CMV: Polygamy should be legal in the Western world (United States, Canada, Europe and Oceania)

I have said all along that in the best case, a polygamous relationship could work out. It's great that your two wives also love each other. If they were lesbians, they could also have married each other (since this is now legal) rather than having to both be your wives. Generally speaking, in a marriage of two wives and one husband, it is the husband that the wives love, not each other. Wives in polygamous marriages are rivals for their husband's love and attention, more often than not. Your particular case is unusual.

I can see that it is intrusive for society to tell you that you cannot have more than one wife, when you and your two wives are so happy together. If your kind of polygamy were the rule rather than the exception, I would not object to it. It is generally a good thing to let people live their own lives as they choose, without imposing arbitrary restrictions. But there is too much abuse.

Bigamy is usually done deceitfully. A man marries two women who each are under the impression of being his only wife. The wives do not know that there is another wife. It is done that way because the women in question almost invariably would not agree to be part of a polygamous marriage. They do not want to share their husband, they want a husband all to themselves, and understandably so. Again, a husband has only so much time and so much money. To divide these between two families means there is less for each family.

But in your case, if you and your two wives are all mutually supportive, then that works out for you. No one is deprived of anything since each spouse has two spouses who contribute to their happiness and security. That is not usually how polygamy works out, but that is how it works out in your case. So it is successful for you.

We could compare this situation to the laws about the age of consent. There are some young people, perhaps 13 years old, who have happy and successful sexual relationships with older people even though those are illegal and generally regarded with deep revulsion. Not all kids are the same. Some are ready for sex, some are not. And not all adults are the same. Some treat their sexual partners well, and some are just exploiting them. So if we were to eliminate the social prohibition against pedophilia, this would work out very badly in most cases, but would also work out well in at least some cases. I do personally know of one interesting case in which a 15 year old boy developed a relationship with a 29 year old woman, and it worked out very well for both of them despite being technically a case of the sexual abuse of a child (this is not autobiographical, by the way, it is someone I know). Even so, we would not want to make a general rule that adults and children can be sexual partners. In most cases that works out badly for the child. Similarly, there is a huge amount of abuse associated with polygamy in general, even though it is working out in your case.

/r/changemyview Thread Parent