Why is monogamy the most popular type of relationship?

[BC1980]

People live longer now. If you only lived to 40 or 50, it’s easier to stay with one person. Also, the concept of picking a mate based on love is relatively new. 100 or more years ago, marriage was a legal transaction meant to keep children from being bastards and keep women from becoming desititute. Those are more stable reasons for a marriage than love. Love is a transient emotion. One more thing that may be of value. Women are attracted to men in their age range, but men are primarily attracted to younger women no matter their age.

[GorillaTheater]

I have enough trouble with one romantic relationship, I don't think I have the energy or wherewithal to juggle several.

[basil67]

It seems to me that no one is really happy staying with one person their entire lives. I look around and what I see is always different from what people think they are going to get. It seems that marriage and very long relationships always lead to some form of boredom and lack of creativity. People are told to "work on thier relationships" to bring back passion. Yet when people are new to each other there is no work to bring passion and interest. We are told that after the passion comes real love and connection. And while that is true in part, and have experienced this myself in the past, This is not the only reality. I even heard two old ladies waking down the street today talking about open relationships and I was like lol its a sign.

 

My conclusion is that relationships in general don't work as we envision them. I have completley given up on the concept that a long relationship with one person that you love, exluding all others in the process, leads to lasting happiness. Freeing myself from that concept has been one of the best things that every happened to me.

 

Polyamory dosen't really work either. There is still a relationship structure there. I was really interested in the concept of relationship anarchy. Maybe that will work beter in future society's? Or perhaps that is happening now and it just goes under the general term "dating" .

 

Monogamy is great for having kids and I understand that but the planet is actually quite full. Its not that important to make more people, So that logic does not hold up.

 

 

So why do we still do it to ourselves? Bind one life to another. Is this really smart? Is humanity going to always stay this way? Will we change as a species or will everything just stay the same?

 

You're looking at this from a particularly modern view - one which has only been in existence since the start of modern self absorbtion and the beginning of the self help industry.

 

Go back into history and you'll find that marriage wasn't about love and passion. It was about working together to form a household where she could have children and a roof over her head and he'd have someone to look after the domestics. If they were fortunate, there may have been some property advantages to their marriage. If they were *really* fortunate, they may have still liked or even loved each other down the track. Do you really think that people prior to the 1960's worried about keeping passion alive? No, they were concentrating on keeping a functioning household. And she was probably wanting to keep her legs crossed to prevent any more babies and he would have accepted that.

 

The reason you're confused is that you probably think that wanting such high satisfaction from marriage is normal. But it's only a new normal....and the selfishness of seeking high personal satisfaction over simply building a solid and comfortable home is why we have such high divorce rates.

 

Before anyone jumps down my throat for calling them selfish. I left a marriage because it wasn't meeting *my* needs. Selfish reasons. And I'm OK with that. I just won't promise "for better or worse" ever again because for those of us who are selfish about having their needs met and will leave a marriage if it's not working, the whole marriage vows thing is a lie.

[basil67]

People live longer now. If you only lived to 40 or 50, it’s easier to stay with one person.

 

Slightly off topic....

 

I used to say exactly this but when doing my family history I started to question only living to 40 or 50. I went through my and my husband's ancestors (99% British and Australian and concentrated on the Victorian era) and found an average age of close to 70. I'd be really interested in the data that the stats of 40-50 years comes from.

 

Also, the concept of picking a mate based on love is relatively new. 100 or more years ago, marriage was a legal transaction meant to keep children from being bastards and keep women from becoming desititute. Those are more stable reasons for a marriage than love. Love is a transient emotion. One more thing that may be of value. Women are attracted to men in their age range, but men are primarily attracted to younger women no matter their age.

 

This ^^^ Spot on.

[somanymistakes]

And she was probably wanting to keep her legs crossed to prevent any more babies and he would have accepted that.

 

A lot of history is full of them not accepting that - it was a woman's job to die in childbirth and be replaced by another woman.

 

It's also true that many people throughout history viewed marriage as more of a business arrangement and less of an expectation of romantic bliss, especially in the upper classes. Nobility had wives. They also had 'companions', often openly acknowledged. Even women had lovers. Love and marriage were side-by-side but not exactly the same thing.

 

Lower classes generally could not afford to keep someone around whose job was just to be a romantic partner, but they of course had prostitutes and parties and slept around. It was not necessarily expected that there was any connection between infidelity and ending a marriage. It's just sex, after all...

 

And then in other times and places adultery was strongly punished, history varies a lot.

 

People in the past certainly did care about their personal happinesses as well, though. They often wrote quite flowery love letters.

