Struggling Polyamorist

  Irrelevant Side-Issue Taking Center Stage I've posted a blog about ideas how a Family of the Future might look, which might provide a better way of dealing with big problems around illness, elder-care, and such. Here's that post . There's one question, that I am asked immediately when I mention these ideas in a conversation: what is included in the “shared activities”? What they always really are asking about is physical intimacy. Who is allowed to sleep with whom? My answer are two questions:   Why is physical intimacy so different than any other activity?   Only answer that I can come up with is the life-long brainwashing we received from early childhood on, to get us to think physical intimacy means so much other than what it really means. Take all the “emotions and believes” away for the moment (and, leave the biological necessity of this activity to ensure the survival of the species aside, too): physical intimacy is a way how you can show and share your love of so...

History Originally, humans organized in tribes, where members took care of each other. They hunted together, gathered together, and looked out for each other.   Later, the tribe “shrunk” to a group. Up until and through the dark ages, for example, farms in Europe where autarkic - that means, they produced everything they needed, and they existed mostly independently from outside.   Towards the beginning of the 20th century, it was the extended family, who was living together and looking out for each other. Then, that social construct was replaced with the nuclear family. Instead of great-grandparents, grandparents and siblings, parents, uncles and aunts, siblings and cousins, it now was only the parents and their children, who formed the basic social unit. In the second half of the 20th century, as divorce rates started to rise, very often it was just the mother (sometimes the father) with the children. the other parent had left the unit as well. Today, there are ...