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I wanted to thank you for drawing so much attention to Sex
at
Dawn. I am going to get it as soon as possible so I can better
understand
myself. I have always felt a certain amount of shame because I've never
had a
monogamous relationship. Having been married 14 years (married at 19,
which I
know is a no-no in your book), I've had plenty of temptation and only
given in a
few times. Those events felt like they were saving my sanity; they never
had
anything to do with me loving my husband any less. It wasn't until I
started
listening to your advice that I realized that maybe I wasn't the
problem. For
all these years, I felt like shit because I couldn't be monogamous.
Thanks for
clueing me in to evolution, reptile brains, etc.
—M
Thanks for the nice note, M, now go forth and cheat no more, i.e.,
don't be a
CPOS (cheating piece of shit). If you're incapable of being
monogamous, don't
make monogamous commitments that you're damn well going to break.
And to all the outraged folks writing in to ask if I'm seriously
suggesting
that no one should ever be monogamous: That's not what I'm saying—and
it's not
what the authors of Sex at Dawn are arguing either. The point
of
Sex at Dawn—and my point in drawing my readers' and listeners'
attention to it—isn't that no one should attempt to be monogamous or
that people
who've made monogamous commitments have a license to cheat on their
partners.
For the record: I'm happy to acknowledge that there are lots of good
reasons to
be monogamous and/or very nearly monogamous, e.g., children and other
sexually
transmitted infections.
What the authors of Sex at Dawn believe—and what
I
think they prove—is that we are a naturally
nonmonogamous species, despite
what we've been told for millennia by preachers and for centuries by
scientists,
and that is why so many people have such a hard time remaining
monogamous over the long haul.Sex at Dawn don't make that
argument
either. (Lots of monogamists, however, do run around insisting that
everyone
everywhere should be monogamous—and proscriptive monogamists get a pass
because,
hey, they mean so well and wouldn't it be nice if everyone
were?) I'm not saying that
everyone everywhere has to be
nonmonogamous; the authors of
The point is this: People—particularly those who value monogamy—need
to understand why being monogamous is so much harder than they've been
led to
believe it will be. In some cases, this understanding may help people
find the
courage to seek out nonmonogamous relationships and/or arrangements
and/or
allowances that make them—gasp!—happier and make their
relationships
more stable, not less, as a routine infidelity won't doom their
marriage/civilunion/commitment/slavecontract/whatever. But understanding
that
monogamy is a struggle for most people—and being able to be
honest with
our partners about experiencing it as a struggle—may actually help
some
people remain monogamous.
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday
at
thestranger.com/savage. mail@savagelove.net
reguards
yer he knew what would happen if he did pal
bugg