Polyamory and the future of relationships
What today's fascination with "open relationships" says about the evolution of society
An opinion piece by Ross Douthat in last month’s New York Times, “The Quest for a New Vision of Sexual Morality,” does a nice job of illustrating the confusion that many relationships face today. The question is: Should we stay “faithful” to each other? Monogamous. Exclusive. Or should we also date other people? Everyone clearly has different “needs” in terms of sex, romance, and companionship… Is it really possible to have all our needs met in a single relationship?
Douthat describes the modern evolution of this question in broad terms. He starts with monogamy. For centuries it was the ideal, and still is for most people (especially conservatives). Then came classical feminism and the era of sexual liberation, a time when women were increasingly free to sleep around (a liberty many men were already taking). But after a few decades of that, women were feeling unsatisfied. Hook-up culture seemed great for the guys, but for the ladies… not so much.
Then came the #MeToo movement. As Douthat sees it, #MeToo has tried to dial back some of the excesses of the sexual revolution. It sees hook-up culture as adolescent. It wants the same freedoms, but in a more adult garb.
The result? — Modern-day polyamory.
So what’s the difference, really, between sexual liberation and polyamory?
With sexual liberation the emphasis is on autonomy — “We’re all adults, we can do what we want!” With polyamory the emphasis is more on relationship — “Yes, we’re all adults, and we can do what we want, but we also have feelings and need to discuss things before we do them.”
Sexual liberation is based on bare consent; it can feel transactional, like it’s all about gratification — “I want to have sex with this other person, they said ‘yes,’ so I’m doing it!” Polyamory replaces bare consent with sex-as-process — “Wait a minute. We’re all in this together. We need to talk about it and make sure it works for everyone.”
We can see polyamory as a family-friendly approach to sexual liberation; it tries to let everyone do whatever they want while still maintaining steady relationships (“I’ll pick up the kids from soccer practice while you’re with Rachel, and after dinner you can put the kids to bed and I’ll go see David”).
In this sense, polyamory isn’t a reaction against the traditional family; it’s actually trying to preserve the family against the ravages of our appetites. For this reason it’s often referred to as “ethical non-monogamy,” implying that other forms of non-monogamy are unethical. In Douthat’s telling:
Polyamory isn’t being offered as an alternative to conservative monogamy… so much as an alternative to more dangerous, irresponsible, and deceptive forms of promiscuity — a responsible, spreadsheet-enabled, therapeutic version of the sexual revolution, in which transparency replaces cheating, and everything is permitted so long as you carefully negotiate permission.
While polyamory is interesting in itself, the most valuable part of Douthat’s article is this historical approach to relationships — the movement he describes from monogamy to liberation to polyamory. Of course it’s a superficial treatment of these things, but it still illustrates how our understanding has changed over time. We can start to see polyamory in context — where it comes from and perhaps also, where it’s going. Which in turn points to some of the challenges we might face in the future and how we might deal with them.
When we look deeper into the history of relationships, we can notice a larger trend that’s emerged over the centuries and millennia: increasing individuation — the tendency of the individual to assert themselves more and more, to follow their own desires and not just what society expects of them.
For instance, we were once forced to marry those who belonged to the same tribe, to the same race, to the same caste or class. But over time those barriers have steadily broken down. People want to choose their partners now. No longer will society or my family decide who I marry. I’ll decide.
Of course this tendency hasn’t developed everywhere to the same extent. There are still plenty of countries where it’s routine to marry relatives and where arranged marriages are the norm. But nonetheless, the direction is clear: The evolution is towards greater choice, greater freedom.
But the march toward individual freedom comes at a high cost: With every step on this path, there’s a corresponding loss of social cohesion. Tradition and custom fall away. The social bonds that hold us together dissolve.
When this happens, the world becomes unfamiliar, unsteady — How should we do things? And tradition didn’t just tell us how to do things, but why to do them. When tradition disappears, the larger meaning of our lives can start to unravel.
So it’s understandable why people resist the breakdown of social norms. When the pendulum swings to one side — towards the individual becoming free of social constraints — it also swings to the other — towards people trying to preserve the old ways of doing things.1
But the pendulum never swings as far back as it swung forward. The drift is always towards individual freedom. With every generation there’s another wave, another push. They question their parents’ way of doing things, and want to find their own way.
So where is it all going? How will relationships look in the future?
