Menage mfm vs the Cuckold

I think Snatch just covered everything perfectly. I pretty much agree with all of it.

Welcome to the board btw...

StrangeLife said:

I think Snatch just covered everything perfectly. I pretty much agree with all of it.

Welcome to the board btw...

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Thanks for the welcome to AH. I'm not actually new though. I am --------------- or ------------- as some in AH call me. I created the SnatchALovingWife nom de plum a while ago for my LW stories. I was receiving too much abuse and too many holy wars against my other stories. Now, my LW detractors can rage impotently into an account I never read.

I was only in the SnatchALovingWife account today because I just submitted a LW Valentines Day Contest entry.

walkerlong said:

Heinlein was always slipping stuff like that into his novels...

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He did have his moments!

StrangeLife said:

I think Snatch just covered everything perfectly. I pretty much agree with all of it.

Welcome to the board btw...

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Evolutionary psychology is a pseudo-science; a failure to truly investigate too deeply for fear of disrupting the narrative -- what we call "Just So" stories. It picks up some social phenomenon and tries to justify it-- which is not in any way the same as actual examination. "It was ever thus" is the cry of evopsych aficionados and to them I say-- You gotta prove that claim, big feller.

Stella_Omega said:

Evolutionary psychology is a pseudo-science; a failure to truly investigate too deeply for fear of disrupting the narrative -- what we call "Just So" stories. It picks up some social phenomenon and tries to justify it-- which is not in any way the same as actual examination. "It was ever thus" is the cry of evopsych aficionados and to them I say-- You gotta prove that claim, big feller.

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Psychology is by it's nature not an exact science. You can't make any definite conclusions regarding a persons psyche by examining the brain - you can't even prove the existence of a consciousness in there. Thus arguing from behavioural observations and logical inference is perfectly in line with recognized principles of psychological research.

In this case we have a hypothesis where the psychological observations line up perfectly with biological and anthropological evidence. Sure, this still doesn't constitute absolute irrefutable proof, but it makes pretty darned good sense...

hehe. Yeah, if your definition of "logical" is "it feeds my ego, me heap big man."

Which to be fair is how most of us define logic, even when we try not to. Evopsyche is a lie in my own lived experience. That shit feels insulting to me. Therefore, is not logical.

And I know of a guy who has concocted the most delightful theory about why so many people like me exist-- he feels that we neurodiverse types, who quite often belie Evopsyche statements, are in fact neanderthals, and that neanderthals were the bonobos of the hominid line. He looks at behaviors such as polyamory, a propensity for BDSM, and correlates those things with Asperger's/autism spectrum, and concludes that neanderthals were all of those things too.

he makes a good, logical case, if you can ignore the fact that correlation is not causation, and that plenty aspies are not poly or interested in BDSM, not to mention that there is no native Neanderthal DNA in Africa, and plenty of Africans show on the A spectrum.

But OMG, he WANTS it to be true! because it explains EVERYTHING!
Read and enjoy; http://www.rdos.net/eng/

There's a way to write your MFM menage-- make them modern neanderthals.

StrangeLife said:

Psychology is by it's nature not an exact science. You can't make any definite conclusions regarding a persons psyche by examining the brain - you can't even prove the existence of a consciousness in there. Thus arguing from behavioural observations and logical inference is perfectly in line with recognized principles of psychological research.

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The reason evo-psych gets flak isn't because it's an inexact science. Plenty of inexact sciences out there that are still respected. It's because, with rare exceptions, it's not a rigorous science.

If I've got a theory that people are more likely to be generous towards relatives than to non-relatives, I can test that. Recruit a bunch of people who don't know one another. Randomly select some and tell them they're distance cousins; tell others they're unrelated. Then put them in a controlled situation where they choose between screwing one over or cooperating, and see what they do.

Psychologists do stuff like that a lot. Any one trial is a random event - I'm not saying relatives will always cooperate, or strangers will always screw one another over. But run enough trials with a good design, and if there's anything to see, the laws of large numbers will reveal it. There's a reason why psych and stats are closely associated fields.

But evo-psych, by and large, looks at stuff we already know and offers an after-the-fact explanation for why it might be so. Often it's a plausible explanation, I'm sure some of them are true - but in general, it doesn't make testable predictions.

It could be that the human penis evolved the way it did because it's effective at displacing rivals' semen. But it's not too hard to come up with other explanations for why it might be advantageous that way... and some things just are. I'm yet to hear an evo-psych explanation for why homosexuality is so widespread in nature.

