139 / Are you happy with your ‘sex contract’?
… where a man’s protection is traded for a woman’s
fertility and fidelity? Do you
think it’s natural? You probably do, and you may even think it is healthy to be
monogamous. But that is a myth.
Apparently for some two million years our
ancestors lived in small, independent and highly egalitarian groups who shared
everything, including sex (as many tribes in the Amazon, Western China or the
Inuit still do.) Monogomy came along only about 10,000 years ago, with the development
of agriculture, when humans started organising themselves in hierarchical
political structures and introduced private property, such as houses,
livestock, slaves – and wives. So much for history.
But is
sexual monogamy healthy? Apparently not … at least according to a new book, Sex at Dawn, written up
in the SMH last weekend, where the authors make the case that, “the price of monogomy
is steep indeed: fractured families, failed marriages, flagging libidos are all
casualties in the battle between our evolved nature and the figleaf of
propriety, otherwise known as marriage-for-life.” So there.
In contrast,
Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha write, polyamory allows for multiple
partners, apparently without guilt, and touted as an ethical solution to the
misery of conventional marriage. How so? Polyamorous people are said to
experience something they call ‘compersion’ – to take pleasure in your partner’s
pleasure.
Now that's something I can relate to; compersion
works for my partner and myself. Yet, we're monogonous … ‘til this week
anyway.