I don’t think that any relationship style is the best for people in general, any more than any food is the best-tasting for people in general. However, I do wish that people were more aware of the possibility of polyamory, as well of the fact that many people do fall in love with others even when they’re already in a committed, loving relationship with someone.
I’ve seen too many times the situation where two people are in a relationship, one of them falls into love with a third person, but the committed couple can’t talk the matter through with each other simply because they don’t even have the concept of someone in a loving relationship falling into love with a third person. It’s just automatically assumed that if that happens then something’s horribly wrong with the relationship, and the only alternatives are to kill the new love or to abandon the relationship in favor of the only love.
There is indeed something bizarre with the concept of jealousy and one-person-forever ingrained in the common view of “love.” This misconception has probably led to a tremendous amount of misery in the form of needlessly shattered relationships.
I don’t think it’s bizarre at all. Pair-bonding is stronger if more time is spent with a partner. The strongest love will naturally usually be in monogamous relationships, therefore, and so if romantic love is the goal, monogamy is a straightforward answer. Time strengthening your relationship with partner X is time you cannot spend strengthening your relationship with partner Y, except in the unusual case that you, X, and Y are all mutually in love.
The strongest love will naturally usually be in monogamous relationships
except in the unusual case that you, X, and Y are all mutually in love.
There may be some biological basis for jealousy; I would be surprised if it weren’t adaptive. However, most people make a constant effort to suppress behaviour that would be (technically) adaptive, or to engage in behaviour that is clearly maladaptive (like, say, not having children so they can have a career). While there may be some biological reason for jealousy, that does not explain or justify its general social endorsement.
More specifically, the concept of love seems to have the concepts of fidelity and jealousy inextricably woven into it, at least in mainstream Western culture. On a philosophical level, this doesn’t exactly make sense. If we care about the overall happiness and flourishing of man kind, it seems likely we would be far better off if we took the effort we put into suppressing, say, premarital sex, and moved it into suppressing jealousy.
Obviously, this is the view of a rather small minority, but it is nonetheless fascinating that most people are incapable of conceiving of love without fidelity: consider the seriousness of the implications of a romantic partner saying, “I love you,” for most people.
If we care about the overall happiness and flourishing of man kind
That’s a pretty big “if”, there. I think the percentage of people who genuinely care about that is vanishingly small. How many Americans do you think would agree to erase the US entirely if they were absolutely certain that it would guarantee the happiness and flourishing of the rest of the human race? Do you think you could find even ten thousand?
Easily. I’m sure there are at least that many Americans who hate America.
But that’s besides the point. I don’t think unusual and extreme examples are very probative in determining how people feel more generally. I think that when you get as absurd a hypothetical as “erase the US entirely,” the evidence provided by it is irrelevant.
That said, I do agree with you that, in general, people do not generally care about the overall happiness and flourishing of mankind. I think reducing the problems posed by jealousy would actually lead to significant individual gains for those involved, but it’s such a gut reaction that I don’t think people acknowledge this. Plus, less jealousy would probably mean less concern over commitment, which I expect would lead to more sex in general (among other things), and plenty of people have a problem with that.
Easily. I’m sure there are at least that many Americans who hate America.
I think that when you get as absurd a hypothetical as “erase the US entirely,” the evidence provided by it is irrelevant.
Pair bonding is also commonly believed to increase with sexual intercourse.
I have more sex with my partner if she’s got another partner as well, variety is the spice and all that.
So even taking your statement as a given (because I have no real dispute with it, it seems pretty consistent with my experience) there are other factors at play.
The hormone vasopressin, which can be released during sexual intercourse, has a 100% correlation with pair-bonding in prairie voles. The gene that codes for vasopressin release during sex completely determines whether or not voles will form permanent pair-bonds. There is also research demonstrating a link between vasopressin and pair-bonding in humans, though of course the link is much less strong. Oyxtocin is also believed to play a role in human pair-bonding, and it is likewise released during sex.
