On monogamy
This may not be as coherent as I'd like. It took longer to write than I expected, and soon I have to venture out to pick up the product of my monogamy from kindergarten and bring him home. But this has been rolling around in my head. So I guess I'll put it out there to roll around in yours, or not. Have fun.
I had coffee with an old friend. This is not the only inspiration for this post, but we’ll just pretend that it is so as to not tread uncomfortable waters.
I had coffee with an old friend, someone I always admired for his charisma and individualism. We had some great talks in our time about all kinds of things. Which is why I’m surprised that I forgot that he is apparently, essentially, polyamorous.
At least, I’m assuming that he is, or that he identifies as such, whether or not he practices. Because he pretty much said it, without using the term or mentioning specifics. I could be completely wrong about that. But it isn’t actually relevant whether he is or he isn’t, because it’s the philosophy of polyamory that I want to talk about.
I think many people share a common assumption: that human beings are not naturally monogamous. We are creatures. We are animals. Monogamy is rare in the natural world, rare among primates. Indeed, it actually makes evolutionary sense for humans to NOT be monogamous - for men, especially, because of that whole “sewing-the-seed” thing, but for women too. Like, what happens if women were hard-wired to want only one man, ever, and that man dies or becomes unavailable? She’d have no urge to go find a replacement, hence the likelihood of copulation and reproduction is impaired.
Makes sense.
I think also that many people recognize monogamy, romantic love, and marriage as social constructs. At some point we decided to pair up, romance was invented to make our sexual urges pretty, concepts of status and ownership and sexual access as a commodity got knotted up in this institution that is now so central to human culture that we think of it as natural, The Thing To Do, when really it is an act in defiance of our biological instincts.
That’s the idea, anyway.
I don’t disagree with any of that per se, and in fact I find the idea of polyamory fascinating. Psychologically, anthropologically, personally. When I say I’d love to have a bevy of husbands so I can get stuff done around this place, I’m only mostly joking. And, certainly, a license to love and or get jiggy with whoever I want might have made certain chapters of my life a whole lot easier.
Maybe. Probably. Not really. I know myself better than that. But anyway.
I have long been of the opinion that while monogamy is not our natural state of being, neither are clothes and living in houses with central air conditioning. I’m not about to go eschewing my creature comforts, and neither am I going to disown monogamy because, natural or not, it’s what I know and what I like and what I do. I’m cool with other people making other decisions that are right for them and theirs, but that’s the thing; it comes down to decision-making. Do you want to put constraints on your sexuality, or not? As evolved primates, we’re capable of doing just that, if it suits us.
So, as of a few months ago, if my husband told me that the waitress with the free-hanging boobs gave him a boner, I would have just laughed about it because 1) boobs are fun, 2) he’s a guy, and he’s wired to notice boobs and 3) our relationship contract allows him to notice boobs and acknowledge that they are fun so long as he honors the other part of our contract which says *looking* at other boobs is as fun as it gets.
The worst that might have come from it would be a twinge of simple jealousy, which has more to do with self-image than anything else. I would have recognized that, honored it, and dismissed it in a moment.
But because of… this coffee date that I had (yes, that’s the reason. Nothing else going on here, move along), I’ve been thinking about the monogamy thing a lot lately - a lot - and jealousy in particular. To the point that I think it’s time to update and revise my polyamory philosophy.
To wit:
I think the idea that monogamy is *only* a social construct is problematic. I think that it devalues “love”, for one thing - personally I don’t buy that love is just sexual attraction dressed up. I do believe that it is far more complex and, dare I say it, spiritual than that.
But aside from love, I think the arguments against monogamy overlook that jealousy is a fundamental emotion, a natural phenomenon, and sexual jealousy is an extremely powerful natural phenomenon that cannot be explained away by social conditioning.
Having spent quality time with my jealousy, lately - having taken it out for coffee, so to speak - I think that jealousy gets a bad rap. We tend to think of it as entirely bad, something to work against, outgrow. And in many cases, yes, maybe. There is no *logical* reason for me to feel bad for my husband’s attention to another woman’s tunnel of love as she leans to give him his diet pepsi.
