Tag Archives: monogamy

February 22, 2017 · 6:55 am

Why Your Ancient Ancestors Had Better Sex Than You: Cracked Podcast

For a while now, I’ve been talking about a fascinating/sexy-as-hell book I’ve been reading called “Sex At Dawn.” By now, my sentiment towards that book should be pretty clear. If you’re really in the mood for something that’s non-fiction, but still sexy as hell, then this is the way to go.

There are so many profound concepts and insight in this book, most of are even sexier than you think they are. I’ve discussed a few of them. This book is the one that coined the term “the standard model” for modern sexuality. It’s basically a catch-all term for the so-called “traditional” brand of romance that involves the white picket fence, a monogamy non-kinky couple, and a glut of kids who aspire to be future soldiers, workers, and tax-payers.

The main purpose of the book is to deconstruct that model and highlight just how flawed it is. It does this by shining a light on our evolutionary past, namely the part that creationists don’t think existed. It explores how sexuality manifests in the pre-agricultural, hunter/gatherer societies that once made up the entirety of the human species.

This book, and the narrative it paints, has given me a lot to think about. Some thoughts are sexier than others. Some involve belaboring certain flaws in modern romance, which isn’t quite as sexy. In any case, this book has been an insightful read. If you enjoy the kinky topics I discuss on this blog or the sexy stories I write in my books, then “Sex At Dawn” is right up your alley.

If my own personal recommendation isn’t enough, then maybe this will help as well. Cracked.com, a site I’m quite fond of, does a weekly podcast and every now and then, they’ll get a special guest. Well last week, in what might be the best cosmic karma since I found a $20 bill outside a strip club, they invited the author of “Sex At Dawn“, Dr. Christopher Ryan, to be part of a live recording.

It made for a fun, fascinating, and quite sexy discussion. The staff at Cracked made quite an effort to challenge him and expand on what he wrote about in the book. It made for some pretty amazing insights.

One particular discussion that stands out is Dr. Ryan’s clear assertion that there’s no going back to the more egalitarian, sex-positive culture of hunter/gatherer societies. He makes clear that it’s just not possible, given how modern civilization has entrenched itself with its dogmatic reservations towards sexual issues.

Sadly, I agree with him. I do think it’s impossible to turn the clock back on human society. If there were, then the priests, mullahs, and social conservatives would’ve used it a long time ago. That said, Dr. Ryan does say there might be one way to level the playing field, so to speak. As it just so happens, it involves something else I’ve discussed on this blog. At this point, it feels like cosmic karma is letting me cop a feel.

He makes clear in the podcast that he favors a universal basic income, a very new idea, but one I’ve discussed on this blog extensively. He believes this will be the key to reorienting our society in a way that’s more conducive to the brand of sexuality that evolution has wired within us. It’s an intriguing, but sexy idea and one I hope to explore.

It’s just one of many interesting topics that came up on this podcast. It’s aptly called “Why Your Ancient Ancestors Had Better Sex Than You” and I highly recommend it. Below is a SoundCloud link to it. Enjoy it, but if you’re wearing tight pants, you might want to change them. Just a fair warning.

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February 18, 2017 · 7:03 am

Scarlett Johansson’s Views On Monogamy (And Why It Matters)

If an typical, healthy heterosexual man walked up to you and said he was a fan of Scarlett Johansson, it probably wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. You’d react the same way if they told you the sky was blue, water is wet, and expired milk smells bad.

It’s one of the few universals that most heterosexual men agree on. We find women like Scarlett Johansson sexy as hell. That means when she says something, we pay attention. That’s not to say we pay attention to her words, but we do pay attention. That has to count for something, right?

I’m not going to lie. Scarlett Johansson has a very special place on my list of sexy Hollywood leading ladies. Ever since she first put on the skin-tight attire of Black Widow and became an fixture in the seamy fantasies of superhero fans everywhere, she’s established herself as the alpha and omega of Hollywood hotness. The fact that she was the top-grossing actor/actress of 2016 doesn’t hurt her cause as well.

Whether you love her or hate her, and those who hate her rarely have a good reason, Scarlett Johansson’s words carry more weight than the rest of us. She’s successful, she’s beautiful, she’s rich, and she’s sexy as hell. She has more leverage than most of us ever will.

