Family time versus business time

Being a busy bee, I am not at home all that much. In classic families, this often leads to tensions between the busy networker and the coasy home bird, or between two busy networkers never at home on the same moment. Does a poly family require more presence at home, or does the company of a sister wife complement the absence of the alpha male?

Organization is key

According to one of the editors on the polyfamilies website, organization increases harmony in a polyfamily. Task lists and menus help in getting organized. As a matter of fact, if you want to limit food shopping to once a week, it is always helpful to draw a week's menu -- poly or not. So that did not come as a surprise to me, but from that polyfamily's story, I understand that they considered task lists as overorganized and 'not done' prior to their poly life... but the poly life made it necessary to keep on going on well with each other.

Much practical info

I came across a site, I do want to point out here. The website Polyfamilies gives many answers I was trying to find through this blog. I have spent more than an hour reading and enjoying page after page.

Definitions of the word "harem"

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the word "harem". Indeed, by us Westerners the term seems very often referred to as "the enclosure of the female property of a sultan". Some dictionaries even limit their definitions to muslim practice, where others have much wider interpretations that go as far as "respectful female privacy".

Let's have a look at some of the definitions I found browsing the internet:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem: The word itself means: privacy that is very respected and honored. Coming from the Arab tradition, the harîm (compare haram) is the part of the household forbidden to male strangers. In Western languages such as English, this term refers collectively to the women in any polygynous household as well as to the 'no men allowed' area, or in more modern usage to a number of women followers or admirers of a man.


• http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harem:
  • a usually secluded house or part of a house allotted to women in a Muslim household
  • the wives, concubines, female relatives, and servants occupying a harem
  • a group of women associated with one man
  • a group of females associated with one male -- used of polygamous animals


• The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:
  • A house or a section of a house reserved for women members of a Muslim household.
  • The wives, concubines, female relatives, and servants occupying such a place.
  • A group of women sexual partners for one man.


• http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/harem
  • the part of a Muslim palace or house reserved for the residence of women.
  • the women in a Muslim household, including the mother, sisters, wives, concubines, daughters, entertainers, and servants.
  • Animal Behavior. a social group of females, as elephant seals, accompanied or followed by one fertile male who denies other males access to the group.
  • Facetious or Offensive. a group of women associated in any way with one man or household: Father joked that he has a harem of five daughters.

On quite some polyamory websites and blogs, I find the word "harem" or "harem-like" as a reference to explain what polyamory is not. In those cases however, the word "harem" refers to the possessive meaning of "owing women" or "enforced relationship". On this blog, the word "harem" refers to the situation in which a man and many women share an intimite relationship. There is no question of any kind of possession. My first posts will clarify that too.

I hope this post eliminates some misunderstandings.

Merriam-Webster and other resources on polyamory

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What about the kids from a previous marriage

An important factor in each newly created family is the smooth integration of the children from the previous marriage -- definitely when those children are not all the time at daddy's place. Being a dad of two wonderful daughters, I consider any new friend as not OK, if my kids do not feel comfortable with her. This of course becomes extra complicated when more than one friend wants to start living in and with the family. I welcome any suggestions and experiences on this topic, since it is a basic struggle for me to get this question resolved.

RLLC -- a business model for modern relationships

While browsing the internet, I came across a site that promotes using a business partnership as the basis for a modern marriage. I like the idea, and beleive it could at least give the partnership a legal form that can act as a legal entity for purchasing a house, cars, etc. Moreover, if the partnership should ever ceise to exist, or one partner would want to leave, the partnership model and actions are the most correct and objective way to step out, or to dissolve the partnership.

Read more on http://www.relationshipllc.com/.

Great idea.

Some polyamorists beleive it is up to them to decide what polyamory is and what it is not ...

I just received a mail from a less open-minded web master -- a person who beleives he is the one to decide what is polyamory and what is not. Polygyny and harems are to be considered non-polyamory, is what he said. That is in contradiction to other polygroups (including the poly ring) and the wikipedia pages. And it feels very inner crowd (and not poly-like) to decide someone does not belong to 'us'.

