Monogamy

n this sparkling, provocative collection of meditations on coupledom and its discontents, Adam Phillips manages to unsettle one of our most dearly held ideals, that of the monogamous couple, by speculating upon the impulses that most threaten it – boredom, desire, and the tempting idea that erotic fulfillment might lie elsewhere. With 121 brilliant aphorisms, the witty, erudite psychoanalyst who gave us "On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored" distills the urgent questions and knotty paradoxes behind our mating impulse, and reveals the centrality of monogamy to our notions of marriage, family, the self – in fact, to everything that matters. The only truly monogamous relationship is the one we have with ourselves. Every marriage is a blind date that makes you wonder what the alternatives are to a blind date. There's nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage. * * * 'A couple is a conspiracy in search of a crime. Sex is often the closest they can get.' All the present controversies about the family are really discussions about monogamy. About what keeps people together and why they should stay together. In this book of one hundred and twenty-one aphorisms, Adam Phillips asks why we all believe in monogamy, and why we find it so difficult to think about it. Everyone knows that most people, however much they may love their partner, are capable of loving and desiring more than one person at a time. It may be reassuring, but it is in fact very demanding (and often cruel) to assume that only one other person can give us what we want. At least in sexual matters, sharing seems to go deeply against the grain. Monogamy is so much taken for granted as the foundation of the family and of family values that, as with anything that seems essential, we are very wary of being critical of it. But as Phillips suggests, it is surely worth wondering why the faithful couple has such a hold on our imagination, and how it has come to be such an ideal. * * * "Wonderful ... Phillips’s great gift as a writer is for aphorism and paradox, and that is the joy of Monogamy." – Esquire "Remarkable. Like Chekhov, Phillips writes as well as he doctors, and his fascination with the subleties of human behaviour makes him a good storyteller. He has a welcome openness to the essential strangeness of every person; this alone is reason enough to read him." – Guardian "Phillips’s reflections on monogamy are both discomforting and comforting." – Washington Post Book World "His genius is the way in which he voices all those things we knew instinctively but could not find words for." – Observer