I can't image anything more awful than polygamy.

You need two gay men to do your girlie stuff for you.

Joe(high maintenance...who me?)Nation

Hmmmmmm....four worked for me.....for a year or two.....but none was gay, or brainless....so it ended up too tiring, and lerve won out....



Sigh.



Lerve sucks.

I am having a private bet with myself that the lerve turned out to be none of the four.

Did they know about one another? One of the worst times of my life was when I was 'seeing' a bunch of women at the same time. None of them knew about any of the others until one fateful morning....it was not pretty.


Joe(Oh hello, have you met my friend...)Nation

I dated 2 guys at the same time once, and only once. 2 was too much for me

After my last one, I decided that 1 was too much, but that's not written in stone of course.

The "lerve" was, indeed, one of the four....and the one I knew was "lerve" from the first time I met him.


Did they know each other? Two and two knew each other well...ie of the four, there were two pairs who knew each other well.


I neither made a secret of it, nor made a point of it.


They met up a few times. What can I say?


They knew as much as they wanted to know.


Had they asked, I would never have lied.


When they met up and stayed, it was awkward, but it was not overly awkward.


I just wished them all good night, and went to bed.


I assume they all knew everything.

Last season, I watched every episode of "Big Love" about a polygamist family who had to hide their living situation. They were mormons, and in Utah.

Differing from my perception that the polygamist families there ALL live in compounds far from other people, this family lived right in the middle of an suburban area, and was a prominent businessman.

Actually, the husband HAD been raised in one of these polygamist communities, but (to answer the question about how polygamy can work if males = females) he got literally thrown out when he became a teenager. This was discussed in another thread a while back. It turns out when a boy reaches a certain age, they are a threat to the Elders, who take all the wives....so, a teenage boy will be driven into a city, and just dumped there to make his way. I'll try to find that link.

Now of course Big Love is a HBO work of fiction, but I'm sure there's truth woven in there.

Honestly, it seemed really REALLY difficult maintaining a family like that. This guy Bill (played by Bill Paxton), because he had to hide the fact he had 3 wives (and their children), owned 3 separate houses, all next to each other. Looked very normal from the front, but in back, all the backyards were linked....He would always enter into the 1st wife's house from the street, then, would go to whatever house he was going to spending the night at.

The 3 wives had monthly business meetings, to discuss household matters re childrens activities, budgets.....and write up a schedule of what nights Bill was going to be at each house. It seems that even if they had all lived in one house, they still would have had these meetings, to decide which bedroom Bill would go to.

It was very important to the family that Bill not show favoritism toward any one wife, and when he was with one, the others where not allowed to interfere.

2 episodes come to mind regarding the sexuality....In truth, all the wives were very modest about discussing sex and it was work to not become jealous.
In one episode, it was the start of a day, apparantly when Bill made the switch from one house to another. Before he left for work, he had to go back to the house he'd been at the night before, because he forgot something....when he went there, he ended up getting aroused by the wife he'd just been with, and they had a quickie....the wife whose day it was walked in on them, and she was irate..."THIS IS MY DAY"!!!
In another episode (actually several) Bill and his first wife both started reliving the days when it had been just the 2 of them, and they were feeling especially close. They couldn't get enough of each other, and where meeting each other at noon at a local hotel. Both were expressing guilt over their "affair"

So, from what I can see, it wasn't some free for all and took a lot of effort on everyones part to do it right.

Why do polygamists have to hide that they have several wives?

I mean, I would understand it if they had several civil marriages at once. But I don't think that's the case in Chai's example -- I imagine that's very hard to pull off in this age of electronic records. But if their arrangement is governed by some religious regulations, or by some informal agreements, what is there to hide?

I think the idea with that show is that they had kids, were part of the community, etc. It's looked down upon.

Gotcha.

I never understood why it would be illegal.

The answer is obvious: Because Mitt Romney can't imagine anything more awful than polygamy. And you can't deny that nothing can even compare with the horror of a man living with four women. Certainly not starting a war on false pretenses, nor abducting European Muslims to Afghanistan, nor naked human pyramids in Abu Gharib, nor the waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay.

Oh. Okay.

Yeah. That makes sense.

Squinney--

Very often the wives are as young as thirteen or fourteen--too young to be consulted about their futures, but old enough to be bedded by men their fathers' ages--or older.

Dlowan wrote:



Each of the gentlemen would take care of his own laundry (starting with picking up his own dirty socks from his own bedroom floor). Any man held up late at the office, would simply lose his turn in the marital bed. Each man would deal with his problem family members. This means deal with them, not simply ignore the problem and hope it will go away.

After all, every man should be King in His Own Castle.

So I heard -- but why is this a polygamy problem, as opposed to a child abuse problem?

imo noddy has it exactly right when she writes :



some of those wifes may be a little older than 13 or 14 but usually they are made "available" (for want of a stronger word) by their fathers to older men .
there is hardly ever any relationship established that is between "equals" .

if adults want to live together in which-ever-way they want , i don't think there is a law forbidding such , is there ?

what it is really all about is to establish the "supremacy" of the husband/father , is it not ?
there have been at least two documentaries on CBC-TV exposing some of these communoties (there are several in british-colimbia) . the police and other government agencies have great reluctance to come down like a sledgehammer , mainly because of the accusation of breaking up families and of what to do with the children - it's not something that the law is equipped to deal with easily .
hbg

But, if all are of age and accountability, what's the problem? If anyone wants to live that way, whether multiple wives or multiple husbands, why not?

Thomas: As I understand it only the female children are subject to the pre-age-of-consent marriages and because the polygamy is being used as cover for what would otherwise be rape, pediphilia or both.

Joe(The men wait for marriage until their mid-20's)Nation

squinney wrote :



but they hardly ever are , are they ?
to my limited understanding they are usually pre-arranged marriages of younger "women" to older men - and i wonder how much say the "women" had in accepting these arrangements .

unless everything i've read and heard about it is complete fabrication , i don't think it's a fair deal for many of these women - but perhaps some may find it acceptable .

i'm sure there must be a couple of men/women living with another couple of women/men even in our fair city and i've never heard any objections to that - perhaps a few laughs , but that seems to be about all .
hbg

Ahhh.... See my imagination was going in a different direction. I sort of pictured them all in the same room, eh, same bed, you see. Hence the Still, it sounds like too much work. Hell, one man is usually too much work.

High five!


Okay, how about this? We all move in together and whoever wants anyone else can just ask, everybody gets to say no and no hard feelings are allowed from anyone.
All the women can have as many of the men as they want.
All the men can have as many of the women as they want.

Joe(wait a minute. I think I lived there in 1969)Nation