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For many people, committing to monogamy, is like ordering salad in a restaurant. They choose it because they think it's good for them, but they can never entirely stop noticing the nice juicy steaks or heaping scoops of ice cream being served at the tables nearby. If we believe the traditional stereotypes, monogamy comes somewhat naturally for women, but not so naturally for men. Women are typically seen as seeking commitment, whereas men are seen as trying avoid commitment as long as possible – accepting "the old ball and chain" only when forced to do so by the women in their lives. Even for those men who apparently want monogamy, the commitment to monogamy is frequently experienced not as a joy in itself, but rather as a form of sacrifice. (See What is it with Men and Commitment, Anyway? pages 17 and 18.) Men often see marriage as forcing them to "grow up" – which is often seen as a rather frightening and unwelcomed prospect. Also, a man whose spiritual values lead him to believe that sex outside of monogamous marriage is sinful can still feel a rather relentless urge to sample other options on the menu.
From a logical and scientific perspective it is not at all clear that life-long monogamy is the most practical or natural form of mating relationship. Given the statistical rates of infidelity and divorce (which are not nearly as high as some people claim, but are nevertheless significant), it is clear that many people never achieve the seemingly fanciful ideal of life-long monogamy. In reality the choices seems to be between serial monogamy and some form of non-monogamy, such as swinging, polyamory, or cheating. In light of this, we are faced with some interesting sociological and historical questions. How and why did so many human cultures come to see monogamy as the ideal form of mating relationship? And is it, in fact, the most practical, the most natural, and the most spiritually rewarding path in life? Given that interpersonal relationships have so many dimensions, levels, and complexities, why did we historically come to focus on sex as the make-or-break criteria for defining the nature of a relationship? And given the unquestionably powerful urge to explore our erotic options, why did life-long monogamy become the ideal, guiding principle of marriage?
Given the sociological realities of modern life, it is easy to see why most individuals today hold life-long monogamy as their personal goal. We are inundated all of our lives with socially sanctioned images of the romantic ideal of "till death do us part" monogamy. Through friends, family, and all forms of mass media, we are taught to project our natural needs for love, companionship, community, and spiritual meaning on to our romantic-life partner. We are taught that we need to find our soulmate, get married, have children, and grow old together in a sexually monogamous union sanctioned by God and government because otherwise we will be condemned to live lonely, shallow, spiritually degraded lives. This is an amazingly powerful message that goes deep into the very core of our sense of self-worth, and aside from becoming a priest or nun, there are basically no government-sanctioned, socially celebrated alternatives available to us. And thus it comes to pass that we become obsessed with sexual monogamy over and above the many other dimensions of relationship and types of fidelity. But again the question is: How and why did this become our modern-day reality? Were we biologically predestined to be this way? Or are we living in the shadow of historical accidents?
The biological evidence is controversial, but a very general scientific conclusion is fairly safe to make: most species do not favor monogamy, and even in those species that are categorized as monogamous, there is strong evidence that cheating is common. If biology can explain monogamy at all, the most it can explain is a form of serial monogamy with cheating. As for the sociological angle, one has to admit that archeological and historical evidence concerning the origins of monogamy is scare and controversial. There is, however, a logically compelling story that can be told that is backed up with at least some shreds of plausible evidence. It can be argued that the concept of monogamous marriage ultimately stems from men's attempts to keep track of the lineage of offspring in early historic times. By the standards of our modern sensibilities, monogamy may have been an improvement over what appears to have been millions of years of polygany (the practice of one man having two or more wives, which is often confused with the term polygamy, which means have more than one spouse).
As an exercise in creative imagination, we are asked to consider the following scenario: Given the nature of sexual reproduction, women always know which children are theirs, so as long as a family's name and wealth are passed through the female line (matrilineal descent) there is no problem. But if men want to pass the family name and inheritance through the male line (patrilineal decent) then things get messy. This much can be said on the basis of sheer logic: If men want to be sure that they are passing their name and wealth to their biological offspring, they need to know that their mates are monogamous. Even prior to the rise of civilization and the concept of inheritable wealth, one can detect obvious biological pressures to keep female sexual behavior committed to a single male, but once civilization takes hold and great sums of wealth are on the line, the biological pressures are supplemented by very powerful social and political pressures.
What this ultimately means is that, for the purposes of biology and patrilineal decent, men don't have to be monogamous, but women do.
The only way to make a system of patrilineal decent work is to keep close track of biological fatherhood, and the only practical way to do this (until very recently, with the invention of genetic paternity testing) was for men take control of women's sexuality. Thanks to the notion of patrilineal decent, women became property, and women's virginity became a prize of great value, both economically and socio-politically. To make all of this work, some very powerful motivational forces were needed – something more practical than just physical strength and endless jealous aggression. Here the concept of divinity became very useful. To make a long story short, the "Great Goddess" became "God the Father," and "Mother Earth" became a resource to be conquered and divided into units of property.
