Monogamy And Infidelity: Are We Made To Live As A Couple?
Let’s talk about one of everyone’s favorite topics: infidelity Adultery has traditionally been seen as a kind of unnatural error, something like a set of small cracks in the surface of what human behavior should be. Thus, the concept “extramarital relationship” has been associated with a failure on the part of people to appease their impulses and form a family.
In general, infidelities have been considered an exception, something that does not represent the human essence. However, one might question whether this approach is realistic. Have you ever wondered if there is some mechanism in our brain that guides us towards monogamy ?
The quick answer to this question is: no, there isn’t. In general terms, that human beings are not monogamous in the same way that some animals are is something that is beyond doubt. First of all, we must distinguish between sexual monogamy and social monogamy Sexual monogamy is something strongly determined by genes, and consists of the practical impossibility of reproducing with more than one partner. This type of “fidelity” is something that is a long way off from us, and really, it is doubtful that anyone would have much interest in experiencing this form of monogamy. For example, some species of lanternfish: when they reproduce, the male remains physically attached to the much larger female, and she digests her partner until she completely absorbs him.
Sexual monogamy, then, is a quite rare phenomenon in nature, since almost all species that reproduce sexually and care for their offspring with a specific partner, copulate with others at the slightest change and then continue dedicating themselves to life. as a family with the usual couple. In these cases we talk about social monogamy, that is, a pattern of behavior guided by circumstances and not by genetics.
In our case, more or less the same thing happens. The most we can say is that we are animals that sometimes practice social monogamy, but not sexual monogamy. This is the only type of monogamy we aspire to, since we have the option of living the fidelity as a pact something that is reached between two people by their own decision, but does not occur spontaneously in members of our species (or at least not in a generalized way).
And, although they are frowned upon in some cultures, extramarital relationships are relatively frequent in our species if we compare ourselves with other animals: gibbons, albatrosses, seahorses, etc. Therefore, considering them as the result of the exception would mean deliberately ignoring a large part of reality. Furthermore, failure to comply with genetic monogamy is not the exclusive preserve of men, since it frequently occurs in both sexes.
If adultery scandalizes us so much, it may be, perhaps, because it is a violation of the rules, not because it has no reason to exist. It can be debated whether infidelities (understood as breaking a deal with a partner) are something desirable or not, but it cannot be denied that they are completely based on reality: there are even contact agencies that make infidelity an added value in their Marketing campaings.
But then… how and why did life as a couple originate in our evolutionary history? What sense does it make that there is a gap between sexual monogamy and social monogamy? Evolutionary psychology has certain hypotheses in this regard.
Evolutionary psychology and its horrible, horrible proposals
In general, when we start to study human reproduction patterns we find great variability depending on each culture, but we do not see a strong genetic predisposition that leads us to have children with only one person, as we have seen. However, some evolutionary psychologists believe that in earlier stages of our evolution as apes there may have been a propensity toward monogamy that natural selection assigned to us because of its usefulness. What was the main benefit of having a stable partner, according to them?
The possibilities of having many sons and daughters who survive us. A rather sullen analysis, yes. According to this approach, romantic love, which is associated with a feeling of obligation towards the partner, is actually born from a kind of selfishness invisible to our eyes. Social monogamy would be, in short, an agreement based on self interest and in the transfer of trust that is to a certain extent undeserved.
It must be taken into account that in itself, adultery does not have to be a disadvantage from the point of view of natural selection. For example, it has been seen that women with children from extramarital relationships could have more reproductive success in certain contexts; That is, they may have a greater chance of leaving offspring. So it is not even possible for us to say that infidelity is of little use from the perspective of natural selection. But there is another thing that we have to take into account if we want to study the covenant of fidelity: the differences attributable to sex
A mother knows that all the efforts she can make to conceive and raise offspring will be reciprocated by the perpetuation of her genes. Compared to the male, a female is certain that the sacrifices she can make so that her offspring survive will not be in vain. Males do not have this security (in their case there are more reasons to doubt whether the offspring they protect is theirs or not) but, on the other hand, they do not become more vulnerable during the gestation period. Precisely for this reason, according to the logic of natural selection , a male has less value than a female as a reproductive pair, because the latter, in addition to being fertilized, takes care of the offspring for a long time. If half the population of a species invests much more time and effort in raising offspring, evolutionary psychologists will tell us, the individuals that make up that half of the population will become a resource by which the other half of individuals will compete fiercely. Furthermore, if the survival of the offspring is compromised by their fragility, it may be in the male’s best interest to always be nearby to provide resources and offer security. Hence, an emotional state similar to romantic love, relatively lasting over time and involving the exclusivity of a couple, can be useful.
