lock thread please

[renegade7]

As many as 70% of married women will cheat on their partners, as will about 72% of married men, at least once. Additionally, 25% of married men have had extended extramarital relationships at least once: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-cheating/2012/02/08/gIQANGdaBR_story.html

Cheating may be frowned upon, but if it was considered socially unacceptable we wouldn't be seeing nearly that much of it. At some level, society has wholeheartedly accepted infidelity even though we ostensibly criticize it.

This happens because society demands that everyone get married, marriage is blown up to be this existential imperative and you're a failed, unloved person if you don't get married, have 2.4 children (gotta sustain the population growth to prop up the loans we take out against the future, regardless of how sustainable an exponentially increasing population is), take a loan out for a house (to keep the bankers rich), and die at the appropriate time (before you can take up too much Social Security, but preferably not before you've spent enough time paying into it!). People cheat because marriage serves no functional purpose. People claim to hate cheating because marriage is a sacred cow that none dare criticize.

Infidelity used to be a crime in the US. In some states it still is, though it is not prosecuted. Polygamy, on the other hand, remains illegal, and it doesn't look like this will change any time soon. In the Supreme Court arguments by the gay marriage advocates earlier this year, even the people fighting for marriage equality stopped barely short of implying polyamorous relationships were perverse. Obviously they were just trying to not give the anti-equality group any ammunition by admitting that polyamory could be next, but that just further evidences the point that polyamory is considered deeply taboo when society finds it so repulsive that even the people fighting for equal rights to be granted to all family structures have to pay lip service to denigrating it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

The couple had a non-traditional relationship which involved partners outside of the marriage that society failed to understand and condemned in response to this. Sounds pretty damn close to polyamoury to me.

It wasn't a polyamorous relationship. It was two married individuals cheating on one another. Both emotionally and physically.

Why not both? Something can be both scummy and understandable. Like most things in life it's not a black and white thing, it's several different intertwining greyscales.

Yes, something can be. It can be everything on the scale from "completely justified" to "morally reprehensible". I'm actually the one arguing that it's shades of grey, here. The majority of the posts are "NO! BLACK AND WHITE!".

Let's take cheating completely out of the question, say that these texts implied she was scamming her husband out of money instead of cheating.

You mean, let's say she was stealing something away that belonged to him? This is a treacherous analogy.

Whatever the case, I don't think evidence of a crime makes a good comparable for infidelity.

Would it be wrong for us to pass judgement on the woman without context?

Yes. Cheating aside, I would argue it is almost universally wrong for people to pass judgment without context. History is literally stuffed to the rafters with the problematic repercussions of judgments without context.

Everywhere has an extreme reaction when it comes to cheating, be it online spaces or real life. It sells papers, it gets views, it loses sponsorships and it triggers resignations. There's no need to condemn this community based on an almost universal human response.

It is not a universally held belief that cheaters are wicked and deserve to suffer. It is belief held by a sizable contingent, but not a universal one. High profile cases of infidelity are usually hotly debated, with sympathy and condemnation on every side. What is universal is that almost everyone feels they deserve an opinion on something that really has absolutely nothing to do with them.

I am a recovering drug addict. I know many other addicts, some recovering, some still in the main throes of their addiction. All of these addicts (myself included) developed our addictions in response to something that was wrong with our lives. For some this meant something as mundane as simply being bored and living in an area where there's literally nothing else to do, for others it was a way of dealing with childhood abuse. All of these reasons are understandable, but none of them excusable. Using drugs as a way of coping with our problems was wrong, for us and those who care about us. And like it or not it says something about our characters that we did so.

What is your feeling on mentally ill people using prescription drugs to cope with their problems? Some of them are just as addictive and insidious as "recreational" and illegal drugs. Genuinely curious what your stance on that is as a recovering addict.

My views on cheating are very much similar. There are many reasons to cheat and I am understanding and empathetic towards many of those reasons. But that doesn't make the act of cheating permissable, excusable or (as you put it) entirely understandable.

I think there are often better ways to resolve bad situations, but I think there are optimal ways to resolve all of life's problems, and people seldom manage them. That doesn't make them bad people. It makes them people. In an ideal world, the husband/wife in the documentary I watched would've had a marriage with healthy communication, would've lived in a society that didn't demonize divorce, and would've separated amicably and been free to pursue romantic entanglements with people more suited to them. None of that happened, and it's not because the people in question were sinister or selfish or weak or morally decrepit.

