649. Polyandry And Polygyny Are Not Mirror-Inverted

649.  Polyandry And Polygyny Are Not Mirror-Inverted

Superficially seen, polyandry by women and polygyny by men seem to be mirror-inverted but identical constellations.    When omitting the blurring factor of what makes a union a marriage, as this differs widely between countries and cultures, both forms of polygamy can be defined as: 

One person of one gender has at the same time more than one non-temporary intimate relationship with a person of the other gender.

But in spite of the superficial appearance, it is far from mirror-inverted.  The subconscious biological differences between male and female instincts cause decisive distinctions.  

Both varieties are in general biased in favor of male decision, male needs, male consent, male attitudes derived from their instinctive urges, while they are imposed upon women without an alternative and without the power to reject it.  Men do have the advantage of power by greater innate physical strength, and polygamy is not exempted from its effects.  

I am saying in general, as I am of course ignorant of the possible existence of exceptions.   

Polyandry: 

I just read in a newspaper about a society somewhere in Asia, where it is the custom, that several brothers marry one woman and they all live as one family.   This reminded me of once chatting with a man, who was looking for a woman to be shared with his buddy.   I already talked about them in entry 300.

Such behavior can be explained by evolutionary biologically and by the specific male instinctive predispositions.  

 

When men perceive women mainly as toilets for their body waste and not as companions for nonphysical intimacy, then it is not at all surprising, when they are emotionally and intellectually much closer and much more bonded to their brothers and to their buddies known since childhood.   

When they trust each other to share their assets and commodities as is a car, a machine or a home, then they perceive the body of an objectified woman just as one more commodity to be shared the same way.  
When men claim the right to and even fight over the exclusive control over the access to their mates' bodies, this does not automatically imply any emotional attachment.    Some men can be indifferent to the woman's affective preferences, but they just want to be sure, that they are only burdened with raising those children, who do carry their own genes and not those of someone else.  

But when men decide themselves, with whom to share a woman by the exclusion of all others, and they feel close enough, then this includes the willingness to also participate in the burden of raising children, who are genetically the descendants of one of them, but of nobody else.  

Polygyny:

Polygyny is much more widespread than polyandry.   It reflects the biological discrepancy between the frequency of male dishomeostasis and the reluctance of many women to cooperate to restore the homeostasis of those men, who do not fulfill the women's emotional needs in return.   Instead of learning to give women, what they need emotionally and intellectually, these instinct driven animals attempt to solve their biological problem by the concurrent use of more than one female body.  

So far, I have not yet heard of any two women doing the same as the men in the cases of polyandry, which means to decide to share one man.  Nor have I heard of any man entering such a constellation by passive compliance with two women's decision.   

Polygyny is a man's decision for his benefits only, and it is rarely welcome by the women.  Where it is a legal option, the second marriage is usually imposed upon the first wife, no matter what she really wishes.   The second and further wives are usually pressed into such a marriage by the family.   

Whenever an additional wife is indeed welcomed as someone to share the burden of household chores with, this is no evidence of the acceptance of polygyny as sharing a man, it really is an expression of the extreme plight and despair of women in dire poverty, who are deprived of the relief of machines or paid help.

But a form of polygyny exists even in modern western societies, but it is usually not considered nor recognized as such.   Whenever a man starts a non-ephemeral extramarital affair with a woman, he creates for himself the benefits of a polygynous constellation.   But the two women involved do not agree.   The first one is either kept ignorant or she is tied by circumstances as having children.  She wants her husband to fulfill his promise of being monogamous, she does not consent to share him.   The second woman is foolish enough to compete with the first wife attempting to take her place and then have him to herself.   Both women suffer, only the polygynous man is motivated to prolong this situations, as long as he gets enough benefits for a low price.

Thus, in the case of the polyandry by the men's decision, the men can often be content and satisfied.   in the case of polygyny, which is installed by a men over more or less disagreeing women, it is also the man, who benefits, while the women suffer.  

Only the balanced monogamy gives women a fair chance of getting as much advantages and benefits as do men.         