[somanymistakes]

I mean, it's silly to think people didn't want to marry for love 100 years ago. It takes only seconds of googling to find scandalous affairs from much longer ago than that, people entreating their lovers to leave their spouses and elope with them, etc.

[carhill]

Yup, romance and love were quite evident in my parent's generation, generally born prior to the Depression, and likely long before. Some of the stories my mom told me of her adventures as a long-single, attractive women were epic. Like many women of her generation she was independent, made her own money, lived on her own and didn't 'need' a man and that was back in the 1940's.

 

Still, visible and public monogamy was socially conscripted for legitimizing children and building the family brand. I noted it most poignantly comparing the modeling work she did prior to being married versus that after, and how the newspapers published her name. After getting married, it was 'Mrs. Husband's name' and the clothing was much more conservative

 

They were married for life and she lived to nearly 90. Rotten preparation for me

[bathtub-row]

Yup, romance and love were quite evident in my parent's generation, generally born prior to the Depression, and likely long before. Some of the stories my mom told me of her adventures as a long-single, attractive women were epic. Like many women of her generation she was independent, made her own money, lived on her own and didn't 'need' a man and that was back in the 1940's.

 

Reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe. She had quite the little racy life. Although she wasn't a fan of marriage.

[Timshel]

I'm going to go ahead and give a shout out to my mom and dad. Married for over 40 yrs. till my dad passed.

 

 

My mom went ahead and earned a Phd from Brown University in experimental psych (science and numbers) when Brown was all women and she did not have to because my dad already had his from another prestigious place and women did not have to do anything except be a good wife and mother.

I will shout my mom and dad out again for having the kahuna's to adopt three brown babies and my mom walking around with us in the deeeeeep south in 1970's.

 

 

They were monogamous/married, had all the benefits of that, I guess. What they did was make choices...conscience choices.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that the commitment they made to each other was not easy to maintain.

 

 

To each their own. These two people are my role model.

[carhill]

Reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe. She had quite the little racy life. Although she wasn't a fan of marriage.

She was the last-married, though second youngest, of eight sisters, so fought family pressure and peer pressure until well into her 30's. From the pictures I have, and letters she saved from men of all ilks, apparently she had what they called in the day a full dance card. Yet, in the end, monogamy and marriage and motherhood won out. Of course, casual sex wasn't as prevalent back then as it is now, right?

 

Parenting and church likely loomed large in my programming as a monogamous, deliberate gentleman. Of course, interacting with my peer group, and survival, necessitated some adjustments. Being hard-headed, a decade or more of dating failures had to occur first.

[basil67]

I mean, it's silly to think people didn't want to marry for love 100 years ago. It takes only seconds of googling to find scandalous affairs from much longer ago than that, people entreating their lovers to leave their spouses and elope with them, etc.

 

I think you're confusing lust and infatuation with love.

 

People married quickly while the infatuation stage was still evident. If they were lucky, love would remain after infatuation died off. Some people got lucky. Many didn't

[basil67]

it was a woman's job to die in childbirth and be replaced by another woman.

 

Not if she kept her legs together. You'll find that there were many women who were cautioned by their doctors to avoid having further children because previous complications would make future pregnancies deadly.

 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm beginning to question the death toll of people prior to modern medicine. The family trees of myself and my husband have very few women dying in childbirth. I can't explain why our trees are such, so all I can do is hope to find the original data and compare it to what I'm finding.

Edited July 12, 2018 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
Fix quote

[carhill]

Perhaps an anomaly of the times but my parents dated longer than my exW and I did, over two years, before deciding to get married. Then they eloped to Yuma, Arizona and a JP

 

However, I get the love v infatuation/limerence thing. I think the Depression generation that went through WW2 were more deliberate and mindful of responsibility and duty and had seen more hardship and fear. That molded them. If love died, and no doubt for some it did, they had duty and responsibility and honor and care. TBH, it's hard to fault such people for their choices. It was their lives. I found the lack of love and care to be miserable so got out. Monogamy until death held no court over me. YMMV>

[BC1980]

I mean, it's silly to think people didn't want to marry for love 100 years ago. It takes only seconds of googling to find scandalous affairs from much longer ago than that, people entreating their lovers to leave their spouses and elope with them, etc.

 

You have to take into account that women had no way to earn a living, so they had to marry or become destitute. If you didn’t marry, you were considered a burden to your parents, and I believe could not even legally inherit your parent’s money when they died. You’d hope some uncle or brother would give you an allowance. Also, the risk of getting pregnant out of wedlock was disastrous. You’d be sent to a nunnery or disowned. I’m sure people wanted to marry for money, but it just wasn’t practical a lot of the time. This is usually the subject of Jane Austen novels.

