"What do you think of monogamy?" my colleague asked as he swung around in his chair to look me in the eye. "Do you think it's dead? I do."
"Really?" I said cautiously. "Isn't that a bit pessimistic?"
"It's reality!" he announced.
"What makes you think that?" I asked him and the others listening into the conversation. The reasons came thick and fast.
"Everyone ends up cheating," one asserted.
"Too many options," another said.
"No one bothers to ask the other if they're exclusive, so everyone is just dating around," said a third.
Kanye West would probably applaud their theories. In his latest single No Church in the Wild, West raps that "love is cursed by monogamy". Sure, West doesn't believe in monogamy. And why should he? Anyone with a never-ending supply of half-naked women cavorting and gyrating for his personal delectation would be highly against the idea of settling down with just one. (How would he even choose?)
For the rest of us, though, it's often not the enormous choice that gets us stumped. Instead, it's the expectation we may have that someone else can fill a void in our lives, whether by sex, love or just companionship.
And if that other person is unable to satisfy us? Some of us simply go looking for it in someone else; hence monogamy goes down the gurgler and all hope of having an everlasting (albeit imperfect) relationship disappears.
Of course these days, we can't expect relationships to last forever. The sobering stats show that, in Australia, one-third of marriages end in divorce (according to mydivorce.com.au) but to me that doesn't mean monogamy is dead; it simply means that it's short-lived.
Modern dating and serial monogamy
Here's the thing about modern dating: no one wants to commit in case something better is around the corner.
Hence commitment is delayed until one has so exhausted all one's resources that one grabs the next person who comes along and doesn't let go.
Serial monogamists move from one relationship to the next. These often last more than some people's marriages, but the they are never intended to last forever.
A case in point is Joseph, a 35-year-old real-estate agent who refused to commit to any woman for years on end. "You're incapable of love," one scorned ex-girlfriend scoffed after being dumped for a younger version.
This merry-go-round of girlfriends (or rather, his round table of bonk-buddies) went on for years on end until one day all his options seemed to dry up. At some point soon after this realisation, something inside him snapped.
"I wonder what happened to Stephanie?" he asked me, searching through his iPhone for her Facebook profile. "She was nice, wasn't she? I might give her another go."
And so he did. Suddenly the two were involved in a heady relationship of romantic dinners and planning New Year's Eve together for 2013.
"I'm definitely going to marry her," he told me over lattes one afternoon. "She's awesome. She helped me pick out the clothes I'm wearing!"
So what changed?
"His taxi light went on," said one girlfriend who witnessed his entire deluge of women. "When it's on, a man is suddenly ready to commit. Until that point, there's no way you can get a man to do anything."
The taxi light theory is one that is perpetuated by many single women (although try mentioning it to a man and watch his face gloss over in confusion). It goes something like this: a man is like a taxi driver, driving around with his taxi light off, which means he is against settling down any time soon. The minute his light goes on, he's available and the next woman who gets into his taxi (so to speak) is the one he is going to settle down with.
Seems simple enough, but the trouble is that many men who drive around with their lights off know exactly what to say to women in order to pretend that their taxi light is on when the reality is nothing of the sort. Hence it's almost impossible to tell whose light is on or off at any given moment until you're given the flick and told he never wanted a girlfriend in the first place. That's when you – dear single woman – go into your rant about how much you gave to the relationship and how you thought it was the real deal and was really going somewhere. To which he just laughs, and then tells his mates that you're the crazy one. Ouch.
Techno-dating
One of my gay friends told me that, thanks to the proliferation of dating apps and websites, he can date so many people at once he and each date don't even both to ask each other whether their relationship is exclusive. They simply assume it is not.
"No one talks about it. It's as boring as bringing up an ex on a first date. We just assume everyone is dating around."
Whether one is gay or straight, marriage is now a love-based institution as opposed to the economic transaction it started out as. But when one is faced with so many other obstacles that stand in the way of love, will any of us really want to truly commit? Or is monogamy, as Kanye West might say, really dead?
