to combat Bogeyman X. Or you can choose to support individual liberty above safety.
But still far too draconian. And what are you going to do if people just engage in these types of relationships without marrying? Ban that too? You don't actually need marriage, you know.
What I care about are individual liberties, not your probability of finding a partner. I will not sacrifice individual liberties just so you can increase your chances of entering into a relationship with someone else. Stop being an authoritarian moron, something that is far worse than "silly".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @07:44PM (1 child)
The issue is that when you have too many bachelor males, you run into issues with civil unrest.
That is the reason that it is the governments' job.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday June 30 2017, @10:23PM
So what's your proposed solution, then? If it involves violating people's individual liberties, then it's dead on arrival and you're an authoritarian. The government has no business being in people's bedrooms, even to prevent "civil unrest".
By the way, if people do cause civil unrest by throwing a tantrum because they can't find a relationship, then they're the ones violating people's rights and they alone should be punished. Anything else is saying that people are not personally responsible for their own actions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by unauthorized on Friday June 30 2017, @03:35AM (3 children)
I would argue that these are contradictory positions. The state having provisions for personal relationships between individuals is the same as meddling into those relationships.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:55AM (2 children)
I see it as people can enter into contracts with one another and the government can enforce their terms. The term "civil union" could be a term used to describe a common contractual relationship among individuals that would cover how the government currently handles marriage. It's really the connotations associated with the term "marriage" that causes a lot of the controversy.
I'd have a higher preference for the government staying out of the whole thing (as you mention) but that seems even less likely to happen.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday June 30 2017, @04:42AM (1 child)
People still can enter such contracts if the wish. The problem with developing a "standard template" is that certain groups *cough*christians*cough*feminists*cough* have an incentive to mess with the standard template for their political ends. I don't see why there is a need for a centralized template in the first place, marriage-like contracts can still be developed and formed even without a centralized authority and that way everyone can have what they want. Everyone except authoritarians at least.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @10:47AM
Not everything can be regulated just by contract, because governmental and nongovernmental third parties unbound by a contract are involved in some.
Some rights and privileges are extended to those in certain special relations.
Changes in laws and regulations would allow people to designate who gets those rights and privileges.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:57AM (1 child)
The problem with polygamy is that it's a sexual dimension of "the rich get richer".
The guys who have multiple wives tend to be the powerbrokers, warlords,
etc. That still happens in the West, where rock stars and NBA players are
spraying their seed everywhere. We don't need to encourage it by institutionalizing
it. Income disparity is bad enough without pussy disparity. Like a lot of libertarian
government hands-off approaches, this one tends to be objectively in favor of
the oligarchs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @05:16AM
In case you forgot, those in power need not to follow the rules.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:02AM (35 children)
"Wife" is a property relation in Patriarchial cultures, and creates all kind a worry about cuckolding. "Little Wife", as they say in Thai, is just for entertainment, or back-up progeny, to keep wealth in the family. So I suggest we reverse this. Women own all the shit. "Husband" for the legitimate heirs, and "little husbands", like Snow, for just entertainment. Someone once pointed out, (Mark Twain), that polyandry makes much more sense, since a woman can handle multiple males much better than the opposite.
But, just imagine. People loving each other just for who they are, and no attempting to control or possess them? Monogamy is a step to that, because almost all multiple marriage ends up in jealously, hierarchy, buggery, or assassination. Careful, Snow!
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday June 30 2017, @03:33AM (17 children)
I don't even know why cuckolding is a thing worried about in general, it's fucking bizarre.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday June 30 2017, @03:44AM (10 children)
Because you inherited the genes of the males who did.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday June 30 2017, @04:37AM (9 children)
Heh. That is such a crazy statement to make about someone's family that I'll assume you meant that it's because I inherited the genes of people who cared about monogamy. Which I don't think is how it works either if there's an element of societal enforcement. But have no knowledge to argue the subject with because to be honest I haven't given monogamy/polygamy much thought at all. Never married. Doubtful I'd ever want to now. Never even been asked/thought to ask about open relationships. Which I guess is the non-marriage equivalent. Guess it'll have to happen to know my shits given level. But most people just call such things cheating.
Given that I hope it's understood why I care even less than that about a fetish I have no interest in whatsoever like cuckolding. Or why it's worried about. Unless this is like the thing where people were scared of bondage because they associated it with torture.
