What do you think?
Rate this book
Why It's OK: The Ethics and Aesthetics of How We Live
Why It's OK to Not Be Monogamous
The downsides of monogamy are felt by most people engaged in long-term relationships, including restrictions on self-discovery, limits on friendship, sexual boredom, and a circumscribed understanding of intimacy. Yet, a "happily ever after" monogamy is assumed to be the ideal form of romantic love in many modern a relationship that is morally ideal and will bring the most happiness to its two partners. In Why It’s OK to Not Be Monogamous , Justin L. Clardy deeply questions these assumptions. He rejects the claim that non-monogamy among honest, informed and consenting adults is morally impermissible. He shows instead how polyamorous relationships can actually be exemplars of moral virtue. The book discusses how social and political forces sustain and reward monogamous relationships. The book defines non-monogamy as a privative concept; a negation of monogamy. Looking at its prevalence in the United States, the book explains how common criticisms of non-monogamy come up short. Clardy argues, as some researchers have recently shown―monogamy relies on continually demonizing non-monogamy to sustain its moral status. Finally, the book concludes with a focus on equality, asking what justice for polyamorous individuals might look like.
182 pages, Paperback
Published March 28, 2023
7 people are currently reading
287 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 26, 2024
Intro
Well done overview of objections to non-monogamous romantic relationships, and questions many assumptions we have about monogamy, non-monogamy, love, and more. In the first chapter the author introduces what monogamy and non-monogamy are, and i thought he had some very interesting insights. He argues that our culture holds an almost oppressive view that monogamous relationships are the only romantic relationships possible, and true romantic love is by definition only possible as between two people in the minds of most people. Both of these ideas should be questioned. Additionally, romantic love and marriage are considered some of the highest goods that can be achieved for all people. Those who aren't able to accomplish this are seen as deficient in some way, and we pity these people as they are going to die alone. Also, because monogamous romantic love is valued so highly, it devalues the importance we should place on other forms of relationships like friendships. For instance, it might be seen as more socially acceptable to be in a mediocre marriage, rather than single with many close friendships (especially the older you get). The main idea I got from this chapter is that western culture seems to presuppose that monogamous romantic love should be an end goal of ALL people. However, we should ask questions such as if it is possible to live a fulfilled life without romantic love, or with romantic love with multiple partners.
Divine Command
He goes over most objections people could think of to non-monogamous relationships (mainly polyamory) in chapter 2, which is probably the most important and interesting section of the book. He first goes the objection monogamy is natural, which ends up committing the naturalistic fallacy. Then he goes over the argument that god commands us to be monogamous because of divine command theory, which is the view that things are only moral because god commands them. This one only matters if you are religious, but I didn't find the author's response to this one to be very strong. After explaining the view, he spends only 2 paragraphs and the end of the section taking a stab at it. But a 2 paragraph counter objection isn't nearly enough for such a complex topic... and his response (which i'm not writing here, i didn't really like it) likely wouldn't convince anyone who thinks monogamy is part of their religion. I think a stronger objection would have been to point out that there are other literal commands in religious texts that adherents often don't follow, and we could compare these to the text against non-monogamy. He puts in a quote from the old testament that might be used to justify being against non-monogamy: "And he shall not acquire many wives, lest his heart turn away". But there are other passages in the old and new testament that point to conclusions such as slavery being permissible or homosexuality being impermissible, such as: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them." I felt that questioning why one might choose to adhere to the verse about biblically sanctioned monogamy, but not putting homosexuals to death, would be a stronger response to divine command theory (albeit I don't know that much about theology). Another point he made that I thought was interesting that some religions, like Greek myth, have their gods practicing non-monogamy, such as Zeus having offspring from many different women who weren't his wife. The author points out that the western Christian narrative against non-monogamy seems to be what stuck with our culture today, rather than Greek, African, and other cultures' permissibility of non-monogamy, which I found pretty interesting.
Specialness
He goes over the "justification from specialness" which says we need monogamy so that we feel special, and the exclusivity of a monogamous relationship is what makes it special. The response is to simply point out other types of relationships, like friendship, can be special despite one not being restricted to having one friend. We would find someone pretty neurotic if we said that they weren't going to allow their friend to make more friends, since they would feel less special. Something similar could be said for romantic relationships. While romantic relationships and friendships fulfill different roles in our lives, it is interesting to ask why a romantic relationship has a maximum limit of only one person, while relationships like friendships, parent-child, and others can have a much higher limit.
