Prejudice

[errantember]

I was floating my mind over my general feelings about monogamy, and I finally arrived at a short opinion that I feel is correct.


No one has ever achieved happiness *because* of monogamy.

No couple has ever achieved happiness *because* of monogamy.

Discuss.



NOTE: This is basically a thought experiment rather than a perceived basic truth. My goal in defending the statement, if I have one, is to define the shape and limits of this idea in my mind, discover how well it meshes or conflicts with other ideas, and learn something about the assumptions we all make about relationships. I'm definitely *not* proposing that one relationships style is necessary better or more appropriate for everyone. More power to anyone who finds a style of loving relationship that makes them happy and successful, including those who identify it as monogamy.

SECOND NOTE: Did they change the editor? It took me like 10 minutes to figure out how to get an lj-cut to work, when in the past it has always just worked. The editor was trying to escape it out for some reason, and that seems like a change.

Comments

[errantember.livejournal.com]

I think you're hitting closer to the mark on where I was going with this discussion than anyone else so far. It's not the form, it's the people and what they *do* with the form that makes a difference. And since I see poly relationships as a superset of mono relationships, I see more opportunities for success. However, with our collective lack of maturity and education around relationships, there are also exponentially more opportunities for failure in a wider model, especially one that exposes those involved to a lot of stresses that monogamy has been specifically designed to avoid. And in either case, there are certain base levels of maturity necessary for long-term relationships to succeed, and I think another interpretation of what I'm try to say is:

If you have the maturity and skills to really make monogamy work long term, you have them to make poly work long-term, too. Someone in this position might chose to be monogamous because they want to, but not because they *have* to.

And *this* comes out of the recognition that a lot of limits defined by monogamy are specifically designed to *prevent* exposure to many issues that lead to personal growth and having to deal with real-world relationship issues by sweeping them under the rug or denying that they exist. You can choose your relationship style, but you *can't* choose to have a relationship with someone else where you don't have to deal with, say, the ending of NRE, inevitable interest in other people, the fact that falling in love is largely uncontrollable, the fact that healthy people *always* change over time, the fact that we all carry fucked-up emotional baggage from our childhood's, etc, etc, etc. When I hear monogamous people complaining about their relationship problems, I often see the answer in facing up directly to problems monogamo-hetero-patriarchy teaches us to pretend don't exist. And then they're stuck, because the real answers lie outside their "allowed" relationship space. And because breaking that mold suddenly means having to be an emotional adult in a world run by emotional kindergardeners. Real life and real relationships are *complicated* and difficult, and far from maximally convenient.