Dating in the modern world is complicated. Compared to earlier, people’s preferences have evolved. People prefer to engage in relationship patterns that help fulfil their sexual and emotional needs, and these can be in the form of monogamy, polygamy, and polyamory. While there are several other relationship patterns such as polyandry, polygyny, and polygynandry, among others, the article focuses on monogamy and polyamory alone in cisgendered heterosexual couples.
Monogamy comes from two Greek words; monos meaning alone and gamos, meaning union or marriage. Monogamy refers to a situation in which a person has only one sexual partner at a time, whether in an informal or formal relationship within a marriage. Interestingly, monogamy is rare among mammals.
Psychologist David Barash of University of Washington and Psychiatrist Judith Lipton,a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, suggested that many species that were thought to be monogamous are socially monogamous at best. They may mate with a single individual, setting up housekeeping, co-parenting and sharing resources. Studies conducted in animals suggest that less than 15 percent of primates and 3 percent of mammals are monogamous.
From an evolutionary standpoint, short term monogamy makes sense for mammals that give birth to helpless infants. These infants require a lasting parental partnership to ensure offspring survival beyond infancy. In these species, like birds, wolves, and humans, mothers cannot feed and protect themselves and their helpless infants without assistance.
Amongst monogamous primates are the Gibbons. Like humans, they have a partner they mate with for life. But unlike humans, they only copulate when the female is fertile, which occurs every several years. They also live in seclusion and away from other gibbons. This means they mostly never interact with another potential partner in their lifetime.
One argument towards monogamy that persists even today was made by Johann Bachofen, a Swiss law professor, is that paternity is a mystery, whereas maternity is always known. Bachofen argues that the two-parent family was formed when the women became weary of rearing children alone and persuaded men to settle down and help. Unlike the civilised world where people can connect between intercourse and conception to claim paternal rights, the primitive world was obscure in terms of sex and paternity. As a result, males would have had more difficulty identifying their offspring, and the family unit would have consisted only of a mother and her children.
The two-parent family is beneficial for children, as studies suggest that children reared in such an environment enjoy numerous benefits. They tend to be better adjusted emotionally, intellectually, sexually, and physically. Married people have lesser physical and emotional illness, and they practice healthier lifestyles.
Even though we have similarities with other monogamous species, humans have interpreted marriage and monogamy with a considerable difference. This is possible due to values such as consciousness, integrity, and compassion which could be different for individuals.
Differences in hormone levels such as estrogen, testosterone, vasopressin, and dehydroepiandrosterone have long been known to influence our sexual desires and habits. The “Monogamy Molecule” - vasopressin has been identified as the cause of lifelong mating patterns in male prairie voles. Humans have evolved to engage in sex beyond the reason of procreation.
Evolutionary biologists argue that if sex were about reproduction alone, then the human body would have evolved differently. For example, if sex were only about procreation, then ovulating women would be easily identifiable—males would know automatically which males could fertilise females. One of the examples of this biological feature is of the chimps.
Chimps practice a form of sexual communism where every male gets to be with every female, and when the fertile female chimp goes into heat, her bottom turns a bright pink suggesting that she is ready for fertilisation.
Unlike chimps, humans engage in sexual activities for physical pleasure, to please their partner, boost self-esteem, and enhance emotional connection. Humans also aren’t purely monogamous in nature and have not necessarily been monogamous throughout the species lifetime.
Anthropological records indicate that approximately 85 percent of human societies have permitted men to have more than one wife (polygynous marriage). Both empirical and evolutionary considerations suggest that large absolute differences in wealth should favour more polygynous unions.
Polyamory is a form of relationship where longer-term intimate and sexual relationships are maintained with multiple partners simultaneously and ethically; arrangements that occur with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.
The word polyamory was created in the late 1980s by Morning Glory and Oberon Zell. Polyamory comes from Greek and means “many.” Amory comes from Latin and means “love.” Mixing Greek and Latin roots in one word is against the traditional rules, but then so is loving more than one person at a time when it comes to romantic or erotic love.
Polyamory may seem complicated but it stands on the 12 pillars of values which include authenticity, choice, transparency, trust, gender equality, honesty, open communication, being non-possessive, consensual, accepting of self-determination, being sex-positive and understanding, and embracing compersion. Compersion refers to the joy of witnessing loved ones’ joy with others.
There are several benefits to being polyamorous which include increased personal freedom and greater depth to social relationships. It also includes the potential for sexual exploration in a non-judgmental setting along with the strengthening of spousal bonds.
But, much like two sides of a coin, polyamory too, has its problems such as new relationship energy, choice fatigue when faced with potential partners, and the dangers of compassion fatigue and social stigma. Further, polyamorous people tend to feel prejudiced against due to their lifestyle. Its nature challenges traditional conditioning and thereby stirs up discomfort.
With this information, one can see why monogamy has turned out to be the norm for humans to ensure survival. As societies were built upon this idea, polyamory seems to challenge the notion in several ways. Monogamy, polygamy, and polyamory come with their fair share of evolutionary, historical and biological concerns. Given each individual’s hormonal consciousness and environmental levels, one has the agency to choose what works for them to navigate through this world.
Parvathi Sajiv
