These days we are told that monogamy is "unnatural" or "unrealistic." As the argument goes, being faithful in a marriage can be hard which means it is impossible and against our very nature. This is the logic of a weak, cowardly age. Monogamy is, in fact, far more "natural" for humans than the other option. And it's perfectly feasible and even pretty easy if you are willing to exercise a little bit of self-restraint and selflessness.
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Well, since it's Friday, I thought that it could be fun to reach into the mailbag.
Not a literal mailbag.
I wish. I wish I had just had a bag of mail with envelopes that I could reach into.
But no, metaphorical mailbag and tackle a subject that was suggested to me via email.
And by the way, I always enjoy these kinds of emails.
So anytime there's a topic that you'd like me to hear me babble about and I haven't babbled about before, you can always suggest it.
It also does my job for me by providing me with content.
So I really appreciate that as well.
All right. So here is the email.
It says, Hi, Matt.
First of all, huge fan. Because of my incredible humility, I will skip the first paragraph that compliments me, and I'll go to the next one.
As a 23-year-old Christian girl, getting married and starting a family of my own is something I'm really looking forward to in life.
However, recently I've heard and read so many things about how it's unnatural for men to be monogamous.
I even watched a Netflix documentary about why monogamy is not meant for humans, specifically men.
I'd like to say that these studies don't bother me, but I'd be lying.
Like most millennials, my biggest fear is a failed marriage, and this is just fuel to the fire.
Anyway, I would love to hear your take on this matter.
Thank you.
So, monogamy is unnatural, is the subject.
This obviously is...
It's something that rather frequently you'll see passed around on social media.
You'll see an article being passed around claiming that monogamy is unnatural, that monogamous relationships are doomed to failure, that being polyamorous is the more enlightened choice.
In fact, I saw an article on Facebook Recently, that I guess was related to a new show on the BBC about a couple who are seeking to save their marriage by having an open relationship, that is by cheating on each other consensually, and the article is promoting the idea of having an open relationship.
So I think the attack on monogamy is often direct and You have people directly saying that monogamy is unnatural, implausible, not feasible.
So you have that kind of attack, but then I think you have the more common sort of attack on monogamy that is implicit and sort of just cultural and environmental.
where people in my generation have grown up in an environment where that is just hostile to monogamy.
And where if you didn't know any better, and you looked around, you may reach the conclusion that monogamy is somehow an impossibility.
There are a lot of people in my generation who, growing up as kids, they really never encountered a faithful, healthy, monogamous relationship.
Their own parents were divorced.
Their friends' parents were divorced.
It was just divorce all over the place.
And so that's how a lot of people were raised.
And it's no surprise that a lot of them now, as adults, have decided that a healthy, stable marriage is impossible, so there's no reason to even try.
I think there are a few different aspects of this discussion that need to be tackled or a few different questions that need to be answered.
Number one, is monogamy actually unnatural?
Number two, is something like an open marriage more natural or even possible, logically?
And number three, is monogamy possible?
So I'll try to tackle these one at a time.
Number one. Is monogamy unnatural?
I think the short answer is yes and no.
It depends on what you mean by natural, and thus what you mean by unnatural.
Now, I think, and the way we talk about things being natural, it's very convoluted and confused, and people seem to be very inconsistent Um, in, in, you know, in the times when they'll use this idea of something being natural as a justification for doing it.
Like we're very selective about that.
And I think part of the confusion is that, is that the word natural as it pertains to humans can mean one of two things.
So when we say natural, we could mean it in the lower sense.
That is, it's natural, Because it's what we instinctively crave.
It's natural because it satisfies some base urge that we have.
So in that way, being polyamorous or sleeping around, being unfaithful, that is a natural thing in that sense.
It's natural like lying is natural, like jealousy is natural, like hatred and gossip and pride are all natural.
They're natural like it's natural to get angry and punch a wall.
They're natural in the sense that you could experience that urge, and if you have no discipline or self-control, you could easily slip into that.
So that's what I mean by natural.
