[Greta Christina] Is Monogamy Fair?
In any romantic/ sexual relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner to limit their sexual activity in any way?
Weird question, I know. Here’s why I’m asking it.
In my last column, I talked about porn in relationships. I asked, “In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner to not watch porn?” And I concluded that it was not. I argued that, for the same reason people don’t have the right to expect their partners not to watch reality TV or read true crime — on their own time, when they don’t have any obligations and their partner isn’t around — people don’t have the right to expect their partners not to enjoy porn. I argued that people have some basic rights to privacy and autonomy — yes, strangely enough, even when they’re in serious committed relationships — and that the things people do on their own time, in ways that don’t have any significant impact on their partner, are entirely their own damn business.
But when I was writing this, I realized that some non-monogamist hard-liners would say the same thing about any sort of sexual activity outside a relationship. Some non-monogamy advocates — not many, but some — would argue that the right to make your own decisions about how to spend your own time extends to having sex with other people. I wrote that people had no more right to expect their partners not to watch porn than to expect them not to watch reality TV . . . and as I wrote it, I could hear voices in the back of my head saying, “But how is sex different from porn? If watching porn is no different from watching reality TV, then how is having sex with someone outside the relationship any different than seeing a basketball game with someone outside the relationship?”
Now, as you may have guessed, I don’t agree with those voices. I do, however, think this is a harder question than it might seem on the surface, and a murkier one, without an obvious place to draw the line. (To some extent, this is one of my “thinking out loud” pieces, and I’m not sure I’ve got the answer quite right.) Ultimately, though, I do think there’s a difference — even if it’s a murky and non-obvious difference — between watching depictions of other people having sex, and actually having sex with other people.
The difference is . . . well, other people.
I think non-monogamy changes a relationship, in a way that porn does not. I think non-monogamy changes a relationship — because it brings other people into it.
For starters, those other people have desires of their own, and limits of their own, and rights of their own . . . desires and limits and rights that have to be taken into consideration.
The porn video doesn’t care if you don’t see it for months at a time. The dirty novel doesn’t have a special new kink that it really wants to explore with you. The book of French postcards doesn’t have a preference about whether or not you discuss it with your partner. The adult comic book doesn’t get hurt if you throw it away without so much as a phone call. Other people do. And they have the right to expect that their cares and kinks and preferences and feelings will get some attention. From both partners in a relationship — not just the one they’re boffing.
Which means that non-monogamy changes the relationship. For everyone in it. Even if you have the simplest, most limited kind of non-monogamous relationship — say, the “You and I are a primary couple, we can have sex with other people but only on our own time, and those other people won’t get involved in our romantic or social life” kind — the other people you’re involved with are still living, breathing, autonomous people, with lives and selves of their own. So both partners in that relationship have to treat the outside person’s desires and limits and rights as if they matter . . . even if only one of those partners is getting the outside nookie.
Plus, other people have emotions of their own — emotions that aren’t always predictable. Porn isn’t going to get obsessed with you and stalk you, or fall in love with you even though you clearly said upfront that that wasn’t an option. And you probably aren’t going to fall in love with your porn. Okay, yes, some people do get fixated on porn to an unhealthy degree. People can get fixated on anything to an unhealthy degree, from weightlifting to “Star Trek” to collecting porcelain pigs. But sexual relationships with other people carry a degree of risk that sexual relationships with books or photos or Internet videos just don’t. (And that’s not even mentioning the physical risk of STI’s and whatnot.)
Finally — for now, anyway — other people change. They change in ways you can’t expect, and ways you have to adapt to. The only way your copy of “Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle” is going to change is when it comes out in a new 30th anniversary edition loaded with DVD extras. (We hope!) But with other people, you can have a nice, neat arrangement that makes everybody happy . . . and then what does that other person go and do but be human, and want something more than they used to, or something less, or something different. Which you then have to accept, or reject, or re-negotiate.
