The boredom of monogamy
“If a man can possess a woman sexually -really possess- he won't need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers.”
Toni Bentley
Most people live in monogamous relationships today. They offer the advantage that each individual gets a sex partner assigned and few people end up without one. But the „guaranteed sex“ is only available for men as long as they are permitted to force their partner (wife) to have sex. Fortunately, this is not possible anymore in most countries.
Marriage was invented to neutralize the destabilizing effect of sexuality in groups. As every man got some sex, there was little tension in the group about who gets the women (the women did not count and paid a high price). Marriage is therefore a result of the competitive nature of our society. It increases group cohesion which makes the group more effective.
But monogamous relationships are problematic in several ways. They most probably don’t correspond to the living conditions under which our sexual behavior was shaped a long time ago. In the tribal communities of our past, women probably used sex to establish advantageous ties to several men. This ensured support from different sources. Sex makes men feeling attached to women and consequently they often offer resources of some kind (help, protection, food, advice etc). The reason is that they might be (or become) the father of one of her children. We could call this behavior socially motivated sex. This kind of sex is strategically highly complex. While men accept every opportunity to have sex, women have to be selective. For a woman to have sex, it needs to offer a „good deal“ of some kind (subconsciously). For men in contrast, sex is always a good deal, because it is so cheap for them. A „good deal“ for a woman can mean many different things and they are the triggers for her attraction and later arousal. Practically this means that women often need a „story“ to get sexually interested in a man. And because this „story“ is often missing in long term monogamous relationships, it is often the women who get terribly bored with their sex life after a while. The men are also bored, but can still be satisfied to some extent by just the female body.
Therefore many women would probably be sexually much more active if polygamy were socially accepted. Of course, this would benefit the sexually frustrated men too.
As we have seen, in a competitive system many women favor successful, rich or powerful men. This leads to an uneven distribution of sex: the mentioned groups of men get a lot of sex, many others little or none. In a cooperative system women and men would, of course, still chose partners they consider attractive, but attractiveness could have many more facets. A myriad of traits and skills could be considered attractive once the exclusive focus on success and power is lost. This would lead to a broader distribution of the female desire.
Similarly men could, after becoming more aware of themselves, lose their boring strong preference for average looking („beautiful“) young women and develop a much broader sexual appetite.
This, I believe, could take a lot of tension out of our society.
“The forbiddenness of a fruit makes even the taste of a lemon sweet”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana