Dr Ryan Scoats is the course director for BA (hons) Sociology and BA (hons) Sociology & Criminology at Birmingham City University. He is a researcher in the areas of gender, sexuality, sexual behaviour, and subcultures. In this blog, Ryan explores themes of monogamy and what sociology reveals about how we really relate.
Dr Ryan Scoats
Course Director for Sociology and Sociology and Criminology
"When many people think about relationships, they often imagine a straightforward path: meet someone, fall in love, commit exclusively to that one person, get married. Various Western sociologists have argued that our societies are "mononormative", in other words, there is an unquestioned assumption that monogamy is the natural, normal, and only legitimate way to structure intimate relationships. But what happens when we look beyond this narrow template? What can sociology tell us about the diverse ways people actually navigate intimacy?
Combining the results of various studies reveals something striking: approximately 14% of Americans have had a threesome at some point in their lives, 6% have attended a sex party, and around 4% of people in relationships identify as being consensually non-monogamous. These aren't fringe behaviours. In fact, statistically, you're more likely to meet someone who's had a threesome than you are to meet a left-handed person. Yet these experiences often remain invisible in mainstream discussions about relationships. This is where sociology becomes invaluable: it helps us see patterns in what we thought were individual choices, and reveals how social forces shape even our most intimate decisions.
The Paradox of the Acceptable Threesome
Consider threesomes. They're simultaneously taboo and somewhat socially acceptable—mentioned in countless relationship advice columns, joked about in sitcoms, positioned as an adventurous way to "spice things up." But this acceptability comes with strict conditions. Sociologist Mimi Schippers describes this as the "threesome imaginary": society's collective understanding of what counts as an "acceptable" threesome. It should be a rare occurrence, preferably once-in-a-lifetime, should be made up of particular types of people. And crucially, once it's done, you're expected to return to monogamy.
Looking from a societal perspective we might wonder, why are threesomes thought about in the way that they are? And I would argue that it’s because they function as a relationship "release valve". They provide temporary reprieve from the monotony of long-term monogamy without actually threatening the monogamous couple or mononormativity. Indeed, research suggests that many people who have threesomes establish elaborate rules to protect their relationship: no certain sex acts with the third person, restrictions on who can participate, limits on frequency.
What sociology reveals here is how individual "choices" about sex are actually shaped by powerful social scripts about what relationships should look like. Even when people transgress monogamy, they often do so in ways that ultimately reinforce it.
When Recreation Becomes Structure: The World of Swinging
Swinging—engaging in group sex or the swapping of sexual partners within a group—takes this further. Here we see how people create entire subcultures with their own norms, hierarchies, and etiquette around non-monogamous sex. Sociologically, this is fascinating: swingers have developed what amounts to a parallel social world with its own rules, its own language ("soft swap" vs "full swap," "play partners," "taking one for the team"), and its own systems of meaning.
Research from the 1970s offers a compelling explanation for why swinging appealed particularly to middle-class Americans: it provided sexual variety without requiring any fundamental shift in public identity or lifestyle. As Mary Walshok put it, swinging offered "the experience of impersonal and varied sex in a context which minimizes any threats to a conventional marriage and lifestyle."
What's particularly interesting is how swingers maintain their relationship stability. Couples may describe themselves as a "unit" and are willing to sacrifice individual desires for what's good for the couple as a whole. The phrase "taking one for the team" captures this perfectly—one person consenting to sex without high personal desire so that the couple can participate together. This shows how even in explicitly non-monogamous contexts, the couple often remains paramount. Sociology helps us see that swinging paradoxically reinforces couple commitment while transgressing monogamous boundaries.
The Stigma That Shapes Everything
Taking a wider view, we also see that the stigma around consensual non-monogamy affects far more than just people's sex lives. Research shows that when healthcare providers learn someone is non-monogamous, they may assume the person has sexually transmitted infections, refuse treatment, or provide inferior care. A woman in one of my studies once reported:
"I did disclose I was consensually non-monogamous once when requesting birth control, because I had my female fiancée with me in the appointment so felt compelled to explain why I needed birth control. GP immediately said I would have STDs because of my 'lifestyle choices' and they could not prescribe birth control without doing STD testing."
This is what sociologist Erving Goffman called the totalising nature of stigma—one stigmatised characteristic bleeds into how we perceive everything else about a person. Studies show people rate those in consensually non-monogamous relationships as not just worse partners, but also less likely to recycle properly or keep up with current events. The stigma isn't contained; it spreads to contaminate our entire perception of who someone is.
Understanding this sociologically matters because it shifts the frame from individual pathology to social process. The "problem" isn't that some people structure relationships differently, it's that society punishes deviation from norms in ways that have real consequences for people's wellbeing, healthcare access, and life chances.
What This Means for Understanding Relationships
So why does any of this matter? Because sociology does something crucial: it reveals that what we think of as natural, inevitable, or simply "the way things are" is actually often socially constructed and maintained. Monogamy isn't the only way humans can successfully structure intimate relationships, it's just the way our particular society has decided relationships should work, enforced through everything from relationship advice to healthcare discrimination.
This doesn't mean monogamy is wrong or that everyone should be consensually non-monogamous. But it does mean that the struggles people face in relationships—the jealousy, the sense that something's missing, the wondering if there are other options—aren't just individual failings. They're responses to living in a society that imposes rigid templates for intimacy while simultaneously making those templates harder to maintain.
Sociology gives us the tools to see these patterns, to question what we've been told is normal or acceptable, and to understand how social forces shape our most personal experiences. Whether you're happily monogamous, quietly curious about alternatives, or actively practicing consensual non-monogamy, understanding the sociological dimensions of intimacy helps you navigate relationships with clearer eyes and less self-blame. And that's what makes sociology powerful: it transforms personal troubles into public issues, helping us see that we're not alone in our struggles—we're all navigating the same complicated social terrain."
