Françoise Simpère - The Art and Etiquette of Polyamory: A Hands-on Guide to Open Sexual Relationships

M oral rules are not universala little travel will show anybody thatnor are they something an individual is born with. Rather, they are the product of historical circumstance or society models. Take, for example, the Mormon Church, for whose members polygamy was practiced during a period when they were subject to much persecution. At that time, many men died in combat, leaving behind wives and children who were destitute and had nowhere to turn. There was no choice but to allow men to marry multiple times, in order that these widows could benefit from the support of a family structure.

Monogamy in the West is justified by the official stance that it is impossible to love more than one person at a timea dogma that is built upon the confusion of love and passion. In other words, passionate love is an intense, narcissistic feeling of attachment that can simply not be shared. However, it is universally agreed that after its initially passionate stage, love must evolve into the building of a life together in order to stay alive, and this being the case, it is as unreasonable to continue to demand exclusivity as it would be to demand exclusive love for a child or a friend.

The foundations of monogamy can be found at the root of the social values that it reflects. In a society built upon the notion of accumulating goods, it has always been important for men to be able to pass down such goods to any children they may father. Monogamy was something that could guarantee to any given man that the children carried by his partner were indeed his. Today, however, contraception and the ability to prove paternity through DNA testing have rendered this objective unnecessary. Furthermore, the protection offered by monogamy is not infallible: Many husbands have unknowingly raised children who were not their own, just as others have fathered children in adultery, something that meant, at a certain time, that these children could stake no claims on inheritance. The cracks in the walls of the monogamy agreement are a clear sign that, since the rules have been broken from the beginning of time, such a demand of exclusivity is not necessarily the natural thing it was once believed to be.

We must, then, look elsewhere in order to understand why monogamy continues to be the sole accept-able model for romantic life. One theory is that monogamy helps to keep couples in a state of latent sexual frustration, given that they are, on principal, forbidden to fulfill the desires that confront them in their everyday lives. In order to quell frustrations, a little compensation is required: Extensive marketing surveys have shown that the majority of sales of non-vital goods to individuals are driven by the need for self-affirmation and for the stimulation of the libido (Hes got the money, hes got the car, hell get the girlthis advertising slogan, like countless others, shows that marketing exploits sexual desire in the name of sales). Some studies have even found a direct correlation between the length of the blade chosen when purchasing a chainsaw... and buyers dreams of virility! Monogamy, therefore, favors consumerism, presented as the key to growth, prosperity, and, by consequence, happiness within a materialistic society. One final theory, clearly linked to the previous one, is that monogamy corresponds directly to values of ownership and power, as promoted by a market society. To be married is to be the sole keeper of another being for ones exclusive enjoyment, much to the satisfaction of the dominant narcissist who lies dormant in so many individuals.

This model, however, must be flawed, given that one in three marriages (one in two in the Paris region) ends in divorce, not counting the couples who remain married despite a lack of happiness and fulfillment. Logic dictates, therefore, that while we may keep this model for the third of households for whom it rings true, we are in need of other romantic options to act not as Band-Aids for the existing one, but rather as new concepts. Unfortunately, it can be extremely difficult to change the logic of thought. We prefer to live with hidden affairs or to look for erotic distractions, but certainly not to question the underlying logic of this model and not to ask ourselves whether another way of thinking is possible.

This intellectual laziness can be found on both the political and economical level: Consider the example of Alan Greenspan, ex-director of the Federal Reserve, who admitted, after twenty years of blind faith in a system of market self-regulation, that there is a flaw in the system and it must be changedmany of those would rather try to fix it, shielding their eyes from the glaring fact that the same logic will sooner or later simply reproduce the same level of destruction. The ability of the liberal financial system to end poverty is widely contradicted, but many economists continue, with unbelievable mental stubbornness, to support the notion that this poverty is accidental and refuse to look to a different economic system, based on an environmental, humane, libertarian vision that exploits and shares resources.

Polyamory finds its place elsewhere in the logic of love, much as libertarian environmentalism finds itself elsewhere in the logic of politics and the economy. It is no coincidence that the former is gaining in popularity at a time when the latter is also making headway, at least on an analytical level. There are several striking conclusions that the two analyses have in common:

Nonappropriation : Environmentalists refuse to accept gene patenting and appropriation of living species. Polyamorists refuse to claim ownership over the people they love.