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Speaker 1: Years ago, a man I loved very much handed me

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Speaker 1: a book called The Ethical Slut. It's essentially a how

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Speaker 1: to guide for non monogamous relationships. This title was emphatically

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Speaker 1: not on my Christmas list. This man and I had

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Speaker 1: been struggling for a long time to try to sort

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Speaker 1: out a viable relationship. We were on again, off again tears, ultimatums,

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Speaker 1: and I could not believe he had the goal to

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Speaker 1: hand me this book. Weren't we working through trust issues already?

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Speaker 1: Hadn't we just started to see a therapist, and with

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Speaker 1: so much work to do, he's out here looking for

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Speaker 1: permission to get something on the side. I felt like

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Speaker 1: I'd gone to a tea party and been served a

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Speaker 1: Molotov cocktail. The man, on the other hand, seemed to

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Speaker 1: think this book could actually help us. When my temper cooled,

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Speaker 1: which it did at geological place, I reassessed the situation.

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Speaker 1: I had several well adjusted friends in non monogamous arrangements.

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Speaker 1: Some cultures even expect people to have more than one

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Speaker 1: mate at a time. Okay, I got ahead of myself. High. Hello,

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Speaker 1: I'm Dessa. This is deeply human and together we are

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Speaker 1: going to rummage around your intuitions about romantic love, monogamy,

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Speaker 1: and its alternatives. For the word Nerds in the room ahead,

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Speaker 1: put your hands down, I see you. Yes. Monogamy strictly speaking,

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Speaker 1: describes being married to only one person, but we're using

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Speaker 1: it here as we do in casual conversation to describe

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Speaker 1: having a sexual relationship with only one person at a time.

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Speaker 1: Monogamy is definitely the norm where I grew up, But

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Speaker 1: why should romantic relationships be exclusive when other relationships don't

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Speaker 1: have to be? Like, we can love more than one sibling,

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Speaker 1: more than one parent, and if we run into a

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Speaker 1: friend having lunch with someone else, we don't flip the

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Speaker 1: table over. So why was I so reluctant to even

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Speaker 1: consider a more open relationship? If you're committed loving relationships

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Speaker 1: have been exclusive. Is that the product of a conscious

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Speaker 1: choice or just social conditioning? Why do our relationships have

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Speaker 1: to be one at a time? First, let's talk about monogamy.

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Speaker 1: We need to talk about it the way we talk

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Speaker 1: about sobriety. You can fall off the wagon, sober back up,

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Speaker 1: and get back on the wagon. And I'm here to

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Speaker 1: tell people, and I'm often in the position of having

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Speaker 1: to tell people in monogamous relationships, that it's the person

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Speaker 1: you were with for forty years only cheated on you

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Speaker 1: once or twice. They were good at it, not bad

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Speaker 1: at it. They were good at it, good at monogamy.

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Speaker 1: My name is Dan Savage, and I write Savage Love,

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Speaker 1: which is syndicated sex and or relationship and ice column

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Speaker 1: that I've been writing for thirty years, and I also

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Speaker 1: host the Savage Love Cast. And a lot of people

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Speaker 1: are interested in what Dan has to say on this

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Speaker 1: stuff because podcast is crazy popular. He's written a best

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Speaker 1: selling book, and what he says is that our understanding

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Speaker 1: of monogamy is in serious need of an overhaul. Western

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Speaker 1: convention usually presupposes that love and monogamy go hand in hand,

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Speaker 1: like if you love someone and the relationship is serious,

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Speaker 1: you're exclusive and if someone cheats, well, that's grounds for

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Speaker 1: media termination. We ask for perfect fidelity, but we don't

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Speaker 1: expect perfection from our partners and other aspects of the relationship.

