Monogamy Revisited – Natural or Not?

I have written before about monogamy.

I gave two views on monogamy: one view states God designed men for monogamy and the other is that men are promiscuous by nature and that they must harness and manage their sexual urges for the betterment of humanity and for the betterment of their own spirituality. 

For years I have held the position that men are not wired for monogamy. Male biology does not seem to be wired for it. We seem to crave sexual variety and quickly grow discontent with our singular source of sexual access. Granted, mere biological optimization speaks neither for nor against the morality of something. Much of Christianity wars against our nature. Man’s biology seems to naturally pull him towards promiscuity. But one new perspective is that this nature is merely the result of no mental discipline. 

It is worth performing a thought experiment and analysis on, though I still believe that men are not purpose-built for monogamy. It seems to me that both men and women have internal wars they have to fight against their own very nature in order to be obedient to God. Men resist the urge to spread their sexual seed as far and wide as possible. And women resist the urge to constantly trade up, or they try to reorient their thinking to find Christianity attractive [not arousing] and value those traits in a man. 

I think one of the places I have gone wrong before in writing about monogamy is not separating man into his different drives. I do not believe we should think of monogamy as something that man as a whole is or is not wired for. What I mean by this is that man has multiple layers.

The libido of man is not optimized for monogamy. If a man is trying to remain sexually disciplined – his biology will be warring against him. The Coolidge effect and subsequent experiments are demonstrative of that reality. 

There is no way for one singular source of sexual access [a wife] to compete with a variety [multiple girlfriends/pornography] of novel sources in a one-to-one comparison. Again – we are speaking strictly of the amoral male libido in this circumstance. When the question is simply about sex and sex drive, men are wired to want multiple partners. This is something that Christian men have to discipline themselves against in order to manage. 

The spirit of man is optimized for monogamy. Now the higher mentality of man may want to be monogamous. Maybe this is natural, maybe it is the result of feminine-centric society indoctrinating him about “Soul mates” and other common myths, it is difficult to truly tell. 

I think when the higher mind of a man competes with his libido, most libidos will win. The discipline to manage themselves is simply not present in most men. I believe I’ve read before by another author that “biology trumps conviction”. I believe that statement – which is why environmental control is so critical to any form of discipline.

Want to be monogamous? Create an environment that supports monogamy. Because your biology is doing you no favors. 

This is the bedrock philosophy of why men shouldn’t be alone with other women. And I think men and women cannot be friends at all. Why would a man have to avoid being with other women if he were naturally monogamous? The answer is: he isn’t. And if a man was alone with a woman, his biology would be waging total war against his conviction, and it would be difficult to see who would come out the victor.

The best-case scenario is to never engage in those battles. This is done by environmental control. Do not trust in your character, trust in habit and environment. 

On Mental Training

If you never provide a child with any direction, he will grow up to be an uncivilized man. If you never train a dog, it will grow up to be disobedient and feral. Could it be that men are the same way with regard to sexual training and discipline? 

Perhaps men actually are designed to be monogamous, but they lack training and direction with regard to sexual discipline. They have never been given any direction on how to manage their sex drive. Men receive no training on how to handle their own physiology or use it productively in order to be successful in the world. 

And it is no wonder. Because what do men in the church know about this? They have obviously failed on the front of sexual education for young Christians for generations. 

You have two basic types of men in the church. These are opposing extremes, and they are certainly not all there is, but they are the most glaring examples.  

1. The unfaithful man acts on every sexual impulse he has and eventually relinquishes his religion and goes into the world or finds a church tolerant enough to ignore the bible’s teaching on marriage and accept his adulterous lifestyle.
   
2. And on the other side, you have the castrated beta male. These are the men who come out of the womb without testicles. They are subservient to females, pedestalize them, and mindlessly self-sacrificer to the vagina gods in order to receive their good favor. This man loves to tell you about how “rewarding” and “fulfilling” his marriage is, despite observable evidence to the contrary. 

