There is no one monogamy rule, but a range of expectations. For me it’s that I don’t want to date someone who has an active desire to date other people. From that standpoint, this is neither a rule nor is it a restriction. I wrote this above, and I don’t understand why it’s seemingly so difficult for others to parse.
The answer to your interrogatories for me would all boil down to “are my partner’s actions indicative of a desire to date other people?” From that standpoint, there’s no reason for me to care about handshakes, or kisses on the cheek, or a wayward glance, or even flirting, because that’s not really indicative of this desire. Even random make-outs with a stranger at party might not be indicative, depending on the context. I wouldn’t want to be lied to about this desire, so I wouldn’t want to be flattered under false pretenses.
In terms of how long that exclusivity desire can last, I don’t know! I can’t claim to predict the future. Maybe it will end tomorrow or never (both very doubtful). I never made a claim otherwise, and I agree that would’ve been an example of self-delusion. I will remain in my relationship so long as it is worthwhile, and from my current standpoint I don’t see any obvious reasons for that to diminish anytime soon, but you never know. I am comfortable with that risk.
Regarding the why I want restrictions, I don’t. I am not restricting my wife from doing anything she wants to do, and neither is she to me. If she gains a desire for others, I wouldn’t want to stand in her way. Doing so is absolutely anathema to my principles of prioritizing individual freedom and autonomy.
For me it’s that I don’t want to date someone who has an active desire to date other people.
I note you say “date” other people. But if you meet someone new at a party (which wasn’t meant to be a date), and that turns into having sex with them, and you never see them again… I don’t think that counts as a “date”, but I think most monogamous people would call that cheating. I’m guessing you would too. So I’ll assume you mean “date or have sex with”.
So how about a passive desire? Something of the form “If the sexiest person in the world threw himself at her, would she be tempted?”. (I think almost everyone would have to say yes to this.) How about “If the sexiest person in the world did his best to seduce her (stopping short of intoxication—above the legal limit, that is) over the course of a party, might she give in to temptation?” If the answer to this were above, say, “30% likely”, would that bother you? How about 90%?
I might guess your answer would be “If that happened once, then my desired type of partner would want to avoid that in the future, and would avoid drinking any alcohol at future parties, and would learn to cut off interaction—rudely if necessary—if someone is making serious progress at seducing her; and if that was her response, then I’d be fine staying with her. If she didn’t change her behavior and acted like that event was fine and she wouldn’t mind if it recurred, then I wouldn’t want to be with her anymore.” How am I doing?
If that happened once, then my desired type of partner would want to avoid that in the future, and would avoid drinking any alcohol at future parties, and would learn to cut off interaction—rudely if necessary—if someone is making serious progress at seducing her; and if that was her response, then I’d be fine staying with her. If she didn’t change her behavior and acted like that event was fine and she wouldn’t mind if it recurred, then I wouldn’t want to be with her anymore.
I know that @ymeskhout disagreed with this, but it seems basically right to me. For a marriage of (hopefully) many decades, I don’t necessarily expect perfection at all times, but I expect significant and honest commitment. So, I wouldn’t consider one mistake in several decades to be a dealbreaker, if all parties agreed it was a mistake and made active attempts to do better. IDK how long @ymeskhout has been with their partner—maybe their perspective could change over time? I have been (monogamously) married for 11 years FWIW.
I’ve only been married two months, so I can’t stake any longevity experience. As I wrote here in response to a further comment, it’s really difficult to imagine how exactly I would react when a hypothetical scenario requires me to fill in so many assumption gaps. For one, I would find it alarming if my non-drinking wife got that intoxicated. I was previously in a relationship with someone who had a history of severe manic episodes, and it was deeply unsettling to always have to scrutinize her behavior through the lens of “does she really want this or is this a sign of burgeoning mania?”
Yeah, it would be alarming! It might lead you to wonder, in addition to “should we break up”, additional things like “does she have an undiagnosed brain tumor or hormone disorder”, “did someone drug her”, etc. I think I ultimately agree with you that it would be highly uncharacteristic behavior, and in some ways the fact that it’s highly uncharacteristic is the ultimate metric we are shooting for, and the actual behavior is just an imperfect proxy for that. And then you would have to figure out what the cause of the highly uncharacteristic behavior was.
