good health is better than bad. To argue such a matter seems
strange.

But there is much loose talk about on the other side of the case, crying
up the non-monogamous program practiced by a few and publicized by more.
The adherents of this group are so vocal that their ideas are constantly
being aired. Knowing themselves a small minority, with the burden of
proof against them, they excitedly attack the existing order.

Their arguments are likely to interest the average person, however, only
when he or she is momentarily thrown off balance by an emotional
upheaval of one sort or another. And right there is the danger. It is
hard for anyone--particularly a young person--to make a rational
decision when his thinking is colored by his emotions; his tendency is
to use his intellectual processes merely to justify what he wants to do
at the moment, and not to search out the truth. If he is unprepared for
the anti-monogamy arguments ready and waiting for him, he is likely to
accept them without question. Before we have occasion to doubt it,
therefore, those of us who take monogamy as a matter of course should
understand why we do, and what its significance is to us. Then, if ever
the occasion does arise, we shall be better able to let our minds, not
our passions, decide the issue for our greater happiness.

The question is shall I, having given myself to one man or one woman,
abide by the till-death-do-us-part vow, or shall I be free to change
partners at will?

The natural mood of most men and women entering marriage is deeply
monogamous. The one thing husband and wife crave is to depend only on
each other forever. Yet later on some of them will suddenly desert the
standards of monogamy without giving themselves time to think, and
others will pass through a period of turmoil before making up their
minds to go or to stay. What has happened in the marriage experience to
change these individuals who were strong for monogamy into men and women
either dead set against it or very doubtful about it?

The answer lies both in the particular temperament of the persons
concerned and in certain characteristic features of the early, middle,
and later stages in married life. Sometimes a young man or woman bolts
from the tenets of monogamy in a late-adolescent panic when marriage
responsibilities begin to be irksome. Sometimes it is the older man or
woman who married in good faith only to lose sight of the values of
monogamy. Not having