643. A Man's Persistent Contact With Ex-Partners Is A Variety Of The Traditional African Polygamy

643.   A Man's Persistent Contact With Ex-Partners Is A Variety Of The Traditional African Polygamy

In entry 642, I pointed out, how prostitution simulates the copulation of mammals, where the male is not impacted by any emotional or cognitive trace after copulating with a female body.  

When a man perceives a deactivated intimate partner as not different from someone, who had never been more intimate than a platonic friend, this also is evidence, that this man does not experience physical intimacy as creating an irreversible permanent special bond, which can never be undone,  but only drastically broken and severed.


I once wrote a term paper upon traditional African family structures.    Simplified, it was like this:  When a man marries for the first time, he and his wife have one hut each in a compound.   They have an intimate relationship, until the first child is born.   Then the physically intimate relationship with this wife is deactivated.   The man marries a second wife, who gets also her own hut.   When she has her first child, the physical intimacy with her also gets deactivated.    Depending on his material resources, he may add several more wives.   When he reaches his limit, he reestablishes the intimacy with the more ancient wives, until they again are pregnant.  
This means, such a man has a harem, which consists during long periods of one active intimate relationship and several deactivated intimate, but temporarily platonic relationships with women, whom he has not discarded as unsuitable.  

A man, who enters a new intimate relationship, while maintaining a platonic friendship with deactivated intimate partners, has the same kind of a harem.  If he would experience emotional attachment as connected with physical intimacy, he would know this.   But if physical intimacy does not create any permanent emotional trace, then he is not aware of creating a harem and he does not know, what he does to the women, whom he denies exclusivity by placing them in the harem.   
He is oblivious of the decisive difference between a deactivated intimate partner and an ex-partner.  


I define an ex-partner as someone, who is discarded from all voluntary contact as being unsuitable for a relationship. 
A woman, who was an intimate partner and who is still treated and considered as a platonic friend, is not an ex-partner, but a deactivated intimate partner.  

I define monogamy as having only one intimate partner at the same time, no matter if active or deactivated.    

I consider and perceive a person, who is not suitable for friendship as also no suitable for an intimate relationship and the step from friendship to physical intimacy as a one-way street and there is no way back.  


I have been thinking hard, but I cannot imagine any valid reason, why two persons get intimately involved and end the relationship, and in spite of this can continue to reciprocally merit each other's friendship.    A valid reason to end a relationship and valid reasons to reciprocally merit each other's friendship are mutually exclusive. 

• When a relationship ends, because one commits an unforgivable transgression, then this means, that the basis for friendship has been forfeited and destroyed.  
  
• When two people have made the mistake of getting involved by infatuation, while they had nothing in common to keep them together, then the they cannot remain the friends they never had been.
  
• When a man gets aware of the banality of his recurrent urge to restore his homeostasis, then as a wise man he understands, that this is inherent in human cognition, which enables intelligent humans to compare more rewarding intellectual activities with the primitive homeostation of animal instincts.  This awareness does not diminish a mature man's attachment to the person of his partner.  
  But if experiencing his own needs for homeostation as a banality suffices for a man to replace his companion's body with another female body for the purpose of enhancing the sensation of primitive thrills, then he is a worthless idiot and an immature jerk and he does not deserve the discarded woman's friendship.  

Therefore any man, who needs to continue the contact with his deactivated intimate partners, scares me for two reasons.  
It makes me suspicious, that physical intimacy is for him not connected with emotional attachment, bonding and commitment, and it indicates a high risk of me being hurt by his ending the relationship for invalid reasons.  

503. Evolution And Monogamy

503.  Evolution And Monogamy

In entry 502, I pointed out, that human instinctive behavior has not yet evolved to adapt to the novelty situation of being free from survival needs, in spite of the cognitive reality, that emotional and intellectual needs have become strong influences upon human behavior.   
Under the pressure of survival needs people are coerced to make choices, which they would not make, were they free to choose by taking full account of their emotional needs.  

In this study, women's choice between polygyny and monogamy is explained by the survival benefits of the choice.   It is a very good example of the force of circumstantial restrictions upon options.   

Sathoshi Kanazawa / Mary C. Still:
Why monogamy?

