Historically, getting (monogamously) married meant “getting serious.” It meant hight expectations of one’s proper behavior. The social ties of marriage create interdependent systems of obligation, mutual support, and restraint. Marriage meant having someone to care for and having someone to take care of you—yes, being interdependent—and these responsibilities and obligations only grew stronger when children entered the family. Non-monogamy flouts such norms, exhibits little constraint, a great deal of “checking in,” and invites partner jealousy and pernicious bugs, all in the pursuit of genital pleasures and perceived “needs.”
Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy, pg.184
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