As Steve has said himself, some fascinatingly varied responses so far. Steve also challenged us to make predictions. Well here is my interpretation and how it will pan out over the next 12 months.
Steve is a successful guy in the prime of his life. He has achieved social esteem from a wide circle and secured adequate resources. He has had reasonable reproductive success as well. He is now in a position to have more reproductive success and is able to support at least one extra family. He is therefore simply behaving in the way millions of years of evolution have programmed him to to maximise his presence in the gene pool in the future.
Most successful people find ways round social conventions to do this when they have the resources. Look at the many mistresses of top executives. Even high earning television evangelists seem to do the same kind of thing.
From the point of view of Steve's genes he is doing all the right things and if he can continue to have enough resources to keep his new bigger harem on the go things should work out okay.
Erin and her children have a different calculus. They get no benefit from Steve's wider promiscuity. But they don't lose out either, so long as there is no competition for resources. The new person/people coming into the relationship are probably the key, because they need to get established. It is imperative for the new woman to get pregnant as quickly as possible, since until she does this she has no strong claim. She will also be very anxious to stop any further females arriving on the scence to stake a claim.
The whole thing relies really heavily on Steve pulling in the cash to keep the show on the road. Luckily this seems to be pretty likely given his current success with his blog and the likely new revenue stream from the book.
So my predictions for this time next year are -
Steve will be pretty happy with the outcome. Basically he can only come out on top.
Erin will be neutral - she has nothing whatever to gain from it but will probably not lose out significantly.
The kids will be neutral - they won't be getting a new sibling this calender year so they are not affected yet.
None of the new relationships Steve strikes up will last. They will be too demanding of his attention because they simply have to get established quickly. When they don't get the response they want they will move elsewhere.
One last semi-prediction, if Steve tries to date more than one extra partner at the same time there will be considerable conflict between potential spouses. The film rights could be very lucrative.
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