If you have 10 wives it's less likely you would be spending that much energy on each one of them. If you have a problem with wife No. 5, just go hang out with wife No. 7.
I simply don't give a damn. If a woman wants to live with two men, or vice versa, and no one is hurt, who cares?
Though life is never fair and balanced, the issue is having enough supply left for everyone else. In a small community, 2 guys sweeping up 14 total women and having legal "ownership" over them cuts down on the available wife pool for other men. We complain enough about uneven distribution of things like tax dollars into others' self interests.Men like to bone. Kind of important to our well being. We're going to condone uneven distribution of women and decreasing our chance at having a sexually compatible life partner? Thats a bad approach of "finders-keepers" thats hard to go for. Its men buying their chance at saying "She is mine, you can't have her". If the women and men decide to do that on their own with no legally written vows, then can't do anything about that, its their free choice.
One woman is enough to handle, thanks. PS the reasons divorce rates are so high is partially because people are becoming increasingly inept at dating and courting in general... totally different topic though.
Interesting thing about this thread No one even imagines a Marriage of Two [or more] Men and One Woman. [Martha Stewart or Oprah with a Harem of dudes.] The legal ramification seem to be the one cause the biggest stir. Rocket River
I'm saying it seems a logical solution to the 'problem'. To clarify: what is the benefit of getting married if you want to be with multiple people? Seems like if you want to have your fun and stay 'free', it's much smarter to do just that.
If that is how the individuals want to live, I don't have a problem with it in theory. One of the legal niceties about the state recognition of marriage is the ease in doing things like determining property rights when there is no will. It just all goes to the spouse. When the law will have to decide who gets what or how much among several spouses, it becomes a judicial nightmare to administer.
Hence the qualifiers in my post "doing it right" and "right way." You could have relationships with a bunch of women, but I wouldn't call that marriage. (And that's not necessarily a moral statement, just a personal definition of marriage, which for me tends towards the concept of equal partners and mutual respect and love. Of course, I could be biased, having lived in Utah for awhile... I knew some polygamists and I never saw anything other than the women being absolutely subservient.)
I'm trying to figure out how much more difficult it would be than splitting between children. Total Assets / Total Spouses = Spousal Share. Although the initial tracking and monitoring of assets might be tough, if everyone's both dishonest or disorganized and has their own lawyer. Or if one or more of the wives are estranged and out of state, and decedent never granted a divorce. And she died, and you two had a kid. Okay, I think I see your point.
Without seeing a specific proposal I'm not going to say yea or nay. In principal if multiple individuals want to live in something they call marriage I don't have a problem with it provided they contractually define it. As I've said before ideally I would like to see all marriage defined through contract law and under that you could have a polygamist marriage.
There are tons of these. You are just not used to seeing them. They are rare ofcourse. But your comment does not control for: What's the difference between 4 men having weak and dependent wives or 1 man having 3 weak and dependent wives?
^^ Those are basically my views. Yes I'm Muslim. No I don't think 4 is a magic number. I just think that, given the right set of conditions (as with any marriage), there's no reason to stop people from doing it. Would I ever do it? No. I don't think I could be fair. I don't BELIEVE that. But I have seen it work and therefore can't say it wouldn't work. It would require tilting rights/entitlements/etc significantly in the women's favor.
