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I'm not arguing for monogamy per se...

since I accept that some forms of polygamy have been stable. I'm arguing against the kind of open marriage you're advocating.

When I see otherwise loving and compatible couples with children divorce merely because one partner chose to seek sexual or emotional companionship outside of the relationship, I see an expectation, often motivated entirely by social expectations, taking priority over greater values that this particular social norm supposedly is meant to protect. This doesn't make much sense to me, and I think it's unfortunate and is worth questioning.

And when couples remain faithful and stay together it does not occur to you that fidelity contributes to their success?

What do I expect to keep men (and women) from leaving their partners? Love? A sense of duty and commitment? One can love and be committed to a partner (and that commitment can in turn be socially reinforced) without necessarily being monogamous.

Sure one can. Though why you think sexually exclusive marriages are unrealistic, but anything that sounds good to you is likely hold families together is quite beyond me.

You sound exactly like a utopian communist explaining how the people will collectively run an automobile factory through shared ideals and mutual respect. Every individual action contemplated is of course possible but the scheme as a whole is completely unsupported by natural human incentives.

How are men able to attain biological success without raising children?

By siring as many children as they can, obviously.

How are women unable to attain biological success without raising children?

Because women have far fewer tickets in the genetic lottery and their tickets are more expensive than the men's by multiple orders of magnitude.

So obviously, a woman who fails to provide for any given child of her own risks far more biologically, than a man.

Men can be forced (by explicit law and/or social pressure) to raise their children directly, or to provide the financial resources for someone else to do so for them.

Yep, or you could force people whose names were drawn from a hat to raise the same children. Or you could force the French to do it. But what's your justification?

And in fact, attempting to force men to provide for their children is a losing game, as women suing for child support usually learn. A "Player" can easily sire more children than he can afford to provide for. Hell, he can do that in six months. Then what?

Women don't need to raise their own children to attain biological success; they can do the same thing men do: Outsource the job to their partner, or purchase childcare.

Sigh. Women must, by their biological nature, invest a great deal more in each child they produce and they must invest a great deal more in arranging for the survival of each child.

You really don't see the asymmetry between men and women in genetic stakes?

Suppose we're both buying tickets in a lottery with big prizes. Now suppose the tickets cost $1 for me but $30,000 for you and you have to hold on to the tickets for 18 years before the final drawing. Do you think we might develop different strategies based on our different opportunities? You think different strategies don't get hardwired into men and women when they play a similar game for a few million years?

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