I want to get a vasectomy, combined with really paranoid sperm storage in ~5 facilities worldwide, although I have no real desire to have children.

I also want to get LASEK and a couple other things done. (laser hair removal around neckline, maybe ear-tube surgery to improve drainage)

I do not want anyone from the military going near my penis or eyes, though.

Private question. I plead the 5th.

I heard sex is a lot better for a man when he knows or has seen
his wife/girlfriend have sex with another man.

I didn't answer, partly because I don't really like the answer space that much, but mostly because I'm still traumatized by stories of a friend's brother-in-law's vasectomy gone wrong. The terms "fist-sized blood clot", "three months", and "doctors say they can't do anything" were thrown around a great deal last weekend.

I hate condoms. And I hate my sweetie having to take funny drugs that screw with her hormone levels and make her cranky. Vasectomy, on the other hand, was a minor discomfort for a few days. The worst part, really, was the week of no sex while waiting for it to heal.

i can see the point of view. but it's something i don't expect _my_ husband to say.

If I were younger/less familiar with polypeople, I would hit #4. So is it relly about exposure to something other than the social norm? It then occurred to me that the proposal might still initially freak me out, depending on the orientation/understanding I have of my partner's attitudes towards marraige, but I'm more likely to answer either #2 or #3. (Are #2 or #3 very separate answers in action?) I suppose there's even a small possibility of #1 in that faroff future, but I have yet to acheive that level of evolution/devolution/development. ;)

Given that condoms are mildly annoyinng and chemical birth control is really scary, this is plan A for us (well, perhaps without the poly part) starting in several years.

It's tempting to answer "The proposal would freak me out" because if it only occurred to him now to propose it, after years of being poly and both of us having sex and being involved with other people, I'd be rather startled! Also, "Sounds reasonable" really depends on how it's proposed, and the circumstances thereof. But I checked "Sounds reasonable" anyway, because that's the closest to "Am there, doing that" that you offered. *)

I am completely baffled as to what #1 has to do (if anything) with #2

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at with the "for men" question. Are you trying to measure attitudes about vasectomies, or about extramarital sex. The way the question is phrased, you combine the two, which could lead to response errors. Maybe that was your point.

I've come to this discussion with little knowledge about the two you of presently. I understand you to be poly by nature and your wife to not be, is that correct? However, she is okay with you two (but mostly you) seeking a secondary partner/relationship correct?

I guess what I'm asking about is what is the set up/structure for your poly relationship?

Being poly myself (although not in the traditional way ((If there is such a thing))) with a poly partner and considering that I study and run Poly groups, I'm curious about how you two are working on things.

Many more questions to follow but that is the big one for now :)

I'm not poly, but I answered yes because I think the vasectomy proposal is reasonable.

If I were in that situation, I'd probably say something along the lines of, "Okay, but I'm not interested in sex with anyone else."

S thinks the poll will be biased because she already knows I'm going to win. She's stammering something about the compostion of our friend group and how the bias works in my favor, and I'm like, duh, why did you think I wanted to resolve this with a poll? Hello, strategic mind at work!

From my quote file:
"Well now, that's *exactly* the whole *POINT* isn't it?!? Every
time we discuss anything *logically* I *lose*. So I ask him how
is *that* fair, Mr. Smartypants? Logic your way out of that one."
-- Nurse Jones

I would just like to state for the record that our polls are not to resolve dispute, they're to learn what others think on an interesting topic. And for bragging rights.

Dude, you're asking for two variables at once, so I'm not sure what you can conclude from these results.

I would have answered "yes" to the question "How would you consider a proposal from your spouse that you have a vasectomy after the two of you are done having kids?", so it follows trivially that I would answer #1 to the question, even though I'm not interested in a poly relationship. If the question included an expectation rather than an option of being poly, or specified openness in both directions, I would probably opt out. As it is, I could simply opt out of the poly clause. I would, however, be surprised by the question.

