Blogging from A - Z Challenge April 15 M

M is for Monogamy

A couple is a conspiracy in search of a crime. Sex is often the closest they can get. - Adam Phillips

Through all my sexual travels, experimentation, playfulness, in the end I've come to the conclusion (and I'm willing for life, experience or a really good argument to talk me out of this) that monogamy is the most most intensely erotic, most subversive, dangerous exhilarating and exciting form of sexual relationship.

I have been married before, but my first marriage was very ... traditional. I met my husband through the church in the course of our years together, we both left and once we put religion behind us, our differences became much bigger than our sames. Lust, while sexually consistent was not exciting in that marriage, and I really didn't experience sexual thrills consistently until I left that situation.

Given my experience, I was quite anti marriage, and particularly anti monogamy. I followed all the contemporary ideologies on the subject: not natural, against human instinct, impossible, the death of lust and desire etc. It was a few years later, that I fell in love with a man who was the first true monogamist I had ever met.
He would say to me:
You are every woman I have ever had and you are every woman I will never have. 

Monogamy for him was a work of art. Sex didn't die with its declaration, it was born with it. For him, sexual expression was a dangerous, exciting thing, that had to include deep intimacy. We included sex in all our moods, we did it when we hated each other as well as when we loved each other, and talked about it a great deal. We used it as a form of expression of the relationship, and tried, within the bounds of love and decency, to never refuse the other. Part of our relationship was a promise to each other to be completely responsible for our own sexuality, to bring it to the other, and be as open and vulnerable as we could. Sex with this man was by far some of the best I ever had, and it taught me a great deal about the beauty, passion and terror of properly expressed monogamy.

The relationship was only a couple of years long, but I have used the model we created as a template for all my future relationships. It has not always been successful, because it is a huge, radical thing for a person to commit to themselves at that level, and then to bring that to a relationship is even more shocking, but I do know every one of my encounters has been greatly enriched by the efforts to realize it. I don't like to talk too much about my current relationship, but it goes without saying, this is something we are both very deeply committed to.

Radical monogamy, does not necessarily have to last forever, but it is the most exciting connection I've ever experienced with any human creature.

Each of our relationships is different, and we are different in each of them. this is what makes monogamy so perversely interesting. - Adam Phillips.