It’s About Making Babies!

Kira writes on Polyamory today at 20-forty.com.

polyamory is the practice of simultaneously having more than one loving relationship.

Unlike promiscuous behavior, the relationships are stable and committed.

A primitive view

Humans evolved with a need for community. We see that today with neighbors, neighborhoods, congregations of worship, extended families, and the way people often gather for mutual support and comfort in adversity.

Recently (in evolution timelines) the aspect of bound marriage appeared, a social institution that formalizes the mating that must have been present all along. Whether human nature lends itself to temporary or life-long matings, in the absence of trauma, might be a good question. Most of us live in societies that combine economic goals of inheritance and domination and stability to impose a life-long insistence. One theory has it that the human spirit is geared to four year matings – the length of time for a gravid woman to give birth, nurse and rear a toddler. I think people are more inclined to inertia – unless something happens, relationships would tend to persist through the lifetime.

Three coins

The Mormons with their initial reverence for polygamy, binding marriages of a man to multiple women at the same time, was derived straight from the Bible; nothing in the bible contradicts this. The ‘Wedding at Canaan’ has inspired many cheap wine parties (“Keep the good wine in case someone important shows up”) and also the mistaken assumption that the wedding was between a man and a first-and-only wife. Nothing is ever said that the man didn’t have other wives at the time, or that he didn’t marry later, as was the belief and custom.

Today a number of people live a multiple-mate lifestyle, sometimes referring to their choice as ‘three coins’ from the movie. The choice is made by the women, to choose to share lives with the same man. There is no reason that people that believe such an arrangement is a joyful blessing on themselves and others. At least, until they cross paths with a fanatic that is often unhappy with many of the people in the world.

Polyamory, though, strikes me as a distraction in finding fulfillment and joy. Instead of building a family, polyamory is a means to keep dating, to continue to explore sexual adventures. The only advantage that polyamory has over polygamy or polygyny is that it isn’t obvious to their community, usually, that they are violating social and religious strictures of today.

Polyamory also consumes resources – extra residence, time, effort, curtailed communication and time with a given partner – that are thus unavailable to form a family, participate in a community. To be of service to others. This seems to be a display of conspicuous consumption. Squandering money and time to boast, rather than to quietly and competently build a home to nurture each other.