We never talked about it. I grew up planning to get married and have a family like everybody else I knew. It was something we didn't question back then.

In 1968 I got married and found myself thinking about things our culture says we shouldn't think about. I was thinking about how monogamous marriage works - that is, the dynamics of it - for the most part, that it doesn't work very well. This wasn't just about sex. It was about relationship, economics, autonomy, and politics.

It would take many pages to explore it all here. I'll just give you the skeleton of it in the next few paragraphs.

Looking at relationships, I saw that monogamous marriage locks two people into each other in an interdependent situation that isn't good for them. Your life depends very much on what the other does and most anything that shows up unexpected is seen as dangerous. There's what you decided to do when you started out and anything new that comes from only one of you is a threat. I didn't want to be in a relationship with each of us trying to contain the other. I thought about the relationships I had before and noticed that those I had with close friends and with my siblings and with my parents were healthier. These were relationships that were not threatened by change. My sister and I simply knew we would be brother and sister forever. If I found a girlfriend she was not threatened and I was not threatened by her boyfriends. We told each other all about these adventures and encouraged each other and enjoyed each other's excitement. But a marriage seemed to be dependent on making sure the other didn't find another interest. "Don't have sex with somebody else - if you do, it's all over - and just to make sure you don't, you better not have any friends of the opposite sex - at all."

The next thing that looked interesting was the possibility of more than two adults getting together to have a home and family. It just made sense. Consider two adults - one person to earn an income, one person to take care of children, one house, two cars, not enough time or money - no choice. Now, consider six adults - three incomes, three people taking care of the children (or change the mix a little 4 and 2 or 2 and 4), one big house (not three), four cars (no need for six), enough time and money for all to enjoy life much more. If one wants to go to school or change carriers, there's more possibility for it. Of course you must accept that some of those six people will become closer than just house-mates and friends. Otherwise you become one more communal living failure.

The politics of it - well, we could say it's all a capitalistic plot to manage the labor force. Some do say that and it's an interesting area to explore. Keep them monogamous, men working, women at home, everybody heterosexual so they aren't fooling with the the people around them. I don't go for this conspiracy stuff, but it is amusing.

Monogamy seemed to be the force preventing any change. I also came to see that monogamy is held in place by a taboo against questioning it. We don't grow up looking at the possibilities and then choose monogamy. To question it is heresy. We never think to question it. We know better. That's how a taboo works.

The trouble was, only a very few people wanted to play that way. I would meet somebody new and and say, "I'm dating other people and I want to date you too". She would agree but, after a while, she would want to be the only one and I would be hearing, "Why are you still dating her?" and I would be asking, "Why did you stop dating him?" This went on about 10 years. It was good but it had that recurring problem. That's when I thought, "I have to find women who want to do what I want to do - have multiple partners. Maybe I'll find them in the swinging community."