One thing that seems clear is that relationships are becoming more complex. When we look at polyamory we see a patchwork of ever-shifting entanglements. In the same way that we now have seemingly endless forms of gender expression, our forms of relationship are also multiplying. How one person relates to another is becoming more specific and unique (“Tom’s my nesting partner, Bree’s just a sensual friend, and Natalie’s one of my life-partnership friends…”)
Sometimes the resulting mash-ups are simple, old-fashioned threesomes or foursomes (throuples and frouples), but sometimes they form strange, never-before-seen romantic combinations called “polycules” — small communities of friends and lovers that form their own Rubik’s Cube of shifting relationships.
In the same vein, I expect that polygamy — where one has multiple spouses2 — will likely become more widespread (it was recently decriminalized in Utah). It’s already practiced in a number of religious communities (i.e. Mormons and Muslims) but more and more polyamorous lovers will likely also want to get married and have multiple spouses — what polygamists call “plural families.”
Another thing that’s happening is that relationships are becoming increasingly paper-thin — more contractual, more superficial.
Why? Because with individuation comes isolation; we lose the community of shared meaning we were born into. Add to that the socially devastating effects of the internet, and we can see how our social connections become weaker by the day, how our “best friends” are strangers in chat rooms and our “partners” are one night stands we found while swiping through endless profiles.
As this happens — as the distance between us grows — it’s certainly possible we’ll see more specialized services like rent-a-friend and professional cuddlers. And I assume more and more people will eventually turn to AI relationships.
I also expect to see the steady growth of relationship-deprived subcultures like the “incel” movement (“involuntary celibates” — mostly young men struggling to find girlfriends). And over time, as society continues to become more liberal, I assume prostitution will be decriminalized (just think how our attitudes have already changed around pornography and sex work, to say nothing of adjacent, previously-considered “immoral acts” such as gambling and marijuana-use).
I don’t think any of these things point to the imminent loss of deep relationships, but I do think that collectively they point to their obvious decline. The isolation of our virtual lives, and the complexity of polyamory and polygamy, means we’re constantly in danger of spreading ourselves thinner and thinner, living more and more on the surface with each other. That is, if we can live together at all.
This probably sounds terrible to most people. A relationship plague that should be fought at all costs. The loss of healthy relationships. The loss of real love.
But I’d contend that it’s inevitable. Not only that, I’d contend that it’s for the good, even though it will lead (and is already leading) to greater suffering.
Why? Because even though increasing individuation means greater isolation and the loss of community, it also means greater independence and the rejection of collectivist coercion. It’s both negative and positive.
And don’t forget: New communities and new traditions are constantly being formed out of the ashes of the old. The question is, What’s the nature of these new communities?
The tendency to become more individuated means we’re always shedding the unfreedoms of the past — the way society told us to think and act. We’re growing out of the womb of our family, our community, our tribe. We’re emerging into the world as adults, standing on our own feet, basing our actions on our own free thinking.
But if our relationships are focused on self-gratification, on fulfilling our personal desires, then our actions are clearly not based on free thinking. We’re no more free following the instincts of our body than we are following tradition. Both force us to act in certain ways.
But there is another possibility. Breaking from tradition opens a space where we can create something new, where we can create spiritual community.
That might sound lofty, but what it really means is that there’s now the possibility of connecting with people in a free way, of consciously choosing our relationships and not being driven to them by either nature or nurture.
Perhaps surprisingly, it’s the shallowness of modern-day relationships that’s pointing the way to this new community. As we find it more and more difficult to connect with people directly; as we lose patience for friends and family who think differently; as we go from relationship to relationship seeking our own satisfaction, we will get tired and some of us will ask, “What’s the real point of being in relationship?”
And that question has the potential to help us find a new path. A path where we’re not just seeking comfort and pleasure, but where we’re actively working to heal the differences and divisions between us. A path where what’s interesting is the difference between us.
You have a female body. I have a male body. How is that different for you?
You’re from one culture and I’m from another. What connects us?
What are all these polarities that live between us, all these one-sidednesses? How are they fruitful?
And what really is a relationship? What’s a family? Is it really just you and me (1 + 1 = 2), or is there something more that’s created?
What is the wholeness — what is the deeper meaning — of our union?
These are the kinds of questions that will bring us into conscious community in the future. And this is also where our development is leading us. We’re being asked to shed what’s unconscious, what’s been given from outside, and instead form an interest in the other person and in the relationship — but now from out of ourselves.
