from social restraint in the relationships of men and
women--has always been associated with social or group decay. But modern
young people are interested in the meaning of monogamy for them
personally.

Monogamy is a going on in the healthy spirit of meeting what life
brings, not running away from it. Escape into a substitute relationship
is a going back to the dreamlike stage of late adolescence, putting new
promises ahead of present performance, and attempting to make life stand
still, so that one may continue on the threshold of maturity without
ever stepping over into the place where one must make good one's
promises.

No human craving, from infancy to death, is stronger than that for
security of affection. What misleads people into thinking of going
outside their marriage association, or wanting to break it for a new
one, is their failure to understand the slow growth of permanent
affection. Looking back at the intensity of its beginning in romantic
love, they suppose it is dwindling, when it is really taking root.

As a child that has been spoiled at home has a hard time getting used to
the lesser attention he receives away from home, the married person who
believes that courtship love is the essence of marriage finds it hard to
come down to the quieter affection that can endure. This is the person
who, unable to stand being valued only for his or her real worth,
complains to an outsider, "Nobody understands me." The outsider,
flattered, murmurs, "I do," and romanticizes about "this fine,
unappreciated person," only to discover when it is too late that the
person was only too well understood by the unfortunate first partner.

One may not be able to make oneself grow up suddenly and all at once,
but one can hold on to the principles one knows to be worth fighting
for, by the simple process of refusing to let go. All kinds of wonderful
qualities needed in marriage may seem to be conspicuous in oneself
chiefly by their absence, but one can always play for time. Even if
infatuated with another person, one can hang on to what one knows is
right until Time, the mighty leveler of passion, comes to one's help.

An exceptionally happy married woman, after going through this ordeal,
said that at the time when she was almost carried away by an unexpected
infatuation for a business associate of her husband's, it seemed as if
nothing was real but the lover. Neither the memory of past happiness
with the husband nor the th