The Marital Smorgasbord

“Even many devout monogamists admit that it can be hard for one partner to supply the full smorgasbord of the other’s sexual and emotional needs,” writes Olga Khazan in The Atlantic, in a kind of apologia for “polyamory” delivered with the magazine’s considerable cultural authority, and Leah Libresco responds:

There’s an enormous assumption tucked into that first sentence. Monogamy isn’t premised on the idea that one person can ever be everything to a partner. When a marriage fails to fulfill “the full smorgasbord” it’s not a sign that anything’s wrong. An expectation that a partner (or full set of them) is meant to be a perfect complement is destructive to romantic and platonic relationships.

This idea, she explains, misunderstands both marriage and friendship. The latter is (this is my paraphrase of her argument) a good in itself that also supports the good of marriage and treating marriage as if it were friendship hurts both kinds of relation.

It’s natural for friends to fill the gaps in a marital relationship, indulging interests that aren’t shared with the spouse, providing emotional support, and simply varying our lens on the world. After all, C. S. Lewis’s observation in The Four Loves that “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other. Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest,” wasn’t meant as an aspirational image for spouses.

Why this idea of marriage is so destructive and what people who hold it as an ideal miss she goes on to explain, and I commend the article.