That’s why her recent comments on marriage and monogamy are making more than a couple of Sunday School teachers gasp in horror. For those of you who missed it and/or haven’t taken her words out of context, here’s what she said:

“With every gain there’s a loss, right? So, that’s the loss. You have to choose a path. I think the idea of marriage is very romantic; it’s a beautiful idea, and the practice of it can be a very beautiful thing. I don’t think it’s natural to be a monogamous person. I might be skewered for that, but I think it’s work. It’s a lot of work.”

Now on the surface, there’s nothing too appalling about these words. However, she’s a beautiful woman and a Hollywood star. Of course her words will be used as an excuse to love, hate, condemn her as a sign of the apocalypse. Considering how Pokemon Go was once considered a sign of the apocalypse, that might not carry much weight.

It still matters though because Johansson, like every major Hollywood star before her, lives a life in the spotlight, under a microscope, and under the constant threat of becoming an unflattering Twitter hashtag. What she does invites far more scrutiny than what the average person, be they a truck driver or aspiring erotica/romance writer, ever would.

If someone other than Johansson had said these words, most people would’ve rolled their eyes, shrugged it off, and gotten on with their lives. There would be no need to call her every horrible insult imaginable in the comments section of every article. Unfortunately, Johansson did say these words.

On top of that, her personal life is already well-known and exceedingly public. She’s only 32 and she’s been married twice. First, she was married to Deadpool actor and former sexiest man alive, Ryan Reynolds. That marriage lasted shorter than the first season of Firefly. Then, she married a French man who owned an advertising agency named Romain Dauriac. This one lasted longer a bit longer and resulted in the birth of her daughter, Rose.

However, as her comments reflected, both relationships failed. Both ended in divorce. That means she has subjected herself to the full force of the internet’s unforgiving, soul-crushing shit storm. The fact that she could date the sexiest man alive and still not make it work makes her an easy target.

I’ve seen some of these comments. They usually amount to something like this:

“Typical Hollywood elitist skank!”

“Arrogant, selfish bitch!”

“She ditches her husband because one man isn’t enough for her? What a slut!”

Trust me, this is the PG version of the comments circulating the web right now. There are some comments that are so hostile, so extreme, and so hateful that even a director on the set of a hardcore porn movie would stop the scene.

It’s not all insults, put-downs, and crude remarks about female anatomy. One other, somewhat less extreme comment that frequently comes up often goes like this:

“I’ve been married to the same man/woman for 40 goddamn years and I did it while working shit jobs and raising ungrateful kids. What’s her excuse?”

This comment, in my opinion, is a lot more revealing about us than anything about Scarlett Johansson’s personal life. It’s actually something I’ve talked about before on this blog, predating Ms. Johansson’s divorce and remarks.

I’m not saying it was prophetic. Hollywood stars getting divorced is so common and mundane these days that someone was bound to make a comment like this at some point. I’m not going to lie though. The fact that Scarlett Johansson, the Black Widow of the Avengers movies, made the comment kind of makes my day.

What exactly does it reveal though? Why does Scarlett Johansson’s remarks about monogamy matter? It’s not just because she’s richer, sexier, and more charismatic than 99.998 percent of us will ever be. It matters because she’s saying something that speaks to much bigger issues with our modern approach to romance, marriage, and relationships.

Last year, I asked whether we were asking too much of our lovers. Now that I look back on it, I think that’s an incomplete question. That’s because what we ask and expect of our lovers varies from person to person.

Some people are naturally independent and don’t need their lovers to do much. Others are more dependent and really define themselves by the relationships they forge. Expecting too much from either is bound to cause problems, strain emotions, and inspire bad sitcoms.

Let’s go back to that comment about the people talking down to Scarlett Johansson because she can’t hold down a stable marriage while other people can under far less favorable circumstances. While I’m sure those commenters feel like they’re Spartacus, being all high, mighty, and moral, they’re ignoring a few key issues.

First and foremost, Scarlett Johansson is richer, sexier, and more talented than they are. That’s not to say those commenters aren’t decent people. That’s just pointing out a clear, indisputable fact. She is a very successful, Hollywood actress who has been working hard in a cut-throat industry for over two decades. As such, her work and her life might as well be that of a sexy Martian alien.

The people who proudly proclaim they’ve been married to the same person for 40 years have probably never had the same experiences as Johansson. They don’t have people scrutinizing every second of their lives, spreading every nasty rumor on tabloids and celebrity blogs. They also don’t have attractive partners practically throwing themselves at you, begging to be your personal bitch.

