A lot of people when faced with the break up of a marriage because of an affair will often choose to try and mend the marriage. Oft times they don’t succeed in saving the marriage but a lot of times they do. The important point being that they never intended the affair to end the marriage.

Why? They try to keep the marriage because it provides a sense of home and stability (providing the marriage is reasonably companionable) and a very real sense of purpose in life especially if there are children involved. A sense of belonging and identity and a support group when times get tough is very important to human beings. Emotionally we flounder without that.

If you are talking about monogamy in terms of soul mates and love sick sexual attraction, well I don’t believe in soul mates and the idea that in this whole world men and women can only be attracted to and love one mate. So sexual attraction between the sexes will always be there, monogamous relationship or not.

I never hear men speak about soul mates, only women, I think men are more practical about the realities of other sexual attractions because they feel those attractions much more keenly given their physical responses to visual attractiveness. Men are visual and women are audio. Hence women’s need for the audio fairytale story when it comes to relationships. The words, soul mates is the modern equivalent to Cinderella and Prince Charming (soul mates who lived happily ever after

Dear Foxy,
I have just seen your very funny car sticker quote,

It has really given me a laugh. Thank you very much.

Checkmate fellows, game, set and match to foxy.

Is it natural? In my opinion, "natural" then becomes a highly subjective question parameter. What is natural in my boring conservative middle class white hetero male perspective, realistically, is the version of natural for maybe 40% of the population. I dont think many "open" relationships do very well, and the key parties of the 60's or 70's probably did more harm than good.
Marriage, in a fair world whats good for the goose is good for the gander. So, you have 4 wives, they each all have 4 husbands, who in turn each have 4 wives, and so on it goes. Even if it fails to dilute the experience of intimacy, it sounds like STD's will explode.

*I never hear men speak about soul mates, only women, I think men are more practical about the realities of other sexual attractions*

Not so Cherful, I am male and speak of soulmates, as I've experienced
what they are all about. Its not about the physical, its about the
mental. I shall just have to classify you as philosophically shallow:)

You can develop a mental bond with somebody, which is so deep and
meaningful, that is goes way past the physical. The beauty is in
that bond and its meaning to you both. The girl with the perky
breasts might be pretty, but she is little but attractive meat,
quite different to a mental bond which one can develop with
the right person, so she is no threat to that kind of relatonship.

I do concede however, that these kinds of relationships are rare,
a good % of people are simply too shallow to be interested in that
kind of thing.

Fair enough, each to their own.

My goodness Yabby - have you finally found Ms Right?

Pat
Just because what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, doesn’t mean each wife would require or desire four husbands. Equality or fairness doesn’t mean each needs to get the same thing. If I want an ice-cream and my wife wants an orange, it doesn’t mean we should each have half an ice-cream and half an orange; half of what we don’t want and half of what we do. Equality is satisfied if the wants of each party are satisfied. I know lots of men who would like multiple wives, but I don’t know any women who would like multiple husbands, though doubtless there are a few around.

Cherful
Yes I daresay that’s right. Obviously for all the male philandering there must be corresponding women. Often it will be a minority of women whom the men are, in effect, sharing, as with the prostitute population.

And for a wife secure in her marriage to have another man’s child, who would know if it’s the same race? I once read that the Canadian immigration department suspected Vietnamese immigrants of bringing in their neighbours’ children under the family immigration program. The authorities wanted to know what proportion of such children were not the biological children of the ‘father’, the mother’s husband. But in order to know whether that proportion was significant, they had to compare it against the same proportion in the Canadian population. So they did studies on middle Canada. They found that ten percent of first born children, and 25 percent of fourth-born children, were not the offspring of the mother’s husband.

But the point is, polyandry means multiple marrige, and such ‘polyandry’ by women is not by way of marriage. The critical difference is, the men don’t voluntarily undertake to support the women’s offspring. It’s a question of legitimacy, which evolved to protect *men’s* freedom of choice.