Hating NTR but liking harem

I'll just simplify things for you. Is the relationship is out in the open ? Did they being truthful ? Did they not act unfairly such as keeping things secret to themselves for their own benefit ? Then it isn't an ntr but if it's otherwise it is ntr.

 

Oh, he did. But she swore to me up and down that she didn’t. And I believe her. Especially since she did admit to me that she and dad were dating while he was still married to my mom. Why admit that and not admit cheating? She did also admit to me that she once hugged and kissed another guy while married to dad, but that was all that happened. And I have reason to believe that claim too. She didn’t even meet the guy I mentioned in my last post until after she broke up with my dad.

My dad is a known lying, cheater (and not just by cheating on my mom with my step mom. He cheated on my mom for 26 of their 27 years of marriage). My step mother has always had a policy that honesty is best. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Anyhow, liking any of them outside hentai is sick. If you really do accept harem, then that means you also find it acceptable and likely that you'll be inside a reverse harem. If not, liking harem is nothing more than self gratification.

 

Then yes it is an ntr for your dad case but for your mother case it isn't. Have your mother tried to keep her relationship secret ? Have her boyfriend's let your dad know about it ? Edit. In advance i mean. He let the married woman's husband know about it if he's after her ?

 

My dad kept his 26 years of cheating on my mom a secret. (I assume very strongly he also cheated on my step mom, also I strongly believe he had an affair or tried to have an affair with one of my friend’s married mother while the divorce was happening. Do you know what it’s like to be fifteen and forced to avoid your friend to try to prevent her family from being homewrecked because that’s the only thing you can think to do?) My step mom was open about dating her boyfriend, now her husband.

 

I've said it if they're secretive about it then it is a betrayal and ntr.

 

So, even though my dad felt betrayed, because she was open about breaking up with him and dating someone else, it wasn’t NTR? Okay, got it.

 

Haha did you not understand what's I've said ? Do i accuse your stepmother of being secretive ?

 

NTR in a nutshell by default is netorare where the woman gets stolen from the man. Netori is where the man steals the woman. Netorase is swinging or open relationship. All tags require cheating in most cases, but an exception is netorase.

It does not matter whether sex is consensual or not, the moment the person likes fucking the other person, it's NTR! I recommend reading some NTR here at Novel Updates to learn more about it if you dare!

 

No, it was just the post from you that I first quoted that confused me. “They don't mostly and i don't see the girl getting acquainted and gravitate away from the mc with a nicer man as ntr. Ntr focus on the act of betrayal itself.” According to this definition, secrecy has nothing to do with it. The betrayal itself is NTR. Therefore, my dad feeling betrayed means it was NTR. But since she’s with a nicer man, it isn’t NTR. This is what confused me.

 

What i mean here is they gravitated away out in the open. The man knows, the woman doesn't hide it.
If the woman with another guy being secretive about it for whatever reason in order to preserve it's own gain either the man affection or simply for economical gain then it is a betrayal and therefore an ntr.


Before any further discussion happen about this i need to clarify most harem story you find have noncommittal relationship so they do not apply as ntr. Unless their relationship is a binding one such as being mutual lover, or married, or concubine of etc then it isn't an ntr.
I've read reverse harem too but they do not score as ntr whatsoever since they also have noncommittal relationship. The goal of such multiple love interest in story is to polish their characters with such dynamic relationship between each other. It is easier to understand than a multiple crisscrossing coupling scenario where the reader can became too confused to remain immersed in the story.

 

I think most people see NTR as wrong because of their moral views and harem as fine since, at least from what I've seen, harem member characters are 'happy' to be in the harem.


I personally hate them both.

 

Protagonists sometimes steal other peoples significant others or love interests
Yeah totally NTR they should burn and die

 

Netorare is a Japanese term for when cheating on your significant other!

 

Seems to me people here are a tad confused on the terminology, which started this whole dumb thread in the first place.

NTR can mean a few different things, or can be considered an umbrella category for a few different fetishes.