If you’re successful at all in Hollywood, there’s are entire industries built around catering to your every whim and shoving every possible temptation into your face. Most people never have those opportunities. Many have a hard time resisting them. Just ask Drew Barrymore.

Take those same people who proudly proclaim they’ve been married to the same person for 40 years, de-age them by 20 years, and give them even half the success that Johansson has achieved and will they be able to make the same claim? Some might, but most won’t. That’s just how we flawed humans are wired.

Beyond the temptation and opportunities that people like Scarlett Johansson face, there’s also the nature of the work itself. It’s one thing to maintain a stable marriage and family when your job involves sitting a desk eight hours a day and listening to people bitch about their slow internet connection. Being an actress is a lot more demanding.

Scarlett Johansson, like any successful actress, has a crazy schedule that demands she work crazy hours while maintaining a crazy health regiment to ensure she stays crazy beautiful. She travels, she works out, she does interviews, and she deals with nosy media types. Somewhere in the middle of all that, she has to find time to act as well. With a work schedule like that, I’m shocked she doesn’t say more crazy things.

Very few relationships can handle a hectic schedule like that. Perhaps Johansson should’ve added that, in addition to not being naturally monogamous, human beings aren’t meant to work such crazy schedules. That still would’ve earned her plenty of vulgar comments from internet trolls, but fewer people would’ve been inclined to disagree.

Even with all that context, there still may be some legitimate substance to Scarlett Johansson’s comments about monogamy. Perhaps she should read “Sex At Dawn” too, which offers some legitimate scientific reasons as to why humans aren’t wired for monogamy. Again, that won’t stop the internet trolls from making vulgar comments, but she could at least say she has some science on her side.

Lastly, I think the comment about the amount of work that goes into marriage should be most telling. I don’t think anybody not named Homer Simpson would agree that good things are worth working for. However, if something requires so much work that it feels forced, then that should be a sign that maybe it isn’t supposed to be that way.

People like Scarlett Johansson have to put in more work than most of us will ever do in order to succeed in her business. However, even ordinary people, from coal miners to aspiring erotica/romance writers, have to be careful to know the difference between working for something and forcing it.

If I could give Ms. Johansson advice, and I know that she’ll never read this blog so I feel comfortable saying it, I would say that she should not treat her relationships the same way she treats her job. If she has to work that hard on a relationship, then that’s a sign that it isn’t meant to be.

Relationships that work are most functional when you and your partner can just be yourself. When the makeup comes off, the cameras stop rolling, and the internet trolls go to bed, the person you are and the person your lover is should complement each other. You shouldn’t always have to feel like you’re in the middle of a scene in “Love Actually.” That person is sometimes hard to find, but they’re definitely worth finding.

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December 6, 2016 · 6:16 am

How NOT To Talk About Marriage

Picture a scenario with a man and a woman. No, it’s not one of those scenarios. They’re both fully clothed, in public, and otherwise normal. Then, imagine the kind of outrage/public shaming that would occur if this took place in front of one too many cameras.

Woman: I’m so sad! I’m so lonely! Why does the world so cruel?

Man: Maybe it’s because you’re really fat. Were you abused as a kid or something? Just exercise more or get some surgery.

You feel that? That’s the inescapable urge to roll your eyes because you know what kind of outcry this is going to cause. You know the kind of arguments, insults, rants, and raves that’ll emerge from this topic. Human can be pretty crazy and unpredictable when it comes to certain topics. Topics that involve marriage or gender issues, though, are annoyingly consistent.

So why do I bring up this scenario and the predictable outcry it tends to cause? Well, it was inspired, in large part, by a video I came across recently. It involves a small talk show discussing recent trends in marriage, namely why men are more and more reluctant to get married.

I’ve talked about this issue before, namely the part where the legal system gives men and women one too many tools to screw each other over and not in the way they enjoy. I generally avoid talking about it because it tends to make people less horny, which isn’t good for any erotica/romance writer. However, sometimes I do feel compelled to comment on something that feels overly relevant.

