Ethically non monogamous?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many women consent to open relationships due to the unequal balance of power in a marriage.

Do you know how I can tell that you're a woman who has never been married?

[Anonymous]

If you're looking for someone strictly for sex, the ENMs are fantastic. I wouldn't be part of the central relationship though. At least from the outside, it always looked tedious and fraught. Someone was always getting shorted and jealousy was rampant. I didn't get the impression that commitment to the marriage kept them together, they were just too chickensh!t to divorce.

[Anonymous]

It’s a front married people use to cheat and get laid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s a front married people use to cheat and get laid.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a front married people use to cheat and get laid.

+100

Most often one of the parties involved is only doing to it to try and hold onto the relationship. The other is usually semi-abusive in making them participate in this great fallacy of a marriage.

[Anonymous]

it's illegal or will impact your career

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm in an open marriage. It works for us, but most certainly doesn't work for a lot of people. And its ethical for us because all parties involved understand the situation and have consented.

Neither knowledge nor consent are themselves sufficient to make something ethical, it is more complicated than that. Fully-informed people often consent to things that are bad for them due to errors in judgment, from which they might need some protection. And consent itself is kind of a slippery concept at times.

There are also externalities to consider, including the risks to third parties (i.e., children who might be affected by relationship instability if “ethical nonmonogamy“ has a bad outcome); modeling a form of behavior that most people cannot handle, with people getting into bad situations as a result; a broader acceptance of non-monogamy facilitating people pressuring their partners to engage in non-monogamy and becoming resentful if they will not; etc. I personally have no issue with ethical non-monogamy, but “anything goes with informed consent” is not a viable moral philosophy.

[Anonymous]

I know two long term (as in 15+ years) couples who are open. One has kids and the other is child free. It's not a constant stream of secondary partners in either case - more like, once in a while when they happen to click with someone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many women consent to open relationships due to the unequal balance of power in a marriage.

Do you know how I can tell that you're a woman who has never been married?

Most people on this forum are married or divorced people with kids. But nice try.

[Anonymous]

I know several couple with open marriages, but they are all gay men.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm in an open marriage. It works for us, but most certainly doesn't work for a lot of people. And its ethical for us because all parties involved understand the situation and have consented.

Neither knowledge nor consent are themselves sufficient to make something ethical, it is more complicated than that. Fully-informed people often consent to things that are bad for them due to errors in judgment, from which they might need some protection. And consent itself is kind of a slippery concept at times.

There are also externalities to consider, including the risks to third parties (i.e., children who might be affected by relationship instability if “ethical nonmonogamy“ has a bad outcome); modeling a form of behavior that most people cannot handle, with people getting into bad situations as a result; a broader acceptance of non-monogamy facilitating people pressuring their partners to engage in non-monogamy and becoming resentful if they will not; etc. I personally have no issue with ethical non-monogamy, but “anything goes with informed consent” is not a viable moral philosophy.

Except no one makes those arguments in the context of all kinds of different behaviors they would apply to. No one says "you should think twice about pursuing IVF after 40, because you might give someone else the idea that they can postpone childbearing/normalize doing that", or "lawyers have really high divorce rates so you should take into consideration the potential effect of that career on your future kids." Or "sure, your wife says she wants to stay home, but a lot of people regret that; maybe she needs to be protected from that decision." If those were considerations that people thought needed to be taken into account, we'd see them made regularly, not just brought up in the context of behavior people want to object to for other reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many women consent to open relationships due to the unequal balance of power in a marriage.

Do you know how I can tell that you're a woman who has never been married?

why can I tell that you are a misogynistic dweeb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a front married people use to cheat and get laid.

+100

Yep. For some reason, they cannot accept that marriages it's limits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did this for a while. It was a lot of work. I’ll say for those who say that the wives are coerced... usually women in polyamorous / ethically non-monogamous communities have more and better dating options than attached men. The men often end up frustrated.

This is so true! It's the men who suggest non-monogamy, but it's the women who love it once they get a taste of it.

It's incredible. I have really good options.

Same!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:it's illegal or will impact your career

HAHAHA no