When I read about this interview the only thought in my head was an irrational fear of 2 "honey do" lists, nearly had a heart attack.
Since my Wife is disabled and my Hubs hates doing work around the house, I'm the one with the two honey do lists. I have to repair a hole in the celing- this is the THIRD one the wife has poked in the ceiling, for the record, I don't know why she hates the ceiling as much as she does..., tighten some plumbing fixtures in the kitchen sink, scrape and re-paint a bathroom where the previous owners put in paint that was not intended for humid spaces, rewire the switch in that bathroom so if the light is on, the fan is on (there are no windows, it's a problem, everyone hates the noise the fan makes but I'm not fixing the darn paint twice), as well as maintain our rather large yard and hopefully, this year, put in a few garden beds.
Oh, and the cleaning and most of the laundry. And meal planning and shopping. And cooking. And there's a couple of parent teacher confrences I am going to have to ride to solo, as Husband is also working mad hours right now.
This week I'm working 9 days solid. It's not happening right now.
Token, you mentioned that you mentally started down this road reading 60s and 70s science fiction. Heinlein comes to mind (to me), what were some of your influences? What shaped your interests to the point of trying to execute an arrangement that turns out to be pretty complex?
Thank you for sharing, it was a fascinating listen.
Heinlein was the first big one. I think I was 10 when I first read
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and I went on a massive reading binge in my Dad's solid golden age sci fi. It was like something clicked- this was the thing that I had been missing. I knew that I couldn't do monogamy and that I wouldn't cheat, so at that point I figured I was just going to be alone. I'd rather not be with someone than be miserable, or make them miserable.
Spider Robinson's
Callahan series (where one person is mentioned as having two wives as not a big deal) came close on those heels, as well as some internet research and time spent at the library. I got ahold of the incredible book
The Ethical Slut before I was 13 and that was a real game changer for me- someone else had sat down and gone "The rules for women being in complete ownership of their own bodies in our society suck. Choose what you want, do it while doing your best not to hurt other people, and be safe" was a wonderful, wonderful message for me, and the practical information on how to handle jealousy and scheduling were also fantastic. I think I've purchased 10 copies of that book, I keep giving it away, and I need to get another copy of it.
The only other book I've purchased that many copies of, that never comes back (I had one friend hand me the price on the back of the book after giving her The Ethical Slut because she started going through it with a highlighter the second page in, and she was NOT giving it back, period), is Deerskin by Robin McKinley. People either love it or hate it, but if you love it, I know I'm not getting my copy back. I have two in the house right now because I scored a backup copy for a buck. I'll probably give it to someone pretty soon.
Knowing there were other people who felt a similar way, or at least had done this kind of thought experiment, meant that there were other options. So, I started reading a lot. Heinline went through a few as thought experiments- line marriages, group marriages, marriages as corporations. There's a very healthy online poly community and in the late 90's there was a lot of information on the internet about what did work, did not work, and so on.
The Poly community online is a lot like most fringe communities. There's a good portion of Poly folk that have their shit REALLY well together. Then there's the other group that are super fascinating, interesting, complicated, yet barely functional people. The same sort of spectrum you see at Sci Fi conventions. But I got to talk to people who had been in 20+ year poly marriages, and who had made it work (the best example I have met were the F family- two adults worked outside of the home in high-six figure a year STEM jobs, with an amazingly brilliant stay at home house manager to make sure everything ran smoothly in the house. They had it
ALL, man- happy kids, great vacations, home cooked meals, a tightly run budget, a functioning and active involvement in the community, and hot tub parties with hot nekked ladies. I think of them often when I try to think of how I want my family to run. They were truly excellent people, and their shit was more together than any other group I've ever seen.).
Seeing people pull it off made me realize that while you might need two people working to make a house run really smoothly these days, you still need a household manager, and it's WAY easier on everyone to have all three of these tasks fall on different people. I seriously have no idea how two adult families get it all done. Or families where the kids outnumber the adults!
I thought it was an interesting discussion; it raised a lot of interesting points to me as I frequently act as a caregiver to my nephews and niece. At the family cabin I also can serve as a watchdog for many children from the neighbors as well. As a former lifeguard I'm always the one in the water with the kids. The concept of caregiver rights and abilities hit home and we'll be having some discussions about being best prepared.
This made my day. Going on the show was kind of scary as hell for me- talking about my family in front of a generally conservative audience was, well, terrifying.
I'm sure Jack has gotten some spectacularly nasty hate mail. I'm really glad I don't have to read it.
Knowing that it got someone thinking about things they need to do, to make sure that they go over plans on how to take care of kids when things go wrong, and get the caregiver rights taken care of BEFORE the legal guardians are incapacitated, is huge.
I can't say I'm envious of a man with two wives; one is plenty for me. But as a guy with a few homosexual and bisexual branches in the family tree I'm disgusted how the de jure and de facto restrictions prevent people from having the kind of families they want. "One size fits all" never really does.
Thanks for the insight, all the best.
Yeah, you don't realize how many rules and restrictions there are in the current contracts until you can't use the standard contracts. Just getting a family gym membership or Costco card is SUCH a hassle, and those are, in the great scheme of things, little.
I would love for this country to become liberty minded enough that people in general become comfortable saying "That's not for me, but if that's how you want to live your life, go for it."
Sadly, the last hill that busybodies seem to try to die on is anything that can be even vaguely related to sex. Which, frankly, is the LAST thing I have any interest in having anyone outside my house tell me what, how, or who to do it to. If you're not married to me, you have zero say in what I do with my genitals.
Let me tell you, we are
married. There's a lot more about dirty laundry and bickering over who has to do what chore and me asking why everyone's socks seem to explode off their feet in the freaking living room, and WHO ATE THE LAST OF THE CHEDDAR WITHOUT PUTTING IT ON THE LIST FOR THE STORE, I GUESS WE HAVE NO CHEESE NOW DAMMIT (I've tried getting up to nine blocks a week, to stock up, but I swear between my wife and my child, we can go through 30 lbs of cheese in a week, if I kept them supplied with it).
Yeeeah, anyone who's ever been married more than a month knows that marriage is about a whole lot of other things way before it's about sex.
Allright, it's one AM and I have work... again... in the morning. Although this time it only looks like 9 days in a row- I am REALLY looking forward to getting the new people on board so I don't have to do the work of two people anymore! If I ramble a bit or take a little extra time to come back, forgive me- it's working mad hours while we get extra people on board to cover the workload.
