Open marriage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Open marriage is a form of non-monogamy in which the partners of a dyadic marriage agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded by them as infidelity, and consider or establish an open relationship despite the implied monogamy of marriage. 

There are variant forms of open marriage (such as swinging and polyamory), each with the partners having varying levels of input on their spouse's activities.

Terminology and concept

Origins

The term open marriage originated in sociology and anthropology. Through the 1960s, researchers used "closed marriage" to indicate the practices of communities and cultures where individuals were intended to marry based upon social conventions and proscriptions, and "open marriage" where individuals had the ability to make their own choice of spouse.

Nena O'Neill and George O'Neill changed the meaning of the term with the 1972 publication of their book Open Marriage. The O'Neills describe "open marriage" as a relationship in which each partner has room for personal growth and can individually develop outside friendships, rather than focus obsessively on their couplehood and their family unit (being "closed"). Most of the book describes approaches to revitalizing marriage in areas of trust, role flexibility, communication, identity, and equality. Chapter 16, entitled "Love Without Jealousy", devoted 20 pages to the proposition that an "open marriage" might possibly include some forms of sexuality with other partners. Fueled by frequent appearances of the O'Neills on television and in magazine articles, the redefinition entered popular consciousness, and "open marriage" became a synonym for sexually non-monogamous marriage. 

In her 1977 book The Marriage Premise, Nena O'Neill advocated sexual fidelity in a chapter of that name. As she later said, "The whole area of extramarital sex is touchy. I don't think we ever saw it as a concept for the majority, and certainly it has not proved to be."

Today, with many committed couples not seeking formal marriage, the term is frequently generalized to "open relationship".

Definitional issues

There are definitional issues that complicate attempts to determine the actual incidence of open marriage. 

The meaning of "open marriage" can vary from study to study depending on how the particular researchers have set their selection criteria. 

Individuals might claim to have open marriages when their spouses would not agree. Studies and articles that interview individuals without taking their married status into account may not receive accurate information about the actual "open" status of the marriage. Blumstein and Schwartz asked more than 6,000 couples whether or not they had an understanding allowing sex outside their relationship. Interviewed individually, the partners in some couples gave very different responses to this question; the respective replies from one married couple were

Sure we have an understanding. It's 'You do what you want. Never go back to the same one.' See, that's where it's going to screw your mind up, to go back the second time to the same person. (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983, page 286)

We've never spoken about cheating, but neither of us believe in it. I don't think I'd ever forgive him. I don't think I'd be able to. I don't know. I haven't met up with that situation. (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983, page 287) 

Couples may have an open marriage in principle, but not engage in extramarital sex. Studies that define open marriage by agreement alone will tend to report a higher incidence than studies that define open marriage by agreement and behavior. Spaniel and Cole found that 7 percent of couples would consider participating in an open marriage, but only 1.7 percent of couples reported having open marriages that actually included extramarital sex. Blumstein and Schwartz found that 15 percent of married couples share an agreement that allows extramarital sex, but only about 24 percent of men and 22 percent of women (or 6 percent and 5 percent of the total, respectively) who had such an agreement actually engaged in extramarital sex during the prior year. 

Researchers have regularly applied "open marriage" in overly narrow terms. For example, Hunt defined open marriage specifically as swinging couples who meet with other swinging couples to swap mates.

Open marriage is usually defined in terms of legally married, opposite-sex partners. Data collected from these kinds of open marriages may not generalize to other kinds of open relationships. For example, cohabiting couples tend to show higher levels of involvement in extra-relational intimacy compared to married couples. Gay male couples show very high levels of open relationships compared to straight couples.

Relationship maintenance

The impact of open marriage on relationships varies across couples. Some couples report high levels of marital satisfaction and have long-lasting open marriages. Other couples drop out of the open marriage lifestyle and return to sexual monogamy. These couples may continue to believe open marriage is a valid way of life, just not for them. 

The extent to which open marriage actually contributes to divorce remains uncertain. Blumstein and Schwartz note a slightly higher risk of divorce among couples who engage in extramarital sex, even if the couples agree to allow extramarital sex. However, Rubin and Adams did not observe any significant difference in the risk of divorce for couples in open marriages and couples in sexually monogamous marriages.

Jealousy issues

A 1981 study concluded that around 80 percent of people in open marriages experienced jealousy over their extramarital relationships. Couples in open marriages experienced as much or more jealousy than people in sexually monogamous marriages.

Martin Weinberg, Colin J. Williams, and Douglas Pryor found that 77 percent of bisexuals in sexually open relationships had partners who experienced jealousy at some point. The largest group, at 46.2 percent, said their partners experienced only a little jealousy. The remaining 30.8 percent said their partners experienced moderate to extreme jealousy. (These findings may not generalize to heterosexual married couples, as most of subjects were not married.) In addition, bisexuals are often more jealous of outside partners of their own sex. "Primary partners were reportedly more jealous of an 'outside' partner of their own sex -- for example, a man whose primary partner was a woman would say she was more jealous of his relationships with other women. The logic that underlies this was that a person of the same sex as themselves could meet similar needs and thus replace them. A person of the opposite sex would not compete in this way, satisfying a different set of needs for their partner." (Weinberg, Williams, & Pryor, 1995, page 108)

People who experience normal jealousy have at least nine strategies for coping with jealousy. The problem-solving strategies include: improving the primary relationship, interfering with the rival relationship, demanding commitment, and self-assessment. The emotion-focused strategies include: derogation of partner or rival, developing alternatives, denial/avoidance, support/catharsis, and appraisal challenge. These strategies are related to emotion regulation, conflict management, and cognitive change.

