Changing attitudes and shifting social scenes requires us to reevaluate our love of monogamy
By Susan Currie
The Nov. 13 edition of The Peak’s “High infidelity” feature looked at The Mistress, a show that tries to de-vilify the “other” woman. Sarah J. Symonds, hostess of the program, believes that much of the problem lays in the lack of self-esteem held by mistresses, women who seem to fall upon married men and, oops, start engaging in sex with them. Symonds did this twice, so she would know right?
Symonds’s suspect sincerity aside, programs like The Mistress merely dance around the issue that should be under scrutiny when discussing the failing institutions of monogamy and marriage. This article also pointed out that the social and geographical climate of Vancouver makes it ideal for would-be adulterers. This may be true; Vancouver is a city teeming with people, most of whom just wanna get laid — been on OKCupid lately? Also noted is Vancouver’s oft-spoken of shell of a dating scene — I reiterate, been on OKCupid lately?
What I’ve observed is that the old method of dating, courting multiple people at a time and ceasing when a formal “dating” relationship has been formed (old-school monogamy), has seen its days. The more socially liberal we are about sex, the more willing people are to create hasty commitments with very recent dating partners. New monogamy has, in many ways, become synonymous with immediate co-dependency. Think of monogamy as wheat: originally we ate a lot of it, and it was generally wholesome and good, but now, after years of genetic modification, your local Safeway has over twenty different products labeled “Gluten Free,” because eventually it got out of hand.
I’ve been chastising monogamy, but it’s not really monogamy that irks me. Being emotionally and physically committed to one person is just groovy. The problem is the fear and ignorance with which people view the other options, options that work in a changing social-sexual climate. Swing, polyamoury, open-relationships — these are all viable options, rarely discussed because the closed-dyad is the hinge on which a great deal of our social assumptions swing.
Do women who become the mistresses of married men just have bad self-esteem? Are all men who cheat scoundrels? It’s hard to say, many of them probably do/are. Will open relationships and the revolution of the North American relationship structure abolish adultery and infidelity? Absolutely not; people make bad decisions and we don’t always know why. It will provide some people with non-co-dependent options, and perhaps that will cease this supposed “eruption” and growth in adulterous behavior in Vancouver. Perhaps the evolution of the sexual/romantic relationship in North America is required for a city like ours where overwhelming options, or overwhelming isolation, can be anybody’s ticket to dubious decision making.
The point of an open relationship is open communication about desires, needs, and interests. We no longer rely on marriage and monogamy for sex and safety, and thus our relationships and reliance on monogamy has changed. Fidelity and honesty with our partners should be an assumption we make, but fidelity and honesty is not monogamy’s domain alone. Being open doesn’t mean that cheating cannot happen. It very well can. What it does mean is that the option to discuss a non-traditional relationship is available and non-taboo. Bonus, when monogamy is not a default option, you can choose it instead of being assigned to it, if that’s how you swing.
