Quotes & Sayings About Monogamy

I had met my now wife, Sheryl, and was attempting my first try at monogamy, which was not really in my nature at the time, and I wasn't able to do it. — Rob Lowe

I think that if I were in a satisfying marriage, I would probably choose monogamy, but I wouldn't want that to be a requirement. — Jamie Johnson

Some women's love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's license to receive it. — Thomas Hardy

Polygamy and polyandry distribute the frightening physical solidarity of monogamy. Monogamous couples are always hungry for company: to dilute sex. — Laura Riding

Monogamy is defined by what it is not, just as much as by what it is," I say, "We couldn't have monogamy without infidelity the same as we couldn't have sad without happy, or down without up. By fucking around in secret, within a relationship defined as monogamous, aren't I just playing the devil in monogamy's Sunday school pageant? — Joey Comeau

Today, monogamy is one person at a time. — Esther Perel

That's the thing with the young these days, isn't it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short. — Nick Hornby

Despite a 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages and 65 percent the second time around; despite the staggering frequency of affairs; despite the fact that monogamy is a ship sinking faster than anyone can bail it out, we continue to cling to the wreckage with absolute faith in its structural soundness. — Esther Perel

Monogamous romantic commitment, like infallible lifelong attraction to only men or only women, is surely a minority tendency expediently elevated to a general social principle — Hannah Black

It was only when I started to reconnect with my inner child four years into recovery (I was over four years clean and sober off drugs and alcohol) and started to attend a love addiction support group that I was able to trust again and have faith that there are just as many honest and trustworthy women as there are women who are not interested in monogamy.
However, it was after ten years of continuous recovery that I started to really dig deep into my childhood grief work and was finally able to reclaim my inner child. I started to take risks again. On a practical level, you can't get very far in this world if you resent and distrust the opposite sex and, sadly, many men and women suffer in this area. Rather than celebrating the opposite sex, they fear them. Empathy and self-compassion has helped me in this area too. — Christopher Dines

And he had been very badly treated by a girl too. He had thought her a really civilised and adult personality, and then she had unexpectedly revealed that she was a mass of bourgeois prejudices and monogamic instincts. — C.S. Lewis

We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion. — Erica Jong

Monogamy is like a 40-watt bulb. It works, but it's not enough. — John Patrick Shanley

Me, I believe in monogamy in much the same way as I believe in, say, cheese on toast. I'll eat it, but only for very special people, and not for every meal. There are other interesting and delicious toast options out there, and I support people's right to investigate those options without being punished. — Laurie Penny

If love wasn't conditional, everybody would be in love with everybody. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I can't imagine anything more stressful than monogamy. — Errol Flynn

It was easy to be nice to an attractive woman over a dinner table. The despair came later, with children and tiredness and the sheer drudgery of marriage and monogamy. — Nick Hornby

Monogamy is a huge time-saver. — Steve Sailer

The two-thirds rule [of the Senate], which can be changed only by constitutional amendment, will no doubt continue for a long time to come. Like monogamy, it is not completely satisfactory, but, like monogamy, it has won general if somewhat grudging acquiescence. — Thomas A. Bailey

A dog's love is forever. We expect infidelity from one another; we marvel at this one's ability to hold that one's interest for fifty, sixty years; perhaps some of us feel a secret contempt for monogamy even as we extol it, wishing parole for its weary participants. But dogs do not receive our sympathy or our suspicion - from dogs we presume an eternal adoration. — Jennifer Egan

Monogamy, it follows, is the sacred cow of the romantic ideal, for it is the marker of our specialness: I have been chosen and others renounced. When you turn your back on other loves, you confirm my uniqueness; when your hand or mind wanders, my importance is shattered. Conversely, if I no longer feel special, my own hands and mind tingle with curiosity. The disillusioned are prone to roam. Might someone else restore my significance — Esther Perel

It's a false premise to say that most monogamous people have chosen monogamy. Most people belong to the religion they were raised in ... because that's what's familiar. That's the milieu they grew up in, and, for better or worse, they're just continuing the pattern. Until this traditionalist mindset is shaken loose, you would likely try from reflex to impose notions onto nonmonogamy that are not only untenable in the new context but spel sudden and messy doom even in situations that otherwise could be worked out. — Anthony D. Ravenscroft

Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there were also husbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy and romance. "Though you probably don't know what those are," said Mustapha Mond. They shook their heads. Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy. "But every one belongs to every one else," he concluded, citing the hypnopaedic proverb. — Aldous Huxley

