Maybe I just have ‘monogamy gene’
I think the labels and the sex confuse things. that to me is more about the power of media and memes than what a person really wants.
people should try have more than one best friend at a time first. people should try giving all of their love to a person, and yet, still able to give all of their love to another person, too.
polyamory means loving more than one person, not having sex with more than one person, although certainly that can be/is a part of it.
if after really loving one person in the morning, and oyu are able to love another in the afternoon, and able to ;love them both like family in the evening, then you’ve crossed a threshold.
I think there’s something in us that ‘protects’ us from the ‘danger’ of true intimacy with a person.
having lived in this world of broken promises, lack of social order, and everyone for themselves, is it truly no one that we can only imagine one-on-one, and even then, wrap it up in a mysterious game of soul mates, marriage, fidelity, and so on?
If you as a sexual and creative being were to investigate what it is to be a sexual being in the broad, meta-cultural context, you would no longer wonder about the desperate depravity of western society.
We are soft-wired to believe in monogamy and to be fullfilled from that. but our culture is rife with mother-in-law jokes. we can’t even stand the idea that we can have intimate relationships with the family into which we marry.
i think we are hard-wired to be intimate with dozens of people, and all the subversive perversity in the 10 billion dollar porn industry, to me, is an expression of the pressure we have placed on ourselves to be emotionally fulfilled by one person.
With sex and violence as western cultures only outlet of emotional expression, one could easily think I mean something other than what I’m thinking of when I say ‘intimate’.
and so, I believe the issue is much deeper than I care to elaborate in one post, but I would be willing to have a conversation with someone if my post elicited in your mind a question or three…
I always ponder when reading this thread whether it’s a problem within or brought out from civilization (and I think monogamy spreads farther than just ‘western’ civilization, or if it’s a problem with monogamy in itself.
well, monogamy is a keen strategy as it is employed by successful groups, be they penguins or humans.
but with a fifty percent divorce rate, monogamy as a western institution is a failure, and with nothing to fall back on, we respond to media memes of the perpetual bachelor perpetually de-evolving, the sex-in-the-city professional by day, slut by night, and so on.
as it is, it doesn’t work, and yet, we are left to throw phrases at each other and explect to know what we are talking about.
all the while, we play our hands closer and closer to our chest, at the same time, we have all these unfulfilled needs and we’re creating this wake of sex industry and sexually transmitted disease. and the need to purchase consumer prophylactics in order to engage in ‘free love’
Monogamy does not necessarily mean “mated for life”.
There is “serial monogamy” in other words, one monogamous relationship after another.
My preference for monogamy is solely based on my own bad experiences with polyamory. Not any kind of moral aversion to multiple, simultaneous, intimate relationships.
Hear, hear, heyvictor.
I don’t really plan to get married (in the conventional sense) or have kids. But I really find monogamy (serial or otherwise) the more natural route for me to take. Perhaps if I worked really hard at it, I could be polyamorous, but it would take a lot of energy over a long period of time and it would be such a slow, difficult process that it wouldn’t be worth it. In fact, the virtues of polyamory are pretty much completely lost on me, so any attempt, however small, to enter into a polyamorous mindset is wasted energy. In other words: I have no desire to be polyamorous, so it would be stupid to try. I would feel as though I were pretending to be someone I’m not.
I’ve met people who can’t wrap their heads around “monogamous bisexual” as though it were a contradiction in terms. For them, bisexual means BOTH, whereas for me it means EITHER… one monogamous relationship at a time. Or, maybe more accurately, anatomy just doesn’t matter to me; it’s really about how the other person makes me feel.
That said, I’m not going to tell anyone that monogamy is the right way, the moral high road, or the more “natural” way. I don’t think that humans are hard-wired for any certain way, and the enormous range of “ways” that have worked for (and/or been attempted by) people is testament to that.
I like this statement. People come in all different shapes, sizes… and all different behavioral orientations, too. To me, polyamory vs monogamy isn’t an issue of what’s right and what’s incorrect so much as it is of a personal preference and “orientation”.
well , it’s fine and dandy if one has the skill sets to let yourself off the cultural hook, as long as you realize that is an exception to a long rule of people suffering while they attempt to enact the lessons of their upbringing. for some reason when using the words of ‘the people’ I can’t help but think about what it means to a broad section, as opposed, to what it means to me. I’m in this strange place in my life where my meanings come from the people around me, where I find self-meaning loathable for myself, it feels like I’m living in this bubble where everything I do is right, and everything everyone else does is simply too different to relate. I think maybe I’m just in too weird of a place right now to accurately describe what I want to communicate, and thus fail at communication in general. Something inside of me can get behind ‘personal meaning’, for something to really make sense to me, it has to make sense to the people around me, too.
so, I talked to my girlfriend about all of this and she is actually down. I never thought it would have happened but we were both honest about wanting to expand our sex lives. We will still live together and love each other(or so we plan). And we agreed to abort mission if it starts getting weird. I hope it works out.
That’s awesome diogenes! I hope that goes well for both of you. If it’s what you both want, and you can be completely honest with each other, as well as claim your jealousy as your own personal issues and not blame your lover for your feelings, then your chances are good. 
My sweetie and I have been together for 3 years as of today, we’ve opened and closed our relationship a couple of times, but we’re in a long streak of non-monogamy right now (over a year? geez, time flies). I love that kid more every day, and trust her completely with my heart.
A few comments:
All right, all you old fogies saying we young’uns can’t understand marriage better cut it out, because there’s no correlation between age and successfulrelationships. I’m only 25, but I’ve been married six years now and we’re doing great.
I beleive that marriage, in our culture and others, is primarily a commitment between a breeding pair to care for the offspring of their union together. In many ways I feel the couple should be able to chose to separate after the kids are adults.
Actually, I just think that marriages probably work best when you need to renew them. I know Wiccans do something called a Handfast, which is like a 1 year trial marriage. After a year it expires, and if you two still want to keep it up, you go forthe long term option.
I don’t think you can separate (hetero, vaginal penetrating) sex from the possibility of children and still be responsible. If you are going to do that,you should have a plan for you will do if pregnancy results. This is epecially important for any “on the side” relationships.
In the end, though, I think it’s impossible for one person to meet ALL of another person’s needs. But our culture seems to expect the romantic partner to do just that. Polyamory, to me, is aboutrecognizing that, and allowing ourselves and our relationships to provide for each others needs however it works, without worrying about if it fits a certain model of what a relationship is supposed to be.
What I mean to say Andrew, is that there is the possibilty for a relationship to continue growing and deepening even after 25 years or 40 years or 60 years.
If your relationship with the mother of your children continues to deepen for the next 25 years I’m sure you will have something that you could barely imagine at this point in time.
In the same way that you as an individual continue to learn and come to new understandings until you leave this life, a relationship that can live a long life continues to grow, deepen, and explore new territory.
Just sharing what I have experienced.