Agamia: a free as well as defiant way of living relationships
Over the decades and the expansion of welfare societies, new ways of loving have appeared. Yes before it was practically an obligation to marry a person of the opposite sex and have children (or dedicate life to a god), today the creation of emotional ties is much freer.
Homosexual marriage, for example, means that regardless of sexual orientation you have the same rights at the time of getting married, while the option of not having a partner is increasingly accepted socially (although there is still a certain stigma about women single women of a certain age). In addition, in recent years proposals such as polyamory or relational anarchy have begun to question the idea of romantic love and traditional monogamous couple.
However, for some people there is still a long way to go to ensure that freedom in affective life is something really present in our societies. It is from this type of position that the concept of agamia, an idea as revolutionary as it is controversial .
- Maybe you're interested: "Relational anarchy: affective bonds without labels, in 9 principles"
What is agamia?
Agamia is, fundamentally, the absence of what is called gamos, which is a union between two people that has marriage as a point of reference . In courtship, for example, is an example of gamos, since culturally it is seen as a prelude to marriage, but there are many other similar cases.
For example, the relationship between two lovers, who formally do not consider themselves a couple, is also gamos , in the vast majority of cases. Why? Because they can not remain indifferent to the possibility that oneself, or the other person, seeks to formalize the relationship, and accept that possibility as something normal, which must condition their way of behaving towards the other. After all, sex is not something alien to gamos, but rather that is what has given rise to its existence.
Something as simple as feigning disinterest in the other person in specific cases, for example, is usually a way of trying not to give the image of a person in love: the courtship and marriage act as background noise against what needs to be positioned.
Thus, the defenders of agamia they usually criticize the idea of polyamory pointing out that, in practice, it is a way of loving, having as a point of reference the traditional Gamma relation. At the end of the day, all kinds of names and labels are established to define each of the forms of polyamory according to the degree to which they resemble the traditional monogamous couple, pointing out types of commitments that only make sense if they have been internalized. based on romantic love.
- Related article: "Polyamory: what is it and what types of polyamorous relationships are there?"
The relational standard of marriage
From the point of view of the defenders of agamia, our way of seeing love is conditioned by the strong cultural roots of marriage as a way to regulate emotional life. For example, when we refer to the world of emotions, the word "relationship" tells us of a love bond typically based on romantic love, of which marriage has always been the ultimate expression.
To refer to other types of affective bonds, it is necessary to add adjectives, specifications that make it clear that what is spoken is not exactly a couple in love: friendship relationship, professional relationship, etc. Marriage remains the axis of emotional relationships , that which serves as the maximum reference and which is impossible to ignore. At the same time, this kind of links based on gamos they create norms in other relationships: there is adultery, for example, seen as a violation of the rules in a non-formalized relationship through marriage, or the socially bad acceptance of being attracted to someone who is married.
In other words, it is considered that there is only one possible choice: o agamia, which is the rejection of any relational standard in the affective (because in practice everyone is based on the same thing), or the gamos, in which everything is measured according to the extent to which a bond resembles a courtship or a marriage.
Love, seen from the agamic perspective
In agamia, what we normally consider as love is seen only as a concept that has emerged from the expansion of a very concrete way of creating affective bonds: romantic love linked to marriage. From this perspective, our perception of affectivity is neither neutral nor innocent: it is judged on the basis of a relational standard based on marital bonds.
Thus, from the objective existence of the bonds of matrimonial type, A series of social norms, thought patterns and beliefs have appeared that, without realizing it, condition our way of living affectivity in all areas of our lives, both in monogamous societies and in polygamous societies.
Marriage, which historically has been a way to perpetuate lineages (until recently, directly trading with women, by the way), was seen as a material need to survive, and from this fact came the ideas and customs to justify this psychologically practice From the passing of the generations the idea that affective relationships are either marriage or substitutes was increasingly internalized, so that today it is difficult to abandon the reference of the gamos.
- Related article: "The 4 types of love: what different kinds of love are there?"
A freer affectivity
The concept of agamia is striking because it is as simple as it is challenging. On the one hand, to define it, it is enough to say that it is the absence of unions inspired by marriage and courtship, but by the other, it is difficult to realize at what moments those mental schemas are so internalized, based on sex Y the formal link and regulated by rules created collectively .
Who knows if, as we have access to more comfortable lives and less need to depend on the family unit, agamia is generalized.
