Strange Bedfellows

When The Myth of Monogamy was published in 2001, husband and wife David P. Barash (an evolutionary biologist) and Judith Eve Lipton (a psychiatrist), stunned the public by making the case that monogamy is extremely rare in the animal world; that it simply isn’t “natural”—for animals or for human beings. The response was dramatic: fascination mixed with outrage; vindication for some, apoplexy for others. The Myth of Monogamy clearly touched a nerve: If monogamy is unnatural, is it hopeless? Is infidelity inevitable? And what about the paradox of a happily married husband-and-wife writing that monogamy is in any sense a “myth”?

In Strange Bedfellows, the much-anticipated stand alone sequel to The Myth of Monogamy, the authors answer these questions and in the process, reassure and empower anyone nervous about his or her monogamous future. Whereas The Myth of Monogamy pointed out the rarity as well as the difficulty of monogamy—a look at a glass half empty—Strange Bedfellows examines the glass half full: how biology, despite its predisposition against monogamy, also leaves substantial room for it; how monogamy works among those animal species that engage in it; and how such “natural lessons” might be applied to human beings. And how, when it comes to love and marriage, biology is not destiny. Unlike other species, we can overcome our biological urges—and are at our most human when we do so!

As in all of Barash and Lipton’s books, the lessons in Strange Bedfellows are served with a good amount of humor and humility. Laced throughout with personal insights, hilarious anecdotes, and a wealth of knowledge concerning evolution and zoology, Strange Bedfellows is an entertaining look into what can be an advantageous, though elusive state of being.