It seems that the thing you guys are describing is that what you expect from your partner is “She is running a ‘monogamy’ module in her head.” A monogamy module says things like “I’m monogamous”, “My partner has to be monogamous”, and “Monogamous people don’t have sex with anyone other than their partner.” These tend to lead to observable behaviors and characteristics.
It seems as though you might care more about the monogamy module itself, than about the behavior it’s ostensibly about guaranteeing. Like, if I read the above a certain way, it suggests that if there was a situation in which your wife cheated, you would be more worried about the implications—that either (a) she no longer has that module or (b) there’s something wrong with her—than you would be bothered about the behavior itself. Is that right?
Speaking only for myself, yes that’s basically right. Non-monogamous behavior is evidence in favor of several bad hypotheses, but only some of which would make me mad or want to break up. Split and Commit. Things that it would be evidence of:
Dealbreaker:
She doesn’t want to be committed to me any more
Mad but not necessarily a dealbreaker over a long marriage if we can work it out:
She wants to remain committed to me but is having some problem with our sex life and is too scared/embarrassed/confused to talk to me about it
She wants to remain committed to me but has developed serious issues estimating and/or controlling her voluntary alcohol (or other drug) use
We had a serious miscommunication and she honestly but unreasonably thought I had told her I was OK with whatever she did
Not mad:
She’s suffering from some kind of medical condition that causes her to act uncharacteristically or be otherwise unable to control her behavior
She was the victim of some severe psychological or chemical manipulation
She was suffering from physical duress/threat
We had a serious miscommunication and, on reflection, I think it’s my fault—the most reasonable interpretation of my words/acts in retrospect was that I had told her I was OK with whatever she did, even though that’s not what I meant
She didn’t actually cheat at all but circumstances conspired to nonetheless lead to strong appearances in favor of a cheat hypothesis
So if I were to get some strong evidence that my wife cheated, I would want to try to collect some more evidence that would differentiate which of these nine realms (or are there others?) that we are in.
Would you say that the ultimate purpose of wanting monogamy is still for the object-level “because I don’t want my partner to behave in that way”? Or has it transcended that completely? Perhaps “Well, this is just how relationships work, to my mind, and I don’t want to change that; and meanwhile, given that this is how my current relationship works, that is a framework by which I’ll judge my partner’s behavior”? Perhaps even “I don’t care about the behavior itself at all anymore [apart from direct causal effects like STDs], but people with the monogamy module usually have better self-control, maturity, and other desirable qualities, so I’m happy to stick with it and consciously endorse that strategy”?
I...am honestly not sure. Probably mix of all? But i see the “probably not a dealbreaker” category as in the nature of “we all sometimes hurt each other, this hurts a lot, but it doesn’t necessarily outweigh all the good years and forgiveness is possible”—not like it doesn’t matter
I meant “date” expansively, so yes “date or have sex with”. I don’t want to be with someone who has an active desire to have sex with other people. Your guessed answer is off. I don’t deny that either myself or my partner could be smitten by a particularly motivated sexiest person in the world, but then again I don’t know how relevant such an extreme hypothetical could be. But if it did indeed happen, I would have no interest whatsoever in placing any restrictions on my partner after the fact. They expressed their revealed preferences, so it’s best to let them go so they can pursue it. Even if they don’t have a subsequent shot, I would have no interest in staying with them.
Really? You’re comfortable being with your partner, even if you believe her character is such that she has a high probability of yielding to temptation in that scenario… but if it did happen, then that would mean you’d want to break up with her, not because you think it’s likely the scenario would recur, but because of what it revealed about her character? I am surprised.
Is it the difference between “high probability” and “100%”? Is it that the details of the event would likely carry more evidence about her character that you couldn’t ignore? (Conservation of expected evidence, though.) Or perhaps it’s more like, you’re running a cognitive algorithm that says you shouldn’t accept a relationship in which your partner has behaved like that?
Based on the conversation I have read here, it seems like ymeskhout is okay with not being ‘fully rational’ or being Dutch-bookable in certain ways, and I think he’s interpreting some of your hypotheticals as qualitatively in the same class as Pascal’s Wagers, and is making a sensible decision to go with his gut and to simply ignore them when making decisions about his relationships.