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Speaker 1: And Dan thinks that's sort of absolutism about monogamy, sort

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Speaker 1: of heartless. If you're with somebody for ten twenty years, kids,

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Speaker 1: you merged finances, social networks, families, and it comes out

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Speaker 1: of your partner has cheated on you five years ago

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Speaker 1: and you find out about it, maybe that's something you

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Speaker 1: should be able to get past. By placing so much

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Speaker 1: weight on sexual fidelity, monogamists might set themselves up to

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Speaker 1: throw away a good thing if somebody misses up. Dan

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Speaker 1: himself is married and he's been with his husband, Terry,

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Speaker 1: for a very long time, and over the course of

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Speaker 1: their relationship, they revised the terms of their arrangement. My

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Speaker 1: relationship with Terry twenty years ago, we were mostly monogamous.

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Speaker 1: When we were having sex. It was almost always usually

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Speaker 1: with each other, but sometimes, you know, when the planets aligned,

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Speaker 1: we could have sex with other people together or separately.

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Speaker 1: But as an out gay couple in the middle of

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Speaker 1: the marriage equality debate and as parents, when we told

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Speaker 1: people we were in, you know, not monogamous, people made

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Speaker 1: assumptions about troops of men, strange men coming in and

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Speaker 1: out of our house at all hours of the day

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Speaker 1: and night. You know, it feels like like the mainstream

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Speaker 1: popular imagination we conceptualized like the opposite of monogamy as

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Speaker 1: either jact loneliness or NonStop promiscuity. Oh my god. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's why I coined the term monogamoush I kept saying

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Speaker 1: mostly monogamous, and so I just thought we were monogamous

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Speaker 1: with some squish. There are so many terms for the

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Speaker 1: many ways to have a modern relationship. If you found

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Speaker 1: yourself referencing a dog eared copy of Urban Dictionary to

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Speaker 1: decipher the acronyms on Tinder, you might have also run

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Speaker 1: across E n M or ethically non monogamous, or words

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Speaker 1: like polyamory or open relationship where everybody's got permission to

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Speaker 1: see other people. When Dan talks about non monogamy, he

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Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a hedonist throwing weekday orgies. He sounds

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Speaker 1: kind of prim When will we stop pretending that relationships

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Speaker 1: have to be defined by the sexual connection that may

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Speaker 1: have brought that relationship together at the start? When will

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Speaker 1: we stop putting so much emphasis on sucks? But I

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Speaker 1: feel that you do you due diligence to say, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm a favor of monogamy if you choose that,

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Speaker 1: and I wanted to work for you, But then I

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Speaker 1: I don't believe. I feel like you talk about monogamy

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Speaker 1: like a needle exchange program, like if you can't quit it,

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Speaker 1: then here's the way to try to do it safely. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I guess if you're going to do this dangerous, stupid,

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Speaker 1: reckless thing, you should do it as safely as possible. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I can see that there are advantages in

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Speaker 1: a monogamous relationship. Also myself having been in monogamous relationships,

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Speaker 1: you know a certain amount of emotional security, definitely, you

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Speaker 1: know sexual safety. The monogomous relationship I was in for

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Speaker 1: five years was high to the HIV AIDS epidemic. It

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Speaker 1: kept us safe. It's probably one of the reasons I'm

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Speaker 1: alive now. Even though we weren't perfectly monogamous, or I

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Speaker 1: wasn't the entire time we together. Dan since built a

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Speaker 1: life where important relationships can be plural rather and strictly singular.

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Speaker 1: The first person I knew to really commit to a

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Speaker 1: non monogamous lifestyle, let's call him Roy. We've had an

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Speaker 1: actor voice up his bits and will explain why in

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Speaker 1: a second. Roy met his now wife when they were teenagers.

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Speaker 1: We've been together since we hugged in a play in

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Speaker 1: high school. Wait did you hug in a play? Because

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Speaker 1: that was like written into the script of the play. Yes, okay, cool,

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Speaker 1: And then you were like I think also off stage,

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Speaker 1: we should also just hug until um we're dead. Right.

