Polyamory as a culturally and socially acceptable alternative to monogamy.
Most relationships formed in the modern culture of the United States are based on the idea of two people meeting somehow, falling in love and then living happily ever after. This fairy tale ending is perpetuated my most modern media including movies, books and many songs. This ideal can be presented either in the positive, that is, people actually meeting and falling in love and living happily ever after, or in the negative, such as sad or angry songs about infidelity, break-ups, or the loss of a soul-mate. This ideal is unfortunate in that it forces on people the responsibility to be everything that their spouse ever wanted or hoped for, forcing them to change who they are, give up dreams, and possibly even compromise their morals and values in order to meet these expectations.
However, there are alternatives to the unrealistic expectations of the fairy tale ending available to people. Polyamory is the philosophy and practice of having multiple significant, non-possessive, honest, responsible, intimate and loving relationships simultaneously. Contrary to what popular culture would have people believe, polyamory is a valid relationship style and deserves to be as culturally and socially accepted as monogamy. This essay will explain the social and cultural merits of polyamory including how it allows people the freedom to form relationships based on what feels right for the individual, how the poly lifestyle encourages the development of stronger communication and interpersonal skills, and how it grants better community and support networks to those involved. This essay will also debunk some popular misconceptions about the social ramifications of accepting polyamory into mainstream culture.
In traditional and modern western culture the three key elements of a relationship are that sexual relationships should be between a man and a woman, they should be strictly monogamous, and that the woman should be submissive to the man. This is illustrated and perpetuated in endless Hollywood movies, pop songs, and self-help books (Barker 76). In ‘Bourgeois Marriage, The Woman Question’, F. Engels goes so far as to state that monogamy is “a restrictive state reflective of the ownership of goods and people inherent in capitalism, with women being degraded and reduced to servants, slaves to male lusts, and instruments for the production of children” (Barker 77). The objectifying and disenfranchising nature of this style of relationship removes people’s ability to seek out happiness and focuses on the ownership and transactional elements of the relationship.
The culture of monogamy tends to place a very high value on self-denial, that is, the sacrifice or willful refrain from pursuing or meeting one’s own desires or interests. Unfortunately, this leads those who seek to satisfy their desire for pleasure to be seen as immature, disgusting or even sinful. Since all people have desires, these puritanical values often lead to self-loathing, a disdain of our bodies and of our turn-ons, and fear and guilt about our sexual urges (“The Ethical Slut” 23). The unfortunate side effect of having these feelings of self-contempt, aside from any psychological effects, is that people then tend to assume that any relationship that arise lie within themselves or their partners, rather than realizing that it is very possibly just an issue with the methods they are using to have their needs met.
The monogamist cultural ideal also tends to assume that the purpose and goal of all relationships is to form a lifelong bond with a single person and that any pairing that fails to attain that lofty goal has utterly failed. There is no room for any grey area in this black and white world view. Polyamory, however, lies in the gray area, viewing a relationship that is short-lived not as a failure, but as a whole and complete relationship that has reached its natural conclusion. As one polyamorist put it “Polyamory gives me the opportunity to have relationships up and down the spectrum and appreciate them for what they are” (“Opening Up” 24).
Polyamory grants the freedom to seek love and intimacy in the way it makes sense to the individual. The Poly relationship style is one that promotes the idea that people are perfectly capable of loving more than one person. Much as a child can simultaneously love his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, polyamorists believe that we all have the capacity to love, share emotional and sexual intimacy and commit to multiple partners, without detriment to any of those relationships. Furthermore, polyamorists tend to see happy, free, guiltless connections with others as a cure for the wounds caused by the self-loathing inflicted by the current culture of self-denial, and that intimacy and sexuality is vital to people’s sense of self worth and their belief that life is good (“The Ethical Slut” 23).
By having multiple people sharing in the intimate details of a relationship, people who practice polyamory are often forced to develop a number of skills that are not consistently addressed or developed by those who practice only monogamy. Those skills include, but are not limited to: giving and receiving constructive criticism, effective listening, the ability to give reassurance and support, being emotionally honest, and clearly stating one’s own needs, limits and desires. These skills can be developed independently of polyamorist relationships to be sure, but the abundance of self-help books for people wishing to learn these tools clearly demonstrates that it is by no means a very common set of abilities for one to possess in our modern society.
Jealousy, an umbrella term for a wide array of feelings including insecurity, fear of abandonment, envy, possessiveness and feeling left out, is often disdained by modern society (“Opening Up” 153-156). It is generally considered to be a universally and naturally occurring emotion and is by no means strictly limited to either monogamist or poly lifestyles. However, the nature of the polyamory relationship style tends to cause those feelings to come up more frequently for poly individuals than for monogamous ones. Adherents to the poly lifestyle often view these feelings as a socially reinforced learned behavior rather than a universally occurring emotion and seek to confront them and learn from them, rather than viewing them as a culturally acceptable excuse for divorce, or even murder (“The Ethical Slut” 108).
In order to learn from jealousy, to grow as a person and move past those socially reinforced emotions, polyamorus individuals are forced to learn those social skills that help them develop a sense of one’s own limits in order to inform their partners of those limits, own their own feelings for those times when previously unknown limits are accidentally crossed, and develop strong sense of emotional intelligence to maintain open lines of communication despite being confronted with strong feelings. By developing these often overlooked and neglected skills, poly people are often very well suited to dealing with many of the social issues life throws at them; whether it is a school yard bully, a demanding boss, pulling a team together to meet a work deadline, or meeting the love of their life.
One of the strongest arguments against the idea of accepting polyamory as an equally viable relationship style is that it is deemed morally unacceptable by religious leaders, either because the Bible states that it is against the will of God, or because it will cause the downfall of modern society by undermining traditional family values. Unfortunately for the opposition, this is completely unfounded. The argument that it will cause the downfall of society has no scientific, sociological or otherwise provable evidence. Furthermore, claims that polyamory are immoral are an argument based on beliefs, and the beliefs of one party in an argument are no more or less valid than those of the other party involved.
This rule of strict monogamy, which is widely regarded as sacred among the majority of Christians, does not appear to be in the Bible according to many theologians. Nowhere does the Bible specifically and explicitly condemn polygamy, polyamory, or any similar derivative. It does, on multiple occasions, suggest that having more than one lover or wife is a complicated situation that is best avoided, but the only place where it states that a man is to have only one wife is in the case of a man desiring to be a clergyman (NIV, 1Ti 3:2-3). Not only does the Bible not condemn polyamory, it actually states in a number of books that there were multiple men who had many wives and concubines with God’s blessing including Abraham, Solomon, David, Jacob, Moses and quite a few others. Most of the arguments made by people advocating for monogamy who cite the Bible as reference are either based on interpretations taken out of context, interpretations heavily biased by personal belief, or are based on streams of logic riddled with fallacies.
Those that argue that allowing polyamory will lead to the downfall of society often have an altogether different outlook on the debate. Rather than quoting the Bible directly, they infer meaning from their belief in what their religion, usually based on the Bible, says is acceptable and moral. By using such common fallacies of logic as the appeal to belief, the appeal to consequences of belief, and the appeal to tradition, these opponents are able to appeal to those people who have similar religious or ethical beliefs, but this fails to provide a satisfactory basis for a logical argument (Ashbee, 103-105). Indeed, the idea that just because the majority of people agree on a point of view makes it right is a fallacy of belief in and of itself. Regardless of how many people they have on their side of the argument, it will not change the validity of the view and opinions of those who oppose them.
The two predominant forms of family arrangement are the extended family and the nuclear or traditional family. The traditional family is generally defined as a man, his wife and their children. The concept of the traditional family came about after the advent of industrialization when people no longer required the additional infrastructure, income and support of the extended family, which was primarily facilitated by housing becoming more affordable after the industrialization era in America. However, people have been living in extended families since pre-biblical times.
In order to protect themselves from many dangers of the pre-civilized world, early humans banded together in groups. These collectives were almost always composed of people who were biologically related to each other. These families were often led by one strong, skilled person, and the older, more skilled members taught the younger ones. This social structure increased the chances of survival for all individuals in the group and allowed them to pool their labor and resources and develop specialized skills. Families developed in every culture, because they helped people meet their physical and emotional needs, and it gave family members a feeling of security and belonging (“Families” n. pag.).
“The idea of giving and receiving support, help, knowledge, and protection within a group of trusted people is still the basis of the modern family” (“Families” n. pag.). Some of the advantages of the extended type of family are that it contains more people to serve as resources during a crisis, and it provides more role models for modeling the behavior of values on the younger members, as well as providing all those involved with the psychological benefits of feeling that they belong to a larger family unit. In one study “An overwhelming 88% of people suggested that their immediate family was one of the most important groups defining a sense of identity and belonging” (“Belonging” 13).
Another benefit is that by having multiple adults in a household, children have a greater chance of an adult being available when the child needs them, whether it’s for help with homework, playing a game, fixing a computer problem, or just listening to them when they have a question or need someone to talk to. Additionally, if an adult is in school, at work, sick, or otherwise unavailable, there is more than one other available adult to help with the increased workload in their absence. By collecting their families, lovers, partners and children into a larger collective, or extended family, people who practice polyamory are able to provide a broader and more stable support network for each other, thereby enhancing their ability to weather the constant struggles that life presents to everyone.
The various alternatives available to the socially acceptable relationship style choices that are prevalent in today’s American culture are slowly gaining ground. This essay has shown that not only is polyamory a valid relationship style, but that it has many merits, and that in some ways it can be not only equal to monogamy, but it can be a superior lifestyle choice for many people, and offers advantages not found in other lifestyles. For these merits alone, polyamory deserves to be culturally and socially recognized and accepted as an alternative to monogamy.
Specifically, this essay has demonstrated the social and cultural merits of polyamory, how this style of relationship allows people the freedom to form relationships that are meaningful to them, how the poly lifestyle encourages the development of stronger communication and interpersonal skills, and how it grants better community and support networks to those involved in the extended families so common in the polyamorus culture. If we are to be a fair and equitable people, with morals based on equality, acceptance, love and compassion, we must recognize and accept polyamory, and all other alternatives to the monogamy relationship style, both culturally and socially as equally valid alternatives.