I said “my partner could be smitten by a particularly motivated sexiest person in the world” but you translated that as “she has a high probability of yielding to temptation in that scenario”. I also did not say anything about what the scenario would reveal about her character (I’m not even sure what that means) but rather what it would reveal about her preferences. If you have a point I believe you can make it without mischaracterizing my statements.
Well, I asked if 30% vs 90% made a difference, and you didn’t specify a probability, so I figured you meant your argument to be independent of that probability. That was presumptuous of me.
Ok, so, is your position that your partner’s preferences are such that, faced with the scenario, she has a low probability (you have admitted it’s nonzero) of giving in to temptation? And that this is what makes you comfortable with her, monogamy-wise?
If so, my next question would be “Can you imagine more seductive situations in which the probability would be higher, of her giving in to temptation in a way that still counts as ‘cheating’? How high can the probability go?”
Extreme hypotheticals can be useful in exploring the outer fringes of our positions, but they do a very poor job of informing our day to day conduct. I’m not averse to engaging with your “drunk wife meets sexiest person in the world” scenario, but for me to give any semblance of an answer requires me to fill in a multitude of assumptions that are too numerous to fully catalog (ex. how did my non-drinking wife get drunk? is she a materially different person when severely intoxicated? whether I went with her to the house party or not, how did my introverted wife find herself alone with the world’s sexiest stranger? did I abandon her? etc etc.). Unless I’m specifying each and every assumption I’m relying upon, it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ll hold a different assumption, which would necessarily change how you interpret my answer. I don’t understand what you find enlightening about this hypothetical.
It seems far more relevant to me to think about far more common scenarios, but I don’t know if probability is the best way to contemplate this though. I can certainly imagine scenarios where my wife is smitten by a friend/co-worker/barista/whoever and if that happens then we can end our relationship because I wouldn’t want to get in her way. I don’t think about this scenario prospectively because there’s no reason for me to care about it if it hasn’t happened. Whether the risk of this scenario happening is 1% or 99% in the future bears little relevance to what I do in the present; I’ll continue my relationship so long as it is satisfying.
There is no one monogamy rule, but a range of expectations. For me it’s that I don’t want to date someone who has an active desire to date other people. From that standpoint, this is neither a rule nor is it a restriction. I wrote this above, and I don’t understand why it’s seemingly so difficult for others to parse.
The answer to your interrogatories for me would all boil down to “are my partner’s actions indicative of a desire to date other people?” From that standpoint, there’s no reason for me to care about handshakes, or kisses on the cheek, or a wayward glance, or even flirting, because that’s not really indicative of this desire. Even random make-outs with a stranger at party might not be indicative, depending on the context. I wouldn’t want to be lied to about this desire, so I wouldn’t want to be flattered under false pretenses.
In terms of how long that exclusivity desire can last, I don’t know! I can’t claim to predict the future. Maybe it will end tomorrow or never (both very doubtful). I never made a claim otherwise, and I agree that would’ve been an example of self-delusion. I will remain in my relationship so long as it is worthwhile, and from my current standpoint I don’t see any obvious reasons for that to diminish anytime soon, but you never know. I am comfortable with that risk.
Regarding the why I want restrictions, I don’t. I am not restricting my wife from doing anything she wants to do, and neither is she to me. If she gains a desire for others, I wouldn’t want to stand in her way. Doing so is absolutely anathema to my principles of prioritizing individual freedom and autonomy.
I note you say “date” other people. But if you meet someone new at a party (which wasn’t meant to be a date), and that turns into having sex with them, and you never see them again… I don’t think that counts as a “date”, but I think most monogamous people would call that cheating. I’m guessing you would too. So I’ll assume you mean “date or have sex with”.
So how about a passive desire? Something of the form “If the sexiest person in the world threw himself at her, would she be tempted?”. (I think almost everyone would have to say yes to this.) How about “If the sexiest person in the world did his best to seduce her (stopping short of intoxication—above the legal limit, that is) over the course of a party, might she give in to temptation?” If the answer to this were above, say, “30% likely”, would that bother you? How about 90%?
