I have interviewed a number of women on the topic of monogamy and/or the lack of it in their relationships. Numerous women told me things which indicate to me it was virtually impossible for them to be happy in a monogamous relationship.
Here are some sample quotes (paraphrased for conciseness):
- After that threesome with two men I realized I could never be in a monogamous relationship again.
- My husband is a great guy and a wonderful father. He is good looking and good shape. I just don’t want to have sex with him. I want to have sex with a half dozen different strange men at the same time.
- After being married for two years I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to have something more so I divorced him. I married a second time and the same thing happened again. They were both good men and they did nothing wrong. It was me. I just feel comfortable at the sex club. It feels right to me.
- My husband and I estimate I have has sex with about 600 different men since we have been married. I can’t imagine it any other way.
- All people want to do this sort of thing (sex with multiple people). The ones that say they don’t are lying to themselves and/or others.
- I was monogamous in my first marriage. We had lots of great sex but there were other things wrong in the marriage. After getting divorced I discovered there was a sex club nearby. In the first year after joining I had sex with 600 different men. Not 600 times in that year, 600 different men. Multiple times with many of them. Now I create my own parties for people in private homes and nothing gives me greater joy than seeing women discover their true sexual nature like I did.
Numerous other women tell me they simply don’t have an urge to have sexual relationships outside of their committed relationship. I believed them because they were in a safe place to be completely honest about their feelings.
There were others which described a middle ground of some sort. Yes, they had been unfaithful for a while but that was when their primary relationship was bad and in their current multi-year/decade relationship it wasn’t a problem.
I didn’t see any environmental factors which could explain the difference so I concluded there was likely a genetic factor.
Now there is evidence confirming my hypothesis:
The Surprisingly Strong Link Between Genetics and Infidelity | Psychology Today
- Monozygotic twins are more similar to one another in the likelihood of being unfaithful than dizygotic twins.
- It is estimated that between 40-60 percent of the variation in infidelity can be explained by genetic factors.
- Research attempting to link infidelity to specific genes has been largely unsuccessful.
…
In Cherkas et al.’s research, concordance rates were significantly higher for MZ (46%) than DZ (32%) twins, suggesting that “MZ co-twins are approximately one-and-a-half times more likely to be unfaithful if their co-twin has been unfaithful as compared with DZ co-twins.” When adjusting for factors such as number of sexual partners and age, the authors estimated that 41% of the variation in infidelity in this sample was due to genetic factors, a “heritability estimate.” By contrast, the shared environment in which twins were raised did not contribute to twins’ concordance rates.
…
Zietsch et al. calculated heritability estimates of 63% for men and 40% for women, suggesting that for men as much as 63% of the variation in infidelity was due to genetic factors. While the estimate for women was very close to the earlier estimate calculated by Cherkas et al., the estimate for men was much stronger than the heritability estimate for women, potentially suggesting a stronger genetic basis for infidelity in men vs. women.
I find this fascinating. How can such complex behavior/urges be influenced by differences in brain chemistry or some such thing? How is this behavior controlled at the genetic level rather than via rational thought?
I am, again, left with the conclusion that rational thought is a very thin veneer over the mind of most people.
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