"The prevalence of monogamous marriage in Christendom is commonly ascribed to ethical considerations. This is quite as absurd as ascribing wars to ethical considerations - which is, of course, frequently done." 

H.L. Mencken from his Intermezzo on Monogamy

"It's not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind." - D. Cooper

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." - P. Atreides

"Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe" - L. tzu

Ah, the refreshing Neff candor. Like those Irish Spring commercials, eh?

My circles always says, "No matter how cute she is, someone is sick of her shit." I think it's a bumper sticker.

Desire is triangulation. There has to be distance between yourself and what you want. (You can't want what you already have.) Where marriages seem to go wrong is that they forget they don't "have" the other person. Both people must maintain their own individuality and both be secure with that.

I think that's why swinging sometimes works, and why some couples can recover from affairs. Realizing your partner is still desirable to other people and has a will of their own can be exciting.

One of the problems with quoting Mencken is knowing when to stop.  The essays are short enough to tempt one to just keep going.  The one in question contends that monogamy is common because it works.  It works at killing passion which is the chief surviving threat to civilization.  This reflects the comments about how the sex dries up after marriage.  Well I've never been married but have had the same experience in a couple of LTRs.

It seems to make sense to me from a biological perspective.  If you've been going at it for a while and no spawn have issued the middle part of your brain, the animal part that gives rise to our animal behaviors (Grrrrrowl!) might just take notice and say to our fore brains 'ain't nothin going to happen here, time to move on.' If spawn are issued everyone is fairly distracted.

Add to this the relative lack of life affirming, pair bond promoting struggle that we are blessed/cursed with in our modern world (hunting, gathering, fighting off nature and the tribe next door (at least on a first hand basis)) and it isn't surprising to me that so many marriages fail.  This may be why I'm so risk adverse (and, therefore, a cad of the first order according to Mencken.)  That and the fact that even the most successful relationships I've seen have involved levels of deception and inequity I'm not comfortable with.

I salute those of you who have made a go of it!

"It's not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind." - D. Cooper

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." - P. Atreides

"Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe" - L. tzu

So you're saying married people with children don't cheat?

This article was in the paper yesterday, about how kids ruin happy marriages:

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_12111464

No, I didn't mean that.  What I meant was...

What the fuck did I mean?  Oh, yeah.  Kids are distracting, first off.  Second, if one of them turns up it might cause that animal brain to think 'Hmmm, that thing sure is annoying but it might be mine so I should probably put some effort into keeping it alive so my genetic material might go forth and cover the earth.' Or, to put it another way, in what might be called the reproductive equation if the front end  (fucking and everything that leads up to it, we can call it mating) is successful (fertilization, gestation, delivery) that leads to the back end of the equation (taking care of the kid until it is old enough to take care of itself, inculcating it with the tribal memes, etc.  We might call this rearing)  which might cause the pair bond to remain intact in order to make sure or genes carry on.  If you subscribe to the theory that the only reason that animals exist is to procreate that is.  Anyway, it is only a hypothesis.

To be accurate what Mencken actually said was: "The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who, on grounds of decorum and morality, avoids the game of love.  He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies.  Women have a hard time of it in this world.  They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority.  Their one comfort is the assurance that, even thought it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man." from The Incomparable Buzz-Saw

This was, of course, 90ish years ago and we live in a much more enlightened age.

"It's not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind." - D. Cooper

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." - P. Atreides

"Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe" - L. tzu