Handling romantic love in a non-monogamous society

First of all I based their sexual mores off of those of the Mosuo people: both sons and daughters stay in their parents' household their entire lives. Marriage as it's known in most Earth cultures doesn't exist; instead, women can take one or more lovers. Their suitors father their children, but the kids are raised with the help of their maternal uncles rather than their fathers.

As such, marrying for love or for anything does not compute. And culturally speaking, men have to place higher priority on their nieces and nephews than their own children.

If two people fall in love in this sort of framework, how would that be incorporated into this? Would it just be assumed to not exist or can I gracefully handle this?

It would be like how you have friends or siblings. You love em all. You might have a best friend, but you don't have to have ONE bestest friend.

I see.

The main character is named by her uncle, who named her after the only woman he ever loved. Said couple never had sex, and they only kissed once.

(To be fair, they were a Battle Couple, so sex couldn't really be managed.)

Also, falling in love with person would probably be seen as the equivalent of being one of those big mac enthusiasts. Only a much bigger deal. A much bigger one. But there would be a lot of 'HOW DO YOU NOT GET BORED?'

It's like you have one friend, and refuse to even be nice to anyone else because of it.

Rather, you'd be seen as a pervert :p Or at least as someone with abnormal tendencies.

People would go "That [name], I think she has a fetish or something, can you believe he's been with the same guy for a whole month? Do you think she has a sexual disease or something? Eww...Disgusting!"

Friends would be like, "It's getting really offensive that you are not taking notice of Teddy courting you...It's like you are saying that he's not good enough." (Remember, you cannot use "I've already got someone" as an excuse!)

Parents would be "[Name] dear, it's nice that but don't you think that it'd be time to go out with other people as well? We just want you to be happy." (...and have children with as many people as possible - because for them, that's success and consequently, happiness.)

Or you can make this sort of thing socially accepted as per AHR's suggestion. I'm not telling you to go with some Humanity Is Superior kind of message where single-person love is the only possible way of love.

Have you read the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb? If you haven't, there was a similar situation with the Outislander culture. Women stayed in their 'mothershouse' all their lives, and if men wanted a relationship they had to go live with them. However, men's first allegiance was always to their own mothershouse, and uncles were far more important than fathers. And marriage lasted precisely as long as the woman wanted it to.

Not exactly what you were thinking of, but similar. Perhaps there would be some 'don't you get bored?'. Perhaps people would urge you to date others for the sake of genetic diversity. I'm imagining this would be primarily a woman's problem, though, not men's.

I think Vree's nailed it.

I think that what you should do first is go to the library and read some decent works on non-monogamous societies.

... I quite frankly don't see where you're getting the idea that not being monogamous makes love as we know it impossible.

The idea of love certainly wouldn't be a foreign concept to them. Love is part of the human condition; it's biological, not cultural. There is a chemical component to falling in love with someone that is strong at first, but tapers off some with time, which is why romantic relationships seem intense at first, but even out later, and possibly fall apart if the people weren't very compatible to begin with.

It isn't a coincidence that most cultures in the world have some form of institutional monogamy. There seems to be a natural desire for fidelity, or more specifically, one's partner's fidelity. Being faithful to one's partner seems to be more of a learned behavior than a natural one. Or not quite learned in some cases, as some people seem to harbor little or no guilt in cheating on their partner, but are nonetheless outraged when they find out they were being cheated on as well. You'll notice that most societies that allow men to have more than one wife, or don't expect men to be faithful, but don't extend these rights to women, tend to be very patriarchal, whereas socieities with more respect for the rights of both sexes (though not necessarily equal respect) tend to expect fidelity from both partners.

Point being, love is generally a part of being human, so there's no way they would be unfamiliar with it. How they view it culturally, is another story. So if this culture is completely non-monogamous, there would probably have to be some sort of stigma or taboo against it. As Vree mentioned, it might be viewed as some kind of perversity. Possibly in the way that some of the major religions villify sex, their culture might do the same to monogamous love. It might also be viewed as an unhealthy obsession to fixate on one particular person, or possibly as something juvenile that you're expected to grow out of. Or maybe like the stigma aimed at homosexually, their might be a common opinion on it being "unnatural".

As Fawriel points out, though, it's quite possible for people to be romantically in love with more than one person. So the stigma would likely be aimed at people who maintain and/or expect sexual fidelity and possibly exclusive emotional intimacy with a specific person. You would probably need words to separate what is meant by monogamous love and romantic love in general. Unless their stigma is against all romantic love.

Well, polygamy cultures do exist. You might wanna research how they turn out (when the system is not being abused).

From what I remember, many of the females loved the idea of their husbands getting another wife. It was like a sister-wife to them.

^^You can still love the person, there just wouldn't be the assumption that a) you will be with them forever and b) you will not cheat on them. So you might come home to Alice and say "I was just off making out with Betty" and that would be totally normal.

I imagine you'd have to have some sort of main significant other, even if it wasn't formal, permanent, or exclusive. At a given moment, someone would be your default person, rather like a best friend who doesn't exclude you from having other friends but who is usually the first person you call when you want to hang out.

