Can I just say that I’m sick and tired of “serial monogamy?”
I mean I might be getting a little radicalized to polyamory (a clunky-sounding word, by the way) here or something but does anybody think there’s any more virtue in, say, multiple marriages and divorces (or their secular, non-gender-specific equivalents) than in a series of “promiscuous” flings? Or a nice single relationship with sex with friends on the side?
Seriously. I’m just curious. I heard someone use the term in conversation the other day and it’s just been sticking in my craw ever since.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it, anymore than there’s anything wrong with real monogamy, polyamory, or just having sex with lots of friends and acquaintances. What is wrong, I think, is imagining that any one of those things, especially serial monogamy, is somehow more virtuous than any other.
Call me a prudish libertine, or maybe a libertine prude, but it’s just not floating my boat anymore.
Update: Along these lines (well, barely) Jess McCabe points to a long-shot conservative Bavarian politician who’s proposed that
...marriage should last seven years, after which couples should make an active choice to renew their vows or dissolve their relationship, reports Reuters.
...
Pauli admits that the proposal is mostly meant to shake up the male-dominated, Catholic-dominated party, and it could well be a way to get people discussing issues of abusive, or just plain unhappy marriages.
Submitted by 1637 (not verified) on Fri, 2007-09-28 12:24.
I heard someone promote this idea of "temporary" marriage some time ago, but they were suggesting the couple should undertake to stay together until any children were old enough to leave home.
I think their assumption is that there is cheating involved in multiple flings, sex with friends etc, which need not necessarily be the case, whereas serial monogamy can and often does involve just as much heartache for someone.
[I think it certainly involves much heartache. For instance my first girlfriend had a fling with someone she later agreed wasn't all that, but because she insisted she had to be monogamous she left me and tried to make it work with him. Her sleeping with someone else hurt my feelings, sure, but otherwise didn't actually bother me all that much. But her leaving me for such a... *stupid* reason hurt way, way, way more! Thanks. --fl]
Submitted by 1637 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-09-30 19:09.
I'm of the belief that whatever arrangement works for you and your partner(s), then it's all good. There's no one mystical answer for what form love takes. You can love someone passionately and deeply whom you live with, just as well as you can love someone passionately and deeply. and yet you only get together with them a couple times a year.
The book The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt goes over it pretty well, I thought.
[I agree The Ethical Slut is a great, great book -- even cooler in retrospect because so much of it seemed radical when it first came out but now, in part because it was so influential, a lot of it seems perfectly routine. Thanks, Quilzas. --fl]