"Really?" I said cautiously. "Isn't that a bit pessimistic?"
"It's reality!" he announced.
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"What makes you think that?" I asked him and the others listening into the conversation. The reasons came thick and fast.
"Everyone ends up cheating," one asserted.
"Too many options," another said.
"No one bothers to ask the other if they're exclusive, so everyone is just dating around," said a third.
Kanye West would probably applaud their theories. In his latest single No Church in the Wild, West raps that "love is cursed by monogamy". Sure, West doesn't believe in monogamy. And why should he? Anyone with a never-ending supply of half-naked women cavorting and gyrating for his personal delectation would be highly against the idea of settling down with just one. (How would he even choose?)
For the rest of us, though, it's often not the enormous choice that gets us stumped. Instead, it's the expectation we may have that someone else can fill a void in our lives, whether by sex, love or just companionship.
And if that other person is unable to satisfy us? Some of us simply go looking for it in someone else; hence monogamy goes down the gurgler and all hope of having an everlasting (albeit imperfect) relationship disappears.
Of course these days, we can't expect relationships to last forever. The sobering stats show that, in Australia, one-third of marriages end in divorce (according to mydivorce.com.au) but to me that doesn't mean monogamy is dead; it simply means that it's short-lived.
Modern dating and serial monogamy
Here's the thing about modern dating: no one wants to commit in case something better is around the corner.
Hence commitment is delayed until one has so exhausted all one's resources that one grabs the next person who comes along and doesn't let go.
Serial monogamists move from one relationship to the next. These often last more than some people's marriages, but the they are never intended to last forever.
A case in point is Joseph, a 35-year-old real-estate agent who refused to commit to any woman for years on end. "You're incapable of love," one scorned ex-girlfriend scoffed after being dumped for a younger version.
This merry-go-round of girlfriends (or rather, his round table of bonk-buddies) went on for years on end until one day all his options seemed to dry up. At some point soon after this realisation, something inside him snapped.
"I wonder what happened to Stephanie?" he asked me, searching through his iPhone for her Facebook profile. "She was nice, wasn't she? I might give her another go."
And so he did. Suddenly the two were involved in a heady relationship of romantic dinners and planning New Year's Eve together for 2013.
"I'm definitely going to marry her," he told me over lattes one afternoon. "She's awesome. She helped me pick out the clothes I'm wearing!"
So what changed?
"His taxi light went on," said one girlfriend who witnessed his entire deluge of women. "When it's on, a man is suddenly ready to commit. Until that point, there's no way you can get a man to do anything."
The taxi light theory is one that is perpetuated by many single women (although try mentioning it to a man and watch his face gloss over in confusion). It goes something like this: a man is like a taxi driver, driving around with his taxi light off, which means he is against settling down any time soon. The minute his light goes on, he's available and the next woman who gets into his taxi (so to speak) is the one he is going to settle down with.
Seems simple enough, but the trouble is that many men who drive around with their lights off know exactly what to say to women in order to pretend that their taxi light is on when the reality is nothing of the sort. Hence it's almost impossible to tell whose light is on or off at any given moment until you're given the flick and told he never wanted a girlfriend in the first place. That's when you – dear single woman – go into your rant about how much you gave to the relationship and how you thought it was the real deal and was really going somewhere. To which he just laughs, and then tells his mates that you're the crazy one. Ouch.
Techno-dating
One of my gay friends told me that, thanks to the proliferation of dating apps and websites, he can date so many people at once he and each date don't even both to ask each other whether their relationship is exclusive. They simply assume it is not.
"No one talks about it. It's as boring as bringing up an ex on a first date. We just assume everyone is dating around."
Whether one is gay or straight, marriage is now a love-based institution as opposed to the economic transaction it started out as. But when one is faced with so many other obstacles that stand in the way of love, will any of us really want to truly commit? Or is monogamy, as Kanye West might say, really dead?
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