Polysexuality Ch. 04

Chapter 4: Polysexuality and Marriage

A happy marriage is a wonderful thing. Being happily married is the best way to be. I've been very happily married for more than two decades, I've never been divorced, and I believe monogamy is the best choice for me. Many people have of course been less fortunate.

Despite my belief in the goodness of a happy marriage, I have to admit that our attitude toward marriage is a cultural construct. Our attitude is not the right attitude, not the only way people can be happy, and not something we must preserve at all costs. There have been other ways of doing things in other cultures throughout history that have worked quite well.

Many people believe in the "sanctity" of marriage—that is to say, they believe it is holy, instituted by and required by God. I don't think it is, but I do think it worth saving. The claim for the holiness of marriage is itself a cultural construct, even though we base it on religious beliefs. Although we live in an ostensibly secular country rather than in a theocracy, our laws regarding marriage are in turn based on this idea of its sanctity, even though we may not admit it. Thus, we feel the need to limit it, restrict it, and protect it from abuse or change, impossible though that is. Our ideas of marriage do change, but they change slowly, often decades or more after various pioneers suggest the changes and experience the resulting backlash from those who resist changing what they are used to until they have had a few years to grow accustomed to the new ideas and make them their own.

Monogamy is part of that cultural construct, though it is not illegal to be unmarried. Polygamy is not morally wrong, but it is illegal in the United States. Many people are repelled by it and have convinced lawmakers that for various reasons, it should be illegal. I think if gay marriage is ever legalized, then polygamy should also be legalized, but I have no interest in having more than one wife. One is ideal for me. Polyamory is somewhat similar to polygamy, but with the ties looser and less binding. Polysexuality is not the same as polygamy or polyamory. It's not about love and lifetime, but about playing and having fun together.

Attitudes Toward Marriage Evolve

Our understanding of what a marriage should be, what a husband should be, and what a wife should be continues to change. At any one time, a great many people would claim that their own views on marriage are God-given and eternally unchanging, yet over the course of their own marriages, their views change. This should warn us against being too dogmatic about marriage.

In my own marriage we've gradually developed a division of labor. My wife pays the bills, but I do the taxes. I do the grocery shopping, I wash most of the clothes, she folds most of the clothes, I do most of the yard work, she does most of the cooking, I often clean the toilets, she usually vacuums, and we both have fulltime jobs.

Our division of labor is very different from the usual division when my grandparents were married or even when my parents were married, but changing lifestyles may lead to changing customs. The definition of marriage my grandparents might have given in the 1920s would be somewhat different from what many of us would accept today. In 1930 my grandmother couldn't drive a car, and though she was a registered nurse, she stopped nursing when she got married. By the time I was born, though, she drove a car and worked part time in a hospital. Things continue to change.

A great many cultures have marriage customs that differ from our own. In India, for example, most marriages are arranged by parents, and young people marry without feeling any passionate love for each other, yet married couples still manage to be happy. Again, the way we do it is not the way it must be done.

Some people like meat and potatoes, others Mexican food, Chinese, Italian, or Indian, and I like them all. A preference for one kind of food doesn't mean the other kinds aren't tasty or nourishing. Similarly, we may prefer one sort of marriage, but that doesn't mean another sort can't be satisfying for those who like it. If it is satisfying, why shouldn't it be acceptable? Does your marriage have to be like mine in order for me to consider yours valid? No!

What we tend to see as the right way to get married and the right way to be married are essentially things we've tacitly agreed to agree on. It's part of our culture. If things change over the decades, the change will be acceptable to most people by the time it happens. If a few of us decide to make big changes now, we may anger a lot of people, but it isn't a sign of the end of civilization. People will get over it.

Wedding Vows: What Did We Promise?