There you go. I argue from feelings, and Bramble explains why my feelings.

Thanks, Bramblethorn.

Stella_Omega said:

But OMG, he WANTS it to be true! because it explains EVERYTHING!
Read and enjoy; http://www.rdos.net/eng/

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Thanks. I love the combination - open source software and neanderthals. That's a connection Microsoft has tried to demonstrate for years.


I am aware of the dangerous lure of confirmation bias and I also harbor a natural skepticism towards something that fits "too well."

But on a general note you can't simply dismiss psychology as a component of the evolutionary process, unless you consider all aspects of our personality to be acquired and discount inherited behavior of any kind. If you chose to go down that road, taming a tiger should be no harder than taming a dog - as long as you keep it away from the treacherous whispers of other tigers.

And you can't dismiss the psychological make-up of an individual as an essential part in determining his ability to survive either. So if you accept the theory of evolution you must accept that our psychology has evolved too. Otherwise it would be like getting better and better cars, but remain the same old crappy driver. That wouldn't make sense, and nature always does.

Bramblethorn said:

Psychologists do stuff like that a lot. Any one trial is a random event - I'm not saying relatives will always cooperate, or strangers will always screw one another over. But run enough trials with a good design, and if there's anything to see, the laws of large numbers will reveal it. There's a reason why psych and stats are closely associated fields.

But evo-psych, by and large, looks at stuff we already know and offers an after-the-fact explanation for why it might be so. Often it's a plausible explanation, I'm sure some of them are true - but in general, it doesn't make testable predictions.

It could be that the human penis evolved the way it did because it's effective at displacing rivals' semen. But it's not too hard to come up with other explanations for why it might be advantageous that way... and some things just are. I'm yet to hear an evo-psych explanation for why homosexuality is so widespread in nature.

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A fairly competent dude once said "God doesn't play dice."

Things happen for a reason, simply because nature is extremely stingy when it comes to resources. What works is allowed to survive and the rest can go crawl under a rock somewhere and die.

No - I do not have an explanation for everything, but I am convinced that there is one. This goes for the morphology of the penis too. It looks the way it does because it's an advantage on some level - I have no doubt about that. I have never done any experiments on the vaginal pressure and fluid patterns during sex however, so I have no idea how strong the "pump hypothesis" is. It could well be plausible though. Sperm competition is a fact, and the most efficient penis would certainly give the owner an edge in the game of reproduction.

Yes, all the psychological sciences are based on statistics and observations. But that does not make them any less useful or relevant. All it means is, that we still have a lot to discover.

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Stella_Omega said:

He did have his moments!


Evolutionary psychology is a pseudo-science; a failure to truly investigate too deeply for fear of disrupting the narrative -- what we call "Just So" stories. It picks up some social phenomenon and tries to justify it-- which is not in any way the same as actual examination. "It was ever thus" is the cry of evopsych aficionados and to them I say-- You gotta prove that claim, big feller.

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You got it wrong again, dear.

Evolutionary psychology and socio-biology propose one principal idea: Diverse, hostile, and challenging environments test genomes better than static environments do. The thesis is easy to test.

The definition of irony should include a posting on a site who's primary purpose for existence is the promotion of dirty stories having a posting in the Author's forums beginning with "Just how does a man choose to share his wife?" and proceeding through sexual evolution to Heisenberg and Einstein in less than 40 posts.

I absolutely LOVE this site. It's like crossing "Big Bang Theory" with "Lost Girl" with "Power Rangers". Posting any question is like giving Bebe's kids a sugar rush and taking them to the carnival. I spend most of my time feeling like Jeff Dunham's Peanut and the rest of the time feeling like Walter.

I am a little disappointed however that no one has mentioned three things.

1) "Chaos Theory" by Gleick covered bifurcations in an otherwise "perfect" equation that resulted in unforeseen outcomes and has been applied to everything from physics and meteorology to the human sciences to literature. In theory anyway. Proving it is kind of like looking for the Invisible Man.

2) "Kamasutra" by Vatsyayana covered polygamy involving multiple men and one woman over two thousand years ago chiseled into stones in Sanskrit. Not just the possible positions, although that is in there too, but the emotional handling of the situation as well. At approximately the same time that certain monks were promoting abstention as a methodology to promote social harmony.

3) Approximately 75% of statistics on the internet are made up and the rest are just a way to be wrong with confidence.

