¹ Church of England Prayer Book (1549). I will understand marriage as a moral relationship centred on lifelong commitments to love and significantly involving sexual desire at some time during the relationship, whether or not the marriage is formalized in legal or religious ceremonies, recognizing homo sexual as well as heterosexual marriages, and independently of government intrusions. On the latter see Palmer, David, ‘The Consolation of the Wedded’, in Philosophy and Sex, 2nd edn, Baker, Robert and Elliston, Frederick (eds) (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), 119–129.Google Scholar

² Or its presumed supportive role. Some couples, of course, enter into (or transform their relationship into) ‘open marriages’ in which they permit extramarital affairs while retaining lifetime commitments. For an early and especially interesting example, see Nicolson's, Nigel portrayal of his parents in Portrait of a Marriage (New York: Atheneum, 1973)Google Scholar. Two illuminating (and contrasting) discussions of the rationale for traditional links between lifetime marital commitments and sexual fidelity are: Leites, Edmund, The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, and Scruton, Roger, Sexual Desire (New York: Free Press, 1986).Google Scholar

³ Singer, Irving develops the idea of love as a special way of valuing persons in his masterful three-volume study, The Nature of Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1987)Google Scholar. Whereas I understand (‘true’) love as permeated by the virtues, Singer separates morality and love, as a result of his constricted view of morality as demanding impartiality (by contrast with love's preference for one individual). See especially p. 11 of vol. I.

⁴ Tolstoy, Leo, Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, trans. Louise, and Maude, Aylmer (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 361–362Google Scholar. Also see Gilbert's, Paul discussion in Human Relationships (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 9ff.Google Scholar

⁵ Wilson, John, ‘Can One Promise to Love Another?’ Philosophy 64 (1989), 560CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Sankowski, Edward, ‘Responsibility of Persons for Their Emotions’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (1977), 829–840.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Oksenberg Rorty, Amélie argues that the core of some emotions is a pattern of attention rather than the more common beliefs and attitudes in ‘Explaining Emotions’, in Explaining Emotions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 103–126.Google Scholar

⁷ Cf. Seligman, Martin E. P., Learned Optimism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).Google Scholar

⁸ Hunter, J. F. M., Thinking about Sex and Love (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1980), 59.Google Scholar

⁹ Except when it inspires individuals to do more than they could have otherwise. On this, and on the entire topic of ‘ought implies can’, see Resche, Nicholasr, Ethical Idealism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Cf. Hatchings, P. E., ‘Conjugal Faithfulness’, Human Values, Vesey, Godfrey (ed.) (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978).Google Scholar

¹¹ Hunter, J. F. M., Thinking about Sex and Love, 59Google Scholar. Cf. Parfit, Derek, ‘Later Selves and Moral Principles’, Philosophy and Personal Relations, Montefiore, A. (ed.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).Google Scholar

¹² Mendus, Susan, ‘Marital Faithfulness’, Philosophy 59 (1984), 246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ P. 247.

¹⁴ Soble, Alan, The Structure of Love (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 166–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Solomon, Robert, Love: Emotion, Myth and Metaphor (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1981), 224.Google Scholar

¹⁶ P. 227.

¹⁷ Cf. Blum, Lawrence A., Friendship, Altruism and Morality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Solomon, Robert, About Love (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 40.Google Scholar

¹⁹ P. 134.

²⁰ Midgley, Mary, Beast and Man (New York: New American Library, 1980), 303.Google Scholar

²¹ Slote, Michael, Goods and Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 62ff.Google Scholar

²² Nussbaum, Martha C., The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge University Press, 1986), 359–361.Google Scholar

²³ Williams, Bernard, Moral Luck (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 26ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Russell, Bertrand, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 1 (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), 195–196.Google Scholar

²⁵ Quoted by Strachey, Barbara in Remarkable Relations (London: Victor Gollancz, 1980), 216.Google Scholar

²⁶ Midgley, Mary, Wisdom, Information and Wonder (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 157.Google Scholar

²⁷ Nin, Anaïs, Henry and June (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 29.Google Scholar

²⁸ P. 229.

²⁹ Slote, Michael, Goods and Virtues, 77ff.Google Scholar

³⁰ Sonnet, 116.Google Scholar

³¹ Day, Dorothy, The Long Loneliness (New York: Harper & Row, 1952), 147–148.Google Scholar

³² Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 232.Google Scholar