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cloudboy -> RE: What is Monogamy? (12/30/2005 3:02:14 PM)
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>High Monogamy??!! This type of term Disgust me.... it's no better that the references,Those universal claims that Slave is better than Sub... Bi is better than straight.... that Poly is better than Monogamy, Men are better than women. Fact is we have our individual perferences that are best for us as an individual... But when we use terms and label that imply valuations better and beyond those of others...... These type of self-serving one-up-man-ships terminologies reflect an intense defensiveness and even prejudical view upon others.
I know a few people that will not be involving themself in this discussion, a thread that is fundamental flawed before it even begins. <
Although I have problems with her terminology and assumptions (I have not formulated a respone), I would just say that Candystripper is only describing her IDEAL relationship. If "high monogamy" is her ideal, then naturally everything else except that will be flawed. I don't think this is "disgusting" as much as it is axiomatic.
The trouble she is obviously having, tho, is that people are not necessarilly monogamous by nature in her experience. So her ideal remains elusive.
For me the question is, how flexible should monogomy be? Do you really love someone by expecting them to only love and have feelings for you ---- for an entire lifetime? Is "high monogamy" just another word for possession or exclusivity?
I don't think there are any easy answers, but the easiest route would be simple formula of:
1. Find "THE ONE"
2. Get married
3. Remain in love at all times
4. Live 40-50 years and feel utterly contented in one's only, exclusive relationship.
The trouble with making the above an IDEAL is how it is so at odds with real life, real people, and the passage of time (years).
At the last wedding I attended, I posed a question to my friends, "Why isn't marriage a time of mourning? Fuck, this means AJ will never get to strike up another strong connection to another womean for the rest of his life. Why do we even think this is a good thing?"
Right now, I am married "with permission." I don't consider this the ideal thing, but what do ideals actually have to do with our actual lives? They can be an inspiration, true, but they can also be bane as well.
One thing I will say about being married with permission, my emotional well being is not all on one significant other. She does not have to be everything for me and visa versa. Next, one is permitted a modicum of newness (new relationship energy), adventure, and freedom with which "high monogamy" are all antithetical.
And as some final food-for-thought I enclose the following view:
> Parents, teachers, and concerned adults all counsel against premature marriage. But they rarely speak the truth about marriage as it really is in modern middle class America. The truth as I see it is that contemporary marriage is a wretched institution. It spells the end of voluntary affection, of love freely given and joyously received. Beautiful romances are transmuted into dull marriages, and eventually the relationship becomes constricting, corrosive, grinding, and destructive. The beautiful love affair becomes a bitter contract.
The basic reason for this sad state of affairs is that marriage was not designed to bear the burdens now being asked of it by the urban American middle class. It is an institution that evolved over centuries to meet some very specific functional needs of a non industrial society. Romantic love was viewed as tragic, or merely irrelevant. Today it is the titillating prelude to domestic tragedy, or, perhaps more frequently, to domestic grotesqueries that are only pathetic.
Marriage was not designed as a mechanism for providing friendship, erotic experience, romantic love, personal fulfillment, continuous lay psychotherapy, or recreation. The Western European family was not designed to carry a lifelong load of highly emotional romantic freight. Given its present structure, it simply has to fail when asked to do so. The very idea of an irrevocable contract obligating the parties concerned to a lifetime of romantic effort is utterly absurd. <
Mervyn Cadwallader
Writing in THE ATLANTIC, 1966
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