Ground rules

Couples involved in open marriages or relationships typically adopt a set of ground rules to guide their activities. 

Ground rules in relationships allow partners to coordinate their behaviors, so they achieve shared goals with fewer conflicts. Some ground rules are universal in the sense that they apply to virtually all relationships in a particular culture. Other ground rules apply to particular kinds of relationships, such as friendships or marriages. Still other ground rules are designed to manage romantic rivalry and jealousy. The ground rules adopted by sexually monogamous couples tend to prevent behaviors that are viewed by the participants as acts of infidelity. 

The ground rules adopted by sexually open couples tend to prohibit behaviors that provoke jealousy or sexual health concerns. Partners may change the ground rules of their relationships over time. One example of a changing ground rule includes where a married couple decides to separate. Without divorcing, they are still legally married. However, they may choose to continue cohabitation. 

Ground rules in open relationships may include, for example: that partners disclose who they have sex with; that they limit their involvement with others (for example, to dating or physical intimacy but not relationships); or that they not become involved with certain people (such as the other partner's friends or coworkers).

Styles

Couples in open marriages may prefer different kinds of extramarital relationships. Couples who prefer extramarital relationships emphasizing love and emotional involvement have a polyamorous style of open marriage. Couples who prefer extramarital relationships emphasizing sexual gratification and recreational friendships have a swinging style of open marriage. These distinctions may depend on psychological factors such as sociosexuality and may contribute to the formation of separate Polyamory and Swinging communities. Despite their distinctions, however, all open marriages share common issues: the lack of social acceptance, the need to maintain the health of their relationship and avoid neglect, and the need to manage jealous rivalry. 

Many open couples establish rules that forbid emotional attachment, extramarital children, extramarital sex in the marital bed, extramarital sex with those known to both partners, or extramarital sex without the use of barrier contraception.

Some open marriages are one-sided. Some situations giving rise to this are where the libidos of partners differ greatly, or illness renders one partner incapable of, or no longer desiring, sex. The couple may remain together while one partner seeks out sexual gratification as they sees fit. The difference between these situations and a cheating situation is that both partners in the marriage are aware of, and agree to the arrangement.

Another type of "one-sided open marriage" is Cuckoldry. Cuckolding is desrcibed as a physical relationship where a submissive man gains masochistic and/or erotic pleasure from his female partner having sex with another man.

Types of openness: from "polyamory style" to "swinging style"

Extramarital relationships vary in terms of the degree of sexual involvement desired and the degree of emotional involvement desired. Presented with the potentiality of non-monogamous intimacy, a given individual might be motivated more either by the desire for multiple sexual partners or a wider erotic experience than offered by monogamy, or by the desire for multiple others with whom to form an emotional or familial bond. 

Polyamory is motivated by a desire to expand love by developing emotionally involved relationships with extramarital partners. Swinging is motivated by a desire for physical gratification by engaging in sexual activities with extramarital partners. The distinction between polyamory and swinging applies to open marriages. Delineation of polyamory and swinging has appeared in academic literature, popular media, and Web sites devoted respectively to polyamory and to swinging. (The swing sites prefer to frame the distinction more along Gould's "utopic swingers" and "recreational swingers".)

A polyamorous style of open marriage emphasizes the expansion of loving relationships by developing emotional attachments to extramarital partners. A swinging style of open marriage emphasizes physical gratification by engaging in recreational sex with extramarital partners.

Psychological basis

The preference for a polyamorous versus a swinging style of open marriage may depend on many psychological factors. One factor may be sociosexuality, an individual's willingness to engage in sexual behavior without having emotional ties to the sex partner. Individuals who are very willing to engage in sexual behavior without emotional ties are said to have unrestricted sociosexuality. Individuals who are very unwilling to engage in sexual behavior without emotional ties are said to have restricted sociosexuality. Individuals can vary along a continuum from unrestricted to restricted sociosexuality.

Community implications

Couples with different styles of open marriage tend to self-segregate in order to find others who share similar philosophies and interests, which has likely contributed to the development of separate polyamory and swinging communities. These offer informational resources and support, even if a given couple in an open marriage cannot see themselves joining either community. Some couples may not have a strong preference for either style of open marriage, feeling equally at home either community. 

The partners within a couple may differ in their respective preferences. One partner may prefer a polyamorous style of open marriage and participate in the Polyamory community, while the other partner may prefer a swinging style of open marriage and participate in the swinging community. Variations in couple preferences and individual preferences thus can result in overlap between the polyamory and swinging communities.

Acceptance

Evidence of disapproval

Surveys show consistently high disapproval of extramarital sex. Hunt briefly mentions three surveys conducted in the 1960s in which large majorities disapproved of extramarital sex under any conditions (see page 255 of his book Sexual Behavior in the 1970s). More recent surveys show that 75–85 percent of adults in the United States disapprove of extramarital sex. Similar levels of disapproval are observed in other Western societies. Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb surveyed over 33,500 people in 24 nations and found 85 percent of people believed extramarital sex was "always" or "nearly always" wrong. However, disapproval of extramarital sex does not specifically imply disapproval of open marriage, since open marriage does not always involve extramarital sex. 

Much of that disapproval is attributed to "religious and moral reasons."

