Can you survive the monogamy gauntlet?
On Netflix's 'Temptation Island,' joyless heterosexual couples undergo 'the ultimate test' by trying to withstand desire for other people.
In the first episode of Netflix’s Temptation Island, a handful of hetero couples behold a parade of “attractive singles.” They watch gym-bodied men rip off their shirts to pop their pecs. Women strut in wearing string bikinis and shaking their butts. The couples squirm as they take in exactly who their partners will be living with for the next three weeks.
The partnered men are moving into a Hawaiian villa filled with these “temptresses,” and the partnered women are moving into a separate villa with these “tempters.” Along the way, they will be shown video clips of what their partner is getting up to in the other villa.
We’re told that these couples have opted into this bizarre reality-TV arrangement—a reboot of a long-running series—because they are at a “crossroads.” Some have struggled with infidelity in the past, while others are wondering why they haven’t taken the next step toward marriage. This show is supposed to be the solution.
As the host Mark L. Walberg—no relation to Mark Wahlberg of the Funky Bunch—tells the group, “There’s only one question that matters. Are you truly meant to be together… or not? Are you ready to put your relationships to the ultimate test?”
On Temptation Island, the ability to withstand temptation—to not touch or make out with or fuck other people—is posed as the “true love’s kiss” of fairytales. It’s presented as proof that your relationship is the real deal, it’s divined by the stars. You’re either meant to be together… or not. It’s fidelity as Cinderella’s glass slipper.
Here, the nuances of care, communication, shared goals, emotional intimacy, and sexual compatibility are not what determine the value of a relationship. Instead, the test is the ability to say “no” to attraction, even at its most intense heights—which, as envisioned by the show, is impressively adolescent. Can you resist this woman licking chocolate sauce from your neck? This man giving you a grinding lap dance?
At the same time, the show implies that those who do stray might learn something about themselves along the way and become better partners. It’s like a hero’s journey where the trials are body shots, late-night hot tubbing, and women saying things like, “My guilty pleasure is sucking dick.”
To feel tempted is only human, the show implies, but to give in is to reveal a flaw. This reality-TV pressure test is meant to identify leaks for fixing. One man named Brion—SPOILER ALERT—cheats on his girlfriend Shante by engaging in that reality-TV staple: a shower threesome. Later, he’s led by Walberg—a career game show host, not a therapist—to talk through how his cheating might result from childhood trauma and abandonment issues.
Contestants are meant to identify these psychological leaks in order to patch things up and become watertight, which is to say: monogamous. “I used women as a way to try to find that love,” Brion tells Shante at the end of the season. “And I thought the wild sex and the threesome were gonna fill that gap and, honestly, it doesn’t.”
I mean, that’s real. People use sex to soothe insecurity and self-hatred all the time, to feel wanted and worthwhile. But the problems with these on-screen relationships are so much deeper than violating an agreement of sexual fidelity. With a lot of these couples, a single glance tells you there’s a lack of intimacy and basic respect. There’s no need for an “ultimate” test; they already fail the most basic one.
On Temptation Island, as in real life, hetero dysfunction is so normalized—so prosaic—that we’re pressure testing something that is already leaking all over the place. Under these circumstances, compulsory monogamy turns lovers into duty-bound soldiers fighting for… what, exactly? Shared misery? Mutual depletion?
The show essentially divides women into commitment-seekers and sexy temptresses; it’s very wife/whore dichotomy. Indeed, Brion labels Shante a “good woman” and “not very sexual” before finding “temptresses” who are willing to gamely entertain his deepest fantasies. On Temptation Island, the dream—or sometimes specter—of marriage and kids is ever-present. Implicit for all of the couples is the question: Are we gonna do the damn thing or what?
Faithfulness—in a situation designed to make you break—is used as a stand-in for marital and parental readiness. As for the Temptation Island contestants who pass the monogamy test without fail? Well, only one couple did this season and they got engaged.
They got engaged on Temptation Island.
It’s funny because heteronormative, married, parental life is built by default around avoiding temptation. It’s dictated in these siloed spheres (dads hang with the dads, moms hang with the moms). Men and women are not supposed to be friends. These norms feel defensive—paranoid, even. And honestly? I think it threatens the stability of relationships more than it safeguards them.
At the end of this season of Temptation Island, something interesting happens in the women’s villas, where things never get anywhere near as wild as in the men’s villas. The women and men (i.e. the tempters) end up really appreciating each other. They are mutually loving and affectionate—and in an easy, free-flowing way. While there has been some romantic canoodling along the way—notably, on the part of women responding to their partners cheating in the other villa—it’s mostly non-romantic connections that are formed.
Before the tempters leave the women’s villa, the whole house comes together for a group hug and everybody starts talking about how they have become like a family. There are tears, even. It’s a stark contrast to the joyless couplings that so many arrived inside—and it underscores the superficiality of this “ultimate test” of fidelity. These people actually like each other.