Today in Horrifying Relationship Ideas…

This morning, as I started my day with a cup of tea and a scroll through Facebook to see what condition the world’s condition was in, I encountered this fresh new cuppa what-the-fuck in a Wall Street Journal ad:

The first thing I thought when I saw this was “holy fuck.” The second thing I thought when I saw this was “are the monogamists okay?”

That’s not really fair, of course. Plenty of polyamorous people are in toxic, abusive relationships. And make no mistake about it, demanding to know your partner’s whereabouts at all time is 100% abuse.

I’ve been thinking about this all day, and it’s got me to wondering something: Are the rise of populist autocratic demagoguery and the social tropism toward toxic relationship standards related? I think they are.

When we think of totalitarian dictatorships, we tend to imagine Soviet Brutalist architectures: row after row of slablike concrete State apartment buildings, as festive and joyous as wasp’s nests.

But in fact, if you look at places like North Korea, you see a fairyland of bright, pastel colors.

Image: Moshe Shai

This theme repeats itself in North Korean schools and public places: bright cartoony pastels, brilliant clothing, bold colors, flamboyant shapes. It’s part of a carefully calculated effort to infantilize everyone who grows up there.

Image: Oliver Wainwright

Infantilization creates a sense of helplessness, which leads to a desire for someone to look after you. Dictatorships benefit from social Infantilization, something that North Korea’s Kim dynasty has learned well.

What does that have to do with people wanting to track their lover’s whereabouts at all times?

I can’t help seeing a connection between controlling, authoritarian government and controlling, authoritarian relationships. I don’t think it’s an accident that the counterculture movement of the 60s encouraged both free love and anti-authoritarianism, and I don’’t think it’s an accident that as the United States slips ever faster into the weird authoritarian of King Trump’s second term, ruled by a guy who literally promised to be a dictator on Day One, and dysfunctional Orwellian relationship dynamics being normalized.

No, obviously I don’t mean to imply that all monogamous relationships look like this, obviously. But when there’s a relationship trend with enough groundswell to get noticed by the Wall Street Journal, something is happening.

Enshrining relationship dynamics that match the literal definition of intimate partner abuse in the foundation of one’s relationship is…well, it’s weird, and concerning, and there’s something deeply fucked up happening there. I see this and Trumpism as two manifestations of the same thing: intentional ceding of autonomy, maybe coming from some desire for order and structure even at the cost of basic agency. I may be living under the eternal gaze of a partner who uses literal surveillance on me 24/7, but at least I don’t need to be frightened of being cheated on! (Never mind, of course, that you can always leave your cell phone with a friend whilst you nip out the back for nookie. That’s the thing about this sort of devil’s bargain: you only ever get the appearance of safety, never safety itself.)

I see dark times ahead, and hold little hope for a correction within the next generation or two.