From: whitlock@vaxb.gbus.virginia.edu (Reid E. Whitlock)
Subject: Re: Polyamory and Marriage
Organization: Darden Center, University of Virginia
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 20:30:06 GMT

In article <171lanINNeof@agate.berkeley.edu> mshort@minestrone.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Short) writes:
>
>what is it that led to those being married to _chose_ to do this? (shotgun 
weddings don't count!)

>> In the case of my first marriage, both my wife and I were practicing 
"poly's" before the marriage. We decided to marry because we felt our 
relationship to be a "safe harbor" --- the "core" relationship, to which we 
both were MORE committed in the sense of willingness to compromise,
the number of facets it encompassed, the amount of sharing (i.e. 
bank accounts), and the amount of openness, than we were to our other 
relationships. We accepted that our other relationships might not be as 
"total", that was o.k. --- it was also the reason why OUR relationship was 
so important. We celebrated that importance in marriage. 

My second marriage was a similar arrangement, with similar understandings, 
one difference was that I think my second wife would have agreed to 
monogamous/mono-amorous behavior had I insisted on it. It was part of her 
idea of what one should be prepared to commit to in marriage. It was fine 
with her that this was NOT a requirement, but she was prepared for it to be 
so. I think we married also in part because we had by this time looked long 
and hard for likely candidates for sharing real intimacy with, and felt that 
marriage was a way of publicly announcing that we had found what we had been 
looking for (or at least as close as we thought we were likely to get!).

Footnote: I'm single again (there were nine years between my first and 
second marriage, and I've been divorced now for just over a year). Would I 
do it again? --- not without a LOT of reflection. I no longer understand 
what "value added" it provides. I might even call one or more of my partners 
my wife in public --- it's a word people know how to relate to --- but I 
don't think I'd get legally bound (lots of imagery in that word, isn't 
there?) again without some VERY deep thought and some VERY good reasons.

>Did a state of polyamory happen only after your marriages? Or was it more a 
>recognization of a 'First among equals'? Are all of you polygamist/polyandrous?
>Or something else?


>>  In both cases, we were both polyamorous before our marriages. In each 
case, my wife was my first --- the others were NOT equal. At one point 
someone else began to vie for that status and it was a definite tension 
creator. 

>Another question: for the few polygamists I've met, polygamy 
usually meant several women being monogamous to the same man. Is that your 
experience also? 

>> No. What I do find, is that some of the women I am involved with don't 
tell their other paramours that they are involved (at least not sexually) 
with anyone else. Only with me (since I have the more open approach) are 
they open in discussion of other relationships. They want these other 
partners to THINK they are monogamous, since they think that to tell these 
men the truth will end/ruin/destabilize etc... the relationships.


Reid
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