Monogamy, I’ve argued, faces a pressing problem: the difficulty of finding a morally relevant difference between its restriction on having additional partners and a restriction on having additional friends. To the extent that we’d find a restriction on having additional friends morally troubling, that puts pressure on us to judge the same about monogamy. This argument, however, has recently come under attack by Kyle York, who defends monogamy on grounds of specialness, practicality, and jealousy. In this paper I’ll argue that, (...) pace York, these defenses of monogamy all fail. (shrink)

The downsides of monogamy are felt by most people engaged in long-term relationships, including restrictions on self-discovery, limits on friendship, sexual boredom, and a circumscribed understanding of intimacy. Yet, a "happily ever after" monogamy is assumed to be the ideal form of romantic love in many modern societies: a relationship that is morally ideal and will bring the most happiness to its two partners. -/- In Why It’s OK to Not Be Monogamous, Justin L. Clardy deeply questions these assumptions. He (...) rejects the claim that non-monogamy among honest, informed and consenting adults is morally impermissible. He shows instead how polyamorous relationships can actually be exemplars of moral virtue. The book discusses how social and political forces sustain and reward monogamous relationships. The book defines non-monogamy as a privative concept; a negation of monogamy. Looking at its prevalence in the United States, the book explains how common criticisms of non-monogamy come up short. Clardy argues, as some researchers have recently shown―monogamy relies on continually demonizing non-monogamy to sustain its moral status. Finally, the book concludes with a focus on equality, asking what justice for polyamorous individuals might look like. (shrink)

It has been argued that romantic love is an intrinsically moral phenomenon – a phenomenon that is directly connected to morality. The connection is elucidated in terms of reasons for love, and reasons of love. It is said that romantic love is a response to moral reasons – the moral qualities of the beloved. Additionally, the reasons that love produces are also moral in nature. Since romantic love is a response to moral qualities and a source of moral motivation, it (...) is itself moral. This chapter aims to cast doubt on both these claims. By employing the model of emotional rationality it shows that a moralistic fallacy is committed when reasons for love are construed as moral. Reasons of love are also not essentially moral but rather of both moral and nonmoral kinds. Reasons of love are in part determined by cultural narratives and norms pertaining to love. Romantic love is not moral in nature. Morality is extrinsic to love. (shrink)

Recent work by philosophers such as Harry Chalmers and Hallie Liberto has called into question the moral permissibility of monogamy. In this article, I defend monogamy on a number of grounds, including practical reasons and reasons relating to commitment, specialness, and jealousy. I also attempt to reframe the debate about monogamy as not just relating to the permissibility of restricting one’s partner but as equally about one’s freedom to leave a relationship. Finally, I make a case against Liberto’s claim that (...) monogamous agreements are over-extensive. (shrink)

Jealousy has been disparaged as psychologically debilitating and morally flawed since well before Shakespeare wrote Othello and is indeed represented—particularly well—as far back as in Homer's portrayal of gods and goddesses in The Iliad. According to some of these traditional views, often shared by philosophers, psychologists and the general public, jealousy is the sign, if not of an irredeemably corrupt mind, then at least of an excessively possessive and insecure character. But does jealousy always indicate some sort of flaw or (...) failure? Is jealousy rerehensible in all contexts? In the present paper, I intend to suggest some modifications to the view that it is, by giving jealousy a more sympathetic and charitable hearing than it normally receives, and suggesting that jealousy might, in some cases, be justifiable. (shrink)

In order to demedicalize the ethics of pre-exposure prophylaxis as HIV prevention, I consider the social effects on men who have sex with men. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers MSM to be the highest risk group for contracting HIV in the USA. The ethics of using PrEP as HIV prevention among MSM, however, has both a medical dimension and a social dimension. While the medical dimension of the ethics of PrEP includes concerns about side effects, drug resistance (...) and distribution, the social dimension of the ethics of PrEP includes concerns about stigmatization, sexual and romantic relationships and sexual freedom. The medical concerns of the ethics of PrEP may take precedence over the social concerns, but there is a growing body of literature that already addresses the medical concerns. Much less attention has been given to the social concerns of the ethics of PrEP, and in this article, I aim to fill this gap in the literature. Therefore, I focus on the often-overlooked social dimension of the ethics of PrEP to help understand the connection between the risks, relationships and communities of MSM using PrEP as HIV prevention. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider how trust affects the decisions of men who have sex with men (MSM) around using pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) as HIV prevention in their sexual and romantic relationships, and how the use of PrEP affects their relationships with healthcare providers. MSM have to trust their sexual and romantic partners as well as their healthcare providers for PrEP to be successful as a relatively new HIV prevention strategy. This trust includes both interpersonal trust and institutional trust and (...) it is complicated by different kinds of relationship dynamics and the history of prejudice against MSM in healthcare institutions. (shrink)

This article highlights a somewhat neglected aspect of love : their complexity. We suggest distinguishing between three major related types of emotional complexity: emotional diversity, emotional ambivalence, and emotional behavior. The notion of emotional complexity has far-reaching implications for understanding emotions and our wellbeing. This is illustrated by examining the notion of emotional complexity in two common yet complex phenomena in the romantic realm: romantic compromises and polyamory.