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Speaker 1: Somewhere near the end of our college years was when

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Speaker 1: we decided to be non monogamous, and maybe two years

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Speaker 1: after that is when we got married. The decision to

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Speaker 1: open up their relationship was sparked by a request from

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Speaker 1: a female friend of Royce. She was lesbian, looking to

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Speaker 1: get pregnant, wanted to do with the analog way, and

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Speaker 1: so she asked if roy would be willing to have

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Speaker 1: sex with her. Roy said he'd consider it, but obviously

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Speaker 1: he had to talk about it with this partner. I

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Speaker 1: shouldn't say as a name, right, all right, my first

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Speaker 1: big crush was Janine Garoffalo, so I'll say Janine. So

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Speaker 1: me and Janine were out for dinner. A brief interruption

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Speaker 1: for a little exposition for those of you who missed

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Speaker 1: the nineties cult classic reality bites. Janine Garoffalo is a

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Speaker 1: comic and an actor. Former Saturday Night Live cast member

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Speaker 1: with dark hair, quick wit, expressive features. A favorite of

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Speaker 1: progressive bookish boys back in high school. Roy carry on. So,

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Speaker 1: me and Janine were out for dinner, and I brought up, Hey,

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Speaker 1: my friend asked today if I could get her pregnant,

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Speaker 1: what do you think? And it started this whole conversation

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Speaker 1: and we kind of figured out like, oh, actually, like

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Speaker 1: the physical part of it as an a comfortable if

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Speaker 1: we're being honest, The part about cheating that we were

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Speaker 1: scared of that seems the most harmful was the like

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Speaker 1: lying and the sneaking about it, and if we erased

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Speaker 1: that part of it, that the physical part didn't seem

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Speaker 1: like it would be that much of a challenge. You know,

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Speaker 1: we'd been together at that point years and years, and

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Speaker 1: it felt like we had been totally honest with each other,

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Speaker 1: but one conversation that we had never had was the

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Speaker 1: honest I'm attracted to other people conversation. We just kind

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Speaker 1: of pretended that that we weren't. We finally like admitted, like, yes,

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Speaker 1: as I walk through the world, I notice other people

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Speaker 1: that are attracted or that are attractive, and I am

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Speaker 1: attracted to them. And so we started the conversation of like, well,

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Speaker 1: what would it look like if we got to pursue

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Speaker 1: some of that attraction And we talked about it and

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Speaker 1: discussed and wrote and rewrote rule rules and read books

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Speaker 1: for I mean probably six months or more before either

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Speaker 1: of us actually went out on a date with anybody.

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Speaker 1: Slowly and cautiously, they started to see other people, which

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Speaker 1: at first confused the daylights out of their friends twenty

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Speaker 1: years ago or whatever. It was like, it was hard

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Speaker 1: to find information about it, and it was hard to

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Speaker 1: like to find other people that knew a lot about it.

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Speaker 1: And most people we were telling would be like, so

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Speaker 1: you're breaking up and it's like no, and and they're

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Speaker 1: like I thought things were okay with you guys, and

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Speaker 1: it's like no, actually, like this is a sign that

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Speaker 1: things are really good. That were like so comfortable that

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Speaker 1: we're messing with it and like trying something else. Being

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Speaker 1: very thinky people, Roy and Jeanine were deliberate about trying

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Speaker 1: to make connections with people who were already living a

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Speaker 1: non monogamous lifestyle successfully many years ago. We went to

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Speaker 1: like a local polyamory meet up and it was at

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Speaker 1: a Turtle Bread. We were sitting there and this is

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Speaker 1: like where like a month then, where we haven't even

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Speaker 1: started dating anyone yet. We're just looking for people to

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Speaker 1: talk to and listener. I must interrupt here. Turtle Bread

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Speaker 1: is like a homey, neighborhood Minneapolis bakery slash restaurant place

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Speaker 1: that makes a subway sandwich shop look like Studio fifty four.

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Speaker 1: It's just like very mild mannered um like mom jeans

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Speaker 1: dog bowl out front. It's like norm core with carbs.

