Dear Brother Gbenga,

 

I have followed you for several years, and I have deep respect for you and the work you are doing. You do not put your head in the sand like an ostrich; you are genuinely concerned about people, and you try to find a solution to issues rather than just contribute to the problems we face in society today.

 

This is a personal letter to you; publish it if you see it as worthy of your attention and your space.

I must warn you, it is long and controversial. It is also a bit academic because I had to add a lot of research to it, so that I can make it make sense to you at some level.

All I ask is that you read it with an open mind and not hiss while deleting ot ignoring it.

 

Even if I have written rubbish and it made no sense to your monogamous orientation, remember that you have a duty to pursue knowledge even when it is not comfortable for you or compatible with your belief system.

 

The Fact is, more than half the population of Nigerians practice polygamy (Muslims, traditionalists, some Christians, and others). Out of the remaining half, a lot of those in monogamous relationships are cheating on their spouses on a steady basis or have cheated on their partners at least a few times in the course of their marriage.

 

Another fact is evident, that among those who are dating to be married, many singles have already been with more than one lover per season in an arrangement I have termed “serial monogamy”. You date A, you sleep with him or her for a while, it doesn’t work out, and then you break up and date B also for a while, and it goes on and on until you find the “right partner,” get married, and settle down.

 

Hookup culture, casual sex, the scarcity of available and capable men, and the surplus of women of marriageable age are obvious challenges staring us in the eyes daily.

 

Most people just ignore these facts or play the game of “As long as me and mine are fine, the world can burn for all I care”. This is why I have directed this long letter to you. I know you are not like that, and you are as concerned about solving societal issues as Jesus was.

 

Nature abhors a vacuum, and as things stand, all forms of ideologies are overtaking the spaces which love and consideration should occupy because we have treated love as a finite resource, and many have to embrace feminism, misandry, misogyny, and other forms of devilish belief systems to compensate for being left out of the loop in our obsession with “monogamous practices which I believe is extremely hyprocritical and not true to nature or human instinct.

 

You have two people and ten oranges. If you are to divide the oranges equally, each person will get five oranges each.

 

You have two men and ten women, all of them capable of feeling lonely and needing companionship. You pick only two women and leave the other eight to rot, and you call this “sensible” because they must not share or are forbidden to share. These other eight women find a way to survive. Some will become baby mamas, “side chicks”, cheating partners, praying for one of the men to divorce while on the waiting list, woman, depressed woman, or angry and bitter woman.

 

This is the reality of the world as I see it today.

 

I am not reducing women to oranges, as I know many people will pounce on my analogy. I am aware that life is not black and white, and some people are truly monogamous by nature, while others are not. I also admit the two men may not have the capacity or the orientation or the ability to marry five women at once, but I am asking why the rules forbid fulfilment for everyone rather than finding a way to ensure everybody is fulfilled or at least have an opportunity to thrive. If one of the men has the capacity to connect with nine of the women or two of the women, or five of the women, how is that evil?

 

My letter is not to vent or rage bait; it may seem provocative to the close-minded, but I ask that you just give me a few minutes. I also ask that you respect me enough to reply to me or at least acknowledge my effort if you don’t deem this worthy of posting. Thank you, sir.

 

For most of my life, I was taught that monogamy is the default setting for love. One person. One relationship. One emotional center. You meet someone, you know love, and they feel the same way.

 

You enter a relationship. If heterosexual, you become husband and wife, procreate and then have children. If homosexual, you become happily wedded (if you are not in a shit third world country like ours), then adopt kids, or travel your life away.

 

It is the way we are raised. But what if not all people are hardwired to be monogamous?

What if I view myself as my own and refuse to be the property of my lover?

What if I believe that fundamentally, my life and my body are mine and mine alone?

What if I refuse to place the burden on my partner to fulfill every emotional and relational need I have?

What if I don’t believe one person has to be my best friend, my confidant, my intellectual companion, my emotional support system, and my entire romantic world all at once?

What if love, to me, does not lose its meaning just because it is not exclusive?

What if the presence of other connections does not diminish what I feel, but simply reflects the way human relationships naturally form?

What if I want my partner to experience a life that extends beyond me?

What if I want them to be loved, to form deep connections, to explore the fullness of their own emotional world without feeling that doing so threatens what we share?

Or perhaps the more difficult question is this:

If I truly love someone, should my instinct be to treat them as if I own them and limit their connections, or if I truly love them, would I support the freedom that allows them to experience life fully?

Is there a philosophy of love and the self that is so free and unrestricting, centering on transparency and autonomy?

 

Is monogamy the default for humans?

That realization forced me to ask a question I had never seriously asked before: What if the way we structure relationships is different from the way humans naturally experience connection?

 

If the human capacity to form multiple bonds has always existed, then the tension many people feel in their relationships becomes easier to understand.

It is the quiet conflict between what we are capable of feeling and the structures we inherited to organize those feelings.

 

People rarely question this structure because it is presented as the natural order of things. But when someone begins to notice that their emotional life does not neatly conform to that expectation, a deeper question begins to emerge.

 

Are we struggling because our capacity for connection is flawed, or because the structures we inherited were never designed to account for the full complexity of human attachment?

 

The answer is rather simple.

 

Humans have always been naturally capable of forming multiple emotional bonds. Our capacity for connection is not limited to a single person. We build friendships, familial ties, communities, and deep attachments that coexist throughout our lives. Love, care, and emotional intimacy are not resources that run out when shared.

Yet culture and society eventually developed structures to organize those bonds.

 

As human societies became more complex, relationships also needed systems that could maintain stability. Agriculture, property ownership, inheritance, and lineage introduced new concerns that early hunter-gatherer communities did not face in the same way. Questions such as who inherits land, who belongs to which family, and who is responsible for a household began to shape the way relationships were structured.

Monogamous marriage became one of the most effective ways to answer those questions. It simplified inheritance, clarified family lines, and created predictable social units around which communities could organize themselves.

 

Over time, what began as a practical social structure gradually transformed into a cultural expectation. The system that organized relationships started to be interpreted as the natural way humans are supposed to love.

But structures and instincts are not always the same thing.

 

The human ability to care for more than one person did not disappear simply because societies created rules around exclusivity. Emotional life remained complex. People continued to form multiple attachments, to feel attraction beyond a single partner, and to navigate connections that did not neatly fit within the structures they inherited.

 

This does not mean that monogamy is unnatural, nor that it cannot be deeply fulfilling for many people. What it suggests is something more nuanced: that monogamy may be one way of organizing human relationships, rather than the only way human connection can exist.

Understanding this distinction opens space for questions that many people quietly wrestle with. If humans are capable of forming multiple meaningful bonds, then the real question may not be whether those bonds exist, but how individuals choose to structure and honor them in their lives.

 

…To be continued