Don't get me wrong, I'm going to make the judgement that it makes them a selfish/weak/dishonourable human being, but the action they took was those things, so I'm also not going blame others for making that judgement.

I think you meant to say "I'm not going to."

People make selfish decisions every day. Being selfish is not inherently bad, or even always an inherently "wrong act".

The same way I wont blame others for thinking that I'm weak, that I'm careless or that I'm hedonistic for developing a drug addiction.

Those people should also withhold judgment. They didn't live your life. Whatever happened to the old "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"? There's a lot of cheery fucking stone casting going on these days. I must assume all the people doing it are moral paragons.

TLDR: As a base line cheating is wrong. You can pile justifications on top of that and yeah, they might pile so high that you can ignore that underlying truth, but a truth it still remains. It's not "sometimes shitty" as you put it, it's always shitty.

Any action you can take that might cause another person emotional distress (even yourself) is "as a base line" a problematic action. I'm not in the camp of "Viva la Cheaters", or "Everyone should try it at least once!". I *am* in the camp of "Anyone's capable of it, even you", "It doesn't automatically mean you are a monster", and "People should put their fucking pitchforks away, what goes on between two people in their romantic relationship is their business. Don't have all the facts? Then keep your uninformed opinion to yourself".

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Yeah, but morality is a social concept.

Well, yes, but then this forum is a small subset of society as a whole. The morals as discussed by people here might not reflect wider society that closely.

Its rare for a society to judge something as immoral while maintaining it's social acceptable. Likewise if something is considered moral, its rare for it not to be socially acceptable to do.

Oh, I'd disagree there. Or at least, there's lots of things that are nominally considered immoral, but that people will turn a blind eye to.

Sure, but doesn't the fact you have to turn a blind eye to something mean that its not socially acceptable? I mean you don't look away, metaphorically, when a father takes his son out for ice cream after the big game. You don't turn a blind eye to a boy scout helping an old lady across the street, or a teacher coming in on a Saturday to help underprivileged children learn to read.
You turn a blind eye to a kid lying during confession or someone taking a penny from the share-tray at a gas station without replacing it.
Or with cheating. Your bro says he has a side chick and you turning a blind eye means you're not okay with it, you know you're not, but you're letting him get away with something not acceptable. Otherwise, if it were acceptable, you'd buy him a beer or something.

Right? I mean I'm making sense here, right? Turning a blind eye means you're keeping it secret. If its a secret, you don't want it known. And if you don't want it known, chances are its something that the public wouldn't be readily happy to hear.

Unless its a surprise party. Those are always cool!

 

[Lufia Erim]

Um, no, not really. Polyamourous relationships, whatever your personal opinion is, are volunteer stuff. You and your partners agree to it, setting terms/conditions and eventually exit points. Its all willing. Some people may frown at the idea, but no one says "Oh yeah, my boyfriend forced me into a polyamourous relationship with his coworkers and ex-girlfriend." Its all volunteer. It has to be.

Cheating, by definition, requires one person to not be okay with it. That's why its called cheating and not polyamory.

Think of it this way: its the equivalent of sharing items among friends, or stealing shit from them. Either way you're getting new stuff, but one is seen as sharing. The other is stealing.

I agree with you on every front. Thats why i said socially acceptable and not just plain acceptable or morally/ethically acceptable. Bassically my question is would society accept you more if you were a knwon cheater than of you were a known polygamist.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Um, no, not really. Polyamourous relationships, whatever your personal opinion is, are volunteer stuff. You and your partners agree to it, setting terms/conditions and eventually exit points. Its all willing. Some people may frown at the idea, but no one says "Oh yeah, my boyfriend forced me into a polyamourous relationship with his coworkers and ex-girlfriend." Its all volunteer. It has to be.

Cheating, by definition, requires one person to not be okay with it. That's why its called cheating and not polyamory.

Think of it this way: its the equivalent of sharing items among friends, or stealing shit from them. Either way you're getting new stuff, but one is seen as sharing. The other is stealing.

I agree with you on every front. Thats why i said socially acceptable and not just plain acceptable or morally/ethically acceptable. Bassically my question is would society accept you more if you were a knwon cheater than of you were a known polygamist.

