This is simple, really. I believe we choose ALL of our actions. Note that I am not saying we choose our feelings.. sometimes feelings arise quickly and unexpectedly within us before we can even identify them.
We can and do choose to modify our feelings. Sometimes this is good, like when we allow ourselves to be calm and examine a fearful or jealous emotion to find out where it's coming from. Sometimes our modification is not so good, like when we suppress a feeling and it bubbles up and out of us in ways that are hurtful.
Just as we can choose to modify our feelings, so can we choose to modify our relationships -- in essence, to modify our responses to other people. We can feel love for more than one person, but choose not to act on this for a variety of reasons. We can also feel love for ONLY one person but decide to open our relationship to other people we care about because it makes everyone happier to share intimacy.
When someone says to me: "Oh, I'm polyamorous because I'm wired that way," I smile to myself, because I know that no one can ever foresee the future circumstances of their life, in which monogamy may in fact become desirable.
Personally, I'd rather be with a person who has made a clear and conscious choice to be poly, because that means they've weighed the options, consulted their feelings (and those of others) and decided to take responsibility for that choice.
Yep, I'm a fan of nurture over nature when it comes to polyamory -- particularly the process of self-nurture.
3 comments:
The person who says, 'I'm polyamourous because I'm wired that way." may still identify as polyamourous even in a monogamous relationship.
I'm not sure if you know of the study, but there was a study completed on mammalian bonding behaviour and vassopressin receptor mutation. 1 copy of the gene meant less inclination to be mono, open to swinging and so on. 2 copies of the gene present meant essentially, polyamorous, more likely to have a marital crisis, and so forth. So far there is a 100% correlation between having 2 copies of the gene and polyamorous bonding bevaviour. This is also found in meerkats.
Here are the articles:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14641-monogamy-gene-found-in-people.html
People can indeed be socially manipulated into behaving a poly relationship if they're monogamous and vice versa, but this poses serious ethical issues.
More articles as previously mentioned:
http://research.yerkes.emory.edu/Young/Getz/1993%20Winslow%20N.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2533683/
There are also other problems associated with Vassopressin mutation such as autism and diabetes.
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