The original note, as written at the time
MULTIPLE WIVES 2.0. In the far future it may become necessary for women, or even any partner in a relationship, to gain the ability to transform into as many versions of their physical being as possible in order to rejuvenate romances and put a check on infidelity.
Ongoing development
A far-future speculation: that a partner might gain the ability to present as many versions of their physical being, in order to rejuvenate a romance and put a check on infidelity.
I want to separate two things in this, because one is interesting and the other is a trap.
The interesting thing is the observation about long relationships: familiarity is the enemy of desire, and the person you have known for twenty years is not a new person. Anything that introduces genuine novelty into a long partnership addresses something real.
The trap is that novelty supplied by a partner’s transformation is not novelty at all — it is the same person in a new surface, and the surface is precisely the part that was never the problem. What goes stale in a long relationship is not appearance; it is the assumption that you already know what the other person will say.
And the policing of infidelity is the wrong frame entirely. A mechanism that makes a partner harder to leave does not make them more loyal; it makes the relationship a containment problem. That is a design goal that should be refused, whatever the technology.
The version worth imagining is not many bodies. It is many situations: a couple who keep putting themselves in places where they do not know how the other will behave. Novelty of circumstance produces novelty of person, and it requires no transformation at all.
The technology is not the interesting part of this idea, and that is the honest conclusion.