It depends on how you measure your optimum. Certainly, it seems that happiness is the goal. But optimization is difficult when the quantity in question is so complex, especially over whole lifetimes.
Here's a neat little theory that may not have a lot to do with reality:
Suppose there are four emotions that affect someone's happiness in a romantic/sexual relationship. I will call them interest, contentment, jealousy/resentment, and boredom/rejection. Interest and contentment add to your happiness; jealousy/resentment and boredom/rejection detract from it. Interest is the feeling that comes with falling in love with new people. Contentment is the feeling that comes with loving people for a long period of time and being comfortable with them. Jealousy is the feeling that comes when people you feel interested or content with are feeling interested with someone else. Resentment is the converse of jealousy. Boredom is the feeling that comes when you are not content or interested with someone, yet you are still stuck to them. Rejection is the converse of boredom.
So there are four non-combative strategies that people can follow, each of which primarily take one positive emotion to promote and one negative emotion to avoid. None of the systems can promote both positive emotions or avoid both negative emotions. The system will take care of two for you, and it's up to you to take care of the other two. There also exist combative strategies, of course, where you try to provide for your own positive emotions and avoid your negative ones, without safeguarding everyone else from negative emotions. I don't count those strategies, because they are dumb and mean.
The first strategy is long-term monogamy. It promotes contentment and avoids jealousy/resentment. People who are good at it (not at sticking to it, but at making it work) manage to also prolong and maintain interest and avoid boredom. Some people are not good at it. With monogamy, people try to distribute love (which I shall modify as a quantity which is produced by all people, but they cannot use their own) by pairing up and giving all their love to their partner, and hopefully receiving all of their partner's love. One problems with monogamy are that it depends upon the participants abilities to maintain interest and supress boredom/rejection.
The second strategy is short-term monogamy. It promotes interest and avoids jealousy. This seems to be pretty common among teenagers and young adults. Love is distributed by pairing off, but without static pairings, so that old connections can be replaced by new ones when they are losing efficiency. Short-term monogamy doesn't combat jealousy as effectively as long-term monogamy, but it has more infusions of interest, which can balance it out. This way has lots of ups and downs. It's also not nearly as vulnerable to boredom as long-term monogamy. Few people find it ultimately satisfying, presumably because it does not provide contentment, which is, after all, the thing that is ultimately satisfying.
Next up is promiscuity, aka short-term polygamy. Here, you promote interest and avoid boredom. Love is distributed by random transfers. Of course, jealousy is the big problem. Like short-term monogamy, promiscuity has an unfortunate tendency to lapse into combative strategies, which are no good. For people with a hard time reining in jealousy, this is not the way to go. Even for people without that problem, it suffers from a lack of contentment, and doesn't do much for long-term satisfaction.
Last is polygamy. Polygamy promotes contentment and avoids boredom. It also supports interest, though not as much as promiscuity or short-term monogamy. Of course, there's a catch: Jealousy. Because in a polygamous relationship, the causes of jealousy will generally be people you already know, jealousy can have much more catastrophic effects. Polygamy is a balancing act. If the flow of love between all the participants isn't balanced, there will be trouble. This is especially tough to manage when the participants are heterosexual, so love can only be transferred efficiently through male-female links. This greatly reduces the total number of links, and makes more steps to get from one person to another.
I feel like I should be writing a simulation with cellular automata to decide which way is best. Long-term monogamy seems simplest and safest, but when it goes wrong, it causes by far the most hurt. Actually, though I may claim that... The complete breakup of a long-term polygamous relationship could be worse. I've never known any.
In the end, what is the best way depends on the people involved. It's best to choose the relationship type that systematically reduces the negative emotion to which you are the most sensitive and provides the positive emotion which you are least able to provide for yourself. It's also very important that you make sure your partners have the same bent as you, especially for long-termers.
