OK, but he spoke very specifically about challenging "traditional" (i.e., patriarchal) aspects of marriage and the way that many people buy into them without being truly conscious of how those impact relationship dynamics. The whole "father gives the bride to the new husband" is only one of those. Marriage has been overtly envisioned as a relationship hierarchy until just a few decades ago and it still goes on quite a bit in the subtext even now. As I said before, my husband and I thought we had a really egalitarian marriage until we opened up and were confronted with all sorts of things that we'd unconsciously bought into without even realizing it that stemmed from a patriarchal outlook. People who never have specific conversations about how they want their marriage to look and feel (nearly everyone) are undoubtedly doing the same.

If you've not encountered that in your marriage and you actively communicated right from the get go and consciously entered into real partnership rather than a modified version of relationship hierarchy, I applaud you, because it's exceedingly rare.

I read things all the time that don't really resonate for me, and I just move on without comment if they aren't that important in the scheme of things. The fact that you felt the need to comment tends to indicate that it bothered you on more than just a "I don't think you've made your point" basis.

Of course, couples can and should spend more time co-creating their relationship in monogamy. But overwhelmingly, they don't. They rely on the structures of what marriage is "supposed' to look and feel like whereas in ENM there are no inherent structures so you HAVE to do that work if you want to be successful. That's literally the whole point of this essay.