When do people decide they want to be monogamous? Do they choose, or are they pressured (mostly wondering about women)
Why do some people want to stay in a long term relationships at age 18, 19, 20 etc? I understand not everyone wants to “sow their oats”, but are some of these young adults expecting marriage and a happy family that will last from age 21 until they die?
Do most people that enter a long term relationship expect it to turn out favorably regardless of age (for simplicity sake, a “healthy family”)?
Is the method of sowing oats a conscious thing? Do some people say “I need to get a variety so I can know who I want to settle down with”, or is it just something that happens until your biological clock and experience change and you decide you want a long term partner and a family?
I think in general, I’m wondering: are we consciously looking for a mate for monogamy by going through partners? Do we expect some relationships to eventually fail? We can’t expect the first relationship to be the last one, of course. And how does age play into this?
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Well im not a woman but ill answer anyway. Im 22 now and ive been with the same girl for over 5 years now. We got together when I was 17 and her 15. Before meeting her I was in a relationship with another girl that was going ok but as you said in your details I was starting to think of sowing my oats. My thought process was im 17 and ive only been with 2 girls, this is lame, girls hit on me pretty often, why dont I just go experience what the world has to offer. So I decided to move on. The girl im with now was supposed to be a wham bam thank ya maam :P but from the moment I first laid eyes on her I was in love. These past 5 years have been some of the best in my life, so yes while I am still very young I do expect to spend the rest of my life with her and have a family. I cant speak for why others my age feel this way but for me it was experiencing true love.
Having committed monogamous relationships at a young age is good training for whatever you want in the future. You learn how to work out your problems and communicate, and how to get what you want out of a relationship.
Women are hardwired to want relationships biologically (provider for their children) and monogamous ones are best (no rival children).
committed monogamous relationship with someone I feel to have a serious relationship with. It is just nature that I want that. But sometimes when the other party is not, then I become flexible. But only recently that I am seriously thinking of a serious relationship with someone for long term. I guess it just comes to recognise that I am not young all the time and I want some stability now
I’ve always wondered if monogamy was a Western Civ meme. There are cultures outside of Western ones where the idea of “monogamy” seems ridiculous, because as long as the “tribe’s” genetic component is continuing, and there’s readily available food and shelter, then there’s no problem about who has sex with whom.
I think it all boils down to who controls the distribution of a group’s resources, and in our culture we want such resources to go to “our own” family units alone. If there were no concept of “property” and “inheritance” in Western culture, our sexual mores would be a lot different, I daresay, and a woman’s sexuality or whose offspring was whose wouldn’t matter in the least. No one would try to control women’s reproduction, bodies or sexuality the way certain people try to in our culture today.
FYI, I Am Not A Social Anthropologist, so YMMV.
I was raised to be a free spirited/questioning child of the 70’s, sexually terrified/socially anti traditional-family-expectations teen of the 80’s and suspicious/confused young adult of the 90’s and here’s just my view:
Are we consciously looking for a mate for monogamy by going through partners?
Yes, I think so. Even the people who aren’t psychologically best for monogamy usually start out trying to make it work for them because they’ve been taught by larger society that monogamy is the ideal, it’s the optimum, it’s “normal”.
Do we expect some relationships to eventually fail?
Yes. We know there are more mis matches than matches and so we accept a degree of failure on our quest for the best possible match. Conflict and depression set in when you start to question if your wants/ideals are reasonable. No one wants to settle but no one wants to consider they’re unrealistic either because then you wonder about what you’ve passed on or missed.
We can’t expect the first relationship to be the last one, of course. And how does age play into this?
This I don’t believe. Some young people are very grounded, very wise and have had great examples around them in order to forge positive markers for themselves in order to recognize a good match, maybe one right off. That’s just chance but some of them grab it and it works.
I don’t believe most people actually stop to think through their relationships beyond, “This feels so right, I want it to last.”
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