Monogamy and infidelity: time to call a truce?

If you buy books online at amazon.com, the site will eventually begin to annoy you by offering recommendations each time you visit the site. The reason I find this annoying is that many of the books I buy aren't for me - they're gifts for others. Therefore the recommendations rarely match my interests.

However, a new recommendation caught my eye. It's not a new book: Monogamy by Adam Phillips was published in 1999. But, in some ways, it has more appeal that the more recent Against Love. For example, he's content to discuss his subject matter without condemning it. He's not quite as cynical as Laura Kipnis, although he is no less fearless regarding his subject matter. And he doesn't have a problem throwing us the occasional curveball.

My reasons for rejecting long-term relationships aren't the same as most others'. In addition to my belief that security doesn't exist, I'm also convinced that attempting to enforce your own monogamy via marriage doesn't buy your passion an extended warranty. True, many of us are terrified of our relationships ending, and of dying alone, but ultimately we have no control over either scenario.

Here are some excerpts, and no, I don't understand all of them:

Profoundly committed to the better life, the promiscuous, like the monogamous, are idealists. Both are deranged by hope, in awe of reassurance, impressed by their pleasures. We should not be too quick to set them against each other. At their best, they are both the enemies of cynicism. It is the cynical who are dispiriting because they are always getting their disappointment in first.

The only truly monogamous relationship is the one we have with ourselves.

Every marriage is a blind date that makes you wonder what the alternatives are to a blind date.

A couple is a conspiracy in search of a crime. Sex is often the closest they can get.

Most infidelities aren't ugly, they just look as though they are.

Each of our relationships is different, and we are different in each of them. That is what makes monogamy so perversely interesting. (I'm still trying to figure out what Phillips means by this - wouldn't it be the other way around?)

At its best monogamy may be the wish to find someone to die with; at its worst it is a cure for the terrors of aliveness. They are easily confused.

No one gets the relationship they deserve. For some people this is a cause of unending resentment, for some people it is the source of unending desire. And for some people the most important thing is that they have found something that doesn't end.

In a society without scapegoats there would be more conflict. People feel too vulnerable without someone else to blame and punish. Similarly, a society without sexual infidelity -- or without the promiscuous going their wanton way -- could be dangerous. Who would we be fascinated by, who would we persecute?
After all, a couple without a third party are radically unprotected from each other. And when people are unprotected from each other, it can go either way.