(article by Eric Francis)
A FEW years ago in a storm of indignant inspiration, I wrote a short piece called The Seven Definitions of Monogamy. The joke was basically this: the outer perception is that monogamy is one thing, one concept; in reality, everyone has a different definition, or lack thereof.

The dictionary says it means having one exclusive partner. An older tradition says it means one partner for life. There is a difference. Serial monogamy, as it's currently known, is not really monogamy: I think of it as serial polyamory. You have "many loves" -- but in sequence rather than at one time.

In other definitions of monogamy, one may be in an exclusive relationship and make out with one's colleague in the supply room. Some monogamous partnerships make a provision if one person in the relationship is bisexual; an exemption is granted for the same-sex excursions.

Some people have a spaz attack if their partner so much as looks at another person. In other relationships, opposite-sex friendships are encouraged or accepted, complete with hugging, cuddling and private dinners out. Some forms of monogamy are so strict that they include a form of exclusivity that prevents one partner from going to community college.

Plenty of people cheat: that is, do things their partner is unaware of and would probably not approve of, and they don't ever mention these activities. These scenarios were all included on my list of the Seven Definitions, which actually counted about 20 variations on the term monogamous. What I discovered from writing that essay is there is nothing mono about monogamy. We all think we know what it means, and it means something different to everyone, and often that something is unconscious; that is, it's not negotiated openly. Sometimes it is, and that is usually very cool.

Monogamy may imply exclusivity, but if that is true, then why are there so many things that we don't (necessarily) discuss with our exclusive partners? Could it be that our thoughts and feelings run contrary to our ideas about commitment? Or could it be that we're concerned that if someone really knows us, they won't want to be with us?

When you begin to include the fantasy world -- what we think about rather than what we do -- the territory gets really interesting. How much of what we imagine in our mind's eye would we articulate to a partner or lover, or to anyone? Often real feelings are involved, scenarios that go on for years, taboos are played with or transgressed, and there are many experiments. What do you imagine your partner would think if he or she could view all your fantasies in a crystal ball? What if you could view theirs?

The private quality of fantasy is my main theory of why masturbation remains taboo. It has nothing to do with the physical content of the experience. I believe that it's the psychic content, veiled from view but still resounding in our minds, that makes most people uncomfortable with the topic. If your masturbation is revealed, then the next logical question is what are/were you thinking? I can tell you this: many people really do have fantasies that they would be extremely reluctant to admit. Perhaps because they are so taboo, they would be shocking, or out of fear of hurting one's partner.

Some people use this whole area of repression as psychic fuel, playing with self-exposure, sharing their erotic fantasies completely openly, and living a little more freely.



Chakra Sutra by Via Keller.

VENUS retrograde recalls the past. Most retrogrades do, particularly of inner planets. Venus retrograde is famous for former partners and forgotten friends showing up. Sometimes the connections are to complete old business, sometimes they're just to say hello, and sometimes they show up and stick around.

The past is very much an issue in many relationships, or it is the issue: what we did, who we did, who we were, what we learned and who we may still care about. Vast sectors of the past are off-limits for discussion in relationships. Indeed, for many people, the past is not something they care to think much about. It typically lives in a secluded dimension.

Retrogrades also possess an interior quality; they take us inward, so Venus retrograde is like getting a passport into the world of our private emotional history. An unseen and otherwise unavailable world can open up.

Venus is retrograde least of all the planets -- for just six weeks out of every 18 months, or about 8% of the time. Many of the attributions of Venus are inwardly related: our values, who we love, what we want, how we feel, what we need. The retrograde emphasizes this quality, and it may take us on a journey through inner space taking us back through our feelings about the past.

Where this occurs in the zodiac -- within the Leo-Virgo borderland -- is a particularly intriguing place, because it already involves the integration of our feelings and our experiences.

Using the signs involved, let's make up a few stories. Leo is said to represent passion, daring and impetuous feelings. Not all people with the Sun in Leo exhibit these properties; many factors shape a personality. But Leo itself is known for a kind of childlike approach to the world that does not necessarily consider the consequences.

