May 1999

For most people monogamy is a damaging and repressive way to live. That although it has a Mills & Boony veneer, in reality it has little to do with romance and love, and far more to do with insecurity and ownership.

And more than this, the real problem is that it is held up as a model, a blueprint for what all sexual relations must be. If you want to live outside of this, you're strange or wrong, and if you actually do live outside of this then you've failed or you're bad.

But to have an idea of what your relations with someone should be before you've even met them can only ever be restrictive and repressive. If we continue with preset rules and roles we deny individuality and push away great partners. We must get the courage to face our hearts, and to make our lives as close to our real desires as we can. We should be able to let each other be the most we can be, to celebrate one another, to work through good and bad times together. But it should always be as ourselves, rather than some predecided but unexplained idea that someone else has of what they'd like us to be.

It is not the relationships of monogamy I'm against, it's the institution - the idea that these are The Rules for sexual love. That if you don't do this you are bad or a failure. If you're a man you're proving a point with an I-shag-loads-of-birds-me attitude, and if you're a woman it's some low self-worth thing. Actually, low self-worth leads to compliance with other people's ideas that don't work for you: the blind acceptance of the monogamous model of relationships can stem from a fear of being open and honest about feelings and an inability to summon the strength to make your life your own.

We've got a total lack of cultural reference for this, it's something not dealt with in the films and love songs and drama (unless it's really negative Fatal Attraction stuff). No wonder it feels like we're stumbling into a dark abyss. But if you do feel like it's heading towards something more honest and true, it's where you must go. And so this pamphlet is here to show you're not the first and you're not alone.

I don't agree with all of the stuff in this pamphlet - indeed some pieces directly contradict each other - but all of it has something valid to say. And not just on monogamy, or even sexuality, but on our attitudes to all human relations.

To honestly live outside monogamy is to step into the unknown, but to me it feels truer to the human spirit. I can never know where it's leading, but then monogamy doesn't really offer that either. I'm sure that, on their wedding day, none of the 40% of couples who end up getting divorced are planning for it to go that way.

For anyone who has even an inkling that maybe monogamy isn't the ideal there's some useful and truthful stuff in here. For those who do think monogamy's an ideal, you'll recognise many of the problems identified in here, and maybe it'll change your mind and heart a little.

Some people say this is all too thought-out and not romantic - on the contrary, monogamy is a master plan, a rule book, a mould to push yourself into. I'm talking about the courage and freedom to abandon Master Plans, and instead to truly follow your heart, to let being together be big, deep, wild, friendly, tender; whatever it turns into. It's a voyage of discovery - of the other person and of your own heart and of what you find together. Now that's romance. Love without limits.

This isn't A Book Of Answers, it only addresses what is clearly an issue that causes problems for most people (at least at some time), and offering some different ways to address what is going on. If this is who we are, why don't we try to find ways to be happy with it? Why should we continue to subscribe to codes of behaviour that damage us far more than the behaviour they prohibit? Why can't we be honest for a change? This pamphlet is here to suggest issues and ideas to consider as a place to start. It is not here to tell you how to live. It's here to get you to start to really think about it.

To blindly follow unquestioned rules is to reinforce them. In everything we do there is a choice. If I am to do anything, let it be because I am aware. Aware of its consequences, implications, meanings, effects and possibilities. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that of all adults.

Rather than try to fit in with a reality that is not only not of our choosing, but a reality that doesn't work, that makes us suffer, we should create our own. We should live as we think we should live. Give the things that repress us no choice other than move over.

This is not proclaiming some social panacea. I'm not advertising a new rule book that will make the world great if only everyone would follow it. I am not just swapping churches. I'm saying that there are no universal models to live up to. 'Non-monogamy' refers to an infinite variety of types of relationship. There are no Final Answers, no one-size-fits-all blueprints for human relations. I don't advocate changing cages, but dismantling them. Abandoning the churches.

Abandoning monogamy is not selfish, it's about opening up and being honest about yourself so that it's a true self that you're sharing. We need to move beyond the selfishness and the need for "security" and start to confront our fear of just how much we're capable of.