I guess I have to disagree, but that's just fine. My concept of being a serial monogamist is that of one who has one deep, exclusive, committed relationship after another; not going into each relationship assuming it was a temporary situation. I don't share well with others, so I know that I can't be in a fully poly relationship; my partner's monogamy is and trustworthiness in this area is *critical* to my feeling safe and comfortable in Relationship. If you read between the lines, you can probably see that what I'm not saying is that I can have multiple attachments, myself, but that I'm too insecure/selfish/neurotic, what have you, to have it at two-way street, so monogamy feels like a safe default position. I wouldn't invest my full self in a relationship, no matter what the permutations were, if I didn't plan on sticking around and doing my best to make it work out. Peace and Blessings,

~ Misha :o)

> Well maybe serial monogamy could be considered failed monogamy,
> at least if the intent was to stay together. But people who consider
> themselves serial monogamists these days actually do not intend to
> stay together, so I can't see how this can be considered monogamy at all.

"married" has, I think, some justification here. I can certainly report hearing
this use of "serial monogamy" -- being exclusive so long as the couple *is*
a "couple" but knowing/intending that the relationship won't be permanent,
and planning to find a different partner after the current relationship ends.

But, for the record, I can also report the *other* use -- being in a (non-serial)
monogamous relationship that ended, and later beginning another one. It
doesn't have to be "failed" in the (somewhat negative) sense "married"
seemed to use it -- if one partner dies, for example, I'd take umbrage at ANY
suggestion that it therefore was a "failed" relationship.


> As for the definition "the condition or practice of having a single mate
> during a period of time", this is meaningless without defining some
> minimum period of time.

Only in an "engineering" sense. We're talking about human relationships
here, not RPM's of motors or microsecond durations of computer-controlled
timing signals. It is at best naive -- and possibly rather disingenuous -- to
suggest that (in a discussion of relationships, particularly when monogamy
is under discussion) the phrase "a period of time" can be *correctly*
understood to be "any period of time."


> After all, a man can only copulate with one woman at a time, so even
> the owner of a harem can be considered a serial monogamist whose
> current partner is whoever he is currently copulating with, at least for
> the duration of the copulation.

Well, most guys only have one dick, so P-I-V sex is limited to one woman
"at a time," but I know *my* wife would consider it "cheating" if I tried to
claim "but honey, I only ate her out! It's not as if cunnilingus is SEX or
anything..." Likewise if she said, "but honey, I only jerked him off..." So
I'm inclined to say that a man can indeed have sex with multiple women
simultaneously... technically speaking, that is.


- Steve