After I wrote last month’s “positive definition of monogamy” post, I got a long and thoughtful response from Irrational Point, who blogs at Modus Dopens. IP’s critique of my position that monogamy is a uniquely effective vehicle for personal growth centered around my apparent unwillingness to acknowledge that polyamorous or “open fidelity” relationships could be, for some people, equally successful models for that kind of growth.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know very many folks who have been in long-term, sustained polyamorous relationships. I’ve known lots of folks who’ve been poly for a few years, but none who’ve done it for, say, a dozen years or more. I’d love to hear from folks who have practiced romantic and sexual commitment to more than one person over a period of many years, and learn from them how the opportunities and challenges of the poly lifestyle (I know, the term “lifestyle” grates) have been catalysts for personal growth. I’m genuinely curious.
I do take seriously another of IP’s criticisms. Monogamy is historically rooted in heteronormativity. Our language about commitment remains inseparable from the language of traditional marriage. Indeed, one of the reasons I’ve been such a strong supporter of marriage equality for gays and lesbians is because of my passionate commitment to monogamy. Of course, I don’t think for a minute that monogamy and legal marriage need always be synonymous. It’s perfectly possible to make and honor commitments without state sanction.
It’s also true that the idea of companionate marriage as a vehicle for mutual growth is a relatively recent one. Marriage itself, as researchers like the indispensable Stephanie Coontz have pointed out, has evolved and metamorphosized in extraordinary ways. It certainly wasn’t always an institution designed to bring emotional growth and fulfillment to its participants.
Marriage also wasn’t always an institution closely correlated with monogamy. Though polyandrous (one woman,many husbands) marriages were rare, polygamy and marriage have obviously gone together, and in some places, still do. And even where monogamy was expected, husbands were often expected (or at least permitted) to stray with few if any serious repercussions. Thus my enthusiasm for marriage is entirely for one particular modern understanding of the institution, one that comes with an expectation of mutual monogamy as a challenging, useful, and life-enhancing discipline.
As a feminist, I am acutely conscious of the ways in which the “yoke” of marriage (to borrow Christian language) has been particularly burdensome for women. I’m also aware of our cultural myth that men are naturally promiscuous, women naturally monogamous. That myth suggests that men are thus more reluctant to commit to marriage (or its equivalent). It suggests that if a woman does find a man who is willing and capable of being sexually faithful to her, she should be bloody grateful and not ask for much else. One of the many insidious ways in which the myth of male weakness works is to suggest to women that monogamy is such an incredibly difficult sacrifice for most men that if a wife is fortunate enough to have a faithful husband, she ought to give him a pass on everything else. That lie needs regular repudiation.
As I argued in my May 11 post , however, we need to see that monogamy is more than sexual fidelity. It’s not enough to not fuck other people, or have emotional affairs with them. I think that the case I made for monogamy transcends heterosexuality. I’m not sure, however, it can encompass polyamory. On the other hand, I’m not sure that it can’t. On that latter score, I’d like to hear more.
First of all, thanks for writing this and addressing these issues.
As I’ve hinted in my comments here and in the original post, I’m not sure that long-term-ness is necessarily the best measure for the success of a relationship or the extent to which it promotes growth.
This is all very well, but one of the failings of the institutiona of marriage (in its current USian form, to take one example) is that same-sex relationships are not the only kinds of relationships that are not recognised. Poly relationships aren’t recognised by the state, and state recognition is a problem for asexual people or people for whom the strongest relationship(s) in their lives is a friendship(s). That’s why some queer rights advocates are anti (all) marriage.
I guess what I’m saying is that the discourse of marriage and monogamy also belongs to a discourse that systematically discounts certain kinds of relationships. And it seems to me that attempts to decide that certain sorts of mutually respectful relationships are better than others are almost invariably heteronormative.
–IP
I believe that monogamy works for some people. However, looking at the statistics of successful (or, unsuccessful) marriages indicates that it doesn’t work for everyone. My problem is mainly with monogamy being defined as the default relationship model, and the expectation of what a healthy relationship is.
