Living in Packs

You want to know what is natural to human beings? Look at pre-domination, non-hierarchical cultures. In none of the cultures that I have ever studied did people live isolated from one another. People hung out in packs – usually gender packs. Now that’s the human being I know! Guys hanging together, gals hanging together. Actually, a lot like kids in school. All through school, we would tend to hang out in gender packs. Then at some point the culture says that we are supposed to be in couples. So people desperately look for a mate. Women keep a few friends, but men often do not. For men, a mate often becomes the only way to get one’s need for companionship, attention, and sensuality met.

This cultural norm is not good for men. Unfortunately, women, too, will tend to drop friends when they are in relationship. Lots of women do not have time to nurture friends when they have a partner and children. Then if anything happens to the family, wham, the woman will find herself isolated as well. I don’t suppose we should be surprised to find depression and anxiety rampant in our culture.

Maybe Christopher Ryan, author of Sex at Dawn, is right. Monogamy is one choice, but not a natural human choice. I’m not thinking about sex here. I’m thinking about intimacy. Knowing another so well we can read their thoughts across the room. I crave intimacy. I know I’m not alone.

What would happen if instead of looking for the one and only, we looked for a group? What if the choice before us as young adults was not to look for the one person who would meet all our needs for the rest of our lives, but instead it was to look for the one group? I got a very short taste of such a life in my college dorm. What made the dorm experience so rich was the intimacy I felt with a group of friends. I felt secure in their attention. And if one person was busy, there was always another. More important – I didn’t have to be in a couple relationship to have intimacy like this – good thing, since I was single for most of my college experience.

I wonder. I would welcome any thoughts you might have on the subject.