Dear Teaming Millions,
My mother and I have an ongoing debate regarding the morality of having affairs and the expectation of monogomy especially in males. I draw on the Teaming Millions hoping to quantify the variables that lie in this debate and come to some sort of line-in-the-sand conclusion.
It is asserted that wanting to have relationships with other people, be they sexual or not, is completely fine and that a member of a established relationship is overstepping their bounds if they try to impede on that right. In addition, if anyone has a problem with their partner’s expression of freedom, there are no universal underlying mechanisms in the phyche that justify partner x to feel that the way they do. Ideas in context: Person A (let’s just assume male) is going out with person B and learns that person B is having a sexual affair with person C. Person A proceeds to throw a squabble. The assertion is that person B is being controlling and that whatever mechanisms that support his feelings or rational in this matter are socially influenced and unrational. Does person A have reason to feel threatened and is reacting to the stimulis accordingly, or is that kind of reaction an expression of unreasonable control. It has been established that males are more controlling in this regard. Surely then, there must be some sort of distinguished mechanism between the sexes that produces this, or is it gender role-socital indocternation? Are there examples in the wild in which males exibit this type of behavior twords their paired females? Also! If anyone has opinions supporting free relationships or your cutie-pie having sex with another person terrifies you, some introspection of the underlying processes that lead you to your opinion would be great!
Thanks
Well right off the bat, we must distinguish between cheating and open relationships. In our society, it is generally understood relationships are monogamous unless the couple has both agreed that it isn’t. In your scenario, Person A “learns” his partner is sleeping around, so that is a situation of betrayal, for which getting pissed off is a perfectly normal reaction.
But I think more to your point, I do think that monogamy is a social construct, rather than a biological imperative. One that made for more stable families, especially before birth control. Dan Savage has written and spoken about this extensively and he thinks strict monogamy is not all it’s cracked up to be. Though for non-monogamy to work, there is a LOT of maturity, trust, and respect that needs to be present before a couple can successfully undertake it. You can browse some of his writing about the subject here.
Also, I’d like to see a citation that confirms that men are more against open relationships than women.
Lastly, the way you talk about matters of love and passion strikes me as oddly dispassionate. It seems like you go out of the way to acknowledge that affairs of the heart are intrinsically emotional rather than logical. “It’s a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.” — O Brother Where Art Thou?
And this is just my opinion, but I had a hard time parsing your post. If you want to communicate effectively with a broad cross-section of people, I would recommend a more naturalistic, less pseudo-academic style of writing. Just my 2¢.
It is simply a matter of honesty in a relationship, and the keeping of promises. If two people mutually agree to have an exclusive relationship, and one person reneges, that’s wrong. Same goes for spending money that you agreed not to spend, or smoking, or drinking.
If one feels that he or she cannot be monogamous, no one is forcing them to get married or enter into an exclusive relationship - especially not now. Either stay unattached or enter only into relationships that are truly open.
Good marriages involve trust. Destroy the trust and you destroy or damage the marriage. Very simple, really.
-I’m unconvinced that monogamy is just a social construct. Jealousy is way too widespread feeling for it to not have some deeper roots. IOW, I think that the desire to “own” a partner for one’s exclusive sexual use is somewhat innate. And obviously, if both partners want sexual exclusivity, the most logical compromise is monogamy. I insist on “sexual”, since people are typically much less bothered by their partner having a long standing close friendship than a single one night stand. Besides, sex leads to reproduction and anything that has something to do with reproduction has a fair chance to be to some extent “hardwired”.
-I agree that there isn’t objectively anything wrong with not being monogamous. And there isn’t anything wrong either with stating that your sexual life isn’t any of your partner’s business (well…at least with stating that your partner shouldn’t mess up with your sex life anymore than with your friendships, hobbies, etc…). However, there’s nothing wrong either with your partner then telling you to get lost.
What I mean is that for a relationship to exist, both partners must agree to its basic elements. Be it an open marriage or a common bank account, whatever seems important to either of them. You can’t just tell your partner “Yes, I’ve been sleeping around, your monogamous conceptions are stupid social constructs, so shut the fuck off”. Especially since in our societies, monogamy is very widely expected. If you don’t have discussed the issue and came to an agreement, the default assumption is that you’ll be faithful and you’ll be morally in the wrong if you aren’t.
-Finally, I’m totally unconvinced that men are significantly more sexually possessive than women. YMMV.
-I’ve never been cheated upon to my knowledge. Generally speaking, it wouldn’t have bothered me that much if my partner had slept with someone else providing that she would have been upfront about it. My main concerns would have been :
-Is she going to dump me as a result?
-Is she going to bring a STD home?
-Is it because she thinks I’m bad in the sack?
If I had been reassured about these three points, I don’t think it would have been much of an issue. But, and and it is important, I fully trusted all my partners except one. And, not surprisingly, I felt jealousy and possessiveness with this one (“So you’re going out tonight? :eek: Sounds great! And…err..so…with whom are are you going out, exactly? :mad:” ).
As for myself, I never cheated on my partners, either, but not out of principle, only because none would have accepted the situation if I had told them, and it would have been a pain in the ass and I would have felt guilty if I had hidden it.
Theoretically, I’d rather be in a (to some extent) open relationship, but I believe that it would be difficult to find the correct partner(s?) for that. Monogamy is a simple concept. Non-monogamy becomes quickly complicated.
To begin with, what kind of open relationship (Occasional one night stands? Regular lovers on the side? Polyamory? Don’t ask, don’t tell?), what if one of the partners get most of the “benefits”, what if one of the partners feels already fulfilled and is only tolerating the other’s escapades, what if one of the partners in fact only agreed to the deal in order not to lose the other, what if… Having never experienced such a relationship, I don’t know how many what if there could be, but I suspect quite a lot.
Unless you’re a complete idiot*, you know whether the person you’re in a relationship with expects you to be monogamous or not. And you certainly knew this before entering into any sort of commitment like marriage.
If you went into things knowing that they expected monogamy, and you never bothered to say “hey, I’m not cool with the whole monogamy thing”, and now you decide to go sleep with someone else, then you’re completely in the wrong. Saying “you can’t expect a man to be monogamous” is no excuse – you should have been upfront that that’s the way you felt, and either they’d be cool with it or the relationship would be over.
Personally, I’m happy with my monogamous relationship.
*I’m talking about a general “you” here, not the OP specifically
To clarify : I didn’t mean “it wouldn’t have bothered me much if they had slept with someone else since I fully trusted that they would never do so”, which would be nonsentical, but rather “I fully trusted that they wouldn’t lie to me and would genuinely care about my feelings”.
I agree with this take, and would add that if the person got married thinking that they were cool with the monogamy thing, and realized later that they weren’t, the moral thing to do is to tell one’s spouse about it, and divorce if they aren’t willing to be married to someone who has sex with other people, not shrug one’s shoulders and set about starting new relationships. So, even a “It took me years to cast off society’s monogamous shackles!” argument doesn’t justify secret infidelity; frankly, nothing does.
I’m not convinced that there are any universal underlying mechanisms in the psyche period. It seems to be self-evident that human psyches have varied enormously from place to place and time to time.
In addition to what others have said, humans are social beings. We thrive on the approval or disapproval of others in the community.
If I sit at home on my ass all day and drink vodka from a brown paper bag, and if my neighbors disapprove, I can tell them to fuck off and live my life in my drunken stupor. Or I can sober up, get a job, and realize that acceptance from others is very important for my well-being along with theirs.
Social norms didn’t come about just to restrict your freedoms. Social norms came about so that we can get along with and support each other with the “guns and butter” economic analogy. We can’t all do it on our own. We need support from each other. Now, we aren’t a bunch of commies, so you are free to do what you want, but the lady across the street will not like you for cheating on your wife, charts and theories notwithstanding.
And…err..so…with whom are are you going out, exactly? :mad:” ).