How can you love someone and force them to be monogamous?

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on this issue, Hamster. However, your response is completely off topic. Maybe you meant to post in the other thread that is actually about condoms? That's not what this discussion is about. But yes, people should have sex safely when sleeping with people they don't know very well. Whether or not I personally have done so all the time is not within the scope of the conversation in this thread.

I think it was on topic, because you used to the words "permit" and "allow" in OP. I do not think that your partner should have a right to permit or allow you to have sex with others - it is your life and the choices are yours; true love is non-possessive anyway, so people should not control their partners' sexual choices. However, people also have a right to sexual safety, and, as a corollary, have a say in what you do, sexually, with others. I assumed that you used the words "permit" and "allow" in that sense, and hence the mention of condoms was on topic. If, however, you used the words "permit" and "allow" in any sense other than "have a say in sexual safety", then you contradicted yourself. Your lovers should not be controlling you to the point of permitting/allowing things in any sense other than by reiterating your responsibility for their sexual well-being; nor should you be controlling your lovers' choices, in any sense other than having a say in sexual safety. Your title uses the word "force" in a way that demonstrates that you are clearly against such use of force; then, by extension, the only permissible use of the word "permit" (no pun intended) is in the realm of sexual safety.

Back to OP - try to look forward to better days rather than look backwards to lament opportunities and connections not pursued due to the belief in monogamy. Otherwise it will be too depressing a walk down memory lane - I can tell you, given that I spent close to two decades total in monogamy. It is incredibly depressing to think both of what you lost and what your potential partners lost due to your belief in monogamy. Way too depressing.

Yes, sexual safety is an issue related to sexual promiscuity. I do believe it is a bit of a tangent from the core issue here, though, which is why I wanted to put a stop to that discussion before it got started and derailed the thread. I also would like to make clear that this is not a thread about me specifically. I included details about my life only as examples. So it's not a thread about me lamenting my past monogamous life. I don't. In fact, I feel a great deal of freedom to have moved past that, but I don't sit around regretting my past. That would be a waste of time.

What I would like to discuss is monogamy in general and basically why people would ever choose it because it doesn't seem to make sense when it's really thought through thoroughly.

Your definitions of "permit" and "allow" are not definitions of those words I am familiar with. I looked those words up in a dictionary just now, and I see no definitions of either one that mean "to be concerned about the possible consequences of something" or "have a say in the safety of something." I suspect you have just invented those definitions in order to make a case for your first post being on topic.

Anyway, what I mean by "permit" and "allow" is the normal definitions of those words: to give permission, consent, or authorization. There is no contradiction because I do believe based on my own past experience as a monogamist and through speaking with countless other people who are monogamous that people in monogamous relationships do not feel they are permitted to have sex with other people and do not believe their partner is permitted to do so either. The fact that you don't believe this is right in a healthy relationship just means that you agree with me. Monogamists, pretty much by definition, do not agree with me and believe that it is acceptable for a partner to have the power to deny permission to have extra-relationship sex.

Furthermore, the great majority of monogamists are not monogamists because they are trying to avoid sexual risk. This is an after-the-fact reason a lot of them will give but it's more just an excuse they throw out to avoid having to think about their beliefs.

Imagine the following conversation between a monogamous couple:

Joe: I had sex with your best friend last night
Jane: Oh my god, you a**hole, we're through!
Joe: Oh no, don't worry, she showed me a copy of a very recent STD screening and we used a condom.
Jane: Oh! Ok, never mind. Sorry I overreacted. Carry on then.

If you think that conversation is evenly remotely plausible among monogamists, then I don't know what to say because you clearly live in a different universe than me. It is simply not true that monogamists are that way because they are trying to be safe. That is not the core reason. I suspect the real reason is just socialization, brainwashing if you will. We are just taught from an early age that that is the "right" way to do things and people don't question it. But that's pretty much why I started this thread. I want to know if there are people who can think of good reasons for being monogamous.

I do not know what kind of a discussion you expect to ignite, though - as stated, the thread's strongly worded title does not allow for a discussion, because, quite clearly, you cannot both love a person and force anything against their will. It is another thing when both people want to be mutually monogamous (which comes with its own can of worms, but at least does not involve force). Yet another thing when one partner asks, nicely, for sexual exclusivity. That request can be entertained. But "force"?..

There are different levels of force. I don't mean physical force, obviously. Your partner is not generally following you around pulling you off people you are about to have sex with. However, if I were to put a gun to your head and say "sing Yankee Doodle or I shoot you" then that would be force. It is giving you a choice between something highly undesirable (death) and something you just simply don't want to do. Similarly, if I say to my girlfriend or wife "Don't have sex with anyone else or I will leave you" that is force. Presumably if she is my girlfriend or wife in the first place, she does not want me to leave her, so she does what I say. That is force. And yes in a lot of relationships, there is one person in the relationship who really wants monogamy and another person who feels forced into it for fear of losing the relationship. Both people are just victims of socialization, though. The monogamous person doesn't really know why she wants monogamy and the person who doesn't really want it doesn't really know why he feels like he has to accept monogamy. It's just that that's the only option a lot of people have ever even considered.