Other consequences of the rise of male dominance came along as well: male children became more desirable than female children. Historically, the vast majority of infanticide involves female children (See also here), and terms like "whore" and "slut" became popular while no parallel derogatory terms ever became popular for promiscuous men. (Indeed, male promiscuity has typically been a source of male pride -- "virility" and so on.)
The bottom line is that monogamy may have its roots in the control of female sexuality so that men could keep track of their lineage, thus historically linking monogamy with women's oppression throughout human history. And in a final huge ironic twist, the modern stereotype requires that women have to nail men down and make them commit to monogamy!
It can thus be argued that the use of monogamy as a defining feature of success in long-term relationships is little more than a major historical power play for which untold millions of people have paid with unnecessary emotional pain and in many cases literal bloodshed. None of this means that monogamy, as such, in necessarily bad, but it should give us pause for thought. Before putting all of their emotional eggs into the monogamy basket, people (especially women) might do well to seriously consider the possible historical roots of their own desire for monogamy. As children we are instilled with social values that, as adults, we must sometimes reconsider in light of our own mature interests, and the ever-changing times in which we live.
No one doubts that some people (maybe even a majority of people) are best-suited for some form of a monogamous lifestyle – whether it be life-long monogamy, or serial monogamy. What considerations of the possible historical origins of monogamy may lead us to wonder, however, is whether monogamy should be taken as the one and only lifestyle worthy of public approval and social celebration. Perhaps it is a simple fact of life that the best path for some people is some form of non-monogamy. Living as we do now, with the option of genetic paternity testing, it could be that the original motivation for the widespread social endorsement of monogamy as the "one true path" for a spiritually rewarding and socially fruitful life is now gone.
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Comments
This is an interesting article and cause for thought. I have a similar belief, but never considered the lineage issue. I have a belief that much of our monogamous beliefs are driven by religions. What better way to control your flock than to take something that is natural, fun, and brings pleasure and make it wrong. The only way to have sex in many religions doctrines is with the permission of the religious leaders (i.e. only for procreation, etc.)
Nicely done.
i think it would be a mistake to leave out evolutionary-psychological reasons for the character of our sexuality. in the human environment of evolutionary adaptedness, a woman's becoming pregnant by a particular male was a risky commitment, mitigated only by her certainty that the male would be willing to commit to protecting and providing for her and the child until it achieved basic capabilities (2 years of age, give or take). so a woman would have reason to want the male to be monogamous (or something like it) with her for that time period, if only to ensure that he was not distracted by another woman who might get that same commitment.
of course, i am not making the case that we are naturally monogamous - only that we are naturally predisposed to demand monogamy of others (which i think we can safely say conforms to modern experience).
"And in a final huge ironic twist, the modern stereotype requires that women have to nail men down and make them commit to monogamy!"
and this only illustrates how effective the massive and pervasive religious brain washing of women has been, especailly coupled with the ingenious engeineering of society such that women are often given no emotional, social and economic choice but to embrace a monogamy that is not only against human nature, but also applied very one-sided - encompassing women only.
I rarely see a poindexter work so hard at convincing not particularly bright women that it's okay to bone him.
couldn't agree more (I'm a woman). Check out this article--scroll down and it discusses how unnatural monogamy is in-depth (it's also written by a woman): www.youngerthanyourage.com/13/clitoral.htm
How illuminating!
I think that many creatures do not remain committed because they do not possess (they might be capable of possessing it, but they lack it or don't use it to say the least) the intelligence needed to do so. For me, having one person in one's life is awesome- it is like, I am half of the heart, he is the other half. Without him, I am not complete. I search for him when I am without him, and have fun thinking of new things to do, with him. People can change if they try. You just have to find someone that is close enough to a 'foundation' of genetic make-up that you can tolerate being with forever. I mean, you don't dump yourself, do you? You just might change your wardrobe (guy or girl), wear makeup (guy or girl I guess), dye your hair, change your hobbies, get a different career, whatever. You might kind of still look the same, but you change yourself so that you do not grow bored. Well, why not find someone who agrees to change with you, whenever the both of you get bored? See, humans are capable of reasoning like this. Other creatures are not. That is why they are only smart enough to remain committed when their senses are so high that they are capable of doing so. This is my theory.
PS: Possibly, for them, their main purpose is survival. We got plenty of people in this world, we don't need to produce with a bunch of people to make sure we don't die out. We have medicine, et cetera to make up for that.
Jennifer: Thank you for your comments. I would say we need to make a distinction between commitment and monogamy. They are not the same thing. A polyamorous person can make life-long commitments just as well as a monogamous person, and all of the benefits you mention for making a commitment are just as applicable to a polyamorous person. As for intelligence, I don't think you will find any scientific support for your theory. It would take a high level of intelligence to make a conscious conceptual commitment to life-long monogamy just because the concept of commitment is, itself, a high-level concept. But, once again, commitment is not the same as monogamy, so your theory would apply only to the concept of conscious commitment, not to monogamy/polyamory.
Marriage a Compromise:
This is the compromise that human beings have made: to be secure about the future, to be certain about the tomorrows, to have a guarantee that the woman who loves you is going to love you forever, that it is not a temporary affair....
That’s why religious people say that marriages are "made in heaven"... a strange kind of heaven, because if these marriages are made in heaven, then what can you make in hell? They don’t show the signs, the fragrance, the freshness, the beauty of heaven. They are certainly disgusting, ugly... they show something of hell certainly. But man settled for marriage because that was the only way to have private property.
Animals don’t have private property -- they are all communists, and far better communists than have appeared in human history. They don’t have any dictatorship of the proletariat and they have not lost their freedom, but they don’t have any private property.
Man also lived for thousands of years without marriage, but those were the days when there was no private property. Those were the days of hunting; man was a hunter. And those people thousands of years ago had no cold-storage system, no technology -- whatever food they got they had to finish as quickly as possible. They could only hope that tomorrow they will get some food again.
.....continued
...continued from the earlier comment "Marriage a Compromise"
Because there was nothing to accumulate, there was no question of marriage. People lived in communes, tribes; people loved, people reproduced, but in the beginning there was no word for "father." The word "mother" is far more ancient and far more natural. You will be surprised to know that the word `uncle’ is older than the word "father" -- because all the people who were the age of your father... you didn’t know who your father was. Men and women were mixing joyously -- without any compulsion, without any legal bondage, out of their free will. If they wanted to meet and be together there was no question of domination. The children never knew who their father was, they knew only their mother. And they knew many men in the tribe; someone amongst those men must have been their father, hence they were all uncles.
As private property came into existence with cultivation.... With hunting, man could not survive long. People have destroyed complete species of animals. Hundreds of species which once used to dance and sing on this earth... man has eaten them up. Something had to be done because hunting was not reliable. Today you may get food, tomorrow you may have to be hungry. And it was very arduous. The search for animals did not allow man to develop any of his other talents, his genius. But cultivation changed the whole life of man. ...to be continued in part 3
ou must be reminded
of the fact that
cultivation
is the discovery of women,
not of men.
The woman was confined -- she was not able to go hunting. Most of the time she was pregnant, she was weak, she was carrying another soul within her. She needed care, protection...so she was living in the house. She started making the living space more beautiful -- and this you can see even today, after thousands of years.
If you enter into a bachelor’s room you can immediately say that it is a bachelor’s room. You may not be able to decide by seeing the bachelor whether he is bachelor or not, but his room certainly is a bachelor! The woman, her touch, is missing. The house of a bachelor is never a home, it is just a place where he sleeps. It is not something with which he feels a certain intimacy, a certain creative relationship.
The home, the village, the city and the whole civilization are because of the woman, because she was free from hunting and she had different values of the heart and of the mind -- she was more aesthetic, more graceful, more earthly, not at all interested in hell and heaven and God and the devil and all that crap! No woman has written a single religious scripture. No woman has been a philosopher thinking about abstract, faraway things. --- it is too long to keep posting. This bar has limitaionwith 1500 words.
My response to "Marriage as Compromise" by Anonymous: Thanks for the thoughtful response. I have no particular issues with your comments, but I do feel motivated to emphasize a distinction between marriage as form of loving/spiritual commitment, and marriage as a traditional socio-political arrangement stemming from the historically-rooted needs of men who wanted to enforce patrilineal decent. The concept of commitment, in general (whether loving/spiritual or socio-political) lends some psychological sense of security and stability, but this sense of security stems from the nature of COMMITMENT as such, NOT from any sort of additional requirement for monogamy that is built into the terms of the commitment. For some people the addition of monogamy to commitment is essential for the sense of security they desire, but for others it is not. It is really just a matter of personal preference - no roots in any sort of universal human nature. For lots of people, marriage as a compromise could serve the psychological need for security/stability just as well whether or not monogamy is included in the terms of the commitment - especially now that technology has freed us from the need for monogamy just to maintain patrilineal decent. In other words, nowadays men can track their biological offspring without necessarily enforcing monogamy.
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