Thoughts on "Non-Monogamy" and Improving Marriage

So, there's this guy named Chris Messina. He's some sort of tech entrepeneur - Wikipedia describes him as an "open source advocate" - and he resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've only recently become aware of him, which I'll get into momentarily.

As I've aged, my personal views haven't changed substantially, but I've gotten consistently better at considering and tolerating the views of folks whose views are significantly different than my own. Chris Messina really strains my ability to do so. First, his claim to fame is popularizing the hashtag. While I recognize the technical ingenuity of hashtags, I'm pretty ambivalent about the net benefits of hashtags specifically and Twitter generally. Messina has recently gained additional media attention by discussing another topic that sort of makes me wince: his decision to eschew monogamy. In his recent op-ed at CNN, Messina says:

"But as a child of divorce and an aspiring designer-entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, I was suspicious of marriage. Out here, we're data-positive and solution-oriented and if your product (i.e. marriage) is failing for 50% of your customers, then you need to fix it or offer something better."

Messina has written previously about his preference for open relationships. I only came across his recent article in the first place by an odd twist of fate: his current girlfriend happens to be an acquaintance of mine, and she has posted and discussed the article and their relationship online. Otherwise, my sole exposure to Messina's views would have been through a recent segment on the Michael Medved Show, in which guest host Mark Davis was less gracious about Messina's column and views than Medved tends to be. My exposure by way of my friend gave me more reason to be invested in Messina's views, as well as reason to consider them in more detail than I would have otherwise.

Messina's argument is essentially as follows:

Marriage is failing for fifty percent of Americans. As a result, either marriage needs to be fixed, or an alternative needs to be offered.

"Monogamy established itself thousands of years ago, when society was ruled by scarcity and resources and potential mates were in limited supply."

"'[O]pen relationships'... are merely rational economic responses to excess inventory and changing expectations of romance. Viewed in this context, conventional monogamy is getting long in the tooth."

That last item is the crux of his argument: because resource scarcity is no longer a significant motivator of monogamy, and because information technology has altered the supply/demand balance with respect to locating potential sexual/romantic/domestic partners, open (or non-monogamous, or "monogamish") relationships are a viable option.

I think I understand where Messina is coming from, though I don't agree with him. And beyond disagreeing with him, I think there are some fundamental flaws in his logic which, at the very least, are worthy of consideration should the debate on "non-monogamy" or "monogamish" or polyamorous relationships continue.

First and foremost, Messina's premise rests upon a demonstrably false, yet culturally pervasive, myth: fifty percent of American marriages do not fail. I actually saw Messina address this criticism by someone else in a comment thread, and he made the entirely legitimate observation that the actual divorce rate (somewhere in the mid- to high-thirtieth percentile) is still problematic. However, he seems to be extremely focused on this idea of jumping to an alternative, rather than the alternative: acknowledging the reasons why marriage remains the best option, identifying the reasons why its effectiveness has declined (albeit marginally) in recent decades, and providing solutions to address those challenges. (Without going off on a tangent, I feel like conservatives are always trying to make the case that progressive policies have undermined marriage, and progressives seem reticent to even consider those arguments.) In that quote above, Messina talks about being "solution-oriented", but from where I sit, Messina hasn't actually identified the root cause of the problem, nor has he provided a solution to that problem; instead, he's tried to dodge the problem entirely.

To put this into risk management terms, those of us in the security field are fond of pointing out that you can manage risk, you can mitigate risk, you can transfer risk, sometimes you can even avoid risk, but you can't eliminate it. Messina's solution of just avoiding monogamy altogether would seem to be an attempt at risk avoidance or, potentially, risk transference, but it doesn't seem to actually manage or mitigate the risks. And, in so doing, Messina is eschewing the benefits of monogamy generally, and marriage specifically. If I'm right, then I'm not sure how Messina's philosophy actually passes a cost/benefit analysis.

That brings me to my next point: Messina's history isn't accurate. Messina claims that "monogamy established itself thousands of years ago, when society was ruled by scarcity and resources and potential mates were in limited supply"; but, in fact, periods of limited supply have often driven polygamy and other forms of polyamory. For example, it's frequently provided as one of the justifications for why the Mormons practiced polygamy for several decades before abolishing the practice in the late 1800's. Messina's historical error is consistent with the prevailing view of social progress, but I've been far more frequently impressed with the adage from Ecclesiastes that "there is nothing new under the sun" - as a practicing historian, I can say with a great deal of consequence that the line from Ecclesiastes is a lot more verifiable. In so doing, he makes a common mistake: he assumes that monogamy/marriage's historical popularity is not a function of its historical success. There's a fine line between questioning authority and tradition, and assuming falsely that they are automatically wrong. Beyond being based upon a skewed view of history, his philosophy seems to focus entirely on a flawed perception of historical economics, while ignoring (or at least omitting) other benefits of monogamy/marriage from other disciplines such as psychology, sociology, law, and even more contemporary economics.

