The Monogamous Imaginary: How CNM Practitioners Challenge and Enforce the Operating Logics of Monogamy

• In Event: Beyond Mononormativity in the Sociology of Sexualities

Abstract

Monogamy is a relationship arrangement that has operated as the default, particularly in the United States. However, in recent years there has been increasing visibility of and more scholarly attention given to consensually non-monogamous (CNM) practices. This research situates monogamy as an operating social force that greatly impacts the organization of society in numerous ways including how people form and negotiate relationships, what they aspire to in relationships, what the expectations associated with various relationships are, and how they end or leave their relationships. I approach monogamy as a social force, or structure that has operated with invisibility in day-to-day life and in scholarship—which I refer to as the monogamous imaginary—and that is just as strong as gender and sexuality and ask how people who are pursuing other relationship arrangements navigate, negotiate, and resist the pressures stemming from the force of monogamy. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with CNM practitioners, I show how people resist monogamy in creative ways, involving both every-day practices and identity work. Ultimately though, this study highlights how even within alternative relationship arrangements the operating logics of monogamy structure and inform relationships and sexuality, even when individuals are seeking to uproot monogamy in their lives. I use this research as a call to other scholars studying relationships and sexuality to consider the forces of monogamy so that we can better understand how this force works and develop tools to combat it with the goal of making our social institutions more inclusive alternative relationship and family arrangements.

Author

• Kiki Higgins, University of Cincinnati