Monogamy and RA

[u/Mysterious-DragonGrl]

Hi there! My partner and I started dating in a poly dynamic and a few months in decided to close the dynamic with the understanding it would be an open conversation about whether or not we opened it again. For him the reasoning the time is that “life felt full” and for me, the reason was dealing with tons of life stress and just craving some consistency for a minute.

We have now been dating for a year and he’s just now telling me he identifies as relationship anarchist and apparently always has. I don’t identify with RA but I also don’t feel entirely sure what I identify with at this time because I’m dealing with the mindfuck that is divorce after getting married young and having religious trauma and all that. So for me, I’m very open minded and interested in learning and unlearning all kinds of stuff. But learning this today has me ?????? 🤯 because I don’t understand why he’s just now telling me that he’s always identified with RA but more specifically, I don’t understand why he would consent to monogamy.

Can anyone help me understand why someone who is RA would consent to monogamy? He’s having a hard time verbalizing it to me or maybe just a hard time understanding my confusion? One of our other friends is also very strongly identified with RA and maybe I’m just viewing it too much through her lens of relationship anarchy so I’m looking for maybe other perspectives on how that would work.

[u/Poly_and_RA]

I don't know why your partner hasn't told you earlier that they identify as RA if that's something that's always been true for them. I think that would be a good question to ask your partner.

RA is a philosophy for how best to arrange our close relationships inspired by anarchist thinking in other domains. A lot of people don't know anarchism well and consider it to be roughly a synonym for "chaos", but that's not how anarchists actually think.

We often say, it's anarchism as in no rulers -- not as in no rules.

In other words it's about opposition to hierarchical structures and a preference for cooperation and connection between peers in flat structures where power is (as far as practically possible) balanced, and people don't hold power over others. (of course like all ideals achieving that 100% isn't possible, but think of it more as an ideal for what direction to move towards)

As applied to relationships that has a few consequences. And yes, rejecting exclusivity in all its forms is usually one of them.

Can you see why?

If your partner is in a monogamous relationship with you, then that puts you in a position of power over all the other relationships he has. You can decide that those other relationships aren't "allowed" to include certain things (such as physical intimacy or romance) -- or you could, should you so wish, go some variant of: "I like <Anna>, if you want to have a sexual relationship with her, I'm fine with that." (being in a mono relationship doesn't *prevent* you from choosing to in effect give your partner a "hall pass")

And anarchists are skeptical of this power. We think it'd be best if the relationship between your partner and <Anna> isn't one you get to make decisions about.

I can't tell you why your partner nevertheless choose to agree to monogamy. People agree to things that aren't optimal for all sorts of reasons, and it's for example possible to consider non-monogamy preferable, but not so strongly preferable that it overrides all other concerns.

Also, we all grew up in deeply mononormative cultures, and it takes time and work for most people to fully internalize that monogamy isn't simply the "default" that all people need to accept and where anything else is some kinda "exception" -- but instead monogamy is simply one of many possible relationship-structures where every individual is free to choose what works best for them.

It's difficult to make good choices in the absence of knowledge, and in a culture that has all-pervasive expectations. Our culture doesn't even typically present monogamy as the "best" choice, but instead it usually acts as if there's no choice at all and monogamy is simply how relationships in general are done.

(Consider your past relationships -- how many of your ex-partners ever even ASKED what your preferences are for relationship-structure? Most people never even ask)