Oh I know. But what I'm saying is the two are closely linked. The numbers won't line up exactly but if we're working off thumb, generally feelings and anecdotes, I think its a fair bet to say if something is considered immoral by society its probably not socially acceptable to do too.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Somewhat.

I mean that cheating website was made and was popular enough to gather alot of people who wanted to cheat HOWEVER at the same time, it drawn in those hacker to threaten to leak out their clients information unless they shut down permanently.

 

[maninahat]

Yes, I'd say cheating is more socially acceptable. Some people just can't get their head around the idea of polyamory; that they think love is something that can't be divided between any number more than two - people accept cheating (no matter how much they condemn it) because they see it as either a case of "you love your partner but wanted a bit on the side" or "you don't love your partner and love another person"; i.e., they still see love as as exclusively monogamous contract. Polyamory requires people to understand you can love more than one person in the same way, which goes against every depiction of every "normal" healthy relationship ever.

 

[Batou667]

Weirdly, because it goes against the Harm Principle, I think cheating is more socially accepted than poly relationships.

The logic, I think, is that cheating is a temporary transgression which everybody (including the guilt-wracked philanderer) knows is wrong. Cheating is bad but it's usually resolved by atonement, revenge, punishment etc, leaving the status quo of monogamy=correct intact.

Polyamory is on some level more objectionable because it undermines and subverts the usual rule of "people come in pairs". The fact that a hypothetical woman is happy in the knowledge that her husband is screwing another chick (or man) in the next room (or any other arrangement of people of genders and sexualities) in a way means there are two guilty parties, not just one. The husband, who is transgressing normal coupling protocol, and the wife who is condoning it. Never mind that all three people are happy with the arrangement, it's morally wrong because... reasons. The potential for abuse and power imbalances in general, perhaps?

I struggle to pin down why, but I have a pretty strong gut instinct against polyamory that goes beyond "live and let live".

 

[renegade7]

The 70% is only true for 1993, in a 2004 it's only 25% and in general it heavily depends on where they took the people, what they consider cheating and if they manipulated the data to have something to write about.

They were distinguishing between any cheating and having an affair. The 1993 study looked at people who were doing anything at all qualifying as marital infidelity, the 2004 study looked at people who had had ongoing relationships with another person outside of their marriage. Either way, even that lower figure of 25% of all married men having affairs is still a huge number of people.

Cheating is accepted as prostitution is accepted, that does not make it automatically "okay", in a perfect world both would be non-existant.

Why not? People who have more money than emotional availability shouldn't be allowed to have some semblance of intimacy? It's not like it hurts anyone. And cheating is not "accepted", it's considered quite unacceptable, but quite a large number of people are apparently hypocrites.

The 3rd paragraph is such liberal bullshit it's amazing, marriage is an incredibly funtional and essential concept, you have the family with described roles,

Heaven forbid people pick their own roles in life, right? But that aside, what function does it actually serve, and what makes it the only thing that can perform that function?

you have a good sizable income and have children so you would not die alone

That's certainly no guarantee against dying alone, and children cost more than enough to outweigh the income benefits. Remember: nearly 50% divorce rate. Also, many married couples are unable or otherwise choose not to have children. As for "sizable income", that's very debatable. Yes, you have a sizable income, but that's because you have to prioritize earning, and most of it will be spent on your children. Priorities of personal fulfillment or benefit to society take the backseat.

(against, for instance, Japan where the elderly slowly becoming a huge burden on the economy),

That is the fault of those countries for failing to plan for a future economy in which there are fewer people, and expecting that endless growth was sustainable. I will explain.

Maintaining the dependency ratio is a basic amortization problem. Assume that for every person who will retire, "a" people are needed to support them ("a" being some constant greater than 1). This induces the difference equation:

p[n] = a*p[n-1]

p[0] = b

Such that the population at the nth generation must be the scalar factor "a" times the population of the previous to maintain the dependency ratio. This is the elementary first-order difference equation, with the solution p[n] = b*a^n

Which is to say that in order for the prevention of the elderly straining the economy in a system like social security, the population must increase exponentially and indefinitely. Any disruption of this increase will direly threaten the stability of the economy. Disregarding the global impacts of overpopulation, it should be clear why this is unsustainable even at a short-term entirely practical level. Where are we going to put all of those people? Will there be enough jobs for them, especially in an age of ever-increasing automation? If not, are we okay with a vast and perpetually increasing number of people living in dire poverty? If we look to a welfare state to support them, the increasing number of people would force that society to trend towards a completely flat distribution of wealth (ie pure communist), are we okay with living in such a society? In reality, population growth is bounded because there is not an unlimited supply of resources.

