As human beings, we are the only animals who spend any amount of time trying to convince ourselves not to want what we actually want. It can be argued that there's some value in self-abnegation - not trying to do all the things we want to do is what separates us from the beasts of the wild, particularly when it comes to sex. Civilization is largely an exercise in agreeing not to exercise our right to absolute self-determination in return for a life that is a little bit less nasty, brutish, and short than it would be without laws, traditions, and enforceable contracts.
This doesn't mean we ever really give up wanting what we have always wanted. Where civilizers have gone wrong (in the deeply unhumble opinion of one porn-writing Russian Blue tomcat,) is in the extending the wrongness of certain actions to an implied wrongness of wanting those things. Orthopraxy is essential to civilizaiton. Orthodoxy is the priesthood trying to make you feel bad enough about yourself that you don't notice the flaws of the ruling class and keep filling the collection plate.
Within the context of a pre-industrial tribal agrarian society that relies on patrilineal wealth accumulation as a basis for maintaining its independencs from neighboring tribes, "thou shalt not commit adultery" is a viable rule. "Though shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife or his ass" is just a recipe for unnecessary guilt and shame over what we have been born to do. Some of our neighbors are just very covetable and coveting them is what got us as a species to the point where we had enough surplus to come up with laws and persistent agriculture. Compared to evolution, civilization is still the new hotness.
A big theme of Too Much Love has always been Nick Coyle's journey from being a mensch who denies what he wants to being a mensch who acknowledges he has some pretty atavistic desires and gets to explore them within the context of also wanting to be a decent and civilized person. At the end of chapter 74, it feels like he's finally committed himself fully to that path.
I didn't think it would take anywhere near this long to get that far, but every time I tried to speed his progress along faster, it felt rushed. As of chapter 71, TML is over a million words. I could have gotten here sooner if I'd focused on Nick's perspective, but the journey wouldn't have been as much fun.