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/SF1999.pdf

"If resource inequality among men is great, women choose to marry polygynously and the polygynous institution of marriage emerges. If resource inequality among men is small, women choose to marry monogamously and the monogamous institution of marriage emerges. The theory explains the historical shift from polygyny to monogamy as a result of the gradual decline of inequality among men."

The explanation makes perfect logical sense, as long as the options of the choice between monogamy and polygamy are restricted to those for physical survival.    When the choice of a man is a choice between starving and eating, the wish for an exclusive attachment is an unobtainable luxury.   There is no free cognitive choice considering also emotional needs.

Today the environment in the rich modern societies offers for the first time in history the true freedom of choice.    Relieved from the pressure of physical survival struggles, people are now able to sense and perceive their emotional and intellectual needs.   In this situation, monogamy is the best cognitive choice (entry 497)

10,000 and even 1,000 years ago, the situation was very different.   Physical survival depended upon access to scarce resources of food, clothing, firewood, shelter.   The total availability of these resources to a community, village or group was limited.   Even under the best favorable circumstances, people could not produce much surplus above their own needs.

• Everyday chores were time consuming.   Water had to be carried from the well, cooking required a fire and fire wood.      
• Without machinery, the production of all goods were slow and limited.  
• Food production depended on the climate.    Food had to be produced locally.
• Skills and knowledge were limited. 

As long as the access to fertile land, forest and water was unrestricted to all people, the sum of the resources allowed the survival of everybody on an equal low level.   But any inequality of power over such resources meant, that only the powerful men had the means to survive, while there was not enough left for everybody else.  Medieval systems of rich landowners exploiting their tenants are examples.      


Under such circumstances, a woman's theoretical choice between being the exclusive wife of a poor monogamous man and sharing a rich powerful man's wealth with other wives was not a free choice.   Her emotional needs were an unobtainable luxury beyond her reach, when the price for one poor man's emotional exclusive attachment was perishing and starvation for her and her offspring. 

This situation was aggravated by the lack of safe methods of family planning.   The woman was not even able to choose the monogamous poor man by restricting the number of offspring to match his resources. 

The woman's choice was further determined by her parents' power over her.  Under the pressure of lacking sufficient resources to keep all their children alive, parents coerced their daughters by dire necessity into the choice of the man, who could maintain them, even if she had to share him in a polygynous arrangement.    


Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology are very valuable methods to explain hidden instinctive tendencies toward certain behaviors.   But it is a fallacy to confound explanations with justification, connivance or acquiescence.  

It is historical reality, that the superior physical strength of men allowed them to first exclude women from independent access to the survival resources and that the physically strongest men usurped greedily a disproportionally high share of the totally available resources.  This enabled a minority of men to gain control over the majority of women. 

Today the cognitive perception of non-material needs are just as much a reality, including the ability to act morally, to distinguish between justice and injustice and to suffer excruciating emotional pain as the victim of injustice.   Today we have reached a situation, where the instinctive reactions, that were helpful in a different environment, have become obsolete and detrimental.   

The most rational and least instinctive people are guided by their cognition to new adaptive behaviors to the changed environment, while the majority are still driven too much by dysfunctional and anachronistic instincts.


Therefore no scientific explanation of the choice of polygyny in the past by reasons of necessity can be morally used to deny people in the present society their emotional needs for the safe haven of a monogamous exclusive commitment.    No allegedly free choice for polygamy in the past is a valid excuse today for the promiscuous cheating and dumping by desensitized jerks.
When scientific research uncovers instinctive tendencies, which hurt others emotionally, then this is a reason to teach people enhanced awareness to fight their subconscious harmful tendencies, it is not justifiable to use scientific discoveries as an excuse for cruelty.     

168. Answering T's Questions - 2

Answering T's Questions - 2

"Also I have female friends, and I'm still on friendly terms with a couple of lovers from years ago even though there is zero chance for a romantic reunion.  I feel flattered to not be hated by women who once loved me.  How can you completely stop loving someone you once loved, if you parted on good terms and that love never turned to hate? "

This question indicates the complete and fundamental difference in attitudes as a consequence of how someone is determined by instinct.   A person, who automatically gets bonded by getting involved in physical intimacy, and a person, who does not, cannot understand each other, they do not have empathy for their different perception of the same activity.  

I value a man predominantly as a companion, bonded with emotional ties.   This means, there can never be good terms with someone, whom I have loved once, unless we continue to be together.   As long as there are good terms, there is just no reason to end the relationship.   If he would end the relationship in spite of being on good terms, I would call this dumping and a transgression, and it would destroy the good terms beyond repair.     The only valid reasons for me to end a relationship are, when I get hurt by the other's behavior, or when he behaves in a way, that I cannot longer respect and appreciate him.   For me, the reasons to end a relationship are exactly the same reasons, for which I do consider someone as not worth being in contact.    Therefore to me to end a relationship and still be on good terms is as logically impossible as is eating the cake and have it.  

When a man keeps contact with a deactivated intimate partner, this indicates me a fundamental and incompatible difference between the meaning and significance of a partner for him and for me.

1.  For that man, physical passion is a main criterion, enough to enter and to end a relationship.    Such a man would be a high emotional risk for me.   When such passion fades, he would dump me, while I feel bonded and get hurt, because I would perceive him as a companion.   For him, physical passion is a condition for a relationship, while for me it is only an extra benefit, that is not vital as a condition to share life.  

2.  Men have some spot in their brain, which determines, how they experience and perceive sexual contact with women.    A minority gets automatically emotionally bonded, when entering physical intimacy with a woman, as I have described already several times in previous entries, as it is for me and as I need it to be also with my mindmate.   
For the majority of instinct-determined men, unfortunately a woman's body is just like a toilet.   This sounds drastic, but that is how I see it.    Men use a ceramic installation in the bathroom for body waste number one and two without getting emotionally bonded with that installation.    Instinct-determined men use a woman's body to deposit waste number three without getting emotionally bonded with her.   
If such a man perceives a woman as not different from a platonic friend, even though there is a history of physical intimacy, this means logically, that he did perceive this intimacy as not more than she being a toilet for him.   He did never get bonded with that woman.   Had he been bonded, he would still be in a relationship with her as her companion.   Had he been bonded, she could never ever be a platonic friend again.  
A man, for whom a woman's body is a toilet, and a woman, who automatically gets bonded by physical intimacy, are a mismatch, because their relationship is very asymmetrical.   For the bonded woman, her partner is her bonded oneandonly, while she perceives herself as degraded to only be one of a bunch of other equally bonded women in his life.    She feels devalued, because he does not honor her with a symmetrical relationship.   For him, she is his actual toilet and he cannot see anything wrong in this, and he has no clue, what she is missing.  

That logically means, that a man's continued contact with deactivated intimate partners tells me clearly, that in that man's brain, a woman is only a toilet and I would only be a toilet too.   He is bonding-disabled.  But I deserve bonding, I refuse to be abused as a toilet, therefore I reject such men.   

3.  I have no illusion whatsoever as to having a chance to be given a unique meaning in a man's entire life.  At my age, that is not available anymore.  Anything that he does to me or feels for me, he has most probably done and felt before.  Anything, that a man has done in the past to another person, he is also capable to do to me.  At my age nobody has waited to consider me as the best thing that has ever happened to him.  I will never be any more special or important or better than all the others had been at some moment in the past.    Would I be with a partner and one of his deactivated intimate partners would also be present, the only difference between her and me would be the moment in time.   At that moment I would not be more special or more important than she had been once.  
While I cannot be special in a man's entire life time, I need the appreciation of being made special and unique during the time of the relationship.    I can never be special as only one more in a system of polygyny, where he is equally bonded forever with the entire crowd of deactivated intimate partners, who continue to be a part of his life.   

The only way to honor me with making me special is to remove all the others, who had been equally special, by ending all contact with them.  
If I cannot be special and the only bonded partner at the same time for a man, if he wants to continue the polygyny with his deactivated intimate partners, the man is not suitable for me.  

I am looking for a mindmate, for whom a woman is more than a toilet, who gets bonded and does feel the special bond created when entering physical intimacy, and therefore he has no contact with deactivated intimate partners.   

Unfortunately polygyny with deactivated intimate partners is a very widespread habit of men.   I have been in mail contact with men already too often, who appeared superficially as matches on dating-sites, until I discovered that their polygyny made them unsuitable.   This is my reason for explaining this extensively.  

