Beyond power dynamics: toward a spiritual ethics of romantic relationships

Contemporary feminist debates on romantic relationships privilege analysis through power relations. This approach, however legitimate, can obscure other equally essential dimensions: spirituality, the multiplicity of bonds, and emancipation through relational authenticity.

The power framework: a necessary but insufficient tool

Feminist analyses of the 1970s and 1980s, following notably the work of Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1970), exposed the mechanisms of male domination in the intimate sphere. This reading through the prism of power revealed how patriarchal structures are embodied even in the most private gestures of affection and sexuality. Later work by Christine Delphy in The Main Enemy (1998) or Carole Pateman in The Sexual Contract (1988) extended this analysis by showing that the political permeates the personal throughout.

This analytical framework is indispensable for understanding the asymmetries that still structure the majority of heterosexual relationships today. It allows us to name symbolic violence, to identify the contradictory injunctions weighing on women, and to highlight the control strategies exercised in the name of love. Without this critical vigilance, we risk naturalizing relations of domination and reproducing patriarchal patterns in new forms, even with the best intentions in the world.

However, this approach reaches its limit when it believes it encompasses the totality of romantic reality. Reducing every relationship to a power game means projecting a single interpretation onto an infinitely more complex and nuanced reality. One can thus forbid oneself from perceiving what escapes the logic of domination: spaces of shared vulnerability, moments of mutual recognition, dynamics of reciprocal transformation that can emerge when two people meet in their authenticity. Anthropologist Maurice Godelier, in The Foundations of Human Societies (2007), reminds us that social relations are never reduced to a single organizing principle, but always result from a complex articulation of economic, symbolic, political, and affective dimensions.

The paradox of emancipation: when deconstruction becomes new orthodoxy

One often observes the belief that deconstructing patriarchal norms would suffice to guarantee an emancipated posture. However, as Pierre Bourdieu showed in Masculine Domination (1998), structures of domination can reproduce themselves without our knowledge, even in those who think they have transcended them. Critical vigilance toward patriarchy does not automatically preserve us from other forms of rigidity or desire to control others.

Take the example of relationships where one partner, woman or man, claims to have “fully understood” the mechanisms of domination and positions themselves as guarantor of the “right” way to live a relationship. This posture, however well-intentioned, can reproduce a form of power: that of unilaterally defining what is acceptable, of disqualifying the other’s experience in the name of a supposedly universal analytical framework. Sociologist Eva Illouz, in Why Love Hurts (2012), analyzes how therapeutic and critical discourses on love can themselves become instruments of normalization, imposing new models that can sometimes become as constraining as those they claim to deconstruct.

This new orthodoxy manifests particularly in the refusal to recognize the legitimacy of relational forms that don’t correspond to the model of exclusive and successive romantic relationships, which may be judged as immature, for example, or characteristic of people “still finding themselves.” Also, when one asserts a priori that certain relational configurations are necessarily patriarchal or necessarily emancipatory, one substitutes dogma for thought. One forbids oneself from concretely examining what is at stake in each singular relationship, the real effects it produces on the people who live it. Ethnologist Françoise Héritier, in Masculin/Féminin I and II (1996, 2002), insists on the extraordinary diversity of relational configurations across cultures and eras, inviting caution against hasty generalizations.

The spiritual dimension of sexuality: an unthought in Western feminism

Western feminisms, largely heirs to materialism and the rationalist tradition, have often relegated the spiritual dimension of sexuality to the rank of mystification or religious alienation. This mistrust is not without historical foundation: patriarchal religions have indeed instrumentalized the “sacred” to control women’s sexuality and justify their subordination. However, by throwing the baby out with the bathwater, one risks denying access to dimensions of human experience that are reducible neither to physical pleasure nor to power relations.

Tantric traditions, both Hindu and Buddhist, have developed over millennia a thought and practices that consider sexuality as a possible path to spiritual awakening, inner transformation, and dissolution of the boundaries of the self. Far from being incompatible with emancipation, these approaches propose a relationship to the body and desire that escapes both patriarchal domination and the consumerist reduction of sexuality to pleasure alone. Religion historian June Campbell, in Traveller in Space (1996), showed how certain women practitioners of tantric Buddhism manage to appropriate these traditions to construct their own spiritual and sexual path, despite the patriarchal structures of religious institutions.