Men would like monogamy better if it sounded less like monotony. — Rita Rudner

Judith Stacey - a prominent New York University professor who is in no way regarded as a fringe figure, in testifying before Congress against the Defense of Marriage Act - expressed hope that the revisionist view's triumph would give marriage "varied, creative, and adaptive contours . . . [leading some to] question the dyadic limitations of Western marriage and seek . . . small group marriages."44 In their statement "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage," more than three hundred "LGBT and allied" scholars and advocates - including prominent Ivy League professors - call for legally recognizing sexual relationships involving more than two partners.45 University of Calgary Professor Elizabeth Brake thinks that justice requires us to use legal recognition to "denormalize[] heterosexual monogamy as a way of life" and correct for "past discrimination against homosexuals, bisexuals, polygamists, and care networks."46 — Sherif Girgis

Here monogamy, there hetaerism and its most extreme form, prostitution. Hetaerism is as much a social institution as all others. It continues the old sexual freedom - for the benefit of the men. In reality not only permitted, but also assiduously practised by the ruling class, it is denounced only nominally. Still in practice this denunciation strikes by no means the men who indulge in it, but only the women. These are ostracised and cast out by society, in order to proclaim once more the fundamental law of unconditional male supremacy over the female sex. However, — Friedrich Engels

generation was consumed with serial monogamy. We — Noah Cicero

Monogamy is god's way of making death seem like a more reasonable option. — Dov Davidoff

I think if you're in a committed relationship, unless you have some sort of an understanding, monogamy is something that should exist. — Jennifer Lopez

For any couple, once you delve into the idea of non-monogamy, you're entering pretty frightening territory. — Zoe Lister-Jones

Love has been in perpetual strife with monogamy ... — Ellen Key

Monogamy, in brief, kills passion
and passion is the most dangerous of all the surviving enemies to what we call civilization, which is based upon order, decorum, restraint, formality, industry, regimentation. The civilized man
the ideal civilized man
is simply one who never sacrifices the common security to his private passions. He reaches perfection when he even ceases to love passionately
when he reduces the most profound of all his instinctive experiences from the level of an ecstasy to the level of a mere device for replenishing the armies and workshops of the world, keeping clothes in repair, reducing the infant death-rate, providing enough tenants for every landlord, and making it possible for the Polizei to know where every citizen is at any hour of the day or night. Monogamy accomplishes this, not by producing satiety, but by destroying appetite. It makes passion formal and uninspiring, and so gradually kills it. — H.L. Mencken

I have a lot of skepticism about marriage and monogamy. — Rashida Jones

It is not monogamy when there is one legal wife, and mistresses out of sight. — Annie Besant

I don't believe in monogamy, possessing people, the rightness or inevitability of jealousy. — Kate Millett

I see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal ethic and applaud his recognition that such must start by junking the present sexual code and starting fresh. Most philosophers haven't the courage for this; they swallow the basics of the present code
monogamy, family pattern, continence, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse, and so forth
then fiddle with details ... even such piffle as discussing whether the female breast is an obscene sight! (p.365) — Robert A. Heinlein

That would be Axelroot all over, to turn up with an extra wife or two claiming that's how they do it here. Maybe he's been in Africa so long he's forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it's called Monotony. — Barbara Kingsolver

Recreational sex is thus supposed to function as the glue holding a human couple together while they cooperate in rearing their helpless baby. — Jared Diamond

Jameson hadn't, however, counted on wanting her so bad that no one else even existed outside of her. He found himself thinking that he couldn't care less if he never fucked another woman again, as long as he could just be close to Tate. Just touch her whenever he wanted. If she said that, said she wanted monogamy between them, he thought he might actually say okay. For the first time ever in his life, he could almost picture it. — Stylo Fantome

Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy. — Aldous Huxley

Infidelity is a deal breaker for me. I've broken up with people over it. You can't do monogamy 90 percent of the time. — Alanis Morissette

Homo sapiens exhibits traits consistent with a long history of polygyny or monogamy, and a relative absence of sperm competition. — Alan F. Dixson

Love is cursed by monogamy — Kanye West

I think monogamy is a little unnatural, if I'm totally honest. You change. Things alter. It's the exception rather than the rule and I think it's exceptional to cope with it and manage it. It's hard work. — Robert Powell

An Odonian undertook monogamy just as he might undertake a joint enterprise in production, a ballet or a soap-works. Partnership was a voluntarily constituted federation like any other. So long as it worked, it worked, and if it didn't work it stopped being. It was not an institution but a function. It had no sanction but that of private conscience. — Ursula Le Guin