One of the starkest conclusions about the origin of social monogamy focuses on the important role of something similar to jealousy. According to a study published in the journal Science, monogamy tends to appear in mammal populations when the females are very far apart and their density over the territory is low, which would make it difficult for the males to monitor them all and prevent intruders from fertilizing them. So, if this is true, the care of young by males would be something of a necessary evil.
There is another study, published in PNAS, in which it is suggested that monogamy could have arisen to prevent infanticide by males. This could have been the case because, in many polygamous mammals, it is common for each change of dominant male to kill the offspring of the previous dominant male in order to make the females sexually receptive again. This is all horrible, isn’t it? If you want, you can think back to the monogamous habits of the lanternfish. Let’s see if that’s how you recover.
Perhaps you have realized that all of the above is painfully reasonable if we think of the human being as a animal that is guided by certain impulses In the vast majority of vertebrates, offspring already have the ability to move on their own within a few hours of being born, and some are completely independent. In comparison, our babies are born nearsighted, unable to coordinate arms and legs and with difficulty even keeping their heads off the ground. They need all the attention they can get, and the help of just one agency may not be enough.
However, many psychologists and anthropologists believe that cultural dynamics, not genetics, explain the assignment of parenting tasks. That’s why we are so unpredictable, according to them. Today there are many people who, despite experiencing romantic love and the need to be attached to a person, do not even consider having babies. Other people don’t even believe that this form of attachment exists. This may be true because the large brains generated thanks to this “pairing” process would have made possible the emergence of a type of thought abstract enough to diversify the forms of love: love for the community, love for friends, etc
All of these links are characterized by allowing the creation of groups of close people who can help raise sons and daughters. And although the couple formed by the biological parents is not always in charge of raising the little ones, there is almost always a protective social circle around the baby, and it may even be that in certain contexts this type of parenting is more beneficial, such as and as Skinner proposed in his novel Walden Two . In these situations, love can be seen as the glue that holds together this circle of people dedicated to breeding and replacing each other. Ultimately, the roles of “protector figures”, like any other role, are interchangeable.
Nuance
One of the problems of evolutionary psychology is that it provides explanations about human behavior that most people do not like and that, furthermore, are insufficient on their own. For this current of psychology, much of behavior is explained by being a result of adaptation to the environment (that is, ensuring that our genes are passed on to the next generation). For example, relationships between men and women come to be seen as a game in which the opposite sex is sought to be used to make the perpetuation of one’s own genes, or the genes that are most similar to ours, more likely. Furthermore, it must be taken into account that the object of study of this discipline is something that cannot be experimented with: the evolutionary history of species.
In some ways, evolutionary psychology provides possible explanations for certain behavioral patterns, but it does not identify or explain them completely. Human beings are characterized by being acculturated, and learning explains a large part of our psychological aspects.
However, although evolution does not determine our behavior, it can explain certain very general tendencies, and it can also help formulate experimental hypotheses in the species to which we belong right now: the Homo sapiens.
It is true that the attachment or love we feel towards people who are not our children could also be understood as part of a evolutionary strategy to ensure the transmission of our genes. However, it could also be understood as a phenomenon that escapes explanations based on biology. Despite this, if we want to descend from that very idealistic conception of love to immerse ourselves in the swamp of crude scientific explanations, We must admit that there is nothing in nature or in our genetics that seems to go against occasional infidelities It is even possible that natural evolution views these dalliances favorably.