I hope one day, he will open his eyes and realize that the Western viewpoint on harems is very wrong. In this respect, I dare to humbly refer to Fatima Mernissa's work "Sheherazade goes West". More about her work is on http://www.mernissi.net/books/books/scheherazade_goes_west.html

Pleasant reading.

Full wives, mistresses, and concubines

In the wikipedia article on polygyny, there is an interesting paragraph on various ways modern polygamous families are 'constructed' across the planet.

"In some cases the male may have a second (or more) family with non-legally recognized wife, supporting her and his children. In some situations the wife not only is aware of the husband's mistress, but also has helped him select one that is 'suitable' to his station. The estate of 'mistress' or 'concubine' does not rank as highly as 'wife'. In some societies, a mistress or concubine may be placed under the authority of a full wife. A man may have as many full wives as he can support, with concubines assigned to each wife to aid in managing the rather large family."

The idea of a man having a full wife, who selects the concubines as her aid, and adding more full wifes, that on their turn add concubines, seems worth exploring, since it shows a potential road map into the creation of a harmoneous harem. Step by step, the family would grow without braking existing bonds whenever a new woman enters the family -- and if she does, she can be detected as breaking in and she can be expulsed.

To be bi or not to be bi

From an erotic viewpoint, I think the four women will have the optimal enjoyment when they are bi. That way, they have more pleasure and are more relaxed during the shared erotic moments. And when the alpha male is absent, they can still enjoy erotic moments with their sisters.

Sharing critical resources

In ancient history, harems were often created because of scarce resources. Frequent war fare drastically reduced the number of men, hence women had less opportunity to find a partner -- or they needed to marry the brother of their former husband, to be able to keep on taking care of their family. In agricultural societies with a high death rate among babies, the labor-intense activities were better spread among many children. And of course, rich man were able to attract women that would never have access to the luxury and education the wealthy family could offer them. Today, of course, these arguments are not valid any longer -- except for wealthy men. But today, career women face different scarce resources: they do not want to devote all there free time to a household and they have almost no time to maintain social networks other than the business networks they are part of. Spreading work over a broader group, increasing the family capital and being able to outsource labor-intense tasks, and enjoying a family of friends, could greatly increase the daily comfort of the family members.

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What wikipedia says about polygyny

Browsing the internet, I found an interesting page about polygyny. One of the conclusions I draw from that page, is that polygyny practices are spread all over the world and that catholicism has tried to bann it ... with secret polygyny as a result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny#Human_polygyny

Interesting to read.

Five cars and one family car ?

Environmentalists are to be shocked by this expression, but indeed, if four career woman and one manager are to share one family, then that takes five cars on the parking. One if it would be more than pleasant to share one car for family outings, than that takes at least one SUV or mobil home -- or a sardine-like feeling in one of the other cars. But also for this point a harem-like family could lead to a more environmental-friendly advantage of scale. When living close to a railway station, the search for career jobs could be limited to companies with railroad proximity. And then one common family car plus one shared little car for outbound city shopping could be the solution for this situation.

Task sharing among four plus one

For harmony reasons, tasks have to be shared explicitly, i.e. it should be clear to all members of the family who has what kind of tasks to perform in the managing of the household. You can use a round robin system, that switches responsibilities each week, month, ... This should be a fairly good system for sharing labour-intense low-expertise tasks. But exactly for those tasks, external suppliers could be attracted -- given the fact that five people will bring in more than enough money to subcontract. For knowledge-intense tasks, however, it seems better to assign a small set of main expertise areas to each of the family members. Each of them builds expertise and is allowed to take decisions based on a low frequency of consultations of each others desires. E.g. one person could be responsible for health and food, giving this person the responsibility over the menu -- but only after this person has consulted all the menu and diet desires of all the others.