serial loves

Complete devotion is so uncommon that I wonder whether it is humanly impossible. For example, it isn’t all that odd to learn of European men who retain mistresses. Other cultures have their own variations: harems, polygamist communities, and so on. Having one’s desires directed into multiple repositories is not restricted to sexual drives. It seems that even those who engage in monogamy in their personal lives juxtapose those arrangements with multiple love interests in their work lives.

By all criteria, someone with whom I am reasonably well-acquainted person is unwaveringly and unquestionably devoted to a life partner. Does this evince a counter-example of humans having polygamist tendencies? No. In fact, the level of marital devotion seems in direct contrast to his propensity to pursue multiple heady projects. Here is reinforcement of my point. On balance, where devotion is the rule within one realm it is within another realm that faithlessness is the default action. Further, such tendencies seem to dominate within our working social circle. Of one mind at home, of too many hearts in the field.

None of this is news, especially with the confession of being a scholar activitist of polygamist proportions. Such tendencies are, I would argue, representative of a cosmic balance. In other settings, where an individual’s sexual attentions are widely dispersed he or she can only focus upon one career option. Those with the wandering eyes and genitalia are also the people who see nothing wrong with keeping in the same job forever. The only thing needed to strengthen this point is to coin a new term. Polygamy or polyandry are too biological as is polygynandry (what it lacks in pronouncability it compensates for in its imagery). Polyamory? Polyfidelitous? Regardless, we must agree it is not polymer.