It's funny what you said about romance novels, because I feel like what I'm objecting to here is about romance novels instead of just about monogamy. I mean, it's not my cuppa, but some of my best friends are monogamists, heh. It's how everyone in this book believes there's a way you've got to do things. You go out on Friday and you meet a guy at the bar and you date him, and the entire point of dating him is getting to marriage, and then you get married and that's the goal. And there are people in the book who diverge from that, but it's in small ways, and they are all tertiary characters. Because the point of the romance is that you do these things in this order, and that's the way it's done, and the people doing this are the people we're supposed to care about by default. And that's what I find so weird about it, and probably about the whole romance novel enterprise, I'm beginning to suspect.