Netorare - cuckoldry fetish where the protagonist's significant other (usually a girl/woman) gets "stolen" away from him by another person. Most of these stories will start by the female being coerced/blackmailed into cheating on the protagonist, until reluctantly admitting they actually get turned on by the infidelity and continuing to cheat willingly or leaving the protagonist altogether. Then again, there's quite a few stories where the heroine never ends up liking the sex but has to put up with it for reasons. There's also stories where the protagonist himself encourages his partner to cheat on him. All these different kinds of netorare have their own, more or less popular nomenclature, but that is not relevant to the discussion at hand.

Also, one defining feature of this fetish is to provoke intense feelings of jealousy, anger and humiliation in the audience, so emotional attachment to the heroine is a requirement.

Netori - this is netorare in reverse. This time around tit's the protagonist that is doing the "stealing" of the partner (or partners) of other people. It's not unusual to see this kind of scenario evolve into a harem/polygamy situation.

Harem - as understood by the Japanese, it's used to define a story where there is severe gender imbalance in the cast, that is - if the protagonist is male then the majority of the cast is female, if the protagonist is female, then the majority of the cast is male. Naturally, yaoi and yuri harems exist too. Basically, you can view harems as stories where there are more than two characters vying for the romantic affections of the protagonist, though there are harem stories out there where the harem tag is just an excuse to cram in as much eye-candy as possible, with the majority of them not being particularly interested in the protagonist.

On the other hand, when audiences tend to talk about harem stories, they're usually discussing narratives where the protagonist has, or will have, multiple partners with whom he/she is romantically involved and sexually active.

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Now that we have the definitions out of the way, I have to admit I have no idea why the OP would even imply people interested in harems would be fine with NTR, when time and again they have been shown to be virulently against the idea and will react explosively at the mere mention of it. To simplify it even further, people that like harems but dislike NTR hate it for the same reason that people that like monogamous romances dislike NTR.

Putting aside dumb concepts such as "reciprocity", "unfairness" and "sexism" (reverse harems are a thing, people - gay harems are a thing, stop strawmanning like retards). Harems are closed-off relationships - as in, the male or female members of the harem will only be sexually active with the hero/heroine and each other (maybe). A harem is not an open relationship and for the love of me I can't understand why so many people refuse to understand this simple concept and get upset when they get shouted at for mislabeling one story as the other or get called out on their ignorance.

Just because the protagonist gets to sleep with multiple people (and they with each other), doesn't mean that his/her harem members now need to "cheat" on him/her to return the favor. These are not real people, they're fictional characters, and the author isn't writing a treatise on sexism or realistic polygamous relationships, he's writing for a very specific audience with rather specific expectations - and they have no wish to see the protagonists girlfriends (or boyfriends) sleep around with men/women that are not part of their group, or for other men (if the protagonist is male and his love interests female) or women (if the protagonist is female and her love interests male) to intrude into the relationship.

So, in short, if you're writing an open relationship story, more power to you, but make extra sure to label it as such, because if you put the harem tag on it, or are actually insane enough to go the NTR route, all you're doing is asking for grief.

 

a harem can be consensual

infact, even today in many muslim countries where men are allowed to marry more than 1 wife, consent of the wife must be obtained before the marriage is allowed and there are many such cases of men who have married multiple women today.

also most harem in novels are taking place in ancient times where it is normal.
harems are nothing unique and almost every civilization have had them. it is almost essential in any monarchy as the king's blood must be passed on yet none of this is ever forced and both the male and female know what they are getting into so how is it NTR?

if you see having a harem as something similar to ntr, you probably need to grow up.

ntr is about the betrayal and is infact, most of the time without consent, eg. rape. like several other people have mentioned.

also even in harem novels, Netori is often absent so i dont know how you are making this association.

 

I'd argue that the majority of harem stories are ones where the women willingly join/stay in such a relationship.

I see little point in dragging IRL depictions of polygamous relationships into the discussion. While an argument could be made that injecting a dose of realism could benefit the story, that would still need to make way for the primary purpose of the story, namely entertaining the audience and giving them the kind of narrative they enjoy reading about. Nobody picks up a harem story to read about a "School Days" scenario.

Now, if you wanted to write a realistic take on harems (the building/room) or polygamous relationships, that's a wholly different kind of story.

Depends, really. While the majority of human cultures were either fully polygynous or allowed for monogamy and polygyny to coexist, this becomes rarer and rarer the closer to modernity you get - most cultures eventually discovering that polygamy tends to lead to highly unstable societies.

That being said, even in modern Western countries rich and powerful men will usually have a wife and a mistress (or several). In the 17th and 18th century this was expected behavior for a gentleman, and in many parts of South America there is tacit acceptance of mistresses by the whole of society (the wife included).

Multiple spouses tended to create nearly as many problems as they solved for the ruler. In the Ottoman Empire whichever prince won the struggle for the throne would nearly always be forced to kill all his male siblings to ensure no challenger to his rule existed for his political enemies to rally behind.

But, again, dragging realism into a discussion of harem fantasies is like quoting divorce rates in the West in a topic discussing star-crossed romances.

Naturally, authors should be encouraged to create tension and conflict within the harem. After all, if such a union was easy to establish and maintain it would be boring to read about and ruin the suspension of disbelief, watching the cast actually try and succeed and make it work is infinitely more enjoyable than the heroines being the equivalent of blow-up dolls and just going along without voicing their opinions or having any agency - but what must always be kept in mind is that the ultimate outcome has to be a stable relationship where all participants are happy and emotionally fulfilled.

 

I guess you are somewhat right now that I think about it. There are multiple mc's who travel to an another city, sect, country, continent or realm where they leave their harem members behind. To eventually meet a new girl in the other place and start a sexual relationship with that woman. Then yes it is ntr, because the forgotten harem members have their spouse cheat on them with the other woman.

The main difference I would say is the way it is written. I can read harems, reverse harem, polygamy, and polyandry without any problem as long as the story is good but I absolutely get disgusted by ntr. In ntr the main theme is a betrayal. You can see it as just like the tragedy tag, something terrible happens with the mc which is humiliating, degrading or outright awful. That is why the guy stealing the girl is most times extremely ugly looking or are outright assholes. However, if the men sleeping with the woman love them and care for them and are in a good relationship with the mc it suddenly turns into a reverse harem.

One other difference is that harem is based on "love", while ntr is purely based on lust. In ntr nobody cares for each other. The antagonist doesn't care for the woman or the mc, the woman doesn't care for the mc as long as her lust gets taken care off, and the mc most times doesn't care for the woman if he knows he is being ntr' ed.

One another important thing is the perspective it was written from. In the case of the man traveling to another place and cheats in the perspective of the man it is getting a harem however if the story was written with the forgotten harem member as the mc it will become the typical fiance cheats on her with another woman kind of story, with her getting a better and more powerful man. In the woman case, she is getting ntr'd. However in polyandry novels where the mc is the woman it suddenly becomes different. If the polyandry novel was written in the perspective of the man, then it becomes the typically broken engagement novel where the man got cucked and he gets ntr'd.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I don't agree with you. You are confusing ntr with cheating. Netorare isn't necessarily cheating and cheating is necessarily netorare. for example, you can have the mc having a crush on a girl and the girl seems all friendly, but in truth, she keeps getting dicked by guys 24/7 while knowing the mc likes her. Even if they aren't in a relationship it is still a case of netorare. There is a hentai where the mc is getting bullied by some guys, his mother felt sorry her son and started to sleep with the bullies so they can stop bullying her son and eventually loses herself to the depravity. This is a netorare, even though the mc and the mother aren't a couple.

And you can also have spouses, where the woman sleeps with other guys, without humiliating the guy, in that case, it simply is cheating not netorare.
The main difference is the humiliation.

 

Yeah but these mc's get called out for that. Look at mga, it has an extremely low rating and everybody everywhere is talking about how they are disgusted with the mc.

 

They're different tags, unless you're talking about Ancient strengthing technique.