@Ambiance,
Yes, that's the article I'd link to.
There's no totally perfect/ideal situation for child-rearing while retaining full sexual freedom at any power level in Western society. Even the most powerful do not have harems.
Even if you could manage to take multiple wives, they'd keep your energies so focused on them you wouldn't manage very many. Philip II of Macedon managed 7 wives and more concubines. One of his wives had a concubine of his and the child he had with her executed, and may have been involved in the assassination of Philip II himself. Or you can just watch the Chinese film
Raise the Red Lantern to get an idea of what it's like dealing with multiple wives in a not-totally-locked-down cult-like or deeply supportive cultural system.
Only good multi-wife situation I can think of is ancient oriental emperors. From Persia to China the emperors had huge palaces with thousands of women, guarded by castrated eunuchs. At one point in ancient China, the women's appointments with the emperor was rigidly timed, to the extent that they'd select a woman for the emperor for that night, bring her to the bedroom, lead the emperor there, give him exactly 15 minutes to shag, then pull him out of there on the buzzer so he wasn't exhausting his "vital essences" (i.e., getting nagged to death by the woman). These emperors typically had lots and lots of progeny.
So, in theory, you could do it if you can be the emperor of a country that supports you running your own eugenics program for yourself (basically), and there are enough castrated men around to defend your women (but believe it or not castrated men can still get erections, and even orgasm, though of course they have no sperm, and there was allegedly a tendency for desperate women in various harems around the world to seduce eunuchs into sex... which the eunuchs paid for with their lives if discovered).
Or, more easily, just start a cult where you are the figurehead. But the quality of woman is not likely as good as being emperor.
Assuming you won't be a cult leader or an emperor though, you'll need to resort to the strategies in that article
You won't stay young, wild, and energetic forever. So what happens to the old playboy when age catches up to him? Does he just fade away? Under my article "Male vs. Female Mating Motivations Laid Bare", a reader comments: hard question to ask, but it just seems having children or getting married...
www.girlschase.com
@Velasco is correct that many/most girls will turn a blind eye so long as it's not too in-their-faces and, most especially, that their social reputations are preserved. The man screwing around doesn't really become a major problem
usually until her reputation's at risk and/or the husband's just become totally negligent toward her and the family.
Women do not think about relationships the way men do. They're not romantic the way men are romantic. They're generally far more practical. If they're happy with the guy, and they feel secure enough with him, and he's doing a good job with them and the family, and they have a few occasional suspicions he might have some side tail here and there, but they don't really know, and it doesn't seem to impact anything, they won't care, and it actually boosts attraction.
The main problem with infidelity is that most guys are
not savvy playboys. Most guys have an affair with one other girl, fall in love, and start neglecting their wives and families. Or they're sloppy about it and shit where they eat and do harm to their girl's social reputation. If you go out with your girl to Location X and she knows people there and people are familiar with seeing you and her together there, and then one day you're at Location X alone and you spot a really pretty girl and you strike up a chat with her and one thing leads to another and she's cleaning your pipes later, and then people from Location X see you with her a few more times, and then they see you with your woman as well, that's going to get back to her. You really can't be sloppy with this.
Sometimes you'll come across tales of men who maintained separate families, typically in different cities an hour or two apart. "It's for business" is the tried and true excuse for a man wanting to get away from the wife/kids, and usually in these multi-family scenarios the man was telling each family he had to be in the other town every other week for business. One week in Town 1 with Family 1 (Family 2 thinks he's there for business), and the next week in Town 2 with Family 2 (Family 1 thinks he's there for business). Only works if you're location independent, of course. Or I guess you could have an office halfway in between, and just pick cities on opposite sides from it.
You start to see how much extra work it is maintaining all this though.
This is why
most guys settle into monogamy. It is just way, way easier than much more demanding alternatives out there.
But of course, if you're more driven than most, you still do have your other options.
(open marriage is another way to go, yeah. I have observed the guys who are happiest with it on the longer term -- like 15+ years -- are the guys who genuinely enjoy knowing their wives are getting fucked by someone else, or watching her get fucked... a lot of the most successful open marriages I see involve a lot of threesomes, usually mostly MMF. Seems like those setups can go the distance. The other ones, where the man just doesn't / tries not to think about his woman getting plowed, while he's out there getting laid with other women, don't seem to work as well, due to the deterioration process
@Ambiance highlighted in the OP. In any event, if you're doing open marriage, the one thing I have consistently heard from practitioners is "you need to make sure the kids don't know about it" -- I would guess that's not a pleasant conversation to have with your kids, and it's probably not good for the kids' reps in school if it gets out)
Chase