I want you to be my black vulture:forever monogamous! — Munia Khan

Monogamy is not found in any social, group-living primate except - if the standard narrative is to be believed - us. — Christopher Ryan

You have to check out 'March of the Penguins'. Penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy. — Rich Lowry

Strong relationships are not rocked by a truth that is grounded by resolute monogamy. — J.R. Ward

Even in the West, moreover, although the ethical ideal has been absolute monogamy, the legal norm has been merely relative monogamy, which is also known as successive polygamy. — J. Budziszewski

When a man cheats, it is said it is because he is a dog. When a woman cheats, it is said it is because her man is a dog. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Most women think cheating is 'disgusting' ... until they fall for a man that likes them back; but isn't willing to leave his lover for them. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We breathe the free air, we have the best looking men and handsomest women, and if they envy our position, well they may, for they are a poor, narrow minded, pinch-backed race of man, who chain themselves down to the law of monogamy and live all their days under the dominion of one wife. They aught to be ashamed of such conduct, and the still fouler channel which flows from their practices. — George A. Smith

I don't believe [monogamy] is realistic. But, I believe that we, as people, have the power to make it happen. — Kate Hudson

Monogamy was the first form of the family not founded on natural, but on economic conditions, viz.: the victory of private property over primitive and natural collectivism. — Friedrich Engels

You see, his mother has thrown me out of the house because I was unfaithful to her. Or rather the faith I had wasn't the right kind. Given the absence of mind-reading technology, humans believe monogamy is possible. — Matt Haig

Monogamy is contrary to nature but necessary for the greater social good. — Rita Mae Brown

Hard work is damn near as overrated as monogamy. — Huey Long

I was always anti-marriage. I didn't understand monogamy. I couldn't figure out how that could last. And then I met Bryn and I started to understand the beauty of constancy and history and change and going on the roller coaster with someone - of having a partner in life. — Maria Bello

I think that monogamy is artificial. I do not think it's something that comes naturally to us. — Tom Ford

Lifelong monogamy is a maniacal idea. — Germaine Greer

Monogamy is probably enforced because society if mostly comprised of beta males. — David M. Buss

Every one belongs to every one else. — Aldous Huxley

Accursed from their birth they be Who seek to find monogamy, Pursuing it from bed to bed - I think they would be better dead. — Dorothy Parker

..and monogamy as rare as an earthen eclipse. — Marissa Meyer

Liberating ourselves from the traditional strictures of marriage altogether, and/or transforming those strictures to include all of us -- gay, feminist, career-focused, baby crazy, monogamous, non-monogamous, skeptical, romantic, and everyone in between -- is the challenge facing this generation. As we consciously opt out or creatively reimagine marriage one loving couple at a time, we'll be able to shift societal expectations wholesale, freeing younger generations from some of the antiquated assumptions we've faced (that women always want to get married and men always shy away from commitment, that gender parity somehow disempowers men, that turning 30 makes an unmarried woman into an old maid). — Courtney E. Martin

Always admired men who had many women. It must be that to a child of a dissatisfied woman the idea of monogamy is hollow. — Marilyn Monroe

Mr. Monogamy doesn't find my shenanigans funny? Oh thank god, if you did I'd have to chuck it all and join a monastery. — Kim Cormack

... each woman is a wonderful world unto herself. And monogamy? It's like choosing to live in a single town and never traveling to experience the beauty, history, and enchantment of all the other unique, wonderful places in the world. Why does love have to limit us?
Perhaps it doesn't. Only fear is restrictive. Love is expansive. And I wonder, since fear of enmeshment impels us to avoid commitment and fear of abandonment makes us possessive, what type of evolved relationship can emerge once those wounds are healed? — Neil Strauss

Revolution in Love'. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Do you want free love as against bourgeois marriage, or monogamy as against bourgeois promiscuity? — Milan Kundera

Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman). — Milan Kundera

If you held your head the right way and squinted, we could practically pass for marmosets. Well, the lack of fur and the use of indoor plumbing would give us away, but you get the point. Monogamy is rare among animals, as we have seen, but hardly unheard of. — Marlene Zuk

My music touches on things I am concerned with in my own life - the idea of a woman's role in society, sexuality, desire, monogamy, fantasy and glamour. That's what keeps me alive, and if I couldn't keep creating that, I'd fall into a bit of heap. — Jane Badler

