By Jamie Azar, Certified Sex Coach
Couple-centrism and couples privilege make it simultaneously difficult to embrace singlehood and maintain individuality and differentiation in a relationship. In other words, these social forces both shame single individuals and encourage the fusion and union of partnered individuals into “one,” often resulting in unhealthy codependence, enmeshment, or loss of selves.
I believe this is largely in part due to amatonormativity.
What is amatonormativity?
Elizabeth Brake coined this term in her book, Minimizing Marriage to describe the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long term, coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such relationship. It’s the set of societal expectations and assumptions that imply everyone should want and prosper in an exclusive romantic relationship, generally one that is sexually exclusive and heterosexual in orientation.
Amatonormativity overlooks and devalues the importance of other caring, loving, platonic, queer, communal, nonmonogmous relationships, or other diverse relationship styles and structures. Have you ever heard statements like, “oh you just haven’t found the one yet,” or “aren’t you lonely,” if you aren’t partnered or married? These are all examples of how conditioned amatonormativity, and allonormativity, the social assumption that all people naturally experience sexual attraction and that allosexuality is the universal or privileged default, might show up in our everyday language or interactions with people we know. Or perhaps you’ve struggled to maintain the balance between friendships and romantic relationships, as we’ve so often been conditioned to prioritize romantic or sexual relationships over friendships, again because of conditioned notions of primacy and socially constructed hierarchies that prioritize romantic and sexual relationships above all other relationships.
Beyond a vocabulary lesson, I think it’s worth examining how these social structures inform our identities, core beliefs, values, or behaviors in our lives and relationships so we can bring more awareness, agency, and choice, and dismantle harmful constructs like couple-centrism and couple’s privilege. And this isn’t to shame anyone who is monogamous, heterosexual, married, or in a relationship. That isn’t the point of this article. This article is an invitation to interrogate what role these social forces may play in your life, and to dismantle the conditioning we’ve most likely inherited in adopting certain beliefs or behaviors, which may inform how we view others and ourselves both historically and presently.
Take being single, for example. So many people struggle with being single, and I think a lot of it has to do with social shaming and conditioning from amatonormativity and allosexuality. In reality? Singlehood can offer ample possibility, opportunity, and freedom to explore, to nurture your senses of identity, to cultivate a secure sense of self, to try new things, break through old comfort zones, and meet new people. Yet these experiences can be devalued or overshadowed by the pressure to escalate relationships into exclusivity, partnership, marriage, familyhood, or to even project feelings of pity on those who choose to remain single or live a solitudinous life.
Singlehood is also often depicted as gloomy, miserable, and lonely, and you know what? Sometimes it can be? But who says people don’t experience those same feelings in relationships or partnered? These negative stereotypes and tropes are just a few examples around singlehood that can create general senses of insecurity, codependence, and fear, which further reinforces the idea that we need to be striving for some form of romantic or sexually exclusive partnership.
This is why it’s important to question, dismantle, and distance ourselves from social conditioning that keep us from embracing our authentic ways of being and relating, whatever that may look like for you— single, dating, partnered, asexual, nonmonogomous, aromantic, queer, questioning. We make the conscious choice to interrogate and discard what social, sexual, or gendered tropes, norms, or stereotypes may no longer serve us to make space for beliefs, perspectives, or practices that may be more aligned with who we truly are.
The impacts of amatonormativity and allonormativity aren’t just social and cultural. They’re also embedded into legal frameworks. Marriage, for example, automatically grants access to a broad set of federal and state protections, from property and tax benefits to medical decision making that single or nonmonogmaous people do not automatically receive, or may face additional barriers to obtain. Additionally, in the United States, there is no state or federal law that recognizes a marriage involving more than two people— polyamorous marriage, or multi-partner union is not legal anywhere. Although states like Massachusetts and California have created limited legal recognitions for polyamorous and nonmonogmous partners, these states still do not grant the full legal rights of marriage.
The point is to be aware of these social, cultural, and legal norms so we can start taking an honest assessment of ourselves and our relationships, our values, our beliefs, our practices, or our unquestioned assumptions we’ve blindly inherited. Perhaps it’s taking the time to examine enmeshment in your relationship and the loss of identity or individuality. Perhaps it’s tapping into identity and individuality as a single individual and embracing the possibilities that exist in knowing a beautiful life doesn’t have to centralize partnership, romanticism, exclusivity, or sex?
The reality is that systems don’t just exist outside our relationships or identities. They inform them at times. However, no matter your relationship status, style, or sexual or romantic orientation, there is always space for agency, choice, design, and permission to create and embrace what works for us outside of systems, norms, stereotypes, pressure, and expectations. Most of us have been handed scripts. We get the ultimate say in whether or not we choose to follow them.
Jamie Azar is former graduate of the Pleasure Psychology and Sexology Certification program, a sex, relationship, and intimacy coach, educator, writer, and mindfulness practitioner based in South Carolina. She offers 1-1 coaching with singles, couples, throuples + to co-create a safe, sex-positive, transformative, liberating, and empowering space that fosters personal and relational growth. She specializes in dismantling limiting beliefs, deconstructing, and destigmatizing harmful narrative constructs, to help clients reframe and redefine their understandings of selfhood, sex, sexuality, and relationships. To work with Jamie go here!