As I see it, my wife is accepting most of the responsibility for birth control during the period in which we're interested in having kids, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to shift that responsibility once we're done.

I picked "The proposal would freak me out" but mostly because of the phrasing; I think this is something that I would have discussed after a couple months of dating. I guess my idealized mind thinks these are the types of things that should be settled before marriage.

Also, men have spouses and women have husbands? That seems slightly... gender-un-neutral. *)

I didn't like any of the answers (for either gender, really) so I sort of chewed on it all day trying to figure out what I felt about this poll. I put way more energy into this question than it probably deserved.

Anyway, what I came up with is: I think those are both perfectly reasonable suggestions. Both a vasectomy and an open relationship are perfectly reasonable things to decide, as a couple, to get/have/whatever.

But the idea of trading them off -- this isn't "I want the house painted" vs. "I want to go fishing" -- this is your nuts and her heart you're talking about. The idea of bartering them makes me really uneasy. If you wouldn't agree to the snip if she needed you to be monogamous, I wouldn't agree to it -- because you may go through with it, and she may discover she can't. Or any of a hundred other complications.

They're both good ideas of "things this relationship may need" -- but it seems really dangerous to me to trade them off.

I hope that L will agree to a vasectomy at some point down the line, assuming I can ever get to the point where I'll definitively decide I'm done popping out the biscuits, because it's so much less difficult a surgery than the women's equivalent. However, my cycles are psychotically regular, so it's possible I could continue to follow the fertility awareness route for the rest of my reproductive existence (using condoms an average of three days a month is really pretty painless). This is more for our convenience, though, not taking into account future poly scenarios.

However, I don't really see it as an either/or scenario (if vasectomy, then extramarital sex). It seems to me that if the husband were to desire extramarital sex/relationships, it would be DURING the time when the wife is consumed with birthing/raising small children and her body/emotions are not in line with being sexy for her man. Once the kids (and parents) are older, the husband's sex drive is naturally fading and the wife's is in its apex, which seems conducive to a (hopefully) satisfactory monogamous scenario (or, if anything, the wife wishing to look elsewhere!!).

I originally checked "I can see the point of view, but no thanks" because that's my attitude about the subject in general. But, like others have said above, if my partner dropped that request sometime after we were married, I must honestly admit that I would freak out. I'm sure we would have discussed and come to a conclusion about this long, long ago; combine this with the fact that I'm great at making assumptions (and my assumption here would probably be that he'd found a particular someone else already and cared for this someone enough to risk our marriage / relationship), and the freaking-out potential is high.

*I* the one who proposed getting a vasectomy and socking away sperm in case we wanted kids some day. My spouse is the one who said "I can see the point of view but no thanks" in that she didn't trust the reliability of sperm banks and AI.

Six months after our second kid was born I did get a vasectomy.

Why doesn't everyone do this? My sweetie got a tubal as soon as doctors would let her. (Fucking patriarchal medical establishment denied her a tubal because in *their* opinion she shouldn't get one till she was "older." Grr. Could not find one doctor to perform it before she was 21.)

The "extramarital sex" part is similarly moot. Have always had an arragement like that of one kind or another.

I'm sad that these are still considered "unusual proposals."

Colossal among the things that I love about my husband is his superior capacity to reason. He used that ability to conclude that I'm his ultimate mate. There is no reason for him to look beyond me for sexual satisfaction. He'll never find anyone as good as I am.

If my husband proposed extramarital sex, I would know that there was something gone seriously amiss with his wonderful brain. It would be evidence that he was no longer in possession of the fascinating mind that won me in the first place. If he persisted in such a proposal, he'd get my permission to have sex with anyone he cares to. Anyone, but me, that is.

I have to reject a premise of the men's poll. There's no way I'd be in a marriage where extra-marital sex was an issue. I want the best in life and having sex with someone other than my wife would be a pathetic experience for me.

I take no pleasure whatsoever in observing that the fact you can even contemplate such a thing reveals that you have no real sense of the highest possibilities of love.