Personally, I think well-balanced long-term polygamy would be a wonderful thing, especially for a group of bisexual people. Unfortunately, I'm heterosexual and fairly prone to jealousy, so it's long-term monogamy for me.
I found what you wrote extremely interesting.. I tend towards short term monogamy but I can see the almost ineviable problems in each paradigm.. love hurts, but without the lows you don't get the highs either - that's the real choice, I think. To bare all and brave the hurt and move on and trust new people or retreat and protect but never feel that extreme joy that comes with total closeness and love.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 1 Oct 2001 14:26 (UTC)Here's a neat little theory that may not have a lot to do with reality:
Suppose there are four emotions that affect someone's happiness in a romantic/sexual relationship. I will call them interest, contentment, jealousy/resentment, and boredom/rejection. Interest and contentment add to your happiness; jealousy/resentment and boredom/rejection detract from it. Interest is the feeling that comes with falling in love with new people. Contentment is the feeling that comes with loving people for a long period of time and being comfortable with them. Jealousy is the feeling that comes when people you feel interested or content with are feeling interested with someone else. Resentment is the converse of jealousy. Boredom is the feeling that comes when you are not content or interested with someone, yet you are still stuck to them. Rejection is the converse of boredom.
So there are four non-combative strategies that people can follow, each of which primarily take one positive emotion to promote and one negative emotion to avoid. None of the systems can promote both positive emotions or avoid both negative emotions. The system will take care of two for you, and it's up to you to take care of the other two. There also exist combative strategies, of course, where you try to provide for your own positive emotions and avoid your negative ones, without safeguarding everyone else from negative emotions. I don't count those strategies, because they are dumb and mean.
The first strategy is long-term monogamy. It promotes contentment and avoids jealousy/resentment. People who are good at it (not at sticking to it, but at making it work) manage to also prolong and maintain interest and avoid boredom. Some people are not good at it. With monogamy, people try to distribute love (which I shall modify as a quantity which is produced by all people, but they cannot use their own) by pairing up and giving all their love to their partner, and hopefully receiving all of their partner's love. One problems with monogamy are that it depends upon the participants abilities to maintain interest and supress boredom/rejection.
The second strategy is short-term monogamy. It promotes interest and avoids jealousy. This seems to be pretty common among teenagers and young adults. Love is distributed by pairing off, but without static pairings, so that old connections can be replaced by new ones when they are losing efficiency. Short-term monogamy doesn't combat jealousy as effectively as long-term monogamy, but it has more infusions of interest, which can balance it out. This way has lots of ups and downs. It's also not nearly as vulnerable to boredom as long-term monogamy. Few people find it ultimately satisfying, presumably because it does not provide contentment, which is, after all, the thing that is ultimately satisfying.
Next up is promiscuity, aka short-term polygamy. Here, you promote interest and avoid boredom. Love is distributed by random transfers. Of course, jealousy is the big problem. Like short-term monogamy, promiscuity has an unfortunate tendency to lapse into combative strategies, which are no good. For people with a hard time reining in jealousy, this is not the way to go. Even for people without that problem, it suffers from a lack of contentment, and doesn't do much for long-term satisfaction.
no subject
on 1 Oct 2001 14:27 (UTC)I feel like I should be writing a simulation with cellular automata to decide which way is best. Long-term monogamy seems simplest and safest, but when it goes wrong, it causes by far the most hurt. Actually, though I may claim that... The complete breakup of a long-term polygamous relationship could be worse. I've never known any.
In the end, what is the best way depends on the people involved. It's best to choose the relationship type that systematically reduces the negative emotion to which you are the most sensitive and provides the positive emotion which you are least able to provide for yourself. It's also very important that you make sure your partners have the same bent as you, especially for long-termers.
Personally, I think well-balanced long-term polygamy would be a wonderful thing, especially for a group of bisexual people. Unfortunately, I'm heterosexual and fairly prone to jealousy, so it's long-term monogamy for me.
no subject
on 3 Oct 2001 01:19 (UTC)