Additionally, the idea that we need to feel special and our partner wanting to be non-monogamous makes us less special seems to stem from some sort of insecurity that can be overcome, rather than a fact that forces people only to be in monogamous relationships. This might come from a high standard placed on western romantic relationships, where a partner should fulfill all of the needs (sexual, emotional, etc.) of their partner, which is a high ask for one person to do. Generally we accept one person can't meet all our needs, which is why we might have multiple friends. The author asks us to lean into accepting something similar for romantic relationships, that some people may want more than one partner to fulfill their needs the same way some people want more than one friend.
Jealousy
He next discusses jealousy as a justification for monogamy. People have a fear of losing their partner to someone else, and because of this they use monogamy will keep them safe from this fear. Similar to the last point about insecurity over specialness, the author argues this jealousy is not something that people must necessarily have, but stems from vulnerability, possessiveness, and entitlement, which can be overcome. However, he points out that currently romantic jealousy is not seen as something bad, but is actually normalized and praised in our culture. People see their jealousy as proof that they love their partners, and find it normal and healthy to be jealous as part of romantic relationships, like the jealous feeling that might arise if they were to imagine their partner being emotionally intimate or having sex with someone else. For example, we might think of a traditionally masculine male figure angry that their girlfriend talked to a member of the opposite sex as attractive or chivalrously protective in some way, rather than view their jealousy as negative.
Additionally, if one thinks a monogamous relationships is a necessary restriction to avoid somebody leaving them, then we should ask if other restrictions might also be permissible. He uses the example of locking your partner in solitary confinement to ensure they don't leave you. Other examples might include preventing your partner from texting or meeting a friend of the opposite sex. The question is whether monogamy is the best restriction to have over a number of possible of other restrictions, like solitary confinement. Here, I felt the author didn't answer the question sufficiently, and kind of just leaves it open. We can see that solitary confinement or prevent your partner from meeting another guy as harmful to your partner in some way as it restricts their freedom. However, if both parties consent to a rule, such as monogamy, is it still restrictive? We can consider a rule consented to by both parties, that they will never text or make eye contact with a member of the opposite sex. This seems like an unnecessarily restrictive criteria to take part in a romantic relationship, so we would have to ask if monogamy is unnecessarily restrictive in a similar way. If this was true, then this would lead us to the conclusion that monogamy is strictly worse than non-monogamy, similar to how a relationship restricting eye contact with the opposite sex could be seen as strictly worse than a normal monogamous relationship. However, I don't think the author addresses this, which was unfortunate. The reason might be because the goal of the book is just to explain why non-monogamy is OK, not that it is better, but I think it would have been interesting.
The author brings up an emotion popularized by non-monogamists called compersion, which is the happiness you get from the flourishing of others. He argues we can cultivate this by addressing our jealousy, and being happy with the happiness our partner might feel with others in a non-monogamous relationship. He frames this is good from a self-development perspective. Whereas those in monogamous relationships try to keep their jealous feelings at bay by restricting their partner, those in non-monogamous relationships face their jealousy and see it as a part of themselves to work on, while also attempting to cultivate compersion and joy in the happiness of their partner.
TEA
Next we have the "TEA Objection", TEA meaning time, energy, attention. Monogamists might argue that one only has finite TEA, which prevents us from pouring it into multiple romantic relationships. This ends up leading to the conclusion that we only have enough TEA for one romantic relationship, and no more. However, this seems to be an absurd line of thinking. The first assumptions here would be that romantic relationships are highly emotionally or TEA demanding, and only when one commits enough TEA into a relationship, it qualifies as a worthwhile romantic relationship. However, it's obvious different people will have difference conceptions of what is needed from a romantic relationship. The author gives the example of people filling their cups with literal tea, where one person only wants one third, the other wants half, while another wants the full cup (side note, i just realized this is the cover of the book lol). For this example, the TEA objection would claim that there is some sort of requisite tea level that qualifies it to real tea, or in the case of monogamy, a legitimate romantic relationship. We can once again make a comparison to friendship here. Some people might be fine with calling someone a good friend if they speak once every few weeks, while others want to speak every day. One person could even have multiple different types of friendships at the same time and be happy with them all. And once again, we obviously wouldn't restrict someone else from making more friends on the grounds that our relationship with them would suffer.
These were the main objections addressed i found interesting and learned something from. There were some other objections like STDs and non-monogamy and non-monogamy surely leading to the social fabric of society breaking down (ex: nuclear family, children, marriage, etc.), which i find to be more silly and trivial than the other objections, though important to add to the book.