Most of us, when we get married, whether we get married in a church or in a civil ceremony, say something like this:

"I take you to be my wedded wife [or husband]

This is called a marriage vow. It's made up of promises, oaths, things we swear to do. We swear we will remain married to each other until we die. We swear we will remain married even if everything goes bad and it's not fun anymore. We swear we will remain married if we strike it rich or if we go bankrupt. We swear we will remain married even if one of us gets sick. We promise to love each other and hold each other dear (the meaning of "cherish"). To have means that we are each other's prized possessions. To hold actually means much the same thing, like holding a bond or holding stocks.

Some religious denominations have vows where people swear they will be "faithful," but surely the paragraph above outlines what we mean by fidelity: remaining married whatever the circumstances. Note that in these vows, the bride and groom do not promise that they will be monosexual, having sex only with each other. That sort of promise does make it into vows now and then, but it's unusual. However, probably most people assume that the marriage vows should be seen to include marital monosexuality. They assume monosexuality because that is what our culture assumes, even though that isn't explicitly declared. But when our cultural understanding of marriage changes, so will our understanding of these marriage vows.

Do we mean what we say, in any case? Are we faithful to these vows? According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, in 2004, for every 76 couples who got married, at least 37 couples got divorced. There were 2,224,000 marriages reported in the United States in 2004, and there were probably close to 1,200,000 divorces (National Vital Statistics Reports, 53/21 [28 June 2005]; retrieved 31 January 2006 from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_21.pdf; California and four other states didn't report divorce statistics, so the number should certainly be higher, as more than a tenth of all marriages happened in these states, and surely divorces occur there, too).

In the light of these statistics, what good are our oaths? Are we all liars or oath breakers? Granted, the divorce statistics include people being divorced for a second time. True, people who don't marry until their mid-twenties are less likely to get divorced, as are those with college degrees, those earning over $50,000 a year, those who haven't cohabited before marriage with many partners, those whose parents aren't divorced, and those who are very religious and marry partners from the same denomination (http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/pubTenThingsYoungAdults.pdf; retrieved 31 January 2006). However, even some who fit the above profile get divorced. For those who don't fit, the chance of divorce looks grim.

[BOX: What are the Scientists Saying? Anthony P. Thompson has put together a useful table on the "Incidence of Extramarital Behaviors" found by researchers since 1948. He includes information about their samples that help explain the differences. Kinsey's sample found that 50% of men and 26% of women had extramarital sexual experience. A 1970 study of about 8,000 men and women, most under 35, found that 40% of the men and 36% of the women had extramarital sexual experience. This is in line with a 1975 study of women over 40 who read Redbook that found that 39% admitted such experience. In 1980, 69% of Cosmopolitan readers over 35 had tried extramarital sex. Hite, in a large 1981 survey, found that 66% of men had experienced extramarital sex. Thompson mentions that "Nass, Libby and Fisher (1981) make an educated guess that 50 to 65 percent of married men and 45 to 55 percent of married women engage in extramarital sex by 40" (pp. 6--7). My estimates of the number of polysexuals is lower because I suspect that a large minority of those having extramarital sex are not actually polysexuals, but are monosexuals trying to find new spouses and doing what they think necessary. Anthony P. Thompson, "Extramarital Sex: A Review of the Research Literature," The Journal of Sex Research 19/1 (Feb. 1983): pp. 1--22.]

"No Fair Cheating!"

When I stand in the check-out line in the grocery store, it's hard to avoid the headlines on the tabloid newspapers: various celebrities, male and female, are caught "cheating." Their spouses are devastated and suing for divorce, so hurt or so angry that they are splitting up the family. Generally the spouses seem like nice people. I feel sorry for them.

But let's be fair and think straight for a minute. If Jack and Jill swore in their marriage vows to remain together until death, no matter what, and those oaths did not specify that they would each remain monosexual in practice, and Jill divorces Jack because he has not remained monosexual, then which person has broken the oath and been unfaithful to the vows? Jill has! Yes, Jill's feelings are hurt, but is this because Jack wants to hurt them or because our culture has conditioned Jill to feel hurt? Does Jack's playing around mean he no longer wants to spend his life happily with Jill? Not necessarily. Is it possible, then, that a lot of divorces attributed to "cheating" spouses should actually be attributed to a culture that teaches us that if a spouse is not monosexual, the love is gone from the marriage?