This spiritual dimension of sexuality doesn’t belong to belief in the religious sense, but to a lived experience: that of an intensity that exceeds the ordinary framework of consciousness, of an encounter with the other that opens to something vaster than oneself, of a transformation that endures well beyond the moment of embrace. Philosopher Georges Bataille, in Erotism (1957), speaks of this experience as a “little death,” a temporary dissolution of ego boundaries that opens to a different perception of existence. For those who have lived this dimension, reducing it to pleasure or power relations means missing the essential.

Monogamy as colonial project: a decolonial perspective

To fully understand contemporary issues around relational forms, one must question the historical roots of the imposition of monogamy. As Guarani activist and psychologist Geni Núñez shows very well in Decolonizing Affects (2023, translated into French by Paula Anacaona in 2025, at Anacaona Editions), monogamy is not a spontaneous organization of human relationships, but the result of a colonial imposition project deeply linked to Christianity. She indicates:

“My research focuses on how colonization began its project of imposing a monoculture of affects from 1500 to the present day. I relied mainly on the letters of the Jesuits, which are among the first official written documents on this period.”

This historical research highlights that the imposition of monogamy was an integral part of the colonial civilizational project. Thus Geni Núñez emphasizes the intrinsic link between monotheism and monogamy:

“The Christian god only feels loved if he is loved uniquely, which is also the main precept of monogamy: the non-concomitance of romantic relationships as a criterion of fidelity.”

This spiritual orientation according to which one can only prove one’s love by not loving anyone else simultaneously constitutes the very basis of the monogamous structure. Christianity does not present itself as one path among others, but as the only way, the truth, and the life". This spiritual exclusivity translates directly into affective exclusivity.

The missionaries who arrived in indigenous territories “were obsessed with eradicating indigenous non-monogamies: without adherence to monogamy, baptism would be impossible, and without baptism, the entire success of the missionary work would be compromised.” The imposition of monogamy thus exceeded the simple question of organizing sexual relationships: it was part of a global civilization project aimed at instilling Christian morality as the only possible one.

Núñez cites an edifying letter from Jesuit father Diogo Ferrer from 1633 concerning the Guarani Indigenous peoples:

“They live together as long as they want, and when the husband wants to marry another woman, he leaves his first wife, and the wife does the same; it doesn’t seem that these Indians in their natural state know the perpetuity of marriage. None of them finds this offensive.”

This testimony reveals that the Guarani peoples had already understood, well before 1500, “that if one of the people no longer wished to remain in the relationship, they had the free right to interrupt it.”

The ethnology of relational forms: moving beyond monogamous ethnocentrism

Anthropology teaches us that successive monogamy, the dominant model in contemporary Western societies, is only one configuration among others. Many societies practice or have practiced polygyny, polyandry, or more flexible forms of alliances and cohabitations. Contemporary polyamory, far from being a simple import from other cultures, rather constitutes an attempt to reinvent relational modalities adapted to our current aspirations: authenticity, honesty, refusal of lies, recognition of the multiplicity of attachments.

Geni Núñez proposes to move beyond the binary categories of “monogamy” and “non-monogamy” to think differently about relationships. She observes that:

“polygamy, polyamory and free love do not translate the same ideology. The prefixes mono and poly may, at first glance, refer to a question of quantity, as if monogamy was for those who want a relationship with one person, and polygamy a relationship with several. This is one of the most widespread misconceptions: monogamy does not necessarily concern one person, and conversely non-monogamy does not necessarily refer to several.”

The fundamental question is therefore not quantitative but qualitative. As Geni Núñez emphasizes, today:

“’monogamy’ has lost its original and restricted meaning, which literally consisted of having only one (mono) marriage (gamy) in one’s lifetime, since it has become quite common for adults to have more than one affective and sexual bond during their existence. This is why, nowadays, people who declare themselves monogamous define their monogamy not in relation to having contracted a single marriage or had a single relationship, but to not having more than one relationship at the same time (in theory). The definition of monogamy has therefore evolved, but the impossibility of concomitance remains central.”