84. Geese and Bees

84.  Geese and Bees

Analogies comparing humans with animals are of limited validity, because all animals breed by instinct, while my distinction between the prototypical humans with individualistic and with particle identity is that the former has out-evolved the instinctive urge to breed.

But in looking at the connection between an individual and society other than potential mates, there is an analogy.    Individualistic identity is bonding with one partner exclusively, just as do geese, while particle identity is feeling connected with many or all others as are the bees.  

Geese are bonded as a pair, and the other geese around are of lesser importance, if of any at all.

Bees are connected to the entire colony and they are driven to fulfill the function and the purpose, that has been genetically wired into them. 

I have been exchanging a few emails with someone, who has very distinctively the particle identity, he identified himself with it.    

We had an interesting impasse.   For him, continuing his deactivated intimate relationships on a small scale, which means in his way of putting it, keeping friendly contact with his divorced ex-wives, is something absolutely normal and unproblematic, and he considers it the same for all other people.

For me, being integrated into such an polygyny compound would be a degradation, as the partner would this way bluntly tell me, that I am not good enough to be his one and only intimate partner at the same time.  

We both did mutually take in the information about the different perceptions without being able to have any empathy for the other's emotional perception.    I cannot emphasize his normality and he cannot emphasize the pain, such a constellation would cause me.   

After some pondering, I think I can see one major reason to explain this difference.   It is the hierarchy and competition instinct.    That of course has nothing to do with my analogy of the geese and bees.  

A male, who acquires the power over the body of a female, and a female, who acquires the position of getting a male's resources by competition, get a higher position in a hierarchy of fitness, and those, who have lost that power, are lower in the hierarchy and not dangerous.   The existence of losers in the competition, including the former owners of her body and his resources, are the living proof of superiority.  

Therefore it is plausible, that for such a person the deactivated intimate partners of the active intimate partner are perceived as testimonies of their own superiority and fitness.  They may well make them feel good as the winners.   What makes the relationship with the active partner unique to them is the power over that person, which the deactivated partners has lost.  

For egalitarian people void of the instinct for competition, the focus is on bonding and on the quality of the bond being unique and exclusive.  Therefore the situation is very different.   As long as there is a wish to be in friendly contact with the deactivated intimate partner, the bond is still there and the actual partner has no position of specialty and exclusivity.   Being given only a bond not better than persistent other bonds hurts an egalitarian person with self-esteem and dignity.   

People with the particle identity, with the competition instinct, breeders and wanna-be-breeders are the vast majority of society.   They create the norms and they are those, who treat and define minorities as weird.    But I refuse to be told, that there is something wrong with me, when I declare, that a man's friendship with deactivated partners hurts.    I am proudly a hypoanimalistic egalitarian, I deserve to be as much the exclusive one and only of a partner, as he is to me.    Anybody, who disagrees with this, can accept the separating ditch of incompatibility, but he has not right to call my differently wired brain weird or worse.   

76. Ex-Partners - Monogamy or Polygamy?

Ex-Partners - Monogamy or Polygamy?

Legally, the difference between polygamy and monogamy is clearly defined.   But seen from the perspective of subjective emotional ties and bonding, some forms of apparent polygamy and apparent monogamy may be just the same.

In breeding-oriented and male-dominated societies, where polygyny is either legal or socially accepted, there are basically two models: 
Harem-polygyny, when one man has parallel intimate relationships with several wives.  

Compound polygyny (described in entry 23), when one man has one active intimate relationship with one  of several wives for a limited phase of time, while the others are temporarily deactivated but available for their turn.    Some can be deactivated to be never reactivated, but they are still part of the compound.  

There are also two fundamentally different forms of monogamy, emotional and practical monogamy.    I consider only emotional monogamy as true monogamy, while practical monogamy is pseudo-monogamy and it is just another name for compound polygyny, with only one difference.  The intimate relationship with one is meant to last, and the previous ones are permanently deactivated.   But the continued friendship or friendly contact with the deactivated partners makes it a kind of a compound.

I assume, that difference between the two forms of monogamy is connected with the difference of the two identities.   