I may be overmedicated again, but just wanted to say, "I love you guysh." Carry on.

Say... I just had a thought. If women were once stoned to death for committing adultery and sometimes a man might choose to share his wife with another man... just where DID the saying "Bet you don't have the stones to do it" come from anyway.

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jeninflorida said:

Clearly I'm struggling with this topic...lots of starts and three "books" but self doubt sets in....

Im left with the question...how does a man share his wife?

The whole male matcho crap....thing

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Stella_Omega said:

How about two guys who respect and like each other-- share a deep and fulfilling friendship with each other-- and also respect and like their wife and enjoy a deep sexual friendship with her.

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I can speak from a couple r/l experiences and from a few stories I've written. As I believe jeninflorida is describing, I tend to reject how people will shove a married man sharing his wife into a cuckold lifestyle. I quote Stella, because I've experience that precise situation while sharing another man's wife and, later, while sharing my wife with that same man.

Randy and I were great friends. We could talk about anything and often did. We worked together. Had kids the same ages. We respected each other and would be first to stand-up for each other. I knew Randy and his wife enjoyed MFM threesomes and the afternoon arrived when that happened for the three of us. Our swords never crossed. There wasn't a dp. She would blow one of us while having intercourse with his buddy. Grope or kiss one while the other was doing whatever. Be the center of attention for an eager observer while doing whatever with the friend. It was great fun without any hints of homo-erotica or cuckoldry.

Later, it was my wife sitting between Randy and I. I love my wife. I'm not threatened by other men. Seeing her having fun was fun, too. Every caress, stroke and kiss she offered Randy was a caress, stroke and kiss I knew. The difference? I was able to appreciate her once removed from the action and thereby appreciate her beauty as a sexual creature in a new and remarkably way. She was the center of our attention and the center of MY attention. Randy was more a prop or a sex toy than anything else.

Later? Randy and I had bonded before we ever did his wife or my wife. There had been at least a year between each instance. Afterwards? We remained the same kind of friends.

I don't believe the "macho" part of things make a difference. I don't believe either partner or either man is forced into subservient role by the action. I believe it can be done with love and affection between the married couple. However, does that meet the needs, expectations or biases of our audiences? Probably not.

wow...this thread got really deep really fast, my head hurts, lol.

A_Little_Show said:

I am a nerd. I also write erotica. Sometimes, my favorite subjects converge.

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I love it when you talk nerdy to me.

jeninflorida said:

Im curious about ménage vs cuckold. In the mfm erotica does the married man become a a cuckold? Can a story, not, enter the world of cuckolding?

Or does a mfm need to be three new people that enter a new relationship at the same time?

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A cuckold is the unknowing partner, usually Husband, of the erring wife.
Otherwise, it's simple 'Group-sex'

StrangeLife said:

But on a general note you can't simply dismiss psychology as a component of the evolutionary process, unless you consider all aspects of our personality to be acquired and discount inherited behavior of any kind. If you chose to go down that road, taming a tiger should be no harder than taming a dog - as long as you keep it away from the treacherous whispers of other tigers.

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I agree with this, absolutely. No question that our brains have different characteristics from those of our distant relatives and that it's happened through an evolutionary process. A lot of evo-psych is plausible. It's where it makes the leap from "maybe it happened this way" to "it could have happened this way therefore we're gonna assume it did" that I get cynical.

Especially when they combine it with the is-ought fallacy and start using it to justify however they want to behave.

A fairly competent dude once said "God doesn't play dice."

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And he was wrong. Evidence that even the brightest are sometimes over-eager to see causality in things that aren't so.

Things happen for a reason, simply because nature is extremely stingy when it comes to resources. What works is allowed to survive and the rest can go crawl under a rock somewhere and die.

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Things do happen for a reason, but there are several important qualifiers to that. Reasons can be complex and multicausal (cf emergent behaviour). Big changes can be instigated by infinitesimally small causes (cf chaos theory, positive-feedback loops). The reason is not always "because it provides an evolutionary advantage" (it can be just "random drift without strong selection pressure against"). And even when a particular feature does provide an advantage, the explanation is often indirect.

For instance: why do men have nipples? I can wave my arms and come up with evo-psych style arguments: it highlights their pecs and makes them look like a strong male who'll pass on good genes to his children. Or, by similarity to female breasts, it makes them slightly more attractive to bi women. Or it confuses male opponents and gives nipple-men a split-second advantage when fighting with clubs for the womenfolk of the tribe. Or because in rare circumstances males can lactate and raise babies if the mother's not around to breastfeed. I could come up with more like this, and then I can turn around and invent equal and opposing theories for why it would be disadvantageous for men to have nipples.