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Speaker 1: So when you kiss on the mouth four people in

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Speaker 1: a row in the middle of the Midwest at a

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Speaker 1: turtle bread, you've been noticed at that point by everyone

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Speaker 1: in the restaurant, right, Like, it's a fairly public display.

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Speaker 1: That wouldn't tend to happen there, And so we were like,

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Speaker 1: that's maybe not our vibe. But they did end up

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Speaker 1: finding other Polly friends that were a better fit and

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Speaker 1: didn't creet with Tom. We kind of just like talked

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Speaker 1: about like science and art and politics, and like we

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Speaker 1: were just kind of we were like, oh, we're just,

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Speaker 1: you know, fairly like minded and curious and interested people.

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Speaker 1: In those early years, however, Roy was worried the choices

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Speaker 1: he made in his private life could be professionally risky.

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Speaker 1: He's worked in public service for a very long time,

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Speaker 1: and over his career has been recognized with some significant accolades.

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Speaker 1: I've been doing the job that I've been doing now

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Speaker 1: for over fifteen years, and I think when I was

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Speaker 1: newer and the world was maybe different than it is now.

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Speaker 1: I was very worried that, like, if this was a

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Speaker 1: public thing, it's possible I would just get fired or

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Speaker 1: demoted or shelved in some way, just because like the

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Speaker 1: place I work wouldn't want that kind of reputation attached

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Speaker 1: to it. I mean, I think it's anyone who's doing

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Speaker 1: something not heteronormative, not whatever, can be looked at as perverts.

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Speaker 1: You know. For me, my life feels very very normal.

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Speaker 1: But the most immediate motive for discretion. The reason we've

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Speaker 1: got an actor doing Roy's side of the conversation. His family,

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Speaker 1: Janine Garofalo's family is very, very conservative. It seems natural

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Speaker 1: to have strong feelings about our own love lives, but

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Speaker 1: we've also got such intense emotions about how other people

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Speaker 1: are loving other people, even if they seem happy. Why

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Speaker 1: some people react like as if my open relationship is

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Speaker 1: a threat to their monogamous relationship, you know, not that

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Speaker 1: like I'm trying to sleep with their partner or anything,

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Speaker 1: but just like the existence of open relationships or people

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Speaker 1: that might be happy in those is some sort of

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Speaker 1: message of danger to the relationship they have. And I

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Speaker 1: think that's true of like a lot of ways of

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Speaker 1: living that have been norm When there's an alternative presented,

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Speaker 1: people can be really uncomfortable with that or feel like

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Speaker 1: it's an attack when you know it's obvious people are

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Speaker 1: living their own life. Sexual exclusivity is part of the

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Speaker 1: predetermined course that a romantic relationship is expected to follow.

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Speaker 1: So where is this course supposed to be heading exactly?

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Speaker 1: Philosopher Luke Brunning describes it as the relationship escalator. In

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Speaker 1: our society, we typically think that relationships ought to deepen

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Speaker 1: over time. Right that you start off, you meet someone,

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Speaker 1: you might get to know them a bit, perhaps you

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Speaker 1: start dating them. Then over time you might become exclusive.

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Speaker 1: Then you might say, oh, now this person's my boyfriend.

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Speaker 1: Then people will actually say, ah, you know, when you're

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Speaker 1: gonna get engaged, when you're gonna get married. Let's say

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Speaker 1: you get married. Then they might start asking when are

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Speaker 1: you're gonna buy a house or have children. It's on

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Speaker 1: and so forth. So the relationship exclated this really simple

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Speaker 1: idea that once you're in a relationship, that relationship has

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Speaker 1: to sort of change and involve over time to become

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Speaker 1: more complicated, more committed in a way that ends up

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Speaker 1: with your lives practically and often legally. Entwined Luke is

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Speaker 1: a lecturer at the University of Birmingham and the UK

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Speaker 1: who researches personal relationships and the philosophy of emotions. I

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Speaker 1: asked how popular monogamy is these days, like who's doing

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Speaker 1: it and where. I'd say that as an ideal, monogamy

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Speaker 1: is kind of spread around the world, so it's practiced

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Speaker 1: fairly widely. There are some exceptions, but even in countries

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Speaker 1: in the Middle East or some parts of the African continent,

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Speaker 1: monogamy is increasingly taking hold as a romantic ideal am

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Speaker 1: I think of it sort of as a as one

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Speaker 1: of many cultural exports. You know, is it like the

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Speaker 1: new Drake record spreads around the world, or is it

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Speaker 1: the fact that you have communities that are landing on

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Speaker 1: this form independently of one another. I think the answer

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Speaker 1: would be a bit of It's certainly something that's been exported.