A few studies have shown more direct disapproval of open marriage. In a national study of several hundred women and men, Hunt reported that around 75 percent of women and over 60 percent of men agreed with the statement "Mate-swapping is wrong." A study of several hundred men and women living in the midwestern United States found that 93 percent would not consider participating in swinging. Yet another study asked 111 college women about various forms of marriage and family. These young women viewed open marriage as one of the least desirable forms of marriage, with 94 percent saying they would never participate in a marriage where the man has a right to sex outside the marriage, and 91 percent saying they would never participate in a marriage where the woman has a right to sex outside the marriage. 

The evidence thus shows strong social disapproval of open marriage. Very large majorities of people in Western societies disapprove of extramarital sex in general, and substantial majorities feel open marriage is wrong even when the spouses agree to it. Nine out of ten people say they would never consider open marriage for themselves.

Religious objections

Some critics object to open marriages on the ground that open marriages violate religious principles.

Generally, non-monogamous people tend not to be very religious. A 1998 review observed that, across the various studies, most swingers (approximately two-thirds) claimed to have no religious affiliation.

Health concerns

Engaging in sex with a greater number of partners increases risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. A 1985 study found that 33 percent of male swingers and 10 percent of female swingers claimed to actively fear this risk. In another study, sexually transmitted diseases topped the list of disadvantages of swinging, and 58 percent of swingers expressed some fear of HIV/AIDS. Some couples have decided to drop out of open marriage lifestyles and become sexually monogamous in response to HIV/AIDS.

The risk of sexually transmitted diseases can be greatly reduced by practicing safer sex. However, the percentage of people in open marriages who practice safer sex remains disputed. Anecdotal observations range from claiming no one at a swing event practiced safer sex to claiming everyone at an event practiced safer sex. A survey of swingers found that "Over 62% said that they had changed their behaviors because of the AIDS scare. The two most frequently mentioned changes were being more selective with whom they swung and practicing safer sex (e.g., using condoms). Almost 7% said they had quit swinging because of the AIDS epidemic. Finally, one third said that they had not changed any of their habits, and, of these respondents, more than a third said nothing, not even AIDS, would get them to change."

Although a majority of swingers reported changing their behaviors in response to HIV/AIDS, some chose to become more selective in choosing partners rather than adopting safer sex practices. Greater selectivity in choosing partners is not a reliable means of reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Many people are not aware they are infected, and no outwards signs of infection may be visible. One psychological study suggests people may not be particularly good at detecting lies about HIV status. Remarkably, one-third of swingers flatly rejected the idea of changing their behaviors in response to HIV/AIDS. These finding suggest people involved in open marriages may indeed be at somewhat greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.

These concerns do not apply to open marriage alone, which would affect only 1 to 6 percent of the married population.. Though most Westerners claim to be monogamous, a it is more precise to say that they are serially monogamous.

Psychological concerns

Several authors consider open marriages to be psychologically damaging. They claim sexual non-monogamy proves too difficult for most couples to manage, and their relationships suffer as a consequence.

These authors contend that sexual non-monogamy provokes jealousy in couples. This disrupts couples' sense of security in their relationships and interferes with their sense of intimacy. Consequently, these authors view open marriage as a "failed" lifestyle. 

In fact, the impact of open marriage varies across couples. Some couples report high levels of satisfaction and enjoy long-lasting open marriages. Other couples drop out of the open marriage lifestyle and return to sexual monogamy. These couples may continue to view open marriage as a valid lifestyle for others, but not for themselves. Still other couples experience problems and report that open marriage contributed to their divorces. Investigators do not yet know why couples respond to open marriages differently.

Loss of social support

Due to strong social disapproval of open marriages, people in open marriages frequently try to hide their lifestyle to family, friends, and colleagues. Blumstein and Schwartz note:

Openly non-monogamous married and cohabiting couples often feel they are thought of as bizarre or immoral by the rest of their world. They have to work out their sex lives in opposition to the rest of society. They may have an understanding with each other, but they usually keep it secret from family, friends, and people at work. (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983, pages 294–295).

Keeping their lifestyles secret reduces the amount of social support available to people in open marriages. Numerous studies have shown that social support carries many psychological and physical health benefits. Thus, strong social disapproval of open marriage may lead to a loss of psychological and health benefits for couples in open marriages.

Legal issues

Whether an open marriage is with the knowledge, consent or encouragement of the partners, the practice may still be regarded as extramarital sex or adultery, which may be illegal in some jurisdictions.

Incidence

The percentage of men and women actively involved in open marriages may be determined from data reported in 1983 by Blumstein and Schwartz. Out of 3,498 married men, 903 had an agreement with their spouses allowing extramarital sex; out of these 903 married men with an agreement allowing extramarital sex, 24 percent (or 217 men) actually engaged in extramarital sex during the previous year. This means about 6 percent (i.e., 217 / 3498) of married men were actively involved in open marriages during the previous year. The number is only slightly less for married women. Out of 3,520 married women, 801 had an agreement with their spouses allowing extramarital sex; out of these 801 married women with an agreement allowing extramarital sex, 22 percent (or 176 women) actually engaged in extramarital sex during the previous year. This means about 5 percent (i.e., 176 / 3520) of married women were actively involved in open marriages during the previous year. 

The estimates based on the Blumstein and Schwartz study are slightly higher than estimates provided by other researchers. Hunt, based on interviews from a 1974 national study of sexual behavior, estimated that 2–4 percent of the married population is involved in open marriages. Bartell (1971) estimated that 2 percent of the married population is involved in open marriages. The lowest estimate comes from a study conducted by Spanier and Cole (1975) of several hundred people living in the midwestern United States. This study found just 1.7 percent of married people involved in open marriages.

