Borsalino Test #15: Mythology of monogamy
Readers,
In the past few years I spent a considerable amount of time learning about the construct of monogamy. Many great reads helped me navigate this extremely complex social topic. The book ‘The ethical slut’ by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy shed light more than any other read. Here is a condensed set of reflections on the subject.
Michele
Mythology of monogamy
Fish in the sea
Those who set off down the path of explorations of any kind often find themselves blocked by beliefs. Both their own and those of others. Beliefs about the way society should be and the way people should behave. Subdermal certainties are far too often unexamined.
An overwhelming majority of us have been taught that one way of relating - lifelong monogamous heterosexual marriage - is the only right way. Because monogamy is ‘normal’ and ‘natural’. If our desires do not fit into that mold, then we must be morally deficient.
Yet, many of us instinctively detect something that doesn't quite track with this picture. How can you dig up and unburrow a belief that you don’t even know you hold? The ideal of lifelong monogamy as the default for relationships is so profoundly engraved in our culture that is almost invisible.
We operate under these beliefs without even knowing we hold them. They are the ground we built our foundations on. The infrastructure for our assumptions, values, desires, myths, and expectations. They’re under our feet all the time. We are fish swimming in the ocean, but nobody explained water to us yet.
A working proposition
Most of these beliefs evolved to meet conditions that no longer exist in today’s society. Traditional marriage dates from agrarian cultures. Back then you made everything you ate, wore, or used. Large extended families got this huge amount of work done so nobody starved. Marriage was essentially a working proposition back then.
When we talk about “traditional family values”, this is the family we are talking about. An extended family with grandparents, aunts and cousins. A nuclear organization structured to accomplish the job of staying alive. Today, large families function in traditional ways in cultures recently transplanted from other countries. They are a basic support system among economically vulnerable urban or rural populations.
Controlling sexual behavior didn’t seem to be that important outside the propertied classes until the Industrial Revolution. That era perpetuated a whole new level of sex negativity. Many think because of the rising middle class and the limited space for children in urban cultures. Doctors and ministers in the late Eighteen century began to claim that masturbation was unhealthy and sinful. Male circumcision became commonplace in an effort to discourage masturbation. Any desire for sex had to become a shameful secret.
In the Nazi Germany of 1930, psychologist Wilhelm Reich theorized that suppression of sexuality was essential to an authoritarian government. With the imposition of antisexual morality, people would be liberated from shame. Otherwise, they would be unlikely to march to war against their wishes or to operate in death camps.
The nuclear family is a relic of the Twentieth-century middle class. Western children no longer work on farms or in the family business. Marriage today is no longer essential for survival. Now we marry in pursuit of comfort, security, sex, intimacy, and emotional connection. The increase in divorce may simply reflect the economic reality that most of us can afford to leave unhappy relationships because no one will starve.
Your author believes that the current set of relational “oughta-be’s” is a cultural artifact rather than natural law. Indeed, nature is wondrously diverse, offering us infinite possibility. Humans are now paving new roads across new territory. Soon, there would be no culturally approved script for an open relational and sexual lifestyle. You’ll need to write your own. And writing your own script requires a lot of authenticity. That is the kind of asymmetric endeavor that returns outsized rewards.
Everybody knows
Simply because “everybody knows” something does not make it true. Apply great skepticism to any sentence that begins with “Everybody knows…” or “Common sense tells us…”. These phrases are signposts for a cultural belief system cemented around monogamy and relational co-dependence.
Cultural belief systems can be very deeply rooted in literature, law and archetypes, which means that shrugging them off your own personal ethos can be arduous. Questioning what “everybody knows” can be disorienting.
The first step toward generating a new paradigm is debunking myths about the old one. Here, then, are some of the pervasive inaccuracies that we have heard all our lives. They are most often untrue and destructive to our relationships and our lives.
Myth #1: Monogamous relationships are the only “real” relationships
Lifetime monogamy as an ideal is a relatively new concept in human history. It makes us unique among primates. Truthfully though, there is nothing that can be achieved within a long-term monogamous relationship that cannot be achieved without one: business partnerships, deep attachment, stable parenting, personal growth, and care and companionship.
People that believe this myth may feel something is wrong with them if they aren’t in a committed twosome. People that discover themselves loving more than one person at a time, or that fail at monogamous relationships question themselves, instead of the myth. “Am I incomplete?”. This belief instills the idea that we aren’t good enough in and of ourselves.
A subset of this myth is the belief that if you’re really in love, you will automatically lose interest in others. Thus, if you’re having sexual or romantic feelings toward anyone but your primary partner, you’re not really in love. This belief has cost many people a great deal of happiness through the centuries, yet is untrue to the point of absurdity. A ring around the finger does not cause selective nerve block to the genitals.
If monogamy is the only acceptable option, the only true form of love, then are these agreements genuinely consensual? If you believe that you have no other choice, then you might lack the agency (or awareness of it) that underlies informed consent. The overwhelming majority of my friends embraced monogamy, and I applaud their commitment. Yet how many people in our society consciously make that choice?
Myth #2: Romantic love is the only real love
The lyrics of popular love songs (or even some classical poetry, for that matter) say it all. The phrases we choose to describe romantic love don’t really sound all that pleasant. “Crazy in love”, “love hurts”, “obsession”, “heartbreak”. These are all descriptions of mental or physical illness.
