Prepare for some pretty heart-crushing news: Hugh Grant, the ultimate heartthrob of the ’90s, is out there criticizing the sacred institution of marriage. The British actor recently appeared on the Howard Stern show, but no, not to announce an upcoming No Weddings and a Funeral. Rather, he voiced his personal beliefs — namely that matrimony and its expectations of decades of monogamy are as unromantic as death and taxes. He didn’t denounce the practice altogether; he instead highlighted its obvious challenges.

“Do I think human beings are meant to be in 40-year-long monogamous, faithful relationships?” Grand asked the radio show host. “No, no. Whoever said they were? Only the Bible or something. No one ever said that was a good idea.” He added, “I think there’s something unromantic about marriage. You’re closing yourself off.”

Grant continued, “I can see the lovely aspect if you marry exactly the right person — your best friend — and it’s cozy and it’s lovely, but people make so many mistakes.”

On the surface, what Grant appears to be arguing for isn’t necessarily cheating. Rather, he’s advocating more for some form of consensual nonmonogamy. He evokes this when he says, “You’re closing yourself off” while praising the French and Italian ways of doing things.

Whatever he may be advocating for, it’s undeniable that typical marriages prescribe exclusive monogamy. And typical marriages tend to fall apart when one or both partners fail to live up to that exacting standard.

“There’s a reason that 70 percent of men and 62 percent of women in a marriage cheat — one partner in over 80 percent of marriages — and only 35 percent stay together,” Bonnie Eaker Weil, Ph.D., relationship therapist, and author of Make Up, Don’t Break Up, tells Yahoo Style.

There’s a scientific basis to much of what Grant espoused on the radio. According to some experts in the field of relationships, biology, and evolutionary psychology, human beings may not be “wired” for long-term monogamy. According to these theories, monogamy is likely a learned, societal behavior that has been firmly placed within modern civilization. By these accounts, “till death do us part” has more to do with property and law than chocolate and roses.



Weil and her peers say the science part is more specifically about chemicals in our brains. In a phenomenon she calls the biochemical craving for connection, “[Marriage] is a like a worn-in, comfortable shoe. You don’t have any excitement, no novelty, no newness, and people start getting bored and they think they’re out of love with their partner. They’re looking to get this dose of chemicals, like a spike in your libido when you get infatuated with an affair.” She continues, “What Hugh Grant is talking about is that thrill of forbidden fruit.”

The argument is less about whether we’re wired for monogamy or not and more about the fact that we do seem to be wired for happiness. And Weil believes that happiness can indeed be rekindled in a long-term monogamous relationship — without needing the novelty of a new person, as Grant seems to imply.

“He’s right: Marriage is unromantic love, because people don’t keep recreating those chemicals. Once they go into an unromantic stage without fun, they think they should get divorced, or they have affairs. But most people don’t know you can have an affair with your own partner, that you can fall in love all over again. But you can’t do that unless you recreate those chemicals.”

What’s the prescription for those life and love-enhancing chemicals? “Couples that are married need to take some time away,” explains Dr. Bonnie. “Because when an absence makes the heart grow fonder, it causes that same surge in chemicals, because there’s newness and novelty again, and because they haven’t seen each other in a while … It rejuvenates the couple.”

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