Another solution to taking care of the elderly must be found, because what we have now cannot work forever.

the fact america warped the concept and got itself into a fucked position does not invalidate marriage throughout the world. You can find "some" societies that does have a different ways of having a family but their ways are pretty much incomprehensible to western mind set.

America's not really doing that poorly, to be entirely honest. But the countries that are doing very well, and have surpassed us on a number of measures economic, social, and existential, are seeing a reduction in the popularity of the typical marriage. We're following the same trend, just a few steps behind.

The fact Infidelity is not prosecuted does not make it okay, that's why there's still a huge stigma against it.

Really not the point, so much that infidelity was legalized decades ago whereas polygamy remains illegal. That doesn't make infidelity a good thing because it still hurts people, but the reason it happens on such a vast scale is that people are expected to get married and stay married when they ultimately don't want to.

 

[renegade7]

I wonder if the majority of women in prostitution agrees with you on it "not like it hurts anyone".

Some are in sex work voluntarily, some are forced, some are in it due to desperation. The latter two should be protected from such situations, the former should have their rights protected.

I did not say pick what, your probably trying to put words in my mouth, a man can be the housekeeper and the women works, ditto for gay couples. Why is it the one thing that can do it? Easy, evolution, your not the first one saying "marriage does not seem to work" and probably tried different sorts of relationships, none got continued in the last millenia, in the end humans want to have an offspring and emotional connection, necessating having pairs rather than lots of wives/husbands or outright no marriage.

That's very debatable. First, marriage as we know it is a product of the last century, things were different in the past, for example when it was considered a luxury of the very rich, or when it was primarily meant for the political and economic gains of noble families. There is also no reason to think that monogamous pairing provides an evolutionary advantage; if we did truly evolve that way then we wouldn't even be having this conversation, nor would we need a government institution to enforce monogamous pairing.

And, again, why do I need the traditional idea of marriage for emotional connection, do I love someone any less if I haven't asked a priest to sign a paper saying our relationship is for realz? And I know quite a few people, myself included, who lack this supposed biological need for children.

First, kids are better for the economy, so not the whole structure falls down.

There is a point of diminishing returns though, namely when the population becomes too large to employ or otherwise sustain everyone. The economy is currently structured so that an increasing population is good for it, but no amount of economic fiddling can permanently stave off the consequences of an economy that's not big enough to support the population that participates in it.

Second there's plenty of ways for old folks to lose their life's savings (banks collapsing, inflation), so they might cost a lot, but will actually get a paycheck to help their parents if they get in trouble.

You have no guarantee of this. Your kids could end up just as poor. Or they could end up hating you.

The 50% divorce rate is again, america, so it means nothing.

It means quite a bit. If you're an American, those are your odds of having a divorce, a risk I don't want to take.

And finally spending money on personal fulfillment is the pinnacle of everything that's wrong with western society.

Sacrifice and hard work for a cause is the pinnacle of nobility. Sacrifice and hard work for their own sake is the definition of stupidity. You're asking people to abandon what matters to them and give up everything for something they don't care about and that really isn't necessary while at the same time wondering why they're all passing up that option. And note how I also said "greater good for society". You know how much better of a place the world would be if more people sacrificed and worked hard towards ending poverty and disease instead of performing a basic biological function that there was no call for them to? Sacrifice for the people who have nothing compared to what you have and who spend every day afraid that they might not live to see the end of it, not to fulfill some obligation you think you have to some hypothetical children.

I have no idea what you tried to say about Japan, nor do I think there's actual connection to the topic at hand (but basically boils to we're fucked so we should try to be happy instead doing something).

Not at all, quite the opposite in fact. All I pointed out was that borrowing against the future isn't a sustainable solution when that borrowing is based on economic growth that isn't likely or even possible, and that the government and society need to find new ways to care for those who can no longer work. The point was that we need to do something, not that we should arse around continuing as we are until we've screwed up everything so badly that we can't recover. This was in response to your claim that population must be driven to increase perpetually less society risk instability (Japan being given by you as the example). All I'm saying is that other solutions need to be investigated and implemented.

Don't get next paragraph either, you don't respond to what I said, just try to dismiss it.