Following the 1972 publication of Open Marriage, the popular media expressed a belief that open marriages were on the rise. This belief turned out to be incorrect. Comparing data from the earlier Kinsey studies with his own data, Hunt concluded the incidence of extramarital sex had remained about the same for many years.

Among wives under 25, however, there is a very large increase, but even this has only brought the incidence of extramarital behavior for these young women close to—but not yet on par with—the incidence of extramarital behavior among under-25 husbands. (Hunt, 1974, page 254)

Hunt attributed the mistaken impression of increasing open marriages to a barrage of books, articles, and television shows dealing with the topic. He also notes that speculative comments about increases in open marriage would sometimes be repeated often enough that people cited them as evidence.

Nearly twenty years later (1993), in a national study of sexual behavior, Janus and Janus likewise denied that open marriages were on the rise. In fact, they suggested the number of open marriages may have declined:

Despite popularization in a book of that title in the early 1970s, open marriage has never become as prevalent as non-consensual extramarital activities, and its popularity seems to be waning even further today. (Janus & Janus, 1993, pages 197–198)

Open marriage remains a controversial topic capable of generating much media interest. A large amount of media interest can mislead people into thinking the incidence of open marriage is on the rise. Conversely, media attention given to the marriage movement can mislead people into thinking the incidence of open marriage is declining. Weiss notes:

Despite the vast attention given to these alternative lifestyles in the 1970s, and despite the more recent claims that Americans are 'returning to traditional models of monogamous marriage,' there is no scientific basis for concluding that these patterns increased in popularity earlier or that they have become less common in the 1980s and 1990s. (Weiss, 1997) 

Investigators have found no reliable evidence that open marriage has either increased or decreased substantially over the last two generations.

Free love

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The Free Love movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It claimed that such issues were the concern of the people involved, and no one else.

Principles

Much of the free love tradition reflects a liberal philosophy that seeks freedom from state regulation and church interference in personal relationships. According to this concept, the free unions of adults are legitimate relations which should be respected by all third parties whether they are emotional or sexual relations. In addition, some free love writing has argued that both men and women have the right to sexual pleasure without social or legal restraints. In the Victorian era, this was a radical notion. Later, a new theme developed, linking free love with radical social change, and depicting it as a harbinger of a new anti-authoritarian, anti-repressive sensibility.

According to today's stereotype, earlier middle-class Americans wanted the home to be a place of stability in an uncertain world. To this mentality are attributed strongly-defined gender roles, which led to a minority reaction in the form of the free-love movement.

While the phrase free love is often associated with promiscuity in the popular imagination, especially in reference to the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, historically the free-love movement has not advocated multiple-sexual partners or short-term sexual relationships. Rather, it has argued that sexual relations that are freely entered into should not be regulated by law.

The term "sex radical" is also used interchangeably with the term "free lover", and was the preferred term by advocates because of the negative connotations of "free love". By whatever name, advocates had two strong beliefs: opposition to the idea of forced sexual activity in a relationship and advocacy for a woman to use her body in any way that she pleases.

Laws of particular concern to free love movements have included those that prevent an unmarried couple from living together, and those that regulate adultery and divorce, as well as age of consent, birth control, homosexuality, abortion, and sometimes prostitution; although not all free-love advocates agree on these issues. The abrogation of individual rights in marriage is also a concern—for example, some jurisdictions do not recognize spousal rape or treat it less seriously than non-spousal rape. Free-love movements since the 19th century have also defended the right to publicly discuss sexuality and have battled obscenity laws. 

At the turn of the 20th century, some free-love proponents extended the critique of marriage to argue that marriage as a social institution encourages emotional possessiveness and psychological enslavement.

Relationship to feminism

The history of free love is entwined with the history of feminism. From the late 18th century, leading feminists, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, have challenged the institution of marriage, and many have advocated its abolition.

According to feminist critique, a married woman was solely a wife and mother, denying her the opportunity to pursue other occupations; sometimes this was legislated, as with bans on married women and mothers being employed as teachers. In 1855, free love advocate Mary Gove Nichols (1810–1884) described marriage as the "annihilation of woman," explaining that women were considered to be men's property in law and public sentiment, making it possible for tyrannical men to deprive their wives of all freedom. For example, the law often allowed a husband to beat his wife. Free-love advocates argued that many children were born into unloving marriages out of compulsion, but should instead be the result of choice and affection—yet children born out of wedlock did not have the same rights as children with married parents.

In 1857, in the Social Revolutionist, Minerva Putnam complained that "in the discussion of free love, no woman has attempted to give her views on the subject" and challenged every woman reader to "rise in the dignity of her nature and declare herself free."

In the 19th century at least six books endorsed the concept of free love, all of which were written by men. However of the four major free-love periodicals following the U. S. civil war, half had female editors. Mary Gove Nichols was the leading-female advocate and the woman most looked up to in the free-love movement. Her autobiography became the first argument against marriage written from a woman's point of view.

To proponents of free love, the act of sex was not just about reproduction. Access to birth control was considered a means to women's independence, and leading birth-control activists also embraced free love. Sexual radicals remained focused on their attempts to uphold a woman's right to control her body and to freely discuss issues such as contraception, marital-sex abuse (emotional and physical), and sexual education. These people believed that by talking about female sexuality, they would help empower women. To help achieve this goal, such radical thinkers relied on the written word, books, pamphlets, and periodicals, and by these means the movement was sustained for over fifty years, spreading the message of free love all over the United States.

