Open Marriages

[sangi39]

I happen to be in an open marriage and I was recently asked "so marriage really means nothing to you. so why did you get married?"

I've more or less had an open relationship since 6 months after I met my now wife and said "I made an emotional and, in some senses, a "spiritual" (neither of us believe in any god) commitment to my wife when she proposed and when I said yes. However, we are both of the opinion that sex can just be sex and that being physically attracted to other people (we're both bi to some degree or another) does not end when you get married. We are both happy with our (open) marriage at the moment, and if the situation changes, I at
least, will mention it, and I trust her to do the same."

While the question kind of insulted/offended me (the person asking me didn't know me), I was wondering how this kind of marital situation would be handled in your concultures (either positively or negatively).

[Hālian]

(scrapped)

[Ànradh]

It's not permitted in any of my three cultures, actually. It was originally going to be permitted in Mex society after I met a couple with such a relationship and determined to include it, but it didn't seem to fit the 'flavour' of the culture.

Edit: It doesn't fit with the Dvoen either, promiscuity is allowed before marriage (chastity isn't held as a virtue), but couples are expected to be faithful (in the traditional sense; I'm aware that faithful meant something slightly different to the couple I knew), but the Maxna might allow it. I haven't developed their culture as much, so there's room for change.

[Ilocar]

its hard to be sure. My world's cultures were all, to some degree, influenced by christianity, (it has connections to our world and is for logical historical reasons and not my own reasons.) but not very strongly. promiscuity in general is common among Tiresians, and is an essential element in the mating behavior of the Orcnean races. in the Raeshan peninsula, polygamy is common, (for business alliances etc.) but an open marriage would not be tolerated. Like the Tiresians, most Devian races practice promiscuity and their closest idea to a marriage is the relationship of a person and a sexual partner in whose house they also live, the exception here are the Melchians, who unlike the other Devians, are obsessed with sanctity, purity and harmony, as a result they abide very strict religious doctrines that check even mildly different behavior from the norm and the Melchians view sex as nothing other than a necessity for bearing children, which is always part of the marriage contract. The Ag Peoples in the south are mostly hunter-gatherers and have no reason to see anything wrong with an open marriage, and such arrangements are the norm among them. The Jamla, on the other hand,basing their economy off of fishing and trade, are more sedentary and subject to religious and cultural shame at behavior like promiscuity, however, such behavior is not wholly looked down upon and is still reasonably common. Among the Yul peoples it is fairly common for females to have sex with and bear children by several males at a time (they lay eggs) and it is the males' responsibility to look after the eggs while she hunts and forages, as a result, Yul males rarely have sex with anyone other than the mother of their children. In the north, marriage is considered to be a commitment to not have sex with anyone other than your spouse in almost every nation and people group, an open marriage would seem strange to them rather than sinful or evil, they wouldn't understand why neither party gets angry at the other and would probably opt to ignore it. the major exception is among the Litlig people, whose society puts little to no relevance on what sexual partners a person takes, a marriage in Litle is more about land ownership and guild affiliation.

That covers most of my concultures that I know enough about to speak on their behalf, didn't expect to write this much, whew :|

[Yiuel]

I happen to be in an open marriage and I was recently asked "so marriage really means nothing to you. so why did you get married?"

I've more or less had an open relationship since 6 months after I met my now wife and said "I made an emotional and, in some senses, a "spiritual" (neither of us believe in any god) commitment to my wife when she proposed and when I said yes. However, we are both of the opinion that sex can just be sex and that being physically attracted to other people (we're both bi to some degree or another) does not end when you get married. We are both happy with our (open) marriage at the moment, and if the situation changes, I at
least, will mention it, and I trust her to do the same."

While the question kind of insulted/offended me (the person asking me didn't know me), I was wondering how this kind of marital situation would be handled in your concultures (either positively or negatively).

In Melville, there is no "marriage". (So to Melvillians, there is indeed... no meaning to the word marriage :P)

Instead, you have Houses. A House is a group of adults who live together in some house, that group being made of adults that decide to live in the same house to care about some children. While the very modern ideal of one mother, one father and children exists, it's only a minority who live like that. Note that the adults need not be in a commited relationship; where you distinguish sex and love, Melvillians distinguish sex, love and family (and within family, many things).

A classical case :

Two guys want to live together in the same House (think of them as two geeks who enjoy playing computer games way too much). They form a House, and live together for a couple of years like that. One guy has a girlfriend, the other guy has a boyfriend. After a couple of years, they meet a girl who is pretty much as geek as they are. She has a girlfriend, but she has the intention to form a family (and not with her girlfriend). The two guys don't object at all to have a family, they probably would like to have geeky kids anyways. The girl therefore joins the house.