All of which means that non-monogamy requires a level of involvement and negotiation and processing that porn simply doesn’t demand — involvement and negotiation and processing that can have a significant impact on your relationship. It can be a good impact, mind you: a great impact even, an impact that keeps communication open and eroticism alive. But it’s an impact, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
I mean, when it comes to porn, what do you have to negotiate? “Don’t look at it when I’m around.” Or, “If you’re going to look at it when I’m around, let’s pick something we both want to watch together.” Or, “If you watch it so much that you can’t pay your bills and we never have sex, we’re going to have deep trouble.” Or, “Keep the volume down when I’m trying to sleep.” Your arrangements about it don’t have to be any more complicated than your arrangements about any other book or magazine, TV show or Internet site. And they’re entirely between the two of you. They involve your wants and feelings and nobody else’s, and they only have to change if the two of you change.
So that’s why porn and sex are different.
Now, there is an area where this moderately clear distinction starts to get murky. And that area is sex work: prostitution, stripping, pro domination, other forms of live professional sexual entertainment.
Here’s why sex work is murkier. Sex workers are people, obviously. I hope I’m not going to get any debate about that. But with a few exceptions, they’re people who aren’t going to have expectations or make demands outside the professional encounter itself. They’re, you know, professionals, and whatever feelings they might have about their encounters with you, they’re skilled at drawing boundaries between their personal feelings and their professional responsibilities. With a few exceptions, sex workers aren’t going to ask to see you more often, or ask for something sexually that’s outside your agreement with your partner, or stalk you because they think you’re their soulmate. I’m not saying it never happens — but it’s rare.
So it could be argued that the non-monogamy issues I’m talking about here — the concern that other people have needs, desires, emotions, changes, any of which could affect your relationship — don’t apply to sex workers. And it could therefore be argued that, while it might be reasonable to want your partner to not have (shall we say) amateur sex outside your relationship, it’s not reasonable to expect them not to see strippers or pro dominants or prostitutes . . . since encounters with strippers or pro dominants or prostitutes aren’t likely to seriously affect the relationship.
I don’t know. It still seems somehow different to me. But I’m not sure exactly why. I haven’t gotten that far yet.
Thoughts?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 1:31 pm Lynet wrote:
The tricky thing in the porn debate, it seems to me, is when one partner views the request for no pornography not as an unusual request that will make it harder to find a partner, but rather as an ironclad right that should be insisted on. It’s the difference between asking “Is it okay to go out of my way, or possibly go without, because I am willing to make those sacrifices to find a man who will not use pornography?” and asking “Do I have a right to expect that the partner I already have will not use pornography?” We’re looking here at the interface between personal preferences, on the one hand, and some sort of standard expectation for relationships on the other. What is ‘reasonable’ in a relationship is not an objective subject, pinned to human nature and unchangeable. It depends both on the society and the people involved.
Thus, it’s entirely possible that in some future society, the request not to use sex workers will be looked on as an unusual and difficult, even unreasonable, requirement. Indeed, I’m sure there have been depressingly many past and present societies in which it was/is considered unreasonable for women to insist upon monogamy, even as men jealously guarded their wives. While I will happily champion equality of the sexes, I am not certain that the question of what should constitute the standard expectations in a relationship is so easily answered, and I am sure that there is plenty of room for partners to negotiate either more or less restrictive rules between themselves, either way.
on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 1:36 pm J. wrote:
Greta, it seems to me you’re making a silent distinction here between “other people that change a relationship” (= people where sex is involved) and “other people that don’t” (e.g. the Basketball person, or else: friends).
Don’t friends have feelings? Won’t they be upset if you drop them, kink-novel like, without calling again? Can’t they ask for more than you, being in a relationship, can handle (ye olde “I fell in love”-story being the most suspicious suspect)?
If you separate porn-sex from relationship-sex only by the people argument, I’m really curious how you would separate friend-people from sex-people. Is sex the distinguishing factor then?
The people-argument seems quite circular to me: People are different because they’re people. That type of reasoning could outrule (and often does) non-monogamy absolutely: “Honey, I know you’re a free soul, but sex is… well, sex”.
I’m very keen to hear your thoughts, though. (And, by the way, I couldn’t agree more that additional partners means a whole lot more impact than porn, and needs some more attention, too).
I myself do believe that watching porn or having sex with another person is very similar: It has to be handled with the necessary care so it won’t hurt your partner/s. The main difference is: The necessary care is usually bigger when it comes to real life sex. By the way, having (non-sexual) friends “outside” the relationship also is something that needs some care. I know people that are terribly jealous of their partner’s friends, and it’s as big an issue as porn might be in other relationships.
