I’m musing on this because I am working on an article about monogamy. I am in a long-term monogamous heterosexual marriage, our tenth anniversary of being together will be Feb. 14th (legally married 7 years come May 7th). Because of my sexual identity/orientation and marriage I am fully aware that I have a socially-approved and culturally-backed bias toward monogamy.

However I am also aware that monogamy is not natural to people; we are naturally a promiscuos species. So it goes against our nature to have one sexual partner for a lifetime or even a short period of time. Monogamy became a social standard in most cultures for 2 primary reasons. One, it allows men to control/know that the children born to their partner are actually their biological children (let’s remember that DNA testing and knowledge is very new to our species).

Two, it cuts down on the spread of sexual diseases and consequently children born afflicted who are disabled for life or dead. Currently there are not many sexually transmitted diseases that will kill you, and there are even drugs now that prevent an HIV-infected mother from passing the virus to her baby, but consider what life must have been like in a small village or town 300 years ago. 1,000 years ago. 2,000 years ago. 3,000. Imagine an outbreak of syphillis or a similar disease, imagine how it would decimate a small town, village, tribe of people.

Even with all the advances in medicine today, the reason my husband and I chose to be in a monogamous relationship was for health. We both had gotten STDs in the past from sleeping around. I was also plauged as well as by various ‘lesser’ infections like bacterial and yeast. We both wanted to enjoy a thriving sex life without fear of contagion or having to hinder our sexual enjoyment with barrier methods. My husband also did not want to have children outside of our relationship, which is always a possibility when having sex with women of reproductive age even with protection. I also did not want to have children with other men, which again would be a possibility. We both had also been stalked in the past and had jealous/controlling lovers, so we both also did not want to have to deal with the possiblity of a lover becoming jealous of our marriage. So we chose to be monogamous.

If you are in a monogamous relationship, why did you choose monogamy?

Now this question is for anyone who has been in or is currently in a monogamous relationship, regardless of sexual orientation. You do not have to be nor do I assume you are hetero to answer and/or participate in this discussion.

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