The point being that some cultures that have moved past the concept of the traditional nuclear marriage appear to be doing better than us in the US, and it stands to reason to think about why.

Final paragraph, really, really think you try to warp the idea to your worldview, "people (by that you mean americans) are expected to get married and stay married when they ultimately don't want to", but that's not it, the culture worships shallow love and self fullfilment (like I said above) over basic human responsibility resulting in couples cheating and divorcing in incredibly high rate after they got wed.

But what's the point of marriage then? Suffering for its own sake? What kind of ideal is that? Why do you want to create a society where the highest ideal is that you should toil and suffer while expecting nothing in return until you die? And where in the hell do you get off saying that anyone with a different plan for his or her life lacks "basic human responsibility"?

Also, isn't the whole reason people get married and have kids in the first place personal fulfillment? Don't pretend that's any less selfish than I am.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Monogamy is monogamy. One partner. Anything else is cheating. You can call it by any name you want.
.

Wait are you saying there is nothing other than Monogamy? Because if so, you are objectively wrong.

The word cheat implies dishonesty. If a couple is polygamous, openly, there is absolutely no dishonesty. Therefore not cheating.

I really hope i misunderstood, because that's absurd.

You didn't read the whole post. At the bottom it says if everyone involved understands there will be multiple partners, that's a thing. Not for me, but whatever, it's none of my business.

Rereading the quoted line, I suppose I could have been clearer. OP's question was, is cheating more acceptable than polyamory? The answer is, not to me, a promise is a promise, one partner means one partner. I wouldn't get into a polyamorous relationship but at least it's honest about what it is. Someone who breaks a promise of loyalty and lies to their partner for months, years or even decades is way worse. It's hypocrisy of the worst sort, to say nothing of how destroyed the partner will feel when they find out.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Major snipping incoming. If I miss something you were fond of/wanted a reply to, let me know.

Fair enough, follow up question. Would it be wrong to pass judgement on the act itself without larger context?

Divorced from context (there is always context) I don't think the act itself has any weight or significance. It becomes a purely abstract/academic exercise. There isn't any "wrong" or "right" at that moment as you're just playing around with ideas.

I would hope that the prescription drugs in question were prescribed by a doctor who is fully aware of the patient's issues and who can ensure that the drugs in question don't act as a destructive force in the patients life.

What would you say about a physician...through incompetence or apathy...prescribing a drug to a mentally ill person that was extremely addictive, and that person subsequently suffering from said addiction and going through typical addict behaviors? I've had a front row seat to that. The drug that was prescribed to her for long term use (years and years) is meant to be used for a week or two only, and eventually causes blowback symptoms that require more and more of the drug to treat.

Like I've also tried to say but failed because of a typo, I'm not going to pass judgements on people's status as human beings based on the bad things they've done. But I will pass judgements on the bad things themselves.

I think I understand what you're getting at, and I don't think we're actually all that far apart in terms of how we view things. I just have a very hard time separating the person and their circumstances from the act.

The thing is though, they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. I know people who were in worse situations than I was in who managed to avoid the call of drugs, I think I'm weak in comparison to them. I know people who I started doing drugs with but they stopped before it fucked up their lives and I didn't, I think I'm careless in comparison to them. I decided that the best way to deal with my problems was to find something that made me feel good all the time with no care to how it hurt me or those around me, I think that's hedonistic.

That's fine, and in all honesty I expect you to feel that way. People...at least decent people who practice self reflection and strive for personal growth...tend to be their own most violent critics. I don't know a person who has cheated who hasn't beaten themselves up about it. The two women who cheated on me both clearly felt terrible, and I don't really think either of them is even remotely a bad person, or that the cheating wasn't a symptom of an already malfunctioning relationship. I feel MUCH worse about the relatively mild transgressions I've made in past relationships than I do about the times I was hurt. That's part of taking personal responsibility, and trying to be a good person.

It's the third parties piling on I have no patience for. I don't think it's "nice in theory". I think "not being a judgmental ass" is something that is very easily within the common person's grasp. And I think exercising that is also part of personal responsibility.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Sure, but doesn't the fact you have to turn a blind eye to something mean that its not socially acceptable? I mean you don't look away, metaphorically, when a father takes his son out for ice cream after the big game. You don't turn a blind eye to a boy scout helping an old lady across the street, or a teacher coming in on a Saturday to help underprivileged children learn to read.
You turn a blind eye to a kid lying during confession or someone taking a penny from the share-tray at a gas station without replacing it.
Or with cheating. Your bro says he has a side chick and you turning a blind eye means you're not okay with it, you know you're not, but you're letting him get away with something not acceptable. Otherwise, if it were acceptable, you'd buy him a beer or something.