Maybe it’s just a question of the amount of care, loving and understanding needed. In an order from little to lots: Friends, porn, other sex-partners, other love-partners. And I do believe that limits regarding what is okay and what isn’t run somewhere through that, very individually.
on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 1:58 pm Iamcuriousblue wrote:
“Polygamy: Twice the Fun?”
Yes, but also twice the headache.
“Polyamoury: X times the Fun?”
Yes, but also X [insert complex algorithm here] the headache.
on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 2:06 pm Frere Lapin wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up Greta. I think that the comparison with porn is tending to muddy the waters though. As you suggest, this is about relationships. Even completely monogamous couples have other relationships. They have friends and family, people they love and care about. Many people draw the line at sexual relationships with others but is that really a necessary distinction.
I am married and in the last few years we have embraced polyamory or ethical non-monogamy. This has not threatened or damaged our relationship but has added new levels of richness and complexity to both our lives. We love each other and also recognize that we are not, and cannot be the whole world to each other, no matter what the fairy tales might say. This is about being open to what any relationship can offer, whether that be friendship, sex or love. Open communication is essential, as is recognizing that while love is infinite, time and resources are not. A new relationship may take away time that I could be spending with my wife, but then so could a new hobby or project. These are exactly the sort of things that have to be negotiated in any relationship.
In our case, the core of our relationship and love for each other is solid and is only enhanced by our other relationships.
on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 2:17 pm Jennifer Beach wrote:
I don’t totally understand the question you end with. Most of the blog makes sense to me - although really I think that what is “reasonable” to request of your partner depends mostly on you and your partner - not some outside sexual politic arbiter. I can imagine a person being disturbed by their partner’s watching some kinds of porn, but overall I agree with your point about autonomy. But at the end I am confused about what your question is about sex-work - are you asking if it is reasonable for someone in a monogamous relationship to ask their partner’s not to have sex with a sex worker, the answer seems completely obviously to be yes. There are a wide array of reasons people choose to be monogamous - and a lot of them involve sexual energy - that you want the sexual energy your partner has to be realized with YOU as much as possible- but lets be real - sex with a person is just different than watching porn - not just because the person has complex needs - but also because it requires a part of yourself and your attention. Not everything is the same as everything else. There is a difference between watching a basketball game and a porn video - and if I tried to list all of the different ways it is different, I would be likely to miss some. Sex with a person contains particular power and attention and in some cases trust than really anything else. Also personally - at the risk of offending - I don’t particularly want to have sex with someone who is also having sex for money, because I don’t really agree that sexual services are appropriate for commodification (I know I risk being considered hopelessly antiquated - but for me it is not entirely unlike selling a body part) and for me, that exchange is a GIANT turn off. I think it affects your whole sexual being if you feel ok with that exchange.
on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 2:17 pm Ephemeriis wrote:
Fair doesn’t really matter.
It either works, or it doesn’t.
Assuming everybody enters into the relationship willingly and gives informed consent, I don’t think it really matters what they agree to. Monogamy… Polygamy… No porn… No video games… Can’t wear red shirts… Whatever.
If it works for the people involved, fair just doesn’t matter. Even if it seems one-sided to the folks outside… It only matters to the folks inside.
Where problems crop up is when folks don’t actually examine what they’re getting into, and make assumptions.
In the United States, for example, there’s an assumption of monogamy. And if you don’t carefully spell out your intentions as you’re entering into a relationship, your partner may be very surprised to find that their assumption was not correct.
Someone from a strict, religious, or extremely feminist upbringing might assume that pornography is straight-up evil; and may be very surprised to find that their partner disagrees.
Someone may assume that they won’t be sharing their clothes with their boyfriend, and be surprised to find that he really likes to wear their skirts.
on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 7:18 pm Meredith wrote:
My husband having sex with someone else puts me at risk in at least two major ways:
1. Disease
2. Pregnancy, which could affect our family and finances.
I see no similar risk to me from porn - no risk I’m concerned about at all, even if there’s some outside chance of porn addiction/obsession.