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Speaker 1: Christian miscenaries and colonizes in general have done a lot

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Speaker 1: to help promote this as an ideal. I don't spend

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Speaker 1: a lot of time kicking it in missionaries circles personally,

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Speaker 1: but while monogamy is an ideal may be spreading around

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Speaker 1: the world. In practice, Americans anyway, may be more likely

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Speaker 1: to try other models. Researchers from the Kinsey Institute and

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Speaker 1: Chapman University in the US surveyed single Americans about polyamory.

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Speaker 1: One out of six people expressed a desire to engage

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Speaker 1: in polyamory, and what out of nine said they've done

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Speaker 1: it at some point in their life. But in trying

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Speaker 1: to sort stuff out with the X who handed me

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Speaker 1: that book, I remember wondering if a predilection for monogamy

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Speaker 1: was just sort of baked into some people and not others,

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Speaker 1: and if so, asking someone to change seemed at best

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Speaker 1: feudal and at worst like proselytizing. Luke says that modern

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Speaker 1: lifestyles may have something to do with the kind of

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Speaker 1: relayation ships who find attractive. Today. For example, many young

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Speaker 1: people are living less settled lives than they used to.

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Speaker 1: They don't live in the same place for a very

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Speaker 1: very long amount of time. The idea of owning a

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Speaker 1: house with a picket fence and a garden full of

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Speaker 1: you know, goats and vegetables and the and their their

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Speaker 1: single partner is something that many people just find very

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Speaker 1: hard to envisage at all, Right, And that's not because

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Speaker 1: they can't imagine it, but because they think it's inaccessible

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Speaker 1: for them. People are much more sort of networked individuals

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Speaker 1: these days, drawing sources of kind of emotional, social, cultural

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Speaker 1: satisfaction and stability from all kinds of different people in

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Speaker 1: their lives. I just want to make sure that there

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Speaker 1: was one moment that I heard correctly. Did you say

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Speaker 1: a house with a picket fence and a garden and

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Speaker 1: a goat? Yes? Okay, cool, thank you. That says a

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Speaker 1: lot about me. I gotta up my own. I gotta

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Speaker 1: up my own fairytale game. Monogamy is embedded in the

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Speaker 1: very first stories we learned about love. I think fairy

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Speaker 1: tales Cinderella is essentially monogamy as foot fetish. But are

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Speaker 1: those norms as relevant and resonant for someone like sexpert

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Speaker 1: Dan Savage in the same sex relationship in heterosexual land?

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Speaker 1: I think like commitment and monogamy are often like this

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Speaker 1: two for one bundled package. Does that work similarly in

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Speaker 1: the gay world? No, and it never has. I'm fifty

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Speaker 1: six years old. I came out when I was sixteen

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Speaker 1: seventeen years old. And monogamy was always the conversation, it

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Speaker 1: was negotiated, it was opt in, and for straight people,

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Speaker 1: monogamy has always seemed to be a default setting from

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Speaker 1: the very first night a couple spends together. Dan says

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Speaker 1: that gay relationships necessarily involve a lot of talking. When

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Speaker 1: a man and a man are going to bed together

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Speaker 1: for the first time, they don't get to consent and

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Speaker 1: stop communicating. They get to consent, yes, let's have sex,

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Speaker 1: and then they keep talking because what's going to happen

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Speaker 1: next isn't obvious, can't be assumed. You have to talk

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Speaker 1: about what you want to do, what your desires are.