Criticisms
The first that this is actually quite a difficult read. It can be kind of technical and difficult to understand at parts, which I found odd since the concept of non-monogamy is actually quite intuitive. This is definitely not a "fun" read, and it almost seems deliberately confusing at some points. Take the definition the author gives of romantic love on page 9: "I take romantic love to be a reason-responsive emotion that involves a final valuation of a relationship, from the perspective of relata in that relationship, and nonfinal noninstrumental valuation of one's relata." The word relata is defined earlier as basically meaning any member of a monogamous or non-monogamous relationship. I had to look up "final valuation", which seems to mean seeing the relationship as an end in itself rather than solely as a means to another end (like children). But for the rest of the sentence I still have no idea what this means. This isn't good because this is the place where he defines what romantic love is, which is an extremely important definition for the purposes of this book. I think this definitely one of many parts of the book that are confusing and should have been explained and expanded upon. This is related to my next criticism, which is that I think there were a lot of parts I wish were longer and expanded upon more. This book is so short (only 150 pages) and it feels like there is a lot more to say about these topics, but the author was trying to keep it as brief as possible. I felt there were many points in chapter 2 that could have been expanded on to make the book stronger, like his short 2 paragraph response to divine command theory that was not nearly enough as mentioned before.
Conclusion
Overall the book is very interesting and a good introduction to the ethics of non-monogamy, and gave me new insight on how to think about monogamy and non-monogamy. The biggest problem I had was definitely the readability. I'm glad that I came into this book with some background knowledge from listening to a podcast about the topic some time ago and talking about it with friends a little bit, since without that prior understanding I probably would have been really confused.
Well done overview of objections to non-monogamous romantic relationships, and questions many assumptions we have about monogamy, non-monogamy, love, and more. In the first chapter the author introduces what monogamy and non-monogamy are, and i thought he had some very interesting insights. He argues that our culture holds an almost oppressive view that monogamous relationships are the only romantic relationships possible, and true romantic love is by definition only possible as between two people in the minds of most people. Both of these ideas should be questioned. Additionally, romantic love and marriage are considered some of the highest goods that can be achieved for all people. Those who aren't able to accomplish this are seen as deficient in some way, and we pity these people as they are going to die alone. Also, because monogamous romantic love is valued so highly, it devalues the importance we should place on other forms of relationships like friendships. For instance, it might be seen as more socially acceptable to be in a mediocre marriage, rather than single with many close friendships (especially the older you get). The main idea I got from this chapter is that western culture seems to presuppose that monogamous romantic love should be an end goal of ALL people. However, we should ask questions such as if it is possible to live a fulfilled life without romantic love, or with romantic love with multiple partners.
Divine Command
He goes over most objections people could think of to non-monogamous relationships (mainly polyamory) in chapter 2, which is probably the most important and interesting section of the book. He first goes the objection monogamy is natural, which ends up committing the naturalistic fallacy. Then he goes over the argument that god commands us to be monogamous because of divine command theory, which is the view that things are only moral because god commands them. This one only matters if you are religious, but I didn't find the author's response to this one to be very strong. After explaining the view, he spends only 2 paragraphs and the end of the section taking a stab at it. But a 2 paragraph counter objection isn't nearly enough for such a complex topic... and his response (which i'm not writing here, i didn't really like it) likely wouldn't convince anyone who thinks monogamy is part of their religion. I think a stronger objection would have been to point out that there are other literal commands in religious texts that adherents often don't follow, and we could compare these to the text against non-monogamy. He puts in a quote from the old testament that might be used to justify being against non-monogamy: "And he shall not acquire many wives, lest his heart turn away". But there are other passages in the old and new testament that point to conclusions such as slavery being permissible or homosexuality being impermissible, such as: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them." I felt that questioning why one might choose to adhere to the verse about biblically sanctioned monogamy, but not putting homosexuals to death, would be a stronger response to divine command theory (albeit I don't know that much about theology). Another point he made that I thought was interesting that some religions, like Greek myth, have their gods practicing non-monogamy, such as Zeus having offspring from many different women who weren't his wife. The author points out that the western Christian narrative against non-monogamy seems to be what stuck with our culture today, rather than Greek, African, and other cultures' permissibility of non-monogamy, which I found pretty interesting.
