This is a draft, a rough thought, on what makes the difference between monogamous and polygamous people. Any feedback much appreciated.
First, what you need to know to follow this thought is Helen Fisher’s research on how love works, biochemically. If you’ve not yet watched her talk:
Or read her book “Why we Love”, do either of that first. Seriously.
Fisher differentiates three phases of love that she calls, as summed up on Wikipedia:
[…] the sex drive evolved to initiate mating with a range of partners; romantic love evolved to focus one’s mating energy on one partner at a time; and attachment evolved to enable us to form a pairbond and rear our young together as a team.
- lust – the sex drive or libido, also described as borogodó.
- attraction – early stage intense romantic love.
- attachment – deep feelings of union with a long term partner.
From this, it becomes obvious what I’m going to say: Polygamous people are those who experience lust as a seperate emotion from attraction and attachment while monogamous people are those who experience either all three of those emotions as one (or as belonging together) or link lust to at least one of the other two. Many women I’ve talked to especially believe strongly in love and sex belonging together and in that they not only could not sleep with someone they don’t love, but also that if they did, they would then fall in love with them.
