The Hypocrisy of Monogamy

Monogamy = a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. Never happens.
Adultery = is a relationship that develops between two consenting adults, when not given a free choice. Always happens.

Marriage has unsurprisingly emerged as a global practice. Usually by definition, a marriage between two partners entails monogamy. Keeping couples faithful is at the root of many societal laws and customs that attempt to promote childrearing while curbing sexual desires. Let us review the rather uninformed rather unenlightened state of marriage as it is now practiced (and I do mean practiced, because few get it right). Between 17 and 24 years of age, when people are at an age least qualified under present modern, commercially inundated, cultural settings, to make such decision, is the time when they are under most pressure from peers and family to do just that. Fortunately all over the world young people are rebelling against this ill-advised ideal, and marrying later and later, many opting not to marry at all. The society in their ignorance of the cultural realities of their first error of sanctifying marriage for selfish reasons, fail to understand why monogamy never has and never will work.

Marriages stayed together because people were afraid of family pressures, wrongly asserted by women afraid to leave abusive marriage partners and enforcing upon their offspring the same ignorance as “tradition”. The divorce rate began to skyrocket as women learned they could earn a living independent of men. The fears, insecurities, envy, jealousy of spouses, have made relating more difficult in an already unnatural setting called marriage. Just because society, out of false morality structures, have not given a free will of choice between monogamy, polygamy or celibacy – polygamy is practiced in the form of an ugly term called “adultery”.

Men by nature were born to be hunters, whereas women naturally chose to be home-makers. If given a choice and one is true to oneself (de-conditioned), men would like to be homeless wanderers. It is the woman who likes to tie him down to becoming a husband and a father, not realising that it is a conditioning that society has fabricated and fed with the mother’s milk, to keep him “in control”. But has failed miserably.

If you wonder about statistics, in every sexual survey done, an average of 75% of all married persons admitted to adultery and the majority admitted to serial-adultery or adultery with more than one person regularly. I say admitted to adultery, because many people, under such conditions, for a variety of reasons, will not admit that they have done something “wrong”. Many others will deny that they have had intercourse outside of their marriage.

The truth? It is hard to find a monogamous relationship by choice. More so, the rest of 15% may not physically practice adultery (I would prefer to call it relationship with another without marriage – adultery again sounds so “society-bound- (il)legal” definition!), but every (wo)man is so bored of his marital status, that in mind/matter (pornography, internet) is always tempting – most don’t indulge in a relationship outside marriage simply due to lack of courage or conditioning.

Indians make a great show of monogamy, but in reality, they practice polygamy with their clandestine “affairs”, “extra-marital relationships” or “heavy petting, oral sex”. It is of interest to note that many countries in the world today have outlawed polygamy. Taking a second wife, even with the free consent of the first wife, is a violation of the law. On the other hand, cheating on the wife, without her knowledge or consent, is perfectly legitimate as far as the law is concerned! What is the legal wisdom behind such a contradiction? Is the law designed to reward deception and punish honesty? It is one of the unfathomable paradoxes of our modern ‘civilized’ world.

“Without trying to simplify a complex situation too much, there’s a basic tension between biology on one side and society on the other side”, said psychologist Tom W. Smith, Director and principal investigator of the widely cited General Social Survey (GSS) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which gauges sexual attitudes and behaviours. “Biology simply wants a male and a female to mate together and the female to become pregnant — that’s all biology wants. But societies want to perpetuate themselves, too”.

Monogamy, as practised today, is like a game of musical chairs where you sit briefly and get up for the next chair so that somebody else can jump on the chair you just left. The reason monogamists give for criticizing polygamists is moral and is based on the ethic of one man, one wife, whereas Polygamy is the most ancient practice found in all human societies and almost every non-human oxygen breathing life form.

Section:: Empowered Gender