I might guess your answer would be “If that happened once, then my desired type of partner would want to avoid that in the future, and would avoid drinking any alcohol at future parties, and would learn to cut off interaction—rudely if necessary—if someone is making serious progress at seducing her; and if that was her response, then I’d be fine staying with her. If she didn’t change her behavior and acted like that event was fine and she wouldn’t mind if it recurred, then I wouldn’t want to be with her anymore.” How am I doing?
I know that @ymeskhout disagreed with this, but it seems basically right to me. For a marriage of (hopefully) many decades, I don’t necessarily expect perfection at all times, but I expect significant and honest commitment. So, I wouldn’t consider one mistake in several decades to be a dealbreaker, if all parties agreed it was a mistake and made active attempts to do better. IDK how long @ymeskhout has been with their partner—maybe their perspective could change over time? I have been (monogamously) married for 11 years FWIW.
I’ve only been married two months, so I can’t stake any longevity experience. As I wrote here in response to a further comment, it’s really difficult to imagine how exactly I would react when a hypothetical scenario requires me to fill in so many assumption gaps. For one, I would find it alarming if my non-drinking wife got that intoxicated. I was previously in a relationship with someone who had a history of severe manic episodes, and it was deeply unsettling to always have to scrutinize her behavior through the lens of “does she really want this or is this a sign of burgeoning mania?”
Yeah, it would be alarming! It might lead you to wonder, in addition to “should we break up”, additional things like “does she have an undiagnosed brain tumor or hormone disorder”, “did someone drug her”, etc. I think I ultimately agree with you that it would be highly uncharacteristic behavior, and in some ways the fact that it’s highly uncharacteristic is the ultimate metric we are shooting for, and the actual behavior is just an imperfect proxy for that. And then you would have to figure out what the cause of the highly uncharacteristic behavior was.
It seems that the thing you guys are describing is that what you expect from your partner is “She is running a ‘monogamy’ module in her head.” A monogamy module says things like “I’m monogamous”, “My partner has to be monogamous”, and “Monogamous people don’t have sex with anyone other than their partner.” These tend to lead to observable behaviors and characteristics.
It seems as though you might care more about the monogamy module itself, than about the behavior it’s ostensibly about guaranteeing. Like, if I read the above a certain way, it suggests that if there was a situation in which your wife cheated, you would be more worried about the implications—that either (a) she no longer has that module or (b) there’s something wrong with her—than you would be bothered about the behavior itself. Is that right?
Speaking only for myself, yes that’s basically right. Non-monogamous behavior is evidence in favor of several bad hypotheses, but only some of which would make me mad or want to break up. Split and Commit. Things that it would be evidence of:
Dealbreaker:
She doesn’t want to be committed to me any more
Mad but not necessarily a dealbreaker over a long marriage if we can work it out:
She wants to remain committed to me but is having some problem with our sex life and is too scared/embarrassed/confused to talk to me about it
She wants to remain committed to me but has developed serious issues estimating and/or controlling her voluntary alcohol (or other drug) use
We had a serious miscommunication and she honestly but unreasonably thought I had told her I was OK with whatever she did
Not mad:
She’s suffering from some kind of medical condition that causes her to act uncharacteristically or be otherwise unable to control her behavior
She was the victim of some severe psychological or chemical manipulation
She was suffering from physical duress/threat
We had a serious miscommunication and, on reflection, I think it’s my fault—the most reasonable interpretation of my words/acts in retrospect was that I had told her I was OK with whatever she did, even though that’s not what I meant
She didn’t actually cheat at all but circumstances conspired to nonetheless lead to strong appearances in favor of a cheat hypothesis
So if I were to get some strong evidence that my wife cheated, I would want to try to collect some more evidence that would differentiate which of these nine realms (or are there others?) that we are in.
I see, that makes sense.
Would you say that the ultimate purpose of wanting monogamy is still for the object-level “because I don’t want my partner to behave in that way”? Or has it transcended that completely? Perhaps “Well, this is just how relationships work, to my mind, and I don’t want to change that; and meanwhile, given that this is how my current relationship works, that is a framework by which I’ll judge my partner’s behavior”? Perhaps even “I don’t care about the behavior itself at all anymore [apart from direct causal effects like STDs], but people with the monogamy module usually have better self-control, maturity, and other desirable qualities, so I’m happy to stick with it and consciously endorse that strategy”?