Yes, I'm sure these people must be hurting terribly. They feel that their world is falling apart. They had always thought they'd be happily married, deliriously in love, and now it's over, or so they think. They imagine their huge houses being sold, their children heartbroken, the scandal and gossip. But does it have to be that way? If they understood that their spouses still loved them above all, still wanted to be married to them, still thought they were the best, could they find it in their hearts to say, "My marriage comes first; my children come first; I love this person, and I've been happy; my spouse is a polysexual, and it's not something personal"?

I hate the term "cheating." Is the spouse being cheated? Of what? If a married couple is used to having sex together about once a week and continues to have sex together once a week while the wife is having sex with two other men once a week each, is the husband being cheated of his sex? No, he's getting as much as he usually gets. If a polysexual man is having multiple sexual partners, is he cheating his wife if he continues to love and cherish her and be a good husband?

Many a woman assumes when she discovers her husband is having sex with other women that it is because she is inadequate in bed or isn't giving him enough. "If only I'd dressed sexier at night or shown more interest," she thinks. "If only I'd been willing to give him oral more often or been willing to try anal." A man whose wife is seeing other men might be thinking, "If only I devoted more time to pleasing her than to my own pleasure," or "Maybe I should have taken the time to learn more about being good at sex," or "I should have seemed more interested in her body." Of course these problems are common. Many men and women know virtually nothing about how to be good lovers. But when polysexuals seek out other partners, often they are entirely happy with the quality of their sex life at home. They simply want a quality sex life with other partners, too.

It's hard to know how many divorces could be prevented if people understood that for polysexuals, sex outside marriage may have nothing at all to do with whether or not they continue to love their spouses. Some extramarital sex, of course, occurs because people are unhappy with their spouses and have given up on the marriage. In many cases, though, a monosexual spouse who wants to avoid a divorce need only recognize the orientation of a polysexual spouse and realize that this person will be much happier and a much better husband or wife if allowed to have multiple partners without having to sneak around. After all, the polysexual orientation seems to have a strong genetic component, rather like the tendency to obesity or left-handedness, and while it can be controlled, many people fail. Others finally say, "Why even try? I should be what I am." When people with a strong genetic tendency toward obesity put on weight, that's not a sign of something gone wrong in a marriage, even when they know their spouse disapproves. Likewise, when people with a strong genetic tendency toward polysexuality seek out sexual variety, they may be happily married. If monosexual spouses, male or female, rather than feeling inadequate or threatened by their polysexual partners' need for sexual variety, allow room to wander, the marriage is saved, and if the monosexual spouse learns to accept this, the marriage may grow deeper and more fulfilling for both. It is merely the faulty expectations inculcated by our culture that makes this difficult.

Sex-Free Cheating

There is a kind of "cheating" I consider much more significant because it involves a true alienation of the affections. Sometimes a man, say, decides he no longer loves his wife and wants out of the relationship. He begins looking for another life partner, finds one, and begins plotting his divorce and remarriage. He gives the special love he has promised to reserve for his wife to the new woman. Probably he is having sex with the new woman, but this is not necessarily because he is a polysexual. For him, she is his new wife in all but name. The wife who discovers this sort of transferal of love is right to feel cheated and right to want a divorce. The oath her husband took has been broken.

Or perhaps a woman meets a man at work who seems much more ideal to her than her husband. She starts meeting him for dinner or drinks, and gradually she lets herself fall in love with him and start fantasizing about leaving her husband. Perhaps she says, "I'm not cheating because we haven't had sex." This highlights the perversity of defining sex as "cheating." If she were having sex with the guy because she's a polysexual but remaining true in her heart to her husband, she wouldn't be cheating. Even without sex, though, if she's deliberating breaking her promise to love and cherish her husband until death in order to transfer her love to this new man, she is definitely cheating her husband of her love and affection.

