Talking Monogamy Blues By Cory Silverberg,

Think about a relationship you've been in in the past, or one you're in right now. Thinking of that relationship, consider the following questions:

• Have you and your partner made a clear agreement about whether or not you will have other sexual partners while you're together?
• Have you had sex with someone else while you've been together?
• Do you think your partner has had sex with someone else while you've been together?

How long did it take you to answer each question? Were the answers right there, or did you have to think about it?

Now imagine your partner answering the same questions, alone, knowing that you will never hear their answers. Do you think you know what your partner would say? How sure are you about their answers?

In a study, published last month in the Journal of Sex Research, titled One Love: Explicit Monogamy Agreements among Heterosexual Young Adult Couples at Increased Risk of Sexually Transmitted Infections 434 couples were asked to participate in an exercise just like this. The couples were all young (between the ages of 18 and 25), heterosexual, and about half of them had been in their relationship for less than twelve months.

The findings, like all quantitative data, aren't necessarily generalizable, but they sure do raise a lot of questions. Here are some of the results:

• In 33% of couples, one partner reported they had a conversation about monogamy, while the other partner reported they hadn't.
• Among couples where both partners agreed on whether there was a conversation, 56% said they had a conversation and 10% said they didn't have a conversation.
• In 40% of the couples one partner reported there was an agreement to be monogamous while the other reported there was no such agreement.
• Among couples where both members reported there was an agreement, 58% said the agreement was to be monogamous, while 2% said the agreement was to be non-monogamous.

It shouldn't be surprising that people don't always keep their commitments to monogamy. After all, even employment contracts can be renegotiated once a year. Whether or not it's true to say that we might be more monogamous if we at least talked about it, you can bet that by not talking about it, we're ensuring conflict and confusion.

So I wasn't particularly shocked to find out that in more than half the couples, at least one member either broke a commitment to being monogamous or believes the other did.

But the very first statistic I cited above was one that gave me pause, and seems particularly rich. One third of couples couldn't even agree on whether they had talked about monogamy. This isn't about whether they were being monogamous, or not being monogamous, it was a simple question about whether or not they had ever talked about it. Maybe not so simple.