Sociologist Meg Barker, in Rewriting the Rules (2013), shows that ethical polyamory rests on principles that are profoundly feminist: explicit communication of needs and limits, deconstruction of jealous possession, questioning of the idea that one person could “belong” to another. These relationships require considerable work on oneself, a capacity to manage emotional insecurity, and radical honesty that contrasts with the accommodations and lies often tolerated in serial monogamous relationships.

However, polyamory raises legitimate questions from a feminist point of view. The risk exists that certain people, predominantly men, reproduce patterns of domination by multiplying conquests, playing on informational asymmetry, or instrumentalizing their partners to satisfy their ego. This is precisely why relational ethics cannot be mechanically deduced from form: it requires constant vigilance, a capacity to question oneself, and above all real attention to partners’ lived experiences. Anthropologist Serena Nanda, in Gender Diversity (2014), reminds us that any relational form can become oppressive or emancipatory depending on how it is practiced and the intentions that animate it.

Jealousy and control: who really dominates?

One recurring argument against non-monogamous relationships consists of saying that they would necessarily make certain partners suffer, condemned to share someone who refuses to commit fully. This argument deserves careful examination, because it contains a part of truth: historically, polygyny has almost always been the privilege of men and has often involved the subordination of wives. But it also rests on several questionable presuppositions:

• First, it assumes that suffering in relationships would come from non-exclusivity itself, rather than from lies, concealment, or unequal treatment. However, many people testify to suffering more from hidden infidelities and double lives than from assumed and transparent parallel relationships. Psychologist Esther Perel, in Mating in Captivity (2006), shows that sexual exclusivity, far from being a universal need, is a cultural construction whose modalities vary considerably according to contexts.

• Second, this argument presupposes that certain partners would necessarily be in a position of weakness in these configurations. But what about when each chooses to have multiple relationships? What about people more invested in their professional, creative, or social life than in their couple, and who precisely appreciate the lightness of bonds that don’t require constant presence? Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex (1949), already emphasized that emancipation also passes through the refusal to make the couple the unique horizon of existence.

• Third, and perhaps the most delicate point, one must question what motivates the need for exclusivity. Is it a legitimate attachment, an understandable demand for affective security? Or is it a desire for control, a fear of losing the other that transforms into an attempt at appropriation? The boundary between these two motivations is not always clear, and jealousy can itself become an instrument of power, conscious or unconscious. Sociologist Anthony Giddens, in The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), analyzes how the “pure relationship,” based on equality and communication, precisely requires renouncing control strategies to privilege trust and negotiation.

Relational investment: between gift and appropriation

A criticism often addressed to people who live multiple relationships concerns the degree of investment: “You’re not really investing yourself.” Behind this accusation lies a specific conception of love, inherited from 19^th-century romanticism and the bourgeois ideal of the couple: true love would require total investment, a fusion of existences, a common life project excluding any other significant relationship (for women only, moreover, men being culturally quite authorized to live carnal relationships outside the couple, regardless of the suffering of their legitimate wife).

This conception obviously poses several problems:

• First, it confuses quantitative investment and relationship quality. One can spend little time with someone and live moments of exceptional intensity and depth. Conversely, one can cohabit daily with a person without ever truly meeting them in their singularity. Anthropologist David Graeber, in Towards an Anthropological Theory of Anarchism (2004), reminds us that non-Western societies often value the intensity of shared moments more than the accumulation of time spent together.

• Then, it presupposes that investing in a relationship necessarily means renouncing investing elsewhere. But why should love obey a logic of scarcity? Why would affection for one person necessarily diminish that for another? Parental love doesn’t work this way: one doesn’t love one’s first child less when the second arrives. Psychologist Deborah Anapol, in Polyamory in the 21^st Century (2010), suggests that our capacity for love is not a fixed resource to distribute parsimoniously, but an energy that can amplify through the very exercise of loving.

