What are your views on polygamous marriage/relationships?

Post Reply New Topic

I was wondering what everyone's view(s) on polygamous marriage/relationships were.I am still trying to figure that out.

-SpaceCase

I don't think they're very good for anyone involved. The women all have to compete with each other for the husband's attention, leaving them quite prone to feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and resentment, so that not only do they not get the husband's undivided attention, but the relationship with the other women they live with is often strained. I imagine this would leave them feeling rather lonely. The man has to try to keep each of the wives happy and deal with any ill feelings that arise among them, and divide his time among his children, which I imagine would get quite exhausting. The children also have to compete for their father's attention, which could hurt their self-esteem, and have to deal with their mother's competition with the other women and their ill-will towards one another, which might affect the way the women treat each other's children as well. I imagine this could get quite stressful for them, as well as for all involved. Based on what I've seen and read and studied about each relationship structure, monogamy makes for the most stable relationships and is the best type of structure for children.

Good in theory, bad in practice. Emotions get in the way.

Ehh... far as i'm concerned it depends on the individual situation.

Depends mainly on how much the "ownership" mentality interferes... there ARE cases where triads (and probably larger groups) can form without ripping themselves apart through petty jealousy and attention-fights.

That, and as far as i'm concerned communes have the right idea for raising children... if people can just get over the whole "MY DNA, MY rules!" thing enough to work together.

(And yes, I'm a pinko if you can't tell already. ;p )

I knew a woman with two husbands once. She said:
1. If you think being married to one person is hard, you should just try two, and,
2. It's not really being married to two people, it's three people married to each other.
It didn't work out. Husband #1 couldn't handle it and had to leave.

IF everyone's ok with it and can deal with it in an adult manner, who'm I to say it's bad?
That said, I've never seen one that worked long-term. Usually they seem to be about a power-trip for the husband.
Not to mention that, as was said above, sometimes it's hard enough being married to one other person, much less 3 or 4 or 5.

I don't see anything wrong with it in theory. But I think that there are probably not very many relationships of this fashion that really work out.

But, if they did, we probably wouldn't hear about it anyways.

You can have numerous relationships at a time. You can have a best friend, a mentor, a protege, a lover, a confidant, and so forth. They each have distinguished roles in your life, and this is why you can manage to have them all at a time. They need to feel that they are filling a niche, and they'll feel displaced if you add another to theirs. Now, I imagine that you could have sexual relations with all of them, but this is unnecessary for the maintenance of the relationships. I don't think that polygamy would work without clearly defined roles for each partner that one obviously couldn't fill at a time, and, honestly, I don't think that a person with any common sense would go to terribly much length to construct one. If three or so people have, by some fate, found themselves in a polygamous relationship, though, they are not wrong if the thing works for them.

I feel like I have the opposite extreme of this problem..

Meaning I can't handle more than one relationship at a time no matter what, if I'm close to someone in any way, they're best friend, confidant, protege, lover, enemy, slave, boss, all in one, I'm trying to do it another way, but the way my obsessive nature is, it seems either a partner thats everything, or alone, is the only way I can work for a while.

Biology dictates there should be about as many boys as there are girls in this world, but polygamy demands more girls than boys. So, naturally, it is prone to fail. There are a number of polygamist communes where I live, and what I have seen has not been good, especially for the children. Polygamy is hard on the girls because they are often forced to marry against their will (a la Warren Jeffs). And it is hard for the boys because many are forced out by the older men to reduce "competition." I'm sorry to say many of these boys end up in orphanages, on the streets, or worse. Perhaps if there was a large source of income to sustain the entire family, no emotions to get in the way, and no ideology used to control people, it might work. Otherwise I don't think polygamy is a good practice.

nukleuz: What you're thinking of (and seeing) speficially is polygyny. One man, multiple wives, never the other way around. This is how some forms of Islam and some forms of Mormonism work, but it's not the only way. If anything it's downright exploitative and such abuses are even warned against in the koran.

There's an inverse of it, polyandry (one woman, multiple husbands), but that tends to happen a lot less because of the nature of society.

Again I restate my utter hatred of the "ownership" mentality because of everything you just mentioned. Of course it's prone to have such horrid faults when a gender is treated like property in a society.

In my mind, you belong WITH someone, not TO them. With that philosophy, it works. I was close to two women at once, and they were close to each other. To this day, any of us could tell any of the others that we love them. It would be true.

No matter how stupid or Ill-advised it may be if all members are consenting they have the right.

Depends on whether it's a case of a man being married to a bunch of women and basically owning them, concubine-style (especially if they're preteens or something--have any of you read "Under the Banner of Heaven"?), or if it's just a bunch of people who are all married to each other (by choice) and there's gender equality. If the former, I hate it, and if the latter, then...well, it's okay, I guess. Polygamy itself isn't bad IMO--a bit foolish given that most people get jealous and often with too much sexism attached, but it in itself is not inheritly bad...just USUALLY bad.

Well, a polygamous marriage and a polygamous relationships are two separate things. In my opinion, marriage is always a better outcome for romantic relationships because it represents a stronger form of commitment between two people who love each other. In a polygamous marriage, you do have this commitment. And it's out in the open to a degree, unlike the more common polygamous relationships that are the stuff of affairs with secretaries. Unfortunately for the concept of polygamous marriage, modern society has eliminated the need for it. Because of improved neonatal care and mechanized agriculture, one does not need to have many children by many wives in order to thrive in a material sense. It is not surprising that the only people still practicing polygamous marriage are religious extremists.

I think it should be allowed, both for men to have multiple wives, and for women to have multiple husbands. I don't know why it's illegal, because if it hurts anybody, the hurt party put themselves into it in the first place.