A partner once told me that she could probably be sexually monogamous with someone but could never promise anyone romantic monogamy. This was a huge epiphany for me.
What is Love?
I’ve been in Facebook threads and in-person discussion groups in the past month or two where we discussed the distinctions people make between Platonic and romantic love. Folks are all over the map on this.
Some people don’t feel that the love in their relationship with their closest friends is qualitatively different than the love in their relationships with their romantic and/or sexual partners. Lots of people consider themselves to have some friendships that are romantic and others that are not. Some people consider Platonic/romantic as one spectrum that only loosely correlates with non-sexual/sexual. Others think Platonic is equivalent to non-sexual and romantic is equivalent to sexual.
Some people feel like romantic love means that it’s driven to be forever. Some people feel like romantic love just means your hormones are weighing in on the matter. Some people feel like romantic love means that you engage in grand gestures of expressing your love.
People are even divided on what constitutes sexual love. Is it sexual love by desire or action? What period of inaction (or lack of sexual desire) reverts a sexual love to a non-sexual one? What level of cuddling or what intention while cuddling constitutes sexual love?
Think about all of that for a second. You have a huge group of people who share the belief that it’s perfectly possible to love more than one person at a time. Despite that unity, they have almost no agreement on what it means to love someone.
What is Monogamy?
Marriage is, culturally, the epitome of monogamy. Unless you’re getting married for a green card, the wedding is the definitive, societal statement of romantic and sexual fidelity.
Groom: I, (name), take you, (name), to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.
Catholic Wedding Vows
Bride: I, (name), take you, (name), to be my husband. I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.
These vows are the canonical expression of monogamy. (Note the bizarre asymmetry above: the woman promises to be faithful while the man promises to be true. Is it just me, or is that saying the bride can only have sex with the groom but the groom can have sex with anyone so long as “she means nothing to me, baby”?)
What, in these vows, prevents you from sharing them with two people simultaneously? Lots of people would say that being sexual with one person is not being true/faithful to the other. Okay. So, I’ll take sex off the table. I won’t be sexual with either person. Now, what’s the problem? Lots of (monogamous) people would say that loving one person is not being true/faithful to the other. But, what kind of love or how much? Even Mike Pence probably feels like he’s still faithful to his wife when he feels love for his children or siblings or mom.
The Epiphany
I had considered myself monogamous/faithful/true through decades of serial monogamy. And, I had been sexually monogamous (where sexual is anything more bodily-intimate than self-conscious man-hugs). And, I had been “future-plans” monogamous. It had never occurred to me that there might be more to monogamy than just those two things.
Now, thinking about how much diversity there is in what people mean when they say they are in love with someone, it seems silly to have ever thought we would have consensus about what is monogamy and what isn’t.
If I’m a monogamous, straight man, how close can I be to my best man-friends before I’m having an “emotional affair”? Is that line in the same place as it is with my woman-friends? (I do get to have woman-friends, right?) If I’m only straight-ish, does that move the goalposts?
How about if I am enamored from afar with a movie star that I’ll never meet or with my boss or with a fictional character? Is that being unfaithful/non-monogamous? To quote Hamlet again, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” But, is thinking bad itself? I never actually ran my fingernails up Gal Gadot’s neck and up under her hair. I never actually wrote my boss an “if only things were different” love letter. I never actually choked on my soup as I locked eyes with Irene Adler across the table at a dinner party.
I think, to many monogamous folks, a strong or persistent or recurring desire for something unfaithful is, for all intents and purposes, unfaithful. And, if that’s the standard, has anyone ever been faithful a day in their life?
The Limits
There is wide agreement that when it comes to family love/filial love, you can love as many people as you wish without it being untrue to the others. There is a fair amount of agreement that when it comes to Platonic love (assuming one believes there is such a thing and that it differs from romantic love in some way), you can love as many people as you wish without it being untrue to the others.
When it comes to romantic love and/or sexual love, it is still fringe in our modern world to believe you can love more than one person without it being untrue to the others whether you act on that love or not.
The mostly-sentient sac of chemicals in me flatly rejects the idea that one can dictate for whom one (oneself or another) feels (or does not feel) romantic love and/or sexual love. The relationship anarchist in me flatly rejects the idea that feeling (and acting on) romantic love and/or sexual love with more than one person is a trespass against any other. (A trespass against agreements with another, possibly, but not de facto trespass.) The hopeless romantic in me flatly rejects the idea that one should ever try to bound (upper or lower) the emotions one person (ourselves included) feels for another.