True, emotional monogamy means, that two hypoanimalistic individuals choose each other to create the special bond of combined intellectual, emotional and physical intimacy, that makes that one partner special and more important than anything else in the world.   As a consequence of that special bond, both perceive the relationship and the partner as first priority in life.    This bond is exclusive with one partner in monogamy, could it exist with several persons at the same time, then this would be polygamy.    The bond can only be recreated with another partner, after the bond with the previous partner has first been severed.   
The bond is severed, when one or more factors of the intimacy are so much destroyed, that the relationship has become dysfunctional beyond endurance of one or both.  As long as a person feels the bond, he wants to be together with the partner.   The severed bond means, that there is no more reason or wish to be together, but that there are unpleasant and painful reasons to consciously decide to be not together.   Therefore there is no reason to continue any contact.  
In the case, that the bond is only severed in the perception of one partner, then the only method for the other is to let time fade the bond into oblivion by ending all contact.  

That bond cannot be annihilated as if it never has existed.     A platonic friendship between a man and a woman, who have never been intimate, is fundamentally different from a deactivated physically intimate relationship of a couple, even when both are determined to never reactivate the intimacy.   Of course, I am only referring to hypoanimalistic individuals, who restrict entering physical intimacy to be inseparable from the wish to create the deep bond.  
As platonic friends, there may be circumstances to keep them in ignorance, if they would have reasons to form a bond or not, would they try.   After a severed bond, they have experienced the existence of reasons impeding and destroying the bond.  


For breeders and wanna-be-breeders, for the people with the particle-identity, nothing of the above is valid.    They have an urge to procreate, and the urge to physical intimacy is a part of it.   Couples form for the purpose of breeding, and practical monogamy means for a man to ensure only to raise the bearers of his own genes and to a woman to ensure to have a provider for her progeny.    Monogamy is a method to enhance breeding success under specific circumstances, it is not considered as vital for the emotional wellbeing of breeders.

Therefore, whenever I get in contact with a man and he mentions his continuing his contact with one or several previous partners, this is a bunch of several huge red flags.   
1.   Is he a wanna-be-breeder or even a copulating dog, for whom entering physical intimacy is not inseparably related to creating an exclusive bond?     Is he one of those, for whom physical intimacy with a woman's body means nothing more than ridding his body of some substance similar to emptying his bowels?
2.   Is he not capable to create the bond of true monogamy?    Does he not even know, what such a bond means or that it can exist?
3.   If it is just one previous partner, does he still feel that unique bond with her, that has been severed only in her emotional experience, but never for him?    Would he therefore not be available for such a bond with any other woman?
4.   Does he even know, that making a woman part of a system of compound polygyny, without giving her the special meaning of being the only one sharing the special bond, is a degradation and depreciation of a woman, who would onesidedly honor him with having that special bond only with him?

My mindmate will be someone, who knows the meaning of true emotional monogamy, he will not even consider to continue any contact with his previous partners.    For him, as for me, an ex-partner is someone, with whom there is no more contact, because such contact has no attraction and no benefit.   As long as a partner is still good enough to be considered a friend worth staying in contact, there is not enough reason to ever end the relationship.   Friendship with a previous partner means, that the relationship has never really ended, but instead has only been converted from an active intimate relationship into a deactivated intimate relationship.    The deactivated intimate partner continues to be a part of the polygyny compound.   Only in this case, the compound is not a physical area, but a mental entanglement.   This is no monogamy, but emotional polygamy.  
Only the end of all contact converts a deactivated previously intimate partner into an ex-partner and ends the relationship.   
.  

48. The Puzzle of Women's Acquiescence to Polygyny

The Puzzle of Women's Acquiescence to Polygyny

Polygyny is an asymmetrical arrangement (entry 46), that it is degrading and devaluing.   It is not compatible with having self-esteem as a woman being human with equal value as men.   As a rational egalitarian, it is beyond my imagination and capacity for empathy, and it is even hard to find an explanation, why women consciously chose to enter a polygynous marriage, when they have an alternative.   

Yet from the point of view of evolutionary psychology, it is plausible that the overwhelming instinct makes women accept any situation promising the most success to spread their genes.   