I could put some of those to the test - I could show women photos of men with bigger and smaller nipples, and quite possibly I'd find some sort of preference. But even if I did that and found that women were 1% more likely to choose the man with the bigger nipples, it wouldn't be the reason why men have nipples.

The real reason is: because it's advantageous for women to have nipples, and males and females develop through the same process with a few hormonal tweaks, so that structures which serve one function in females are modified via androgen etc to serve a different function in males (or atrophied, as here).

So if we're trying to find an explanation for why the penis is the shape it is - assuming there even is an explanation simple enough for us to understand - thinking about how it functions as a penis is only half the story. For all I know, the "purpose" of the coronal ridge might be a side-effect of something that's useful in female anatomy.

(Disclaimer for next bit: I don't like commenting on scientific articles based only on pop-media summaries of them, because those very often misrepresent or leave out important bits. But I've had a horrible and exhausting weekend and even if I had journal access, I don't have the energy or motivation to go chase up the originals today, so I'm gonna be lazy. Apologies if any of my criticisms here are answered in the bits I didn't read. Also, if I sound belligerent here, it's not directed at any of the posters in this discussion.)

A_Little_Show said:

This one adresses Bramblethor's specific statements about testing hypothesis using his exact example: "...the scientists set out to unravel the psychology of the fa'afafine, to see if their altruism is targeted specifically at kin rather than kids in general."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100204144551.htm

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From what I can tell from the article, that seems like a reasonable experiment in establishing that fa'afafine are likely to favour related kids over unrelated. (I'd be astonished if they didn't; just about any category of people are more helpful towards relatives, probably for the kin-selection reasons mentioned.) What it doesn't seem to test is whether this behaviour is the reason why fa'afafine exist.

It's like climbing up onto the grassy knoll, measuring angles, and concluding "yes: somebody could have shot JFK from here". It might be possible, even plausible, but that's still a long way short of "somebody DID shoot JFK from here".

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...depp-effect-evolutionary-explanation-homosexu

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I note that this one runs contrary to the previous one: "It was once hypothesized that such a trait could be maintained via kin selection... when the kin selection hypothesis of homosexuality was tested by David Bobrow and Michael Bailey of Northwestern University and later by Qazi Rahman and Matthew Hull of the University of East London, it was not supported. Homosexuals did not provide more care and resources to family members than heterosexuals."

That's not to say that they can't both be true, in their own contexts - fa'afafine may well behave differently in this regard to gay men and women in London. But at the least it suggests that kin selection may not be a "one size fits all" model.

(That said, it's difficult to disentangle this stuff from social influences; even if gay men and women were genetically predisposed to be generous uncles and aunts, factors like being estranged from siblings or economic disadvantage might mask that. I dunno whether these studies attempted to correct for that.)

Also:

"While the findings did not reach statistical significance, data suggested that heterosexuals with a homosexual twin had slightly more opposite-sex sexual partners, slightly more children, and were a bit younger at the age of first intercourse than heterosexual twin pairs. These recent findings are scientifically intriguing and they likely have profound implications for the LGBT community"

No. Just no. This whole passage should have ended with the words "did not reach statistical significance". Those words establish that everything after is unsupported speculation. Either go back and repeat the experiment with a larger sample size or acknowledge that as performed, it doesn't provide meaningful support for their theory. Leaping to "these findings likely have profound implications for the LGBT community" after admitting that the findings are inconclusive is just awful.

http://www.newscientist.com/article...annot-explain-homosexuality.html#.Utp83Xn0C2w

http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/135762/

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Both of these boil down to "here are a whole bunch of possible explanations, but we don't really know which of them is the reason, and maybe it's a complicated mix of them."

I think that's a reasonable and honest position, and the theories given generally acknowledge that this stuff is a complex interaction of genetic and social factors. I'd have a lot more time for evo-psych if I saw the same caution applied to interpretation of other phenomena.

(And, yeah, I was over-reaching to say "no evo-psych explanation of homosexuality". I probably should've expressed it as "no evo-psych explanation that's as glib and self-assured as the ones I see for other stuff". Blah, I'm vague today.)

Acktion said:

The definition of irony should include a posting on a site who's primary purpose for existence is the promotion of dirty stories having a posting in the Author's forums beginning with "Just how does a man choose to share his wife?" and proceeding through sexual evolution to Heisenberg and Einstein in less than 40 posts.

