Nonmonogamy and Happiness

An exploration of the search for meaning in nonmonogamous relationships. The love story were all familiar with ends with and they lived happily ever after. But how often do we hear a nonmonogamous love story with that ending? In all kinds of contexts, nonmonogamous happiness is erased. From the ubiquitous friend who tried it once and it didnt end well to Dan Savages long-term jokes about never being invited to a polyamorous third wedding anniversary, we are repeatedly assured that nonmonogamy leads to misery. In real love, we are taught to expect the opposite: to expect happiness. When we want to ask if someones relationship is going well, we ask if they are happy with their partner. We might even ask whether their partner makes them happy. But what does love have to do with happiness? Doesnt love have space to accommodate the full range of emotional experience? Carrie Jenkins thinks it does, or at least it can. She draws connections between the expectation that love will make us happy and the undue focus on positive emotions to the exclusion of negative ones. She argues that lovemonogamous or otherwisemight better aim at being eudaimonic than at being happy, and that we have a better chance of achieving this if we are able to make relationship choices free from the prejudices and distortions that lead to an unduly rosy view of monogamy and an unduly miserable picture of the alternatives.