I think biologically we are attracted to more than one person, but given society and our needs, monogamy works better. — Nancy Friday

I was angry at myself for my inclination to vice. I longed for the day when a state of frenzy would lead my mind to sober pasture, just as it had for Saint Augustine. I longed for the day when the love of one woman would be sacred enough to forget all the rest. — Roman Payne

Monogamy is the true path to happiness. — Wilt Chamberlain

Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code - family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy, ... restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etcetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an "obscene" sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than the failure to abide by the code. — Robert A. Heinlein

Monogamy is monotonous, but it's safe you know. And that's my philosophy. And I like to convey that to people. — Joy Behar

Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact. — Wallace Stegner

Men think monogamy is something you make dining tables out of. — Kathy Lette

The campaign to obscure the true nature of our species' sexuality leaves half our marriages collapsing under an unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido-killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion, and shame. Serial monogamy stretches before (and behind) many of us like an archipelago of failure: isolated islands of transitory happiness in a cold, dark sea of disappointment. — Cacilda Jetha

Sometimes people have a wild past because they have an essentially wild nature, and that's how they plan to go through life. Sometimes such people settle into happy monogamy, and can be content there because they never have to wonder, "What did I miss?" — Emily Yoffe

Happily-ever-after monogamy has been reinforced so steadily in literature that we tend to feel like failures when we don't achieve that in reality. — Colleen Chen

Why get married? For human beings, marriage is such an unnatural state. If you want monogamy, it has been said, you should marry a swan. — Quentin Crisp

Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy. — G.K. Chesterton

She would keep him, keep his love, deserve it and cherish it, for this much was certain, that there was no longer any happiness possible for her without that one man's love. — Emmuska Orczy

Christianity fucked men and women up. Men feel guilty and women have misguided anger. The result, a weak male. Fucking controls on our behaviour. It's like a sickness. A control sickness. — Robert Black

Inside the boundaries of the old paradigm there's no hope, there's no way out of the box of capitalism, monogamy, consumer fetishism, egoism, money worship, no way out. No way. No way out! — Terence McKenna

This isn't the time or the place for me to decide to start thinking about monogamy. That ruins men. Clips their nuts, drains their testosterone, destroys the very things that make politicians good politicians. — Adriana Locke

Culture preaches monogamy while Nature repeats it - over and over again. — Anthony Marais

Monogamy is so weird. Like when you know their name and stuff. — Margaret Cho

Marriage," "mating," and "love" are socially constructed phenomena that have little or no transferable meaning outside any given culture. The examples we've noted of rampant ritualized group sex, mate-swapping, unrestrained casual affairs, and socially sanctioned sequential sex were all reported in cultures that anthropologists insist are monogamous simply because they've determined that something they call "marriage" takes place there. No wonder so many insist that marriage, monogamy, and the nuclear family are human universals. With such all-encompassing interpretations of the concepts, even the prairie vole, who "sleeps with anyone," would qualify. — Christopher Ryan

Sex is only boring if you are. — Merlyn Gabriel Miller

Talk about polygamy! There is no true philosopher on the face of the earth but what will admit that such a system, properly carried out according to the order of heaven, is far superior to monogamy for the raising of healthy, robust children! — Brigham Young

Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius. — Warren Beatty

To emend one's thinking constantly is a desirable practice, and one I often engage in
sometimes to the point of being almost schizophrenic. But there are cases where one should not parade changes just to prove one is up to date. In the field of ideas, as much as in other fields, monogamy is not necessarily a sign of absence of libido. — Umberto Eco

Environmentalists believe that monolithic solutions - be they in the auto, nuclear, or genetics field - are doomed to fail and lead only along the path to dependence. They feel rather that it is far more sensible to approach the future by opening up more possibilities. Likewise, polyamorists believe that monogamy sterilizes love and fosters unhealthy codependence, whereas multiple relationships feed off of each other's differences and ultimately lead to an enriching fulfillment. — Francoise Simpere

I've been practicing serial monogamy with one loser after another since I was eighteen. You can't deny I'm an asshole magnet. — Avery Flynn

I believe in monogamy if that's what a couple decides upon together, but it all depends on the personal history and culture of the two involved. — K.d. Lang

The daddy-at-home theory posits that concealed ovulation evolved to promote monogamy, to force the man to stay home, and thus to bolster his certainty about his paternity of his wife's children. The many-fathers theory instead posits that concealed ovulation evolved to give the women access to many sex partners and thus to leave many men uncertain as to whether they sired her children. — Jared Diamond