I’d be glad to support people who want to be polyamorous, but I wouldn’t stand for it.
on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 7:29 pm Liz wrote:
Humans aren’t generally wired to have huge emotional attachment to inanimate objects. (I recognize my obsession with my books is weird) We do have emotional attachment with other people (and animals. I joke that I come second with my boyfriend, after the cat). So porn can be a problem in two ways: it’s use excludes “couple time” (so too video games, the internet, books, or any other non-shared activity), and it theoretically means less desire to have sex with the other person (Unless you’re using it as part of foreplay). The catch with the second problem is also two-fold: sometimes one person has a much higher sexual drive than the other, and watching/reading porn can be an outlet for the higher dive person to lower sexual pressure on the lower sexual drive person; I suspect most people find masturbation and sex with another person to be two very different types of sexual experience. One of them simply gets you off, the other has the added bonus of providing all kinds of relationship-strengthening intimacy.
As for the polyamory vs having friends thing, I suppose you could argue it’s just a social norm, but that seems massively oversimplifying things. There are degrees of friendship. For that matter, there are degrees of all kinds of human interaction. I feel like the difference between having lots of friends and having lots of lovers has to do with a) romantic feelings (and what these mean), and b) how you decide what makes someone worth having sex with. But I don’t have any answers there, beyond what I am and am not comfortable with. Which I’ve noticed is different in different relationships.
on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 8:49 pm J. Ash Bowie wrote:
Greta,
I approach this interesting topic from a psychological perspective. There are evolutionary reasons why this topic continues to be relevant, no matter how much it gets discussed. As modern humans we can enjoy sex as its own thing, but that doesn’t get rid of millions of years of development. Having sex with someone outside of a bonded relationship triggers all kinds of deep mechanisms for the partner: fear of mate poaching, bacterial/viral infection, loss of resources, divided attention, and so on. While it isn’t politically correct to talk about these things, research strongly indicates the powerful influence these ancient systems continue to have on us.
Porn will not give me a disease, steal me away from my partner, drain our shared resources (absent a serious addiction), or risk our child being neglected. It is close enough to the real thing that my wife doesn’t want to see it or know about it, but she doesn’t otherwise have any moral objections to my indulgences.
For those talking about friends—in most cases, peer relationships do not have the same threats that sexual relationships have, so it makes sense that we wouldn’t develop strong emotional responses against them. In fact, friendships are a boon, evolutionarily speaking, so it follows that partners would support them so long as they don’t start to infringe on the resources/attention issues (but that same rule would apply to any situation that carried that threat, even bird watching).
Of course, it’s possible for human culture to override basic evolutionary impulses. That you can draw a distinction between “amateur” and professional sex in terms of how “okay” it is is an example of this. But our ape brains don’t see the difference: if my wife is having sex with another guy, on a deep level it doesn’t matter to me if he is a pro or not. I might be able to change my behavior based on a rationalization of the difference, but my baseline response will be the same either way: pained jealousy.
Yes, yes, everyone is different, so there will be people on the edges of bell curve…some that never feel jealous and some that ache when their partners even glance at someone else. But those are deviations from the norm, which is a strong negative reaction against a partner having sex outside the relationship.
on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 3:41 am Kit wrote:
Personally I think that it always boils down to the same thing, which is that you need to agree between yourselves what the acceptable boundaries and commitments are (and if you can’t agree, the relationship isn’t going to work). If you agree sex only with each other, or sex only with each other and professionals, or no sex at all, or anything else … all that matters is that you’re both happy with what you’ve agreed.
Sticking to whatever commitments you’ve made is an issue of resisting temptation, and I think porn is partly an issue just because it’s so temptingly easy. It’s easy to get hold of, and easy to use, and easy to walk away from. For all those reasons it’s not very realistic to expect someone to stay away from it, and the strain of resisting is probably not worth it. It’s generally easier to resist having sex with other people, because it’s not as if they offer themselves to you the minute you switch on your computer or walk into a bookshop. (Or if they do, you’re either a movie star or such a flirt you probably shouldn’t be in a monogamous relationship anyway.)
But if a couple agree between themselves that they want to exclude porn, if they’re fair about it and if both of them really want to rather than one of them wanting to and the other agreeing for the sake of peace, I figure that’s their business, not mine, same any other sexual agreement. Some arrangements seem more likely to work out than others, but if a couple can make an unlikely-sounding arrangement work out, here’s to them.
on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 5:59 am Ola wrote:
J. said exactly what I wanted to. If involving other people in our life is unreasonable, well… we have a problem then. And I don’t agree with your “autonomy” argument to begin with. Our sexual fantasies do have an important influence on our sex lives, on our relationships, on our whole beings, in fact. They are important!