In the first years of Melville, procreation would be rather complicated, but it would probably involve the two guys mating with the girl. After a thousand years, they would simply go for a procreation machine. But the result is that they have together three kids, two girls and a boy, one of the girls adopted from the girl's girlfriend who doesn't want to take care of children at all. In the meanwhile, the guy with a boyfriend decided to for a more permanent style relation by going through a marriage (though it is not legally binding in Melville), while the other boy changed boyfriends twice in the same time. The girl eventually left her girlfriend and has now recently hooked up with another girl, and that other girl would like to join the House. She joins, decides to have two children. So now you have 4 adults and 5 children.

This is classic, and very Melvillian.

Perhaps more surprisingly, some children of Houses actually join their Houses as adults. I described such a case in one of my short stories.

A genetically modified human, part of a program from a mad scientist to try to dominate Melville with engineered humans, gets to see first hand the scientist's plan. While the others are killing machines, our modified one has been raised by a person who ingrained a little bit of care for other people. And when he saw his teammates kill people, he utterly rebelled and killed all his teammates and saved a lot of the people (who were peaceful). After his rampage, he saw that many townsfolk had been killed, and there was a little lonely kid. He took him, and raised him as his son. (Though when the father has four arms while the son has only two, it can get complicated...) He left for the woods where he lived a lonely life with the kid. He eventually reached one of the Melvillian cities, where he met with Melville's Army Force, the Orionites. As it happens, they were looking for the mad scientist, and the genetically modified human gladly gave all informations regarding this. After a while, he even applied to join the Orionites. (But the Orionites took care of the mad scientist before he joined.)

Familywise, because of his strange looking bodyshape, he was kind of shunned, but Melvillians tried to learn his story to understand why he looked like this and why he had a boy that didn't look like him at all (except perhaps for his physical fitness, life in the wood makes it a good thing to be stronger). He founded a House, when told he could do that. Eventually, he fell in love with a girl, and the girl eventually reciprocated, and he asked her to join his House. His own boy was now a teenager. The girl eventually decided for it, so now the boy got a new parent (and brothers and sisters). The boy himself obviously filandered and he was raised as a Melvillian, so he was more aware of what was the norm in Melville; he eventually decided to join his father's house, bringing in a couple buddies (boys and girls alike), and you had a house full of adults and, eventually, many children.

So your situation, as is, is atypical, but in the opposite way of what you were asked. Couples who form houses are extremely rare. (However, the biggest houses never go beyond a hundred people.)

Note, my conculture is mostly human. (Though you do have some genetic engineering in the package after a while.)

[prettydragoon]

In Rireinu, the persons view sex as primarily a means to strengthen the ties between spouses. The culturally approved ideal is serial monogamy until you find your One True Lifemate. If that was good enough for your mothers and your mothers' mothers, it damn well better be good enough for you!

[clawgrip]

An interesting real-life, non-modern cultural practice similar to this is the Inuit practice of wife-swapping. There were numerous reasons for it, ranging from physical desire, like just wanting to sleep with your friend's wife, to practical concerns (gender roles were extremely strict and no man or woman could survive without a husband or wife, because innumerable taboos prevented them from doing 50% of the everyday work). Sometimes wife-swapping would be permanent, sometimes not; sometimes it could lead to resentment, song-battles, or even murder.

[valiums]

Llapuans probably wouldn't make it past the words "open marriage". They marry strictly for business between clans and love freely else, so the whole situation would be unthinkable. The closest thing they have would be long-term relationships; malizphirai "a long time in love" for a couple (formally maldavaqa) or triple (malnavama), and malphajawa, literally "love sit-down restaurant", or īymala "many love", for several people.
Malphajawa sounds pejorative in English, but it's not in Llapu.

[Foolster41]

The idea would be strange to salthans, and they'd probably see things similarly to the person who asked the question, seeing as getting marriage a promise to have sex only with that spouse (though, then again, they do practice polygymy too...).

I haven't decided yet how accepting they are of premarital sex, whether it's very openly done, done, but taboo to talk about, or very rarely done.

Salthans are a fairly religious medieval-ish society.

[Yačay256]

@Yiuel: I am pretty sure marriage is a human cultural universal, unless I am mistaken. It may be that some forms are more common that others, but marriage - as defined by my anthropology professor "Some sort of formal and socially encouraged sexual and economic union between two families" - is clearly a human cultural universal from all the research I have seen.

