Should Monogamy Be Abolished?

[Marat]

I once read an article in an 18th century science journal which raised this topic, but it seems that despite the long history of the problems of monogamy being recognized, society seems quite inert with respect to suggesting any changes.

 

An old adage says that if you put a penny in a jar for every time you have sex during your first year of marriage, and take a penny out of that jar for every time you have sex after the first year, you will never empty the jar no matter how long you are married. Since sex is quite important and is now culturally recognized as something good which should be promoted, why do we have as the central social institution of our culture a form of sexual partnership which has been known for centuries to destroy sexual desire through the tedium of familiarity? While there seem to be many good psychological reasons for forming life partnerships, and perhaps life partnerships with one other person of the opposite sex have certain deep psychological resonances for most of us, why should we connect that psychological, social, financial, and operational partnering with one person with a requirement that there also be an exclusive sexual partnership with that same person? Wouldn't it make more sense to isolate the aspects of human interaction which flourish through partnering with one person throughout life and preserve those, but detach from them the one aspect which withers and dies if it also falls under the rule of lifelong focus on just one partner?

 

The most society seems to be able to do is to accept some tinkering along the edges of this problem, with people who would otherwise go insane with sexual boredom being allowed to have affairs as long as they keep them secret. But this seems an insincere half-measure for a problem which society should have the courage to address and deal with more forthrightly.

[zapatos]

Wouldn't it make more sense to isolate the aspects of human interaction which flourish through partnering with one person throughout life and preserve those, but detach from them the one aspect which withers and dies if it also falls under the rule of lifelong focus on just one partner?

 

Looks like marriage compares well to being single:

 

23% of non-married men reported they have never had sex in the past year,

25% reported only a few times in the past year,

26% reported a few times in the past month,

19% reported 2-3 times a week, and

7% reported 4 or more times a week (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels, 1994).

 

1% of married men reported they have never had sex in the past year,

13% reported only a few times in the past year,

43% reported a few times in the past month,

36% reported 2-3 times a week, and

7% reported 4 or more times a week (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels, 1994).

 

http://www.iub.edu/~kinsey/resources/FAQ.html

[Sisyphus]

How would you go about abolishing it?

[lemur]

Funny, I was just recently thinking about how monogamy should actually be practiced. It seems to me that when people keep multiple partners it leads to competition and power games. For example, if your partner has more than one partner and they do something rude to you, you would have to be careful standing up for yourself because they might just shift their focus to their other partner. What reason would they have to respect you when it costs them unnecessary energy to go out of their way for you instead of just spending more time with the partner who they're not having trouble getting along with?

 

From a sexual-variety standpoint, abolishing monogamy may make some sense but the practical concerns regarding the total relationships surrounding the sex make it sound silly. It's like saying you'd like to drive a different car to work as you would to go out to clubs and yet another to go camping, etc. but when you get into the practical issues of maintaining all the cars and insuring them, etc. it makes more sense to just choose one car that is well-rounded for all your different driving interests.

 

Sorry to make it sound like I'm comparing sex to driving and women to cars. It's a pretty bad cliche' but I really just mean it as a general analogy to having one or multiple partners.

[Mr Skeptic]

So go have an open marriage, or remain single, as you prefer. Why do you want other people to live how you want them to live instead of however they wish to?

[Versa]

If that is the case, then where are the values of having a family? When talking about this topic on abolishing monogamy, first thing that came to my mind would be jealousy. Okay, imagine this scenario, if you can have any partner that you want, someone else whom you love deserve the same right to have anybody he/she wants. Maybe kind of confusing but what are we trying to achieve anyway? Does sex means everything? Or is the bond and love feeling towards each other is more important?

[Marat]

Obviously reconstructing the social world so that plural sexual partnerships would be possible alongside stable familial partnerships would require changing socialization to make people less sexually jealous. Even Wilhelm Reich, the great sex revolutionary, said that "It is naturally difficult to cope with the idea of one's partner in the arms of another." But there are now some people who seem not to be jealous about their life partners having other sexual partners (many gay men, for example, report such arrangements; Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir had such an arrangement in the 1950s, 'swingers' seem not to be bothered by this, Kalahari Bushmen have sex so promiscuously that they have never learned the link between sex and pregnancy, etc.), so it must represent a possible form of socialization.

 

It just seems to me that rather than setting up monogamy as the only ethically and institutionally endorsed system of partnership and then having to cope with all the social stresses that arise because this ideal is constantly violated, it would be more rational, less conflictive, and more honest for society to abandon monogamy as a strict ideal and socialize people not to be bothered by an institutional arrangement more consistent with both male and female biological drives toward variety in sexual partners.

