On Polygamy III

What’s Pimpin Baby??

Kumo tha Dude back at ya!

When we left off with our discussion of polygamy, we had determined that there should be limits to the number of wives, we considered the idea of men and women negotiating if plural marriage will be a part of their marriage or not, and also that allowing polygyny in an intelligent and skillful way would not result in a large number of men being without partners.

Having laid the groundwork, I am ready to share some thoughts, spread out over a series of posts on how polygamy could be skillfully used to benefit society, and why it should become an accepted part of our culture.

Reducing the likelihood of male Adultery.

The crime of Adultery is, unfortunately, more prevalent than we would like to admit. In addition, it ain't no secret that Adultery is a leading cause of divorce, and all of the harmful things that flow from it [a][b].

While figures are somewhat hard to come by, what I have found shows us that Adultery is a “male dominated” activity.

Yes, I am aware that women cheat too, and I also know that this post does not address the many reasons why women commit adultery. Nor do I address how polygamy can lessen the occurrence of adultery among women, as the vast majority of multiple partner marriages, past and present, involve one man and many women. As a result, I do not see this tangent as sufficiently relevant to our purposes here, and I will leave that discussion to others.

According to Mr. Kerby Anderson:

How prevalent is adultery? Two of the most reliable studies come to similar conclusions. The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior estimates that "More than one-third of men and one-quarter of women admit having had at least one extramarital sexual experience."{1} A survey by the National Opinion Research Center (University of Chicago) found lower percentages: 25 percent of men had been unfaithful and 17 percent of women. Even when these lower ratios are applied to the current adult population, that means that some 19 million husbands and 12 million wives have had an affair.{2}

Whatever the actual numbers, the point to be made is that adultery is much more common than we would like to admit. Family therapist and psychiatrist Frank Pittman believes "There may be as many acts of infidelity in our society as there are traffic accidents."{3} He further argues that the fact that adultery has become commonplace has altered society's perception of it. He says, "We won't go back to the times when adulterers were put in the stocks and publicly humiliated, or become one of those societies and there are many in which adultery is punishable by death. Society in any case is unable to enforce a rule that the majority of people break, and infidelity is so common it is no longer deviant."{4}

In addition, Mr. Anderson notes that:

Preventing Adultery: His Needs

Now, let's look at the five needs husbands have. The first is sexual fulfillment. The typical wife doesn't understand her husband's deep need for sex anymore than the typical husband understands his wife's deep need for affection[aa][bb][cc]. But these two ingredients can work very closely together in a happy, fulfilled marriage. Sex can come naturally and often, if there is enough affection…

… A husband's third need is an attractive spouse. A man needs a wife who looks good to him. Dr. Harley states that in sexual relationships most men find it nearly impossible to appreciate a woman for her inner qualities alone--there must be more. A man's need for physical attractiveness in a mate is profound.

… The fourth need for a man is domestic support. He needs peace and quiet. So deep is a husband's need for domestic support from his wife that he often fantasizes about how she will greet him lovingly and pleasantly at the door, about well-behaved children who likewise act glad to see him and welcome him to the comfort of a well-maintained home.”

The author gives an extensive list of needs that both men and women desire in their relationships. It should be obvious that multiple partner marriage, in and of itself, cannot solve all problems. However, I do believe that it can help reduce the rate of adultery among men.

Incidental, it seems a little strange to me that to expect a lone wife, who is:

A) Biologically not on the same sexual level as the husband,

B) In most societies, Matriarchal or Patriarchal, usually juggling a ton of responsibilities such as childcare, housework, cooking, working, and so forth,

C) Affected by evershifting hormonal cocktails that make or break her sex drive,

to always be available sexually 24 hours a day, seven days a week, seems a bit unrealistic to me. It makes more sense, in my view, for a man to at least have the option to bring another wife home to pick up some of the slack instead of having to go down to the local brothel, or seduce some young college intern.

And, in our age of so-called "Marital Rape," the wife has every legal right to deny her husband entry (pun intended) into the "promised land."

Unfortunately for millions of men across the world, the sexless marriage is a fact of life. So what is he to do then?

Is he to live like a celibate even though he is married? Resort to violence and go to jail? Leave and lose everything in divorce court? Complain and run the risk of losing everything in that aforementioned divorce court? Go and take a mistress, risking his reputation, his children, property, and livelihood?

What is he supposed to do?

It becomes obvious that our modern day Matriarchal marriage model places an inhuman burden upon the married man. Is it any wonder that marriage rates are dropping like stones throughout the West?

Does anyone even care?

Sorry, I digress.

Moving on, MSNBC notes that:

“In February, MSNBC.com and iVillage asked readers to share their feelings about love, sex and fidelity.

Over two weeks, 70,288 readers — 93 percent from MSNBC.com, the rest from iVillage — completed the survey. Three-quarters told us they were in a committed relationship and the majority of participants have been with their current partner for at least 12 years. Fifty-four percent were men, with an average age of 43; 46 percent were women, 38 was their average age…

… Have you ever cheated? Nearly half of men and women have cheated at some point in their lives. Twenty-two percent of people have cheated on their current partner, but only 4 percent are in the middle of an affair…

… Why did you seek sex outside your relationship? Among men’s top reasons: 44 percent wanted sex more often, 40 percent wanted more sexual variety. Women’s top reasons: 40 percent desired more emotional attention; 33 percent wanted reassurance of their desirability. Physical attraction was a strong pull for about 42 percent of men and women. Revenge was more of a motivation for women, with 11 percent of them naming it as a reason they cheated, compared to only 5 percent of men.”

