My Facebook friend Jennifer sends me a link to this blog post by Greta Christine: Is Monogamy Fair? The post deals with whether it’s reasonable to ask your partner in a monogamous relationship to avoid masturbating, to avoid porn, or to avoid strip clubs and sex workers.
I pick those three examples because for many people, they fall on an escalating scale of “violation” of the basic principle of monogamy. While many folks are comfortable with the idea that their partners masturbate, many of those same men and women might prefer their partners not do so to porn. And many of those who are fine with a lover’s private porn use would draw the line at accepting their decision to have sex with a prostitute.
I’ve written about porn and masturbation before, and you can find my (often evolving) thoughts on those subjects under the categories on the right. What struck me about Greta’s post was the underlying premise: is it fair to ask a partner to only be sexual with you?
The simple answer, of course, is yes. Monogamy in 21st century Western culture isn’t coerced (though it is still elevated,often wrongly, above other options). People in committed relationships enter those relationships by choice, presumably motivated by desire. And it’s not unreasonable, in a relationship, to ask for what you want.
Years ago, Mary Chapin-Carpenter sang “It’s too much to expect, but it’s not too much to ask.” It’s an important distinction. Harry gets to ask Mabel to not masturbate alone because it’s his wish that both he and Mabel are only sexual when they are together. He’s allowed to want what he wants. But he doesn’t get to expect Mabel to agree. Even in marriage, one partner’s desire is not automatically the other’s obligation. To use Greta’s language, it’s fair for Harry to ask… and equally fair for Mabel to refuse the request.
Monogamy isn’t one-size fits all. Monogamy isn’t about the limitations you place on your sexuality so much as it is about the degree to which you prioritize a sexual relationship. So one monogamous relationship could be “open” to other partners while another was “closed”. What would determine the health and the strength of the relationship would be not the choices made, but the openness, clarity, respect, mutuality and honesty with which the ground rules of the relationship were negotiated.
Monogamy is, sooner or later, sacrificial. It calls for something maddeningly delicate — the merging of interests and the practice of constant compromise without the complete loss of individual identity. It is an endlessly shifting Venn Diagram in which there must always be three distinct entities: You, Me, and Us. The $64,000 question is the obvious one: how much of “Me” do I give up for the “Us”? To pretend that the answer is “nothing” is absurd. But to insist that the answer is “everything” is a recipe for romantic disaster.
What we want sexually (and in other areas) fluctuates over the course of our lives, and certainly over the course of a long-term relationship. Successful couples tend to renegotiate agreements and compromises. “You’ve changed!” should be less of an accusation than a compliment; who wants to be the exact same person at 45 that they were at 23? We’re here to help each other grow.
Part of that growth involves developing the courage to ask for what we want. Part of that growth also involves developing the courage to say “no” to a request we cannot grant without a loss of something very precious. We have the right to ask, but our asking never entitles us to a “yes”. In that spirit of balancing sacrifice with self-love, of valuing the Us while not letting go of the Me, a monogamous relationship can indeed find its way to fair.
So it is eminently “fair” to ask a partner to be sexual only with you. And it’s equally fair for them to say “no”. And fighting fairly through the conflict that follows will either allow the relationship to grow — or to end, gracefully and kindly.
I’ve got to say, that was a lot of words for saying, “You can ask anything you want, but that doesn’t mean someone has to give it you.”
Here is a more interesting question, I think. If I ask someone to only be sexual with me, does that in turn mean I am obligated to meet their sexual needs? Perhaps I can’t meet all of their needs, but perhaps I need to make a good faith effort to do so?
Here’s another question, again that I think is more interesting. What drives the requests we make of others to curtail their behavior? What is the fear/insecurity that underlies my request that she not masturbate? Is the request reasonable? Am I worried about whether my partner will leave me? Will she neglect my sexual needs in preference of fulfilling them elsewhere? Is it better to take the request at face value or explore the motivations behind the request?
I think you can see where I am coming from. Like you, I have no problem with people entering into mutually agreeable contracts with one another. However I don’t think courage is to be found in asking for what we want, particularly where monogamy is concerned. We have, after all, a culture that has declared monogamy to be the sine qua non of a committed relationship and any request to deviate from it is abnormal, immoral, and abhorrent.
Courage to me is found not in the request that my partner restrict their behavior, but in being honest about my motivation in making the request. It’s not courageous for me to ask my partner not to do X, but rather to lay bare all my fears and insecurities that lead me to ask for X, and risk my partner’s rejection. It’s found in putting the relationship on the line even as the state brings considerable financial and civil penalties to bear when we decide the price of admission has grown too steep, particularly when there are children involved.
