This website or its third party tools use cookies,
which are necessary to its functioning.
By tapping on "I accept" you agree to the use of cookies.
Open2Think

Open2Think > Relationships

Why monogamy?

Let’s clear up a huge misconception: monogamy is NOT the most common form of relationship in the world:

Only 17 percent of human cultures are strictly monogamous. The vast majority of human societies embrace a mix of marriage types.
Source: here for the source and here for a long explanation .

The ideal of a man and a woman to marry and to live together forever is a Christian concept that came up in the Early Middle Ages. Now, that’s cleared up, let’s understand why monogamy is the least practical, and unpopular form of relationships. Modern society did come up with compromises to allow serial monogamy with divorces, even though they are still not recognized by some religions.

You can!

So, why is society so obsessed with monogamy that many countries have laws to enforce it? Even though, as we learned above, monogamy has been uncommon throughout history the world over and has only become a modern Western societal norm through sectarian lobbying. It was effective in growing the population to recruit armies (Romans figured that one out) and generate economic benefits for the rulers who chose to enforce it (European kings of the Middle Ages). It is so recent in human history that it is not in any original Buddhist writing or the Bible (aside from Genesis, but that’s also where the first mention of two wives is found). Quite the opposite as the Bible, for example, is very explicit about some of the prominent characters having several wives (700 for Solomon along with another 300 concubines for good measure). Getting followers to adopt monogamy came much later, at about the time when the Christian religion got mixed with the European powers of the time (about the 7th century). Yet, it only became broadly accepted as a social norm in the late 1800s. Before that, even the word monogamy was not commonly found in writing. The words “monogamy” and “monogamous’ started to emerge in books around 1860, peaking in the 1990s, and declining thereafter.

Ngram of word frequency shows the comparative use of the words

Can we guess what will it be in, say 100 years? We can probably predict what it will be in two generations, say 50 years. Monogamy will not be denounced as a social practice, but will it will most certainly have lost all of its officialdom status, which is already happening now with divorce laws and allowance for same-sex unions. As formal marriages will also become an out of fashion practice remaining only among the most conservative religious communities, monogamy will simply lose the importance of its status and will not even be replaced by polygamy as the very concept of dictating the format of relationships in officialdom will become outdated. Thus, as a formal and official societal norm, monogamy will have lasted less than 200 years, barely a blip in the scale of humanity.

Before wrapping up, let’s address the reason why the term “Ethical non-monogamy” is often used to emphasize that it is not cheating, it is consensual and known to all involved. Ironically, no one says ethical monogamy even though cheating is the most common cause of monogamous relationship failures.

References good to read:

  1. Monogamy and Human Evolution, Carl Zimmer, 2 August 2013, The New York Times.
  2. Why We Think Monogamy Is Normal, Michael E. Price Ph.D., 9 September 2011, Psychology Today.