I have been here a few years now but the work life balance always seems to get in the way of my best intentions to spend more time on the site.
I know there are a fist full of people here who also spent time on the now closed up forthefamily.us and if you are one of them, there is a chance you will remember me by the account name Noblequest. I was lucky enough to meet my exwife there and we had seven years together with her being a part of our plural marriage. In the end however the plural marriage equation was not for her and we have gone our seperate ways save for still being connected by my amazing son. Those who know her, I can say without reservation that she would prefer not to be quized about the situation. Very private by nature and would prefer that the past remain a closed book.
Some would be discouraged by what they might call a failure...I believe in the plural family structure very deeply however and whether we meet the right woman who would mesh with us or not, I will always remain a staunch advocate of polygyny. My son is amazing. I say that in the most literal sense. He amazeses me every day and I lament that I did not have children sooner. The dad gig is the best job and the best thing I have ever done. If I can swing it, I would like a few more children and to spend my days doing the homesteader (focus on ranching and protien production in various forms but also farming in various forms) / homeschooler dad. Those who read my posts and the blather that I have to say will have seen me express that I am a poor candidate for prosthelytizing to and getting my beliefs to align with theirs, but that I am more apt to be swayed by example and by community. Having thought about it a bit, my son, and hopefully future children, are an even stronger arguement for me to ever swing round to a position similar to the majority on the site. Long winded way of saying that I see children as a blessing.
Why plural marriage? I get that question on occassion, and I should probably address what brings me to the conclusion that it is the best form of marriage, albeit a difficult one for a lot of us from the modern Western sphere. The questions I get most often...to the point that it ceased to be tiresome long ago and has just moved into the rhelm of being slightly funny...is questions about the intimate side of things. Assumptions about it being like something from a sexploitation flick from the 70s or 80s, that it is all about sex and a constant focus on anything and everything tittilating, presumably with a cheesy soundtrack. Ugh. Lame.
In real life plural marriage is exactly like monagamy save for the amount of people. There are monogamous marriages where they are at it like rabbits and there are monogamous couples that it happens on friday nights after a bottle of wine and rarely otherwise. Plural marriage, in my experience, is exactly the same. Each marriage is a discreet entity and while each marriage is quite near to each other, they are seperate and different relationships.
Maybe I don't get peoples minds going straight to the earthy because I really don't want to know about that level of private detail of other peoples lives. I'm just old fashioned I guess. Private means nobody else's business, rather than the over sharing of really intimate details like one is discussing some new recipe they tried out last night. I don't want to know what my pals get up to in that respect so it always seems funny to me that the intimate side of things is the first issue people ask about, and they feel comfortable asking about it even with strangers.
Back to why plural marriage as it is a far more interesting topic to me, I think that it provides opportunity to the husbands and the wives both. It allows for being dedicated to a working career, being a stay at home parent, focusing on furthering your education, developing a homestead/farm/ranch (if that is your kind of thing of course), becoming involved in local politics like the school board/town council or state office, homeschooling or best of all...to do all of these things potentially at one time or the other. Monogamous couples just do not have the support network and buttress of additional spouses to get the opportunities that more hands and minds have on the tasks of running a family.
Another opportunity that I see is from the point of view of a new wife and that is the ability to step into a family which already has routines and systems and its own infrastructure. Yes, it will be a bit stressful learning how things go in a new home, but so long as we are talking about a loving environment then the stress should not be particularly high. In practice, and I know I can speak for us, if a future wife has good ideas or ways of doing things then I absolutely want her to put her stamp on things. The best end result for everyone is the goal, not some silly blather like "This is how we have always done it" blah blah. It is easier to step into an existing system and help to guide it with your own special touches than to start from scratch with far less support.
On the subject of support, another advantage that I see for women is having others to talk to and to get feedback from, or just be an ear when feeling troubled but not comfortable expressing the same concerns to her husband. Men and women communicate differently, obviously...that whole thing where a woman wants to tell her husband a problem and all he does is suggest solutions or attempt to fix the issue, when she simply wants to be heard and receive sympathy or have her feelings validated, that was/is a seriously a hard lesson for me to learn. I want to solve problems but I am slowly learning that I can't fix every problem, and that there are times where my difficulty in focusing on anything but a solution shoots me in the foot. We are all works in progress, but this is where I see an advantage to plural marriage. Having another woman or women there gives a lady the opportunity to talk to someone other than her big dumb husband who can not casually understand the actual underlying issue without a map and compass bearings. I hope that makes sense.
Big big opportunity from my point of view is the potential for a lot of kids and just a big group in general terms. I was raised in a fairly emotionless or perhaps emotionally repressed environment by people who were a little less warm blooded than I might have liked. There were thousands of acres to explore and play on, but no brothers or sisters or even other kids nearby, just the quiet, reserved and oh so very proper professorial grandparents and the mom who worked two jobs and was rarely around. Yeah... thanks but I prefer a big happy, open and possibly full on boisterous family.
Lets see...what else, politically involved and hard right winger to the point of being proudly jingoistic. Only slightly tongue in cheek Texas separatist. Lover of history, politics, anthropology, archeology, art, evolutionary psychology, cooking and nature to name just a little. Big advocate for living local, doing business locally and not participating in the insanity of the outside world other than where unavoidable.
I imagine that there is a lot more I could say about myself, and a mountain I could say about my wonderful wife, but I imagine that is probably enough for now.
