Cultural Practices You Didn’t Learn in School

Sasha Tanoushka BCH IACT
1 day ago
3 min read

Polyandry, Attachment, and What Our Nervous Systems Still Remember

By Sasha Tanoushka

We grow up thinking relationships have always looked the way they do now.

One man.

One woman.

One household.

One “real” parent.

But that’s a modern story.

In parts of Sri Lanka - especially during the era of the Kandyan Kingdom - families practiced something radically different from what most of us were taught in school:

Fraternal polyandry.

One woman.

Multiple brothers.

One household.

It was called eka-ge-kema — “eating in one house.”

And it changes how we understand love, security, and the nervous system.

First: let’s separate two things people often confuse

1. What was

poly (in the emotional sense)

And

2. What was purely economic / kinship strategy

Because they land very differently in the body.

The “poly” part: multiple attachment figures

From a modern nervous-system lens, the most interesting part of fraternal polyandry isn’t the sex.

It’s this:

Children grew up with multiple adult attachment figures in the same household.

Not one overwhelmed provider.

Not one exhausted caregiver.

A group.

That matters.

Biologically, humans evolved to regulate in tribes, not nuclear families.

Multiple caregivers mean:

More emotional availability
Less pressure on any single adult
Greater resilience if one person is absent, ill, or stressed
More consistent co-regulation for children

In nervous-system language:

Safety wasn’t centralized in one person.

It was distributed across the household.

That’s powerful.

Even today, we know that children thrive when regulation is shared, not siloed.

So in this sense, these households accidentally preserved something ancient:

collective attachment.

The non-poly part: land, labor, and lineage

Now here’s the part that wasn’t romantic.

This system existed primarily to:

Prevent farmland from being split between brothers
Pool male labor on one property
Maintain inheritance inside a single household
Ensure elder care
Preserve economic survival

In other words:

The structure served land more than love.

Women’s autonomy varied widely depending on family dynamics. Consent looked nothing like modern consent. And patriarchal control still existed. This was not a utopia. It was a survival strategy.

Why this feels so different from modern polyamory

Modern polyamory is built on:

Individual choice
Explicit consent
Emotional autonomy
Personal identity
Attachment awareness

Historical polyandry was built on:

Kinship obligation
Economic necessity
Collective survival
Family hierarchy
Property continuity

Completely different nervous-system experience. One is relational exploration.

The other is structural engineering.

So why did it disappear?

Enter the British Empire.

Colonial governance needed:

Clear paternity
Clean inheritance lines
Legal marriage registries
Monogamous contracts
Victorian morality

Multiple husbands broke their paperwork.

So the practice was outlawed in the 19th century through marriage ordinances.

Not because it was proven harmful.

Because it was administratively inconvenient.

And just like that, an indigenous relational system was replaced with imported norms.

What this teaches us today

Here’s the quiet truth:

Our nervous systems still remember collective care.We just don’t live it anymore.

We now ask one partner to be:

lover
best friend
therapist
co-parent
financial teammate
emotional regulator
creative collaborator

That’s historically unprecedented.

No wonder so many relationships collapse under the weight.

A modern reflection

This doesn’t mean we should recreate polyandry.

It means we should question the isolation model we’ve inherited.

It means remembering:

regulation works better in community
children thrive with multiple safe adults
intimacy doesn’t have to be scarce
support doesn’t have to be romantic
healing doesn’t happen alone

Whether someone chooses monogamy, polyamory, or something in between isn’t the point.

The point is nervous-system literacy.

Because rules don’t regulate trauma.Connection does.

Why I share this

At ThisCourse, we don’t just teach mindset.

We teach embodiment.

Attachment awareness.

Relational safety.

Nervous-system regulation.

Not surface-level empowerment.

Real biology.

Because when you understand how humans actually evolved to bond, you stop blaming yourself for struggling inside structures that were never designed for nervous-system health.