A person who doesn't try to control themselves and just lets themselves sort of be...
That's how they're going to be. They're going to be gossiping, prideful, lying, unfaithful.
They're going to be all those things. And in that sense, monogamy is unnatural in the same way that it's unnatural to suppress your anger or to exercise humility or to refrain from lying and to tell the truth, even when the truth is painful or inconvenient or uncomfortable.
So I think natural in this sense In the sense that being non-monogamous is natural, would be better called maybe base or even animalistic.
Animalistic because animals are going to experience a compulsion or an instinct, and then that's just how they're going to act.
They're not going to choose to do something else.
An animal is never going to say, well, I really have the urge to do this, but I think that's wrong, so I'm going to do this instead.
Animals will never do that.
And so a person who says, well, I can't be monogamous because it's not natural, what they're saying is basically they don't want to live like a human.
They don't aspire to be a human being.
They want to live like a dog, like an animal.
But then there is natural in the other sense.
I think the higher sense.
The sense that maybe we would even call supernatural.
And not supernatural because it's magical, but because it is above instinct.
It is above compulsion.
It is above urge.
When we act this way, we are separating ourselves from nature to an extent.
We're standing above nature in a way because we are acting in a way that the rest of nature is not capable of acting.
We are making a choice that the rest of nature, animals and plants, cannot make.
Monogamy, lifelong devotion, belongs to this category.
And I know that there are some examples in the animal kingdom of monogamy, that is, animals who have a lifelong partner.
But again, that's very different.
That's instinct. It's not like they have made this promise and this commitment to each other that I'm going to stick by this person or this other creature for the rest of my life.
That's not what's going on.
Only humans can make that calculation and make that choice.
So it's a higher thing.
It's a greater, more beautiful, more enriching thing.
But like all higher things, like all greater things that requires effort and work and sacrifice and discipline...
Fidelity goes against our baser urges, but not because it perverts those urges or those instincts.
So it's not like someone who hurts themselves on purpose, someone who's a self-mutilator, and so they go against the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct to avoid pain.
But in that case, they go against it in that they pervert it.
It's not like that. Monogamy, fidelity, it goes against our instincts by reaching for something beyond instinct.
And in that way, I would argue that it is the most natural, the most human, because it's our ability to reach beyond instinct and to act according to a higher standard that makes us human.
So in pursuing this path, we really become human.
By just having sex with random people, living a life of selfishness, you're losing your human identity and becoming this small and pathetic little thing.
I don't want to get sidetracked here, but This is also why I find the argument against free will so completely stupid.
I mean, it's the stupidest argument that you'll hear that even very smart people will make, trying to deny free will.
I mean, what are you talking about?
It is obviously evident that we all have free will, because here's how I can prove it, okay?
I can really, really, really want to do one thing and not do that thing.
That's free will. No other animal in the animal kingdom has that.
We are the only ones who can do that.
In the known universe, we're the only ones.
We could really have an urge to do something and yet do the opposite.
So I think when people who argue against free will, what they're really revealing about themselves is that they are total, absolute cowards and wimps.
And that they, in their own lives, have never actually resisted an urge, have never exercised any self-restraint, and have therefore decided that it's impossible for everyone.
But it's not impossible.
It is possible to do.
The fact that you haven't done it just means that you're weak.
But it can be done.
It can. Many billions of people do it all the time.
Um, so that's, you know, that's the distinction between natural and unnatural.
And I think you can see this.
I mean, talk to, um, Talk to a couple that's been married for 50 or 60 or 70 years.
I think often what you'll find when you talk to some people like that is that it's like they've reached a higher mode of existence.
You'll find a certain peace, a certain wisdom that's grown from a life of love and devotion.
And you can contrast that with someone who's older and is also older, like the old married couple, but let's take someone who's older and has gone from marriage to marriage, lived a life of self-seeking, of self-involvement, never managed to have really a healthy, faithful relationship.
And what you'll notice about that kind of person Is that they've kind of caved in on themselves and they become like shells.