But more importantly: Lynet got it right. I think there are two questions here that got hopelessly entangled together, and that’s why they seem difficult. But they are not. Here are the questions:
1) Is activity X factually bad/dangerous, or otherwise morally wrong?
2) Is it reasonable to expect a partner to refrain from X?
These are two different questions, and the problem clears up immediately when we handle them separately! Look: is it reasonable to expect your partner not to eat animals? Or not to touch any women? Definitely, if you’re a vegetarian/orthodox Jew! But it is only reasonable in these cases because the first partner believes that:
a) the answer to question (1) is a solid YES
b) the other partner is absolutely on the same page regarding (a)
So all the problems begin when assumption (b) turns out to be incorrect… but heartache normally happens when partners discover they’re not on the same page about an important issue (considered important by at least one of them).
You feel that the question is murky and tricky only because you try to answer question (2) by de-facto arguing about question (1). It won’t work!
The reasonable expectations are determined by the partners’ shared beliefs. Without sufficient communication of their beliefs, the only thing relevant to the question of whether an expectation is reasonable is the accepted social norms in their time/circle. 100 years ago it was reasonable to expect your bride to be a virgin. Now it is not. See how question (2) is very easy once it is separated from question (1)?
on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 12:15 pm Greta Christina wrote:
J.: I think you pose an interesting question. Since other people can affect a relationship even if no sex is involved, why would it be reasonable to ask/ expect your partner to forgo sexual activity outside the relationship, but not to ask/ expect them to forgo contact with friends, family, etc.?
But I don’t think those are the same. For one thing, we have a fundamental human need for friendships, family, other non-sexual relationships. In fact, asking a partner to not see their friends and family is one of the biggest red flags for abuse. I don’t think we have a fundamental human need for sex with multiple partners (well, some people do, but plenty of people do fine with monogamy). So while other non-sexual relationships can have a profound impact on a relationship, that impact is an inherent part of relationships, in a way that outside sexual relationships aren’t.
And there’s also the fact that non-monogamy isn’t socially accepted in the same way that friendships and family are. So asking for non-monogamy is essentially asking your partner to either keep a major secret about your relationship, or deal with a serious social stigma. That sucks, but it’s reality.
on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 12:24 pm Greta Christina wrote:
J. Ash Bowie: Your point about evolution and our hard-wired feelings is a good one. It does seem that our feelings about sex are different from our feelings about other topics; there’s even neurological research about it. (In fact, I’m working on a piece about that now, rethinking somewhat the question of whether sex should be treated as an exceptional case or not.)
But I still think it’s worth making non-sexual analogies to questions about sex — frankly, for that exact reason. Our feelings about sex do run strong, and we often let the mammalian hindbrain do the thinking. I think it’s often worth asking, “If this weren’t about sex, what would we think about it?” And I think if we’re going to let the fact that it is sex and we therefore feel differently and more strongly about it than we do about most other areas of our life, we have to come up with a good reason for doing so. Otherwise, the mammalian hindbrain is going to run our lives.
on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 1:59 pm Iamcuriousblue wrote:
J Ash Bowie:
I think your point about hard wiring and jealousy is a valid point. However, I don’t see that as an end-all argument for the “naturalness” of monogamy and possessiveness, since left to our own devices, I think there’s a hard wired-urge to fuck around with as many attractive partners as will have us. If somebody is working on a completely self-centered, follow-your-urges level, one would probably screw around as much as possible and get violently jealous of one’s partner if their eye wandered in the least.
Basically, these drives create a tension between what one wants for oneself and what one wants from a partner. Thankfully, humans have another set of drives toward reciprocity and the ability to work out rules when individual needs come into conflict. (Something that, at its basis, is also hard wired, and I refer to the work of Marc Hauser on this subject.) This is not to say that people don’t cheat in all kinds of ways in spite of this, but there is a certain innate sense nevertheless of reciprocity and a need for rules, even if one is gaming those rules.
