As you deconstruct things like purity culture, have you found yourself questioning whether God actually designed us to be monogamous? “Asking for a friend.” Just kidding, I’m asking for myself, but I am not rejecting monogamy, I am simply questioning.
I celebrated my 9th anniversary last month. I have known my husband 11 years and he is the only man I have had PIV intercourse with. I was also Valentine’s Day last month, and on Valentine’s Day, Sheila Gregoire wrote a Facebook status about her marriage being “easy.” I commented that my marriage is not so “easy” but neither is it abusive. I don’t want a divorce and my husband and I do, in fact, love each other.
During this same month of February, I attended the “Content Warning” Conference (online). There were panels discussing ethical non-monogamy and polyamory as legitimate life choices. I was intrigued, a little jealous because I don’t fee free to explore my sexuality in other relationships and I am concerned about putting the family I have created with my husband and two children, at risk of breakdown. But I agree with the idea that you can’t really call a spouse a “cheater” or label sex an “affair” if a couple agree to an “open” relationship in which they can sexually explore with people other than just their spouse. I read Jada Pinkett Smith’s memoir, also in February, and she talks about this agreement in her own marriage, though she doesn’t like the term “open marriage.” She is very much in a ride-or-die marriage. It sounds like Jada and Will Smith will never divorce. There was a period that they were separated and not living in the same house. They still refused to divorce. It is an interesting concept that I, frankly, don’t know how I feel about for myself and my marriage, but I don’t judge harshly those who take this approach, because I can see the appeal: allowing for the ebb and flow of marital relationships, the raising of children together in a unified way etc.
These were not the only things to happen in February. My favorite podcast (the Where Do We Go From Here? Podcast) had two episodes about divorce and marriage. One was an interview with Liz Lenz about how her life improved with divorce and she has no desire to re-marry. The other was an interview with Dr. Camden Morgante about the seven signs that your marriage can be saved. I recommend these episodes if you are struggling in a monogamous relationship or contemplating divorce. The contrast between these episodes was super interesting. It can be tricky to determine whether we are in abusive monogamous relationships, or whether the issues we face are very normal, i.e. that most people living with other people face similar concerns they have to negotiate together. The church has sometimes implied that marriage isn’t about happiness, it’s about holiness. But no one wants to be miserable. Physical abuse, sexual abuse, and even verbal or emotional abuse do not make us holier, they wound us. Personally, I believe divorce is always an option, even though most people think and hope their marriages will last, at least in the beginning.
For me personally—and I said some of this in a comment on Sheila Gregoire’s status—my marriage is not hard enough to want or need a divorce, but I would not usually call it “easy.” Raising children is also not something I would call easy, even on the best day. Perhaps marriage and child-rearing is easier for some personalities than others. I’m a melancholy enneagram 4 and I experience a lot of disillusionment during some of the bigger life changes—even though I still embrace change and have made big moves and decisions (career changes, interstate and international moves, marriage, children etc.). Here is what I actually wrote on Sheila’s status:
I find marriage both hard and easy at different times. My marriage is not abusive but my husband and I argue, sometimes yell, sometimes even cuss at each other. We support each other most of the time. We negotiate housework, but this can end in arguments about why the bench wasn’t wiped or why there is hair on the bathroom sink. We seem to have cycles where we blow up at each other (usually about housework, which I find really strange–can’t figure out why it’s such a big drama), and then we fall back into the same patterns of going through the motions for a week until another blow-up. Or we get frustrated with the kids and that creates tension for everyone.
But overall, we work on our relationship and spend time together. We take walks, swim laps, read books together, have sex, watch movies… We are the best of friends who sometimes really piss each other off. We have no desire to separate, heck, we’ve moved countries together so splitting up our family would be super complicated. We are sometimes deeply honest and cry together. But I do think marriage could be easier… And I’m not sure why it’s not as easy as it was before we had kids or why it’s not as easy as my parents’ marriage seemed to be, or why it’s not as maybe passionate and therefore “easy” as I expected it to be when we embarked on this journey 9 years ago.
Any advice? Particularly with regard to why we fight about housework so frequently. Is it normal to go through pretty much weekly or monthly cycles of feeling closer together, then further apart–arguing about this thing or that thing, then having deeper more meaningful conversations that bring us closer? I was starting to think these cycles are pretty normal. But your post got me thinking, why is it that I would basically never say marriage or family life is “easy” on the whole?
For a little more context, I’m 41. Got married at 32. We have a 5-6yr old and a 3-4yr old.
There was a lot of marriage breakdown in my husband’s and my extended families during the recent worldwide pandemic. To me, humanity looks like it leans toward serially monogamy. We long for connection and relationship. We enter into marriage because we really want this love and passion and friendship (hopefully) to last forever. But we are not so great at making it last because people change, and also sometimes because people don’t change quickly and easily enough for our preferences. It’s a conundrum. My husband will sometimes request that I change a habit (like “interjecting,” which he calls “interrupting,” and which I do all the time), and I tell him I will try, but I know that even in the trying (which I genuinely do) it is unlikely he will notice a change or that the change will be considerable enough for him. And vice versa. I know that if I ask my husband to change, it is unlikely he will be able to in a long-term, permanent, measurable way, unless we allow years for the adaptation to occur (which is more likely to be effective). On the other hand, a person can change their theology, or suffer from a mental illness or a physical sickness that can result in personality changes and we can feel like they are different from the person we married…
Monogamous relationships are complex. Sometimes people change to quickly. Other times one person changes and the other seems to stay the same. Sometimes we change together. I feel fortunate that my husband and I have often changed theological beliefs together, over deep and bonding conversations. We have negotiated our parenting skills as a team and often make the same mistakes as each other so we are able to show one another a lot of grace as parents. Our biggest issues literally are things like housework/house maintenance and verbal interruptions/interjections. Our sex-lives could be better, for sure, but there is a mutual acceptance rather than a blaming about where our sex-life is at while we raise small children.
I just wanted to put these ideas out there because I don’t think we do enough talking about navigating monogamy, weighing up divorce, polyamory, or even admitting that many of us have and are living serially-monogamous lives from what I have observed. I would be interested to hear your experiences, struggles, opinions etc.
Leave a Reply