History

Early precedents

The Adamites were a sect that rejected marriage. Pictured, they are being rounded up for their heretical views.

A number of utopian social movements throughout history have shared a vision of free love. The all-male Essenes, who lived in the Middle East from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD apparently shunned sex, marriage, and slavery. They also renounced wealth, lived communally, and were pacifist vegetarians. An Early Christian sect known as the Adamites existed in North Africa in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries and rejected marriage. They practiced nudism and believed themselves to be without original sin. 

In the 6th century, adherents of Mazdakism in pre-Muslim Persia apparently supported a kind of free love in the place of marriage, and like many other free-love movements, also favored vegetarianism, pacificism, and communalism. Some writers have posited a conceptual link between the rejection of private property and the rejection of marriage as a form of ownership. One folk story from the period that contains a mention of a free-love (and nudist) community under the sea is "The Tale of Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman" from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (c. 8th century).

Karl Kautsky, writing in 1895, noted that a number of "communistic" movements throughout the Middle Ages also rejected marriage. Typical of such movements, the Cathars of 10th to 14th century Western Europe freed followers from all moral prohibition and religious obligation, but respected those who lived simply, avoided the taking of human or animal life, and were celibate. Women had an uncommon equality and autonomy, even as religious leaders. The Cathars and similar groups (the Waldenses, Apostle brothers, Beghards and Beguines, Lollards, and Hussites) were branded as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church and suppressed. Other movements shared their critique of marriage but advocated free sexual relations rather than celibacy, such as the Brethren of the Free Spirit, Taborites, and Picards.

Enlightenment thought

Frontispiece to William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), which contains Blake's critique of Judeo-Christian values of marriage. Oothoon (centre) and Bromion (left), are chained together, as Bromion has raped Oothoon and she now carries his baby. Theotormon (right) and Oothoon are in love, but Theotormon is unable to act, considering her polluted, and ties himself into knots of indecision.

The challenges to traditional morality and religion brought by the Age of Enlightenment and the emancipatory politics of the French Revolution created an environment where ideas such as free love could flourish. A group of radical intellectuals in England (sometimes known as the English Jacobins), who supported the French Revolution developed early ideas about feminism and free love.

Notable among them was the Romantic poet William Blake, who explicitly compared the sexual oppression of marriage to slavery in works such as Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793). Blake was critical of the marriage laws of his day, and generally railed against traditional Christian notions of chastity as a virtue. At a time of tremendous strain in his marriage, in part due to Catherine's apparent inability to bear children, he directly advocated bringing a second wife into the house. His poetry suggests that external demands for marital fidelity reduce love to mere duty rather than authentic affection, and decries jealousy and egotism as a motive for marriage laws. Poems such as "Why should I be bound to thee, O my lovely Myrtle-tree?" and "Earth's Answer" seem to advocate multiple sexual partners. In his poem "London" he speaks of "the Marriage-Hearse" plagued by "the youthful Harlot's curse", the result alternately of false Prudence and/or Harlotry. Visions of the Daughters of Albion is widely (though not universally) read as a tribute to free love since the relationship between Bromion and Oothoon is held together only by laws and not by love. For Blake, law and love are opposed, and he castigates the "frozen marriage-bed". In Visions, Blake writes:

Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot, is bound
In spells of law to one she loathes? and must she drag the chain
Of life in weary lust? (5.21-3, E49)

Blake believed that humans were "fallen", and that a major impediment to a free love society was corrupt human nature, not merely the intolerance of society and the jealousy of men, but the inauthentic hypocritical nature of human communication. He also seems to have thought that marriage should afford the joy of love, but that in reality it often does not, as a couple's knowledge of being chained often diminishes their joy. 

Title page from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), by Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist and proponent of free love.

 

Another member of Blake's circle was the pioneering English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and her husband and early anarchist, William Godwin. The ideals of free love found their champion in one of the earliest feminists. In her writings, Wollstonecraft challenged the institution of marriage, and advocated its abolition. Her novels criticized the social construction of marriage and its effects on women. In her first novel, Mary: A Fiction written in 1788, the heroine is forced into a loveless marriage for economic reasons. She finds love in relationships with another man and a woman. The novel, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, never finished but published in 1798, revolves around the story of a woman imprisoned in an asylum by her husband; Maria finds fulfilment outside of marriage, in an affair with a fellow inmate. Mary makes it clear that "women had strong sexual desires and that it was degrading and immoral to pretend otherwise."

Wollstonecraft felt that women should not give up freedom and control of their sexuality, and thus didn't marry her partner, Gilbert Imlay, despite the two conceiving and having a child together in the midst of the Terror of the French Revolution. Though the relationship ended badly, due in part to the discovery of Imlay's infidelity, and not least because Imlay abandoned her for good, Wollstonecraft's belief in free love survived. She later developed a relationship with Godwin, who shared her free love ideals, and published on the subject throughout his life. However, the two did decide to marry, just days before her death due to complications at parturition. 

In an act understood to support free love, their child, Mary, took up with the then still-married English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley at a young age. Shelley wrote in defence of free love (and vegetarianism) in the prose notes of Queen Mab (1813), in his essay On Love (c. 1815). and in the poem Epipsychidion (1821):

I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion ...
True love has this, different from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.

