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.

Merriam-Webster and other resources on polyamory

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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.

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.

Sex 'in the other room'?

By rereading the other post about sex, it crossed my mind it is probably very difficult to have sex one day with A in my room, while B is sleeping in her own room, and the other day with B in my room, while A is sleeping in her own room. When sleeping in their own room, they will be hearing all the great sounds that are shaking the ground in the other room -- while not being able to join in. If not by anything else, this situation is bound to bring in jalousy. How does one cope with this?

Sex with four woman and 'justice'?

Sex. It is considered the ultimate intimacy between two people, the underlining of a caring relationship between one man and one woman, etc etc. And yet, sex with more than one partner is considered as 'fooling around', leaving a man without juridical ground to defend his rights, as soon as the judge finds out he is 'fooling around'.

Indeed, in ancient times when sex was inevitably coupled with having children and creating a family, sex must have been introduced as part of a formal bond between man and woman, in order to avoid women to be left behind by their irresponsible 'mates'. And since man always had difficulty in distinghuishing their own bread from the kids from the milkman, one can also understand that no man ever wanted to be unsure about his fatherhood. So man became fierce defenders of jalousy. And sultans locked up their women in a harem guarded by eunuchs with the physical impossibility to trade places with the sultan.

In these modern times, one should expect sex to be released from the bonds of marriage. Pre-marital sex is now more or less accepted in Western democracies -- although not by everyone. Sex does not automatically lead to having children any longer, so it can be seen as being seperate from marriage or as being part of a friendship without having to induce any jalousy. But having sex with more than one partner is still considered as 'fooling around'. And within divorses, the one partner having sex besides his or her marriage is still considered the erroneous one -- without even questioning why that person had a second sex partner, or without questioning whether it happened with mutual consent.

Within this context, how is sex with four women going to be accepted by the outside world, and by court? And how is the sultan in question ever going to defend his rights in court, when sex with someone else than his one own wife is the only right he has?

A harem does not have to be equal to an enforced community

Today, I received a nice e-mail from Harry (Holland). He has built a website in Dutch in order to support his quest to find like-minded polyamory people in Holland. His site is http://home.orange.nl/hcsm/. His definition of polyamory is wide -- I translate freely from his mail: "as long as your relationship is not enforced or misleading, you can call it polyamory. The structure you give it, is your personal implementation." Thanks Harry, for being such a positive person.

The word "harem" might frighten some people. On the Dutch polyamory website, I saw another discussion forum where some reactions were going bluntly against the use of the word "harem" without trying to find out whether the intentions of the use were open and honest, or not. Just by its structure, a community with one alpha male and four woman is named a polygamous relationship or harem. Whether the harem implies enforced stay, locking up, eunuch guards, etc is a choice of implementation. For those who still have their doubts, my implimentation has nothing to do with enforcement.

Is a harem considered polyamory?

Does polyamory allow a community of peope to build boundaries to their openness? In this case, do polyamory experts think of a harem as a case of polyamory, or is the one-to-four relationship not real polyamory?

Not that it really matters of the answer to the above questions is yes or no. Everyone designs his life according to his own standards. So will I. But it would be interesting to find out whether I could promote my harem concept into polyamory circles or whether doing so would be considered artificial - or worse - a lie.

Sultan Murati

About this blog

A modern harem. That title could shock some people. I know. It would have shocked me too, a couple of years ago. But now, I am really trying to get this experiment going and I want to give it high chances.

The harem concept I am thinking of has nothing to do with the classic ownership of women. The idea is to build a community of five people, one man, four women, living together harmoniously and sharing an adventorous part of their life. Why? Because today's society is a lonely society, build on individualism. Why? Because today's marriage-based mono-partner relationships are not working and are not creating hapiness. Why? Because it feels like a nice way to live together, when five people can share their life, create advantage of scale, help and support each other, do more and acheive more, have more variety and still feel comfortable. Why this form? Because it feels feasible to me. Why not another form? Because I feel this is what I would like to create.

I have started this blog in order to share ideas with people who are curious, who are constructive thinkers and positive-minded philosophers. I would like to counterbalance first impressions and thought. Make sure I have thought-over the most evident pitfalls. And ... most importantly ... find many woman sending me their fears, their dreams, their thresholds, their desires in case they would be part of that family. Not as an application for really being part of this community, but as input to my drawing board of the modern harem.

Thank you in advance for positively adding thoughts to this blog.

And for those who want to preach. Do not. I am not interested in finding out why you consider me being wrong. Spend your time elsewhere.

Sultan Murati