With that in mind, here is the clip in question. To get to the part that really annoyed me, fast forward to the 2:20 mark. I should warn you though. You may feel the urge to punch your computer screen.

https://youtu.be/1RkQIDHI0Qs

Did you see it? Is your computer screen still intact? Are you confused as to why someone who is single, in his 30s, and worried about his romantic future would feel uneasy with this exchange? Well, let me break it down in a way that I hope won’t cost anyone a new computer screen.

The argument the man in the clip makes is not a new one. They’ve been made before, the pitfalls of marriage and the reasons men aren’t too eager to participate. In fact, Fox built one of its most successful sitcoms about the ills of marriage and what it does to men. These are not new issues is what I’m saying.

Even so, there’s still this imbalance of sorts between men and women when it comes to the decline of marriage. There’s still a stigma against those who are reluctant to join an institution that has become exceedingly unjust for legal, political, and social reasons that are too complicated and unsexy to get into.

That stigma, however, doesn’t apply to both genders equally. I know this because I’ve actually felt this inequality to some extent. It plays out like this:

  • You’re a woman and you don’t want to get married? You go girl! You don’t need a man! You just need to be you! Girl power!

  • You’re a man and you don’t want to get married? What the hell is wrong with you? Are you gay or something? What kind of creep stays single all his life?

See the difference? The clip itself doesn’t do justice to the extent of this difference, but the man does get crap for making these arguments. When he calmly and reasonably lays out his arguments, the first response isn’t to take them seriously or ask more questions. The response is, “Were you hurt?”

To the man’s credit, he laughs it off. That shows he has more maturity and self-awareness than 95 percent of the people I see on talk shows these days. It’s still a very telling assessment though, assuming outright that the man is criticizing marriage was somehow hurt in the past.

Even as a man who does want to find love and does want to marry someone, I find that pretty insulting. I get that marriage has rarely, if ever, been an equal institution. I get that for most of human civilization, women had it pretty rough with respect to marriage. I’m not denying that.

However, if I’ve learned anything from all the superhero comics I’ve read over the years, it’s that you can’t fight injustice with more injustice. That’s like trying to fight a wildfire with napalm. It’s only going to make the situation worse.

At the moment, marriage is not a good deal for men. At the moment, women have more legal and social protections with respect to marriage then men. Women can divorce their husbands whenever they want for whatever reason and, in many states, get half their husband’s assets by default. They can get custody of kids, get favorable treatment by courts, and are more readily believed with accusations of spousal abuse.

Now I’m not Al Bundy in that I see marriage as its own circle of hell for a man. I believe marriage, love, and all the passion that comes with it is a beautiful thing. The problem is that our assumptions, legal traditions, and social constructs are horribly imbalanced at the moment. It’s only when marriage becomes a relationship of true equals that its beauty can be appreciated.

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October 13, 2016 · 6:43 am

Double Standards And How They Screw Both Genders Over

A couple years ago, I took a trip to New Orleans. While I was there, I frequented many bars on Bourbon Street, as many people do when they visit the Big Easy. In doing so, I noticed a common theme of sorts, one that highlighted some rather annoying differences between men and women.

It played out in two distinct scenarios. If you’re a man sitting by yourself at the bar, slamming back cheap beer and tequila shots while occasionally glancing towards the pretty girls, then congratulations. You’re a creeper. You couldn’t be more creepy if you wore clown makeup and had a machete growing out of your ass.

The second scenario is the exact same situation, but with a woman. If you’re a woman sitting by yourself at the bar, slamming back the same cheap beer and doing just as many shots of tequila while glancing towards any man, then congratulations. You’re probably going to get laid that night and chances are you won’t have to worry much about your reputation. It’s New Orleans. Like Las Vegas, the whole city may as well be a giant mulligan.

This highlights an annoyingly common, but not wholly illogical double standard between men and women. Call it the slut-versus-stud dilemma. Call it unbalanced sexual dynamics. Call it anything you want. It’s still a frustrating inconsistency for anyone who claims to value freedom, gender equality, and everything Rick Santorum stands against.

We all know how this inconsistency plays out. A man goes out, has sex with two Japanese twins, a Sweedish bikini model, and a Russian gymnast in one night. The next day, he gets high-fives and praises form all his friends. Hell, some them will want to smell his cock just to get a whiff of the sweet scent of pussy. The man is a stud.

