Take your victory lap already.
I enjoyed this article:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/06/24/vindication_love/
I think about this often as well… I have a beautiful girlfriend who is everything I’d ever want in a potential wife, and I’ve been dating her for nigh 2 years. She’d get hitched with me in a second, but I constantly joke about never wanting to get married.
It seems like a disaster even if you DO have the right person. I’d much rather plan a pregnancy than a marriage… Having kids seems exciting, committing to one person forever seems a drag. My problem is that while I would love to date many other people, and possibly experiment with polyamory, my SO would NEVER consider such a thing, and even worse, I would NOT want to share her with any other guy. It’s a case of not being able to have your cake and eat it to, I feel, and I think I’m destined for marriage, as are the majority(?) of men.
Wanting to date other people + wanting my girlfriend to only want me is unfair and unrealistic, so I’ll likely never act on it. Do I feel this way because I’m a selfish bastard, or because I’m caught in a gray zone between our ‘natural’ state as humans and the burdens of our cultural norms?
And then there’s the people who doesn’t fit the mono-hetero-marriage ideal. Some people need more than a single partner to be happy. Some need an owner or a slave. Still others need other things. Point being: people like that won’t ever be satisfied with a mono-hetero-marriage. It will never be what they’re looking for, even if their partner is.
No you’re not. You might make a slightly bigger deal out of it, but pretty much all cultures and countrioes share those expetations.
And soon you’ll write the third chapter that I’ve seen every time in the open marraige where you ignore your wife to the point that she’s chasing you down the street with your girlfriend and screaming at you through the car window.
Or when you’re crying because you went to a local Ron Jeremy show, He said that he’s not really into the guy guy girl thing and you come home crying because she picked him.
Yes I’ve seen both of those from the “open marriage”.
I have several more stories about bad endings to this, don’t think the show is over.
We’re hard wired for multiple partners but our installed software says monogamy.
We’re all due to crash to the blue screen sooner or later.
Yeah, Supersport’s post reads like the first act of a movie about the violent collapse of a relationship. We’ll see how successful this experiment actually in in a year or two if he wants to give us an update.
But, to be honest, if his marriage was failing and he was checking out anyways, isn’t living with 2 chicks a nice denouement compared to an instant split?
I doubt we’re predisposed to traditional monogamous relationships, I think it’s something we’re taught, continuously.
I know of a couple of seemingly stable families like Supersport’s, including one that I know have been together for more than 35 years. I know or know of a small horde of people who wouldn’t fit in a traditional monogamous marriage. And I know many of them have tried, because they thought they had to.
I swore a vow to my wife and I will live by it until my death.
If you make a promise, you are a sick fuckbag if you break it. Period. That’s how I see the issue.
I don’t have whatever muscle it takes to flex in order to cheat on my girl.
I couldn’t live with myself if I cheated. My wife is very liberal and as far as looking at other girls or watching porn or whatever, she couldn’t care less. She even points out hot girls to me so I don’t miss out. But cheating? I would be betraying her trust on such a deep level that … well, I really can’t even go there.
Admirable, but only tangentially related to the topic. Nobody is REALLY talking about cheating as an alternative to marriage, just other viable alternatives to marriage (most, so far, being respectable and honest ones).
Oh yeah, I understand that. I was sort of putting my feelings on monogamy into the context of cheating, I suppose. I can see the appeal of an open marriage but, as has been said earlier in the thread, I haven’t seen them work long term.
I’ve heard that while a 3-way sounds great at first (to the guy, anyway) it inevitably leads to jealousy and mistrust and will tear the relationship apart.
It’s sort of like a couple who has babies to keep the marriage together. That rarely works either.
Uhm… Which ones aren’t?
EpicBoy:
I guess you could look at the idea of cheating in the context of an ‘open relationship’ as well, as that is the real issue for the major problems.
Even with an unpromised bond, SOMEBODY in the relationship is going to feel entitled to a certain level of focus, being the ‘primary’ player in the emotional side (or bedroom side), etc., and if that notion was broken, they’re going to feel ‘cheated on’ in some way, justified or not.
That’s the whole problem, and I guess I can understand it, even having only been in a monogamous friends-with-benefits relationship. It always goes sour, even when you have an ‘understanding.’
I didn’t want to reread all the posts to verify, so I said that just in case I had missed something (and this post came out of the whole Sanford thing, naughty business)
I’m in a similar boat. My wife protests that she wouldn’t mind if I went and sowed my oats, but I come from a long line of one-woman men. (And I know a trap when I see one.) I am just wired that way; I can’t think about another woman unless it’s to the detriment of the one I’m with. The one I’m with now, I don’t want to bother with other women… going on 12 years now.
I’ve noticed that more and more of my friends are trying “open marriage.” It seems very complicated, especially when the couple has kids. Arranging the hookups just is nuts sometimes. I’m not saying anything positive or negative about it. It’s not something I would do.
i’m too polite for group sex… too many thank-you notes to mail out aftewards
Thanks for clarifying.
I think that depends a lot on why people want whatever it is they want, how honest they are about it, how clearly and comprehensively they discuss it with those affected, and how good they are at setting limits.
Let’s say a bisexual sub finds a nice master, let’s on that he perhaps wouldn’t mind being shared, and the next thing he knows, his master has an additional partner - something our unfortunate sub didn’t want at all, and doesn’t know what to do about.
Then again, suppose the above, except this time our more fortunate sub has explained what he wants, as well as what he doesn’t want. And keeps refining - and if he feels like it, redefining - what he wants and doesn’t want.
The former is heartbreak waiting to happen. The latter may well be the only kind of satisfactory relationship our sub can have.
Really good point there.
Really good point there.
I suppose. I guess it depends on how emotionally invested you are. The use of the word “chicks” would indicate “not very”.
As I’ve mentioned before, my wife has given me full permission (which I suppose means it would not be an affair). However, I have not taken her up on it. If I did, I would make sure it was a one night thing, not someone I knew well or had any emotional tie to. There are too many horror stories.
Still, I think we focus on the horror stories and forget that lots of people have successful open marriages. Likely, it depends on the trust issue still, though. People get jealous and feel betrayed, yes. But a strong commitment to each other in non-sexual ways means your marriage will survive an affair, most likely, if you want it to. That’s the real issue.
By the time it gets to an actual affair (and here I mean without permission), the marriage is in serious trouble most of the time. An affair, in itself, doesn’t have to ruin a marriage, and I think we are silly when we suggest that the other person must have no self-esteem if he/she stays. I’m sure that’s true in some cases, but in others it’s the existence of such self-esteem that allows the marriage to continue.
As for the original question, yes monogamy is probably overrated. But commitment is underrated right now. I mean a real connection to your partner that isn’t about sex per se (though it probably includes sex).