I have a guy that has 9 by four different women and I assure you, where he is concerned anyway, this is not a good approach.
Fascinating may have been a little strong but I think that the lifestyle of having a wife and a live-in girfriend is crazy and something I couldn't deal with. I simply enjoyed hearing about how it works and how this dude, Jerry, deals with it and the dynamic between him and his women. I wasn't so much focused on Patirce in this instance but rather Jerry.
You pay child support, but only as a caveman would: With piles of rocks in front of her door every week. Or putting a chick that you just knocked out with a club at her doorstep, ringing the bell, and running. It also helps if you're screaming "BUT ITS HEALTHY!!!" as you're running.
One of the things most of you armchair anthropologists are forgetting is simple love, I don’t think it’s an artificial construct and has likely been with us for 50,000+ years. It’s a force which keeps people together voluntarily through simple choice and desire. It also has the dark flipside that creates societal pressure to minimise transgressions, jealousy in a time of instant bloody retribution is a destabilising force in any culture and needs to be controlled. One of my colleagues recently had an interesting arrangement with his wife while touring Italy, she could have a $10,000 shopping spree in Milan and he was allowed to hire 3 call girls under the stipulation that he could only do it during the day and he had tell her about it over dinner that night. He thought this was an awesome outcome. Seemed like doubling up to me.
I recently read somewhere (I think it was a book about what makes the English English), and one of the threads was village size was a function of how many people a person could care about. Hence, most villages were roughly the same size based on this human phenomena.
Oddly on topic, this weekend I was in New Orleans, and my friend and I both met girls from separate groups who were engaged and both didn't "believe" in monogamy and could (and would) hook up with guys other than their fiancee as long as they told them about it. And these were classic engaged at 22-24, blond, polite southern belles. It was bizarre and sort of interesting. Then the girl I was talking to got drunk and left to get fried chicken with her friends so I couldn't verify this position carnally. But it didn't come off as justification for sleeping around, but rather a tacit agreement within a belief system.
How much do you think this has to do with the time you grew up in? I grew up in the height of the AIDS scare. Sleeping with multiple partners meant certain death. Hence, committed relationships were always the norm. It seems weird now, but in the mid 80's, you literally thought you might be risking death by having sex at all. It seems to me (and I am curious) that there seems to be a lot less emphasis on sex within a committed relationship only nowadays.
You know how when you start to date someone and decide to be exclusive and then all of a sudden, women seem to suddenly realize you exist and flock to you out of no where? This solution of theirs effectively eliminates his reason to say no. Women tend to get a lot of attention no matter what the circumstances, and they are naturally pickier about the people they are with. If the only rule is that they have to disclose to the other person that they were with someone else, its basically the best of both worlds. Assuming he can handle the fact that she can also sleep with other people. Like I said earlier in the thread, its not something I could do, but I definitely see the appeal.
Changing "what might have happened on the pre-historic savannah" to "modern hunter-gatherer societies" doesn't change a whole lot for me. There are a whole lot of things that we do fundamentally differently to hunter-gatherer societies (i.e. we hunt for fun and gather to share photos on pinterest, not out of necessity) and I don't think their sexual behaviours should be taken as instructive for ours, unless you want to start down the road of all the other things we do - vaccination, living in cities, working in offices - that remote tribes don't. I'm sure that polygamy has been the main form of reproduction for the vast majority of human evolution, and I'm also sure that if monogamy weren't the social norm that not nearly as many people (but not none) would practice it. But then, our form of monogamy is to find a partner as soon as possible and stay married for 50 years or more. Pre-historic caveman didn't have a life expectancy anywhere near as long as our modern marriage, so even if monogamy is primarily genetically coded, it's not coded to modern monogamy any more than the rest of our genes are programmed for sedentary, middle-class, first-world lifestyles. Frankly, polygamy isn't really my thing, but I've also never been presented with the opportunity. I just think that we as modern humans can work out the ethics and practicalities of being polygamous or monogamous on our own, without having to justify it based on remote tribes or evolutionary game theory.
Focus: Nope, couldn't do it. I've only been in one relationship that only lasted a little under a year, but I never felt the temptation to fuck other women. Not that I didn't look and think to myself that I would if I had the opportunity as a single man, but I never so much as felt the urge to act on it. Then again, it's probably way easier to hold my position when you're on the less attractive side like myself and the opportunities don't exactly come along frequently or easily. I don't think I would even want to do a FFM threesome in a relationship to be honest. I think if I was seeing someone and they proposed to open up the relationship that would be the beginning of the end for the relationship. In my mind that would just seem to me that I'm not satisfying them. Plus, even if I did want that, I feel like that kind of arrangement is way more beneficial for women who want it and that there isn't any possible way that it wouldn't somehow effect the quality and/or quantity of sex that we would be having. To me it's having your cake and eating it too, but to people who can make those kind of relationships work, good for you and keep doing what you do.
I'm the opposite--I'm open to MMF threesomes (and have done a few) so long as the guy is NOT a friend of mine. Also, I absolutely will not do one with a girl I'm dating. Every relationship I've been in has been monogamous, and while I wouldn't necessarily turn down a future girlfriend's offer to let me play the field (with her not doing the same) I have no idea whether I'd take her up on it other than in the case of (MFF) threesomes. I absolutely, 100% would NOT be in a relationship that was open on the girl's end. To add another dimension to this, I have a slight fetish for married women. I don't want to be a homewrecker--I've only ever slept with one woman who I knew in advance was cheating on a husband, it was in Vegas years ago and I felt like a douche afterwards--but I have found that I get almost as much of a rush from married women who are in open relationships. All of the 3-4 MMF threesomes I've been involved in were with women who were either dating or married to the other guy, and I've also fucked a few women one-on-one who have had "understandings" with their husbands (and yes, I do verify this ahead of time). If her husband/boyfriend knows and is OK with it, it's not cheating. That said, my "no cheaters" policy doesn't apply to unmarried but attached women, unless their boyfriends are either friends of mine or fellow service members. I figure if she's a cheating whore, better he finds out before he puts a ring on her finger.
I find it really interesting that for a lot of you, non-monogamous obviously means threesomes. I must be odd person out, I am SO not into the idea of threesomes. Like, to the point that porn with them just confuses me. Anyhoo, carry on.
I am not normal. I do not equate having sex with making love or with any emotional attachment, ever. It just is not an emotional thing for me at all, nor for my bf. Why do I care if my boyfriend puts his wee wee in your hoo hah? It's just sex, it's just an orgasm, and then it's over. I guess I just don't equate deep speshul feelings with what for me is just a basic physical need. The odd exception to this is that I find kissing to be much more of a personal thing. I'd be more comfortable with his tongue in another woman's vagina than in her mouth. The only 'rules' in our open relationship have nothing to do with sexual acts, but with emotional ones, like the kissing. There are no pet names, no cuddling, no morning breakfasts in bed with our fuck buddies. The fuck buddies are also just buddies. Not quite friends, but more than acquaintances. These are not even rules so much as things we just don't do because it'd be weird. The jealousy thing is a non issue for us because, what is there to be jealous of? So you fucked my boyfriend... I'm still the one he spoons at night, brings flowers to and cooks for. Just because his dick was in you doesn't mean I'm suddenly not his little brat princess. Yep, that's his actual title for me, and that, with all the feelings and history behind it, will never be given to anyone but me.