On that same night, a woman of the same age and level of attractiveness goes out and has sex with a bouncer, two joggers, and one of Brad Pitt’s stunt doubles. The next day, she’ll probably endure an intervention from her family and friends. What kind of woman goes out and has that much sex for no other reason than because she enjoys it? She’s a slut. There must be something wrong with her. End sarcasm.

It’s one of those unspoken rules that some will talk about, but in the wrong way for the wrong reason. When it comes up, it usually focuses on the slut-shaming that women endure for wanting to have more sex than society deems appropriate. This sucks too. Slut-shaming in general is a major dick move, if that’s not too fitting a term. However, there are two sides to this coin and I’d like to talk about the other side.

I don’t deny it. When a woman goes out and has more sex than celibate priests say is acceptable, she gets a lot of shit for that. It can affect her family and friendships. It can affect her job prospects. Hell, female teachers have been fired for being too sexy. That sucks. That’s an injustice. We, as a society, should call bullshit on that.

However, let’s at least try to be fair because there is a part of the male perspective that’s equally unjust. Sure, a man probably won’t lose his job if he has sex with ten bikini models over the weekend, but there’s another injustice within that dynamic that should also be called out.

It manifests in the form of expectations and assumptions that men and women share about sexual intimacy. I’ve mentioned it before when I’ve talked about sexual promiscuity. Our current culture, with respect to gender dynamics, sets it up so that men have to jump through all these hoops to even have a chance at getting sex.

Those hoops include going out on dates, paying for meals, giving rides, offering expensive gifts, remaining in constant contact, and accommodating the woman in every way in hopes that she’ll decide he’s worth seeing naked. Every woman has a different set of standards, but at the end of the day, she’s still the primary decision-maker. A man can jump through all of these hoops, and even a few he doesn’t have to, and she can still decides he doesn’t get sex.

Needless to say, this can be annoying and frustrating to men. It’s a reason why some men hold deeply misogynistic views. That’s also part of the reason why men respect and admire those who can get so much sex without jumping through all these hoops. They’re like gurus or infomercial salesmen. They have skills and insights that we want to mimic, copy, or buy.

We’re men too. We want sex too. We want to know the tricks of the trade. That’s why we’ll eagerly befriend others who have better success at getting sex from women. That’s why we won’t shame them and will make every possible excuse to defend them. We want to be like them, learn from them, and draw from their experience.

Using caveman logic again, this makes perfect sense. Like all living creatures, we’re hard-wired for two major imperatives: survival and reproduction. If there are any ways to improve our efforts with the latter, we’ll be inclined to do it and make every possible excuse to justify it.

This means that men’s pursuit of sex isn’t always rational or ethical, for that matter. We’ll make whatever excuses we have to because it’s a biological imperative. Those imperatives tend to trump laws, culture, and social norms. Biology doesn’t give a damn what sort of arbitrary rules we make or what deities we conjure. We need to survive and reproduce, damn it!

So let’s revisit that frustrating double standard. Let’s re-evaluate it with the perspective of both the man and woman in mind. There’s a lot we can say about it. There’s a lot to interpret. Thankfully, a brilliant comedian named Jim Jefferies has already nicely summed it up with the following anecdote.

Once again, comedy tends to echo with a harsh truth. Now I would take issue with his concept of how fair this double standard is. It’s debatable what constitutes fair in matters of sex and gender dynamics.

It does, however, highlight the deeper inequalities that only make some amount of sense when we look at it through the harsh lens of caveman logic. Despite what radical feminist types may claim, men and women are very different.

The human race, like many species, is sexually dimorphic. That’s just a fancy sciencey way of saying that the different genders of a species exhibit unique characteristics beyond having different body parts to rub together. Human beings have plenty of those characteristics. We’re different in terms of muscles, body hair, facial structures, bone structure, hormone balance, and all sorts of other characteristics that I’m not qualified to describe.

The most defining trait, however, is that women are the ones who bear the babies. Men only provide the seeds. That means there’s an inherent imbalance in the sexual dynamics at play. If a man has sex with 25 women in one night, he has a chance to get them all pregnant with his genes and, thereby, propagating the species as his biological imperative says. A woman, on the other hand, can have sex with 25 men, but still only have one or two children in that same time-frame.

This is where the caveman logic bleeds right into basic economics. Nature is crude, blunt, and doesn’t give two whiffs of a skunk’s ass about our assumptions and expectations about sex. Nature just wants our species to survive and reproduce. That means it’ll follow crude incentives.