I can only think of one explanation for such a conscious choice:  All available men are such jerks, fools or nitwits, that there is nothing rewarding or attractive to spend even one minute in their company.  The women either have no economical choice to stay alone or they prefer to bond instead with children and to be in sisterly friendship with other women rather than be alone.   

1.  The Quality of Men

There is a fundamental difference between mating by instinct for the purpose of procreation, and the mating by rational wishes to enhance the emotional and intellectual quality of life.   
That difference is the time together.   Procreation can be reduced to getting a woman pregnant and handing her over the provision for survival, it can be done in a few minutes of contact every once in a while.  The two bodies agree by instinctive reaction to procreate, the personality can be haphazard, it is insignificant to the genes.  The couple can lead two separate lives under the same roof.  The couple might not even know, what to talk about, if they would as much as try.    They might in the extreme not even speak the same language to have healthy offspring.       

If a woman accepts for the only purpose of procreation such a man , for whom she feels nothing, who maybe is only stupid, maybe even a brute, beating his wives, demanding a lot of work of her, then it is no wonder at all, that she considers him as not even worth to want his exclusivity or to be jealous of other wives or concubines. 
The other wives become more like companions sharing a hard fate and relieving her of some of the burden.   Once I read a story about how a woman actually encouraged her husband to get a second wife, so that she would have someone to share the hard household chores with her.    I have vague collections of having read and heard more of the same kind.   

Once in a chat a Pakistani man in absolute seriousness told me, that he was searching on the web for a second wife.   He would not divorce his first wife as an act of consideration for her, and his first wife would not want to be divorced but prefers him to have a second wife.    Sometimes the web is like a time machine, I felt like talking to a caveman.  

I will never forget some muslim women, whom I met in former Jugoslavija ages ago.   In the presence of their husbands, they were docile, silent, subdued, servile.    But the moment, when the husband left the house, it was as if a switch had turned life on in them, and they cursed those husbands full of hatred.    But as far as I know, there was not even polygyny then.    

2.  Boredom

To spend rewarding interesting quality time together needs a mate, who can offer quality content.   He needs to share enough interests, and to have enough education to communicate about those interests.  Also the environment needs to offer some opportunities for intellectual pursuits.  
A couple of two intellectuals in the modern world can visit art exhibitions, archaeological sites, watch movies, read books, and spend hours every day talking about.  Both perceive this as spending quality time and it fulfils their lives.   

But what would a young couple of cavepeople have to talk about, when they sit infatuatedly staring at the same landscape and listening to the same birds, that are not romantic to them as they have been used to them during all their lives?   He can tell her his hunting adventures, but they might be similar to those dozens, of which he had told her already many times before.   She can talk about her excursions to collect berries or about some household problems, that he has heard of too often too.   Both will soon just get bored with each other.  

The ability to spend rewarding time together and to enjoy it as the focus of a relationship could only evolve with rationality, intelligence in individuals getting education and living in a society creating a stimulating environment.  

Even today, some people lacking intelligence and education get so bored, that they watch the most stupid stuff on TV all day long.   

So, while the question of consenting to enter a one-sidedly disadvantageous asymmetrical situation only concerns women, the issue of boredom is mutual.    Therefore the couple of newly wed cavepeople in their first marriage might also be too bored with each other to even consider happiness as a childfree couple.   Instead, she probably fills her boredom with children, and he probably fills his boredom with having more than one wife.  

3.  Strong Bonds with Children

There are things going on in the mind of breeding women, that will always be a mystery to me.

I have a friend, who got her third child 14 years after the second, and she freely admitted, that had she lived in a different social environment, she would have preferred an abortion.   But she also told me, that at the moment of giving birth, she had some kind of overwhelming emotional experience bonding her to this child as much as to the others.    My best approximation to this is the comparison with someone having the first shot of a strong addictive drug, that gives a great flash the first time and at that moment the addiction to compulsive self-destructive behavior starts.    The substance addict is compulsed to his next dose, the mother is compulsed to change dirty napkins.  

Also children often are used for compensatory functions, when a woman is unhappy with her husband.  In the cavepeople situation, when the man is a dominating brute and makes the wife helpless, then sometimes she might find relief by her own power over the children.