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Speaker 1: Straight people avoid that conversation. Straight couples might just presume

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Speaker 1: they agree with sex should be what a relationship should be,

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Speaker 1: whereas gay couples don't have the same scripts to lean on,

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Speaker 1: so they got to negotiate every step. What do you

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Speaker 1: actually want out of this? What should we build together?

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Speaker 1: Dan Savage is one man leading one life who has

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Speaker 1: not been elected official representative of gay people around the globe,

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Speaker 1: but in his worldview, monogamy is just not the gold

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Speaker 1: standard of romantic connection. I don't think gay men are

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Speaker 1: failing at monogamy. I think gay men are succeeding at

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Speaker 1: relationships and non monogamy. Okay, enough about love for a minute,

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Speaker 1: let's talk money. It's time for econ. I'm Marina at Shade.

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Speaker 1: I'm assistant professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at

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Speaker 1: the University of British Columbia, and my specialization is the

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Speaker 1: economics of sex and love. So from the economic vantage points,

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Speaker 1: what are the incentives for monogamous relationships? Well, throughout history,

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Speaker 1: there's been a lot of incentives for monogamous relationships, particularly

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Speaker 1: from men. Men in general historically haven't been big fans

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Speaker 1: of putting their resources into children that are not their own,

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Speaker 1: and so there's been a lot of incentive for women

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Speaker 1: to be monogamous so that men are raising other men's children.

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Speaker 1: And then the idea of like institutionalized monogamy, like living

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Speaker 1: in a society that really really frowns upon people having

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Speaker 1: multiple sexual partners, That really comes out of the idea

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Speaker 1: that you know, you can't supervise somebody all the time,

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Speaker 1: So what you do is you set up a system

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Speaker 1: that is either system of just like social norms or

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Speaker 1: religion or laws. The great that structure so that when

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Speaker 1: you're not around the other person, mostly the woman here

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Speaker 1: is not off having sexual relationships with other people. Marriage,

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Speaker 1: it's worth noting, hasn't always been considered a fundamentally romantic endeavor.

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Speaker 1: In the past, marriage was much more of an economic relationship.

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Speaker 1: People got married to produce a household, essentially to produce children.

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Speaker 1: But in much of today's world that's changed more hallmark

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Speaker 1: less labor forced marriage started to being about other things.

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Speaker 1: It started being about more about love and companionship and

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Speaker 1: about the joy of spending time with another person. And

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Speaker 1: then once you make marriage more about those things, then

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Speaker 1: it opens it up to other possibilities because it's no

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Speaker 1: longer and economic relationship. If it's just about love and companionship,

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Speaker 1: then why not have a triad? Right dang Marina, quick

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Speaker 1: turn on that one. Also, technological and inss have changed

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Speaker 1: our attitudes about how sex and relationships fit together, and

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Speaker 1: so as birth control technology comes better and better, then

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Speaker 1: the incentives change. Right, You're less concerned that your partner

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Speaker 1: is going to go off and have a baby with

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Speaker 1: someone else if she is sexually active with another man,

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Speaker 1: and so that will erode away some of the incentives

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Speaker 1: to enforcing monogamy and relationships. If our incentives for sexual

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Speaker 1: exclusivity of a rooting, does that mean that monogamy is

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Speaker 1: on its way out and rom coms are dead and

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Speaker 1: Cinderella just stays out all night barefooted and abisa phone party.

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Speaker 1: M h, not yet. I know. We see a lot

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Speaker 1: of studies where we say that young people, you know,

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Speaker 1: the next generation that's coming up, is kind of less

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Speaker 1: tied to the idea of monogamy. They're more open to

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Speaker 1: having relationships with multiple people. Um, it's gonna be really

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Speaker 1: interesting to see once they get a little bit further

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Speaker 1: on in their lives and their children become involved, whether

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Speaker 1: or not they'll be as receptive to those ideas, and

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Speaker 1: that I think we still have to wait and see.