Now that’s not to say we should just accept these injustices and imbalances. We shouldn’t. Slut-shaming women and deifying promiscuous men to the extent we do asinine, even by the standards of basic biology and caveman logic.

Our attitudes and expectations towards sex and gender dynamics are skewed. It gets teachers fired. It makes social outcasts of people who don’t deserve it. It also creates every annoying antagonist in every teen movie ever made. We don’t need more of that in our society. We don’t need to distance ourselves from one another more than our genders already do.

We can’t circumvent our biological imperatives or our caveman brains beyond a certain extent. We just tend to push that extent way farther than it needs to be. There are injustices and inequalities in our current attitudes towards men, women, and sex. These injustices and inequalities are making it harder for us to relate to one another, to understand one another, and (most importantly) to love one another.

We can acknowledge our inherent differences on a biological basis. We can modify our attitudes towards how we go about sex, how we pursue relationships, and how we relate to one another. It takes work, more so than an aspiring erotica/romance writer can provide alone. I hope my books can inspire others to re-shape those attitudes.

Unjust assumptions can only lead to unjust actions. Unequal attitudes can only lead to unequal understandings. At the end of the day, we’re still wired to seek out love and intimacy with one another. Let’s not make it harder on ourselves.

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October 12, 2016 · 6:53 am

Monogamy May Be Going Extinct (Too Soon)

A big part of being a romance/erotica writer is finding new ways to explore romantic and sexual love in novel ways. Let’s face it. There are only stories you can tell about love at first sight. Those themes are as old as Shakespeare and it’s hard to make those stories interesting these days.

There’s still a place for these kinds of bland, basic love stories and there always will be. I’ve certainly used those elements in my own books. We’re an affectionate species. We love to love every bit as much as we love to hump. However, the ways in which loving and humping manifest will change with time, culture, biology, economics, and whatever happens to be a popular internet meme at the time.

There are already some ongoing trends that are making religious zealots, registered republicans, and anyone overly fond of the 1950s very nervous. According to the Centers for Disease Control, marriage rates are declining. Divorce is declining as well, but that’s to be expected when people aren’t getting married in the first place.

If that weren’t horrifying enough to the “Father Knows Best” crowd, the average number of sexual partners isn’t one. According to the CDC, men average approximately 6.7 sexual partners over the course of their lifetime while women average around 4.3. Seeing as how men tend to exaggerate the amount of panties they’ve moistened and women underestimate how often their panties get moist, let’s just call it an even 5.0 for both genders.

For some people, these numbers are truly terrifying. It means people are daring to love more than one person over the course of their lifetime. It means they’re daring to have sex for reasons that don’t involve consummating a marriage, making a baby, or showing homosexuals on how it should be done. The horror.

I hope everyone can appreciate the sarcasm in that last paragraph because this really shouldn’t be terrifying. People have sex. People love more than one person. It happens because people are complicated creatures. We can’t even agree over pizza toppings and ice cream flavors. How can we possibly agree on the right way to love and make love to one another?

I say this as someone who comes from a family that has a fair number of divorces and a fair number of marriages that’ll probably last until the sun explodes. I know how erratic and fickle our passions can be. It makes sense that our eyes, as well as other parts of our bodies, would wander.

I’ve talked about it before on this blog. Our bodies and our biology don’t know that we live in an era of Tinder, internet porn, and no fault divorce. As far as our brains are concerned, we’re still hunting and gathering in close-knit tribes on the plains of the African savanna.

Within those tribes, monogamy can happen, but it’s not the only way our passions manifest. In some cases, like when women die in childbirth or men die hunting sabretooth tigers, we need to be able to share our passions with others.

Loving more than one person doesn’t just make sense from a biological perspective. It makes sense in that it ties us together closer as a tribe. If we love each other and want to have sex with each other, we’ll be that much more dedicated to protecting and supporting each other. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s also a sexy thing. Even the most ardent clergyman or nun can’t deny that.

So when I hear stories about how monogamy is in decline or that family institutions are decaying, I want to roll my eyes and bash my head into a brick wall. This sentiment gives the false impression that monogamy has always been the end all/be all of sex, love, and relationships. That’s just not how the world works. It’s not how we’re wired as humans. It’s not even the theme of most sitcoms anymore, as “Modern Family” can attest.