Right? I mean I'm making sense here, right? Turning a blind eye means you're keeping it secret. If its a secret, you don't want it known. And if you don't want it known, chances are its something that the public wouldn't be readily happy to hear.

Not necessarily, there are plenty of things that society (as a rule) doesn't want to know the details of that it finds acceptable. There are certain things yo aren't allowed to do in a main street that nobody objects to you doing at home, for example.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Sure, but doesn't the fact you have to turn a blind eye to something mean that its not socially acceptable? I mean you don't look away, metaphorically, when a father takes his son out for ice cream after the big game. You don't turn a blind eye to a boy scout helping an old lady across the street, or a teacher coming in on a Saturday to help underprivileged children learn to read.
You turn a blind eye to a kid lying during confession or someone taking a penny from the share-tray at a gas station without replacing it.
Or with cheating. Your bro says he has a side chick and you turning a blind eye means you're not okay with it, you know you're not, but you're letting him get away with something not acceptable. Otherwise, if it were acceptable, you'd buy him a beer or something.

Right? I mean I'm making sense here, right? Turning a blind eye means you're keeping it secret. If its a secret, you don't want it known. And if you don't want it known, chances are its something that the public wouldn't be readily happy to hear.

Not necessarily, there are plenty of things that society (as a rule) doesn't want to know the details of that it finds acceptable. There are certain things yo aren't allowed to do in a main street that nobody objects to you doing at home, for example.

Can you name me one? 'cause I'm really struggling here.
Society accepts something, but doesn't want to know the details? Like what? Like sex? Ever been to a Forum? 'cause there are plenty of people who want to hear about sex lives. Or watch porn? Plenty of people want to know about the sex live's of Lisa/Julia Ann. Too specific? Fine.
Generalize it. Name something consider moral(as in acceptable to do) that you won't find any audience to listen to the doing there-of.

As far as things allowed in main-street that are considered immoral...what, like taking a shit? 'cause I'm pretty sure going to the bathroom is moral. Or even giving birth. Some may object to popping a baby out in the food court, but generally I don't think you'll find many who say having children is wrong. Location may matter, sure, but the general idea of it? Birthing a kid into the processing line of a food warehouse is probably wrong, but having a kid in your grandmother's birthing room? Probably not gonna' get too many scowls and frowny faces on social media from that.

 

[MeatMachine]

Cheating is common, and is viewed as a bad thing.
Polyamory is uncommon, and is therefore mostly just confusing.

 

[renegade7]

I did not mean evolution, as in, evolution of mankind, but cultral evolution, as in, the unneeded gets discarded.

Being literally my entire point. That which is unneeded is discarded.

Why do you need "a priest to sign a paper saying our relationship is for realz"? Maybe because to prevent the SPOUSE TO LEAVE HIS PARTNER WITHOUT MONEY AND CARING FOR KIDS? Logic, man, logic.

First of all, I would suggest that that risk is a vulnerability of marriage in the first place, in setting you up to be at that risk. I would further remind you that divorce is still a thing, as is basic human greed. Finally, I'd point out that if the default setting was monogamous pairing, then there would be no need for anyone to prevent a spouse from leaving his or her partner destitute since no one would have that impulse.

Now, there was a time when that was a very real risk. This is no longer nearly as much the case, society has adapted accordingly.

The fact you don't have need for children does not mean you are the only one that's right, (and frankly not wanting to have children is contrary to basic human instincts).

This is an argument from nature, and on top of that its premises are debatable. Humans do not have a reproductive instinct per se, they have a sex instinct and the evolutionary motivation is that reproduction would tend to follow. But that aside, a lot of things are also potentially attributable to basic human instinct. Some scholars, for instance, have argued based on behavioral observations of bonobos and chimpanzees that forcible rape is an evolved behavior that allows lower-status males to be reproductively successful even with unreceptive females. The lack of interest in forcibly raping people therefore also may contradict basic human instinct, but in this case that's a good thing.