Plenty of people have successful and healthy relationships following models other than monogamy. And there are many ways to do open realtionships. It doesn’t *just* mean poly. There’s swinging, open sexual relationships, poly, triads, and more. If you haven’t read ‘Opening Up’ by Tristan Taormino, I highly recommend it. It’s the best book on open/non-conventional relationships I’ve ever read.
The key to a healthy and successful relationship that promotes growth of the parties involved isn’t the find the relationship model that works for them and try to mold their relationship to fit that expectation. Instead, they should mold their relationship model to fit the individuals themselves. What works for them? What doesn’t? It doesn’t have to fit into a box of “monogamy,” “poly,” etc. Every relationship can have different rules and expectations. The key is to make sure it’s what works for those involved.
Further, someone many have a successful monogamous relationship with one partner, but have an open relationship with another. That doesn’t make one relationship more successful than the other; success is defined on an individual basis. We need to let go of these rigid expectations of what a relationship is “supposed” to look like, because THAT causes more harm than good, and THAT is what ruins relationships that may have been successful had they not been under the impression that their relationship was “supposed” to fit a certain image.
Britni, thank you (and thanks, IP). But I think I resist the anthropology you’re referring to. I suppose I see relationships as having purposes, and that chief among those purposes is to instigate growth for those involved in them. And growth is often something that happens in unexpected and uncomfortable ways. That doesn’t mean an obligation to suffer unhappily in a bad relationship — it does mean that the person (or persons) we are with should push us, challenge us,help us to find the parts of ourselves that still need growing. My wife and I refine each other, like iron sharpening iron. We don’t just adapt to what’s comfortable.
Does that make sense?
I’m not sure what you mean.
Is there necessarily only one kind of purpose that matters? Or only one kind of purpose that is the right kind of purpose? Is it up to you to decide what the purposes of other people’s relationships are?
Even assuming that the purposes can be externally determined, it’s unclear to me why certain kinds of (mutually respectful) relationships should be thought inherently more successful at working towards those purposes than others. I’ve grown a lot from one particular short-term relationship. I’ve also grown a lot from my current relationship, which is both monogamous and long-term, but not marriage-like in a Judeo-Christian sense.
Again, it’s unclear to me why you think mutual growth (even assuming that this was everyone’s goal, and assuming it is the best goal) can only happen in a monogamous marriage-like relationship.
I’m also somewhat uncomfortable about the last sentence:
perhaps unintentionally, it seems to suggest either that relationships are the *only* vehicle for growth (what about people who are single? Can’t they grow?) or that any model for relationships apart from the one you advocate is lazy. It’s not clear to me why this should be, since other kinds of relationships are not incompatible with growth.
Look, it’s one thing to say that monogamy is what best encourages growth for *you*, and that it is the kind of relationship you want, with the kind of purpose you want. That’s all perfectly legit. Where it starts being problematic is if you decide that because it works for you, it must necessarily work for everyone else as well, unless you have some reason why it is a net good. It does not seem to me that you do have such a reason (unless I’m missing something), and that being the case, it’s important to deal with the association between this discourse and heteronormativity.
–IP
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IP, and I’m not seeing what’s heteronormative about talking about two people of any sex. Marriage as an institution is hetero-normative — but if we look at the history of same-sex love, we see that monogamy and commitment are hardly alien values. It’s not as if the desire to build a life with one person is part of the Gramscian hegemony that gays and lesbians have unwittingly adopted. The primacy that the struggle for marriage equality enjoys in the queer community (at least in the States) is an intuitive recognition that this matters above all else.
Hugo,
I’m confused with your 4:36 a.m. response to IP. I have no problem with your talking of “commitment” and the importance of that. Your presumptions that monogamy and a “simple” relationship seems simplistic to me. To say that this works best for you – I have no problems with.
I’m in a monogamous, committed relationship now.
Some years ago I met one member of a triad relationship. In this case the “original wife” was a homebody, while her “husband” and the woman who had joined their relationship both enjoyed going out a lot. No doubt in other ways each of them added to what they shared together.
I think in the case of this triad they each had two separate commitments as well as a commitment to the three of them together. Their commitment, if anything, was greater and more complex than I could ever imagine having in my mono relationship (now).