CW, if you assume that the root cause of the desire for sexual exclusivity is fear and insecurity, you’ve already poisoned the well. Asking people to think about why they want what they want is good. Insisting that they justify their wants, or pathologizing and psychoanalysing their wants, is not good.
I dunno, Hugo. Setting “fair” aside, I think I’d say that it’s almost always a bad idea to ask your partner to, for instance, eschew masturbation.
For one thing, it’s generally a bad idea to ask someone to stop doing something that gives them harmless pleasure. If you do, there’s a good chance that either they’ll comply and resent you, fail to comply and start lying to you, or fail to comply and then eventually come clean … which will put you in a very awkward position.
For another — and I’ll put this in as un-poisoning-the-well way as I’m able — I just can’t think of a good and healthy reason to make that request. I can think of a lot of really bad reasons, a lot of really creepy reasons, a lot of really wrongheaded reasons, but no good ones. I’m not saying there ARE no good reasons, but I am saying I’ve never heard one.
Yeah, some of us are preferentially monogamous simply because we find sex to be an extremely intimate act on multiple levels that we prefer to keep as private as possible…I’m trying to figure out how it could be linked to any kind of fear and insecurity in me and simply can’t see the connection. Not that I’m fearless and without insecurities, lol! …but, envisioning my partner having sex with someone else if we have an agreed-upon nonmonogamous relationship doesn’t trigger those feelings. Afraid of what? I suppose our chances of catching the kinds of STD that aren’t protectable-against with condoms (say, herpes) would increase and maybe I’d fear that..? But not terribly, as I’d risk that with any new sex partner if they weren’t visibly symptomatic. Fear that he’d want to stop being with me to only be with her..? Obviously, if he wanted to just be with one person, he and I would already have a monogamous relationship, so I can’t see why I’d fear that. Fear of comparisons..? People are going to make comparisons whether their partners other than you are past or present–the only reason to fear such a thing is if your partner wants to share the comparisons with you to your face where you come out on the lower end of the totem pole, and if he wants to be flat-out mean like that, he’s likely mean about a lot of other things too and you might seriously want to reconsider your relationship period.
Nope, it’s just me, my privacy and introversion and the way I am emotionally, that leads me to prefer monogamous relationships. (I’m allergic to casual hugging, too.
I’m sure they’re related.)
There is some courage involved in asking for monogamy, though, as one unfortunate trait that most of the preferentially non-monogamous folks I have met share is that they feel perfectly justified in lying to your face about what they’re willing to do in terms of monogamy. For the most part, they will not be honest; they clearly feel they are entitled to a relationship with a preferentially monogamous person regardless of that person’s expressed wishes on the subject. I asked someone like that once, Why the lying? why not just go your separate way and hook up with someone who does share your non-monogamous preferences? And the answer I got was (a) there aren’t enough women who are willing to agree to non-monogamy to make that a realistic, viable alternative and (b) they aren’t you in particular and I want you. sigh.
I’m not assuming that those are the root causes or only reasons, but I’d have a difficult time believing anyone who said they weren’t among the common reasons. And I don’t think it’s poisoning the well if you are engaged in an honest inquiry rather than trying to stuff someone into a particular box you’ve imagined for them.
Consider the recent study from Oregon State suggesting that up to 40% of couples disagree about whether they are in a monogamous relationship. If people aren’t even communicating to each other that they want to be monogamous, can we truly expect that they’ve thought about why they want to be monogamous?
My point is that I do believe we have a profound inability – or perhaps plain unwillingness – to be introspective about why we make such requests. Just as it is “fair” for me to ask that she constrain her sexuality to only involve me, it’s just as “fair” for her to ask me to explain my request.
Just as she has the right to deny my exclusivity request, I have the right to deny her request that I justify what she sees as an unreasonable request. We each then have a decision to make: do we stay given the line the other has drawn? Sounds like we’re back where we started.
@lisakansas
I suspect from what you’ve written that you would not be among the 40% who disagreed about whether they were in a monogamous relationship because you will have negotiated that already. I think most people do indeed negotiate the shape of their relationship. But if a request was made of you by your partner that you thought was unreasonable, would you acquiesce because it was your partner asking, would you simply say “no,” or would you push back? And if it’s the latter, what would that push-back look like?
As to those guys lying, it’s because the lack the courage to ask for the type of relationships they want, and lack the decency to go without until they find them. “sigh” is too kind a sentiment.
Cornwalker, of course people need to challenge each other. It’s part of the give and take. We start with assuming that the other person’s wants are genuine, and we start with a blank slate. So it’s perfectly okay to ask “Why do you want me to stop using porn?” It’s not okay to follow it up with “Is it because you’re so insecure about your own body?”
Pushing back is hard. Learning to live in the limbo of unresolved conflict is hard. It can be done (in the ninth year of an intense but successful monogamous relationship, I’m living it out), but it does take work. It isn’t for everyone.