• Finally, and this is perhaps the most important, this injunction to total investment can mask a requirement of appropriation. When one reproaches someone for not investing “enough,” one often reproaches them for not giving us everything we would like, for not conforming to our expectations, for keeping a part of freedom that escapes us. However, respecting the other’s freedom, accepting that he or she keeps spaces that don’t concern us, is perhaps the highest form of love. Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, in Totality and Infinity (1961), precisely defines the ethical relationship as the recognition of the irreducible alterity of the other, who cannot be totally possessed or understood.

Honesty against lies: a feminism of authenticity

If non-monogamous relationships can be problematic from a feminist point of view, serial monogamy, as it is mainly practiced, is no less so. It often rests on a series of fictions and unspoken things: one allows oneself ambiguities with former relationships, one maintains friendships whose erotic aspect is carefully silenced, one hides attractions that persist. This system functions on a tacit balance: each accepts to close their eyes on the other’s gray zones, provided certain lines are not crossed.

This tolerance for lies, or more precisely for what sociologist Erving Goffman calls in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956) “impression management” maintains an informational asymmetry that can be instrumentalized, it prevents authentic communication about desires and frustrations, it condemns to permanent vigilance to maintain appearances. Philosopher Michel Foucault, in History of Sexuality (1976), shows how the injunction to secrecy around certain dimensions of sexual life participates in devices of power and control.

Conversely, ethical polyamory requires radical sincerity: telling one’s partners that one sees other people, clarifying each person’s expectations, explicitly negotiating boundaries and rules. This honesty can be uncomfortable, because it forces confrontation with difficult emotions: jealousy, insecurity, fear of abandonment. But it also offers the possibility of a more authentic encounter, where each presents themselves as they are, with their multiple desires and contradictions.

This relational authenticity perhaps constitutes one of the most promising paths for a feminism applied to romantic relationships. It requires renouncing strategies of concealment and manipulation, accepting the vulnerability that representing oneself wholly entails, with one’s needs and limits. It also implies recognizing the other’s right to lead their life according to their own values, even if they differ from ours. Psychologist Brené Brown, in The Gifts of Imperfection (2010), shows that this assumed vulnerability is at the heart of building healthy and egalitarian relationships.

Paradoxical solidarity: when partners share without tearing each other apart

One of the most troubling aspects of non-monogamous relationships, from the perspective of conventional representations, concerns the bonds that are woven between people who share the same partner. The classic patriarchal reading would have these people necessarily be rivals, in competition for attention and love. It’s moreover this supposed rivalry that fuels a significant part of popular culture, from Greek tragedies to contemporary television series.

However, experience shows that these situations can sometimes give rise to unexpected forms of solidarity. When partners know each other (which is obviously not obligatory), they can discover common points, share their experiences, build bonds that are their own and that no longer depend solely on the common person. This “paradoxical solidarity” upsets usual expectations and suggests that rivalry is not a biological fatality but a social construction that can be deconstructed.

Sociologist bell hooks, in Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002, published in France in 2022), insists on the importance of cultivating bonds between women that don’t pass solely through male validation. This reflection can extend to all types of configurations: in the context of ethical non-monogamous relationships, these bonds can develop precisely because partners mutually recognize each other’s legitimacy, beyond all competition. They can even support each other in the face of the emotional difficulties this type of configuration raises.

Several testimonies, from myself and from other people, attest to the existence of this paradoxical fraternity or sorority. I have several times found myself in the situation of loving a woman and sharing moments with her other lovers. Situations where, around a person, in daily life, the several partners can coexist in distinct ways (without any swinging context). This generates an enriching presence, contact with the dimension of a love greater than a simple dual relationship, and a deeply nourishing contact with the flourishing of a person who, through their multiple romantic relationships, deploys more facets of their being. I was able to be all the more sensitive to a woman who was thus nourished, the complete opposite of a so-called “competition” with the other men she also loved. Far from any opposition or competition, mutual respect can be born, a solidarity all the greater because each knows they share an intimacy with the same person. All can come out grown from this situation and reach a spiritual, loving level, of respect for oneself and the other, more open than in the framework of a dual relationship, where the fear of the exterior is often inscribed, and thus the refusal to receive more from life.