And from that point, you get into social constructs to meet these needs. Monogamy is one such construct – the urge to play around outside of a single relationship is restricted for the sake of keeping the jealousy of both partners in check. Polyamoury/open relationships are another perfectly valid one – jealousy is kept in check in order to allow partners a wider opportunity for sexual partners. (I suppose this leaves out classic polygamy (one man with many women, who are only allowed to partner with that one man), but that seems to be more about either odd religious rationalizations or simply wealthy and powerful men doing what they please than anything to do with reciprocity.) Of course, there’s a whole range of options between strict monogamy and complete openness which have been discussed here.
on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 3:04 pm Call me Ash wrote:
To say that sexual politics is complex would be a major understatement. My original comments were in regards to the differences between porn, “amateur” sex, and professional sex—my basic claim was that the key influencers behind responses to sexual activity outside of a monogamous relationship isn’t intellectual or even cultural rules, but deep seated responses to evolutionary threats. That same process also created the drive* for men to, ahem, spread their seed around. There is data to show that women often mess around for different reasons, usually as a way of either getting attractive male DNA or exiting a relationship. And again, there are certainly sociocultural influences that skew our baseline mechanisms.
* (I don’t like the word “need” unless something is truly necessary, like food and sleep)
Greta, you say “the mammalian hindbrain is going to run our lives” unless we question our motives behind our rules and expectations regarding sex. Fair enough—I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that we should be slaves to our basest instincts. But at the same time, I don’t think such examinations will be fully beneficial if we don’t first understand and acknowledge the psychological drives that make sex such a potent issue in the first place. In other words, we will be making a mistake if we begin with sociocultural constructs.
For example, we can talk about what might be “fair” when it comes to sexual expectations, but the initial upset a wife feels when she finds her partner strayed is probably not due to a violation of the intellectual concept of fairness, but to the primal evolutionary threats I outlined above. This is why we can intellectualize about the differences between pro and amateur sex, and maybe even guide our behavior based on those ideas, but that will do little to change the underlying pain, because the parts of our brain that react to infidelity don’t have any idea what “fairness” is, at least not in the sense we are talking about it.
Iamcuriousblue: You say I don’t see that as an end-all argument for the “naturalness” of monogamy and possessiveness. Please note that I didn’t claim that evolutionary drives end all argument. In fact, I said clearly that there are sociocultural influences on sexual politics. I agree that things like the social contract and the drive towards reciprocity also play major roles.
But I disagree that monogamy is an arbitrary social construct—there are too many evolutionary advantages to it for it to simply be a check on bad behavior. There is a reason that polygamy faded out as a major form of marriage—in evolutionary terms it definitely advantages women but terribly disadvantages men on the whole (think about that one for a moment: it makes sense for multiple women to share one wealthy mate as long as they are all able to have babies and get the resources they need, but if that man has, say, nine wives, that leaves eight men without mates at all. Not a good deal for us poor guys).
I’m not saying polyamory is impossible…clearly it is possible, and some people are obviously happy with it. But except for rare cases, even when it works it requires extra time, energy and resources to pull off. Not many relationships have those things to spare, at least not so they will have long term success. This is why I consider polyamory a luxury for those few couples that have both the spare resources and the ability to modulate their base instincts. That doesn’t make it good or bad, simply an indulgence that few couples can afford.
on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 3:43 pm Vene wrote:
In my (poly) relationship we treat stuff like porn and sex outside the group as the same thing. Basically, we have rules for the relationship, plainly stated, agreed upon rules. Breaking a rule is breaking trust. The lines drawn can be irrational for relationships. Having a rule where a partner doesn’t watch porn is just as valid as a rule where they don’t sleep with anybody but their SO. I may think that watching porn and having a mistress are two very different things, but that doesn’t mean that the boundaries of a relationship have to treat them that way. As long as they are agreed upon by everyone involved, that’s their business.
on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 5:17 pm c. wrote:
I think monogamy can be fair in principle provided that expectations are made clear from the start but I definitely feel like I got trapped into it. Early on in my (very long-distance) relationship my bf and I agreed on non-monogamy, the only condition being keeping the other partner fully informed. But as soon as I wanted to take advantage of this my bf decided that he wasn’t ok with non-monogamy after all. This definitely isn’t something I would agree to in a new relationship, even with someone I would see more often than every two months, but at this point I’ve become too attached to leave easily. I don’t know what to do and am afraid that if I found someone else the same thing would just happen again. The default-monogamy assumption makes it a lot easier to get away with this kind of bait-and-switch.
on Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 10:00 pm Iamcuriousblue wrote:
Call me Ash:
I stand by the idea that monogamy is a social construct rather than hard wired. Monogamy is far from the only sexual arrangement known from human history. Even when talking about the “decline of polygamy”, you’re talking about something historically recent (and something still practiced in many parts of the world), and something that has taken place in barely an eyeblink in evolutionary time. I think we as contemporary human beings are hard-wired the same way as people in historical cultures where polygamy or other kinds of non-monogamy were common.