While the MSNBC poll is not the most scientific in the world, we note once again that Men have affairs mainly because of the quantity and quality of sexual relations.

This is because men have much stronger sex drives than women, and that, in some cases, a monogamous union, for whatever the reason, is insufficient to meet that need.

It should be noted that monogamy, as it was practiced by the Greeks and the Romans in ancient times, had no quarrel with men seeking pleasures from partners other than their wives.

According to the History and Philosophy of Marriage:

“The ancient Greek and Roman notions of marriage and of chastity were in some respects different from ours, but only as Christianity has made them different. We are ready to admit, at least in theory, what Christianity requires, that the laws of chastity are binding upon men and women equally, and that no person can innocently indulge in amorous pleasure except with his own wife or her own husband. But among them this rule of chastity applied to the female sex alone.

The other sex claimed and exercised their freedom from it, without concealment or palliation, and at the same time without the loss of moral character or of public estimation.

To be grossly addicted to whoredom and seduction was no dishonor: it was only when convicted of Sodomy that they were pronounced unchaste.

Marriage was not expected or intended to preserve the public purity, or to secure domestic happiness, but was rather designed to perpetuate their heroic races, to preserve their rich patrimonial estates, and to maintain the ascendency of their aristocratic families.

For these purposes they guarded the chastity of their wives with vigilant jealousy and punished their adultery with severity; but the men placed themselves under no such restrictions either in law or in fact, but they habitually sought their own pleasures away from home, in the public haunts of impurity, at the house of an Aspasia, of a Leona, or of a Messalina, or at some other establishment of their numerous Cyprian and Corinthian dames; or, if they could not pay the extravagant prices demanded by these celebrated beauties, they could at least resort to their public temples, and gratify their lust among the prostitutes kept there.”

We in the West have continued the Greco-Roman tradition of monogamy. However, as we can see, monogamy and fidelity were not mutually exclusive. With the grafting of Christianity, a religion with Semitic origins, monogamy was thus reinforced by the teachings of the early Fathers of the Church. However, the religion, (in scripture) does not outlaw polygamous marriage, again, due to its Middle Eastern origins, where plural marriage was practiced and accepted [1]. So while couples throughout time and space have manfully attempted to live up to iron-clad monogamous expectations, adultery has gotten the better of many a man, and the institutions of concubinage and prostitution thrived, even unto our present day.

So how does Polygamy compare to Monogamy with respect to Adultery?

Catholic Priest Eugene Hillman, speaking about Polygamy in Africa, notes that:

(In a change from polygamy to monogamy,) … the kinship system (strong family ties created by the existence of polygamous marriage) will also suffer; and, as kin relationships deteriorate, the whole social fabric will progressively lose its traditional cohesiveness. But the institution of marriage itself is apt to be the first thing compromised, at least as regards stability and permanence.

Among the Yoruba people of Nigeria, for example, there is correlation of social change… (i.e. monogamy) … and the high rate of divorce. Moreover, it is notorious that the introduction of enforced monogamy contributes in no small measure to the establishment and increase of institutionalized prostitution, while it also encourages casual concubinage and adultery (Hillman, Polygamy Reconsidered, p. 124).”

It should be noted that polygamy is not a cure-all for social ills. As Father Hillman continues (with my comments in parenthesis):

“When men must wait a long time before marriage and younger women are often married to much older men (as is the African custom), there is a tendency toward adultery (on part of the woman); or there is a tendency to give considerable license to the association of unmarried persons of both sexes… “it is because unmarried girls are so scarce and lustly bachelors so many, that the seduction of the wives of polygynists is frequent, and homosexual practices are general (p. 125).”

Mr. Hillman concludes that:

“…we must say that neither the system of monogamy nor the system of polygamy yields a perfectly balanced control of sexual activity.”

I have held previously that monogamy, polygamy, and celibacy are all equally valid options, with none having any form of superiority over the other (It goes without saying that the best way for men to go nowadays is to not marry at all). I also argue that polygamy should be skillfully used as a tool to solve pressing social issues that neither monogamy nor celibacy can address successfully.

Based on the evidence presented in this series,I believe that a finely crafted approach towards polygamous marriage would not result in rampant homosexuality nor a massive shortage of marriageable women. Polygamy can help hold families together by greatly reducing the risk of married men getting caught up in sexual infidelity, should his first wife be unable, or unwilling, to satisfy his intimate sexual needs.

In the next installment of On Polygamy, I will touch on demographic change, how plural marriage could work for the black American community, and how Christianity can use the polygynous model as an effective counter to the rise of militant Islam.

Consider:

There is no such thing as getting depressed or ever
thinking that you are losing – example is the Muslims
- no you are winning – they got you some food, you
slept and you got to take a few shots against the
enemy while explosives planted before destroyed enemy
transport vehicle somewhere, while Muslims went up in
population by 240,000 in those hours while non-Muslims
declined in population worldwide by 600,000 and so you
are winning thousands to one – cannot lose at all –
good morale and winning feeling is good and true all
the time.

Posted by: Madduck at July 7, 2007 12:56 AM

Polygamy is a tool. Either for good, or for domination.

Kumo Out.