However, I think that jealousy is just as much an evolutionary mechanism as diverse attraction. I think jealousy is, in its way, adaptive. Because I think that monogamy is, also, adaptive.
As a psychologist and anthropologist (what. I am. kind of.), one of my most fundamental beliefs about human nature is that men and women are designed, by nature, to be complementary and reciprocal. This is why I am not a “true” feminist - I do not believe men and women are *the same*. I believe (as science has shown us) that men and women are wired differently so that we may specialize in different but complementary ways. Men hunt, women gather. Men proliferate semen, women nurture an egg. Men are hard and lean and narrow, women are soft and pliant. This is not a value judgment. This is wisdom. One is not better than the other - rather, one cannot exist without the other.
And yes, I am speaking in generalities, because in reality human beings fall anywhere on a spectrum between prototypical female and prototypical male, even before you start factoring the social constructs of gender that we apply, artificially, to the biological foundation. But *generally speaking*, this is how we are, this is the design, and I think it not only makes sense, it’s beautiful.
So it surprises me that it took thirty-four years and… coffee with an old friend… for me to figure out that the pairing up of man and woman (or one and one, call it the urge to pair up, whatever your sexual preference) is a biological mechanism, an urge that aided in the evolution of the human species by giving individuals the motivation and desire to work together and stay together in what we now recognize as the family unit.
Again, there’s a spectrum, and, again, it comes down to choice, but for me, monogamy is the natural choice. It’s not a construct - it’s a survival instinct. And my feelings around it are not weakness or a lack of sophistication - they are an inborn and functional phenomenon.
As much as I might, occasionally, want to stray outside the bubble of my marriage, and as much as I recognize that, occasionally, my husband feels the same way, I do not believe that it would healthy. Because life is hard, surviving is hard, parenting is… the most challenging thing I’ve ever attempted. I rely on my husband in all things. He holds me up. He is my partner. He protects and sustains me. And I do the same for him. The intimacy, the specialness, the romance that comes with marriage is what keeps us doing it. Without that motivation, it would be so easy to put down the bubble (burdens) and walk away. And where would our family be then.
Is what I think.
I had coffee with an old friend. This is not the only inspiration for this post, but we’ll just pretend that it is so as to not tread uncomfortable waters.
I had coffee with an old friend, someone I always admired for his charisma and individualism. We had some great talks in our time about all kinds of things. Which is why I’m surprised that I forgot that he is apparently, essentially, polyamorous.
At least, I’m assuming that he is, or that he identifies as such, whether or not he practices. Because he pretty much said it, without using the term or mentioning specifics. I could be completely wrong about that. But it isn’t actually relevant whether he is or he isn’t, because it’s the philosophy of polyamory that I want to talk about.
I think many people share a common assumption: that human beings are not naturally monogamous. We are creatures. We are animals. Monogamy is rare in the natural world, rare among primates. Indeed, it actually makes evolutionary sense for humans to NOT be monogamous - for men, especially, because of that whole “sewing-the-seed” thing, but for women too. Like, what happens if women were hard-wired to want only one man, ever, and that man dies or becomes unavailable? She’d have no urge to go find a replacement, hence the likelihood of copulation and reproduction is impaired.
Makes sense.
I think also that many people recognize monogamy, romantic love, and marriage as social constructs. At some point we decided to pair up, romance was invented to make our sexual urges pretty, concepts of status and ownership and sexual access as a commodity got knotted up in this institution that is now so central to human culture that we think of it as natural, The Thing To Do, when really it is an act in defiance of our biological instincts.
That’s the idea, anyway.
I don’t disagree with any of that per se, and in fact I find the idea of polyamory fascinating. Psychologically, anthropologically, personally. When I say I’d love to have a bevy of husbands so I can get stuff done around this place, I’m only mostly joking. And, certainly, a license to love and or get jiggy with whoever I want might have made certain chapters of my life a whole lot easier.
Maybe. Probably. Not really. I know myself better than that. But anyway.