[Woggle]

Because humans in general tend to be jealous. Many people like cheating but very few like being cheated on. There are a lot of hypocrites who act indignant at being treated in a way that they wouldn't hesitate to do somebody else. I don't like being cheated on either but I believe in treating others the way I would like to be treated so I am faithful as well. 12 years in and it's working out lovely for us. We are even more in love than we were 10 years ago. If people don't want monogamy just be honest about it. Tell them straight up that it is not for you instead of lying and sneaking around. I don't understand what is so hard about that?

[carhill]

<snip>I'm beginning to question the death toll of people prior to modern medicine. The family trees of myself and my husband have very few women dying in childbirth. I can't explain why our trees are such, so all I can do is hope to find the original data and compare it to what I'm finding.

 

Yeah, same here, from what I know of the family tree. My maternal grandmother had 11 kids, essentially from her teens until late 30's and she survived all and only one child died and that wasn't in birth but rather as an toddler coming on a ship to America in the late teens. She had one child die and gave birth to one on the ship. IIRC, she did get a divorce but it was late in life, after the kids were adults. Grandpa was an alcoholic. Still, stayed in the game to preserve the family and the family farm.

 

Also, surprisingly, the people didn't die young. Grandma lived into her late 60's and most of her kids lived into their 70's-80's, my mom a couple months short of 90. The men, per usual, died younger.

[Echo74]

Well, because it's nice to have someone to witness my life as I witness theirs.

 

In a longterm monogamous relationship, we could potentially look back 30, 40, 50+ years and (hopefully) have shared a lifetime of memories to reflect on and share with our kids, grandkids and other family and friends.

 

My own parents were married for almost 60 years until dads passing. Mom often reminisce about their adventures in travel and raising us six kids. I love that.

[Mumbles]

I think we have to go back a few hundred years further to really see a more easily understood difference in longevity and infant mortality, etc.

 

1900's and later, sure, as time progressed things got significantly better, but go back to the 1700's and have a look at your family history (if you can go back that far!).

 

I'd have to check my sources, but I think early-mid 1700's the infant mortality rate in the 'west' was horrific, around 60-70% if memory serves. Things got exponentially better as the decades and centuries progressed.

 

If you look at similar time periods, there is a bell curve of death statistics for adults. Men tended, in large numbers, to die 16-30 odd, with the peak being in early 20's I believe. This is being explained away via 'normal' testosterone driven reasons, conflict (both local and war), dangerous occupations or circumstances, etc, which tend, via stats, to have flattened out as men got older. So, you might well have a great great great uncle who lived till he was 90, but the key for him was surviving past 30-40 ... after that his chances rise significantly.

 

Women, at the same time period, tended to die in large numbers about 40-50, and though the proposed reasons for this are less distinct, there seems to be some theory that this was majorly due to 'late life' pregnancy and issues that couldn't be resolved at that time, mostly medical.

 

When reading history, don't forget that a very large number of the personalities you will read about came from upper-middle or upper classes too. They 'made' history, so to speak, or at least appear more often in the record, and had access to the best of everything at the time - better food, better clothing, housing, better medical options ... for whatever that might have been worth 200 odd years ago and some.

 

The average truly poor 'working class' guy-n-girl in the 1600 and 1700's didn't live long, and vast numbers of the populations of the west were pretty much 'done' by 50, if something else didn't kill them first.

 

I think that the above strongly influences, or influenced, the expectations surrounding marriage and life long partnerships. I don't think people loved their spouses more, or less, back then, its just that your whole life was compressed into a much smaller time period (on average ... there will always be outliers statistically speaking) and for most, the wealthy aside, simply living, from day to day, was a very real challenge.

[Lorenza]

Oh? what is happening over there, are people dying in the streets from leprosy? Is it a giant pandemic? I am still betting that getting in a car crash is still more likely. herpes does not count because over half of the population has that. My ex GF had it and im lucky I did not get it.

 

 

And who says it is just about sexual liberation? How about just being liberated from these constraints in general?

 

Why are you exaggerating? I didn't say people are dying from STD's, but it's a very high rates of clamydia, HPV etc. Don't know how about you, but I don't think it's a positive thing.

Oh believe me, Sweden's all about sexual liberation.

[central]

Well, because it's nice to have someone to witness my life as I witness theirs.

 

And a current spouse can't be forced to testify against you!

[preraph]

Because people are insecure, jealous, and possessive, in a nutshell. And because if you share a life together, you want to form a responsible union and be able to count on that person.

