On January 13th, 2024, I got cheated on. And it sucked. But it made me think deeply about the concept of monogamy, love, and the future of human relationships. A dire question, “Is our concept of ‘The One’ outdated if we are living longer than 100+ years?” In other words, is monogamy the end-all be-all for human relationships? Or is it something we merely existed with, by circumstance, waiting for a newer, fresher upgrade to come along?
Immediately, this strikes most (myself included) as a fanciful if not blasphemous notion. Surely, monogamy is the best — dare I say most romantic — form of love. Two different people with different life experiences, backgrounds, perspectives, outlooks and values come together at a certain moment that just…sparks something. That particular moment may not be the genesis of their love. Indeed, I believe that the love shared between two individuals transcends the collision of their lives. But at the ephemeral moment of contact, they begin new lives, together.
The concept of monogamy is evolutionary, like anything biological. Oversimplifying, pair-bonding was advantageous back in the day because it gave future security for the offspring, being raised in stable relationships of both mother and father, being nurtured, etc. But these traits that fit humans to our early environment of jungles and caves and Dunbar-number-limited tribes do not seem to hold up in the modern world. When human lives are a mere 30-40 years, then pair-bonding makes (retrospective) sense. It’s not that long, it provides time to raise the child, and then the parents die off and the cycle renews.
If we are approaching the majority of the population being centurions+, then these monogamous relations become more like ~40-90 years (depending on a variety of circumstances), a 200-300% jump from 20-30 years. Are we built to pick and choose only one partner for nearly half or even a full century? I do not think for a second that we are evolved for these types of relations. There seems to exist a time limit for monogamy, where entropy increases in human relationships the longer they go on.
This is why if the average person is living to 100, 150, or even 200 years, then being with one person for your life is kind of silly. The remark that some people give, of wanting to explore other people or falling out of love, makes sense in a very unfortunate way. How can you maintain a healthy relationship with one person for over 100 years? No cheating, no dealbreakers, nothing of the sort can happen during those times — if we’re sticking to the rules, of course; ahem. Open relationships may be a commonality in the near future. Or marriage may update to just be a contract to raise children, terminating when the youngest child reaches 18 years of age.
Imposing these restrictions, or time limits, on marriage may be the key to keeping people together. 18 years is indeed a long time but it’s far shorter than 80 or 100. This gives people the chance to explore other people in a way that suits them and the community — no grief of being cheated on and no anger that the relationship didn’t work out.
As we extend lifespan, we may have to shorten marriages, or rethink the concepts of monogamy altogether.
An obvious question: could technology augment romantic relations between humans? Unlikely from my perspective. Currently, we are seeing technology replace human romance, with chatbots like Replika and even ChatGPT in some regards offering artificial proximates to sexual/romantic scarcity. In many cases, the human user develops real feelings towards and for their chatbot, giving it names, undressing the avatar, and even proposing — a large majority of users are surveyed to already be in real-life relationships, which tells you something.
What about VR sex and VR partners? These fall into the same trap as the chatbots mentioned earlier. They may solve some short-term issues, but long-term, if every individual opts for a VR partner, things may get…complicated. Especially when it comes to procreation and extending the lifespan of the civilization. If everyone is playing an individualistic game with love, keeping population numbers steady becomes tricky. This also might be why monogamy has outlasted all its competitors. Not just the forced religious aspect, but the fact that it offers a stable situation for offspring to develop, as mentioned before. If there are multiple partners, the politics become quite severe, violent.
So where are we in this blog post? We understand why monogamy succeeded over polygamy due to the advantages of pair-bonds; we see how technology may not offer solutions out of these core problems of our nature.
But we haven’t come to any fuzzy, warm, good-feeling conclusion. Monogamy, by all accounts, may be totally antiquated. In fact, it may be limiting to most people. Tying oneself down in marriages that last more than half a century (at best) may be the link to destroyed mental health, murder, depression, and a host of other issues that plague society. The entire concept of marriage, then, also comes into question. Courtship and dating (one at a time) also seems to become fuzzy. For there is no reason to lock oneself down to one partner anymore if everyone is living very, very (relatively) long lives.
Thus, lifespan and the One, may interfere with each other. Living to 150 means that having one partner is just not the smartest route. Sure, having children with one partner is manageable, but then divorce comes into the picture and the situation becomes ugly incredibly quickly. Frankly, if marriage had term limits, like Presidents, where people knew the precise parameters and length shared between each other, it may make for far more quality and deep relationships.
Instead of feeling forced to be with one person, or stuck, you can choose very carefully which person you want to spend (arbitrary number) 30 years with. If you pick the wrong One, then that’s where divorce comes in. But if you pick the right One, then you can have children, raise them to be fantastic, independent humans, and say goodbye to your beloved and search for a new mate; or, if you choose, renew your contract accordingly. Having these dynamic contracts, or smart contracts, which don’t rely on fuzzyethereal emotions but raw purpose.
Of course, I could point out at least seven things wrong with this blog post. I find it difficult to back, let alone write about, ideas that I don’t fully agree with. However, thinking about lifespan and infidelity, I somewhat understand my ex partner’s (potential) reasoning. Human lives are long, and we don’t want to end up with the wrong person and life horrid, ugly, difficult, draining lives. Picking the right One is a life or death decision. This means that, through some kind of social engineering or a nicer term, we could construct “smart relationships” that avoid the pitfalls of traditional, “analog” relationships. Further, we could offer alternatives to people who want kids but don’t see the reason for marriage or staying with one person for the rest of their lives.
As we grow older, and hopefully wiser, maybe our age-old concepts will be forced to update with us. This doesn’t mean love is dead. On the contrary, love is very much alive. Sometimes, though, she assumes different forms. Growing older means we’ll have to deal with that. Wisdom, however, means we’ll eventually be okay with it.