Utopian socialism

Sharing the free-love ideals of the earlier social movements—as well as their feminism, pacifism, and simple communal life—were the utopian socialist communities of early-nineteenth-century France and Britain, associated with writers and thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier in France, and Robert Owen in England. Fourier, who coined the term feminism, argued that true freedom could only occur without masters, without the ethos of work, and without suppressing passions: the suppression of passions is not only destructive to the individual, but to society as a whole. He argued that all sexual expressions should be enjoyed as long as people are not abused, and that "affirming one's difference" can actually enhance social integration. 

Robert Owen argued that marriage formed one of an "awful trinity" of oppressors to mankind, as well as religion and private property, and his son Robert Dale was a leading proponent of free divorce. The Saint-Simonian feminist Pauline Roland took a free-love stance against marriage, having four children in the 1830s, all of whom bore her name.

The German composer Richard Wagner advocated something like free love in several of his works, and began a family with Cosima Liszt, then still married to the conductor Hans von Bülow. Though apparently scandalous at the time, such liaisons seemed the actions of admired artists who were following the dictates of their own wills, rather than those of social convention, and in this way they were in step with their era's liberal philosophers of the cult of passion, such as Fourier, and their actual or eventual openness can be understood to be a prelude to the freer ways of the twentieth century. Friedrich Nietzsche spoke occasionally in favor of something like free love, but when he proposed marriage to that famous practitioner of it, Lou Andreas-Salome, she berated him for being inconsistent with his philosophy of the free and supramoral Superman, a criticism that Nietzsche seems to have taken seriously, or to have at least been stung by. The relationship between composer Frédéric Chopin and writer George Sand can be understood as exemplifying free love in a number of ways. Behavior of this kind by figures in the public eye did much to erode the credibility of conventionalism in relationships, especially when such conventionalism brought actual unhappiness to its practitioners.

Origins of the movement

The eminent sociologist Herbert Spencer argued in his Principles of Sociology for the implementation of free divorce. Claiming that marriage consists of two components, "union by law" and "union by affection", he argued that with the loss of the latter union, legal union should lose all meaning and dissolve automatically, without the legal requirement for a divorce. Free love particularly stressed women's rights since most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures.

United States

The Oneida Community was a utopian group established in the 1840s, which practiced a form of free love. Postcard of the Oneida Community Mansion House from 1907.

Free love began to coalesce into a movement in the mid to late 19th century. The term was coined by the Christian socialist writer John Humphrey Noyes, although he preferred to use the term 'complex marriage'. Noyes founded the Oneida Community in 1848, a utopian community that "[rejected] conventional marriage both as a form of legalism from which Christians should be free and as a selfish institution in which men exerted rights of ownership over women". He found scriptural justification: "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven" (Matt. 22:30). Noyes also supported eugenics; and only certain people (including Noyes himself) were allowed to become parents. Another movement was established in Berlin Heights, Ohio. 

In 1852, a writer named Marx Edgeworth Lazarus published a tract entitled "Love vs. Marriage pt. 1," in which he portrayed marriage as "incompatible with social harmony and the root cause of mental and physical impairments." Lazarus intertwined his writings with his religious teachings, a factor that made the Christian community more tolerable to the free love idea. Elements of the free-love movement also had links to abolitionist movements, drawing parallels between slavery and "sexual slavery" (marriage), and forming alliances with black activists. 

American feminist Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927), the first woman to run for presidency in the U.S. in 1872, was also called "the high priestess of free love". In 1871, Woodhull wrote: "Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere".

Cartoon by Thomas Nast portraying Victoria Woodhull as an advocate of free love

 

The women's movement, free love and Spiritualism were three strongly linked movements at the time, and Woodhull was also a spiritualist leader. Like Noyes, she also supported eugenics. Fellow social reformer and educator Mary Gove Nichols was happily married (to her second husband), and together they published a newspaper and wrote medical books and articles, a novel, and a treatise on marriage, in which they argued the case for free love. Both Woodhull and Nichols eventually repudiated free love.

Publications of the movement in the second half of the 19th century included Nichols' Monthly, The Social Revolutionist, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly (ed. Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin), The Word (ed. Ezra Heywood), Lucifer, the Light-Bearer (ed. Moses Harman) and the German-language Detroit newspaper Der Arme Teufel (ed. Robert Reitzel). Organisations included the New England Free Love League, founded with the assistance of American libertarian Benjamin Tucker as a spin-off from the New England Labor Reform League (NELRL). A minority of freethinkers also supported free love.

The most radical free love journal was The Social Revolutionist, published in the 1856–1857, by John Patterson. The first volume consisted of twenty writers, of which only one was a woman.

Sex radicals were not alone in their fight against marriage ideals. Some other nineteenth-century Americans saw this social institution as flawed, but hesitated to abolish it. Groups such as the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Latter-day Saints were wary of the social notion of marriage. These organizations and sex radicals believed that true equality would never exist between the sexes as long as the church and the state continued to work together, worsening the problem of subordination of wives to their husbands.

Free-love movements continued into the early 20th century in bohemian circles in New York's Greenwich Village. A group of Villagers lived free-love ideals and promoted them in the political journal The Masses and its sister publication The Little Review, a literary journal. Incorporating influences from the writings of the English thinkers and activists Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis, women such as Emma Goldman campaigned for a range of sexual freedoms, including homosexuality and access to contraception. Other notable figures among the Greenwich-Village scene who have been associated with free love include Edna St. Vincent Millay, Max Eastman, Crystal Eastman, Floyd Dell, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Ida Rauh, Hutchins Hapgood, Neith Boyce; a certain extreme was reached by self-proclaimed Satanist Anton LaVey. Dorothy Day also wrote passionately in defense of free love, women's rights, and contraception—but later, after converting to Catholicism, she criticized the sexual revolution of the sixties. 