And there lies my quite tardy introduction
I know there are a fist full of people here who also spent time on the now closed up forthefamily.us and if you are one of them, there is a chance you will remember me by the account name Noblequest. I was lucky enough to meet my exwife there and we had seven years together with her being a part of our plural marriage. In the end however the plural marriage equation was not for her and we have gone our seperate ways save for still being connected by my amazing son. Those who know her, I can say without reservation that she would prefer not to be quized about the situation. Very private by nature and would prefer that the past remain a closed book.
Some would be discouraged by what they might call a failure...I believe in the plural family structure very deeply however and whether we meet the right woman who would mesh with us or not, I will always remain a staunch advocate of polygyny. My son is amazing. I say that in the most literal sense. He amazeses me every day and I lament that I did not have children sooner. The dad gig is the best job and the best thing I have ever done. If I can swing it, I would like a few more children and to spend my days doing the homesteader (focus on ranching and protien production in various forms but also farming in various forms) / homeschooler dad. Those who read my posts and the blather that I have to say will have seen me express that I am a poor candidate for prosthelytizing to and getting my beliefs to align with theirs, but that I am more apt to be swayed by example and by community. Having thought about it a bit, my son, and hopefully future children, are an even stronger arguement for me to ever swing round to a position similar to the majority on the site. Long winded way of saying that I see children as a blessing.
Why plural marriage? I get that question on occassion, and I should probably address what brings me to the conclusion that it is the best form of marriage, albeit a difficult one for a lot of us from the modern Western sphere. The questions I get most often...to the point that it ceased to be tiresome long ago and has just moved into the rhelm of being slightly funny...is questions about the intimate side of things. Assumptions about it being like something from a sexploitation flick from the 70s or 80s, that it is all about sex and a constant focus on anything and everything tittilating, presumably with a cheesy soundtrack. Ugh. Lame.
In real life plural marriage is exactly like monagamy save for the amount of people. There are monogamous marriages where they are at it like rabbits and there are monogamous couples that it happens on friday nights after a bottle of wine and rarely otherwise. Plural marriage, in my experience, is exactly the same. Each marriage is a discreet entity and while each marriage is quite near to each other, they are seperate and different relationships.
Maybe I don't get peoples minds going straight to the earthy because I really don't want to know about that level of private detail of other peoples lives. I'm just old fashioned I guess. Private means nobody else's business, rather than the over sharing of really intimate details like one is discussing some new recipe they tried out last night. I don't want to know what my pals get up to in that respect so it always seems funny to me that the intimate side of things is the first issue people ask about, and they feel comfortable asking about it even with strangers.
Back to why plural marriage as it is a far more interesting topic to me, I think that it provides opportunity to the husbands and the wives both. It allows for being dedicated to a working career, being a stay at home parent, focusing on furthering your education, developing a homestead/farm/ranch (if that is your kind of thing of course), becoming involved in local politics like the school board/town council or state office, homeschooling or best of all...to do all of these things potentially at one time or the other. Monogamous couples just do not have the support network and buttress of additional spouses to get the opportunities that more hands and minds have on the tasks of running a family.
Another opportunity that I see is from the point of view of a new wife and that is the ability to step into a family which already has routines and systems and its own infrastructure. Yes, it will be a bit stressful learning how things go in a new home, but so long as we are talking about a loving environment then the stress should not be particularly high. In practice, and I know I can speak for us, if a future wife has good ideas or ways of doing things then I absolutely want her to put her stamp on things. The best end result for everyone is the goal, not some silly blather like "This is how we have always done it" blah blah. It is easier to step into an existing system and help to guide it with your own special touches than to start from scratch with far less support.
On the subject of support, another advantage that I see for women is having others to talk to and to get feedback from, or just be an ear when feeling troubled but not comfortable expressing the same concerns to her husband. Men and women communicate differently, obviously...that whole thing where a woman wants to tell her husband a problem and all he does is suggest solutions or attempt to fix the issue, when she simply wants to be heard and receive sympathy or have her feelings validated, that was/is a seriously a hard lesson for me to learn. I want to solve problems but I am slowly learning that I can't fix every problem, and that there are times where my difficulty in focusing on anything but a solution shoots me in the foot. We are all works in progress, but this is where I see an advantage to plural marriage. Having another woman or women there gives a lady the opportunity to talk to someone other than her big dumb husband who can not casually understand the actual underlying issue without a map and compass bearings. I hope that makes sense.
Big big opportunity from my point of view is the potential for a lot of kids and just a big group in general terms. I was raised in a fairly emotionless or perhaps emotionally repressed environment by people who were a little less warm blooded than I might have liked. There were thousands of acres to explore and play on, but no brothers or sisters or even other kids nearby, just the quiet, reserved and oh so very proper professorial grandparents and the mom who worked two jobs and was rarely around. Yeah... thanks but I prefer a big happy, open and possibly full on boisterous family.
Lets see...what else, politically involved and hard right winger to the point of being proudly jingoistic. Only slightly tongue in cheek Texas separatist. Lover of history, politics, anthropology, archeology, art, evolutionary psychology, cooking and nature to name just a little. Big advocate for living local, doing business locally and not participating in the insanity of the outside world other than where unavoidable.
I imagine that there is a lot more I could say about myself, and a mountain I could say about my wonderful wife, but I imagine that is probably enough for now.
And there lies my quite tardy introduction