I...am honestly not sure. Probably mix of all? But i see the “probably not a dealbreaker” category as in the nature of “we all sometimes hurt each other, this hurts a lot, but it doesn’t necessarily outweigh all the good years and forgiveness is possible”—not like it doesn’t matter
This is an excellent breakdown of what I tried to articulate regarding “filling in assumptions in a hypothetical”
I meant “date” expansively, so yes “date or have sex with”. I don’t want to be with someone who has an active desire to have sex with other people. Your guessed answer is off. I don’t deny that either myself or my partner could be smitten by a particularly motivated sexiest person in the world, but then again I don’t know how relevant such an extreme hypothetical could be. But if it did indeed happen, I would have no interest whatsoever in placing any restrictions on my partner after the fact. They expressed their revealed preferences, so it’s best to let them go so they can pursue it. Even if they don’t have a subsequent shot, I would have no interest in staying with them.
Really? You’re comfortable being with your partner, even if you believe her character is such that she has a high probability of yielding to temptation in that scenario… but if it did happen, then that would mean you’d want to break up with her, not because you think it’s likely the scenario would recur, but because of what it revealed about her character? I am surprised.
Is it the difference between “high probability” and “100%”? Is it that the details of the event would likely carry more evidence about her character that you couldn’t ignore? (Conservation of expected evidence, though.) Or perhaps it’s more like, you’re running a cognitive algorithm that says you shouldn’t accept a relationship in which your partner has behaved like that?
Based on the conversation I have read here, it seems like ymeskhout is okay with not being ‘fully rational’ or being Dutch-bookable in certain ways, and I think he’s interpreting some of your hypotheticals as qualitatively in the same class as Pascal’s Wagers, and is making a sensible decision to go with his gut and to simply ignore them when making decisions about his relationships.
Pascal’s Wager is a good comparison here.
I said “my partner could be smitten by a particularly motivated sexiest person in the world” but you translated that as “she has a high probability of yielding to temptation in that scenario”. I also did not say anything about what the scenario would reveal about her character (I’m not even sure what that means) but rather what it would reveal about her preferences. If you have a point I believe you can make it without mischaracterizing my statements.
Well, I asked if 30% vs 90% made a difference, and you didn’t specify a probability, so I figured you meant your argument to be independent of that probability. That was presumptuous of me.
Ok, so, is your position that your partner’s preferences are such that, faced with the scenario, she has a low probability (you have admitted it’s nonzero) of giving in to temptation? And that this is what makes you comfortable with her, monogamy-wise?
If so, my next question would be “Can you imagine more seductive situations in which the probability would be higher, of her giving in to temptation in a way that still counts as ‘cheating’? How high can the probability go?”
Extreme hypotheticals can be useful in exploring the outer fringes of our positions, but they do a very poor job of informing our day to day conduct. I’m not averse to engaging with your “drunk wife meets sexiest person in the world” scenario, but for me to give any semblance of an answer requires me to fill in a multitude of assumptions that are too numerous to fully catalog (ex. how did my non-drinking wife get drunk? is she a materially different person when severely intoxicated? whether I went with her to the house party or not, how did my introverted wife find herself alone with the world’s sexiest stranger? did I abandon her? etc etc.). Unless I’m specifying each and every assumption I’m relying upon, it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ll hold a different assumption, which would necessarily change how you interpret my answer. I don’t understand what you find enlightening about this hypothetical.
It seems far more relevant to me to think about far more common scenarios, but I don’t know if probability is the best way to contemplate this though. I can certainly imagine scenarios where my wife is smitten by a friend/co-worker/barista/whoever and if that happens then we can end our relationship because I wouldn’t want to get in her way. I don’t think about this scenario prospectively because there’s no reason for me to care about it if it hasn’t happened. Whether the risk of this scenario happening is 1% or 99% in the future bears little relevance to what I do in the present; I’ll continue my relationship so long as it is satisfying.