In no way would I say that these three people had it easier or better or anything similar than I or you have. Their commitment is far deeper and more complex than my tie to my duplicate bridge game (important to me) which my partner has no interest/aptitude for and my commitment to my partner.
I admired them. I’m not them and don’t want to live like they do. I fail to see Why – such relationships aren’t “just as good” and just as “right” as your relationship is.
Can most – do like they did? No, of course not.
Thanks!
I don’t think anyone’s claiming they are (that would certainly be a problematic claim). Certainly that’s not my claim.
(I do slightly object to the equation of monogamy with commitment, however. Committed relationships don’t have to operate on the model you’re suggesting.)
My point is that the privileging of monogamy over other relationship attributes is heteronormative.
Because it’s not just people’s sex that matters. The discourses about relationships, and how those discourses have been used, matter too.
It’s a Big Deal in queer communities that monogamy (and other aspects of traditional Judeo-Christian marriage-like relationships) are sometimes seen to be negotiable. When I say “a Big Deal”, I mean, it’s something that’s been prominent in discussions about queer communities, and often from within queer communities themselves, although I’m wary about the extent to which this is making queer communities sound monolithic. But think Queer Read This and similar documents, and the way they express rejection of pressure to have the suburban nuclear family, the white picket fence, etc.
Then think about the way that discursive rejection of certain kinds of discursive family construction has been seized on by the religious right, and used to paint queer people as “against family values”, or as sexually promiscuous, sexually immoral, detrimental to society, etc.
When we say that certain kinds of (mutually consensual and respectful) relationships are inherently better than others, that belongs to this kind of discourse: the kind that says that some relationships are “family values” and others are immoral. That’s a heteronormative discourse, and the kind of real-world effects it has are heteronormative.
–IP
I suppose I see relationships as having purposes, and that chief among those purposes is to instigate growth for those involved in them. And growth is often something that happens in unexpected and uncomfortable ways. That doesn’t mean an obligation to suffer unhappily in a bad relationship — it does mean that the person (or persons) we are with should push us, challenge us,help us to find the parts of ourselves that still need growing.
I think you missed the entire point of my comment. I agree that relationships should have purpose, and that people should grow from those relationships. And maybe, for you, monogamy is most effective in accomplishing that. My comment actually agreed with you that there should be purpose and growth to relationships, but I question why that has to be defined by monogamy. I could have a perfectly functional realtionship that provided growth and purpose, but that doesn’t mean it had to be from a monogamous relationship.
My point that was, while I agree that there needs to be a functional definition of monogamy, and positive one, there also needs to be a redefining of what, exactly, our expectations of “relationships” really are. What works for one person will not work for every person.
Geo, I’m not arguing with your friends’ experience — I’d like to see more of those relationships myself, particularly to see how they shift and change over time.
I agree with both IP and Britni that what works for one person will not work for everyone. I do think, however — and this is rooted in feeling and instinct and experience rather than reason alone — that the willingness to close doors, to take options off the table, is a precondition for growth. A triad in which there was a commitment to not be with anyone outside that triad seems to meet that standard.
Discomfort is part of growth. Discomfort happens in relationships — and when it is a viable option to seek sexual solace with someone else, that seems to me to short-circuit the good that might come from wrestling through that discomfort with one other person. I am an imaginative person, but cannot imagine how any condition other than sexual exclusivity could produce equally beneficial results. I honor that others think differently. But leaving aside my Christianity, it goes against everything I think I understand about the human person, which is why I remain committed to monogamy as a preferential option for growth.
And why I am so supportive of those in the gay and lesbian community who are fighting for marriage equality. Marriage has a dark history — but what was cannot blind us to the possibilities of what is and what could be for this remarkably flexible institution.
I can’t “go” where IP and Britni are going, but I appreciate the challenge.
In my experience, a willingness to open doors and try new things has been crucial. However, it’s not clear to me why not doing certain things is necessarily synonymous with “not having certain kinds of relationships”. Not that this isn’t about having sex with other people, because my post wasn’t just about poly relationships — it’s about the fact that I’m not sure we get to say that some kinds of relationships are better or more important than others.
