For Better For Worse: Essays on Sex, Love, Marriage, and More

by Neel Burton

Marriage is an ancient institution that evolved in a historical context of agrarian societies with low life expectancy, high fertility and infant mortality, and marked gender disparity.

over 90 per cent of avian species are socially monogamous,

In Genesis 1, God seems to have created man and woman at the same time: ‘So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.’ After blessing them, the first thing God tells them is, ‘be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth’.

(sororal polygyny),

(hut polygyny).

Shiva himself is often represented as Ardhanarishvara, an androgynous composite of Shiva and Parvati with a body that is

male on the right-hand side and female on the left.

In most cases, boys are identified as fa’afafine from an early age, either because it is their natural inclination or because there are not enough girls in the family. To varying degrees, they take on the dress, manners, and responsibilities of a woman, although, if the need arises, they can also perform the work of a man.

Same-sex marriage was practised and accepted among precolonial peoples such as the two-spirits, the fa’afafine, and more than thirty African cultures (Chapter 5); in Ancient Mesopotamia and

perhaps also Ancient Egypt (Chapter 8); and in Fujian province during the Ming dynasty.

‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’

for the first time in the Judeo-Christian tradition, love, in so far as courtly love can be counted as love, did not ultimately aim at, or depend upon, God—and the Church duly declared it a heresy.

Eros is sexual or passionate love, and most akin to the modern construct of romantic love.

The hallmark of philia, or friendship, is shared goodwill.

Storge [‘store-jay’], or familial love, is a kind of philia pertaining to the love between parents and their children.

Agape [‘aga-pay’] is universal love, such as the love for strangers, nature, or God.

Ludus is playful or uncommitted love.

Pragma is a kind of practical love founded on reason or duty and one’s longer-term interests.

Philautia, finally, is self-love,

‘the more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes.’

Sadomasochism can be defined as the taking of

pleasure, often sexual in nature, from the inflicting or suffering of pain, hardship, or humiliation.

To fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates, or implore pardon, were for me the most exquisite enjoyments…

True love is about respecting, nurturing, and enabling, but how many people have the capacity and maturity for this kind of love?

Man has evolved over millennia into one of the most social and interconnected of all animals. Suddenly, he finds himself apart and alone, not on a mountaintop, in a desert, or on a raft at sea, but in a city of millions, in reach but out of touch. For the first time in human history, he has no practical need, and therefore no pretext, to interact and form attachments with his fellow men and women.

many people who think they are hungry for sex are in fact hungry for skin.