Basic human instinct also includes the behavioral blueprints for tyranny, murder, and theft. Again, the fact that those instincts can be and typically are ignored is a good thing.

Then actually give a solution instead of saying "we should not have kids".

But that really is the very best solution, though. Sooner or later, population hits a hard limit, and there is nothing anyone can do about this. Sometimes solving large problems means that we may need to resist our basest instinctual impulses.

Who, where, why? I don't see a single example of non "traditional nuclear marriage" in your post.

In those countries that currently are the most prosperous, and where the people are the happiest and the most successful and productive, marriage rates have been declining steadily.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-30-most-prosperous-countries-in-the-world-2014-11
http://uvamagazine.org/articles/the_marriage_crisis

Fine, I get it, you don't want kids, but guess what, the vast majority of humanity does want

Not really, or at least not to the extent you may think, given that such a vast proportion (around half) of children in the world were unintended https://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/j.1728-4465.2014.00393.x.pdf That seems to suggest that, given the choice, close to or slightly more than half of all people would have substantially fewer or no children. Since people having fewer children is the quickest way to solve a vast number of global problems, the only thing I suggest is to give more people that choice. One component of that solution is to take marriage and child-rearing off the ludicrously high pedestal they've been placed on: not to abolish them, not to denigrate them, but simply to give people more options and not drive people towards a narrow set of goals that may not be the best for them.

and that's why families are formed,

Because no unmarried person has ever gotten pregnant, right?

with the idea of having a structure to care for the kids,

Since the expectation has now become that both parents work, and in fact it is often a requirement for financial stability, this can no longer really be said to be the case. With increasing frequency, the burden of childcare is falling upon daycare centers and sitters, suggesting a trend towards a communal approach to child-rearing and away from a familial approach. Alternatively, to drag this back to the original topic, such a trend also could potentially encourage polyamorous relationships by reducing the burden on the individual parents, which is why I think it is not an unreasonable assessment to claim that such relationship structures may very well begin to see greater social acceptance. Perhaps that might be an example of the evolution of society you mentioned earlier? After all, the selective pressures now are quite different than they were 1,000 years ago, and that which is unfit or unnecessary may need to be discarded.

the fact you don't seem to understand it makes me feel like explaining the concept of "yellow" to a blind person.

Yes, obviously the only way I could reach a different conclusion is emotional damage or a lack of understanding. Heaven forbid my decision be one that was carefully thought-out and required serious examination of my own personal beliefs, goals in life, and honest assessment about what I'm actually capable of in regards to being responsible for another human being. I do understand, and it was not an easy decision, but I also know that it is the right one. It's a decision I've put enough thought into that I can explain it and the factors informing it with some degree of care and depth and without a need to resort to trashing on anyone.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I think polyamory is misunderstood and so people equate it as bad, a slippery slope or even don't make the distinction between it and cheating.

Cheating is almost always considered bad from an outside moral perspective. That being said, the reasons for cheating are more understood than polyamory and there's room for empathy/ sympathy, for example...

I have actually given thought about what I'd do if I had ever been cheated on, while it might be easy for me to say immediately "dealbreaker!" my father once cheated on my mother and she took him back and if she hadn't done that, I wouldn't exist today, also they have been happily married ever since.

There becomes an issue when people start mixing the three (polyamory, FWB and Cheating) because of misunderstanding or as an excuse to explain away their cheating, or a reason to avoid commitment when they'd prefer otherwise to be monogamous[footnote]With someone other than their current SO[/footnote], which also further hurts understanding of true polyamorous relationships.

---------------------

Edit: For the sake of that statement, I'm going to throw in definitions.

Polyamory (from Greek πολύ poly, "many, several", and Latin amor, "love") is the practice, desire, or acceptance of intimate relationships that are not exclusive with respect to other sexual or intimate relationships, with knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

Friends with Benefits
Two friends who have a sexual relationship without being emotionally involved. Typically two good friends who have casual sex without a monogomous relationship or any kind of commitment.

Funny enough, I couldn't find a clear definition for cheating, but I'm going to say
"When a spouse has sex outside of a committed relationship, without knowledge or consent of the established partner(s)".

(I'm going to avoid things like "emotional cheating" or "cyber cheating" for the sake of keeping things clean, though I suspect these are some of the reasons why I couldn't find a clear definition).

Still, here too, you get confusion. While maybe not technically a relationship in itself, fairly sure you can't be in a relationship while doing the 'freinds with benefits' stuff with someone else.
Because that's still cheating...