Of course, this solidarity is not automatic, is fragile and must be cultivated, because cultural codes quickly return. It requires considerable emotional maturity, a capacity to manage jealousy, to replace it with compersion, and especially a posture that doesn’t play on rivalry between partners to feed one’s ego. When a person instrumentalizes tensions, compares, deliberately maintains uncertainty, they fully reproduce patterns of domination and division. But when they on the contrary strive to support the bonds between their partners, to value their own friendships, to never use one against the other, they open the possibility of a radically different relational configuration.

Ethical responsibility: assuming one’s power without exercising it as domination

Recognizing that certain people possess a particular power of attraction does not mean legitimizing the exercise of this power in a manipulative manner. On the contrary, becoming aware of one’s own power should lead to increased ethical vigilance. Someone who knows they seduce easily, that their presence can mark others, that their engagement creates upheavals, bears a specific responsibility: that of not instrumentalizing these effects.

Philosopher Hans Jonas, in The Imperative of Responsibility (1979), develops the idea that our power over the world and over others creates moral obligations proportional to it. The more power one has, the more one must show prudence and solicitude toward those who may be affected by our actions. Applied to romantic relationships, this reflection suggests that a charismatic person, spiritually “advanced” or particularly seductive cannot simply follow their desires: they must not forget to question the effects they produce on their partners.

This ethical vigilance passes through several requirements. First, honesty, already mentioned: never let someone believe they occupy a place they don’t occupy. Then, attention to the other’s lived experience: truly listen to what they feel, even and especially when it’s difficult to hear. Finally, the capacity to renounce: know how to dialogue to consider being able to interrupt a relationship when one realizes it does more harm than good to the other, even if it brings us much.

This ethics of responsibility doesn’t require that one withdraw or renounce living intensely. It simply asks that one fully assume the consequences of one’s choices, that one accepts being confronted with the suffering one can cause, and that one seeks to minimize this suffering without lying or denying oneself. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan reminded us that ethics begins where one accepts to pay the price of one’s desire, rather than making others pay this price. This formula summarizes the issue quite well: living according to one’s deep aspirations while remaining fully conscious of the effects this produces on others, within an ethical framework.

Decentralizing sex and recognizing interdependence

An essential dimension of the decolonization of affects, as Geni Núñez emphasizes, concerns the decentralization of sex in our understanding of relationships.

Monogamy and sexual orientation “have in common a centralization of sex that reverberates in many dimensions of life. At the time of family formation, when we say ’Choose the person you love to live with you,’ we’re not talking about just any love, but about the one for the person with whom you have a sexual relationship. Why is this the main criterion?”

This centralization of sex produces considerable effects on social organization. Geni Núñez observes:

“the family continues to be defined by the hierarchy of romantic love and sex. What we call single, married, and divorced only makes sense from the point of view of the affective and sexual centralization of this family formation.”

An authentic decolonization of affects requires questioning this hierarchization, asking oneself:

“Do I only feel loved if someone manifests sexual desire for me? Do I only have intimacy through sex? Whose company do I make invisible when I say I’m alone? Who inspires passion and enchantment in me?”

Beyond the decentralization of sex, the decolonial perspective invites rethinking our relationship to autonomy and interdependence. Geni Núñez also writes:

“One of the lessons that the elders of our people teach us is that of interdependence. Individual decolonization doesn’t exist, it is necessarily collective and the struggle for territory is at its heart.”

This interdependence doesn’t mean dependence, but recognition that:

“we human beings are not self-sufficient, and never have been. We need air, water, earth, food; we permanently need each other. Our interdependence and our circular care make the health of life.”

This vision contrasts radically with the ideal of autonomy promoted by neoliberal discourses.

“Romantic love promises that everything will be provided by a single person, the ’meaning of one’s life,’ or the only source to ask everything from. Just like the earth, which becomes sterile when abusively exploited, love also dries up when all its drops are removed. Unilateral care is extractivist.”

