If I had written this article a year ago, I think its content would be completely different.  A year ago, I was married and had been for the best part of twelve years.  It was a marriage that had built itself upon vows of “till death do us part” and a commitment that I had every intention of fulfilling.  Throughout my marriage I was monogamous in my actions, but towards the end, no longer in thought.  The simple fact that needed to be addressed was that my husband and I had grown apart.  With still much love and respect for each other, we parted.  The impetus for the decision was another man, this is true, but not one that I had been having an affair with, simply someone whom I had stronger feelings for than appropriate considering my condition.  A year ago, I would have argued ardently against monogamy, because as the love affair in my own relationship dwindled, my desire to be loved and held by others became a psychological obsession.  In my head, I became polygamous way before we finally ended.   

However, only a few months after we went our separate ways I am revisiting this idea.  Is monogamy entrenched in our human nature, or isn’t it?   It’s important to determine what we mean by the word, seeing as so many argue for its place in human nature.  Monogamy, according to the Webster dictionary is “being with one partner at a time.”   It does not necessarily imply a lifelong marriage, but simply that cupid only throws a single arrow at any given moment.   When most people think of monogamy, they think in terms of life long commitment.  But, this is socially cultivated monogamy.  There is nothing natural about it.  How can you know you can love one person for life, when you don’t know yourself today, let alone in twenty years?   There are couples that make it and for all of them monogamy is an intellectual choice they make daily.   Nothing wrong with this – let’s face it, there is more to life than sexual attraction – there is family and visions for the future and high ideals – but none of these are as instinctual, nor as natural as pure, basic attraction.  

 

Recent scientific discoveries have obliterated the monogamy ideal. Robert Wright, author of The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life, observes, “The language of zoology used to be so reassuring.  Human beings were called the “pair bonding” species.”  Our feathered friends were seen as being perfectly monogamous, the females having one lifelong partner.   However, as scientists took a closer look, they ruffled a few feathers with the finding that actually many a chick enjoyed a romp in other nests and gave birth to chicklets from many different partners.  Akin to Galileo announcing that the earth actually revolves around the sun and not vice versa, the fundamentalists flapped.

From an evolutionary psychologist’s point of view, our urge to go forth and multiply is in our genes.  Men, naturally have an urge to spread their mojo far and wide.  In the jungle the Alpha gorilla affords a larger harem, which is both a symbol of virility and his status within the social structure. Vestiges of our ancient history still exist.  The Alpha males are often surrounded by the most sought after women.   But despite all the monkeying around in our own concrete jungle, I still can’t help but argue for love.  True intimacy, while it can occur multiple times in a life-time, only truly happens one lover at a time.  It’s the difference between pure orange juice and orange juice that is watered down.  Pure orange juice is much better for you and titillates your taste buds immediately.     

It’s no wonder there is such a confusing debate about monogamy.  On one hand, we see scientific facts that all contradict the concept of one love.   We witness our own attraction to others.  And on the other, the bible quotes Jesus as saying that to lust after another is to commit adultery in one’s heart.   That to desire someone else is a sin.  Christ.  No wonder we are all so schizophrenic.  Human nature is not a bad thing.  Human nature, all nature, if revered as much as our holy myths are, can lead us unto temptation and deliver us from insanity and neurosis.  

I asked a few people at a local bar what they thought.  Mickey, a single fifty something guy told a tale of this one woman that he could have been with forever had circumstances not torn them asunder.  To this day, he has never been so ruffled by anyone.   He believes in monogamy despite his non-monogamous life.  Another bar fly, agreed whole heartedly.  A yogi friend says there is no such thing.  My mother just hums and avoids the question.  My own lover agrees that it must be possible to love more than one person, but he is far too emotional to be able to deal with it.  The truth is perhaps simply that monogamy exists where love is.  And sometimes it becomes a habit; a safe way of existence.
 
Jalalludin Rumi, the revered Sufi poet, gave up his very successful career as professor when he became completely enamored by a Sufi Dervish.  He lived with this man for two years in what was supposedly a Platonic relationship and is best known for his ecstatic love poetry that was inspired by, in my view, this single, unlikely, human being.   The film Casanova while fictitious, illustrates a man who loves many women until he meets an extraordinary woman who is his equal in every way.   Upon meeting her, his desires become monogamous because when love occurs, it demands full attention.  There is a similar plot in The Libertine and also uncannily enough in the Marque De Sade.   And countless books, which have been used as a counter argument against monogamy, actually re-inforce my version of it.  Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Illiad, The Scarlet Letter; all these novels are of the power of love to pull you away from a relationship where ‘love’ has been absent, and forces the protagonists into another monogamous relationship.   

Love demands all of you in the end. There is no negotiation.  It is not an institution.  It does not make sense or have your best interests at heart necessarily, but it is all that matters when it occurs.  The evolutionary psychologists suggest that this obsession is solely for the sake of pro-creation.  But whether you agree or disagree with them, when it occurs, love has a one-track mind.  The lover.