Monogamy – Is it nature or nurtured?
Motherhood and monogamy in woman
God seems to have created every woman with the intention of making her life wholesome essentially through her motherhood. This motherly instinct is deeply etched in every female species, including the animal kingdom. Amidst human beings, even the life of a nymphomaniac undergoes a metamorphosis, both physiologically and emotionally, once she gives birth to a baby. The inexplicable bond of love that a woman develops with her baby, and the desire to protect and nurture her child calls for an emotional attachment towards the man who was the cause of the arrival of the child.
Through her love and care a woman nurtures monogamous commitment in man.
It is true that in the present day scheme of things where marital discords and divorces have become too common, a woman may bear the children of more than one father one marriage after another (what is now called serial monogamy) , but definitely the society would not easily accept a woman having more than one sexual partner simultaneously.
There is nothing like natural fatherly instinct!
Thus along with motherhood, God appears to have given a woman a far deeper sense of responsibility towards her children and the need to ensure their respectability in the society; that respectability can be ensured by her only by declaring boldly, without any sense of guilt, who their singular father is.
A woman’s psyche, by nature, is haunted by a high degree of guilt and consequent emotional turmoil, if she were to become polygamous by her adventurism, omissions or commissions.
A man can sow seeds everywhere
Contrary to all the above, think of a man’s physical and emotional constitution. Man’s life is NOT built physically and mentally around fatherhood. When a woman produces just one egg in her womb per month that has the potential to become a child, a man produces billions and billions of sperms in every ejaculation, which he is capable of releasing every day. A man, like a tree or a plant, produces far in excess of seeds than that can create a new life. Why is it so? It leads us to believe that it is purely God’s scheme of things that it be so.
This excess and natural production of seeds tempt a man to sow them at wider and and newer fields, and he is not haunted by any emotional sense of guilt as strongly as women are. That’s why there is lot of scope to conclude that God has not created men to be monogamous strictly; He has given him the freedom to play as he likes and face the physical and emotional consequences of practicing such an unbridled freedom (Eg. AIDS) , or to restrain himself by accepting moral and spiritual responsibility towards a single woman.
Enforcing monogamy through womanly love and care
God has also given, in a very poetic way, some strong capabilities to woman to keep her man bonded and hooked to her without going astray. Yes. It is the power of woman’s overpowering love, possessiveness and the physical bonding she weaves around a man. It is this beautiful characteristic of woman that attracts and binds a man to one woman. A woman’s way of showing love to her man, the way she goes about satisfying his needs and nurturing him, the way she displays extraordinary motherly characteristics to their children, and the extent of sacrifice a women does to do her divinely role of playing the unselfish motherhood — all these create an awe in a man on his wife.
Loving, nurturing, caring, accepting man’s dominance, accepting a man’s many idiosyncrasies and still tolerating and supporting him — all these things are done by women just as a barter deal to ensure men of predominantly polygamous tendencies to remain monogamous. Thus a woman plays her role naturally to nurture monogamous tendencies in a man.
An essentially polygamous man can be tamed and turned monogamous only through the unique strengths, well founded on femininity, as endowed to a woman by God. When women forget to grasp this simple fact, they end up fighting for equality and entangle themselves into more and more emotional turmoil.
If a man, despite his natural and inborn tendency, opts to live monogamous, he is definitely elevating himself spiritually. By nurturing this quality, he may lose some thrills and fun in life, but he gains love, physical well being, mental peace and tranquility in the bargain. On the contrary, if a woman tends to become polygamous, she is going against her basic monogamous nature and thus tend to acquire lowly animal qualities. As women are more of emotional creatures than men, a fallen woman suffers a lot more emotionally than a fallen man.
Such of those women who want equality with men in all respects — women who want to shun their traditional role and monogamous nature and compete with men in all spheres including the domain of loosened moralities, are woefully ignorant of this elementary fact, and the price they pay for it in their physical and mental plane is really too stiff.
The suffering of a family or a society is much more when a woman goes astray, than when a man goes astray. This is not an area where woman should try for equality with men. If they do, not only do they bring themselves to ruin, but also cause a severe damage to the balance of the society at large.
Monogamy & Polygamy – Potent Lessons from Indian Mythology
Lord Rama, the most adored male Monogamist
Sita Rama — the monogamous and ideal husband.
In the grand Hindu Epic Ramayana, the King Rama practiced monogamy as a matter of great virtue, despite the fact that it was quite a common norm those days that Kings had multiple wives. Rama’s father Dasaratha had three queens and other 60 concubines in his palace and Lord Rama never took it as an example to follow for his personal life. With such a great virtue, Rama is being adored as the ideal husband, despite the fact that he got himself separated from his dear wife Sita and sent her to forest in order to uphold his adherence to dharma as a ruler.
Draupadi, the much condemned woman polygamist
On the contrary, in the other grand Hindu epic Mahabharata, the 5 pandavas, who were considered sticklers to dharma, got infatuated by the overpowering beauty of Draupadi; they opted to marry her as a common wife of all the five, despite the fact that it was only Arjuna who won her by his archery skills at te swayamvara of Draupadi. There are explanations and justifications given in Mahabharata for this deviant act, but the fact remains that Draupadi accepted this proposition without protest; it was quite a blasphemous act, even considering the fact that the morality of the ruling class was at its lowest ebb during Mahabharata period.
A scene from Mahabharata – Draupati being disrobed by Duschatana in front of her 5 husbands. Only Lord Krishna could come to the rescue of polygamist Draupati.
This act against the social norm practiced by Draupati and Pandavas can be taken as one of the covert causes of the many hardships faced by the Pandavas in their lives. The total lack of empathy towards their cause by the Kauravas and the utter disrespect meted out to them by kauravas becomes very obvious when Pandavas lost everything to Kauravas while playing the dice game. Draupadi was singled out and utterly humiliated by Karna as he was openly laughing at Draupati, calling her a whore that married 5 men and she could very well come and sit on his lap too.
It should be noted that though Pandavas won the war, none of their their children given birth by Draupadi was alive to rule the kingdom later.
This website has been conceived and being developed by C.V.Rajan. He is a retired Engineer and an ex-design consultant, now living with his wife in Ashram at Amritapuri, Kerala, spending his retired life in quest of spirituality under the holy feet of Amma, Satguru Mata Amritanandamayi.