And while I argue that, yes, monogamy is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean I’m saying its an *arbitrary* social construct. As I’ve mentioned, its a construct that negotiates several very real competing “hard wired” drives. But what I’m also saying is that I don’t think its in any way inherently the only, or the best, or most fair way to negotiate these conflicting drives.
You say polyamory takes particular time and energy and is a luxury? Assuming monogamy is an easier alternative is premised on the idea that it runs smoothly, something which clearly isn’t necessarily the case.
on Friday, 22 January 2010 at 9:12 am J. wrote:
It seems we end up with a totally different question: Is sex fundamentally different from other topics in regard to our relationships? It might not even be very important wether this supposed difference is genetically or culturally determined (and I dare say: It’s probably a mixture anyway). If we accept it is fundamentally different: End of argument. We can also weasel out by leaving it all up to individuals. People should figure out if it’s fundamentally different, and if so, by all means, stick to each other.
But I’m not happy with that. The question risen was one of ethics: Fairness. And philosophy has worked long and hard trying to answer these questions universally, and I don’t want little blank spaces on the map, marked with a “sex issue - can’t be handled” sticker. Also, I feel quite a lot of topics have been argued to be very hard-wired, very strict (what women feel and can achieve, what children are capable of, how we treat other cultures), and yet: We’ve found our way (and still do).
Regardless wether it’s genetics or culture, if we feel sex can’t be handled by the cognitive tools we have, hey, let’s refine the tools!
I still stick with my post above: There is no fundamental difference, so the mechanisms that help us through many many difficult situations (fears, feelings of guilt, an urge of revenge, …) can just as well help us through bare-bone jealousy. They helped us in not killing everyone with a different skin color, they helped us seeing women in trousers (god forbid!) and they begin to help us cope with homosexuality.
We can go through these “instinctive” responses. At least in theory. In practice, we might not even approach the issue, which is alright as long as these issues are private. Whatever works is okay (and I admit, if I didn’t feel all the other options of relationships totally didn’t work out for me, I’m not sure I would try to tackle being poly). But please, don’t claim the big sex-difference. This is in (IMHO) no way different from the big difference between man and woman or the “against-nature” claims against homosexuality. Scientifically proven (I’m sure they both were, once), but still falling short.
on Friday, 22 January 2010 at 3:30 pm ToppHogg wrote:
If one person in a relationship insists on monogamy, with absolutely NO sexual activity outside the relationship, that person had better expect to satisfy every desire of the partner. Given the parameters of this situation, the partner then has to agree to perform the same service. Otherwise, the relationship is unequal and one partner will eventually decide (whether truly or not is another matter) that they got the short end of the stick, and the potential to destroy the relationship exists.
It’s my experience that the former is too common - as is the latter.
on Sunday, 24 January 2010 at 7:34 am J. Ash Bowie wrote:
Iamcuriousblue:
I stand by the idea that monogamy is a social construct rather than hard wired.
Why can’t it be both? We see monogamous relationships in other species, so clearly it is one possible result of the evolutionary process.
But what I’m also saying is that I don’t think its in any way inherently the only, or the best, or most fair way to negotiate these conflicting drives.
Nowhere did I insist on anything being “the only, or the best, or most fair”. I am saying that monogamy does seem to successfully meet evolutionary demands on the whole, in both human and non-human species. Obviously other arrangements can meet those demands as well, but in humans monogamy has “won” (my discussion of polygamy was an example of why other systems have lost out to monogamy in large-scale society).
But “fairness” is a cultural construct that emerged post-mammalian brain, so that concept is something we map on top of deeper drives. That makes conversations like these confusing, because we have to juggle sophisticated modern ideals with baseline instincts. Greta originally came at the conversation from a top-down perspective (no pun intended) and I simply reminded her that there is a bottom-up perspective that needs to be considered before a complete picture can be painted.
on Tuesday, 26 January 2010 at 10:02 pm Elin wrote:
I have a bit of a problem with the idea expressed by ToppHogg, above, that wanting monogamy obligates one to satisfy every sexual desire of one’s partner.