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We had a great one a few months back (I think on the BDSM boards?) that started out as kinky sex and turned into the chemistry of cooking and hydrangea colour changes within a couple of dozen posts. Place is full of nerds.

One day I'll finish my story about how abstract algebra can be used as a model for fantasy-world poly societies...

I think all the science is a bit over the top - as has been mentioned, it's all very inexact and 95% of it never goes through anyones head anyway.

For me, it's a pretty simple thing.

A cuckold - from the word cuckoo, where the cuckoo adds it's eggs to an established nest of another bird, so it's offspring will be raised (and it gets worse, because cuckoo eggs tend to maturate faster, so they often hatch first, and often the first act of the new baby bird is to destroy / eat the other eggs) - gives you some idea of what it is.

A cuckold is a man who has given sexual rights to his wife to someone else. Now, it can be willingly "Hey Honey, you have a small dick, I want something bigger", "Fine, I understand, we will still be married yes?", unwilling - "I'm going to fuck this guy and there is nothing you can do about it if you want to remain married to me" or even unknowing "I just discovered my wife is fucking someone else for the past three months".

It doesn't matter if he is still getting any, the moment someone elses cock supplants his as the premier sex partner, he's cuckolded. It seems that here on Lit, if he doesn't know about it or is unwilling, then he's a definite cuckold, but if he willingly shares, then it blurs a bit. If he stops getting any from his spouse, again, clear cuckold. But if she shares and still fucks him, then it can defined in lots of ways - hot wife, shared love etc etc etc.

In terms of threesomes, if both men are of equal stature in the eyes of the lady, I'm not sure you'd call it cuckoldry - I guess you can, but there are many other, more descriptive ways to talk about it. Threesomes, Menage a Tois etc etc. Although it is worth pointing out that even within a MFM, it's entirely possible for the visiting cock to be very dominant and basically be cuckolding the home cock, so to speak - only allowing him limited access, and always at the dominant cocks discretion.

From what I can gather, Cuckold has a somewhat specific meaning (at least in terms of usage) here on Lit, and it generally means a man who's been supplanted sexually.

At least that's how I see it. Hope that helps.

jezzaz said:

From what I can gather, Cuckold has a somewhat specific meaning (at least in terms of usage) here on Lit, and it generally means a man who's been supplanted sexually.

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That's about right. See CUCKOLD (Wikipedia):

Cuckold historically referred to a husband with an adulterous wife and is still often used with this meaning. In evolutionary biology, the term cuckold is also applied to males who are unwittingly investing parental effort in offspring that are not genetically their own. Since the 1990s, the term has also been widely used to refer to a sexual fetish in which the fetishist is stimulated by their committed partner choosing to have sex with someone else.

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I would distinguish between the UNWITTING CUCKOLD of the traditional definition, vs the fetishist WILLING CUCKOLD. These are different birds IMHO. My mother cuckolded my father by cheating. My uncle was NOT cuckolded when he gave his first wife leave to screw friends. (And no, he wasn't stimulated, just resigned to their incompatibility.)

Questions come to mind

Webster's defines cuckold as a man who's wife is unfaithful.
If the couple indulge in a threesome with another man, does the husband automatically become a cuckold?
He participated, knew before hand, and maybe encouraged it so how is the wife unfaithful especially if he continues to be the wife's main sexual partner?
IMHO that is a MFM situation and not a cuckolding one yet most commenters jump on the cuckold band wagon.

Hypoxia said:

I would distinguish between the UNWITTING CUCKOLD of the traditional definition, vs the fetishist WILLING CUCKOLD. These are different birds IMHO. My mother cuckolded my father by cheating. My uncle was NOT cuckolded when he gave his first wife leave to screw friends. (And no, he wasn't stimulated, just resigned to their incompatibility.)

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That is how I see it too.

The word "cuckold" derives from the brood parasitic behavior of the cuckoo bird. Thus follows that the term only can have meaning when events take place outside the other spouses knowledge or control.

Swinging and open marriages are not cuckolding.

StrangeLife said:

...

Swinging and open marriages are not cuckolding.

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Tell that to the commenters on my LW Valentine's Story about an open marriage that hurts some feelings, but everybody comes out of it still friends. http://www.literotica.com/s/valentines-day-dinner-1

The crazies are in rare form today. I may frame some of the comments.