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Beyond the Couple: Are We Ready to Blow Up the Marriage Monopoly?

Let's be honest, the whole two-people-forever fairytale has always felt a little… manufactured, hasn’t it? We’re fed this narrative from birth: meet “the one,” lock it down with a ring, maybe pop out a few mini-mes, and ride off into the sunset of matching cardigans. Queer folks shook up that tired script by demanding their right to the “happily ever after” too. But what if the real revolution isn’t just about who gets to couple up, but the very idea of coupledom itself?

The whispers are getting louder. You hear them in online forums, in the nervous laughter at dinner parties when someone mentions “ethical non-monogamy”. People are realizing that love, that messy, complicated, exhilarating thing, doesn’t always fit neatly into a box labeled “one size fits all.” And in Australia, as elsewhere, the conversation is starting to turn towards a once-taboo topic: polygamy.

Now, before your brain conjures up images of patriarchal harems and forced marriages, let’s pump the brakes. The history of polygamy, particularly polygyny (one man, multiple women), is undeniably tangled with power imbalances and the subjugation of women. But as Michail Ivanov points out in their forthcoming article for The University of Queensland Law Journal, polygamy can be an egalitarian practice, especially when it’s not rooted in religious dogma. Think about that for a second. What if the foundation of your relationship isn’t a dusty old religious text dictating roles, but a conscious, consensual agreement between multiple adults to build a life together?

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This is Heliox: Where Evidence Meets Empathy

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