History of Monogamy: The Shift from Duty to Pleasure

Monogamy has nothing to do with love – it was an economic decision about patrimony and lineage. The idea of monogamy and love is only 150 years old. Why did we switch? Because we could never know whose child it was and a man could be stuck raising a child that wasn’t his.

Women could not own their desire – desire is for men – she is about making herself desirable. As my mother would say, “Men married who they want, women married who they can!”

Until the pill came along, sex had a dangerous outcome for women (death, childbirth, unwed motherhood). The pill is the first time women and men can have sex without fear of pregnancy, effectively separating sex from reproduction in the 60’s. Sex is no longer a condition but an identity (belongs to the world of nature).

Sex became separated from nature and for the first time became a property of the self – about lifestyle choices, gets renegotiated overtime. The gay movement and women’s movement comes and it shifts again; then another shift from duty to pleasure (until now it is about duty – and if she likes it is important not to let him know that she likes it too much)

It’s not possible that she would have an autonomous sexuality outside of him (“that’s a new trick – where’d she learn it?” Total threat to the man). In order to make sex proper it has to be related to love, intimacy, romance, connection – because if she just likes sex for its own experience, what does this make her? A threat to masculinity.

Let’s expose the enormous fragility about male sexuality – she can’t even initiate sex, if she is that sexually powerful why should she stay with him? Thus creating a distance between himself and a sexually alive woman.

The sexually powerful woman releases his own lust, which means he never has to face his own inadequacy. The more timid and less sexuality powerful, the more he wants the woman.

You have to make a distinction between fantasy and reality – who you live with is not the same as who you fantasize about while masturbating. Women have been urged to become more powerful, including in their own sexuality. For example, the rise in pornography (not the extreme kinds): the regular use has to do with a relief of the burdens of emotionality. Women are beginning to experience a more free sexuality due to the women’s movement. As she becomes more empowered her expectations shift – she is no longer just needs a provider. He has been recruited as an emotional unit in the family, no longer the sole provider. He is connected to the children in ways never before.

Loss of fearlessness allowed by detachment created by evolution. Psychotherapy has become inundated by women, and she comes with that word “intimacy”. It isn’t you, “Joe”. What you are being asked is a shock to the male evolutional model.

“What is close for you…? We went to the market together, we had dinner together…what more do you want?”

On the one hand you are being asked to do something that men have been programmed not to be but it relieves you from the burden to fix things. You think she is asking more of you but it is actually freeing you by not having to be the fixer. The woman next to you is stronger than you sometimes give her credit for. She can handle it. And it will not weaken him, it will allow him to experience other aspects of his masculinity.

I have a certain kind of empathy of what they are going through. Sure some are jerks, but they are in a bind. Sometimes women are dishonest – we want this and we want that, which makes it harder for them to be instrumental and emotional. But men have always made it clear that they want women to be multiple things – women lie or deny what all we want/need from men. We want someone who is going to unleash us – open us up.

He will release the lioness within, push our reserve, but we decide it was not us but him. He made me do it but I wanted him to make me do it.

The woman’s big experiment is how to have both under the same roof – the mother and the sexually free woman. Self depriving and receiving through the children, the selfishness necessary for desire, the permission, the self directedness, the child centered world that we are in at this time. It’s important to de-psychologize certain things rather than absorbing the premise and work as if this is a given. It needs to be said to women, “What we are trying has never been done.” Couples are suffering and are trying to individualize it.

She resents him partially because she is ambivalent about her traditional role, so she does it and does he say, “it was a wonderful meal, the house looks great”? Historically it needs to be affirmed – it’s true, why should she thank him for everything that he does?

That is the next progression – from duty to pleasure. But she needs to know what it is that she likes. She needs to like herself first. That was never before required for sex and female sexuality.