3 ms·

‘Serial polygamy’ means a sequence of multiple simultaneous relationships. You mean serial monogamy.

by rue 11y ago

fab13n 11y ago
I meant it as an electrical engineering metaphor, where you can string devices in parallel, or in serial one after the other, but where with a few adaptations both can lead to the same practical result. Besides, my whole point is that this behavior constitutes a variant of polygamy, not a variant of monogamy, so I stand by that term. That there's a "serial monogamy" idiom describing it (I just discovered it thanks to you and Google, I'm not a native speaker) is tellingly disingenuous IMO.
- rue 11y ago
  I don’t know, I think it’s less useful to read ‘lifelong’ into the word monogamy. It simply describes the number of simultaneous relationships—whether it lasts for a week or forever is another dimension.
  - netcan 11y ago
    I think you're splitting hairs a little, rue. In fairness, fab was splitting hairs with me. What I meant is a softening of the monogamy using the currently normal relationship model as the definition. What he meant is that the definition of normal monogamy has changed anyway over the past few generations. Courtship became relationships, which really became marriage-like partnership. He's right. What we call monogamy would not have held with our great grandparents. They would have objected to the serial partnerships much more than the infidelity which at least we have the decency to try and keep secret.
    - fab13n 11y ago
      > infidelity which we had the decency to try and keep secret. Moreover, infidelity was about sex. It might also have cost a bit of money, going to mistresses and bastards, for wealthy male adulterers, but it didn't affect patrimonial rights. Neither could the mistress be promoted as new wife, to the detriment of the incumbent one. The idea that marriage is first and foremost a love affair is a fairly recent one, and coincides with its demise (explosion of divorces, monoparental families...) The lifelong marriage was a patrimonial affair.
- smtddr 11y ago
  I thought of it as how a CPU appears to be running several programs at the same time in a home PC, but we know the OS is actually switching between all the processes at an extremely high rate. :)
- angersock 11y ago
  It's not a variant of polygamy, though. If you were a polygamist and only ever had one partner at a time and weren't looking and courting others then you would be, de facto, practicing monogamy. If I had a spouse, to whom I was devoted, and they were hit by a bus and killed, and then I had another spouse, who was killed by a falling meteoroid, and then a third spouse, who died of an aneurysm, and finally a fourth who left me because of a reasonable fear of death-by-misfortune--I would still be considered monogamous. Yours is a very tortured interpretation of what polygamy is.
  - fab13n 11y ago
    If you're a serial widower without being the cause of your spouses' deaths, then you're monogamous indeed. Monogamy does exist, and you can live morally monogamous lives although having several partners over your life. But I don't think that's the topic. The original question was, will it become morally acceptable to be polygamous? And my answer was, you don't have to, of course, but you already can, in a contrieved way. You can live the hookup culture without much stygma. You can dump your partners every 2-3 years, when novelty wears off, possibly having children with each of them. You can temporarily put up with a partner who doesn't satisfy you on some subjects, because you know there will be a next one who will fulfill those currently unmet needs. TL;DR: polygamy isn't the only acceptable way, will probably never be, but some form of it already is a viable and non-stygmatized possibility.

‘Serial polygamy’ means a sequence of multiple simultaneous relationships. You mean serial monogamy.

by rue 11y ago

‘Serial polygamy’ means a sequence of multiple simultaneous relationships. You mean serial monogamy.

I meant it as an electrical engineering metaphor, where you can string devices in parallel, or in serial one after the other, but where with a few adaptations both can lead to the same practical result. Besides, my whole point is that this behavior constitutes a variant of polygamy, not a variant of monogamy, so I stand by that term. That there's a "serial monogamy" idiom describing it (I just discovered it thanks to you and Google, I'm not a native speaker) is tellingly disingenuous IMO.

rue 11y ago
I don’t know, I think it’s less useful to read ‘lifelong’ into the word monogamy. It simply describes the number of simultaneous relationships—whether it lasts for a week or forever is another dimension.
- netcan 11y ago
  I think you're splitting hairs a little, rue. In fairness, fab was splitting hairs with me. What I meant is a softening of the monogamy using the currently normal relationship model as the definition. What he meant is that the definition of normal monogamy has changed anyway over the past few generations. Courtship became relationships, which really became marriage-like partnership. He's right. What we call monogamy would not have held with our great grandparents. They would have objected to the serial partnerships much more than the infidelity which at least we have the decency to try and keep secret.
  - fab13n 11y ago
    > infidelity which we had the decency to try and keep secret. Moreover, infidelity was about sex. It might also have cost a bit of money, going to mistresses and bastards, for wealthy male adulterers, but it didn't affect patrimonial rights. Neither could the mistress be promoted as new wife, to the detriment of the incumbent one. The idea that marriage is first and foremost a love affair is a fairly recent one, and coincides with its demise (explosion of divorces, monoparental families...) The lifelong marriage was a patrimonial affair.
smtddr 11y ago
I thought of it as how a CPU appears to be running several programs at the same time in a home PC, but we know the OS is actually switching between all the processes at an extremely high rate. :)
angersock 11y ago
It's not a variant of polygamy, though. If you were a polygamist and only ever had one partner at a time and weren't looking and courting others then you would be, de facto, practicing monogamy. If I had a spouse, to whom I was devoted, and they were hit by a bus and killed, and then I had another spouse, who was killed by a falling meteoroid, and then a third spouse, who died of an aneurysm, and finally a fourth who left me because of a reasonable fear of death-by-misfortune--I would still be considered monogamous. Yours is a very tortured interpretation of what polygamy is.
- fab13n 11y ago
  If you're a serial widower without being the cause of your spouses' deaths, then you're monogamous indeed. Monogamy does exist, and you can live morally monogamous lives although having several partners over your life. But I don't think that's the topic. The original question was, will it become morally acceptable to be polygamous? And my answer was, you don't have to, of course, but you already can, in a contrieved way. You can live the hookup culture without much stygma. You can dump your partners every 2-3 years, when novelty wears off, possibly having children with each of them. You can temporarily put up with a partner who doesn't satisfy you on some subjects, because you know there will be a next one who will fulfill those currently unmet needs. TL;DR: polygamy isn't the only acceptable way, will probably never be, but some form of it already is a viable and non-stygmatized possibility.