And all that was real and vital and awesomely human about them has been eaten away.
And that is what being natural has gotten.
Number two. These days we have the idea of an open relationship or an open marriage.
And this seems to me to be a contradiction in terms.
You know, saying open marriage is like saying dry lake or something.
Now, a lake might dry out, you know, of course, but once it has dried out, it's not a lake anymore.
There's no such thing as a dry lake.
It's not a lake. It's just a big hole in the ground.
And I think something similar is the case with an open marriage.
Now, of course, it's hard to make this case in modern times when people don't recognize that marriage has any particular definition or purpose.
And if marriage is just literally any kind of arrangement, if it's just whatever you want it to be, then marriage is nothing.
It means nothing.
By opening up the definition of something and including all definitions within it, you haven't gained a new definition, you have just lost definition.
That was the whole argument that the supporters of so-called traditional marriage have always made.
It's an argument of logic, saying, look, marriage is a certain thing, serves a certain purpose.
If you erase those lines and say, well, it's not that thing anymore, it doesn't serve that purpose anymore, then you have to come up with a new definition that can still exclude all other definitions.
Because if it's not a definition that excludes other definitions, then it's not a definition.
The problem is that the people who have advocated for this new definition of marriage, they never actually came up with a new definition.
The old definition is very simple, very straightforward.
Marriage is a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman.
That is a lifelong, fruitful commitment between a man and a woman that serves as the foundation for a family.
That's what a marriage is.
Now, you could disagree with that, but at least it is a thing.
You know what that is.
It has definition. It has purpose.
It has function. Okay.
Well, if you're coming in and saying, well, it doesn't need to be lifelong.
It doesn't need to be monogamous.
It doesn't need to be fruitful.
It doesn't need to serve as a foundation of a family.
Well, then what is it?
What in the world is this thing now?
It just went from a thing that is a thing to a thing that's nothing.
Unless you can come up with some new debt, but no one bothered to do that.
And so now we just, all we've done is literally gotten rid of marriage, at least from a cultural standpoint and from a legal standpoint.
But the fact still remains.
Even if we don't recognize it as a culture, even if we don't recognize it legally, marriage is still marriage.
Between a man and a woman, and that part is important because one of the primary functions, I said, of a marriage is to serve as the basis for the family, and only a man and a woman can biologically create a family.
And the lifelong and monogamous part is important because that is what a family requires in order to be stable, happy, and healthy.
Now, you might say, what about polygamy?
Which obviously has plenty of historical precedent.
Well, I think polygamy is a primitive kind of arrangement that we have grown past, I think also that polygamy could have arguably been necessary in the earlier days, the very early days of human civilization, when human beings had to do quite a lot of reproducing in order to reach stable population numbers.
But that's not the case anymore.
And anyway, polygamy in the traditional sense...
It's not the same as this modern idea of an open marriage, where a spouse goes out and has sex with whoever they want just for fun, for recreation, and then comes home to their spouse and pretends that they love them.
And it also isn't the same as the modern system of marrying and divorcing a whole string of people.
So at the end of your life, you can look back and see that you have four or five spouses, but you just had them in succession instead of all at once.
I think even the polygamists of old would have found both of those arrangements to be absurd and horrifying.
So, you know, open marriage, it's a dry lake, it's a square circle, it's a contradiction.
The thing that makes, if a marriage is a marriage, if it means anything, one of the central things that make it a marriage is that it is closed.
That it is a bond between two people, man and woman, closed off from others.
It is a unique and special bond.
Three, is monogamy possible?
Is it possible or feasible to get married and stay married and remain faithful to one person for your whole life?
And for that, let me offer an emphatic yes.
And this is one of the most frustrating things to me, that people who have failed in their relationships and failed in their marriages will very often argue that essentially their experience is universal.
Nobody can be sure in their marriage.
Nobody can rule out divorce.
That's sort of what they'll say.
That's the message that newlyweds and people who are discerning marriage, that's the message that they hear.