If you expected your partner to be monogamous, that would probably be treated the way we treat excessive jealousy in our culture: "Jeez, I was just making out with Betty. What's your problem?"

edited 10th Sep '10 4:05:24 PM by jewelleddragon

Also, I suspect lots of orgies, which is something much more casual. I'd assume going with one person would make it so people wouldn't want to invite you over any more.

edited 10th Sep '10 4:08:15 PM by A_H_R

How closely is your culture based on the Mosuo? I watched something on them a few months ago. Can't remember the name of the show now... but anyway, I remember the show talking about one woman who had two children by the same man, and the couple had been seeing each other for several years. The relationship maybe wasn't sexually exclusive (they never said,) but it seemed as committed as their culture allowed. Also, it wasn't presented as very unusual for the culture.

Just because a culture doesn't rely on romantic monogamy to maintain family structure (the way ours does,) doesn't mean they demonize romantic bonds. They may, if romantic love is seen as a threat to familial ties, but with the Mosuo that didn't seem to be the case. In your world it could be.

I think a story set in a culture like the Mosuo's would be terribly interesting, personally. You'd have a wider range of romantic relationships possible, novel family interactions (compared to our culture), and the fun of seeing those spheres interact.

I agree with previous posters: research more cultures. Also, if you are in college or have friend who are, ask them about their area's customs around "f*uck buddies". Might learn some funny things about non-monogamous love close to home.

They might be forcibly removed from the partners in question and forcibly exposed to other partners so yeah not viable.

This is interesting. I think if you had a plot to go along with the idea, it might be worth your while to flesh out the idea in writing.

You guys really do need to read Diane Duane's The Tale Of Five — if ever a fantasy series was written for an bisexual polyamorous pagan, this is it. (And yes, this is the same author who's written a bunch of YA fantasy novels.)

Oh, Tor.com just had a discussion about this here. Some books to check out in there.

edited 13th Sep '10 4:36:57 PM by Morven

Depending on the culture, a monogamous relatioship might be seen as how modern society would see someone that doesn't have sex often (or ever) or someone who doesn't have "enough" kids.

How do they deal with the matter of greater potential for incest? or the lovers usually stay long enough to at least know who the father is?

Also, how does the bit of staying in the mother's house the entire life works with a growing family (I would sugest that upon death, the siblings usually split up and find they own homes)

There was a culture detailed in a RPG (I think it was a now-scrapped idea in Talislanta) in which there was no concept of marriage and a kid's "father figure" was more likely to be a maternal uncle. Which just made me think of an exchange like this:

Character A: "So you're related to the mayor somehow?"
Character B: "Yeah, my mother conceived me with him."
Character A: "Wait...you said he was a relative. You didn't say he was your father!"
Character B: "Say what?"
Character A: (Tries to explain the concept of a paternal figure.)
Character B: "No, no. I said he was my sire, not my uncle!"
Character A: "..."

edited 16th Sep '10 8:00:10 PM by FarseerLolotea

Depending on the culture, a monogamous relatioship might be seen as how modern society would see someone that doesn't have sex often (or ever) or someone who doesn't have "enough" kids.

Or somewhat like homosexuality, with being "mono" accepted by the more liberal members of society and decried as harmful and unnatural by the more conservative.

Incidentally, how does this society view homosexuality / bisexuality? If a woman comes home to find her two male lovers getting frisky, does she kick them out or just be thankful she can actually get some work done tonight?

edited 18th Sep '10 3:13:45 AM by Evilest_Tim

I'm a fan of SW Zeltrons; as a result, I play as them in one online setting and create fanon there.

Thus I find myself handling a society that in canon sees monogamy as "quaint but impractical."

In that setting, my version of the Zeltrons are predominantly pansexual ("love everyone" being the canon phrase) and while they may fall in love very deeply, they move on quickly. They'll still care about others, and it's not considered wrong to sleep around, but there may be one person you currently have a deeper emotional connection to.

Children are raised by their mothers with the aid of the community - "Go play at Sara's house, sweetie, Mummy's busy right now and she'll fix you some dinner" being repaid by "You want me to mind your kids today, Sara? Sure thing!"

Basically everyone in the neighbourhood helping out each other.

A current live-in lover and present romantic interest of the mother'll help look after her kids even if they aren't his - someone else is likely to be caring for his elsewhere, though he'll still take interest in their growing up well.

Children tend to know the names of their fathers due to the viability of good contraceptives and responsible sexual practices, so that it's not "it could be anyone" but "lemme check with the guys from the time I wanted a baby". It prevents accidentally getting intimate with a half-sibling.

Basically, just general caring - and one can romantically love more than one person...

Romantic love need not be exclusive love.

I was recently designing all sorts of marriage workings for a setting. I just find it odd that you think romantic love has to be monogamous considering that nowhere in polygamous societies is this frowned upon. What is frowned upon is believing that a person is only capable of loving one person, as if there was some kind of shortage of love.

I think you might be overthinking it. Romantic love is exactly the same... except you can make more than one relationship of that sort.

I'm at work on a Tabletop Game setting in which one of the human cultures is the fusion of what used to be several separate tribes. And I'm thinking there may be multiple different marriage customs that are still in use.

edited 6th Oct '10 1:14:26 AM by FarseerLolotea