Apart from anything else, your accounts seems to allow for *only* relationships as a vehicle for personal growth. This is contrary to my experience. I don’t *just* learn from my significant other and my relationship. I do learn from my relationship, but I learn from all sorts of other experiences too: consciousness-raising, reading, talking to the people in my life, interacting with the world and thinking about my experiences.
Claiming that a relationship is the only or the best vehicle for growth seems to me to amount to the idea that the only kind of growth that really matters is the kind that depends on and relates to a partner. This suggestion strikes me as dangerous — an important part of feminism in USian society involves not teaching women that they depend on their partners for “wholeness”. How is this to be reconciled with the idea that personal growth can only be effectively achieved through a relationship, and the only kind of growth that matters is the kind that revolves around their partners?
I don’t think that means we can ignore the ways in which certain discourses can cause real-world harm now. It’s not clear to me that you’re addressing the issue of heteronormativity.
IP, the business about doors isn’t an either/or. And of course folks can grow outside of a relationship. But a great many people very badly want relationships; indeed, a remarkably high percentage of young — and not so young — people make it clear that they want enduring, monogamous relationships almost more than they want anything else.
Feminism has to be as much about as how we are in relationships as as it is how well we thrive outside of them. Of course women don’t need men. But the famous fish/bicycle image doesn’t work either; fish don’t fantasize about bikes, a great many women do fantasize about building a lasting, loving, fulfilling, faithful relationship with a man (or a woman). Many of them have the “if/then” mentality (the one that says IF I find the right person, THEN I will commit, but I won’t throw myself into a relationship willy-nilly.) I don’t think those folks need to be talked out of their desires, or subjected to lectures about how their desires are socially constructed. (Though those lectures have a place.) They need tools to make the relationships that they want happen — if, and only if, they want them. And talking about what monogamy is and isn’t is part of giving those tools. I think that’s part and parcel of the feminist project.
And I’m sorry, but I’m wracking my gender studies professor brain here, and maybe I’m just dense, but I just don’t see how the ideal of monogamy — which is not the same as marriage, and should not be confused with it — is hetero-normative.
I still find things lacking in some of the conclusions that you make Hugo. IF a relationship is shaky or bad, generally one must deal with Why it is problematic and (often) work through these issues before complicating that relationship involving other people.
This could be equally true in situations that have no possible non-monogamy where for example a het man may escape his relationship by spending increasing time with his “buddies” watching sports or playing video games or whatever (besides things involving women in potentially sexual relationships).
Alternate relationships whatever their nature may be are not about escaping growth or conflict or difficulties one may have with life in general.
1. Difficulties in a relationship which may relate to being poly or otherwise non-monogamous are Not Necessarily Sexual,
2. Sexual relationships or behavior may be minimally to critically important in alternate relationships.
“when it is a viable option to seek sexual solace with someone else, that seems to me to short-circuit the good that might come from wrestling through that discomfort with one other person. I am an imaginative person, but cannot imagine how any condition other than sexual exclusivity could produce equally beneficial results”
3. Your words above – are troubling to me:
“sexual solace” = particularly. Due to erectile dysfunction issues I have faced increasingly over the past 15 years, it is unlikely that I will ever be able to have (“normal”) sexual intercourse again. While this saddens me, I also accept this. My partner does Not want other sexual partners. I could easily imagine Me wanting her to have the option of having sexual intercourse with a man or men in the future under certain circumstances if she might desire this. (This is totally aside from other options that exist for us as a couple.) This would have Nothing necessarily to do with Poly relationships, though it could. We’ve “wrestled through that discomfort” for the entire eight years of our relationship and will continue to do so. Whatever We might choose in the future will hopefully be right for us, no matter what that choice might be.
4. It appears to me that Honesty, Depth, Caring, Love and similar are most important in any relationship. It will be much more damaging to my relationship if Either of us loses the depth of that commitment, however that might be. Examples I could see of that might be:
a. Financial malfeasance,
b. Commitment to Work – excluding the commitment to the relationship
c. Becoming overly involved in: religion, a hobby, the internet or many other such things – to the detriment of the primary relationship
besides the obvious issues related to sexual fidelity.
I would agree that Sexual Infidelity and/or failing to be connected sexually/emotionally is critically important in any primary relationship. How one does this is important to us all as individuals.
