Just like unconventional relationships aren't for everyone, monogamous relationships aren't for everyone either. It's difficult to know if monogamy isn't right for you because it tends to be the default, and many people do not have experience with unconventional relationship styles.
Just like you can be committed to multiple friendships, you can be committed to multiple romantic relationships as well — and there's nothing wrong with being single, whether you identify as monogamous or not!
1. Our romantic drives are loosely coupled networks. Probably the biggest factor in why it is hard to remain monogamous is that there are several drives built into us that contribute to reproduction, but they do not work in unison.
Monogamy, after all, does not come naturally; it is not the norm unless a society enforces it as such. There are immense benefits to doing so. But it is unclear how well we humans can achieve this aim in the present environment.
Humans are now mostly monogamous, but this has been the norm for just the past 1,000 years. Scientists at University College London believe monogamy emerged so males could protect their infants from other males in ancestral groups who may kill them in order to mate with their mothers.
Balance of evidence indicates we are biologically inclined towards monogamy. Science has yet to definitively pronounce on whether humans are naturally monogamous (lifelong male-female breeding pair) or polygamous (single male breeding with more than one female).
In essence, men are only socially monogamous rather than genetically monogamous.
“The human mating system is extremely flexible,” Bernard Chapais of the University of Montreal wrote in a recent review in Evolutionary Anthropology. Only 17 percent of human cultures are strictly monogamous.
So, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, monogamy is natural because fathering is natural in the human species and fathering only evolves with sufficient sexual exclusivity to allow for paternity certainty for men and sufficient resource provision certainty for women.
John Gill comments on 1 Corinthians 7 and states that polygamy is unlawful; and that one man is to have but one wife, and to keep to her; and that one woman is to have but one husband, and to keep to him and the wife only has a power over the husband's body, a right to it, and may claim the use of it: this power over ...
Monogamy is an intrinsically unstable mating strategy. Benefits include the (relative) certainty of access to the partner's reproductive potential, but the chief disadvantage is that access to other potential partners is strongly diminished, particularly in those cases where males exhibit strong mate-guarding behavior.
More recent field research on a large Canadian sample also found that those in open or polyamorous relationships were just as happy as those in monogamous relationships. The Rubel and Bogaert review reports that most non-monogamous people are just as or more sexually satisfied than monogamists.
As long as the relationship is ethical, considerate, and considerate, being monogamous is not selfish. If couples are accepting and open-minded, there isn't a wrong or selfish relationship. Put simply, you shouldn't worry too much about what others think and focus on discovering your truth.
Instead, biological indicators suggest a mating system where both sexes form a long-term pairbond with a single partner (Møller, 2003). And while polygyny was likely present in the human past, as it is across contemporary human societies, the weight of evidence seems to support social monogamy.
There are many forms of consensual non-monogamy, including triads or “throuples” (when 3 people are involved in a romantic relationship and every person is linked with one another), open marriages (when married couples agree to have extramarital sexual relationships), and polyamory (see below).
Recent discoveries have led biologists to talk about the three varieties of monogamy: social monogamy, sexual monogamy, and genetic monogamy. The distinction between these three are important to the modern understanding of monogamy.
According to sexologists, some serial monogamist red flags are: There is barely any gap between the end of one relationship and the beginning of another. A serial monogamist will not like it when their demand for exclusivity is not accepted. They might be engaged more than three times without getting married even once.
If we mean realistic for the species of humans, then the answer clearly is yes. In various cultures around the world people are able to engage in lifelong monogamous relationships.
Polyamory is a relationship orientation that is practiced by a minority of the population in the United States, about 4 to 5 percent.
According to the New York Times, a 2011 paper showed that early humans, or hominids, began shifting towards monogamy about 3.5 million years ago—though the species never evolved to be 100% monogamous (remember that earlier statistic).
For humans, monogamy is not biologically ordained. According to evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss of the University of Texas at Austin, humans are in general innately inclined toward nonmonogamy. But, Buss argues, promiscuity is not a universal phenomenon; lifelong relationships can and do work for many people.
Polygyny offers husbands the benefit of allowing them to have more children, may provide them with a larger number of productive workers (where workers are family), and allows them to establish politically useful ties with a greater number of kin groups.
In the vast majority of polyamorous relationships, jealousy does come up at some point. However, jealousy can be broken down to determine what your real concerns are. When you recognize what is bothering you, it is possible to manage this challenging feeling.
Only about 2% of the global population lives in polygamous households, and in the vast majority of countries, that share is under 0.5%.