The former makes up about 20% of the church and the latter makes up the remaining 80%. 

What would a man look like if he was actually trained from his youth to manage his sexual impulses? Or better yet, to convert them into success? That would be a rare breed of man. He would not fall into any of these two categories. 

But there will never be any type of training like that because what religious man knows anything about sexual discipline? Most religious men either have no sexual access, or babble on about sexual purity one minute and are masturbating to pornography the next minute. Have any of these men seen the heat of the sexual battlefield, claimed victory, and lived to tell the tale? 

The majority of men who are masculine and high value commonly fail to save sex for marriage. So we cannot listen to their advice – they lost their war. Those who are beta males are the ones we want to avoid imitating our actions as well if we are interested in avoiding sexless marriages. 

But men could be built better [regarding sexual discipline] from a young age, no one can deny this. One of the problems is far too much feminine influence at the expense of masculine influence. When kids spend all day around mom is it any wonder when they start acting like mom [even the sons]? 

Men could be raised and trained to manage their urges, channel their sex drive and transmute it into something better. Convert it into a drive for success until it can be used morally, based on the principles of the Bible, within marriage.

I always hesitate to make comments about “biblically correct sex” because there is no way to talk about it without looking and sounding like a loser. Probably because the only people who talk about it are losers on the scale of masculinity. 

However, I can acknowledge the fact that men are likely built to crave sexual variety, but then required to sacrifice that drive for the sake of Christ. 

Notice that this is not a sacrifice made for the express benefit of women. Christ has asked us to do something difficult – limit our sexual relationships to one woman for life.

That’s not easy. That is not a light request. That is a heavy request and a painful sacrifice. It’s not a sacrifice made directly for women – it is a sacrifice made directly for God. And it is something that is difficult to reason through, especially at the height of a sexual urge that you have no religiously justified outlet for if you are a single man. 

This walk of faith comes at a cost to your pleasures. The Bible tells us that sin is pleasurable [Heb 11:25], anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. The sins of this world are very enjoyable to engage in. And to give them up for Christ is a major sacrifice. 

It is a sacrifice because we want those pleasures badly, we are built to crave them, yet we must deny ourselves. And we are left to hope that trading all the pleasures on earth will be worth the pleasures of heaven. It doesn’t matter how good heaven is made to sound by your preacher, that is still a hard trade for a 19-year-old guy at the height of his natural testosterone production trying to stifle a sexual urge or hide his erection while sitting in a church pew.

How about instead of continuing to say “Well it’ll be worth it. Heaven will be worth it. Marriage will be worth it. Everything will make sense”, we start to accept the fact that the trade is difficult. It is just difficult. It may very well be true that marriage is “worth it”, whatever that may mean, but that does not mean marriage is any less of a sacrifice and a risk [professional, financial, social, sexual, emotional, psychological] for a man – especially in the 21st century. 

Closing

Job said that he made a covenant with his eyes never to look at a woman lustfully. What kind of mental training does that involve? Sure, we could sit around and argue all day that Job did not have the same temptations and pressures that men today have. Many modern women are walking advertisements for sex, and we can always point fingers and say Job had it easier. But the reality is that this man set rules and regulations for the proper use of his own mind. There were certain ways that it was to be used and certain ways that were not allowed. He likely passed this training on to his sons as well. 

We should work to replicate the mind of Job, the man who imposed complete control on his own body. And if we work to train ourselves and to train our sons from a  young age, perhaps they will be in a better position than most Christians. Because while the people in the church want to sit around and pretend like sex does not exist, their sons are already learning more about sex from school and the internet than they could ever expect. 

The difficulty in managing sexual drive demands better sexual education in the church. Again I note that most men do not know anything about sex. They know little about purity and warring against urges successfully because women find the majority of men unattractive and low value, and these men will never have to struggle to attain their purity. But perhaps if there is the one in a million man who is high value but sexually disciplined – he could teach men how to manage and redirect sexual impulses.