Certain corners of pop science like to frame monogamy as a cultural bug that has somehow snuck past evolution. Others argue it did come with survival advantages for a time, but now it’s an outdated feature. Divorce rates of 50% and above sure seem to add fuel to this fire. Why spend 60 years with the same person when you can spend 20 years with three each? Different partners for different seasons, and so on.
Yesterday, I reflected on my own hunter-gatherer instincts being alive and well — but I also realized I’m harnessing those instincts in ways suited to the 21st century. And while redirecting nature where possible is efficient, advisable, and often sufficient, in some cases we can and will override it altogether. If the men of today don’t need to chase wild animals down the street with a spear in order to satisfy their inner neanderthal, they don’t have to spread their genetic material to every homo sapiens with two X-chromosomes either — and can even get through life without doing so at all.
Monogamy may be the most prominent example of annulling our biological roots, but actually, we’re choosing sacrifice and service over self-preservation all the time. Why become a bodyguard, firefighter, or policewoman? Why try to leave your kids an inheritance — a concept universally accepted and even tax-advantaged by governments around the world — when you can spend every last cent you have on staying alive as long as possible? Why ship food to another nation? Why send in the army to support another nation’s cause? Perhaps anti-evolutionary behavior isn’t as uncommon or unreasonable as we think. What if it’s not anti-evolutionary to begin with?
In a world where everyone has more digital connections than ever yet fewer real friends at the same time, a world where work has fully permeated our lives and developed the potential to creep up any minute on any day, a world where dating apps have destroyed natural relationship economics and the illusion of infinite choice encourages us to never commit to anyone, well, maybe in such a world staying with one partner for your entire life isn’t a bug. Maybe it’s a superpower.
Why spend 60 years with the same person when you can spend 20 years with three each? Because the last 40 years are not the first 20 repeated twice. A great relationship, like everything, gets crispy at the end. For all their hardship and health problems, I bet if I asked my grandparents about their 60-year marriage, they’d say the last ten years were some of the best. But you don’t get those years if you don’t work together through the early struggles, the messy middle, and the inevitable end. You’ll get an expensive divorce lawyer and the emotional scheduling nightmare that is shared custody instead — plus all the other chaos that comes with our modern high-volatility life, of course.
Marriage and monogamy are not perfect concepts. From religious bias to routine and boredom to keeping the romantic spark alive, they come with plenty of knots to unravel. But when you’re part of a generation for whom it’s harder than ever to own a home, own a job for the long haul, or even own a community you’re proud to be a part of, the one thing that should almost feel easy to own is your commitment to another person — especially when maintaining that relationship is no harder than stringing together a chain of loose connections.
The Western individual is as liberated as he or she has ever been. But are we any happier for it? Having lost plenty of its 20th-century shine, monogamy may feel like handwriting letters in a hologram-fueled, cyber-connected world, but sometimes, new is just different, and the old way, having never stopped working, may yet turn out to be timeless.