And even though 'friends with benefits' implies something less committed than being in a relationship with someone, I do wonder... Does it... Actually work on the level where it's OK to do that with multiple people at once?
I'm not entirely sure it does.

Gah! weird!

As I understand it, friends with benefits type relationships aren't exclusive at all. It's basically an agreement between two people that they can have sex no strings attached and avoid all that messy relationship stuff, until one of them finds somebody to become exclusive with (at which point it becomes cheating).

That being said, the reason why FWB relationships are difficult is because it needs to be a solid agreement between both parties and with an easy exit. Personal feelings, jealously, ext can't be involved and can't be allowed to develop. If one person has personal feelings and wants something more and the other just wants them as a FWB (is using them) and won't make that fact clear, that's a very jerky thing to do.

Furthermore, the difference between FWB and Polyamory is that in an FWB style relationship, you know the other person is potentially sleeping with more people than just you, but you don't know who those people are, also polyamory plays with the idea of being able to love more than one person while FWBs avoid "love" like the plague.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Can you name me one? 'cause I'm really struggling here.
Society accepts something, but doesn't want to know the details? Like what? Like sex? Ever been to a Forum? 'cause there are plenty of people who want to hear about sex lives. Or watch porn? Plenty of people want to know about the sex live's of Lisa/Julia Ann. Too specific? Fine.
Generalize it. Name something consider moral(as in acceptable to do) that you won't find any audience to listen to the doing there-of.

Any audience, no. There's always some group that will discuss anything. However, that's not to say that society, as a whole, would.

For example, we often think of Victorian England as very sexually repressed, because there were lots of things it wasn't considered appropriate to talk about. Some things just couldn't ever be depicted in literature, such as prostitution. However, there was more prostitution (in large parts due to widespread poverty) then there is nowdays, it just wasn't talked about.

A looser example, any social problem that people acknowledge as bad in a vague and general way, but turn a blind eye to in practice. "I'm totally against X, but just this once I'll keep quiet" is something that crops up a lot.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

To be honest with you mate Polyamory is the most made up snowflake shit I've heard in a long time. Are you really that desperate to be different?

This word, "snowflake", I feel like it pops up in almost every. single. LGBT+. discussion aside from homosexuality[footnote]asexuality, bisexuality, polyamory, trans, pansexuality, you name it[/footnote], and the person stating such never presents reasoning for it. With all due respect, what is your reasoning? Why do you feel this way?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Then the doctor was at fault. Anybody who is visiting a doctor to get help, for any kind of illness, is in a position of vulnerability. The doctor has a position of authority over the patient that puts them in a position of great responsibility. If they are providing the patient with non-solutions to their issues that are destructive then that is malpractice.

We're agreed on that. She was 18 at the time the drug was prescribed, too.

To me a world where nobody passes judgement on anybody else seems sanitised, it seems cold and emotionless, it sounds robotic and inhuman.

I'm not suggesting "no one ever judge anything". I'm suggesting that A) people hesitate to judge before having all the facts, and B) people hesitate to judge the workings of other people's private lives, such as what goes on in their bedrooms, in general.

I also don't think of characteristics such as "compassion" or "viewing all sides of a story before coming to a conclusion" as "cold and robotic".

If somebody is reeling from the pain of a partner cheating on them, why shouldn't they have the right to call that partner scum?

We can be understanding of those who commit infidelity, but if it's a choice between being understanding of the cheater and understanding of the victim (and for a lot of people it is). Then it's the victim who deserves our understanding more.

This isn't a cheater vs victim binary choice. I'm not suggesting we shift all sympathy from victims of cheating to perpetrators of cheating. Or that one can't have sympathy for both, depending on the circumstances. I do think some "victims" of infidelity would be well served by reviewing their own culpability, but that's true of every relationship gone sour...regardless of how it ended. I've found people...particularly when we're younger...habitually cast our exes as "scum" and believe ourselves pure as the driven snow, as we are all the protagonists of our own stories. Doesn't lend itself to a lot of personal growth. It wasn't cool that I got cheated on, but retrospectively it's not surprising either. The first relationship was a sexless malfunction, and in the second case I was taking a new and formative situation for granted and putting hilariously little effort in. If I'd just concluded that the two women involved were "scum" I wouldn't have been doing myself any favors.