Monogamy vs. Polyamory: A Philosophical Ramble for the Jaded

Tuesday, March 11. 2025.

Humans, that peculiar species known equally for inventing calculus, jazz music, and reality television, can’t agree on how to handle something as straightforward as love.

You’ve got monogamy, which society props up like the perfect IKEA shelf—promising sturdiness and elegance but prone to wobbling dangerously if not assembled just right.

Then there’s polyamory, monogamy’s free-spirited cousin who promises everyone at the party an emotional goodie bag filled with love, honesty, and occasionally uncomfortable truths.

Like all ambitious philosophies, both come with fine print, hidden fees, and potential meltdowns.

Monogamy: One Ring to Rule Them All?

Monogamy is easy to mock but tough to dismiss entirely.

Alain de Botton, who spends considerable time philosophically shrugging about human disappointments, points out that monogamy offers stability tempered by compromise—a kind of romantic realism.

Science supports this cautious enthusiasm: John Gottman's research affirms that stable commitments help people sleep better at night, literally and figuratively. Yet monogamy also feels suspiciously like emotional real estate, complete with property lines, fences, and the occasional "KEEP OUT" sign.

Secure attachment sounds lovely until it becomes mandatory attendance at your partner’s third cousin’s wedding in Akron.

Polyamory: Brave New Love or Emotional CrossFit?

Polyamory claims to solve love's scarcity problem by asserting that love is abundant—like kale smoothies or subscription streaming services.

Esther Perel, famed for her TED talks and measured Belgian accent, praises ethical non-monogamy as an experiment in radical honesty. It isn’t.

The polyamorous ideal of compersion—experiencing joy at your partner's other romantic entanglements—sounds spiritually evolved. In practice, it's about as simple as explaining quantum physics to a raccoon.

Jealousy: Human Nature’s Favorite Buzzkill

Freedom sounds wonderful until jealousy kicks down your emotional door like a drunk party crasher demanding attention.

Jean-Paul Sartre might laugh at polyamory’s claim of liberation, reminding us that humans paradoxically crave and loathe freedom.

Jealousy, after all, isn't just biological possessiveness—it’s existential dread in cosplay. Sartre would probably argue polyamory is freedom’s ultimate prank on humanity: offering limitless choice precisely to remind us how ill-equipped we are for it.

Love as Limbic Capitalism: Swipe Right for Heartbreak

And let’s not forget Limbic Capitalism, always lurking in the shadows, ready to monetize your heartbreak.

Both monogamy and polyamory are vulnerable, but polyamory particularly risks becoming a shopping spree in the love department, endlessly browsing, endlessly restless.

In Limbic Capitalism, Tinder swipes replace meaningful glances, and your romantic life turns into an Amazon cart—full, overflowing, and increasingly meaningless.

Wisdom from Clever People Who Probably Know Better

Esther Perel gently suggests that infidelity isn't always about betrayal but about the human desire for novelty and self-reinvention. I think she’s makes way too big a deal of it.

Alain de Botton counters by reminding us that love's inherent disappointment arises from unrealistic expectations.

Both thinkers, in their smart, refined, TED-talky ways, agree on one thing: successful relationships—monogamous, polyamorous, or otherwise—require emotional bravery and relentless honesty, neither of which humanity reliably excels at.

Love’s Messy Middle (The Place Nobody Likes)

Here’s my take: love is fundamentally messy, resistant to neat categorization, and indifferent to your philosophical preferences.

Polyamory's utopian promises regularly crash into the human tendency to hoard affection like toilet paper during a pandemic. Jealousy is an authentic, hard-wired human emotion. Compersion is an idea, not an emotion. I have to tell my auto-correct that it’s a real word.

Compersion is a Unicorn grazing in Shambala. It is a figment of a covetous erotic imagination.

Monogamy, meanwhile, often feels like emotional lockdown—a safety measure that's reassuring until it starts feeling like house arrest. But Monogamy is the basis of civilization in all of its most successful and resilient forms.

The Bottom Line: There Isn’t One

Smart people understand that human relationships defy tidy philosophies or foolproof instructions.

They’re messy, weird, heartbreaking, occasionally wonderful, and often absurd.

Love is just one more thing humans do to keep each other going amid the cosmic confusion of answering the question of who we are, why we’re here. and what we’re supposed to do. .

And maybe that's the whole point—finding someone, or multiple someones, who make this bizarre human trip slightly less lonely, a little more funny, and bearably complicated. But I just think one partner at a time is how we’re wired to roll.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.