Chris Messina invented the hashtag. He also believes it is time to re-invent contemporary sexuality, which is why he practices something he refers to as “non-monogamy.”
“As a child of divorce and an aspiring designer-entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, I was suspicious of marriage,” the early Twitter employee writes on CNN. “Out here, we’re data-positive and solution-oriented and if your product (ie marriage) is failing for 50 per cent of your customers, then you need to fix it or offer something better.
“Monogamy established itself thousands of years ago, when society was ruled by scarcity and resources and potential mates were in limited supply,” Messina argues. “We’re now living in a period of great (though unequally distributed) abundance where our basic needs are sufficiently met, and reproduction is a choice. As a result, the reasons to be with a single mate for life are less urgent.”
Is non-monogamy the new sexual truism?
Should we sit our partners down and tell them that it’s time to begin introducing some new faces to the bedroom? Well, for one thing, non-monogamy is not exactly new.
“There is an odd modern sense that sex for fun was invented in the mid-20th century and that before that, sex was acknowledged as fun but was only done within the confines of relationships,” Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, tells Yahoo Health. “If you read the Bible, any old literature, or go to the opera, you discover that the world has always been just about as modern when it comes to sex as it is now.”
Indeed, the modern definition of marriage as between “one man and one woman” that is promoted by many religious conservative politicians flies in the face of the fact that most of the male characters in the early Bible had many wives.
Non-monogamy is not equivalent to “cheating” or adultery
Since the relationship is agreed upon, it’s not considered messing around. Elisabeth Sheff, PhD, author of The Polyamorists Next Door, uses the distinction “consensual non-monogamy” to refer to situations such as Messina’s.
She notes that “not only do consensual non-monogamists try to tell each other the truth, but this greater communication has real impacts” such as reduced rates of sexually transmitted diseases as a result of the “honest communication needed to negotiate consensual agreements that allow a variety of ways to have multiple partners.”
Sheff herself is in a polyamorous relationship and was shocked to discover that she was not jealous when her partner had sex with other people. “I resisted it for 10 years because I anticipated feeling so threatened and jealous with my insecurity that I thought I would not be able to handle it,” she says.
Won’t nonmonogamy undermine the bond within a couple?
Research suggests that men and women both experience jealousy when their sex partners engage with another person. “There is a tendency for men to be a bit more jealous about sexual infidelity by their mate and for women to be more jealous about emotional infidelity,” notes Markman. “But sexual infidelity makes both men and women really jealous.”
Messina argues that there is no need for such feelings to come into play in what he refers to as the era of Big Dating. He claims that “Big Dating unbundles monogamy and sex. It offers to maximise episodes of intimacy while minimising the risk of rejection or FOMO [fear of missing out]” and that “Big Dating precipitates the rising ambivalence toward commitment,” proving that “that there’s now more than one option for building meaningful and satisfying relationships.”
A happy relationship is about commitment
Perel concludes that maintaining an erotic connection in a relationship has nothing to do with monogamy or non-monogamy, but rather with a deeper understanding of the concept of commitment. Successful relationships of any length are committed.
Successful couples understand that passion waxes and wanes, like the moon. But those who have a good sex life know how to resurrect it. “They know how to bring it back, and they know how to bring it back because they have demystified one big myth, which is the myth of spontaneity,” says Perel. “They understood that whatever is going to just happen in a long-term relationship already has. Committed sex is premeditated sex. It’s willful. It’s intentional. It’s focus and presence.”
So heads up to Messina and his fellow non-monogamists: Call it what you will, but apparently commitment— both sexual and emotional—is key to any successful relationship.
(yahoo.com)