Cabbageroses - "all the world's great literature for the past 500 years" has had the theme of the desire for a monogamous relationship". You cannot be serious, surely?
It seems to me that a fair amount of literature from the past has been about the misery/boredom of monogamy (Madame Bovary, much of Colette's writing etc). Both men and women have tried quite hard to break free from the confines of marriage in the past and have written about it too!
A lot of women traditionally got a pretty raw deal from the married state - and it is not THAT long ago that a woman was considered to be a man's property - and still is in many parts of the world. Adultery committed by women is punishable by death in certain parts of the world STILL. The men get off scott-free.
It is really only relatively recently that a woman has had much power or control in marriage and those that seek to deny that are simply re-wiritng history.
Anyway, that is another topic entirely.
My main gripe when it comes to the monogamy subject is that there is this myth that, just because someone is not "cheating" they are a signed-up monogamist. The fact that they have a string of ex-wives (or husbands) with assorted children littered behind them is neither here nor there.
I sometimes question whether this type of serial monogamy which is now socially acceptable is any better than the more traditional wife plus mistress route which served some of the non-monogamists quite well in the past, before divorce made serial monogamy acceptable.
Both types of arrangement are evidence that lifelong monogamy does not suit everyone.