Dichroic Reflections

on monogamy

I was just reading a fascinating article on Evangelical Christians and how they do just about as much drinkin' and wenchin' and just about as little helpin' and givin' as the rest of us. (Referred by someone else's journal but her entry is locked so I won't refer back.) The reason it was fascinating is that it appeared in Christianity Today and was written by an Evangelical as a desperate plea to his fellows to live by their own beliefs to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, rather than as a sneering piece by a heathen like me. Disclaimer: I do know a few Xtians who can be determined by their attempts to live by Jesus' words. Not too many, though.

What I would have liked is to have seen similar statistics, rigorously analyzed, on the behavior of Jews, Muslims, pagans, and so on. I suspect Muslims owuld have outdone most of the rest of us in time spent reading the Koran, adherence to its laws, and in donation to the poor. (My only quarrel with the extreme fundies there is in their interpretation of the laws they're following and in their apparent belief that nonbelievers are subhuman. But talk to a nonradical but observant Muslim for a lesson in living within a faith.) Personal experience has suggested that even less observant Jews are much more likely than Christians to donate to causes they believe in, and that both pagans and Christians in more liberal denominations (e.g. UUs, though of course referring to them as Christians is a whole 'nother debate) are more likely to be working within their community to help others.

The one thing I think is especially funny is the concern at the rate of adultery and divorce among Xtians. Here's the thing: marriage (or equivalent lifetime committed relationship) is hard. At least it is if it's done right. On second thought, that's the wrong word. It's not hard, in the sense of being difficult. It does require constant work and attention, like a garden, but like a garden (if you're a gardener - I'm going by hearsay here) it's mostly rewarding and pleasant work. The thing people rarely mention is that once you've got that part going, monogamy is surprisingly easy.

No, really. Of course I have to insert a disclaimer here, that this is based only on my own experience, but I do have 14.5 years of that to draw on. There are only two prerequisites, both of which I seem to have achieved, though possibly more by luck than by virtue or good planning. You have have married the person you'd rather sleep with than just about anyone else, at least in the long term, and you have to have enough of a sense of consequences to not want to do anything that would cause more pain than pleasure, at least on important issues. Clearly the second of those isn't universal or there would be no petty criminals. As for the first, since I've met Rudder I haven't met anyone else with whom I would rather be in a relationship - a few people with whom I'd otherwise have enjoyed being friends-with-benefits or a few dates, yes, but no one who didn't have big gaping flaws, comparatively, for anything longer. At this point, I find it highly unlikely I'd meet someone better; I could conceivably meet someone equivalent but then it would be the equivalent person with whom I have the 15-year history versus the one without - so not really equivalent after all.

If I did meet someone like that I would still stay faithful because I vowed, and I keep my promises; what I'm saying, though, is in a decade and a half that I haven't even been more than fleetingly tempted.

This almost demands a digression on polyamory, before someone else brings it up. None of the above is about it at all, really. I don't think polyamory is particularly wrong. For me it comes down to vows and promises kept: if all involved agree on the parameters, then I think it's fine. In most cases I've seen, it does look more considerably difficult; there are just more resources and constraints to track and juggle, and more responsibility for each person to make sure they're getting what they need and being fair to all others concerned. Whether it yields concomitantly more joy is something I haven't yet seen enough to judge on; I suspect, as with most human things, that in some cases it does and for some people it doesn't. At any rate, I see a huge difference between having agreed-on multiple partners vs just sleeping around on your spouse: the former is an alternate arrangement, while the latter breaks vows.

But yeah, once you have the marriage in place, and if you work just a little to maintain it, then the monogamy is easy. Maybe that's why the fundamentalist types make such a big deal of it, or rather why their Bible does. (I believe there's a lot of wisdom in the Bible, though not always in those who follow it blindly - I love that I come from a tradition that encourages study, question, and interpretation of everything.) I can imagine it being easy to slip once, say if you're apart for a long time, but I would think anything bigger than that is a sign that you're either not married to the right person or not working to be the right person. And that is serious. If you're not attached, that's one thing; if you are in a committed relationship, it's liable to be the biggest factor in your life, and so part of the glass through which you view the rest of the world. If that gets distorted, how can you see anything clearly? And to get back the article that started this line of thought, why would anyone else trucst your moral view?