The Deck Is Stacked Against Successful Lifelong Monogamy, Too
Too bad no one tells us how many beautiful decks exist.
A person might never open up to the idea that there is more than one flavor of religion. Or more than one way to ascend the career ladder.
Or more than one way to have lifelong loving relationships.
This short post is just the tip of the iceberg of how it can be difficult to navigate healthy relationships. Being surrounded with messages, whether well-intentioned or not, that stack the deck against us is—frankly—shitty.
Monogamy as we know it is full of expectations. Goals. Idealized outcomes. But what happens to all of us when things don’t seem to add up? First let’s dip our toes into this modern concept of monogamy. Let’s start with definitions, biased towards the United States in the last few generations, since that’s where this author grew up.
“Monogamy as we know it” means you are in a romantic relationship with one person, married or not, and you have implicitly agreed that neither of you engage in “romance” with anyone else while you are in your relationship. Usually/often, you also do not see a reason to break up in the foreseeable future. This doesn’t mean “grow old together” but it also probably does not mean you’re just doing this relationship while waiting for something else.
(Photo from article called “Is Monogamy Unrealistic?”)
THAT kind of monogamy includes what was taught (explicitly or by example, and hoo-boy is that ANOTHER subject…) by family, community, friends, books, but also….. everything you see, hear, expect, and know from media and modern Western culture. It includes those couples on social media flaunting the #relationshipgoals tag against photos of led-by-the-hand vacations or dozens of roses. It includes the partners on TV shows who bicker and snipe and find a way to end each episode with a winking or grudging reunion set to the laugh track. Or the shows/films that just expect that, in the end, everyone needs to find Their Lobster to be happy (even though Friends is 20 years old, much of my generation grew up with those values on display 24/7). It includes the romcom expectation that your soulmate will eventually have their lightbulb moment after ignoring your obvious destiny and travel across vast distances to finally get down on one knee, or stalk outside your window with a boombox. It also includes animated films that show kids a single type of relationship goal and none other as even being an option. (Ugh, don’t get me started on that… where’s the gay family from Frozen when you need them???)
And from real life—also known as “my life”—monogamy includes long-term couples who tolerate each other and will say that everything is fine, thank you, but you’ve never seen them laugh or touch or gaze into each others’ eyes with a knowing sparkle. It means the couples that have stayed together for “something”: the children, the community, the job, the hometown, the family, the church. Society has not often been great at sending healthy messages, unfortunately.
(Swans: not monogamous)
Monogamy, done kindly and ethically, can be a force for good. It means the partners who have built each other up over years, genuinely care, and communicate well despite many of the cultural cues that they don’t “have to” in order to succeed at a long term relationship. Traditional monogamy doesn’t necessarily mean happily ever after any more than it must mean ball and chain. Both are options from an endless list of possibilities.
ONE of those possibilities—one of those decks—is polyamory, which itself is one kind of ethical non-monogamy.