Polyamory is having a moment. Glowing pieces in mainstream media outlets like The New York Times and New York magazine, not to mention the Peacock reality show “From Couple to Throuple,” have cast polyamory as the newest family fashion that progressives should get behind.
Polyamory is the latest in a long line of supposedly shackles-breaking, self-actualizing adventures in the realm of love, sex and marriage that are supposed to open new horizons of meaning and happiness for men and women who are looking to change things up. About one-third of Americans have reported they preferred something besides monogamy in relationships, according to one YouGov poll.
The rose-colored glasses were on full display in The New York Times coverage of Brooklyn writer Molly Roden Winter’s “More," which is a “memoir of open marriage.” The writer generously described “More” as a “breathtakingly candid” record of the “highs and lows” of polyamory. But the reader was left with the impression that Roden Winter’s “adventure” had brought her to a good place in life and love.
In Commonweal, a different, more honest review took a much dimmer view: it was all lows.
“Roden Winter sobs in hotel rooms on work trip, she sobs in hotel rooms on sex trips, she sobs in her own Park Slope home,” wrote reviewer Dorothy Fortenberry.
Roden Winter sought to portray midlife polyamory as a liberatory experience for women. But the “benefits” of abandoning marital monogamy, it turns out, are found much more in the telling of the story, not the living. The actual stories Roden Winter shares in her book describe an “adventure” only in disappointment, jealousy and despair.
This follows a pattern. A growing number of public advocates for polyamory argue their position in the abstract: it will liberate women, it will repair broken marriages, it will refresh “antiquated” cultural expectations for women or marriage generally, and in so doing leave them happier for it, they say. But these advocates cannot use data to support their aspirations. Because it doesn’t exist.
First, it’s worth noting that monogamy is far from the “norm” in human history. It’s not even the contemporary norm. According to research from MIT historian Anne McCants, an estimated 5 billion people are living, right now, in societies with legal polygamy. We should note that where polygamy is conventional, either through law or religious custom, it is almost uniformly polygyny — the right of men to marry multiple women, but not the other way around.
Today’s Western advocates of “polyamory” are not thinking about it in these terms. They seem — at least in their memoirs and pseudo-autobiographical novels — to believe the history of human sexual norms began with Western Christian civilization, which has stigmatized polygamy. And that has been of great benefit to the advancement of human rights: as McCants and her fellow researchers found, polygamous societies are more despotic, less scientifically and economically advanced, and more tribal than monogamous societies. Polygamy is particularly disastrous for women, and is “associated with the commodification of women at the expense of their health, wealth, education, and personal agency,” wherever it is practiced, McCants and her co-author, Daniel Seligson, write.
So let’s dispense with the notion that “polyamory” represents “throwing off convention.” And while today’s American polyamory apologists aren’t advocating a return to polygyny, they clearly intend to cast doubt on whether monogamy is really the social ideal.
But married monogamy is. And we have receipts.
The data has long shown that Americans who are married — still legally defined in the U.S. as a contract between only two people — report the highest levels of personal happiness. Despite the fact that many young Americans, particularly women, place marriage low on their bucket lists, it remains a better predictor of happiness than education, money and work.
Of course, polyamory advocates may contend that their “open” marriages are still “marriages,” only “liberated” ones. But the numbers on this score don’t lie, either, as one of us (Wilcox) argued in a recent debate with evolutionary psychologist Diane Fleischman at MIT. Marital happiness is much higher for couples who embrace the norm of faithful, monogamous marriage, and who say they believe sex with someone outside the marriage is always wrong.
Happiness in marriage is also higher for those who embrace monogamy in marriage. “The happiness-maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be 1,” noted Arthur Brooks, the director of the Harvard Leadership and Happiness Laboratory, referencing a 2004 survey of 16,000 American adults.
And an Institute for Family Studies report by sociologist Nicholas Wolfinger found that married men and women were most likely to report being “very happy” in their marriages when they only had one sexual partner — their spouse. So, for the average couple, embracing monogamy in theory and practice seems like a more reliable route to happiness.
We don’t contend that monogamous marriage always makes everyone happy, or that it’s never challenging. But it is relevant that “personal satisfaction” is the stated goal of most public advocates for polyamory, and it sure looks like the best way to realize a satisfying marriage is by rejecting the push for polyamory.
Maybe the problem is the diagnosis: advocates for Western polyamory presume the most important component of a married person’s satisfaction is sex. Sexual health certainly impacts a marriage. But research suggests it’s actually the quality of friendship and commitment, the attachment, between a husband and wife that most profoundly influences their marital satisfaction. No one can truly feel safe inside a marriage whose vows have an asterisk. And it’s exactly these components — the friendship, trust and commitment — that polyamory devours.
We can be charitable and assume that couples toying with polyamory don’t come to it lightly. Even the most “liberated” advocates often admit their “journey” began in a struggle. Many say their marriage had hit a rough patch, or that they were struggling to cope with the natural trials of life, work, parenthood and aging.
Interestingly, the women who write the memoirs, or who “start whisper networks” of women on the cusp of leaving their marriages, all seem to say the same things: that monogamy left them feeling under-appreciated, undesired, bored or lonely. These women rarely sound like they’re earnestly seeking “liberation” and sexual “autonomy” — they sound like they’re seeking what their monogamous marriage was supposed to offer them in the first place: the sense of being chosen, cherished and sacrificially loved.
These components are also what makes monogamous marriage a crucial source of safety and well-being for the most vulnerable stakeholders: a couple’s children.
It should be stated plainly that polygamy and polyamory are a direct threat to kids, both emotionally and physically. Boys whose parents either never marry or break their marriages (including after “opening” them) are more likely to go to prison than to graduate from college. Kids without a married mom and dad at home are far more likely to report feeling “sad a lot of the time,” and those whose parents invite an unrelated adult into their home are at exponentially higher risk of experiencing physical, sexual and emotional abuse.
A few years ago, a writer at Vice reported on what he clearly thought was an edgy new trend. People were calling it “radical monogamy.” This was described as the choice to commit to only one person — “choice” being the crucial part. In this world view, monogamy can be “radical” only if it is chosen from among many other totally valid options. “I’ve always wanted a gigantic love,” one “radical monogamist” told the reporter. “I wanted to be one person’s joy and delight and I wanted them to be mine.”
Progressives can rebrand their natural human longing for exclusive love and commitment all they like. They can tell themselves they “chose” monogamy rather than it being “chosen” for them by their culture; that’s fine. That’s still an improvement over those who would advocate for polyamory because they believe it’s progressive, despite the human misery it is likely to leave in its wake.
Monogamy ought to remain our social ideal. Because of all the other choices on offer, it offers the very best chance for freedom, advancement and human happiness. Even more importantly, it’s the safest option for our children. This, above all, is why we should reject the progressive push for polyamory.