Decolonizing affects therefore requires “decentralizing dependence rather than seeking to depend on nothing and no one”, by recognizing our fundamental need for others.

The problem of binarism and the exercise of collectivity

Geni Núñez also insists on the necessity of overcoming the binarism that structures our thinking about relationships:

“The recognition of the harmful effects of binarism is a central point of anticolonial thought and struggle. Indeed, binary logic prevents us from understanding the interconnection between mind and body, reason and emotion, nature and culture, theory and practice, etc.”

This binarism manifests particularly in the monogamy/non-monogamy opposition.

“On this last example, non-monogamy refutes the idea that theory and practice are separate and independent spheres, because our actions are deeply inspired by the ideology that guides us,” she explains. Thus, “I recalled in the first part how colonization had and still has the project of ’saving’ us and converting us to its god, the one and only. It’s because its faithful believe in this theory that they seek to convert us at all costs. Conversely, our indigenous cosmogonies never had the desire to ’save’ other peoples by convincing them by force that their gods were false and that only ours were true.”

In the decolonization process, “the exercise of collectivity is essential. This requires community emotional and psychosocial work. Historically, this work has mainly been carried out unilaterally, by women (particularly non-white) and sex-gender dissident people.” A redistribution of care and recognition of interdependence then become fundamentally political gestures.

Geni Núñez concludes on the importance of collective commitment:

“In the decolonization of affects, commitment is not limited to a single relationship, but encompasses them all. Thus, it’s not just about including more people in the ’official’ category, but about rethinking commitment, ’opening’ this word and seeing what it refers to. In monogamy, commitment requires constancy, a contract, and timeless inflexibility, and is mainly centered on the prohibition of concomitant affective bonds.”

Conversely, in a decolonial perspective, commitment becomes a question of authenticity, real presence, and mutual care that can be exercised in a multiplicity of bonds.

Toward a plurality of possible emancipations

The feminist debate on legitimate relational forms therefore absolutely cannot be settled by a single explanatory verdict. There is no universally emancipatory configuration. Everything depends on how relationships are concretely lived: with honesty or concealment, with respect for each person’s autonomy or desire for control, with attention to others’ lived experience or self-centeredness without empathy.

I would like to conclude with the idea of the necessity of recognizing a plurality of possible emancipations. Some people find their fulfillment in exclusive and fusional relationships. Others flourish in more open configurations, which allow them to multiply experiences and attachments. Still others privilege celibacy and independence. None of these paths is in itself more feminist than the others: what matters is the real freedom to choose, and the ethical quality of the way one lives these choices. There is no hierarchy to postulate.

Geni Núñez reminds us with lucidity:

“we non-monogamous people were not born with a special illumination, a ’gene’ that makes this choice easier. On the contrary, we were born and grew up in the same historical-political context as monogamous people. We face the same challenges in terms of jealousy and insecurity, and know the same anxieties. The difference is that we seek other ways to manage this, without wanting to imprison others’ autonomy as a means of calming our fears, without wanting to guilt-trip and moralize others for what we feel.”

Feminism, in its emancipatory vocation, must in my view always guard against promoting a single model of the good relationship. Its task consists rather, I believe, in dismantling the structures that prevent people from living according to their deep aspirations, highlighting mechanisms of domination wherever they are found, and supporting those who invent more authentic, more respectful, more conscious forms of relational life.

From this perspective, integrating the spiritual dimension of sexuality, recognizing the possibility of ethical polyamory, valuing honesty against lies, and cultivating ethical responsibility proportional to one’s power of influence constitute as many avenues for enriching feminist reflection on love. Not as certainties to oppose to existing analyses, but as additional dimensions that deserve to be taken into account to think about the complexity of romantic reality in all its richness and contradictions.

I leave Geni Núñez to conclude, in an ethnological approach:

“In Guarani language, instead of saying that we possess something, we say that we are in its company. This idea of property, so present in dominant society, is not part of our indigenous perspectives. Living well is living without possession.”

This philosophy of non-possession could well constitute one of the most precious contributions of decolonial perspectives to feminist thought on romantic relationships.