h they are copartners
in love, has an indispensable, unique, and satisfying role.

Monogamy is not a fettering of human impulse, but a registration of the
deepest yearnings of men and women. The laws that define and support it
are merely man's efforts to express the common opinion that has taken
form out of the experiences through the centuries of a great multitude
of persons who, like ourselves, have sought success in marriage. Those
who think of monogamy as something imposed on human nature through
external authority, a sort of strait jacket of emotional restraint, are
obtuse to the overwhelming testimony of human nature. Monogamy is not
established by a thundering edict from Mount Sinai, but by the quiet,
persistent inward-speaking of human need. The one-man-one-woman craving
is so deeply laid in the structure of all of us that any other way of
mating and establishing a home is alien to desire, the thought never
arises, except when the one-time expectations have been lost through
personality failure.

Monogamy is not something that suddenly and finally takes shape, a
petrifying of emotion that for a season in courtship flourishes. It gets
its vitality through a growth process, continues with life, a spreading
of an affection always forward-looking; anything else is an indication
of a faltering marriage. In the beginning love announces the awakening
of mutual need. Then the feelings flow swift and strong and carry each
toward the other. The impulse to possess, to annex, to have possession
of the beloved, is a consuming hunger. It is a covetous grasping, a
recognition that the other is indispensable. Out of this comes a union,
and from then on, the two grow not only together, but also their common
fellowship grows, becoming their way of life.

The passion to possess the other one, who seems external, fades away,
and in its place comes the joy of mutual sharing, the security of an
exploring fellowship. It is thus that monogamy offers love its
fulfillment. There must be this welding of self with self if the
emotionally awakened man or woman is to escape loneliness.
Self-expansion in power, distinction, or pleasure does not suffice. Any
by-oneself fulfillment only brings home the profounder need of a
different achievement, not in separation, but through union, the fusion
of two persons in a constant intimacy.

This growing together comes from no deliberate, effort-making program.
It grows out of the affectionate livin