Is there a right way to romantically connect with others?

[bennyboy]

I don't think polyamory is ethical, because I still believe (shoot me, I already know what you fuckers are going to say about this) that at the core, heterosexual relationships are about babies.  Yeah, fuck you, I said it, don't start with me.

The ethics of sexuality are largely to do with what happens at the point of pregnancy.  In a polyamorous relationship, pregnancy likely means that the woman will no longer get to be anything-androus.  Since she's lacking the bonded understanding of a monogamous couple, she's going to have a hard time convincing the man that he suddenly needs to commit to helping her build a nest and raising a child.

The other issue is the reproductive life cycle.  It's easy to talk a 20 year-old girl into thinking she'll never ever want a baby.  But fast forward about 9 years, and there's going to be a real dissonance-- she's very likely to start wondering about reproducing, whereas for a man-- well, he's still got about 40 years to think about it.

So the Bonobo's are doing it wrong?

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/07/opinions/m...os-safina/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex...ve-and-sex

Ethics implies the capacity to hold a world view and act in accordance with it.  So yes, from the human perspective, bonobos are doing it wrong.

Humans have to balance components of a world view against each other: the seeking of pleasure is an important value; so is equality among the genders; so is the sense of responsibility for the social and material well-being of children.

In my opinion any man trying to talk a woman into a polyamorous relationship is doing so selfishly-- he wants sex, but none of the relationship work that comes with a real romantic relationship.  He also, unless he's completely retarded, knows that as women mature their desire to reproduce often intensifies; he should be able to infer, then, that a long-term polyamorous arrangement is likely to lead to conflict or suffering.

Making choices which one knows are likely to lead to conflict or suffering of others is unethical.  Convincing yourself that you've got the consent of some young lady might make you feel better about living the way you want, but in the end, it will likely go badly, and a decent man will see this likely outcome and take reasonable measures to avoid it. He will do this by accepting some limitations to his own pursuit of pleasure in favor of maintaining a healthy romantic relationship.