You make it sound like Poly or other alternate relationships are where one or both individuals are Escaping Problems. Far more common I think are people who struggle on with unhappy, unfulfilling lives too scared to leave bad relationships or struggle to make them better or simply have failed relationships.
Poly and other alternatives aren’t for most people perhaps. Where we as individuals are “different” in various ways, often alternatives are helpful. Whether the (sic) “wife swapping” is “sexual” or is where the wife and other husband play tennis all the time together or whatever the alternatives are – - mean little to me. What is important is that people are honest and that it works for them. Thanks!
Hugo, I highly recommend you give Tristan Taormio’s excellent book, “Opening Up” a read. It’s a pretty quick read, and part of what might be helpful for better understanding that folks in nonmonogamous relationships can learn and grow just as much as folks in monogamous relationships are the “interview” portions of the book, where Taormino gives a window through which to look at the (growing!) human beings who have these relationships.
http://books.google.com/books?id=_HrTMMm9abUC&dq=Opening+Up:+A+Guide+to+Creating+and+Sustaining+Open+Relationships+by+Tristan+Taormino&hl=en&ei=RtAHTOi7HoPOM6X46LUE&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA
Also, when you say, “But a great many people very badly want relationships; indeed, a remarkably high percentage of young — and not so young — people make it clear that they want enduring, monogamous relationships almost more than they want anything else,” I think you beg the question: Why do people often want enduring, monogamous relationships more than they want *anything else*–say, healthy relationships of all kinds, or even a healthy, non-needy relationship with themselves? Part of the answer is because the way that monogamous romantic relationships *are* normative, even if they aren’t hetero-normative (which is arguable), and they are pushed at us from every direction, in every way. For some of us, it feels like they are forced on us, and some of us reject them, just as out-of-the-closet queer folks reject hetero relationships. (And poly may very well be more of a hard-wired sort of thing than a lifestyle “choice” anyway–at least lots of poly folks feel like it is.)
I agree.
(I was saying that the hetero bit comes in because the harm done by the normative bit tends to be to queer people (others too, perhaps).)
–IP
Coming to this late, but I wanted to say:
That doesn’t mean an obligation to suffer unhappily in a bad relationship — it does mean that the person (or persons) we are with should push us, challenge us,help us to find the parts of ourselves that still need growing. My wife and I refine each other, like iron sharpening iron. We don’t just adapt to what’s comfortable.
In my experience, plenty (maybe most) polyamorous people have difficulties in their relationships that refine each other, that don’t just adapt to what’s comfortable.
Hugo, I’m pretty sure you would be really sad if you heard about a relationship in which one partner was pressuring another partner to be poly. A relationship in which Partner #1 really didn’t want to be poly, but did it for the sake of Partner #2, and maybe grew a lot as a result. Why is that different from a situation in which Partner #1 pressures Partner #2 to be monogamous?
Lastly, while I totally understand the assertion that pressure and lack of options can create resilience and emotional growth (that’s part of the reason I’ve forced myself to stay in Africa and undergo massive culture shock over the last year), I am really not convinced that all growth is facilitated by that. In fact, I recently wrote a post in which I specifically recommended a “low-pressure environment” for the purpose of encouraging sexual openness and evolution:
http://clarissethorn.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/sexual-openness-2-ways-to-encourage-it/
I’d be interested to know what you think about that post.
Er. You do realize that if you want information about polygamy you can simply flip open your Bible, right? Most of it’s toward the front.
the willingness to close doors, to take options off the table, is a precondition for growth
You conflate this with monogamy. Why?
and this is rooted in feeling and instinct and experience rather than reason alone — that the willingness to close doors, to take options off the table,, is a precondition for growth.
It seems to me that if you really believed this, you’d say that the best romantic relationship is one in which no children are born.
Makes as much sense as a requirement for sexual exclusivity; indeed, more.
what is sex? is sex monogomous by definition?
sophonisba – as well as to cut oneself off from pre-marriage single friends. Closes doors, removes temptation, propels one towards the “growth” of making new friends.
Hugo is a Southern Californian and tends to worship “personal growth”, forgetting that while growth can be a fine thing it can also be destructive.