The development of the idea of free love in the United States was also significantly impacted by the publisher of Playboy magazine, Hugh Hefner, whose activities and persona over more than a half century popularized the idea of free love to the general public.

United Kingdom

Havelock Ellis was a pioneer sexologist and advocate of free love.

Free love was a central tenet of the philosophy of the Fellowship of the New Life, founded in 1883, by the Scottish intellectual Thomas Davidson. Fellowship members included many illustrious intellectuals of the day, who went on to radically challenge accepted Victorian notions of morality and sexuality, including poets Edward Carpenter and John Davidson, animal rights activist Henry Stephens Salt, sexologist Havelock Ellis, feminists Edith Lees, Emmeline Pankhurst and Annie Besant and writers H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and Olive Schreiner. Its objective was "The cultivation of a perfect character in each and all," and believed in the transformation of society through setting an example of clean simplified living for others to follow. Many of the Fellowship's members advocated pacifism, vegetarianism and simple living.

Edward Carpenter was the first activist for the rights of homosexuals. He became interested in progressive education, especially providing information to young people on the topic of sexual education. For Carpenter, sexual education meant forwarding a clear analysis of the ways in which sex and gender were used to oppress women, contained in Carpenter's radical work Love's Coming-of-Age. In it he argued that a just and equal society must promote the sexual and economic freedom of women. The main crux of his analysis centred on the negative effects of the institution of marriage. He regarded marriage in England as both enforced celibacy and a form of prostitution. 

Edward Carpenter in 1875.

He did not believe women would truly be free until a socialist society was established. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, however, this led him to conclude that all oppressed workers should support women's emancipation, rather than to subordinate women's rights to male worker's rights. He remarked, "... there is no solution except the freedom of woman - which means, of course, the freedom of the masses of the people, men and women, and the ceasing altogether of economic slavery. There is no solution which will not include the redemption of the terms free women and free love to their true and rightful significance. Let every woman whose heart bleeds for the sufferings of her sex, hasten to declare herself and to constitute herself, as far as she possibly can, a free woman." 

The best-known British advocate of free love was the philosopher Bertrand Russell, later Third Earl Russell, who said that he did not believe he really knew a woman until he had made love with her. Russell consistently addressed aspects of free love throughout his voluminous writings, and was not personally content with conventional Monogamy until extreme old age. His most famous work on the subject was Marriage and Morals, published in 1929. The book heavily criticizes the Victorian notions of morality regarding sex and marriage. Russell argued that the laws and ideas about sex of his time were a potpourri from various sources, which were no longer valid with the advent of contraception, as the sexual acts are now separated from the conception. He argued that family is most important for the welfare of children, and as such, a man and a woman should be considered bound only after her first pregnancy.

Marriage and Morals prompted vigorous protests and denunciations against Russell shortly after the book's publication. A decade later, the book cost him his professorial appointment at the City College of New York due to a court judgment that his opinions made him "morally unfit" to teach. Contrary to what many people believed, Russell did not advocate an extreme libertine position. Instead, he felt that sex, although a natural impulse like hunger or thirst, involves more than that, because no one is "satisfied by the bare sexual act". He argued that abstinence enhances the pleasure of sex, which is better when it "has a large psychical element than when it is purely physical".

Russell noted that for a marriage to work requires that there "be a feeling of complete equality on both sides; there must be no interference with mutual freedom; there must be the most complete physical and mental intimacy; and there must be a certain similarity in regard to standards of value". He argued that it was, in general, impossible to sustain this mutual feeling for an indefinite length of time, and that the only option in such a case was to provide for either the easy availability of divorce, or the social sanction of extra-marital sex.

Russell was also a very early advocate of repealing sodomy laws.

Australia

Interest in free love spread to Australia in the late 19th century. The English-born anarchist, Chummy Fleming founded the Melbourne Anarchist Club in 1886, which led a debate on the topic of free love, and a couple of years later released an anonymous pamphlet on the subject: 'Free Love—Explained and Defended' (possibly written by David Andrade or Chummy Fleming). The view of the Anarchist Club was formed in part as a reaction to the infamous Whitechapel murders by the notorious Jack the Ripper; his atrocities were at the time popularly understood by some—at least, by anarchists—to be a violation of the freedom of certain extreme classes of "working women," but by extension of all women. 

Newcastle libertarian Alice Winspear, the wife of pioneer socialist William Robert Winspear, wrote: "Let us have freedom—freedom for both man and woman—freedom to earn our bread in whatever vocation is best suited to us, and freedom to love where we like, and to live only with those whom we love, and by whom we are loved in return." A couple of decades later, the Melbourne anarchist feminist poet Lesbia Harford also championed free love.

France

Émile Armand

 

In the bohemian districts of Montmartre and Montparnasse, many were determined to shock the "bourgeois" sensibilities of the society they grew up in; many, such as the anarchist Benoît Broutchoux, favored free love. At the same time, the cross-dressing radical activist Madeleine Pelletier practised celibacy, distributed birth-control devices and information, and performed abortions. 

An important propagandist of free love was individualist anarchist Emile Armand. He advocated naturism and polyamory in what he termed la camaraderie amoureuse. He wrote many propagandist articles on this subject such as "De la liberté sexuelle" (1907) where he advocated not only a vague free love but also multiple partners, which he called "plural love". In the individualist anarchist journal L'en dehors he and others continued in this way. Armand seized this opportunity to outline his theses supporting revolutionary sexualism and camaraderie amoureuse that differed from the traditional views of the partisans of free love in several respects. 