Should you satisfy your partner’s desires to the best of your ability? Yes, definitely. But EVERY desire? Come on now. This just sounds like a spoiled 2-year-old’s idea of how life should be.
I also don’t think that “visiting sex workers” can be lumped into one category. To me, my partner watching porn, getting a lap dance from a stripper and having sex with a prostitute are three quite different things. One of these scenarios involves my boyfriend having sex with someone else; the other two do not. As Liz pointed out, sex outside the relationship runs the risk of disease and pregnancy. Second, I can understand my partner enjoying the strip-club fantasy of having a beautiful woman dance for him. But if he went to a prostitute, I would wonder what about me was so inadequate that he felt he had to go and fork over quite a bit of hard-earned money to get someone else to do it.
I think this kind of discussion bothers me partly because of my own insecurity. As someone else said, polyamory seems to be a luxury for people who have extra time and energy, not to mention beauty. First, you have to have the time and energy to bang these other people. Also, you have to have these other people that want to bang you. I once met two guys that were interested me in the course of 3 months and, let me tell you, that was a windfall. Whereas for some of the polyamorous people I know, people just fall out of the sky.
on Wednesday, 3 February 2010 at 7:14 pm Steve wrote:
Elin
you said that you would “I would wonder what about me was so inadequate that he felt he had to go and fork over quite a bit of hard-earned money to get someone else to do it.”
It would not be something about you per say, it would simply be that you are not ’somebody else’. Evolution has hardwired blokes to want, to need novelty like oxygen. Every guy alive today is descended from the men who were the most sexual, the most fecund, the most successful at getting more women pregnant.
Our large primate brains may have lifted us from the swamps of our reptilian ancestry but that has only magnified and multiplied the ways the male mind obligates itself to sex.
If you think for just a moment that you could object and argue that females have just as great a need for sex blah blah blah a simple consideration of the number of prostitutes to gigolos demonstrates that to be patiently false. If women wanted casual sex as much as men the law of supply and demand would predict that there would be no or very few prostitutes. In any city there are thousands of prostitutes all taking advantage of the deficit in the availability of sex, and the price is high - both in money and in the social stigma attached should one get caught. And still men use their services because they must.
I would be insecure if I were you: men have a massively higher sex drive than women and are biologically driven to seek multiple partners. It does not matter how attractive you are - you are just one woman. Look at Tiger and his super model wife.
on Wednesday, 3 February 2010 at 8:38 pm Steve wrote:
How is this different from porn? Did you mean to imply that monogamy was the moral default?
How is this any different from something that would be unreasonable to ask unless it was spelled
out and agreed to in advance in the relationship?
All the above: A personal interest in sports, or in porn, or in other lovers intrude into any isolated
exclusionary monogamous relationship. I don’t see that this can be defended as a reasonable
demand after the relationship is agreed to and has commenced.
Steve
on Monday, 8 February 2010 at 12:53 pm Byron wrote:
Greta, I just discovered your site today, and I‘ve only read a few of your posts. You bring up some very important but often un-discussed issues that certainly need to be discussed. So many married people are not happy in their marriage, and it’s partly because as a society we can only talk about one or two views about relationships. Our culture says that everyone should want to get married and have kids. Yet the opposite view is never allowed to be voiced. Everyone does not not need to be married, and having a baby should not be proof of your manhood or womanhood. It’s simply too hard to maintain a monogamous relationship without serious changes in a relationship over time. That’s why there are so many divorces and couples going to marriage counseling. It’s like forcing a round peg in a square hole. Many marital relationships are not always a great fit.
However, I must admit to having a few affairs in marriage, and I don’t feel good about it. It takes up a lot of energy to sneak around and have sex outside of my marriage, and I can’t completely be honest with my wife. So I have to either decide to quit our relationship or be content with it. When kids are involved and there’s lots of investment in the relationship, it makes it difficult to quit, so you try to hanging in there as long as you can. There’s also the fact there is still love and friendship in the relationship, and you don’t want to lose it. However, like I said, people change and their needs don’t always get met by the other person. And that is what makes monogamy so difficult.