Marriage and Fidelity.

[gcstomp]

My limited take is that most people naturally are attracted to social pair bonding. Developing a deep love with your spouse or partner over years has very little to do with sex, and more about having a home in someone. You want to come home to celebrate your victories, and sob in your various lowpoints with someone who you have history with, to share the laughs, the good times, and have a life partner in the challenges. Life is a shadow of itself when you are just floating by your lonesome.

The staying faithful to each other is about not wanting to cause pain to someone who means the most to you in life, and knowing that is reciprocated. I am just a dweeb that has been faithful to his wife for 17 years, while watching the majority of our friends and relatives screw up that fragile social pair bond construct.

[gcstomp]

Oh the question of the thread was is it natural. No, marriage/fidelity is not natural, or easy. Marriage is fragile, and requires tons of work. Most every single thing in life that is great is the same way.

[Lucky]

Yes, because it's really close to being a stone cold fact, anecdotes aside. The probability that at least one party will cheat during the course of a relationship is somewhere between 40-76%.

In nearly every society there is significant stigma associated with infidelity, yet rates of cheating are very, very high. This despite the fact that marriages will theoretically end from the cheating, despite the negative connotations society holds for cheating, despite all of the negative consequences. It follows, then, that cheating would be much higher if there were no consequences. Stranger, even, is that infidelity is not well correlated with unhappiness in a relationship. More than 50% of cheating men said they were happily married in a recent survey.

It all makes perfect sense, though, from an evolutionary ecology perspective: women can only reproduce, at the most, once every nine months or so. Men can reproduce as quickly as they can spread their seed. There is evolutionary motive for men to sleep with as many women as possible. (There is also evolutionary motive for women to attach themselves to those men who display the highest value and/or tendency to display characteristics associated with fatherhood, but it's a complicated topic.) Men, by virtue of their biology, inherently have less parental investment than do women. Given that low investment, men experience specific evolutionary pressure to stray outside their relationships. Similarly, women experience evolutionary pressure to couple with high value men. Chances are, fellas, if you've been cuckolded your woman thought that other guy she was boning was of higher quality stock than you. Sorry. Most evolutionary ecologists / anthropologists do not believe humans are either naturally monogamous or polygamous, but rather something that's close to "slightly polygamous" and that we have been moving away from our polygamous ancestors slowly over time.

I have to call bullsh*t on this for a couple of reasons. We're not in the caves anymore, and well beyond these evolutionary mandates. Our inability to keep it in our pants is more nurture than nature. In any event, numerous studies have shown that women are more likely to have affairs...and not coupling with alpha males, but just regular, tawdry affairs.

A lot of guys use this genetic imperative to excuse their actions, but if they break the hearts' of their loved ones, it is on them, not their DNA.

[Judge Jude]

My limited take is that most people naturally are attracted to social pair bonding. Developing a deep love with your spouse or partner over years has very little to do with sex, and more about having a home in someone. You want to come home to celebrate your victories, and sob in your various lowpoints with someone who you have history with, to share the laughs, the good times, and have a life partner in the challenges. Life is a shadow of itself when you are just floating by your lonesome.

The staying faithful to each other is about not wanting to cause pain to someone who means the most to you in life, and knowing that is reciprocated. I am just a dweeb that has been faithful to his wife for 17 years, while watching the majority of our friends and relatives screw up that fragile social pair bond construct.

great post except for the dweeb part


seriously, this. am also married 17 yrs this yr and got married the same day Bhob did (not to each other, nttawwt)

[Lucky]

What exactly are you calling bullshit on? The things I wrote are very well known facts in the field of evolutionary ecology. Men generally desire many women and women generally desire high value (usually considered in terms of resources) men. I mean, is that somehow controversial to you?

My issue is that Evolutionary Ecology can have some value in explaining our history, but it is not predictive or an indicator of how we human beings in the USA will act. Sure, I recognize that guys are horn dogs, but not because we are trying to spread our seed. If it were, why are married couples having fewer and fewer babies over the last 50 years? And yes, I recognize that girls like to snag guys with lots of money rather than broke ass guys like me. I don't think you need a PhD to chart that out.

So, nothing controversial about the "conclusions". My problem is a causation fallacy.

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And yes, I should have phrased it better, knowing that you would rise in response with a cogent objection. I've missed you lately. Where you been? How's tricks?
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I swear I'm losing my mind. I spend countless hours trying to explain basic legal concepts to code officers. Probable Cause. Making sure you have the right defendant. The difference between fee simple and an easement. Over and over. Again and again. Any suggestions? I used to teach police officers and auxiliary officers all the time. I think the issue is motivation. Theirs, not mine.

[GwynnInTheHall]

A couple more.

How much does the environment you grow up in affect your perception of Marriage and Fidelity?

How much does the environment of today's World (college, corporate, social, etc.) Change/effect that perception?

[Lucky]

Yeah, I was definitely remiss if my post implied causation or that evolutionary ecology is a predictive indicator of specific instances of cheating. I have had relatively extensive experience in the realm of evolutionary ecology but the subject of infidelity was never broached, as far as I can remember. I just thought it might be a nice fitting segue to know that there are potentially evolutionary reasons behind infidelity. I have no idea if those ideas are backed up by any facts, studies, or stats. It's very difficult to find a cohesive narrative surround infidelity. It just made sense on a fundamental level to me that the "guys are horn dogs, women value resources" theory could fit in well with findings of high rates of infidelity. I do still think that a lot of human behavior and cultural landscape is much better understood under the lens of evolutionary ecology --- i.e. the notion that when men sleep around they're studs and when women do so they're sluts becomes more easily understood given the differing biological imperatives human men and human women have historically been bound by. Of course none of this provides great excuses for straying outside one's relationship but it might make that behavior a little easier to comprehend. Perhaps men, even though they're not really attempting to actually procreate by spreading their seed far and wide, are still bound by a certain degree to their predecessors over the centuries and millennia - perhaps it's not just nurture that makes men horn dogs, but a great deal of nature as well.



Getting absolutely crushed in law school right now, which is kind of nice. We've entered into the clinical phase of our eductation, which means that I now have real clients with real problems. I have a really fascinating family law / custody case and a pretty heartbreaking adult guardianship case for an undocumented woman and her disabled adult daughter. I'm loving it so far but it's an unbelievable amount of work.

You mind if I hit you up via PM to ask you some questions about how to break into small practice? Finding a mentorship situation is a little harder than I'd imagined. Fire away. I'll tell you whatever I know and suggest whatever resources helped me.



Perhaps employ some tried and true teaching tricks, like role playing and small breakout groups? I'd wager that you're doing a hell of a job already, based on how I know you conduct yourself. I wouldn't be surprised if your students are absorbing a lot more information that you think they are. You strike me as the kind of person that others are inclined to listen to....although code officers might fall outside the normal sphere of student. I'll admit that the younger officers are making progress. It's the ones who have been there the longest and are the most set in their ways who refuse to accept new ideas. I guess that is not too uncommon.

Look forward to hearing from you.