I also take some issue with one of Messina's opening observations:

Like most of my generation, I grew up spoon fed monogamist fairy tales that pushed "happily ever after" endings as though achieving one was preordained.

It was like, once you found "the one" and stepped on to the relationship escalator, all the answers became clear -- so long as you kept your eyes on the prize and didn't stray (wait, what was the prize again?). You could spend your whole life living out this fantasy, blissfully ignorant that any other way might be possible, let alone desirable.

I suppose that this is the version that a lot of popular culture presents. I differ with Messina's description of these as "monogamist fairy tales" - I think most of us know couples who have lived long, happy lives together, and who have weathered life's storms better because they had done so with a partner who was committed to sticking by them "for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health". And, in fact, the standard, cliche vows that most people take when getting married imply the truth that I suspect most of us, even Messina, have learned either by being told or through observation: that relationships, and especially marriages, are hard work. They require sacrifice, discipline, patience, and compromise, none of which are a "monogamist fairy tale". I'm reminded of an episode of Friends, The One Where Joey Tells Rachel, which features this exchange:

Monica: I don’t believe in soul mates either.
Chandler: You don’t?
Monica: No. I don’t think that you and I were destined to end up together. I think that we fell in love and work hard at our relationship. Some days we work really hard.

I'm also reminded of an old discussion featuring economist Thomas Sowell:


For anyone who can't watch the video, here's the money quote:

"Married men get an extra bonus because their wives take care of many things and enable them to put more time into their careers."

Now, Sowell participated in that discussion many years ago, so let's extrapolate it to a more contemporary setting: married men and married women get an extra bonus because they work together to take care of many things that enable both husband and wife to put more time into their careers.

I doubt that anyone told Messina that monogamy/marriage was effortless, but if someone ever did, they were doing him a great disservice. Monogamy isn't easy, and neither is marriage. However, I've always thought that the case for why they were preferable to the alternatives were pretty compelling. For these reasons, I've always been very keen to frame my relationship with Lady Jaye as being part of a team: we work together, we triumph together, we work to overcome challenges together, and although we could (and did) function adequately as individuals, we co-opt the opposition campaign's motto from the Scottish secession referendum by saying that we're "better together".

Ultimately, while I acknowledge that Messina (and my friend, and anyone else for that matter) has the right to choose whatever lifestyle they think suits them best, I'm underwhelmed by the intellectual case that Messina has presented to support his relationship philosophy. That said, I think that one point that he makes can be spun a bit to make a relevant point. Messina says:

We're now living in a period of great (though unequally distributed) abundance where our basic needs are sufficiently met, and reproduction is a choice. As a result, the reasons to be with a single mate for life are less urgent. And with the advent of connected mobile devices and the internet, we've entered into the era I've dubbed Big Dating.

Messina is right that since most folks' basic needs are sufficiently met, the pressure to marry young is much less urgent than it once was, though I don't believe that this extends to less urgency to mate for life. I'm skeptical of his conception of "Big Dating", but what "the advent of connected mobile devices and the Internet" has altered is the scope of the supply. Demand remains essentially the same: with few exceptions, nearly everyone wants someone to have and to hold, and most people recognize the benefits of monogamy relative to its costs. However, the information revolution offers unprecedented access to the supply of potential mates. The Internet has made prospective mates easier to find, and with a much higher degree of selectivity. It's enabled people to maintain relationships which would have been difficult or impossible to maintain under earlier circumstances. I can say with some confidence that it's played a fundamental role in my relationship with Lady Jaye, and judging from twenty years of news stories, we're certainly not alone.

As skeptical as I've been of the case that Messina makes for "non-monogamy", I wish both him and my friend happiness and success. And, although I'd have previously wished misfortune to befall Messina as karma for having introduced hashtagging to the masses, I'd be interested to do a point-counterpoint with him on this topic (though I suspect that I would be too busy to actually do that, and that he would also have other endeavours consuming his time).