[pepperbird]

It seems to me that no one is really happy staying with one person their entire lives. I look around and what I see is always different from what people think they are going to get. It seems that marriage and very long relationships always lead to some form of boredom and lack of creativity. People are told to "work on thier relationships" to bring back passion. Yet when people are new to each other there is no work to bring passion and interest. We are told that after the passion comes real love and connection. And while that is true in part, and have experienced this myself in the past, This is not the only reality. I even heard two old ladies waking down the street today talking about open relationships and I was like lol its a sign.

 

My conclusion is that relationships in general don't work as we envision them. I have completley given up on the concept that a long relationship with one person that you love, exluding all others in the process, leads to lasting happiness. Freeing myself from that concept has been one of the best things that every happened to me.

 

Polyamory dosen't really work either. There is still a relationship structure there. I was really interested in the concept of relationship anarchy. Maybe that will work beter in future society's? Or perhaps that is happening now and it just goes under the general term "dating" .

 

Monogamy is great for having kids and I understand that but the planet is actually quite full. Its not that important to make more people, So that logic does not hold up.

 

 

So why do we still do it to ourselves? Bind one life to another. Is this really smart? Is humanity going to always stay this way? Will we change as a species or will everything just stay the same?

 

 

How about you stop assuming that the way you feel is he way all of us feel.

 

Some of us ARE built for monogamy. I have been in mostly long term relationships and married for over 20 years. I have never cheated on anyone, and have had no desire to. I am happy, I don't feel like I have missed out on anything by not sleeping with a whole lot of people. I guess , to some, that makes me a boring old fuddy duddy, but I don't care.

 

I have a feeling that I am not the only one who fits this description.

[pepperbird]

Well, monogamy is just fine for me. I think you are projecting when you say most people are not happy in monogamous relationships.

 

I tell you, watching my parents at the end of my mother's life was enlightening. They were married for 40 years, they built a home and a family together, they traveled the world and had great adventures, and at the end of her life... they cared for each other and loved each other.

 

To find that one person to love, to move through life together and know that this person will be by your side through the good, the bad, and the boring... well, that to me is what living is all about.

 

I saw that in my parents as well. They had been married for almost 50 years when my mom died from a cancer that absolutely ravaged her. In the space of a year she went from a woman who was planning her next world adventure to what amounted to not much more than a shell of herself. My dad looked after her, carrying her up and down the stairs so she could stay at home. He would sit with her for hours, just holding her hand. At the end, between the cancer and the pain meds, she was barely aware of who or where she was, but in his eyes, she was still the pretty young woman he fell in love with and married and also the mother of his children, the woman who had stood by him and supported him through all the good and bad times. She was the woman he will always love.

 

Even now, years after she died, he still gets tears in his eyes when he sees her picture.

 

 

 

Monogamy worked well for them. It wasn't drudgery or a ball and chain. They were best friends, lovers and very happy together. They, and millions like them, found it worked well for them. Others find other relationship styles are best. So long as there is honesty, it's all good.

[LilithD]

I was married once before. I believe in a mongamous relationships. He didn't. Or shall I say he thought he could have his cake and eat it too. Needless to say after six years of trying, we went our seperate ways.

 

The singles lifestyle never made me feel fulfilled. I found I need a committed relationship with someone who feels the same way.

 

Anyway, a few years later, I met my soulmate. Wouldn't have it any other way. Knowing that he is here, or with me means everything to me. No, monogamy may not be for everyone, but it for us... And a lot of other happy couples, I must add.

[Striver]

Love is about acceptance. You have your time of choosing, reject some, some reject you, you make it work with someone and go from there. Your lover/spouse should be like family. Like your parents, your children. Which none of us choose either. Many of us love them, why can't we love a spouse in the same way?

 

If you want a pet, pick the kind of pet you like, and see it through its days. If you get a dog, and it's a biting, hostile mess, that might not be part of the bargain. If it comes as advertised, well, you wanted a dog, the relationship with one. See it through.

 

With my kids, we had them through in vitro. So there were several cycles where things were winnowed down. Three kids made it to birth. They are what they are and I love them. You don't know much about what you are ultimately going to get there either through all of the choices and winnowing.

 

I don't want to be on my own, I have had a bellyful. I can always entertain myself within a relationship, but I want the partner for partner things. I don't want to sleep around, juggle multiple GF. Too much work!

 

I also get tired of courtship. It isn't sustainable. Even the second time around, it's more boring. People are older and you've done some things before. Less exciting. Don't understand how the excitement can still be there for some the fifth or tenth time around.

 

As much as I was hurt by my ex, monogamy seems to be the only way for me.