Interesting that you would connect the insecurity I mention to body insecurity – that seems to be where more of your writing is these days. I can see why you might think of it as poisoning the well if the probing was to draw attention to a personal insecurity (that would be a dick move). I was thinking more about relationship insecurity (e.g. does she still love me, does this mean she wants out, is there someone else, etc). I’m not sure how to connect body image issues to sexual exclusivity but I trust there is a connection there.
After 18 years in a monogamous relationship I’m still figuring things out. But I do feel I can tell the difference between being an asshole and genuinely trying to figure out where my partner is coming from. Or maybe I don’t, and she’ll deliver a painful reality check if I ask her.
Speaking of which, when I asked for her thoughts on this she was conflicted. On the one hand, she doesn’t necessarily know why she feels so strongly about any particular request, she just does and wants me to understand that desire and agree. I can appreciate that sometimes we just want our partners to do something, even if we can’t explain why. However, at the same time she realizes I am also an actor here and if I feel the request is unreasonable, my default reaction is going to be to say “no.” Instead of saying no, I see asking her to justify the request as me saying, “I see you feel strongly about this, but I think this is unreasonable, however I’m open to being persuaded.”
For the record, I don’t have a dog in this fight, as no “unreasonable” exclusivity requests to have been made by myself or my partner. I agree, it isn’t for everyone. Perhaps if people were a bit more introspective or honest with themselves, they wouldn’t make monogamous commitments they are ill-equipped to honor.
Saying ‘no’ is one thing, breaking a promise (or a vow!) is another. No one has a right to pull the old bait and switch. If you’re partner married you on the condition that you’d be faithful for the rest of your life, you can’t just shrug off that promise. Your partner made a lot of sacrifices to be in a long term relationship with you (the could have married someone who WOULD be faithful). If they don’t get you promised them, you cheated them.
If you think the concept of lifetime commitment is obsolete, then don’t get a lifetime commitment. Promise you’ll be faithful for a few years, or “as long as you both shall love.”
corn walker, I think that sometimes you have to accept that people just feel a certain way about things; but it’s also entirely fair for them to ask that they CONSIDER why they are not OK with it.
So perhaps your wife says “I’m not OK with you using porn,” and when you ask why, she says “I don’t know, I just am.” A bad response is for her to say “so you can’t, and that’s that”, or for you to say “unless you can provide me with a logical reason I’m still using porn and that’s that.” (The former is controlling. The latter is “I get to do whatever I want, if my debate skills are better than yours.”)
But I do think it would be entirely fair for you to ask that your wife think about her feelings and talk about them. Maybe she IS insecure about how she measures up to a porn actress – and maybe she’s right to feel that way, if on some level you find her wanting. Maybe she’s seen a lot of misogynistic porn and worries about your opinion of women. Maybe you spend way too much time looking up porn sites. Etcetera.
@mythago
Here’s what I’m suggesting. We can each take an approach of wanting to understand and wanting to be understood, or we can issue edicts and dictums and ultimatums. I’m not saying that either approach is more valid than the other, but that with either approach there is no standard of “who is right.” Both approached present to each party a series of choices.
If my partner asks me to change my behavior and is either incapable or unwilling of helping me understand why I should change my behavior, I have a choice to make: I can either accede or I can decline. If I think the request is reasonable then I will likely agree. If I think the request is unreasonable, then I will likely decline.
If I decline, the choice has now reverted to my partner, who has to decide whether this is a battle worth fighting, a reason for leaving, or something she can let go of. Once she makes her choice, I can then react to that choice. If she’s willing to leave over it, perhaps I’m willing to make an offer of compromise. If she wants to fight over it, do I engage?
All of this is basic interpersonal communication. The thing is, there are no agreed ground rules for how the game is played out. We have some broad rules society has agreed upon – no domestic violence, no kidnapping, etc – but the finer points of the game are very much up to the individuals. Each person inhabits a role, and ultimately we need to decide if our partner is someone with whom we can negotiate. We assume that the other is negotiating in good faith, but sometimes they aren’t.
And contrary to @GudEnuf’s assertions, relationships are contracts between two parties, and those contracts can be rewritten either jointly or unilaterally. My partner might decide she is going to see other men – I can either accept this change to our agreement or I can decide to break it off. But it is both unreasonable and unrealistic to hold people to lifetime commitments made in a state of ignorance of what the future may hold. Things change, and our most basic moral duty to our partners is not clinging to an agreement made in the heady days of early love, but according them the respect of being honest and forthright with them when things do change. What each of us has a right to expect in our relationships is honesty from our partners so we can make informed choices. For some reason, this is simply stated but perhaps the hardest thing to put into practice for many.