This kind of love can be thrilling and overwhelming. Sometimes even a hell of a lot of fun. But it is not the only “real” kind of love. Nor is it always a good basis for an ongoing relationship.
The feeling that gets called romantic love in this culture seems to be a heady cocktail of lust and adrenaline, sparked by uncertainty, insecurity, perhaps even a little anger. Or danger. The chills up the spine that we recognize as passion are, in fact, the same biological phenomenon as hair rising up on a cat’s back. They are caused by a fight-or-flight response.
Myth #3: Sexual desire is a destructive force
This one goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. It also leads to a lot of surreal double standards. Some religious beliefs preach that women’s sexuality is evil and dangerous and exists only to lure men to their doom.
From the Victorian era we get the idea that men are hopelessly voracious and predatory creatures when it comes to sex. Women are just supposed to control and civilize them by being pure, asexual, and withholding. Men are the gas pedal and women the brakes. I’m no expert, but that seems pretty hard on the engine to me.
Many people also believe that unashamed sexual desire inevitably destroys the family. I suspect that far more families have been ripped apart by bitter divorces over cheating than by ethical, consensual forms of non-monogamy.
Myth #4: The only moral sex is within a committed relationship
An old adage has it that men agree to relationships to have sex, and women agree to sex to have relationships. Believing such nonsense leads to the idea of sex as a currency traded for both financial and physical security, as well as social acceptance. And all the other perks traditionally granted to those who have achieved the culturally mandated state of lifelong pair-bonding.
If you believe this myth, you’re likely to see sex for fun, for pleasure, for exploration. For any purpose except cementing two humans together. Hence, as immoral and socially destructive.
Myth #5: Love makes it okay to control someone’s behavior
This kind of territorial reasoning is designed to make people feel secure. Yet, I don’t believe anybody has the right, much less the obligation, to control the behavior of another functioning adult.
Being treated according to this myth would make anyone feel the opposite of secure. Actually, that is the kind of stuff that would make me flip out. The old “Awww, she’s jealous - she must really care about me” reasoning is the litmus test of a very disturbed set of personal boundaries that can lead to a great deal of relational unhappiness.
Myth #6: Jealousy is inevitable and impossible to overcome
Jealousy is, without a doubt, a very common experience. So much so that a person who doesn’t experience jealousy is looked at as a bit off or in denial. I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit to having confronted its pervasive intensity.
But often a situation that would cause intense jealousy for one person can be no big deal for another. Some people get jealous when their honey takes a sip out of someone else’s soda. Others happily watch their beloved wave bye-bye for a month of amorous sporting with a friend at the far end of the country.
Some people also believe that jealousy is such a shattering emotion that they have no choice but to succumb to it. People who believe this often believe that any form of non-monogamy should be non-consensual and completely secret. They believe they are protecting the “betrayed” partner from having to feel such an impossibly difficult emotion.
On the contrary, jealousy is an emotion like any other. Its thorns puncture underneath your skin, but that pain is not intolerable. Many of the “oughta-be’s” that lead to jealousy can be unlearned. Unbundling social constructs is often a useful process. Sometimes even profoundly healing.
Myth #7: Outside involvements reduce intimacy
Most marriage counselors and popular cheap psychology state that when a member of an otherwise happy couple has an “affair”, this must be a symptom of unresolved conflict or unfulfilled needs. This is occasionally true. But this myth tells us that sleeping with someone else is something you do to your partner, not for yourself. And that is the worst thing you can possibly do to your partner.
This myth leaves no room for the possibility of growthful and constructive open sexual lifestyles. It is cruel and insensitive to interpret an affair as a symptom of sickness in the relationship. It leaves “cheated-on” partners - who may already be feeling insecure - wondering what is wrong with them. Meanwhile, “cheating” partners get told that they are only trying to get back at their primary partners and don’t really want, need or even like their lovers. Nonsense.
Many people consume their sexuality outside the boundaries of their primary relationship for reasons that have nothing to do with any inadequacy in their partner or in the relationship. The new relationship may simply be a natural extension of an emotional and/or physical attraction to someone besides the primary partner. Or perhaps this outside relationship allows a particular kind of connection that the primary partner doesn’t even want (such as kinkier stuff, or going to football games together) and thus constitutes a solution for an otherwise intractable conflict.
Or perhaps it meets other needs. Like a need for uncomplicated physical sex without the trappings of a relationship or for sex with someone of a gender (or ethnicity, height, …) other than one’s partner’s. Or for sex at a time when it is otherwise not available (during travel or a partner’s illness, for example). Permutations are endless.
An outside involvement does not have to subtract in any way from the intimacy you share with your partner unless you let it. Feelings for others are not a zero-sum game. If you find this hard to mentalize, just count in your head how many people you find insufferable. Right. Keep counting.
Myth #8: Love conquers all
Hollywood tells us that “love means never having to say you’re sorry”. We, fools that we are, drink from the hose of this nonsense. This myth has it that if you’re really in love with someone, you never have to argue, disagree, communicate, negotiate, or do any other kind of work. It’s just an effortless “click”. A corollary of this theory is that we automatically get turned on by our beloved and that we never have to lift a finger or make any effort to deliberately kindle desire.
Those who believe this myth may find themselves feeling that their love has failed every time they need to schedule a discussion or have a courteous (or not-so-courteous) disagreement. They may also believe that any sexual behavior that doesn’t fit their criteria for “normal” sex - from toys to threesomes - is “artificial” and indicates that something is lacking in the quality of their love.