Those talk about the presence of the pair bond being determined by the presence of oxytocin, but they don’t say that it’s zero-sum (unless the first linked page gets to that—I’ve only read about 1⁄3 of it, but given the topic I doubt it’ll be able to draw that conclusion). The first linked page does say something about the presence of a pair bond being potentially affected by time, in that voles can become pairbonded by spending enough time around another vole even without a traditional bondmaking activity, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that time has anything to do with the strength of the bond once it’s created.
I think your model isn’t complex enough to describe the reality of the situation.
Pair bonding can’t occur (and continue, since it clearly falls off with time, in humans) if one of the pair isn’t present; even if a specific activity were required for pair bonding, this would still apply. There’s only so much time for bonding in any given period.
I think your model isn’t complex enough to describe the reality of the situation.
People are complex; I didn’t mean to imply that they aren’t, or that no people can thrive in polyamorous relationships. That’s not the way I’d bet, though, given a random person. In any case, you appear to be suggesting that pair bonding could be a single event or binary state, which is actually simpler than my model, where continued time spending is necessary to continue and/or deepen the bond.
You’re forgetting the (very likely) possibility of hitting diminishing returns at some point. If you want to maximize the amount of romantic love and there are diminishing returns, then it pays off to diversify at some point. Polyamorous people have also reported experiences where having a second relationship actually strengthens their first relationship, even if the three were not all in love.
Furthermore, you are presuming that people can just choose to spend all their time with a single partner, and any time spent with a second partner is gone from the first one. This is not so. For instance, suppose that A lives in San Fransisco where B also lives, but because of their job, A has to take the occasional extended trips to Moscow where C lives. That means A and C can see each other on occasions when it simply wouldn’t have been possible for A and B to see.
Or suppose that person A prefers spending nearly all of their free time in the company of other people, while their partner B prefers to spend half of their free time doing things on their own or with other people. In that case, A also dating person C who has the similar preferences as B will maximize everyone’s enjoyment and romance.
I would be very suspicious of claims that, in general, the strength of a romance would be a monotonically increasing function of time spent together. Most couples do not want to spend all their timed glued to each other, at least not after the initial NRE has worn off.
I don’t think that any relationship style is the best for people in general, any more than any food is the best-tasting for people in general. However, I do wish that people were more aware of the possibility of polyamory, as well of the fact that many people do fall in love with others even when they’re already in a committed, loving relationship with someone.
I’ve seen too many times the situation where two people are in a relationship, one of them falls into love with a third person, but the committed couple can’t talk the matter through with each other simply because they don’t even have the concept of someone in a loving relationship falling into love with a third person. It’s just automatically assumed that if that happens then something’s horribly wrong with the relationship, and the only alternatives are to kill the new love or to abandon the relationship in favor of the only love.
There is indeed something bizarre with the concept of jealousy and one-person-forever ingrained in the common view of “love.” This misconception has probably led to a tremendous amount of misery in the form of needlessly shattered relationships.
I don’t think it’s bizarre at all. Pair-bonding is stronger if more time is spent with a partner. The strongest love will naturally usually be in monogamous relationships, therefore, and so if romantic love is the goal, monogamy is a straightforward answer. Time strengthening your relationship with partner X is time you cannot spend strengthening your relationship with partner Y, except in the unusual case that you, X, and Y are all mutually in love.
There may be some biological basis for jealousy; I would be surprised if it weren’t adaptive. However, most people make a constant effort to suppress behaviour that would be (technically) adaptive, or to engage in behaviour that is clearly maladaptive (like, say, not having children so they can have a career). While there may be some biological reason for jealousy, that does not explain or justify its general social endorsement.
More specifically, the concept of love seems to have the concepts of fidelity and jealousy inextricably woven into it, at least in mainstream Western culture. On a philosophical level, this doesn’t exactly make sense. If we care about the overall happiness and flourishing of man kind, it seems likely we would be far better off if we took the effort we put into suppressing, say, premarital sex, and moved it into suppressing jealousy.