Back to Sangi39's question, I shall use the Pyeom, as per usual:

The Pyeom have marriages arranged by community scholar-bureaucrats, either within or outside of the community; this is officially and ceremonially done on the sixteenth Lunar New Year's of the person concerned. Though monogamy is the single most frequent form of marriage, polygamy - both polygyny and polyandry - are customary during certain circumstances, such as a particularly powerful or desirable person taking multiple spouses.

The Pyeom use a joint family system wherein the newly wed group moves into the household of the youngest spouse in a form of ambilocality; save temporary travel or a rise in social status for one of a household's members and not including a movement of the entire family to a new location, this is the only regular way of moving for a Pyeom person from one's residence of birth.

Pyeom law and custom mandates that all people be married to one or more people of their preferred gender or genders (the Pyeom recognize a third gender), thus accommodating the needs and desires of queers.

Outside of marriage, the Pyeom have a fully legal, normalized, healthy and well-regulated sex industry and, though prostitution as the capitalist world knows it largely does not exist, there are often community-sustained "'brothels' of the mutually willing" where people (well, anyone over the age of full consent (this being identical to the age of majority) get together for casual sexual encounters; as their name suggests, though, these "brothels" are based on mutual and informal obligations, not on direct and overt transactions.

So, in conclusion, a Pyeom person probably would not even blink.

[Serena]

@Yiuel: I am pretty sure marriage is a human cultural universal, unless I am mistaken. It may be that some forms are more common that others, but marriage - as defined by my anthropology professor "Some sort of formal and socially encouraged sexual and economic union between two families" - is clearly a human cultural universal from all the research I have seen.

While this is true for sexuality, actually a certain culture may not have a formal socially encouraged economic union.

My conpeople, Keyalians, does not have the economical concept of "family". Some castes (Warriors, royals and politicians) often do not have a stable relationships. Only the low castes have "marriages" (that are not official unions).

To answer sangi39's question... if you are a workman or a workwoman, you are given the choice to do whatever you want as long as you bear children (Of course workmen can't bear children, but they are needed in the process). On the other hand, if you are a female warrior you probably don't have sex with men at all (They are somehow dirty to you, and penises are gross), you'd have rather a young girl (better if virgin).

[DrGeoffStandish]

I'm not much for micromanaging the specific details of my concultures, this issue'd be only one of tens of thousands others I'd have to decide for. If I ever made a conculture that dealt with the issue in question I'd rather choose a perspective where marriage has been phased out completely. Why? This is what I personally think is the modern rational way of dealing with it. We are just adult mammals some of which have the pleasure of copulating with other adult mammals of the same species (with the potential result of generating new mammal units of the same species if the copulating units are of heterogeneous sexes), why should there be a concept of abstract (even in the juridical sense) unification of any number of such units? Ridiculous in my POV, there's always the possibility to sign some kind of contract regarding if one unit in a relationship e.g. departs. I'd regard mammal units the same way I'd regard corporate units, you don't have e.g. have companies marrying each other, they sign legally binding contracts. Let's quote Wikipedia's article on contracts:

• • • In common law legal systems, a contract is an agreement having a lawful object entered into voluntarily by two or more parties, each of whom intends to create one or more legal obligations between them.
      The elements of a contract are "offer" and "acceptance" by "competent persons" having legal capacity who exchange "consideration" to create "mutuality of obligation."

No reason to make things more mystifying than that, stop calling it marriage and call it a contract instead, a contract that may contain any kinds of obligations that the parties agree on. Let the religious call it marriage and let the rest of us call it partnership contract or whatever.

[Kehgrehdid]

It would be insanity. An open marriage would be an absolute death wish.

Fedrelar reproduction involves the husband and wife's entire bodies below the neck melding together for a time lasting from a few days to two weeks to a month, including a complete mixing of their bloodstreams. After this melding, their bodies separate again into husband, wife, and usually a newborn child, but the parents' bodies now consist partially of cells that had belonged to their spouse. Male Fedrelar blood has antibodies against all foreign male blood, and female Fedrelar blood has antibodies against all foreign female blood, so anything outside of lifelong male-female monogamous fidelity would result in fatal blood clotting in the bodies of both parties. A mandate to be faithful to one's husband or wife would hit the Fedrelar as a "Well, duh!" on the level of humans being told not to let cobras or vipers bite them.

(And regarding transfusions, the Fedrelar have developed a blood substitute that can be used to replace blood lost to an injury, but it cannot replace more than about 3/4 of an individual's blood, so it cannot be used to enable promiscuity.)

[svld]

This may be of your interest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo#Walking_marriages