Is Monogamy Really All that Important in Relationships?

By John Gray

Absolutely! Monogamy is the basic foundation of our expectation for relationships - if we want passion to last, there has to be monogamy.

Some men say that they want open relationships, to be able to fool around, but there's no way they can do that and still have great passion with their wives. Give me a break! If you had great passion with your wife, you wouldn't need to fool around. It's as simple as that. The real passion I have with my wife is beyond anything I can conceive of with anyone else. The fact that a man feels the need to fool around proves that he doesn't have great passion with his wife.

This is what makes sex really great: when you're making love to your wife, she is the woman you adore, you love, that you've dedicated your life to - She is the woman you are passionately attracted to.

Here's another answer: if you want to have lasting passion in a relationship, one of the prerequisites is that the woman must be sexually fulfilled.

That doesn't mean she has to have an orgasm every time because that would put too much pressure on the relationship - but she has to be experiencing peak fulfillment in sex on a regular basis. If she doesn't - if every time they have sex, he just gets off and she doesn't, then he's not going to feel very successful at sex. And so his attraction to her will become less. When she does experience peak fulfillment, it's a great memorable experience for him that will keep him attracted to her.

There are three major requirements for a woman to feel fulfilled in sex:

1. You must have a very good relationship, with good communication.

2. You must have sexual monogamy

3. You must have romance outside of the bedroom.

If he's unfaithful - even if he doesn't tell her - the fact that he's taking his sexual energy and sharing it with another woman means he's taking it away from his wife.

A woman needs to feel a man's full attention from time to time for her to blossom. Monogamy creates that focus: that she is the number-one person in his life, that she's cherished, that she's not being compared with other women.

That gives her the safety for her to open up and become increasingly vulnerable to the man. Over the years, it's like a flower continuing to unfold: deeper levels of her being are able to open up and surrender to him - and by surrender, I mean open up and let him in, instead of putting up a wall to keep him out.

She cannot achieve these deeper levels of intimacy if she suspects that he's going to be with another woman.

When life's experiences have proven that he is sticking with her through thick and thin, his loving commitment opens her up to deeper levels of her being, and allows greater passion, which allows sex to get better and better for him, and her as well. If she can't continue to open up, sex will become stale, and both of them will lose interest.

To summarize: monogamy makes a woman feel special, and she needs to feel special in order to open up sexually. You can't just be mechanically a great lover, you need to be monogamous.

And you men have to be romantic - even if you don't feel like it.

Men have this idea that they only have to make romantic gestures when they're courting. Once they're married, a man thinks he's giving his wife the big stuff - like sharing his income with her - so he doesn't have to do all of the little stuff anymore. But it's the little stuff that builds romance.

The man has to continue to bring flowers occasionally. He should be physically affectionate, even when sex isn't planned. He should give her hugs; look at her when she talks - all the things he did when they were dating. You have to do all these things for the rest of your life if you want your relationship to grow. This doesn't mean you have to do it every day, but from time to time you have to bring back that initial energy that you used to give to her when you were courting.

Of course, it's not all up to the man. Lots of women will be nodding their heads at this point, thinking, "Yes, he's stopped doing those things: I understand why sex isn't that good nowadays." But there's a flip side: women take men for granted as well, and stop appreciating men for doing the little things. As a woman gets to know her husband, she'll become aware of his little failings - then she starts pointing out all of the things he does wrong, hoping he'll change. And that kills passion.

My advice to women is to appreciate the things he does and don't point out his mistakes unless, on a scale of one to ten, those mistakes are eight, nine, or ten.

A man can deal with you pointing out his mistakes if they're serious, but if you're pointing out mistakes indiscriminately (whether they're a one or a ten), it's a real turn-off.

He feels, "If you really loved me, you'd overlook these little mistakes." Sometimes, a man will say, "I cleaned up the whole kitchen, and she comes in and says nothing about how I cleaned the whole kitchen, all she says is 'you know, you put the pots in the wrong spot'." That man will never wash another dish!

Focus on what he does right, not on the little mistakes he makes.

Women aren't taught this stuff, and it's very, very important.

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God bless your family and your marriage.

Jim Stephens