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Speaker 1: When I took honest stock of my own resistance to polyamory,

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Speaker 1: at least a part of me was concerned about being judged.

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Speaker 1: I worried what people might think, which is allows you

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Speaker 1: a way to make big and fundamentally personal choices, and

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Speaker 1: I want my decisions on who and how to love

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Speaker 1: to be based on the gossip at in neighbor's house.

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Speaker 1: But people do pass sweeping judgments on other people's love

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Speaker 1: lives Roy was worried about it. Dan Savage, the Love

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Speaker 1: and Sex columnist, says his relationship has been dismissed out

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Speaker 1: of hand for not adhering to convention, like it just

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Speaker 1: wouldn't count. It used to only be people who are

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Speaker 1: monogamous telling those of us who are not a monogamoust

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Speaker 1: that we were doing love wrong, or that we weren't

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Speaker 1: in love, and that if we were in love, we

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Speaker 1: couldn't do this. I don't look at monogamous people and

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Speaker 1: say you're not in love, because if you were really

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Speaker 1: in love, you'd be having three ways. I never say

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Speaker 1: that to monogamous people. It's the mixing monogamy love that

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Speaker 1: that really harms, not open relationships like mine, but monogamous relationships.

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Speaker 1: Dan suggests that monogamous arrangements actually de emphasize the sexual

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Speaker 1: aspect of a relationship and in doing so, can strengthen

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Speaker 1: the emotional connection that so many of us seem so

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Speaker 1: concerned about. And as for him and his husband Terry,

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Speaker 1: they are salad. We've been together almost thirty years now,

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Speaker 1: and yet despite having been together for three decades, I

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Speaker 1: have been in the position a numerous occasions where someone

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Speaker 1: will look at me and say, as we're talking about relationships,

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Speaker 1: I could never do what you and Terry do because

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Speaker 1: I value commitment too highly. All of my marriages have

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Speaker 1: been monogamous. Unpack that, like Terry and I've been gether

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Speaker 1: for three decades, we aren't committed to each other. And

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Speaker 1: you have been married multiple times and each one of

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Speaker 1: those marriages was monogamous. So you were committed to monogamy.

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Speaker 1: You never committed to a human being, to a person,

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Speaker 1: you committed to that to an idea, I committed to

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Speaker 1: Terry and he committed to me. I have no idea

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Speaker 1: where that copy of the Ethical Slut is now. Wasn't

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Speaker 1: quite my cup of gasoline. These many years later, I

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Speaker 1: still generally regard myself as a monogamist, though I'm single

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Speaker 1: at the moment, so maybe a nonpracticing monogamist an aspiring monogamist.

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Speaker 1: But I find myself less surprised and less scandalized by

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Speaker 1: the array of romantic arrangements. Even falling hard for someone

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they're the only one. Polyamory might even

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Speaker 1: alleviate some of the intense pressures and stresses imposed by

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Speaker 1: expectations of perfect fidelity and I'm personally more eager to

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Speaker 1: design a relationship based on the specific desires of the

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Speaker 1: people in it, rather than a blind allegiance to a

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Speaker 1: societal script. Meaningful commitments can be made with or without

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Speaker 1: monogamous agreements. It's some of us might skip the romantic

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Speaker 1: buffet altogether, and some of us still queue up to

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Speaker 1: board the relationship escalator hoping for their goat. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of people, you know, one love might not fitt all.

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Speaker 1: Deeply Human is a BBC World Service and American public

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Speaker 1: media co production with I Heart Media. It's hosted by Mesa.

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Speaker 1: Find me online at Dessa on Instagram and Dessa Darling

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Speaker 1: on Twitter. We humans are real sensitive to power dynamics.

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Speaker 1: We key into one another's body language, vocal register, patterns

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Speaker 1: of eye contact, all possible cues as to who is

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Speaker 1: Alpha at this particular business meeting or birthday party or

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Speaker 1: whatever next time on deeply Human. Why do we form

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Speaker 1: social hierarchies