Before we discard monogamy as an outdated constraint, we might do well to heed Chesterton’s Fence—the principle that before tearing down an old institution, we should first understand why it was built in the first place. It has persisted not because it was forced upon humanity, but because it solved a fundamental problem in social organization: how to channel human relationships in a way that promotes stability, trust, and long-term investment in the future. It is, in effect, a structure that tempers our natural impulses in order to aim for something higher—something that makes the values we now take for granted  possible.