Later Armand submitted that from an individualist perspective nothing was reprehensible about making "love", even if one did not have very strong feelings for one's partner. "The camaraderie amoureuse thesis", he explained, "entails a free contract of association (that may be annulled without notice, following prior agreement) reached between anarchist individualists of different genders, adhering to the necessary standards of sexual hygiene, with a view toward protecting the other parties to the contract from certain risks of the amorous experience, such as rejection, rupture, exclusivism, possessiveness, unicity, coquetry, whims, indifference, flirtatiousness, disregard for others, and prostitution." He also published Le Combat contre la jalousie et le sexualisme révolutionnaire (1926), followed over the years by Ce que nous entendons par liberté de l'amour (1928), La Camaraderie amoureuse ou "chiennerie sexuelle" (1930), and, finally, La Révolution sexuelle et la camaraderie amoureuse (1934), a book of nearly 350 pages comprising most of his writings on sexuality. In a text from 1937, he mentioned among the individualist objectives the practice of forming voluntary associations for purely sexual purposes of heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual nature or of a combination thereof. 

He also supported the right of individuals to change sex and stated his willingness to rehabilitate forbidden pleasures, non-conformist caresses (he was personally inclined toward voyeurism), as well as sodomy. This led him to allocate more and more space to what he called "the sexual non-conformists", while excluding physical violence. His militancy also included translating texts from people such as Alexandra Kollontai and Wilhelm Reich and establishments of free love associations which tried to put into practice la camaraderie amoureuse through actual sexual experiences. 

Free love advocacy groups active during this time included the Association d'Études sexologiques and the Ligue mondiale pour la Réforme sexuelle sur une base scientifique.

Germany

Lily Braun

 

In Germany, from 1891 to 1919, the Verband Fortschrittlicher Frauenvereine (League of Progressive Women's Associations) called for a boycott of marriage and for the enjoyment of sexuality. Founded by Lily Braun and Minna Cauer, the league also aimed to organise prostitutes into labor unions, taught contraception, and supported the right to abortion and the abolition of criminal penalties against homosexuality, as well as running child-care programs for single mothers. In 1897, teacher and writer Emma Trosse published a brochure titled Ist freie Liebe Sittenlosigkeit? ("Is free love immoral?"). 

The worldwide homosexual emancipation movement also began in Germany in the late 19th century, and many of the thinkers whose work inspired sexual liberation in the 20th century were also from the German-speaking world, such as Sigmund Freud, Otto Gross, Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, and Max Stirner's follower and biographer, John Henry Mackay.

USSR

After the October Revolution in Russia, Alexandra Kollontai became the most prominent woman in the Soviet administration. Kollontai was also a champion of free love. However, Clara Zetkin recorded that Lenin opposed free love as "completely un-Marxist, and moreover, anti-social". Zetkin also recounted Lenin's denunciation of plans to organise Hamburg's women prostitutes into a "special revolutionary militant section": he saw this as "corrupt and degenerate." 

Despite the traditional marital lives of Lenin and most Bolsheviks, they believed that sexual relations were outside the jurisdiction of the state. The Soviet government abolished centuries-old Czarist regulations on personal life, which had prohibited homosexuality and made it difficult for women to obtain divorce permits or to live singly. However, by the end of the 1920s, Stalin had taken over the Communist Party and begun to implement socially conservative policies. Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder, and free love was further demonized.

Recent

From the late 1940s to the 1960s, the bohemian free-love tradition of Greenwich Village in America was carried on by the beat generation, although differing with their predecessors by being an apparently male-dominated movement. The Beats also produced the first appearance of male homosexual champions of free love in the U.S., with writers such as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. Like some of those before, the beats challenged a range of social conventions, and they found inspiration in such aspects of black culture as jazz music. The Beat movement led on the West Coast to the activities of such groups as the Merry Pranksters (led, according to Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally, not by novelist Ken Kesey, but by hipster and driver Neal Cassady) and the entire San Francisco pop music scene, in which the implications of sexual bohemianism were advanced in a variety of ways by the hippies. The study of sexology continued to gain prominence throughout the era, with the work of researchers Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson supporting challenges to traditional values regarding sex and marriage. 

With the Summer of Love in 1967, the eccentricities of this group became a nationally recognized movement. Despite the developing sexual revolution and the influence of the Beatniks had in this new counterculture social rebellion, it has been acknowledged that the New Left movement was arguably the most prominent advocate of free love during the late 1960s. Many among the counterculture youth sided with New Left arguments that marriage was a symbol of the traditional capitalist culture which supported war. "Make Love Not War," a slogan of antiquity renewed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono among others, became a popular slogan in the counterculture movement which denounced both war and capitalism. Images from the pro-socialist May 1968 uprising in France, which occurred as the anti-war protests were escalating throughout the United States, would provide a significant source of morale to the New Left cause as well.

Second wave feminism continued to question traditional Judeo-Christian teaching on sexuality, while groups like Moral Majority and the Christian right opposed change, after Roe v Wade greatly increased access to abortion in the United States. 

After the Stonewall riots, gay rights became an increasingly prominent issue, but by the early 21st century gay activists had shifted their focus to same-sex marriage rather than free love. Divorce and blended families became more common, and young couples increasingly chose to live together in common law marriages or domestic partnerships rather than marrying in church or formalizing or legalizing marriage through the court system.