Exclusion and exclusivity are not the same
For large parts of human history, intimacy was not primarily a private relationship between two individuals. People lived in social groups in which provision, reproduction, and care were organized collectively.
With the onset of settled life, this structure changed fundamentally. Agriculture made property durable. Durable property made transfer necessary. Property had to be inherited.
Inheritance makes clear lineage necessary. Clear lineage requires controlled reproduction. Controlled reproduction presupposes regulated pair and family structures.
What mattered was the clarity of ownership and lineage relations, which were, among other things, enforced over long periods through the physical dominance of men. Thus, relationship rules emerged in which a woman belonged to a man, or multiple women belonged to one man.
This was not about romantic ideals, but about allocation:
– which child belongs to which lineage,
– which woman belongs to which household,
– which wealth, which land, which responsibility belongs to whom.
From this order, hierarchy emerged.
Those who could secure property across generations could build power.
Those who built power could stabilize hierarchies.
Religious systems assumed a central function in this process. This function did not consist in regulating emotions, but in securing existing order and stabilizing hierarchy over long periods of time. Through the normalization of sexuality, the institutionalization of monogamy, and the sanctioning of deviations, existing power and property relations were maintained.
The crucial point is: sexuality can be hidden.
And what cannot be observed from the outside can only be controlled in one way: from within.
Through the moralization of sexuality, shame, guilt, and fear of sanction became internal control mechanisms that produced self-surveillance and self-condemnation in cases of norm-deviating desire.
This historical account is a simplification, but it makes the underlying logic visible.
People have always been able to fall in love, feel closeness, and form relationships. The feeling itself was never new. What was new was the framework within which its expression was permitted or sanctioned.
This framework changed historically. With increasing mobility, economic independence, and individualization, the monogamous marriage in the Western world gradually lost its position as the only legitimate form of intimacy.
Monogamy no longer necessarily referred to a lifelong order, but to a temporally limited phase. A partner for life became a relationship for a certain duration.
For a long time, exclusivity and relationship coincided. Whoever was in a relationship was exclusive. This is no longer consistently the case. There are relationships that are lived without exclusivity. And there is exclusivity that is lived without a relationship, often as an intermediate state between getting to know each other and partnership.
Exclusivity has detached itself from marriage and has become an independently practiced form. Two forms of this practice can be observed:
- One possibility is exclusion. Others are excluded, access is restricted, alternatives are prevented. This form of exclusivity can be established immediately. It requires no shared history and no developed closeness. It is independent of what has actually emerged between two people. Precisely for this reason, it is suited to relationships of limited duration.
- Another possibility is exclusivity through uniqueness. Uniqueness does not arise through agreement. It consists in non-replaceability. It develops through shared experiences that are, in comparison to previous experiences, particularly intense or particularly reinforced through repetition. Intensity: in moments in which someone is willing to reveal themselves more deeply than would be safe (vulnerability). And in moments in which it becomes visible how far someone is willing to go for the other (sacrifice). Repetition: in moments in which behavior repeats and thereby proves to be reliable. And in which the predictability of the other builds trust over time.
In marriage, both levels of exclusivity were present simultaneously. Exclusion was structurally given. Under these conditions, uniqueness could emerge more easily, because everything happened for the first time and was experienced together over a long period.
This coupling no longer exists in this way. Relationships are shorter. Partners are no longer automatically unique in a biographical sense, but one of several relationships over time.
Thus, the condition under which uniqueness could previously arise almost automatically no longer applies. In its place comes freedom. The freedom to choose how exclusivity is lived.
What is often chosen with this freedom is the first level of exclusivity: exclusion. With the decision for exclusion, the focus shifts, not toward allowing uniqueness to emerge, but toward maintaining exclusion.
Security is then no longer derived from what has grown, but from control. Everything is oriented toward ensuring that exclusion is not violated. Here, exclusivity is reduced to the demand: please don’t cheat on me.
The strong focus on exclusivity through exclusion is not an additional ideal, but a substitute. Where uniqueness has not emerged, exclusivity must be secured. “Please don’t cheat on me” is then not directed at protecting something irreplaceable, but at preventing its replaceability. The less uniqueness there is, the more strongly exclusion must be controlled. What matters is not what emerges between two people, but that no third person enters.
When exclusivity is lived through exclusion, it is necessarily limited. Exclusivity with multiple people is logically excluded in this model. Exclusion defines exclusivity through a boundary: there is an “inside” and an “outside.” This boundary only works if it applies to everyone. As soon as multiple people are simultaneously “inside,” exclusion is dissolved.
This logic does not end with monogamous relationships. In some open or polyamorous relationship forms, exclusivity is not abolished, but simply inverted. The rule is no longer that only one person may have access, but that no person may have exclusive access.
The mechanism often remains the same. Exclusivity continues to be regulated through the status of exclusion: either exclusion is permitted or exclusion is forbidden.
In both cases, exclusion remains the central point of reference.
If, however, exclusivity is lived through uniqueness, the opposite applies. Then exclusivity is not scarce, but can exist simultaneously. Not because relationships are interchangeable, but because each relationship is unique in its own way.
Exclusivity then does not mean that there can only be one relationship, but that each relationship that exists is not replaceable. Unique relationships are nevertheless not infinitely available, because the conditions under which they can arise are limited. Uniqueness requires time. It requires attention. It requires emotional, physical, and existential resources. In this sense, exclusivity through uniqueness is not structurally limited, but practically limited.
© Ema, 2026. All rights reserved.
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