And of course, we’re free to decide. As society continues to fall apart, we’ll probably be tempted to push back and to legislate these things. For instance, to keep polygamy and prostitution illegal — to tell people who they can love, who they can marry, and how they can be together as adults.
But we’d be better off working on the relationships themselves. We’d be better off recognizing that relationships are the foundation, the practice ground, for everything else that happens in society. It’s in our relationships — if we take them seriously — where we can learn to overcome ourselves, where we can develop the capacities needed to bring unity and wholeness to a broken, and ever-breaking, world.
Yes, writers have to eat, but paywalls just punish low-income people, and why shouldn’t they have access to the writing and ideas they want?
This is something I’ve written a lot about lately — this swing between the individual and the collective, between the social and the antisocial. I described it in the life of organizations, where we encounter the challenge of trying to balance individual initiative with the harmony of the whole. And I wrote about it in the world of architecture, where the design of spaces easily leads to isolation and away from greater togetherness.
Polygamy refers to both men and women having multiple spouses, but in reality it’s far more likely that a man would have multiple wives (referred to as polygyny), than a woman would have multiple husbands (referred to as polyandry). In a 20 year study from 1980, over 1000 societies were either occasionally or frequently polyganous, whereas only 4 societies were polyandrous. — Information found in Wikipedia on April 27th, 2024.
***AN IMPORTANT NOTE ON PROSTITUTION
I often write about controversial topics, and sometimes people don't like what I write and unsubscribe. They don't usually tell me why, but with this last article on polyamory one of my unsubscribers did. I thought they made some important point about prostitution, so I asked if they'd be willing to share their thoughts with everyone here in the comments, but unfortunately they haven't replied back so I'm going to share them instead (I'm retracting their name in case they want anonymity). I've also included my reply to their message so you can get a better sense for my thoughts on what they shared.
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You apparently haven't heard of or considered the Nordic Model as a legal framework to deal with the issue of prostitution: i.e. decriminalisation of sellers and criminalisation of buyers and provision of funding for exit services for the overwhelmingly female victims. It has been implemented with a good degree of success in various countries round the world.
If you inform yourself of the research of academics such as Melissa Farley you will find:
Prostitution is a form of gendered violence: the majority of sellers/sold are female and the overwhelming majority of buyers are male.
Studies have shown 90% of women/girls in prostitution worldwide are under the control of a pimp.
A very high percentage of those in prostitution begin as minors: so to condone/legalise prostitution is to do so for child prostitution.
Women in prostitution have higher rates of PTSD than military veterans and higher rates of murder than any other civilian group.
Women and girls in prostitution (and porn) have very high rates of childhood sexual abuse and rape compared to the rest of the female population: this experience 'grooms' them to see themselves as worthless sex objects- a kind of training for prostitution.
Men who use prostituted women are more likely to be partnered than single: the prostitution use is a form of infidelity therefore, and the self reported motivation of buyers is commonly to have the opportunity to do things to a woman that their partner would object to.
I'm letting you know that I'm unsubscribing to your substack on the basis of the unexamined and offensive misogyny and classism I feel you have displayed through your inability to condemn the social evil (I believe demonic and asuric beings are involved) of pornography and prostitution in this piece. You are almost certainly protected from being used in prostitution due to your (male) sex and class privilege: you appear only to have thought about prostitution from the perspective of a buyer, due to these privileges.
Those who haven't developed spiritually to the degree they are capable of seeing women in prostitution as deserving of the freedom to be able to survive financially without being raped for money, and that EVERYONE deserves to live a life free of suffering from the massive attendant physical, mental, emotional and spiritual violence from the men who use prostituted women, I feel, can have little to offer me. In my view such a understanding represents a relatively low bar of moral development. It is also in no way a coherent Christian/anthroposophical position to take. (Do unto others as you would wish to be done unto you).
Best wishes
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And my reply...
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Thanks so much for your message, it brings up a super important issue that I did treat in a very shallow, cursory way in my article. I agree with all the points you make, and I'll try to explain my own understanding so that you get a better understanding of why I wrote about prostitution in the way I did. I'm grateful for the opportunity.
