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A picture pops up on my Facebook feed. “It takes a real man to realize that one female is enough,” it says, and it may be right. But if this is the case, a real man is the quintessence of self-deception, of asceticism in its most blatant and violent form, and of a compromise of the subjectivity that makes us fundamentally human. En un mot, much like gender and capitalism, the monogamous structure of sexual relationships must be removed from public consciousness if a higher human (homo eximius) is to proliferate. It is the moral imperative of the free spirit to make this so.
Enter Jean-Paul Sartre. There are many critiques of the ascetic relationship, and they reach as far back as Epicurus. The most scathing and in-depth criticism appears in the face of existentialism’s Being and Nothingness in which Satre says, “in Love the Lover [sic] wants to be ‘the whole World’ for the beloved… He is and consents to be an object. But on the other hand, he wants to be the object in which the Other’s freedom consents to lose itself”
In continuation with Sartre’s analogy, the lover wishes both to be “the whole world” of their partner and their partner to be “the whole world” to them. They wish to dominate, and entirely submit to, their partner’s will. This is, of course, impossible. Yet monogamy is by far the normative. In Sartrean terminology, long-term monogamy is possible only because of what he deems mauvaise foi, which means bad faith and involves a combination of self-deception and play-acting. The lover does this in at least three ways. First, they tell themselves that this kind of love is possible and good. Second, they compromise their character in order to make themselves appealing (or, at least tolerable) to their mate, and say this is authenticity. Third, they pretend that their affection will remain constant as their character, their tastes, and their ideals change over time. These are all untrue. To the hedonist, this does not matter much. But to free spirits, who wish above all else the authentic assertion of subjectivity and to know ourselves accurately despite the consequences, this poses a problem.
Sartre himself presented an imperfect alternative to monogamy with his intellectual and romantic partner, Simone de Beauvoir. He and de Beauvoir were, in his words, ‘essential’ lovers. Their other relationships were considered ‘contingent’ affairs. This roughly translates into ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ relationships in contemporary polyamory. This system is quite effective when one has a primary, serious partner and other casual relationships. But what if there is more than one ‘essential’ person? Introducing a hierarchy of love, even with only two tiers, invites serious partners to develop the system further and place themselves at the top. This is a problem de Beauvoir confronted through her relationship with Nelson Algren. This is not to say the problem of jealously would be resolved in polyamory by merely changing the language, but it would be restricted. As well, Sartre fails to see (or doesn’t care to mention) the implications of his theory of instantaneous temporality on these relationships. If time is experienced instantaneously, then the emotions we feel only exist in brief moments. Which partners are identified as essential and contingent fluctuates constantly, depending on who the subject is around, their current mood, and so on. This renders the language dishonest. The user of Sartre’s relationship terminology is, ironically, in bad faith.
We see that Sartre and de Beauvoir’s anti-conformist relationship is primitive. What the future holds for sexual relationships is unclear. But, like the existential heroes, we must try to develop new systems that both accurately reflect our emotions and leave our subjectivity intact. This issue lives among our greatest tasks. We must strive to live unabashedly against convention, to act not for tolerance, but for assertion, to live, and to bring about the future.
Photo provided by Harley Roquentin