Specialness
He goes over the "justification from specialness" which says we need monogamy so that we feel special, and the exclusivity of a monogamous relationship is what makes it special. The response is to simply point out other types of relationships, like friendship, can be special despite one not being restricted to having one friend. We would find someone pretty neurotic if we said that they weren't going to allow their friend to make more friends, since they would feel less special. Something similar could be said for romantic relationships. While romantic relationships and friendships fulfill different roles in our lives, it is interesting to ask why a romantic relationship has a maximum limit of only one person, while relationships like friendships, parent-child, and others can have a much higher limit.
Additionally, the idea that we need to feel special and our partner wanting to be non-monogamous makes us less special seems to stem from some sort of insecurity that can be overcome, rather than a fact that forces people only to be in monogamous relationships. This might come from a high standard placed on western romantic relationships, where a partner should fulfill all of the needs (sexual, emotional, etc.) of their partner, which is a high ask for one person to do. Generally we accept one person can't meet all our needs, which is why we might have multiple friends. The author asks us to lean into accepting something similar for romantic relationships, that some people may want more than one partner to fulfill their needs the same way some people want more than one friend.
Jealousy
He next discusses jealousy as a justification for monogamy. People have a fear of losing their partner to someone else, and because of this they use monogamy will keep them safe from this fear. Similar to the last point about insecurity over specialness, the author argues this jealousy is not something that people must necessarily have, but stems from vulnerability, possessiveness, and entitlement, which can be overcome. However, he points out that currently romantic jealousy is not seen as something bad, but is actually normalized and praised in our culture. People see their jealousy as proof that they love their partners, and find it normal and healthy to be jealous as part of romantic relationships, like the jealous feeling that might arise if they were to imagine their partner being emotionally intimate or having sex with someone else. For example, we might think of a traditionally masculine male figure angry that their girlfriend talked to a member of the opposite sex as attractive or chivalrously protective in some way, rather than view their jealousy as negative.
Additionally, if one thinks a monogamous relationships is a necessary restriction to avoid somebody leaving them, then we should ask if other restrictions might also be permissible. He uses the example of locking your partner in solitary confinement to ensure they don't leave you. Other examples might include preventing your partner from texting or meeting a friend of the opposite sex. The question is whether monogamy is the best restriction to have over a number of possible of other restrictions, like solitary confinement. Here, I felt the author didn't answer the question sufficiently, and kind of just leaves it open. We can see that solitary confinement or prevent your partner from meeting another guy as harmful to your partner in some way as it restricts their freedom. However, if both parties consent to a rule, such as monogamy, is it still restrictive? We can consider a rule consented to by both parties, that they will never text or make eye contact with a member of the opposite sex. This seems like an unnecessarily restrictive criteria to take part in a romantic relationship, so we would have to ask if monogamy is unnecessarily restrictive in a similar way. If this was true, then this would lead us to the conclusion that monogamy is strictly worse than non-monogamy, similar to how a relationship restricting eye contact with the opposite sex could be seen as strictly worse than a normal monogamous relationship. However, I don't think the author addresses this, which was unfortunate. The reason might be because the goal of the book is just to explain why non-monogamy is OK, not that it is better, but I think it would have been interesting.
The author brings up an emotion popularized by non-monogamists called compersion, which is the happiness you get from the flourishing of others. He argues we can cultivate this by addressing our jealousy, and being happy with the happiness our partner might feel with others in a non-monogamous relationship. He frames this is good from a self-development perspective. Whereas those in monogamous relationships try to keep their jealous feelings at bay by restricting their partner, those in non-monogamous relationships face their jealousy and see it as a part of themselves to work on, while also attempting to cultivate compersion and joy in the happiness of their partner.
TEA
Next we have the "TEA Objection", TEA meaning time, energy, attention. Monogamists might argue that one only has finite TEA, which prevents us from pouring it into multiple romantic relationships. This ends up leading to the conclusion that we only have enough TEA for one romantic relationship, and no more. However, this seems to be an absurd line of thinking. The first assumptions here would be that romantic relationships are highly emotionally or TEA demanding, and only when one commits enough TEA into a relationship, it qualifies as a worthwhile romantic relationship. However, it's obvious different people will have difference conceptions of what is needed from a romantic relationship. The author gives the example of people filling their cups with literal tea, where one person only wants one third, the other wants half, while another wants the full cup (side note, i just realized this is the cover of the book lol). For this example, the TEA objection would claim that there is some sort of requisite tea level that qualifies it to real tea, or in the case of monogamy, a legitimate romantic relationship. We can once again make a comparison to friendship here. Some people might be fine with calling someone a good friend if they speak once every few weeks, while others want to speak every day. One person could even have multiple different types of friendships at the same time and be happy with them all. And once again, we obviously wouldn't restrict someone else from making more friends on the grounds that our relationship with them would suffer.
