Is It Monogamy’s Fault?
A relationship style formed within patriarchy can’t help but have issues
First off, let’s get a few things clarified. I have nothing against monogamy, per se. If that’s something that people want to choose for themselves, they have every right to do so and some people find real happiness in exclusive pair bonding. We chose it quite happily for over 20 years. But, monogamous marriage is a patriarchal structure. It didn’t exist in its current form until about 10,000 years ago, only 3% of human history and it came about primarily for the purposes of being able to definitively determine parentage. The net result of this was control of women and the larger stratification of society.
Polyamory isn’t for everyone and it doesn’t need to be in order to talk about the beneficial elements of it that might be employed in any kind of relationship. You also don’t have to embrace polyamory for yourself in order to be able to recognize some of the issues that might result from a relationship dynamic that is an outcropping of patriarchy, a dominance hierarchy where men historically had significant control over women. But before delving into that further, let’s make sure we are on the same page about some of these terms.
Dominance hierarchy — a social system that is pyramid-shaped, with only a few members of society at the top wielding the most power and having the most influence. Patriarchy is a kind of dominance hierarchy and although not everyone at the top are men (White men in particular), there are more of them at the apex of the pyramid than any other demographic. Patriarchy emerged in our recent past at about the same time as agriculture. It was the first time that human beings had significant personal possessions; ones that they wanted to pass on to heirs of the blood. Prior to this time, humans lived a lot more cooperatively and sexual exclusivity was not commonplace. The onset of patriarchy meant the beginnings of social stratification across the board, not just between men and women.
“From Sumer to ancient Athens and Rome, medieval Europe, the Islamic world and traditional China, rigidly male-dominated societies, argues historian Riane Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade), relied on pain or the fear of it to maintain hierarchical relations of dominance and submission. Patriarchy, she believes, represses sexuality, distorts the natural bonds of erotic pleasure and love between men and women and diminishes women’s status. Drawing on archaeological evidence and Paleolithic and Neolithic art, Eisler argues that prehistoric societies were relatively free of the domination, exploitation and misogyny that have marked Western societies up to the present. She emphasizes that Christianity’s hostility toward sex and, particularly, women’s sexuality has conditioned men and women to accept coercion and repression. Eisler outlines a new sexual ethic that aligns pleasure with our capacity to feel and act empathically. Her visionary, passionate scholarship is a revealing psychosexual exploration of love and power relations.” Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth and the Politics of the Body — New Paths to Power and Love; Riane Eisler
Polyamory — a relationship system in which individuals have different types of romantic and sexual relationships with more than one partner at a time. Sometimes referred to as ethical non-monogamy (ENM), this relational dynamic is based (at least in theory, if not always in practice) in honesty, transparency, communication, and self-responsibility. It is about co-creating different types of intimate relationships which may meet different needs.
My husband, James, and I opened up our relationship to other people about 5 years ago. We noticed the dynamics of our relationship beginning to change as we included not just other lovers, but other beloveds, into our life together. We began to interact with each other much more as individuals who choose to spend our lives together rather than the stereotypical ball and chain.
*The following is excerpted from my comments made in another discussion
We weren’t very jealous or possessive before, but there is none of that now. We no longer fight much (not that we fought a lot before, but some) because there is no more power struggle and because we have complete honesty and transparency. Again, it’s not that we had dishonesty before but the container of traditional monogamous marriage means that certain things are off the table to talk about — like how sexually attracted you are to someone else, for instance. Now we talk about anything and everything. And because of that we also no longer look at whose job it is to do what and simply negotiate getting it done in the moment, sometimes by one person and sometimes by the other. Again, co-creation rather than prescribed roles. As my husband once only half-jokingly said, “Once you get used to the idea of your wife loving and fucking other people, whose job it is to bring in the mail is pretty irrelevant.”
Are there people out there with happy and healthy monogamous marriages? Sure, but overwhelmingly not, or not entirely, if you go by the statistics. Could monogamous married people put a lot of these same principles in place? Absolutely! But the fact of the matter is, most of them don’t because they are bought into a paradigm that was designed 10K years ago as a method of control. Sure, it’s evolved some since the time when a wife was literal property, but not all that much really. We didn’t have marital rape laws in all US states until 1993. So, many of those same ideas and constructs are alive and well in the institution of marriage today — which was my point; which was born out by the study that I cited about why women initiate divorce 70% of the time, but dating break-ups are 50/50.
Patriarchy is a dominance hierarchy. Societal constructs that are entrenched in that lead overwhelmingly to power dynamics within them. We live in a culture where more than 50% of the people believe that the father is the lord and master of the household, so the “freedom” to create your own relationships even within traditional marriage is not really available in the way you are asserting. Of course, certain people could do the work to get there but almost no-one will, in part because they don’t even realize that it is missing — they are bought into the cultural notion of what marriage is that doesn’t encourage that kind of exploration. And as I’ve already stated, my very egalitarian relationship was subconsciously informed by destructive ideas like “ownership” of each other, and in particular, his ownership of me, because that’s the pervasive cultural expectation of what marriage is.
It’s hard to allow for independence if you have a relationship system built on dependency and control, and also if you only get one person who has to fulfill all of your needs. If people can figure out how to put more partnership-oriented elements into their traditional marriage, that’s wonderful. When polyamory works well (and it doesn’t always), it’s because the people involved are focused not only on their needs and boundaries as individuals, but they are seriously undertaking their own self-responsibility and emotional work;
For marriage as we know it to survive in the future, we will all have to catch up. Things are shifting dramatically in our society. We are learning a new form of relationship — not based on sex, or swinging or adventure — but based on integrity, a new concept for many of us. Being out in the open about our real feelings many be a new and creative style of relating. This type of relating is not founded in following our lust or our impulses, but is the basis of forming a new style of relationship that is honest — honest with ourselves about what we really want and desire and honest with our partners about what we need. There is an inherent maturity in standing up for what we believe is our truth — even if it is the need to love more than one person at a time.
There’s absolutely no reason that couldn’t be a part of monogamous marriage today, but you need to be able to clearly see the underpinnings of what you are working with in order to do that — and it’s very hard to see the properties of the ocean while you are swimming in it and everyone else around you is doing the same, so it’s going to take some real self-examination. James and I had no notion that we were not completely egalitarian until we moved into a different relationship paradigm that illustrated it clearly to us both.
It’s not that monogamous marriage is bad and polyamorous relationships are inherently good; it’s that the former was founded in having one leader (the man) and followers (the wife and children). To this very day, it’s a common marriage custom for a bride to be walked down the aisle by her father and ceremonially given to her new husband. Most women take their husband’s last name. There is nothing inherently wrong with either of those things, but they do subconsciously influence how we think about marriage.
In order to create more egalitarian, cooperative, relationships of any kind our society needs to take a page from the polyamory playbook and prioritize integrity, communication, and self-responsibility. Partners need to actively create a relationship that works for them both and not just fall into old structures that may or may not serve them. This takes intention, vulnerability, and a whole lot of on-going communication, but it also leads to deeper connection and love.
© Copyright Elle Beau 2020 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.
