Sabertooth, have you thought about, talked about when you have children with other women? Have you figured out what would happen with the children that your wife might have with her boyfriend? Do you have some kind of commitment between you for her to always be number one no matter how many children you have with another or what feelings might arise? I'd imagine that it would be hard to predict.
Too bad people are being difficult - but it makes sense with their social programming. It's not much different than eating raw meat in a way. You do the best you can and just go on with what you know to be right for you.
To answer your questions
1)We tell our older children about the other people we adore. I tell my son when I am going to visit my girlfriends, and that I like so and so's mom. Then he goes behind my back and tells mama everything. We are all about positive reinforcement, If you don't want your teenage daughter to run off with some punk, then first of all, you don't fill them with prejudice and fear of unsavory people . Instead you start pointing out people and behavior that are admirable, when they are still young. If you know a cute couple that have a loving relationship, then tell the children out loud about what a cute couple those two make. A little positive conditioning can do a world of good.
2)We are using measures to prevent pregnancy, and the boyfriend is adamant about not wanting children.
3)The third question is difficult for me to answer. I promised myself to be their for my children no matter what. There are no plans for impregnating other women at this time. Life has got me so strapped for money and time that it just doesn't seem like a good Idea. Then again you can never say never, circumstances do change, but it will take an absolute goddess, to take me away from my first Litter and brood mare.
I don't blame people for not accepting polyamory, many people have identified with monogamy as a virtue and gear their lives around attainment of the idealistic relationships. Many people settle for the acceptable norm because its the path of least resistance. Many people do not like to be confronted with ideas suggesting that other people don't have to live and love as they do. The idea that ones spouse is harboring sexual feelings for others upsets the monogamous type. So, one must view such issues with compassion and understanding. Voyeristically flaunting your wide open sexuality in a society of people who have chosen monogamy as the ideal, is a bit rude and inconsiderate. Just as it would be inconsiderate to go into a vegans home with a slab of raw beef and start chowing down.
Sabertooth - I like your experiment!
I don´t know about other countries, but here in Germany women usually seperate from their men, and not the other way round. Women, by nature, are much more selective than men when it comes to sex. So if they don´t feel attracted to or don´t like their man any longer, they will separate (or at least don´t like to have sex with him any longer), given, of course, that they are economically independent from him. It may even be a torture to them if they have to have sex with a certain man just because of his money or just because they are married to him.
It seems natural for women to be highly selective with who they let breed them. Such selective breeding is in part responsible for the advancement of our species. The laws of attraction have gotten a lot more complicated in the modern age. Women may have had a much easier time discerning positive attributes in a time where men were measured by their more primal abilities and not by the industrial aged materialistic criteria. Now a days what makes for a worthy mate in the urban jungle, seems so ambiguous and complicated that its no wonder so many people go sexually schizophrenic, and are never able to keep up healthy relationships.
It all boils down to the fact that we have been separated from our tribal nature and most people no longer grow up in complete communities, where relationships within small close nit groups of people can arise naturally and are able to grow and mature in less complecated environments. One must give modern humans credit for being able to adapt and persist under a wide range of circumstances and still be reasonably happy and healthy.
Those who have been born and raised outside of the range of healthy environments will just have adapt to the modern jungle, or die tring. Sometimes its not pretty, but the paleo world was often very cruel as well. Each individual must forge onward and learn to play the game of love without an official rule book to go by. If you are lucky then you may find small pockets of people within the swarm that will guide, accept and love you along the way. We all could use a special someone who will help us play this game without keeping score or taking things to seriously. Someone who will let us cheat on occasion or at least bend the rules, but also someone to stop us from going too far and harming ourselves or others.
Alpha: The problem is that women may be attracted to a man at the time they marry him, but aren´t attracted to him any longer after some time. So they won´t have sex with him any longer (it they are free to choose!) or separate.
Free love is fine, but free love could mean that some men will have even less sex than they have in our current culture (with marriages and the like as "institutionalized prostitution").
Peoples taste do change. Its not unreasonable to think that someone would want something different after many years of the same thing over and over. If men were not compelled to put the shackles of wedlock on their women then in general they would probably enjoy a much greater quality and variety of sexual experience. I have let my mate date this man, whom I had chosen, for over two months and she still enjoys putting out for me regularly.
Aldous Huxleys wife helped him get other women regularly. She thought he would get bored with just having her all the time, so she encouraged her friends to be with him.
My goal is to cultivate a deeper awareness of these primal drives. and with the permission of my brood mare, to seek out a mate that is willing to take part in a some of my S)experiments.