Recently I’ve had more insights into stories from female friends about relationships, both current and past. Add to that a friend introducing me to the original 2003 series ‘Sex in the city’ and a book recommendation of ‘ The case against the sex revolution” by Louise Perry and it brought to me the title of this question.

A warning is that there will be some harsh truths in this, albeit probably not as aggressive as Louise’s, as well as some points that towards statistics and majorities rather than comments that fit everyone (which would be impossible anyway).

The consequences of everything

Louise Perry rightfully argues that some forms of liberal feminism have focused so much on choice and equality, that it’s actually had negative effects on women overall. She also blames men from benefitting from this liberal feminism.

My personal view on this is that society as a whole, regardless of gender has been much more influential than men on the consequences of the sexual revolution. If you blame men for supporting women’s feminism goals, then that puts men in an impossible position – damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

The truth is, every decision has winners and losers, and depending on society, certain groups of both men and women win, and others lose.

Take for example the push for women to have jobs in the workplace. Personally, I think giving women the choice to do this is overall an amazing thing. It means that women who want to, and those that have incredible skill and talent can take advantage of it and make their lives more fulfilling. However, this positive has a cost to certain groups of women – the traditional woman who prefers to be a housewife.

While society and certain feminists have shunned upon being a housewife, there are still large number of women who would prefer, or at least wouldn’t mind being a housewife. But they hardly have this option now. Theoretically they have the option, but realistically, most women don’t. Why? Because with such a large portion of women working, the household income to sustain a certain level of life has now become the combined of the man and woman. This means that unless the man is in the top X % of wealth, a household with a woman being a housewife is unlikely to survive financially, especially since the number 1 cause of divorce is still financial problems.

But that’s not all.

The sexual freedom liberated for women (and men indirectly) through the legalization of abortion, the contraceptive pill, the reduced judgement of embracing women’s sexuality, while great for a lot of women, has still had drastic negative effects for certain groups. Mainly women and men who would like a monogamous relationship.

Society with sexual freedom makes monogamous relationships both riskier and less exciting than casual encounters

One of the problems with the modern availability of choice is that both men and women are not taught the dangers and risks of choice. What I mean by that is that humans are stubborn and do not realise that certain choices are very hard to undo. When we are young, we are still very malleable and ideas and experiences form who we are but also, we are able to change ideas relatively quickly. This ability to change starts to shrink as we get into adulthood, and what we used to think was temporary fun and ‘getting to know oneself’ becomes our destiny for life.

The reasons for monogamous relationships being riskier and less exciting are biological, psychological, and external pressure from society.

Biologically, there is a tendency for woman to want to select and keep a mate for life. This is in contrast to men who want to ‘spread their seed’ to as many women as possible.

Psychologically, women do tend to both need a bigger connection before sex, but also form a bigger bond during sex compared to men. Women also tend to date equal and up in terms of sexual market value, compared to men who date equal or down.

Society pressure is complex and comes from many angles, but a few of the big ones are:

• Marriage is now a risk for both men and women. Men risk losing his assets to a wife that wants divorce. Yes this is a stereotype, but on average men in marriages are more likely to spend more time working to provide and feed the family, even if the wife also works. So they are more likely to be on the losing end if she wants a divorce.
• Women on the other hand still risk being either abused by toxic men, or left to be single mothers in a society that doesn’t give much support for child care.
• Destruction of communities and moral values. Independence and free will have provided both anonymity to people’s actions and destroyed communities that used to support people in relationships and also provided a social pressure to reduce the chance of adultery. Religion used to be part of this as well, and while religion can be particularly strict and unfair to women, it did benefit those that wanted those things in a relationship anyway.
• Lack of space in western world for children. There is too much demand for space in urban areas and very little in rural. This means that while there is still a lot of space on Earth to increase the population, people don’t want to live in those places. So the only remaining thing to do is to not have kids because it leads to worse living conditions (multiple generations having to live in the same house, not being able to afford the lifestyle, and lack of freedom if you have kids etc).

All of the above make it harder for monogamous relationships to form and pushes people towards casual encounters even for people who know they want monogamy. With the way things are, women’s psychology means they are all competing for a small group of men. Why? Because with sexual freedom means that 1 man can ‘please’ multiple women without any consequences. This means that women have less choice as it would be unsatisfying to date down. On the other hand, men who are in the top % have less incentive to settle. Why would they when they have easy access to many beautiful women?

And women and men who are not the top%? They are completely left out of the picture. Women may still get sex but would struggle to find a satisfying relationship, whereas men tend to get nothing at all. No sex, no relationship. There are some studies that up to 80% of men don’t get regular sex. Fact is, if it wasn’t for porn, there would be violence and wars throughout the western world.

But even within the top % of women and men who know they want a monogamous relationship are put in a difficult situation. The lack of consequences for embracing sexuality means that you give up a lot to be in a relationship. This means that to ‘give up’ these benefits, you have to find the perfect of perfect matches. What would previously have been a good enough match for life, now is “I probably could but I believe I can find better”. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is a personal choice, but I do see a lot of potential couples that would have been great break apart because of “I can do better, and if I don’t, the single life isn’t that bad anyway”.

So, what can make the monogamous relationship comeback?

I do think the popularity of monogamous relationships will make a comeback. Everything in life is cyclical and this is not the first time that sexual liberation has occurred. There are many societies in the past that have probably been even more sexually open than the modern world.

What will cause this is probably one of the following:

• Wars or large population decline due to disease etc. Whenever wars and population decline occur, society tends to become more conservative, which makes it easier to form and maintain monogamous relationships due to society pressure working for them rather than against them.
• Remote working bringing life back to rural areas. If people want to live in rural areas, then there will be a massive opportunity for population growth, this will again put societal pressure for families and monogamous relationships.
• Becoming a multi-planetary species. Maybe not in our lifetimes or those of our grandchildren, but eventually the only way to continue sustainable population growth would be to expand into new planets. This will have similar effect to population growth in rural areas – societal pressure on families and monogamous relationships. I believe this is one of the main reasons all major superpowers are investing back into space programs. It is getting to the point where tensions are so high that unless we can channel this energy into populating a new planet, it will lead to war. A world war where nukes exist would be catastrophic, so the race to populate another planet could be the answer to avoid such a scenario.

What should I do if I want a monogamous relationship?

The factors are currently against you, which means that if you want one – you have to work harder on yourself and be willing to take more risks that it won’t work out, with the potential of severe consequences.

You have to increase your own value while being open to finding ways to be attracted and excited by partners without looking for immediate perfection. The more important thing is the ability for both to be open to growing together. This needs to happen while resisting the urges to cheat or experience all the possible novelties of the single life.

Not only that, but you must start to live as if you were in a relationship before you even got into one. Most people believe that they can live the single life and then ‘convert’ to relationship when they find the one. The problem with that is they often exhibit behaviour that makes you less attractive for a relationship, or makes it extremely hard to give up on the benefits of single life to even start a relationship.

You have to channel energy into other areas of life – such as personal growth, looking after kids, business, charitable actions and so on to reduce the pressure on your partner to be the main source of happiness and fulfilment (which can be for large parts of time but cannot be maintained for a lifetime).