I have long been of the opinion that while monogamy is not our natural state of being, neither are clothes and living in houses with central air conditioning. I’m not about to go eschewing my creature comforts, and neither am I going to disown monogamy because, natural or not, it’s what I know and what I like and what I do. I’m cool with other people making other decisions that are right for them and theirs, but that’s the thing; it comes down to decision-making. Do you want to put constraints on your sexuality, or not? As evolved primates, we’re capable of doing just that, if it suits us.
So, as of a few months ago, if my husband told me that the waitress with the free-hanging boobs gave him a boner, I would have just laughed about it because 1) boobs are fun, 2) he’s a guy, and he’s wired to notice boobs and 3) our relationship contract allows him to notice boobs and acknowledge that they are fun so long as he honors the other part of our contract which says *looking* at other boobs is as fun as it gets.
The worst that might have come from it would be a twinge of simple jealousy, which has more to do with self-image than anything else. I would have recognized that, honored it, and dismissed it in a moment.
But because of… this coffee date that I had (yes, that’s the reason. Nothing else going on here, move along), I’ve been thinking about the monogamy thing a lot lately - a lot - and jealousy in particular. To the point that I think it’s time to update and revise my polyamory philosophy.
To wit:
I think the idea that monogamy is *only* a social construct is problematic. I think that it devalues “love”, for one thing - personally I don’t buy that love is just sexual attraction dressed up. I do believe that it is far more complex and, dare I say it, spiritual than that.
But aside from love, I think the arguments against monogamy overlook that jealousy is a fundamental emotion, a natural phenomenon, and sexual jealousy is an extremely powerful natural phenomenon that cannot be explained away by social conditioning.
Having spent quality time with my jealousy, lately - having taken it out for coffee, so to speak - I think that jealousy gets a bad rap. We tend to think of it as entirely bad, something to work against, outgrow. And in many cases, yes, maybe. There is no *logical* reason for me to feel bad for my husband’s attention to another woman’s tunnel of love as she leans to give him his diet pepsi.
However, I think that jealousy is just as much an evolutionary mechanism as diverse attraction. I think jealousy is, in its way, adaptive. Because I think that monogamy is, also, adaptive.
As a psychologist and anthropologist (what. I am. kind of.), one of my most fundamental beliefs about human nature is that men and women are designed, by nature, to be complementary and reciprocal. This is why I am not a “true” feminist - I do not believe men and women are *the same*. I believe (as science has shown us) that men and women are wired differently so that we may specialize in different but complementary ways. Men hunt, women gather. Men proliferate semen, women nurture an egg. Men are hard and lean and narrow, women are soft and pliant. This is not a value judgment. This is wisdom. One is not better than the other - rather, one cannot exist without the other.
And yes, I am speaking in generalities, because in reality human beings fall anywhere on a spectrum between prototypical female and prototypical male, even before you start factoring the social constructs of gender that we apply, artificially, to the biological foundation. But *generally speaking*, this is how we are, this is the design, and I think it not only makes sense, it’s beautiful.
So it surprises me that it took thirty-four years and… coffee with an old friend… for me to figure out that the pairing up of man and woman (or one and one, call it the urge to pair up, whatever your sexual preference) is a biological mechanism, an urge that aided in the evolution of the human species by giving individuals the motivation and desire to work together and stay together in what we now recognize as the family unit.
Again, there’s a spectrum, and, again, it comes down to choice, but for me, monogamy is the natural choice. It’s not a construct - it’s a survival instinct. And my feelings around it are not weakness or a lack of sophistication - they are an inborn and functional phenomenon.
As much as I might, occasionally, want to stray outside the bubble of my marriage, and as much as I recognize that, occasionally, my husband feels the same way, I do not believe that it would healthy. Because life is hard, surviving is hard, parenting is… the most challenging thing I’ve ever attempted. I rely on my husband in all things. He holds me up. He is my partner. He protects and sustains me. And I do the same for him. The intimacy, the specialness, the romance that comes with marriage is what keeps us doing it. Without that motivation, it would be so easy to put down the bubble (burdens) and walk away. And where would our family be then.
Is what I think.