First off, I haven't heard of the Nordic Model, but that sounds like a good legal framework to address some of the issues you brought up. And I am generally aware of many of those issues. I know that most prostitutes are women and that they're forced into it, either through sex slavery (being sold by their parents or tricked into it) or because of poverty (another clear form of coercion). And I know that the term "sex worker" has become popular in recent years among liberals who think it's more empowering, but that many prostituted women have pushed back against it and said, "We're not doing this because we chose to. We're being forced into it. So let's not make it sound healthy and good." (There's a similar movement in the disabled community, trying to reclaim the term disability.)
So, I'd say that I ENTIRELY agree with you that "women in prostitution [deserve] the freedom to be able to survive financially without being raped for money, and that EVERYONE deserves to live a life free of suffering from the massive attendant physical, mental, emotional and spiritual violence from the men who use prostituted women." Yes. So then the question for me is, How does one do that?
First, I think it's important to recognize two different things here. One is that there's a clear human rights violation - there's the element of coercion, of force (whether economic or physical), as well as the brutality and violence of prostitution. And then there's the element of having sex with another person as a so-called "service." I think it's possible to disentangle these two things, as is clear from my earlier example - there are some women who prefer to use the term "sex workers" because they feel they HAVE chosen the profession, because they feel they do have agency. If that is the case - if someone really hasn't been forced into it, but wants to be a sex worker - do you think society should say they can't?
Maybe that sounds a bit convoluted. After all, the reality is as you described it. But the reality also has to shift, and what will that shift look like? For instance, there is the argument that if prostitution was legalized then prostituted women would be able to have the same protections that are afforded to all other workers. If we imagine that happened, then my hypothetical isn't so strange. If it was an above board, legally recognized profession and there wasn't the same coercion or brutality, could you imagine it being alright for some people to do it?
I certainly have my doubts about the above argument. I could definitely imagine that it would only encourage more prostitution, and maybe much more. And on top of that, I could also imagine that much of it would still be happening illicitly. And even if that wasn't the case, there would still be the issue of economic coercion. If nothing else changed, if we still had the same dog-eat-dog capitalist system, then most women would still only be doing it because they had to.
But this just points to the fact that we need to deal with this issue of economic coercion across ALL of society, prostitution is just the most extreme example. We need to change the economy in a fundamental way. We need to separate work and income so that no one has to sell their labor. It makes people into commodities, and puts all the power in the hands of the employers (this is something I've written a bit about in a couple articles - "Welcome back to work. Now please hold still while we put your collar and leash back on" and "Your work is not a commodity, it's your reason for being here." In an economic system that actually addressed these fundamental inequities, people would have far more agency in choosing their work.
In such a system, I could imagine prostitution actually becoming "sex work," and being a helpful, perhaps therapeutic profession. When I was younger, I met a man who slept with prostitutes. He was an incredibly awkward person - had a very hard time connecting with people - and he described that prostitutes were a life-saver for him, that otherwise he felt he would have been driven mad because of the lack of intimacy in his life. I don't think sex workers are the long-run solution for his particular dilemma, I think we should be trying to create a society where people can enter into committed relationships in a healthy way, but I could also imagine that there might always be some people who are challenged in this particular way, and that sex work might be a step on a person's particular path of development.
That's the only way I can really imagine sex work playing a healthy role in society. I assume it would be a much rarer activity than it currently is, and that people would be doing sex work out of their own free will, without any coercion. When I point to prostitution in my article, I'm assuming these things - I'm assuming, for instance, that the human rights aspect of prostitution is being addressed (and to some extent it would obviously have to be, otherwise how could it become legal?) If it is addressed, and people still want to do it (even for much less healthy reasons than I've outlined above) I do think they should be able to. If it's not violating their rights, if they're two or more consenting adults, then I don't think other people should get in the way.
But yeah, I recognize that there are a lot of "ifs" there. And I recognize that I didn't really put any of them in my article (though I do think they're somewhat implied...). So yeah, it was pretty thoughtless of me, and I apologize for being so flippant about the whole thing. Anyways, I hope that clarifies things. Thanks again for bringing up this incredibly important issue. Would love your further thoughts on it.
I think more and more human beings are recognizing that freedom is intricately connected to responsibility for other human beings, for our humanity, and its survival as a whole. In the coming 6th epoch, the spirit of brotherhood will reign and we will not be able to find peace if another, or other human beings, are suffering. No doubt personal bodily satisfactions will become less important than care for the healthy raising of children and family life in whatever constellations that takes. Our human evolution is moving us away from physical satisfactions to spiritual ones that value all of humanity.