Editing Oneida Community (section)

=== Complex marriage ===

The Oneida community strongly believed in a system of [[free love]] – a term which Noyes is credited with coining – which was known as complex marriage,{{sfn |Foster |1997 |p=}} where any member was free to have sex with any other who consented.{{sfn |Stoehr |1979 |p=}}{{page needed|date=April 2020}} Possessiveness and exclusive relationships were frowned upon.{{sfn |DeMaria |1978 |p=83}}

Noyes developed a distinction between amative and propagative love.

{{Blockquote|text=Complex marriage meant that everyone in the community was married to everyone else. All men and women were expected to have sexual relations and did. The basis for complex marriage was the Pauline passage about there being no marriage in heaven meant that there should be no marriage on earth, but that no marriage did not mean no sex. But sex meant children; not only could the community not afford children in the early years, the women were not enthusiastic about a regime that would have kept them pregnant most of the time. They developed a distinction between amative and propagative love. Propagative love was sex for the purpose of having children; amative love was sex for the purpose of expressing love. The difference was what Noyes called "[[Coitus reservatus|male continence]]", in which the male partner avoided ejaculation. Noyes argued that this practice not only kept them from producing unwanted children but also taught the male considerable self-control. The system worked very well.{{sfn |Claeys |Sargent |2017 |p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=d_C4DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA218 218]}}}}

Women over 40 were to act as sexual "mentors" to adolescent boys because these relationships had a minimal chance of conceiving. Furthermore, these women became religious role models for the young men. Likewise, older men often introduced young women to sex. Noyes often used his judgment in determining the partnerships that would form, and he would often encourage relationships between the non-devout and the devout in the community in the hope that the attitudes and behaviors of the devout would influence the attitudes of the non-devout.{{sfn |Noyes |1937 |p=}}{{page needed|date=April 2020}}

In 1993, the community archives were made available to scholars for the first time. Contained within the archives was the journal of Tirzah Miller,{{sfn |Herrick |Fogarty |2000 |p=}} Noyes' niece, who wrote extensively about her romantic and sexual relations with other members of Oneida.{{sfn |Chmielewski |2001 |pp=176–178}}