Obviously, this is the view of a rather small minority, but it is nonetheless fascinating that most people are incapable of conceiving of love without fidelity: consider the seriousness of the implications of a romantic partner saying, “I love you,” for most people.
That’s a pretty big “if”, there. I think the percentage of people who genuinely care about that is vanishingly small. How many Americans do you think would agree to erase the US entirely if they were absolutely certain that it would guarantee the happiness and flourishing of the rest of the human race? Do you think you could find even ten thousand?
Easily. I’m sure there are at least that many Americans who hate America.
But that’s besides the point. I don’t think unusual and extreme examples are very probative in determining how people feel more generally. I think that when you get as absurd a hypothetical as “erase the US entirely,” the evidence provided by it is irrelevant.
That said, I do agree with you that, in general, people do not generally care about the overall happiness and flourishing of mankind. I think reducing the problems posed by jealousy would actually lead to significant individual gains for those involved, but it’s such a gut reaction that I don’t think people acknowledge this. Plus, less jealousy would probably mean less concern over commitment, which I expect would lead to more sex in general (among other things), and plenty of people have a problem with that.
Well, there is that. :)
Pair bonding is also commonly believed to increase with sexual intercourse.
I have more sex with my partner if she’s got another partner as well, variety is the spice and all that.
So even taking your statement as a given (because I have no real dispute with it, it seems pretty consistent with my experience) there are other factors at play.
The hormone vasopressin, which can be released during sexual intercourse, has a 100% correlation with pair-bonding in prairie voles. The gene that codes for vasopressin release during sex completely determines whether or not voles will form permanent pair-bonds. There is also research demonstrating a link between vasopressin and pair-bonding in humans, though of course the link is much less strong. Oyxtocin is also believed to play a role in human pair-bonding, and it is likewise released during sex.
Citation needed.
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v7/n10/full/nn1327.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_bonding#Pair_bonding
http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/oxytocin
Those talk about the presence of the pair bond being determined by the presence of oxytocin, but they don’t say that it’s zero-sum (unless the first linked page gets to that—I’ve only read about 1⁄3 of it, but given the topic I doubt it’ll be able to draw that conclusion). The first linked page does say something about the presence of a pair bond being potentially affected by time, in that voles can become pairbonded by spending enough time around another vole even without a traditional bondmaking activity, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that time has anything to do with the strength of the bond once it’s created.
I think your model isn’t complex enough to describe the reality of the situation.
Pair bonding can’t occur (and continue, since it clearly falls off with time, in humans) if one of the pair isn’t present; even if a specific activity were required for pair bonding, this would still apply. There’s only so much time for bonding in any given period.
People are complex; I didn’t mean to imply that they aren’t, or that no people can thrive in polyamorous relationships. That’s not the way I’d bet, though, given a random person. In any case, you appear to be suggesting that pair bonding could be a single event or binary state, which is actually simpler than my model, where continued time spending is necessary to continue and/or deepen the bond.
You’re forgetting the (very likely) possibility of hitting diminishing returns at some point. If you want to maximize the amount of romantic love and there are diminishing returns, then it pays off to diversify at some point. Polyamorous people have also reported experiences where having a second relationship actually strengthens their first relationship, even if the three were not all in love.
Furthermore, you are presuming that people can just choose to spend all their time with a single partner, and any time spent with a second partner is gone from the first one. This is not so. For instance, suppose that A lives in San Fransisco where B also lives, but because of their job, A has to take the occasional extended trips to Moscow where C lives. That means A and C can see each other on occasions when it simply wouldn’t have been possible for A and B to see.
Or suppose that person A prefers spending nearly all of their free time in the company of other people, while their partner B prefers to spend half of their free time doing things on their own or with other people. In that case, A also dating person C who has the similar preferences as B will maximize everyone’s enjoyment and romance.
I would be very suspicious of claims that, in general, the strength of a romance would be a monotonically increasing function of time spent together. Most couples do not want to spend all their timed glued to each other, at least not after the initial NRE has worn off.