[lemur]

Obviously reconstructing the social world so that plural sexual partnerships would be possible alongside stable familial partnerships would require changing socialization to make people less sexually jealous. Even Wilhelm Reich, the great sex revolutionary, said that "It is naturally difficult to cope with the idea of one's partner in the arms of another." But there are now some people who seem not to be jealous about their life partners having other sexual partners (many gay men, for example, report such arrangements; Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir had such an arrangement in the 1950s, 'swingers' seem not to be bothered by this, Kalahari Bushmen have sex so promiscuously that they have never learned the link between sex and pregnancy, etc.), so it must represent a possible form of socialization.

 

It just seems to me that rather than setting up monogamy as the only ethically and institutionally endorsed system of partnership and then having to cope with all the social stresses that arise because this ideal is constantly violated, it would be more rational, less conflictive, and more honest for society to abandon monogamy as a strict ideal and socialize people not to be bothered by an institutional arrangement more consistent with both male and female biological drives toward variety in sexual partners.

 

You make good points. I have always been fascinated by plural sexual partnerships and open relationships but I have found that it is difficult to study how they work in practice because people are often fairly guarded and closed about their experiences with them. You can say that this is due to the relative stigma attached to promiscuity, but the fact remains that engaging in illicit sexuality tends to provoke secrecy and distrust of other people knowing "what you're up to." People in monogamous relationships, on the other hand, seem to have a weight lifted from their shoulders by not having to hide their sexuality from others, perse'. I'm not saying that this isn't the fault of people who negatively judge promiscuity; just that it isn't really possible to transcend. The only evidence you really need to to look at the way Tiger Woods was treated in the media and what anyone you talked with about him said, and the judgmental attitudes. People are naturally sexually curious, so when they have learned to repress sexual desire and channel it into monogamy, their repression tends to get displaced to anyone who engages in the behaviors that they are prohibiting themselves from considering.

 

That's the practical aspect of exploring polyamory. In theory, though it's possible the ultimate consequences would be several. For one, women would become primary parents for their children unless one of their partners (or someone else) chose to take on the responsibility. Men tend to want to know, or at least believe, that the genetic link exists between them and their offspring before investing in full-blown fathering responsibilities. If a woman has multiple partners and becomes pregnant by one who is not her favorite, it would make it more difficult to combine the parenting relationship with the interpersonal and sexual relationship between parents. Of course, you can say that parenting should be separate from sexual and other interpersonal bonding, but there is some benefit to children having parents who are in love or at least very devoted to one another.

 

Then, if a woman has chosen to only want children with a certain partner, she would have to be very comfortable with the prospect of aborting pregnancies if they turned out to be caused by unwanted fathers. Then, the question would be what would happen to women who were uncomfortable with the idea of having abortions at all, and were willing to forego multiple partner indulgence to prevent the possibility of getting pregnant by the wrong man? Would such women come to be seen as prudish and avoided by men who feel guilty for indulging in polyamory while their devoted wife patiently waits for them to "return home?" Likewise, would men who prefer monogamy come to seem like domineering, controlling chauvanists and be systematically avoided by women who don't want to give up their sexual freedom? In fact, wouldn't relationships generally become competitive on the basis of the least controlling/jealous person wins the most love/attention, since such people would make their polyamorous partners more comfortable than those who would hope for devotion and monogamy?

[Marat]

Wilhelm Reich once said that the world naturally contains enough people for all of us to have our wildest sexual fantasies shared by willing partners all the time, but a panoply of artificial rules limiting sexual activity transform sex into a rare and costly commodity, increasing the power of those who can withhold and dispense it, and diminishing the power of those who seek it. Perhaps if this idea that sex should be transformed into a scarce commodity were socialized out of the population from an early age then our 'natural' tendency towards sexual jealousy would also disappear, with the result that a relaxed system of partner sharing and exchanging would arise.

 

Having sex with someone would then function in society like having a conversation with someone does today: It would be so common, readily available, and socially insignificant that only the most insanely jealous partner would object to his or her mate enjoying the experience with someone else. There would be no rape, since no one ever holds someone at gunpoint in a dark alley to force him or her to talk about the day's news events, nor would teenagers giggle about it, people sell it on the streets, or manufacturers use disguised appeals to it to advertise their products.

 

The problem of free love in relation to the children produced would be diminished by the fact that in the modern era of birth control, only a tiny percentage of sexual interactions are designed to produce children. In cultures which practice unrestricted mating, like the Kalahari Bushmen, children are brought up by the entire village, which has the advantage of freeing children from the risk of being trapped with psychotic parents.