These were the main objections addressed i found interesting and learned something from. There were some other objections like STDs and non-monogamy and non-monogamy surely leading to the social fabric of society breaking down (ex: nuclear family, children, marriage, etc.), which i find to be more silly and trivial than the other objections, though important to add to the book.
Criticisms
The first that this is actually quite a difficult read. It can be kind of technical and difficult to understand at parts, which I found odd since the concept of non-monogamy is actually quite intuitive. This is definitely not a "fun" read, and it almost seems deliberately confusing at some points. Take the definition the author gives of romantic love on page 9: "I take romantic love to be a reason-responsive emotion that involves a final valuation of a relationship, from the perspective of relata in that relationship, and nonfinal noninstrumental valuation of one's relata." The word relata is defined earlier as basically meaning any member of a monogamous or non-monogamous relationship. I had to look up "final valuation", which seems to mean seeing the relationship as an end in itself rather than solely as a means to another end (like children). But for the rest of the sentence I still have no idea what this means. This isn't good because this is the place where he defines what romantic love is, which is an extremely important definition for the purposes of this book. I think this definitely one of many parts of the book that are confusing and should have been explained and expanded upon. This is related to my next criticism, which is that I think there were a lot of parts I wish were longer and expanded upon more. This book is so short (only 150 pages) and it feels like there is a lot more to say about these topics, but the author was trying to keep it as brief as possible. I felt there were many points in chapter 2 that could have been expanded on to make the book stronger, like his short 2 paragraph response to divine command theory that was not nearly enough as mentioned before.
Conclusion
Overall the book is very interesting and a good introduction to the ethics of non-monogamy, and gave me new insight on how to think about monogamy and non-monogamy. The biggest problem I had was definitely the readability. I'm glad that I came into this book with some background knowledge from listening to a podcast about the topic some time ago and talking about it with friends a little bit, since without that prior understanding I probably would have been really confused.
September 5, 2024
This is an academic book setting out a philosophical perspective on monogamy and nonmonogamy, especially polyamory and polyfidelity. It is not written for a popular audience, though it is pretty readable.
As a philosophical text, it seems to be concerned with laying out the basics of a new area of inquiry. It systematizes and makes explicit much of the common philosophical perspectives of nonmonogamy, and gives a first assessment of many of the central questions.
As a well read practitioner of nonmonogamy, I didn't find much of this book particularly illuminating, but I am glad to see the author setting out the terms and questions and perspectives in a form that academia can digest and engage with. I hope fellow academics take time to read it. Good luck to you in your future works, Justin L. Clardy. Thanks for writing.
3/5: It's competently written and is a useful contribution to the field. But, I'm not really the target audience, so it wasn't great for me personally.
As a philosophical text, it seems to be concerned with laying out the basics of a new area of inquiry. It systematizes and makes explicit much of the common philosophical perspectives of nonmonogamy, and gives a first assessment of many of the central questions.
As a well read practitioner of nonmonogamy, I didn't find much of this book particularly illuminating, but I am glad to see the author setting out the terms and questions and perspectives in a form that academia can digest and engage with. I hope fellow academics take time to read it. Good luck to you in your future works, Justin L. Clardy. Thanks for writing.
3/5: It's competently written and is a useful contribution to the field. But, I'm not really the target audience, so it wasn't great for me personally.
October 28, 2023
I enjoyed reading this book. Even though it entails some very theoretical concept in the fields of law, politics and philosophy, it manages to explain them clearly before coupling them to the concept of non-monogamy.
The shift in focus to marriage in the last chapter(s) might be too extensive for some but I rather enjoyed it.
It’s a book that let’s you think critically and embrace your inner activist in a wat that’s not coercive.
The shift in focus to marriage in the last chapter(s) might be too extensive for some but I rather enjoyed it.
It’s a book that let’s you think critically and embrace your inner activist in a wat that’s not coercive.
November 2, 2024
An interesting overview about the concepts of monogamy and various forms of non-monogamy that covers a lot of general questions and potential misunderstandings or stereotypes. Coming from an asexual/aromantic pov I appreciated the inclusion of friendship and singledom under the non-monogamy umbrella. I appreciate that the book was a quick read, was well structured, and generally had a factual, academic tone, since this is exactly what I was looking for (not personal stories).
October 9, 2023
It is okay to be non monogamous. I just hated the book, it was such a boring read, nothing entertaining at all.
July 16, 2025
Extremely academic and philosophical but feels repetitive.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews