By Alissa Henry
“It’s unrealistic,” a guy friend told me one day when we were discussing the subject of only having sex with one person until death do you part. “Even if I were married to Beyonce, I’d still cheat. It’s not about looks. All men cheat on their wives and the ones who don’t are lame.”
James was attractive, slightly older than I am, accomplished and a certified ladies man. If they gave out degrees in bed hopping, his would be summa cum laude. He said he wanted to be married one day, but he also said he wanted to divorce at 40 and start all over again. “Monogamy is cool for, like, the first year,” he told me. “But after that, no way.”
It’s these types of men – and the women who share those same ideas – who would do the institution of marriage a favor by never getting married. Or at least they should take care to marry someone who agrees with the fallacy that the best thing about sex is novelty.
Men and women like James believe monogamy is unrealistic simply because they lack the experience and the desire to be committed to one person. Some eventually commit, either through coercion or the misguided belief that a ring changes anything fundamental about them, and they end up stepping out on their marriages. We can all recall those at the center of several affairs that made headlines in the past few years: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rupert Sanders, Chad Johnson, and Tiger Woods to name a few. When that happens many wonder if the hurt, pain, and humiliation could be avoided if only we’d abandon the “one person until death (or divorce)” requirement of marriage.
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In my opinion, the hurt, pain, and humiliation would be avoided if these types of people would just stay committed to their marriages. One person’s – or even a group of persons’ – selfishness does not make the whole idea of monogamy obsolete. Not living up to a reasonable standard is not a reason to do away with it.
If anything, knowing that people believe different things about monogamy just means that we should be certain we’re marrying someone who shares our same ideals on the topic. It’s the whole “you can’t turn a man-whore into a house-husband” thing. As one wise writer succinctly put it “a cheating boyfriend is a cheating fiancé is a cheating spouse.”
It’s not monogamy itself that’s unrealistic. What’s not plausible is the idea that one can easily go from having indiscriminate sex to being content with one person. That would involve a total retraining of the mind. A monogamous relationship would require someone accustomed to fornication to learn to value the quality of sex over the quantity of partners.
It would also require them to learn how to be good in bed. The inconvenient truth is, people who switch sexual partners often never learn how to satisfy because random encounters are inherently selfish, and rarely as much about a real connection as about the next release. In those situations, if the sex isn’t “good” for one or both people, then they can just move on to the next. In a committed, monogamous relationship both parties learn how to please the other person and ultimately learn what they themselves like best through trial, error, experiment, and ecstasy. This is why most people say married sex is the best they’ve ever had. In all of that bed hopping, they never really learned what it is that they liked and were never in the presence of someone who cared to find out. Monogamous sex is the best kind.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
The problem is, people who expect monogamy yet are attaching themselves to promiscuous people who excuse their own behavior by insisting that monogamy is an unrealistic expectation. What’s truly unrealistic is the idea that sex is all physical and not at all emotional or mental. Even if we preface it with adjectives like “casual,” sex will still be anything but. The fact is sexual exclusivity safeguards a marriage against jealousy, possessiveness, extreme selfishness, disrespect, insecurity, and distrust from both parties. How many men in favor of polygyny would be OK with another man sexing one of their many wives? They don’t even permit lesbian relations among their women. They like to pretend sexual exclusivity doesn’t matter, but clearly it does. If monogamy weren’t normal, then infidelity would not hurt us emotionally.
Beyond that, with the AIDS rate being what it is, as well as, the sheer number of unwanted children being born to uncommitted sex partners everyday, monogamy is not only realistic, it’s necessary to the health and wealth of our communities.
What do you think? Do you think monogamy is an unrealistic expectation? Do you agree that people with a lot of sexual partners find it harder to commit to just one?
Follow Alissa on Twitter @AlissaInPink
[Photo: Shutterstock]
