Does Monogamy Have a Future?

The idea of monogamous relationships seems to be an ideal that many people cherish in their hearts, even if they have a difficult time practicing it. What's fairly obvious is that this ideal is a human convention, not something explicitly sanctioned by nature. It's not generally practiced in the animal kingdom (many animals are promiscuous; others at least tend to "stray" from chosen mates a few times over the course of their lives), nor has it been a dominant mode in human societies (more than three-quarters of which have been non-monogamous in some form or another). Faced with such evidence, one wonders where we ever derived this notion from in the first place.

Lifelong mate-ship has never been in the ascendancy, then, yet we continue to try and nurture it. We humans want to feel like we're something special to our partners; we want to feel assured of their love and commitment. The fact that half our marriages end in divorce, and typically in less than eleven years, isn't enough to convince us to abandon the cherished idea entirely.

Ever since certain social movements brought them a greater sense of empowerment in the '80's and '90's, many women have begun to put forth the idea that monogamy has oftentimes been, for their sex, nothing more than a form of prostitution. In previous eras, they've been obliged to use their sexuality (i.e., the promise of exclusive sex) to purchase for themselves the comfortable standard of living that men could provide. It was a basic fact of many forms of tribal existence, for example, that women would barter with sex for the resources that were necessary both for their own survival and their children's.

Monogamy has also served to keep the peace amongst men. What if the whole world consisted of harem cultures? Well, if you consider that there's a fair balance between males and females in the general population, such an arrangement would actually leave a lot of men out in the cold. A belief system that prescribes one man with one woman at least affords each a fighting chance.

Does all this imply that the idea of monogamy has no real emotional or, dare we say, spiritual merit? One thing to consider is that long-term (ideally, lifetime) commitment brings a depth of intimacy that two people simply aren't likely to find any other way. This might become especially important in later years, when the drive to "sow one's wild oats" cools off, when having someone who's love can be relied on throughout the bewildering twists and turns of life's journey seems much more valuable in comparison.

One of the primary reasons why people grow restless in relationships and tend to stray is because they yearn for variety (sexual or otherwise). If we're willing to look a little deeper, though, we might find such variety in the very person we may have been involved with all these years. People change; they grow in unexpected ways; they evolve. The mate we spend time with this evening is probably not the same person we fell in love with years ago, anyway, though the name may be the same and the face may bear some resemblance. Just because commitment is not a dominant fact in nature does not mean that it isn't a worthy human ideal. When boredom sets in, we're free to play the field and start over somewhere else. But we might just be discarding a valuable treasure in the process.