Moving through the astrological signs counterclockwise, the direction that most of us are taking the journey, Virgo commences a very different story. Virgo is all about considering the consequences, even to the point of paralysis. The critical and extremely self-critical attributes of Virgo are well established. So moving from Leo into early Virgo and stationing retrograde seems like a pausing to consider and review the consequences of our experiences.

It's about integrating those experiences: consciously considering them, and exploring our responses both intellectually and emotionally until we own our journey consciously.

Virgo is Chiron country, and Chiron is about awareness. Many have noted that Chiron is about healing, but I propose that it's specifically about healing through raising awareness. Virgo certainly possesses the hyper-focused consciousness that really makes us look at our lives, and Venus stationing there is leaving no brain cell or emotional cell unturned.

Problems begin, however, when we get too critical, forget our passions and live what some people like to describe as "in our heads." Part of the awareness we need to raise is precisely of that issue, so common to our technological society. This would be a good time to notice the extent to which virtual reality is taking over. The retrograde is a big invitation to backtrack a little bit from the virtual world into the experiential world of Leo.

And as Venus moves toward Leo, it will be an excellent time to remember our passions and dive into them backwards. They may be creative or romantic, they may be the quest for experience or acknowledging desire -- define passions as you will. Yet where Leo is concerned, we move toward experience rather than our ideas about it. The retrograde implies reconnecting with old passions or those encrypted deep within us. We may want to seek out people we cared for deeply in the past and see how they respond to us today.


PART OF awareness is the awareness we share with others, and that is called a relationship. Looked at one way, all the divisions I was describing earlier in this article -- such as what we choose or refuse to express to our partners, or ourselves -- are divisions in awareness.

In much of the territory involving sex and sexuality, we pretend not to be aware of our feelings and our desires. We also can pretend not to be aware of our experience of our past, or how we really feel about it.

I am aware there are many reasons that we don't share things with our partners.The world can be an extremely isolated and lonely place, and it makes a lot of sense to cling to the love that is available; and to reveal nothing that might threaten it.

I would suggest this. The current astrology is at least a compelling invitation to reach a degree of unfettered self-awareness: to keep no secrets from yourself, and to tell yourself no lies.

we are looking to add other people to our relationship for a larger closed relationship, which most folks might define as being polygamous.

FWIW, we define monogamy as totally honoring each other's desires, and in that sense, sexing is not that different from another high risk fun activity. So it might or might not be OK w/ her if I go ice climbing or hang gliding - and if its OK with her, and I want to go, I will. The same is true of sexing with other people.

i interpreted "alternative" to be open to individual interpretation. and my interpretation was my own style of monogamy, which consists of *wanting* a partner to spend my life with, raise a family, and be 99% solo with, while still being open to the occasional threesome or, as i am bisexual, my having a romantic friendship with another gal if my partner was a boy...or with a boy if my partner was a girl.

I found, personally, that alternative monogamy meant, to me, a relationship so defined as the primary that it could/can be called monogamy.

I am an alternative monogamist. I do not invite others in easily. I do not seek them, in fact, they tend to find me. I am bisexual, however, have found the love of my life in the man I married and had a child with. He, however, understands, that I am not built, nor was created, for specific monogamy that denies a portion of who I am, and these needs will rise and if denied, rob me of my basic sensibility for a time. This is not to state I am an animal, instead, it is to state I was created that way, and I do not question that.

I am blessed enough to have a man that finds this to be a beautiful and wonderful thing, rather than a compromise of his manhood or ego. Instead, occasionally, a woman will approach me that was bold enough to approach him, and he states, without compromise, that unless I am there, there is no need to approach me or him further. He, in fact, has been the one to broach bringing in a male, when I had not thought of such. He has no leaning towards bisexuality himself, but a desire to witness what he cannot. Took me a few to bend my brain around that!

I believe, in our hearts and minds, we all define monogamy differently. Righteously? Perhaps. I would be offended were someone to state I had strayed from my mate, but would not deny I have taken women to our bed. I have not strayed, and I never will. But it has taken a decade for he and I to find the place that meant I could be who I am, and he who he is....

let alone, post such a message.

I hope this provides, if only, one point of view on the many and varied definitions of monogamy. Would you care to share yours?