Quick Note on Non-Monogamy as Revolutionary Strategy
I once engaged in a terribly heartbreaking situation as the affair partner to my best friend at the time, a married revolutionary. This revolutionary told me good writing should make a person want to “hug me or hit me.” It is in that spirit, and in the spirit of wanting to save others from experiencing the heartbreak that I experienced and perpetrated, that I write this opinion piece.
I dedicate this piece to all of the “other” persons and “third wheels” out there who lose their very best friends in such a tragic and dehumanizing manner, to the people on both sides who still miss their best friends terribly, to the people who were surprised to find they are indeed able to love many people, and to the everyday people perfectly happy in monogamy who had the great misfortune of marrying a revolutionary.
I am critical of what is known as “lifestyle anarchism.” I am critical of policing people’s lifestyles and demanding people engage in projects, actions, and lifestyle choices that have no clear strategical connection with building mass revolutionary consciousness and action. That being said, I have always witnessed a dialectical relationship between social and economic relations under capitalism. While orthodox Marxists may claim that economic relations determine social relations, I believe the relationship is two-way and reciprocal. I believe that rearranging and being intentional about our social relations, while actively situating and theorizing these rearrangements within concrete, longterm revolutionary strategy, is a powerful way to develop the political consciousness and interpersonal skills needed to build and fight for liberation. Make men do domestic labor and care work. Put People of Color, Black people, Trans people, Fat people, and Disabled people in leadership roles. Collectivize child and elder care. And might I controversially add to this list: abolish monogamy. I understand that a majority of people who currently practice polyamory do not do so with explicitly strategic revolutionary aims. But I believe it can be practiced within the movement with such aims.
Under capitalism, we all feel insecure and unsafe, because we are. Capitalism tells us to find this safety and security in the monogamous relationship and nuclear family. Thus, monogamy socially conditions us into counterrevolutionary tendencies.
I am not suggesting that in a post-revolutionary society there will not be couples or sets of people who feel that coupling off is right for them, most likely for temporary periods of time, but potentially also for a lifetime. They will actively customize what sectors of spiritual, sexual, romantic, emotional, intellectual, material, and other forms of connection they want solely shared between the two of them for whatever reasons. But, in a post-revolutionary society, couplehood will not be common, and it will not be where we seek economic, health, and familial safety and security, where we seek our sense of self, worth, and reality, or where we seek a refuge from capitalist ills.
If we embrace prefigurative politics, polyamory forces us, in the face of our fears and insecurities related to sharing our partner(s), to, with urgency, fight for and build a world that collectivizes love and care and labor, that makes survival easy, that makes us feel safe. Capitalist society tells us that we are supposed to find everything in our monogamous relationships, and under our secular society, monogamy is the new religion. We are supposed to find safety, security, stability, predictability, share finances, share property, have a best friend, a family member, a nearly complete emotional support system, single lover, eroticism, mystery, unpredictability, inspiration, intellectual equal, savior, shared politics, shared hobbies, shared humor, travel partner, co-parent, and more. Our monogamous partner is supposed to save us from the existential angst and toxic loneliness of living under capitalism. Monogamous marriage is viewed with a finality. While it has become socially acceptable to have a low-key Christmas, a non-ritualized marriage is stigmatized. Marriage has to be magical and a big deal- for we turn to our monogamous partners to literally save us from capitalism.
If you are in a monogamous relationship right now, I urge you to be brutally honest with yourself, and ask yourself, “In what ways did I turn to my monogamous relationship to help me survive the economic exploitation and social oppression of capitalist society? In what ways did I buy into the mythical fantasy (we all have dealt with soulmate propaganda since birth) that monogamous relationship and marriage would finally provide me with the emotional, social, material, and financial stability and safety to survive capitalism?” And finally, reflect on whether a romantically, sexually, and emotionally exclusive, one-on-one relationship with another human is a proper and healthy structure for protection from capitalism (we are also inundated with propaganda that “us against the world” is the romantic essence of monogamy). Committing to another human for life, whether as a friend, chosen family member, or partner is a powerful and beautiful thing that can teach us so much. But there are profoundly obvious ways to retain the beauty, challenges, and lessons of longterm love and commitment to another person without the psychological, spiritual, and political damage of capitalism’s monogamy.
My feeling is: it’s ridiculous. The stress of it, the ways it limits how you can grow and who you can become and who you can love. Some friendships are simply beautiful and it feels beautiful for them to evolve into having romantic and sexual components. Some friendships are beautiful and they evolve in ways that are not romantic and sexual. Only under patriarchal, abelist, white supremacist capitalism is sex so fetishized, sanctified, and viewed as more significant than other types of intimate bonding (see social reproduction theory). I like to ask monogamous people to concretely define for me the difference and line between a best friend and a partner. To concretely define romance. To concretely define for me what is and what is not a date. They can never do it. If you have a best friend whom you connect with politically and emotionally and in other ways to deep, deep depths, and you all but have sex or kiss, is this still just a friendship? Would your monogamous partner say having a best friendship that close is totally okay, as long as there is no sex? And thereby be placing an ultimate significance on this fetishized physical act? Or would your partner say you need to not be as emotionally close to your best friend, thereby policing your friendship? I have fallen in love with people I do and do not want to have sex with. Pointing to societally accepted definitions of sex as the point in which a best friendship turns into a relationship or betrayal is disturbingly dehumanizing to asexual people and people who do not have or cannot use their genitalia. And there are so many ways to fall in love with people, with works of art, with ideas, with places. Most of the people I know who get involved in affairs are previously very best friends, who unconsciously and unknowingly slip down a slippery slope. Sex between them feels natural and beautifully progressive but yet simultaneously insignificant in the face of their deep emotional connection.
We cannot be owning each other the way that monogamy insists. It’s full of contradictions and unanswered questions that just lead to counterrevolutionary and emotionally damaging/heartbreaking protocols. Far more than 1 in 5 people in the USA cheat on their spouses- it’s time we stop pretending monogamy even exists, at least on a massive scale. There is no such this as a soulmate. But there is such a thing as abundant love, myriads of amazing peoples, all of whom should be treated with love and respect. There is a goal of working towards ethical, communicative non-monogamy.
Love is messy. Love is nonlinear. None of us are prepared. None of us philosophize and study deeply what our thoughts on relational constructions are until after it is too late- we marry without prior self-discovery and/or we cheat after marriage. Cheating hurts. Betrayal hurts. Surprises can hurt. If you love and care about someone, please do not become their affair partner. If you love your partner, don’t cheat. Although the abolition of monogamy and the experiencing of multiple loves has revolutionary power, it is nearly impossible to strategically seize upon this power based in contexts of addiction, obsession, deception, manipulation, and dishonesty. Although there are plenty of radical people who become polyamorous, and discard of mythical capitalist social reproductive monogamous internal stories, in the face of their partner’s infidelity, this is a very unreliable and potentially traumatic strategy. Revolutionaries must be masters of meeting people where they are at. Sometimes love is unpredictable and insurrectionary. If you find yourself loosing the people you love due to infidelity, and these loves were unable to embrace polyamory, make sure to grieve, make sure to hone your strategy, make sure to find love elsewhere, and make sure to avoid suicide.
But with the right politics and revolutionary goals, with a clear vision of the type of world we are trying to build, the pain of moving through our insecurities with the goal of more fully embracing the world we are fighting for is a medicinal, transformative pain and struggle.