My god people are weird about sex.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday June 30 2017, @04:54AM (8 children)
The human genetic history, moreso than your personal family. Evolution works on the scales of hundreds of generations and on the scope of entire inter-breeding populations. And not strictly speaking monogamy, but mate protection [wikipedia.org]. Males who were not driven to engage in such behavior were more likely to be cucked, and thus their genes were less likely to be passed on. Likewise for females because having a male partner assist with the raising of children is advantageous to the well-being and thus success of the offspring. This is how evolution works - a gene which increases your likelyhood to produce offspring that successfully reproduces are selected for, thus behaviors which facilitate such success become more prominent in the population.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday June 30 2017, @06:42AM (7 children)
To be completely clear, cuckolding is a fetish. This isn't an evolutionary theory any more than someone with rape fantasies actually wants to be raped. I'm not really sure why this can't go without saying. Someone having such fantasies and sometimes living them out safely is their business. It's not an outlook on life or freedom any more than BDSM roleplay is. This shit reads to me at best like the aforementioned fear mongering of bondage and at worst in the same vein as phrenology. It makes so little damn sense to judge people based on a fetish. Let alone extrapolating it into evolutionary theory. The idea people are actively doing this and turning it political breaks my brain. What it's supposed to connotate breaks my brain even more because it's been made quite clear by this thread that it is now one hell of a loaded term.
In other words: A guy being into cuckolding does not mean anything about his instinct, genes or evolutionary drive any more than a guy being into bondage. That's just their fetish. You think they'd be okay with you trying to have sex with their wife in real life/uncontrolled environments in front of them? Try it with someone.
Of course, I doubt any of the people who use this term seriously in its current connotation actually have the balls to try that because they'd get their asses kicked. It's becoming more clear to me that people are conflating cuckolding the same way they did gayness when it comes to the nature of someone's character. And that's pretty shitty. Just because they don't have the balls to say fag anymore.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @08:11AM (6 children)
Look, being the bull is about as gross and nasty as being the cuck, so I'm not going there, but...
Being a cuck already, he'd get over it. Anybody else would slay both the bull and the wife. They'd be lucky to have deaths that weren't purposely long and painful torture.
Also, it's not just a generic insult. It's not a substitute for fag, except that there is a bit of overlap regarding unmanliness. Cuck very often is used as part of a pretty solid metaphor having to do with immigration: the valuable modern nation is being handed over to people who do not descend from the people who built it. It's like having your wife's boyfriend's child inherit your stuff.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday June 30 2017, @08:59AM (5 children)
So if a guy adopts children and raises them as his own - perhaps their wife's kids from an ex, or maybe some kids whose own genetic parents abandoned or failed them, is that guy a "cuck"?
There's a lot more to parenthood than genetics, but based on your obsessive desire to make excuses for your bitter and divisive opinions by appealing to the most base instincts of humanity that we have spent the last however many thousand years struggling to rise above, I wouldn't expect you to understand. And since you bring it up, I think your metaphor holds up well - we can think of immigrants as adopted children. They might not look like their parents, they might have some issues from their past traumas, they might have some habits and behaviours that don't quite fit in at first, but it doesn't fucking matter. We accept them, we love them, we do the best we can for them and they learn from us and we learn from them. The dynamics of our families grow and change because of what they bring and everyone is the richer because of it.
Or at least, that's how it's supposed to happen. You do get some families where the parents treat the adopted kids differently: Make them sleep in the cupboard under the stairs and feed them table scraps while the genetic kids get treated like princes. In those cases you can expect them to become resentful and grow apart from the family, and maybe even to rebel, ultimately causing misery for everyone. In those cases the parents have only their own narrow-minded, miserly bigotry to blame.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @07:03PM (4 children)
Adopting kids causes your resources to be diverted away from your offspring.
There may be factors that justify it. For example, your niece is closely related to you, so you might be inclined to adopt her if your brother dies. Your example (wife's kids from an ex) can be justified if this will likely lead to producing new children with her; supporting the unrelated kids is a cost you pay in order to get kids of your own.
You may also be infertile and lacking any relatives (closely related by DNA) to help provide for. In that case, do whatever -- it doesn't matter because you are genetically dead anyway.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday June 30 2017, @10:17PM (3 children)
Again, you seem intent on boiling everything down to genetics and resource expenditure. Are you a robot? A spreadsheet? I'm pretty damned sure you aren't a parent. Has it ever occurred to you that while many or even most human behaviours can be explained by our primeval instincts, most intelligent people aspire to overcome those base drives and be more than senseless, rutting animals?
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday July 01 2017, @12:16AM
If by "those drives" you mean the desire to have sex for pleasure, that is a distinctly higher-primate trait. In other words, it is one of the things that defines humans -- that differentiates us from most of the "senseless, rutting animals".
Anyway, what sane person would aspire to overcome the enjoyment of pleasure?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 01 2017, @12:42AM (1 child)
I have 11 kids, all with the same wife. (counting the kid to be born any day now)
I totally accept evolution, selection, fitness, and so on. The meaning of life is reproduction. I'm OK with that. I play to win.
The wife has other motives, sadly. She's hard-core Catholic and thinks birth control is a sin. Oh well. Fitness is whatever gets the job done, eh? I'm still winning, and she is too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 01 2017, @02:06AM
Your religion seems to be pretending that nature actually has a will. You realize that since nature is not living, thinking being, it cannot decide the meaning of your life, right? That is subjective. It is true that the vast majority of humans have a desire to procreate, but that has nothing to do with "meaning". Your thinking is logically fallacious.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:26AM (3 children)
Imagine I hadn't seen your prior posts and journal. From that one sentence, I can tell you are pretty damn liberal. You failed to support your president in his election.
I'll start with the simple issue of resources. No mentally healthy male wants his resources going to anybody other than his descendants and current/future sex partners. Note that previous sex partners like ex-wives don't count, and of course their new partners definitely don't count -- it is normal to wish death on such people, especially when there are alimony or child support payments.
Sexual desire for a mentally healthy male follows a rule from Star Trek. A man desires to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Basically, it is impossible to fully clean a woman. You can't get a soapy washcloth all the way up into the end of the Fallopian tubes. Once a woman has sex, she is forever tainted.
If you put your dick into a woman that has been with some other man, you'll get his jizz on your dick. It's very gay. You might as well be into docking. At that point, suicide is the only way to stop the shame.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday June 30 2017, @04:52AM
wot. [imgur.com]
Also I guess the gist of your post is that it's folly trying to continue with the pretense this is a strictly fetish thing. I respect the way in which you expressed this fact.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @06:13AM
Why, oh why, you totally irrevelant cocksucking AC, would that matter? I am liberal, and I fucked your mother. She is rather disappointed in how you turned out, but we will leave that for Thanksgiving.
You fucking cunt! I will resource YOUR ass, me matey! What makes you think that you have ANY property in you descendants? Sure, they will use you for a property claim, whether you are the genetic pere or not, you cuckolded bastard, but more likely they will arrange you premature death, so as to avoid clamming up the heir queue or potential inheritors. I say, cut the old man's balls clean off!
This is your excuse for why so many men are interested in your asre? Weak, AC, very weak.
Ah, at last, here we are. We are dealing with a cuckold. A man so weak, so clueless, that he cannot trust women. I see that you are in fact a faggot, a poofta, a . . . now before any LGTB, etc. friends take offence, there is a certain class of males who are, um, submissive. They cannot be a equal partner in a heterosexual relationship. Some, like Maggie Thatcher's husband, just get used to being a drone. Others react, and go on to the internet, become anti-feminist, since feminism is actually a challenge for them to actually be real men, which we real mean have nearly no problem with, but these Red Pillars, perpetual Cuckolds, non-reproductive wastes of human existence, cannot deal with the reality human relations. Here, suck my cock, it will make you feel better.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday June 30 2017, @09:03AM
Oh you are so gay. I can smell the repression and denial from here. Give in a go suck a dick, you'll feel so much better for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @11:08AM (1 child)
I'd be happy to enjoy in unrestricted sex with, and impregnate your wife, repeatedly, and let you and her raise my and her kids without costs or tedious upbringing involvement on my side.
Instead of wasting my time on bringing them up, in the meantime I can find more good people like you, have even more non-guilty pleasure, and father even more children.
You sir are an altruistic saint!
Why would any male ever want to be married, then? Well, that's why the women invented marriage or:
Woman: "You ain't getting any before you commit to help me out with the kids!"
Man: "Uh, all right, if I must, but then don't make me do chores after other guys too"
So, in a sense, monogamist relationship is an agreement that both parties set back a little their respective goals to achieve a deal on common ground. If there is a breach of this agreement by one party, the other one gets upset: men get upset if children aren't theirs, women if men are allocating part of their efforts to another women and children (most women don't care if their men sleep around, unless they make more offspring to leech income or cut into inheritance), or stop providing entirely.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 30 2017, @03:58PM
most women don't care if their men sleep around, unless they make more offspring to leech income or cut into inheritance
That hasn't been my observation at all; instead, it seems to be quite the opposite: women are far more jealous of their partners than the reverse. From my observations about polyamory specifically, men are *far* more interested in it than women, even though women actually stand to gain far more from it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:34AM (13 children)
The purpose of sex and the reason we're all drawn so heavily to it is procreation. One man can impregnate hundreds of women in 9 months. The woman's purpose in sex is to get pregnant, the man's purpose is to impregnate. This is why polyandry makes 0 sense. And marriage is similarly about procreation. It has nothing to do with owning the woman - but ensuring that one's child is their own. You'll find that the notion of 'legitimacy' and marriage tend to go hand in hand. In modern society marriage serves a further purpose in ensuring people have a partner who's not riddled with sexual diseases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:11AM (12 children)
"The woman's purpose in sex is to get pregnant, the man's purpose is to impregnate."
Humans also have sex for non procreation purposes.
"This is why polyandry makes 0 sense"
It would be a great evolutionary position for the woman (lots of resources, increased genetic diversity of offspring, etc.).
"marriage is similarly about procreation"
That's why infertile people fail at marriage and couples often divorce after menopause, right?
"ensuring that one's child is their own"
There's no such thing as infidelity!
"In modern society marriage serves a further purpose in ensuring people have a partner who's not riddled with sexual diseases"
Everyone knows that marriage makes you immune to STDs. Too bad there is absolutely no way of knowing if a partner has an STD, you'd think science would've figured something out by now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:36AM (7 children)
Why do you breathe air? It's so you can procreate. Why do you take a shit? It's so you can procreate.
Everything, absolutely everything, is so you can procreate. (this is the true meaning of life) You might think you are having sex for other reasons, but you are not. You are building a relationship that may help children to be made and to survive. It may be that you are not the most "fit" for our modern environment with birth control, in which case you will be strongly selected against, but in the ancestral environment your actions would lead to reproduction.
It does not make evolutionary sense for women to be particularly promiscuous. Evolution has to account for the violence, abandonment, and disease.
Infertile people very often do fail at marriage. Yes, this is a huge cause of divorce. Couples do in fact have an increased risk of divorce after menopause, though of course at some point people usually give up on sex.
Proper marriage does in fact prevent STDs.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:48AM
Nature does not assign meaning, since that is subjective.
Marriage doesn't do any such thing, since it's not magic and is just a silly cultural ritual. Certain choices regarding sexual intercourse do that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:55AM (5 children)
"It does not make evolutionary sense for women to be particularly promiscuous"
Bullshit.
Polyandry would provide more diverse offspring and the extra investment from multiple men contributing as providers and protectors would increase the chances for the offspring.
(Score: 1) by ewk on Friday June 30 2017, @12:21PM
Just as long as those men do not use that extra investment to bust each others skulls (to become and remain the one and only provider for and to the woman involved...
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @02:46PM (1 child)
Polyandry was never even a realistic possibility until recently. If a woman has 3 husbands, that means that she needs to have a bare minimum of just over 4 children in order to maintain the population. And she'd have to have a whopping 5 in order to increase the population. Pregnancy up until relatively recently was extremely dangerous and women regularly died as a result.
What's more, aside from pregnancy related deaths, the world was far more dangerous for men. For example Europe would lose a third of it's male population on a relatively regular basis in their massive wars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:35PM
Whether or not it is a viable population strategy has no bearing on it being a favorable evolutionary position for an individual.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:12PM (1 child)
Arbitrary genetic diversity is not a good thing.
The whole process through which evolution has brought us from nonsentient blobs to what we are today is natural selection. It's not fair and it's not meant to be. Nature and randomness result in a variety of different traits and characteristics. Those that make individuals more well suited to their environment get passed on, traits that make individuals less well suited disappear. This is the reason that women have always been attracted to strength, power, and intelligence. Men by contrast have been attracted to physical characteristics which tend to be indicative of somebody capable of birthing and raising a child healthfully.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:22PM
Hindsight makes it relatively easy to explain which traits would be favorable, but genetic diversity is evolutionarily favorable because it hedges against unpredicted environmental changes. You are correct that certain traits are instinctually considered as favorable, but there are always fitness costs (metabolic cost for bigger muscles and a larger brain).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:17PM (3 children)
You're not understanding at all. The one and only reason sex is so enjoyable is because it's an evolutionary imperative. You think you're controlling it, but in reality the genetically encoded instincts control you. For instance when asked to rate a woman's attractiveness by smelling a shirt they had worn men instinctively select the shirt that came from women who were ovulating. Obviously they had no clue they were doing this and probably thought the whole thing was just a hilarious experiment, but it again goes to show that your instincts control you more than vice versa. All of our behavior is fundamentally driven towards procreation and natural selection. And it's completely invisible to us.
And yes issues with fertility are much a reason that serious relationships break down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:33PM (2 children)
You seem to be projecting values onto natural selection and mysticism into instincts.
Evolution doesn't care that you want a purpose or want to make sense out of how humans developed.
You say that sex is enjoyable because of evolution, then why is birth so painful? You also miss that evolutionary fitness is not only dependent on procreation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @06:46PM
What I am stating is exactly how natural selection and evolution works. It is entirely about procreation. Characteristics that result in a greater ability to procreate get passed on. Characteristics that inhibit one's ability to procreate do not get passed on. The way we evolve (and continue to exist for that matter) is procreation. Absolutely everything that gets passed or not is 100% decided by its effect on the ability for one to successfully procreate.
The comfort of birth (or not) would only be a selected trait if it had any meaningful impact on the probability of someone successfully procreating. On this there are two things to consider. Given that men are typically the dominant ones sexually, the trait would have minimal to no impact. However, at the same time - it could have at one point. You are assuming that the current state of birth is not comfortable without contrast it to hypothetical alternatives. All sorts of animals have a wide array of sexual habits. In some the female regularly dies once procreating, in others the male is killed by the female during procreation, some give birth to one young - some given birth to tens or hundreds. Everything from the reason we have mammary glands and give live birth instead of laying eggs are all just products of evolutionary selection. It's both wonderfully arbitrary and amazingly effective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @09:30PM
Birth is not universally painful, that meme mostly exists in western European areas where the women don't have wide hips...
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday June 30 2017, @08:37AM
"Wife" is a property only in legal terms in a patriarchal culture. Patriarchal culture puts no responsibility on young women as they are able to give birth. Your ass-backwards understanding shows you had a feminist upbringing, but it is not true and you can go to any real patriarchal culture such as middle east and witness this yourself. Secondly, women DO own all the shit such as gold in these cultures because until very recently GOLD was one of the two ways to store money in the first place. The other being land, which was given to men. And thirdly, Islam, the patriarchal culture to the max, allows non-consensual divorce for both MEN and WOMEN but does not allow non-monogamous relationships for women (only for men). This is because multiple spouse means multiple kids fighting for the money. Patriarchal cultures have no proper way to transfer money from a living woman against her wish because that is considered honourable. Men on the other hand can be forced to give. So a rich man with lots of land can divide it legally among different heirs but a rich woman cannot be asked legally to give-up her gold.
The problem with feminists is that they are a product of industrial age. They are a group of ignorant morons and like most ignorant morons of the west, they think they are simply better human beings for being western and they have the god-given right to usurp whatever system is working in non-western non-industrialized societies by hook and crook. Your understanding of 'patriarchal cultures' is wrong even for western countries pre-industrial revolution. But who cares? Feminism allows women to get free money and that makes it right.
(Score: 2) by YeaWhatevs on Friday June 30 2017, @02:04PM
Sure, that's cool. While we're at rewriting the marital contract, I get to keep all of the money I earn and she can support herself and her little bastards herself, since they aren't my problem. See where this goes? Can't have your cake and eat it too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @02:16PM
Yeah great fantasy, but it doesn't work. There is a reason Patriarchy is predominant form of societal arrangement in most places. Differences in gender make it so, and it is usually to benefit of the woman as well as the man. It allows for men to accumulate wealth and still marry a woman during her prime fertile years. Where as if inverse was true, women would have to struggle to accumulate resources to attract mates during their most fertile years, and then hope they have enough fertility left to have a family. (And yes, they would have to EARN the wealth, there is no GIVING fucking wealth away, any society that tries shit like that will turn into Venezuela).
