I never consented to monogamy.
And I'm just realizing it now.
In my late teens and early twenties, I was always in monogamous relationships. There was my first boyfriend in college, my second, and my third.
Afterward, in New York, some short flings and two longer relationships.
They were all different, most were healthy, some not so much, but what they all had in common was this one thing: I never really agreed to them.
During these formative years, monogamy, specifically, was never something I agreed to do.
None of my exes and I ever said to each other “Hey, if we decide to date, should we also stop connecting with others sexually and romantically, and have the goal of continuing that for the rest of our lives?”
No. I never consented to that.
To this, you might say, “Well, maybe you didn’t consent directly to being monogamous, but you consented to being in a relationship. And in our culture, consenting to a relationship means consenting to monogamy.”
The consent is implicit.
And to that I would say, “Since when is consent complicit? Sounds a bit rapey if you ask me.”
Relationship ≠ Monogamy.
Agreeing to be in a relationship should never implicitly mean agreeing to be monogamous.
In the end, “choosing” to be monogamous was a decision I made under duress.
In other words, when I was “asked” to be exclusive—to be monogamous—I had a proverbial gun to my head. A gun held by my to-be partner and heavy cultural expectations, blocking the view of anything beyond.
I consented to be in a relationship because of course I wanted to be in a relationship. I wanted connection, I wanted intimacy, I wanted love. I wanted a family one day.
And I was taught (falsely) that the only way to have that is through monogamy.
If your options are:
A. Be alone.
Or
B. Be monogamous.
Then as a human animal who desires — no, needs connection — then I didn’t really have much of an option, did I? Of course I chose option B.
No one told me there were many other choices outside of monogamy.
No wonder I cheated.
Put another way, if you tell someone they can either stay in a house forever with the person they love or they have to leave the house and be alone forever, and they chose to stay with their loved one in the house, did that person really “consent” to staying in the house forever?
And accordingly, if the answer is no, would you fault them for sneaking out once in a while to get some fresh air?
Fresh air meaning wanting to connect more intimately with someone else?
Yes, we naturally want love and connection and intimacy. That’s our deepest yearning as humans. But most of us also want variety and excitement and freedom.
If no one told me what my options truly were or that I had any, how can you hold it against me when I didn’t hold to this agreement to just stay in side? A few times in my dating life I was dishonest about how I related to other men.
I’m not trying to excuse this. We need to be honest and own up to our desires. Cheating is not a solution to this problem. It causes immense pain.
But I also want acknowledge how incredibly difficult staying monogamous can be under these circumstances.
It goes against our nature.
According to the National Science Foundation, no mammal has ever been shown to be truly monogamous.
Yet, we humans, the most social animal of them all, are all implicitly consenting to monogamy?
Wut? Why has this become the norm?
There’s a quote from the book More Than Two that says, “polyamory is not a privilege your partner extends to you.”
Yet this is the way people who are considering non-monogamy treat it. The assumption is that non-monogamy is something your partner allows you to do. Not something you can actually claim as something you want and expect.
In my opinion, we should be doing the opposite.
If we’re assuming anything, we should be assuming non-monogamy, and explicitly, asking our partner to not be with anyone else. It should be a request. A decision you come to together.
Let’s talk about it.
Monogamy wasn’t for me. It never was.
But I just thought this is what I had to do. This is how I had to be in a relationship.
I had to forsake all other potential connections in order to have one deep connection.
But I should have never been monogamous without agreeing to it explicitly. Without having this conversation.
That’s the part thats totally bonkers.
That’s the part that totally f*cked me up in my college and post-college years.
Feeling trapped in my own tunnel of what love looks like and where it has to lead.
No more implicit monogamy.
If we do it, let’s at least agree on it.
Quality sh*t
I used to never pay for anything I consumed online. There’s SO MANY free interesting articles and videos to read and see.
Why take out your wallet?
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<3
Sarah