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It's a myth that one sexual partner was the norm for most people (I'm including both sexes). Until the 1960's it pretty much was the norm for your average woman but not you're average man. It would be great if this was the norm, but it never was. In the 1950's my mother worked in a major mid-western city as an executive secretary for several different companies (a couple of them are well-known but I'm not naming them). It wasn't uncommon for men at these companies to cheat on their wife. Everyone knew it but it was pushed under the rug. Some of the things that my mom told me went on wouldn't be tolerated today and any company who allowed such things to go on would be sued for sexual harrassment and creating a hostile work enviornment.
OP, back when being married to one person for life was the norm, marriage cost some women their life. Women were property, and domestic violence wasn't considered a crime. The Temperance Movement was an attempt to prevent women from being beaten bloody. Other marriages were loveless, and people stayed with each other because divorce was so difficult, if it existed at all. Some couples lived separate lives and occupied separate bedrooms.
So, if your question presupposes that the marriage is a good match, then I'd agree. But women need liberal divorce laws for their own safety. Though we may lament the changes we've seen in that regard (I wonder how much of that lament is due to simple nostalgia), the fact is that in so doing, we tend to idealize marriage, and only think of the exceptional couples that got along well most of the time. The liberalization of divorce laws happened for a good reason.
You might ask the question a different way, and see what answers come up: would anyone on the forum who's been through a divorce or is now going through one, want to turn back the clock and be required to stay with their (ex-) spouse for the rest of their life?
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 04-21-2012 at 08:30 PM..
This is a very interesting question, or rather, group of questions.
I would NOT want to go back to an era where only having one sexual partner in your lifetime was the norm, because so many other things were just wrong in those time periods.
I WOULD prefer having only one sexual partner in my lifetime, assuming it was my true love.
"Variety" is not important, and I think ideally, the dating process should provide enough "sorting" so you know when you've found the one.
Is it the end of the world that it doesn't work that way for most people? Of course not. I do regret each and every sexual encounter I had before my current gf. I don't kick myself over it, but I would change it if given the chance. All in all, your current mentality is much more important than your past behavior.
At 19 I met my soulmate, and I waited until we were engaged. He was the first. 33 years later, we are still happily together, and I don't think I've missed anything. I always found the idea of promiscuity disgusting, personally, but to each his own.
I don't really care what other people do. I'm 35 and my wife is the only woman I have ever been with. It was challenging at times... there have been opportunities to experience "new things", but I didn't, and I'm glad. Strict monogamy works for me. I don't see myself ever having sex with anyone else. To each his or her own though.
Or do you see this as more a process of sorting through people to 'find the one'?
I wonder if most people are really monogamous at heart...yet at the same time you're looked down upon if you have less than 4 sexual partners in your lifetime.
While I can definitely see the appeal, I sort of look back fondly at a time (if there ever was a time) when most people were monogamous. Let's take away all the associations with patriachy and stuff - obviously, sexual liberation is something that some men and women welcomed...
There was never a time when most people were monogamous. They just didn't talk about their premarital sex and extramarital affairs openly, as Kinsey made very clear in his research. Look throughout history, and you will see that there has never been a time when people didn't cheat. In some cultures, even today, mistresses and paramours are an expected part of the landscape. It's only in puritanical America where people like to pretend there was once some golden age when every husband loved and adored his wife, who was his first and only love, and every wife loved and adored her husband, who was her first and only love. Reality is quite different.
That is not to say that there are not people who are monogamous, or that there are not people who married the only lover they've ever had.
Just that this "once upon a time when the world was monogamous" stuff is a fairy tale.
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