Also, if you think a woman, especially one with kids, will give enough sexual attention to 2, let alone 5 horny as fuck men, you have never been married. What do men who are horny do if their wife isn't able to give them enough attention? They get into all kinds of trouble...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:14AM (1 child)
Surveys internet social media dedicated to having sex with multiple people while in a relationship. Discovers people who spend their time on social media talking about it speak fondly of it. I'm certain there's no sampling bias, survivorship bias, or anything like that. Amazing work that continues to emphasize the fundamental value of psychology in modern society.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:28AM
Crap.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Lagg on Friday June 30 2017, @03:27AM
So I know there's still some debate on whether or not the biological imperative is actually a thing or something enforced by society. But I don't care about that. Because por que no ambos
Anyway, this kind of scenario fits how one would think nature would work. You've got a partner and then you've got things you hump. Random humping is a thing that happens in nature. Monogamy kind of goes against how many species (besides the ones that birth in dozens of eggs) propagate. If the thinking that we are instinctively driven to reproduce is correct (and why would it not be, we'd be so extinct otherwise) people probably find happiness for the same reason friends with benefits do.
Not that I am advocating one way or the other. If there are people that actually do it that aren't goddamned mormons or something by all means. But I hope if they have the time to invest in that they also bother using condoms. We don't have tigers and lions eating 20 of us a day anymore. Don't overfill the tire.
Also Kings had harems for the same reason everyone else in history had sex slaves I imagine. As far as the king was concerned I'm sure it was a super great 'partnership' though. Especially for the castrated butlers.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:31AM (1 child)
Lefty and Righty must never touch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @05:33AM
I, for one, imagine a room, where TMB and Runaway pace apace. And then the lights go out. No one saw anything, so nothing happened. But I, poor spectator that I am, was eaten by a grue.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday June 30 2017, @03:32AM (1 child)
The explanation for that is much simpler. From an evolutionary perspective, for a male it's advantageous to spread his seed as far as wide as possible, with no regards to investing into the well-being of the offspring produced. Even if only a tiny part of his offspring survives and reaches sexual maturity, it would be a greater evolutionary success provided a sufficient number of mates over investing into a single mate who at best can only produce 1 offspring per year over 30 or so years, but more realistically less than one per 3 years even in the most rapidly growing societies.
In reality it is of course a bit more complicated as there are certainly things to be said about the quality and offspring to be produced, but nature does make abundantly clear is that greater breeding rate inevitably overtakes all other factors given our current environment. We like to think ourselves the masters of our world, and that might be true in a way, but there are far more successful species on this planet than us and they all share the paradigm of great proliferation rates and rapid maturity.
Of course, over a long enough period investment into higher quality offspring would snowball in a way which other species simply could not hope to compete (ie complete biosphere mastery and space colonization), but that's not an evolutionary factor yet and thus inconsequential when examining our ingrained instincts. The only reason we are the way we are today is because we are at a sort of an evolutionary plateau where changing this reproductive strategy to a more advantageous one would have been a short-term downside for our ancestors, and thus selected against since natural selection has no provisions for long-term planning beyond random chance, making any such adaptation highly unlikely.
In a way, we were lucky to develop the "inferior" trait.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:03AM
For most of us, the downsides outweigh the upsides.
1. inability to keep more than one (add one, and a previous one leaves)
2. violence from other males
3. inability to keep more than one from cheating
4. inability to support more than one
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BK on Friday June 30 2017, @03:33AM (2 children)
I thought it was because they *could*...
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @02:18PM (1 child)
Yes, in essence that is what it is. But it doesn't address why they want to. There is motive and opportunity. You only covered opportunity. I know motive is like "cause it's fucking great", but that's really not the underlying motive why we evolved to consider it being fucking great.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @07:50PM
Pretty sure we evolved that because a male that had a herem would end up with many progeny. That is, those males were highly successful breeders (the only success that evolution cares about).
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday June 30 2017, @03:41AM
Maybe people who are interested enough in relationships to want multiple partners, want a larger amount of 'relationship' in general?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @03:45AM (2 children)
LOL
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:17AM (1 child)
Your brain felt good to write this (feeling superior was your motivation).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:38AM
I love me
I love me
I'm the greatest
I can be
Kill All Humans!
(Score: 4, Informative) by krait6 on Friday June 30 2017, @04:12AM (3 children)
I've had a polyamorous relationship with my current partner for > 10 years now. I had dated her years prior, then later had several monogamous relationships where I discovered that my partner had cheated on me, or was now dating someone else at the same time without telling me. Note: in the version of polyamory I'm practicing, that's still cheating. (i.e. I'm not practicing "don't ask, don't tell", which is another version of polyamory -- and there are several other forms as well.)
The "big lessons" when it comes to "making poly work" has to do with understanding that relationships are seperate from one-another (one relationship breakup does not mandate the other break up, etc), handling feelings of jealousy, and having good communication with all of your partners. (Along with trust that all the partners in the chain won't cheat.) It's certainly not for everyone, but for me I find it more honest and more refreshing than any monogmous relationship I previously had. If my partner finds someone cute or wants to date them, that is not a reflection on me personally at all -- it has nothing to do with any kind of inadaquacy or not getting something "missing", it's about being attracted to the other person, and that's fine! ;-) That's something pleasing not something to be jealous of. It takes time (and some effort) to truly understand this.
There is the issue of "loosing time" with one's partner because they're busy with another, and so when new relationships start it is important to be mindful to maintain existing relationships at the same time rather than focus solely on the new relationship. But other than that it hasn't been a big concern.
I'm pointing this out because the article doesn't really delve into these details.
And again -- Poly isn't for everyone. If you like what you have, keep what you have. And I'll just mention, having a Poly relationship with someone who has other partners does not require that you have multiple partners -- they can have multiple partners and you can just have them. That seems to work fine too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @04:51AM (2 children)
Not all men/women are wired the same way, whether due to upbringing, genetics, or past experiences.
That said, some people, both men AND women are wired for monogamy, and you need to sort that shit out early, because some people WILL lie about it in order to get an 'in' with you, then start pushing the monogamy later. I had that happen with an ex who started as a fuck buddy, but was really just trying to catch a man to live up to her family's expectations of her. We ended up dating a year and a half (the sex was amazing!), but religion, family involvement, and the monogamy/marital commitment stuff eventually did it in (neither of us were in a position for it financially, educationally, or socially at that point.)
Ensuring you start with, and maintain open and honest communication is VERY important for *ANY* style of relationship, but one involving multiple partners (or a single partner and their multiple 'annoyingly close' family members) can have a lot of impact on the relationship dynamics and health. Also mutual respect, something that tended to be in decline before ending our relationship.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 30 2017, @03:26PM
We ended up dating a year and a half (the sex was amazing!), but religion, family involvement, and the monogamy/marital commitment stuff eventually did it in
That'll do it in all the time. My advice: never date someone who isn't of the exact same religion as you (within reason, i.e. Catholics should not date Protestants, but it's OK for Lutherans to date Anglicans I think). It just causes too many problems. Most importantly, if you're not religious, don't date someone who is. Trust me on this.
Family issues will also kill a relationship; I've seen that several times. Your families need to be completely compatible; if you hate your in-laws-to-be, then break up (unless your partner also doesn't like them, then it's OK).
(Score: 1) by krait6 on Friday June 30 2017, @10:05PM
I like your reply and think it's insightful and I'd like to touch base on this specific part:
"Wired for monogamy" I think is true but (in my humble opinion) purely environmental -- that is, people are "wired" for this from learned behavior rather than it being genetic. Human beings aren't wolves -- we don't mate for life. If our partner dies, we usually (though not always) find another partner. So it is possible for someone monogamous to learn to be polyamorous. For instance I didn't start out polyamorous -- I grew up with very traditional monogamy, and learned to be polyamorous only because I dated someone who figured out how it could work. (And when she did, the title of "polyamory" didn't exist or she had never heard of it, and only found it later.)
I haven't personally had the experience of someone monogamous telling me they're okay with being polyamorous and then trying "trick me" into being monogamous (again), but I have friends that are polyamorous that have had that happen, and it's annoying. It's understandable, but feels/seems manipulative. :-( It ends up being a kind of "relationship competition" instead of "relationship collaboration", the latter of which is what I think "my version" of polyamory is really about. Messy.
And polyamory also comes with some risks -- even when it works well, there can be situations where multiple relationships all fall apart at the same time, and that "multiple hurts" instead of "single hurts". :-( You take the good with the bad.
My partners and I discussed this as we got involved with one-another so we were sure to understand the risks, and had a discussion about the possibility of dating before actually dating so that we all got a kind of "brocure" about who we were, what our situations were, what we thought our personal problems/deficiencies we had were as well as our skillets, and so forth, so that we could try to understand and mitigate the risks. That seems to be a thing that helps a lot with these kinds of problems.
During times that things are good we sometimes joke about things that "weren't in the brocure". ;-)