And they'll hear that, well, if you're happily married right now, or if you're about to get married, watch out.
Because it could happen to you at any time.
A divorce could just happen to you.
The end of your marriage could just happen.
Like, you could just trip into it like a puddle, right?
Your vows, your promises, your plans, all that really doesn't mean anything.
It's nice, but it doesn't mean anything.
This is the attitude that people seem to want young married couples to have, and I find it detestable, honestly.
I find it detestable. Anytime I've talked about this publicly, about the issue of divorce and being faithful to your spouse and so on, or I've talked about myself and I've said, you know, been married for seven years, I'm never going to divorce my wife.
I have had, in so many cases, I've been told by people who have been divorced and they've said, well, pride comes before the fall.
What kind of thing is that to say?
You're saying it's prideful that I'm not going to divorce my wife?
I'm arrogant for that?
Because I made a vow and I planned to stick with it?
That makes me arrogant and prideful?
What a horrible, awful thing.
Do you realize how horrible that is to say to people?
You may as well just wish, you may as well tell them, I hope you get divorced one day.
It's what you're doing. And I really think that's the case.
I think there are a lot of people who have, you know, experienced a lot of misery in their life, in their lives, much of it self-inflicted, and they really do wish it on others.
They want other people to experience it.
Well, let me say this.
That's all bull.
And if you're getting married or if you're a young married couple, don't listen to it.
Don't listen to these miserable people who would try to foist their miseries on you.
Don't listen to people who say, you know, I couldn't do this, so nobody can.
Don't listen to them. Here's an absolute fact about marriage.
If both of you are 100% committed to it, and you remain committed to it, and above all, you remain totally faithful to one another, your marriage will last as long as you live.
Guaranteed. All you have to do is fulfill those two things.
If both of you do, you're committed, faithful, your marriage lasts.
I mean, it's really as simple as that.
It's impossible that you could both do that and complete that task on a daily basis because it is a daily thing.
If you're doing that every day, you're not going to trip and fall and end up divorced one day.
And is any of that impossible or unrealistic?
Is it impossible or unrealistic to be committed and faithful?
No, it's not only possible, but it's completely feasible.
It's not only feasible, but it's even easy.
Easy when you look at it objectively, I mean.
Easy when you look at it this way.
Okay, look at it this way.
You say to yourself, I'm married, okay?
I can be faithful and committed or not.
And then you think, so this is just, you're being objective, right?
I have two paths, like faithful committed path, and then the unfaithful non-committed path.
And then you think about where each path will take you.
The faithful and committed path is not only morally correct, but it's also way, way easier.
I mean, it's difficult in the sense that it requires sacrifice, honesty, work, and so on.
But it's easy in that it's much simpler.
It's much more peaceful. It's much happier.
And you avoid all the complications and dramas and deceits that mark the lives of unfaithful and uncommitted people.
In a sense, in a similar sense, you could say it's much easier to eat healthy and get exercise and live a healthy life.
It's easier. Now, little sacrifices are required to maintain such a life.
And in the moment, like when you are choosing to have broccoli and you compare that to the choice to eat ice cream, Seems like a harder choice.
And when you're going for a jog and you compare that to the choice of sitting on the couch, the jog seems like the harder choice.
But if you look at it in its totality, objectively, you see that the other option to be a lazy glutton who eats ice cream all the time and just lays around on the couch, that will lead to huge complications down the road, all kinds of health problems, and ultimately to the biggest sacrifice of all, your life. You're going to die.
It will kill you. Of course, we're all going to die, but that lifestyle will kill you much sooner.
So in that sense, to eat healthy and to get exercise, it really is easier.
It makes your life a lot easier.
There's a great line at the end of Graham Greene's book, Power and the Glory, that I think I've mentioned before, one of my favorite books.
And there's a line, it's a scene where a priest is in jail, he's awaiting execution, martyrdom.
And though this priest has done a heroic thing by, in the end, sticking to his faith, even when faced with death, up until that point, he had lived a sinful life, he was a drunk, he had an illegitimate child, okay?
