My partner is polyamorous and I orient towards monogamy. This is not an easy balance to maintain. We do a lot of communicating around it, and it’s the cause of a fair amount of friction from time to time.
Even though he has a comet relationship (FWB for those not familiar with the lingo), we are mostly functionally monogamous. All that means is that with a particular person, in a particular circumstance and time, a polyamorous person may be in a monogamous relationship. Many poly people are functionally monogamous at some point, even with another polyamorous person. That’s part of the beauty of the human experience — it can encompass a vast variety of connections.
I had a great discussion the other day with a friend who is also GenX and monogamous but has a lot of polyamorous friends. I do too; when you’re in the kink community you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one.
One thing we talked about is how if you open any book on polyamory, you’ll hear how great it is — but inevitably, you’ll also be told that monogamy is somehow bad. We agreed that polyamory often holds onto a very outdated view of what monogamy actually is.
How We Got Here
Back in the day, women had almost no choices in life (and this was not as far back in the day as you might think). You got married, had kids, and were a good wife and mother. Maybe you had a bridge club you met up with once a week, but otherwise you were tied to hearth and home. Divorce was only possible in very specific circumstances, like provable infidelity. Your husband could rape you and you couldn’t get a divorce because of it — because marital rape wasn’t even considered rape.
Women were forced to be monogamous, in other words. They were trapped by society, church, the state, with one partner for the rest of their lives.
And of course, there was the church — the Roman Catholic one in particular, but most Protestant denominations as well — keeping marriage “sacred.” Also, men could stray with a fair amount of social impunity, but women absolutely could not.
My generation — GenX — was the first to experience divorce as something normal. My mom was married three times. My stepdad was my “Dad.” They divorced when I was 19 and already out of the house. They were both happier for it. Looking back to 1984, when I graduated from high school, almost half of my friends had divorced parents. No one was shunned.
Suddenly, divorce wasn’t a source of shame. Women could have their own checking accounts. Many of us chose not to get married or not to have kids. Many of us enjoyed being single between relationships — or just being single. “No sex before marriage” became unenforced outside of religious communities. We had the Pill, and you could get it without a husband’s sign-off (yes, that was a thing).
The key benefit of all of this was that women could choose the kinds of relationships they wanted — with a partner (or partners), or none at all. She could travel by herself, have a completely different circle of friends from her husband. She could have her own politics and religion, but also create and cherish an intimate connection with one person. And so could he. Being sexually monogamous doesn’t mean you are super-glued together. In fact, one of the best things about the “new” monogamy has been the trend of “together but apart” where a monogamous couple maintains separate bedrooms or even houses (a big win for women for sure).
As another friend recently said, we created equitable monogamy so the next generation could have polyamory.
The Ethical Slut was published in 1997 — which feels surprisingly late in the sexual revolution timeline, doesn’t it? For many, it resonated deeply and gave people a vocabulary to describe how they wanted to structure their romantic lives. Huzzah!
Unfortunately, it also demonized monogamy by defining it through that outdated patriarchal lens. It didn’t value that one of the choices a woman might make — freely, joyfully — was to be sexually monogamous while also owning the house, the company, and the bank account.
The movement made it seem like polyamory was an evolution of monogamy instead of just an alternative orientation — like being gay is to being straight.
We are all the sums of our experiences, our biology, life, the Universe, and everything. As my GenX friend said to me — we don’t have baggage, we have contours. We’re hopefully flexible and open to new experiences, nonjudgmental of others, and willing to smooth down the contours that no longer fit the world we inhabit. But we are still who we are.
When I’m single, I don’t date with the plan to get into a relationship. I love my single life. I own my own home. I’m happy to travel by myself. I have dogs that keep me company and horses that keep me connected to a community I love. I have amazing women friends.
I never think, “God, I miss having a man around,” except maybe for the sex — and even that’s rare. I have an excellent collection of vibrators and dildos, and I’ve never had more satisfying sex than with myself. I’ve happily decentered men. I love them, I just don’t need them.
When I met my current partner, I was dating and sleeping with multiple people. As we got to know each other, I developed romantic feelings, and those feelings ended up centering him as an intimate partner. I dropped the other guys I was seeing, and he became my romantic priority.
Without me being monogamous — or monoromantic, which might be a better term with less baggage — he wouldn’t be my primary. He’d be one of a few, with no real focus or priority from me. That might have been fine with him, but I know he’d been looking for a relationship where he could be the primary.
Since I’m not polyamorous, I can’t say what it’s like to have hierarchical relationships. I understand it in theory, but I can’t imagine how it feels in practice. People swear it works, and I believe them — but because I’m not polyamorous, it’s a moot point for me.
At the end of the day, I don’t want my partner to be anyone other than who he is. I want him to be happy and authentic. That may mean that ultimately we’re not compatible, and that’s okay. I’ve never believed a genuine, healthy connection is wasted just because it didn’t last. I’ve also never believed anything is forever.
I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind here, just like my lovely poly friends will never be able to change my mind. I do want folks who identify as poly to understand monogamy from a historical perspective, and see that there is a modern lens they should be looking at it with. It is not for everyone just as non-monogamy is not for everyone. But it certainly is not one of Dante’s circles of Hell.