User blog comment:Animegeek1689/Does Issei really love Rias?/@comment-73.8.130.237-20170501063320

I think you may be confused on how issei's various relationships are being portrayed. What this, and quite frankly MOST, harem series dois confuse the meaning of a harem with other multi-party relationships. Issei claims to want to build a harem, but in practice, he is actually seeking a polygamist relationship.

In a harem, Issei would have a wife (Rias) while every woman that came afterwards would be considered a concubine whose main purpose in the relationship is to satiate Issei's lust and provide him with entertainment. The concubines would constantly be in competition not only amongst each other, but with the current wife as well for the "prestigious" spot of being the wife. In ancient times, this would normally take the form of who could sire an heir for the head of the household. And seeing as Devils have a low birth rate, this would be a very real possibility for Issei in this kind of relationship.

In a polygamist relationship, Issei would be in a committed relationship with multiple women of whom equal affection is given and received between him and his various women. The women would all be intimate with him but not with each other as their is no sexual attraction. They would all be sister-wives. Ideally, the way this relationship would work is by every member supporting each other. When a woman is pregnant, the other wives would help her through the process and help raise it after its born. Essentially, it would be thepersonification of the idiom "it takes a village to raise a child".

However, there is a third possible path that Issei's relationships can go. It's called polyamory. In a polyamorus relationship, all parties are in fact, lovers. Let's say that Issei were to enter such a relationship with Rias and Akeno. There would be no barriers between the three of them because all three were in the same standing as each other. Rias would love Akeno in the exact same way that she loves Issei and vice versa. In such a case Rias and Akeno would have to be bisexual for it to truly work. In a scenario where one girl has a child, both women would be considered the child's mother (unlike in most polygamist relationships where all others besides the birth giver are considered the "aunt") and both have equal say in the child's development just like in a monogamous relationship. This kind of relationship is very hard for anyone to pull off if all parties do not communicate with each other and are not careful about showing favoritism. I should also note that it's not impossible for there to be more than three in this kind of set up, nor for there to be more men than women in such a relationship as well.