And so as he was in his cell awaiting execution, Green has this line to describe his state of mind.
The line is, it seemed to him at that moment That it would have been quite easy to have been a saint.
It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage.
And I've always loved that line and that whole scene because of how deeply true it seems.
And you can really imagine yourself in a cell awaiting execution and having the exact same thought.
That really, to be a saint, to be a good person, is actually really easy when you look at it objectively.
All it requires in any given situation most of the time is a little bit of self-restraint, a little bit of courage, a little bit of selflessness.
99% of the moments in our lives only require the smallest little smidgen of saintliness.
99% of the time, that is all that's required.
So that to be a bad person, to live a bad life, it means that you have to consistently refuse, even in the pettiest situations, you have to refuse to even be a little bit selfless and a little bit honest.
And you have to consistently make that refusal.
Where you see, after a while, it's almost like it requires more effort to be a bad person because you have to be so consistently bad.
At a certain point, you think you just give up on it and say, fine, I'll just be a good person.
It's so much easier to just be a good person.
And I think a similar thing is the case with marriage.
Marriages most often fail because one or both people, usually both, refuse to stop being selfish for even two seconds.
That really is the truth. I'm not saying it's the truth every time, but I think in the majority of cases, what kills a marriage is consistent, unrelenting selfishness on the part of both people.
I think that being a good spouse, 99% of the time consists of very little things that are really easy.
It consists of taking the garbage out without grumbling about it or smiling at your spouse when they come home from work, asking them how their day was.
It consists of, you know, volunteering to be the one who gets up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water for the crying kid.
That sort of stuff. I think if in all of these really small, easy situations, if we exercise a little bit of patience, a little bit of selflessness, our marriages will be fine.
Now, there's still going to be that 1%.
There's going to be that small minority of really difficult, challenging situations.
Those moments when doing the right thing, responding the right way, might require even something like heroism.
But the 99% won't require anything close to that.
And if you get into the habit of being selfless in the 99%, Then probably you'll react the right way or close to the right way when the 1% creeps up on you.
And I think that's the other thing, that there might be plenty of marriages that appear to have ended because of some cataclysmic thing that occurred or some great challenge that the couple faced.
And it may seem on the outside, it may even seem to them, that this huge challenge is the thing that destroyed the marriage.
But I think probably in most cases that's not true.
I think what you'll find is that it was kind of a, that one or both of them had been in the habit for a long time leading up to that.
Had been in the habit of selfishness and pettiness and impatience and all of that.
And so there had been this kind of cumulative effect, and then the big thing happens, and it's an explosion that blows them apart because they have no stability, they have no strength at all in their marriage and in their relationship, and so they don't have the foundations to survive this big challenge.
And also, they themselves personally, because they haven't gotten into the habit of being a good husband or being a good wife, when this huge challenge arises, they have no idea how to approach that in the right way.
So I think that's all that's needed to be monogamous and faithful.
And by the way, I don't say any of this as a person.
I've been married going on seven years, so I'm hardly a marriage expert.
Compared to someone who's been married for 30 years, I think I'm still a novice.
And I also certainly have not mastered the art of doing what I would call the easy thing, you know, and being selfless and patient in the small situations.
I have not at all. I have not myself mastered the 99%.
But that's part of the reason why I know this.
Because so many times if I, you know, if I am impatient or if I do the wrong thing in one of these small situations, you know, or there's a fight or something like that, I can look back on it later and say, what?
I mean, why did I do that? I mean, it would have been so much easier to simply do the, you know, it would have been so much easier to have a little bit of patience or to be a little bit selfless.
So that's what I would say to the emailer.
Don't be afraid of marriage.
Don't be afraid of it, but be discerning about who you ultimately end up with.
And you do absolutely have to go into it yourself, completely ruling out the possibility of divorce and knowing that your future spouse has also ruled out the possibility, completely ruled it out.
And then at that point, you charge out into the great unknown and see what awaits you.
