Monogamy and Liberation

About three years back I was at my local library visiting with a friend when the book, The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People (by husband and wife David P. Barash Ph.D., zoologist and professor of psychology, and Judith Eve Lipton, MD, psychiatrist; copyright 2001) popped out at me. It has always been an interesting subject to me having married the first girl I fell in love with at 20, and falling out of love and into divorce 24 years later. Can’t say I understand women very well, but I do know a little bit about long-term relationships. Needless to say I checked the book out and read it.

The basic conclusion biology has come to is that sexual monogamy is nowhere to be found in nature. While there are several examples of socially monogamous members of the animal kingdom, all those who were thought to be sexually monogamous are not. Maybe there is some species somewhere, but biologists, armed with DNA testing capabilities, have their doubts. The list of players is long and the usual suspects’ names thus far have all been crossed off. Interestingly enough, animals play the field running around on each other just like humans do, complete with jealous and possessive dramas. It seems to be part of the biology. But with animals, “after the lovin’” everything is back to tranquility between the socially monogamous pairs.

So why blog about this? Am I just a trouble maker? While that is not my intent, the age old issues inherent in the human cultures of this planet around jealousy and possessiveness still plague us. We all (almost all anyway) say we want to be free, and yet our culturally supported attitudes about sex and relationship weigh in and on us. It is precisely the issues of jealousy and possessiveness that draw me into this discussion. Two questions/points: 1) How can one be free while holding another bound? Does that not fly in the face of karmic law?; if I sow jealous and possessive seed, then I will reap the same, and bind myself not free myself thus so. 2) How can I commit to having certain loving feelings in the future? I can only know what I feel now, and to bind myself to feeling something in the future is a guarantee that I will need to deny what is when it happens. People somehow overlook these details when they “fall in love” and bind their mate in a contractual arrangement of excusive partnership.

Time and again we hear stories about people that we hold in some exalted status getting caught up in an affair, or some sorted pay-per encounter; and then there are those who travel to exotic places to get serviced by the local sex-workers. Granted, these are mostly men, but they are “doin’ it” with mostly women. Some say there is a double-standard, but I’d say there are a lot more than two standards. We are all over the place, and why wouldn’t we be? We seem to be fighting our most natural selves. Does there need to be cultural standards for these kinds of intimate matters? I’d say they would be handy if we all agreed on them. It’s the all-encompassing deceit that blows my mind. We carry on as if the way we do it now, with our animal biology being denied for the sake of some unreasonable fairy tale, can actually work. Society today is more frazzled by this dilemma than ever. Especially in the West there is no cultural security in relationship. I understand that in India the concerns of abandonment in marriage are virtually non-existent because divorce is practically non-existent. In the old ways of the Celtic traditions there was a trial period of one year before the union was considered permanent; at least there was a culturally acceptable mechanism that supported couples if they decided that they didn’t want to be married any more. Right or wrong, here in the West there is still a stigma around divorce, like the only worthy connection is one that lasts “till death do us part,” and all else is failure. I’d say a life not fully lived is the real failure. Which is better: sixty great minutes of free, tender, intimate sweetness, or sixty sad years of unfulfilled denial and stuckness?

The part that really gets me is our system of relating that validates jealousy and possessiveness. How can we really claim to love someone, yet keep as seminal to the connection some control of the other? Orwell’s Thought Police comes to mind. Ordinarily in relationship, if I am attracted to another woman I am not really allowed to have those feelings; typically all kinds of tip-toeing around takes place as I look more and more diligently for the door. It is rare as hen’s teeth to find a partnership where the parties in question have healed this pettiness. It is only those extremely rare couples that have actually risen above the animal kingdom and the laws of man into the angelic awareness that unconditional love allows everyone to be who they are… not only allows, but enthusiastically celebrates the other and their feelings.

I think humans, like those of the animal kingdom who appear to be, are naturally socially monogamous. We want to be in pairs. I know I’m inclined that way. But in our zealous pursuit of spiritual ideals we confuse the issue. Is it reasonable to conclude that because humans seem to have strong socially monogamous tendencies, that we are therefore also supposed to be sexually monogamous? Religions have condemned nature, and implied that we should dominate it. The ideas that we should be both socially and sexually monogamous have been lumped together without much concern for our basic animalness. Although most religions promote this approach, going against nature is ignorant insanity.

I suppose I might be opening a can of worms with this post, but if we are going to truly transcend pettiness and reach freedom we had better get to the bottom of this one. Don’t be like those who flip out because I woke them from their sleep to tell them their house is on fire. I’m telling you, your ultimate and absolute liberation is worth whatever price you have to pay.

Can we imagine a world where people relate so deeply that questions of love and caring are non-existent? Is it possible to love others so much so that there is no sneaking around, and honest sharing of our deepest desires is encouraged? Is it possible to be in a socially monogamous connection with a lover and recognize the fallacy of  requiring sexually monogamous feelings or behaviour of them? Can we raise children in a way that celebrates the diversity of life and all its need to express, rather than repress them into frustrated perverts? I’d say that if the animal kingdom can work this out, we ought to be able to do them one better. After all, we have a cortex for something don’t we? What do you think?

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