So who is claiming that monogamy is in decline? It isn’t just the usual cast of clowns from the overly religious types who think their particular deity wants them to micromanage every aspect of our personal lives. Even more liberal types, like the Young Turks, are proclaiming loudly that monogamy and family life is going the way of disco, bell-bottom pants, and the Macarana.

Now I can understand the doom-saying from both sides. They’re looking at the same data and noticing the same trends. People just aren’t getting married, having children, and living around a white picket fence for the rest of their lives anymore. For some strange reason, this life doesn’t appeal to every member of the human species. Go figure.

That’s more sarcasm by the way. Sarcasm is necessary when addressing any form of doom-saying, be it from wide-eyed hippie liberals or fire and brimstone loving religious nuts. However, this sentiment that monogamy is in serious decline is worth taking seriously, if only because it means I may have to tweak the themes of my books.

As I’ve noted before, the current economics for marriage and monogamy are shit. The legal framework in which love and marriage operate are woefully unequal. In some ways, men get screwed over. In some ways, women get screwed over. It is a horribly unequal, inefficient institution that may as well have been crafted by divorce lawyers getting paid by the hour.

Since I’ve beat that dead horse more than it needs to be beaten, I won’t go off on another rant about why divorce sucks and why expectations of monogamy are unrealistic. I don’t think I need to belabor those points than I already have. However, there is one element to this sentiment that I think is worth pointing out and it’s something the Young Turks even discussed to a certain extent.

While it may be true that marriage and monogamy are in decline, it’s not necessarily declining in an equitable manner. What do I mean by that? Well, in the same way that divorce and marriage laws are woefully unbalanced, our cultural concepts of sex, romance, and gender relations are just as out of whack.

It isn’t because of the rise of feminism or radical feminism. It isn’t because of men losing their edge or fearfully protecting their male privilege either. In many respects, the problem has to do with the lingering impact that our uptight, puritanical, monogamy-loving culture still has.

Keep in mind, we still live in a culture where women can’t agree on whether Kim Kardashian showing her naked body on the internet counts as empowering or shameful. We live in a culture where a man can’t just walk up to a woman, say she has nice breasts, and not dread being sued for sexual harassment. We live in an environment where false accusations of sexual assault can ruin lives.

In other words, our current culture isn’t ready to let go of monogamy. We’re still kind of stuck on it. We still have these strange, skewed expectations about how men and women relate to one another, both romantically and sexually.

We expect women to be reserved and prudish, never freely engaging in sex with as many men as she wants. If she does, we as a society just assume there’s something wrong with her and go out of our way to shame her. It can’t possibly be that she just enjoys having sex and all the toe-curling pleasure it gives her.

We also expect men to be aggressive, pig-headed brutes who would gladly hump a dead cow if it looked enough like Jennifer Lawrence’s ass. If a man goes out and humps every woman within his area code, then he’s just being a man. If he actually goes out of his way to love and be faithful to one woman, then he must be a total pussy.

You see the problem with these expectations? Now try to imagine a society functioning without monogamy. It just can’t work. Our collective heads will explode from all the double standards, hypocrisy, and conflicting biological imperatives.

The fact remains that gender relations in our current society are just too fucked up right now. They’re too unequal. They’re too imbalanced for monogamy to decline to the extent that doomsayers fear. I’ll let the immortal Eric Duckman sum it up in the most crude, offensive way possible.

https://youtu.be/G8xp8BQxftE

It’s unavoidable. Men and women today aren’t ready for a post-monogamous society. Too many of us still cling to the “Father Knows Best” principles of how love, relationships, and sex should manifest. Almost as many cling to the politically correct sentiment that one gender must be guilted and shamed to no end for past injustices. It seems like there’s no way for society to achieve a healthy balance.

I try to be more optimistic than that. Our society always has room for improvement. Trends change. Cultural attitudes change. We, as a species, are great at adapting to new conditions. It’s part of what makes us the dominant species on this planet.

We tend to be slow, clumsy, and inept as hell when adapting our culture to new conditions, but we do get around to it. I believe that at some point, the incentives for a truly balanced understanding of love, relationships, and sex will be greater than the forces driving us apart.

It may take a long time, but it’s one of those goals that is worth the wait and the effort. It’s a goal I hope to explore in my books in various ways. I might not be able to speed up the process, but I can at least make the wait entertaining and sexy as hell.

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