Yes, people make mistakes in whom they marry, and it's natural that they want to try again with someone else and do better if they're unhappy. It may be that both partners want out of the marriage. Nevertheless, they ought to realize that their choice to no longer love each other and to end the marriage is breaking their word, their promise, their oath.

There are other ways of bruising, if not breaking, the marriage vows that we sometimes don't think about. I know a man who loves sports so much that he spends hours a day watching them or playing them. It's as if his real wife is sports. He's not a professional, but he's talented, and he plays basketball and baseball on a couple teams each season. He married a woman who also loved sports, but when the kids came along, she no longer had time to play. Instead of being a good father to his children, he was watching games when he was home and playing them if he could. He wasn't functioning as a husband and father, and eventually his wife divorced him. He was bringing nothing useful to the marriage but a small paycheck and his sperm count. His next wife divorced him for the same reason.

Many wives feel neglected and unhappy because their husbands may be monosexual, but they spend most of their hours watching sports on television. Is this how men show their love? Other wives are unhappy because instead of coming home after work, their husbands go out for "a few drinks with the guys." Their urge for male companionship is stronger than their love for their wives, and they get angry if their wives question it. They find the male/male bond more satisfying. The result is that the neglected marriage fails to thrive. This sort of "cheating" is generally considered less important than having multiple sexual partners, but many people are quite able to have multiple sexual partners without neglecting their marriages.

I'd love to see the National Enquirer trumpet on the front page that some CEO has cheated on his wife by playing golf with his buddies every Sunday morning for the past year, when she'd enjoy being taken out to brunch or accompanied on a walk or something.

I've talked with many women who have told me that never in their married lives have their husbands brought them flowers, candy, or perfume, cleaned the toilet, washed the dishes, stayed at home with the television off just chatting for an evening, cooked a meal for them, cared for them when they were sick, or gone for a walk with them.

I don't care if these men are strictly monosexual. As far as I'm concerned, they are second-rate husbands who aren't being true to their marriage vows. A polysexual husband who plays with other women now and then but loves only his wife and does the things listed above for her should be considered by far the better husband, the man faithful to his vows.

I might add here that there are probably more than a million couples in the United States who occasionally "swing," having sex with other couples or trading partners. If everyone involved is happy with it, then this is certainly not "cheating." Jealousy is rare when everyone involved is having fun.

[BOX: What Are the Scientists Saying? Anthony P. Thompson, summarizing research by J. Bernard, writes, "Bernard (1974) points out that, in its strictest interpretation, infidelity occurs not only with extramarital sexual relations but also whenever one or both spouses cease to love, honor, cherish, or comfort on another" (p. 2), on J. Bernard, "Infidelity: Some Moral and Social Issues," in J. R. Smith and L. G. Smith, ed., Beyond Monogamy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974).]

The Right "Chemistry"

Some evolutionary biologists and psychologists have speculated that men are genetically programmed to want multiple sex partners because the more women they have sex with, the better the chance that they will have progeny capable of surviving. They have claimed that women are genetically set to want only one mate because they want the mate to help with parenting. Men want to spread their seed far and wide, while women want to build a nest and keep it feathered (for a useful bibliography and a much more nuanced view, see David M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, rev. [New York: Basic Books, 2003]).

To me it doesn't matter to me whether I can find an explanation for why something started happening. I'm happy merely to know that it happens. I would be pleased to see scientists expand their explanations to account for the fact that most men seem to be either happily monosexual in orientation or at least able to live that way without much difficulty. It isn't due merely to cultural conditioning. Some men simply don't want sexual variety. I'm also interested in why a substantial percentage of women (at least a quarter, I'd guess) are polysexual in orientation (even though they might not discover the desire for more partners until middle age or unless their husbands neglect them sexually).