-By Caleb Jones

One of the more popular posts here is the one regarding the four levels of your belief regarding women. Today I’m going to talk about the six levels of belief regarding your views on relationships. You fall into one of the six levels described below (whether you know it or not).

One could also view the below levels as stages many men go through when they first discover these concepts (be it from the manosphere or elsewhere). Some men start at lower stages and slowly over time move to higher ones. Others just pick a stage and stubbornly stay there forever.

Here they are:

Level 1: Absolute monogamy is always the ideal for all relationships, period, end of story. Open or poly relationships don’t work at all. 

This level is usually populated by hyper-dominant people, low-sex-drive people, sexually inexperienced people, very young people, or very religious people. It’s a very boring and dismal place to live beyond a relationship’s initial, temporary honeymoon period.

The only time Level 1 makes any sort of sense is if you hate sex (or at least have a very low sex drive) and your partner is the same way.

Level 2: Threesomes with two women and one man are okay. But other than that one exception, monogamy is always best. Open relationships don’t work. 

Some guys have referred this to “kinky monogamy” or “monogamish”. It’s one teeny tiny notch better than absolute monogamy, but men in Level 2 still experience all the same relationship problems as men in Level 1.

Level 3: Open relationships are great…as long as you’re not serious. As soon as you actually get serious with someone, you need to be monogamous. Open relationships don’t work unless they’re casual. Serious open relationships are impossible. 

This is probably the most common level of people under the age of 40 in the modern era. Today’s society is (thankfully) more sexually open and understanding (in some ways) than in decades past, and most people have no problem with people “sleeping around” as long as they aren’t “serious” or “committed” to anyone. This is even seen as “empowering” to some.

But! The instant you want to get “serious” with someone, all this freedom and empowerment vanishes out the window, and now you must get monogamous just as if it was 1952 again. The problem, of course, is that it’s not 1952 any more, even if you want it to be. We’ve discussed that on this blog many times before.

Level 4: Open relationships, even very serious ones, even open marriages, work great. They’re actually better for certain people. But! If you actually want to have KIDS, then you need to be monogamous. You cannot raise children in an open marriage. That’s impossible.

I see a lot of Level 4 guys in the seduction community. “Open/poly relationships are awesome…even better than monogamy. But I want kids someday and when I do that, then I’ll be monogamous. I mean c’mon. You can’t be out fucking chicks while you’ve got small kids at home. C’mon man. That won’t work.”

The problem is that there are millions of open marriages with children all over the western world. These folks tend to be very discreet, because people in the first four levels will judge them harshly. The odds are you already know a married couple with children who have an open, semi-open, or de facto open (tolerated cheating) marriage right now, and you don’t even know it.

Level 5: Monogamy does not work. If you want to be monogamous for a year or two, and then go have sex with someone else after you break up, then fine. But beyond that, monogamy doesn’t work because human beings were never designed that way. Casual, serious, married, or raising kids…it doesn’t matter. Open/poly relationships are, while not perfect, always the better way to go, and there are many proven ways to do this.

Level 5 is where I live. It’s a very happy place to be.

I know monogamy doesn’t work, but I do reluctantly admit that short-term serial monogamy can work for certain people as long as they never expect to have an always-happy relationship that lasts beyond 3 years or so. I will never be monogamous, even if I live with a woman and/or have more kids. Not only does this make me happy, it makes me happy more often than monogamous people.

Sadly, while people in levels 2 – 4 are extremely common, people in Level 5 are in the minority. The good news is that we are the fastest-growing of all the levels, by far. Every year there are more of us, and in a few decades we will be affecting great societal changes. Good ones.

Level 6: Monogamy is oppression. Being monogamous under any context is against basic human rights and is evil. It should never be attempted or agreed to, ever.

Level 6 is a severe, unusual fringe. While I do lean a little in its direction, I find Level 6 extreme and a little silly. Regardless, there are indeed people out there at Level 6 who are far more rabidly anti-monogamy than even I am. Most of these folks I’ve encountered tend to live outside the United States, so I don’t encounter a lot of them on a daily basis. Regardless, I have talked to many of them. And damn, if you think I’m tough on monogamy, you should hear what these people say (most of whom are women!).

Like it or not, YOU fall into one of the above six levels. Maybe you’ve been sitting at your level forever and won’t budge. Maybe you started out at lower levels and eventually saw the light, and moved, even if reluctantly, into higher levels over time.

I started out at Level 4. I was never monogamous before age 25 and always considered monogamy silly, even when I was a virgin in high school, making fun of my buddies who had girlfriends. However at age 25 I really wanted to have kids, so being a good Level 4 soldier I mistakenly thought that the “only” way to do that was to get married and monogamous. Most of you know the rest of the story. Today I sit happily at Level 5, and will likely be there the rest of my life.

Where do you fall in the above scale? And have you always been there?

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