Monogamy is failing men.
Not only is it failing them, but it's a "socially
compelled sexual incarceration" that can lead to a
life of anger and contempt, or so says Eric
Anderson, an American sociologist at England's
University of Winchester and author of the
provocative new book, The Monogamy Gap:
Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating (Oxford
University Press, $49.99).
Cheating, however, serves men pretty well. An
undiscovered affair allows them to keep their
relationship and emotional intimacy, and even if
they're busted it's a lot easier than admitting that
they wanted to screw someone else in the first
place, he writes.
In his study of 120 undergraduate men, 78
percent of those who had a partner cheated,
"even though they said that they loved and
intended to stay with their partner." Contrary to
what we may think, most men aren't cheating
because they don't love their partner, he says;
they cheat because they just want to have sex
with others. And society shouldn't pooh-pooh
that.
Monogamy's stronghold on our beliefs -- what
he calls monogamism -- brings ostracism and
judgment to anyone who questions or strays
from its boundaries. That doesn't make sense to
Anderson, who wonders why we stigmatize
someone who has a fling more than couples
who divorce -- throwing away a marriage rich in
history and love, upsetting their kids' lives -- over
something like sex.
Monogamy isn't the only "proper" way to be in a
relationship, and he says it's time that society
finds "multiple forms of acceptable sexual
relationship types -- including sexually open
relationships -- that coexist without hierarchy or
hegemony." It's especially important for today's
young men, for whom monogamous sex seems
more boring than in generations past because of
easy premarital sex and pornography.
Dr. Anderson was kind enough to answer my
questions by email:
Your study includes just 120 undergraduate
men, straight and gay; isn't that too small a
sample to really know what's going on for
men?
If I were attempting to determine what percent of
men cheat, then, yes. Large-scale surveys show
us that cheating remains the norm... I wanted to
examine the very notion of monogamy, not
morally, but rationally. I wanted to know why
men want monogamy but nonetheless cheat.
You say men want to be emotionally
monogamous, but their "body craves sex
with other people somatically." People
crave food, drugs, booze, sometimes to
disastrous results. If there can be self-
control with other cravings, why can't men
control their body urges?
Humans are largely lousy at controlling our
bodies' desires. We say we don't want to eat that
Snickers bar, but we also really do want to eat it.
We eat it, we feel guilty about it, and afterwards
we promise ourselves not to eat one again; but
we nonetheless do. It is this same phenomenon,
only with cheating, that I explore.
The men in your study experienced a sharp
decrease in the frequency and enjoyment
of sex after two monogamous years. Since
no one can sustain the kind of thrilling sex
couples have in the beginning of a
relationship, isn't it a healthy thing that it
decreases?
I wish young men got two years of good sex
before it dropped off; it's a lot less than that! It
may, however, be good that the sexual desire for
one's partner weans; it means that we end up
staying with our long-term partners for the
socioemotional connection and not for the sex. If
a couple is going to raise a family, it is the
emotional connection that counts, not the sexual.
Our physical desires don't die; they just change
from our partner to people other than him/her.
We falsely believe that when the sex dies, the
relationship has also died. The reality is the
opposite; when the sex dies the relationship has
just begun.
What about the idea that long-term
relationships make sex become deeper,
more intimate and more meaningful?
The diminution of sex is simultaneous to one's
emotional bonds growing stronger. Long-term
partners may have more intimate sex (most just
have very little) but when men see a guy or girl
who turns them on, it's not intimate and
meaningful sex they are craving.
Honesty is a huge part of a relationship.
How good a relationship can one have
when there's deception, especially since
you say after men cheat spontaneously,
they are more likely to plan cheating?
Honesty is good sometimes, and horrible other
times. There are good reasons to lie; it is an
essential skill for keeping community and
relationship peace. The reason men lie about
cheating is mostly because they know that if they
ask for permission to have recreational sex: 1)
they will be denied 2) after they are denied, they
will be subject to scrutiny and increased
relationship policing; 3) they will be stigmatized as
immoral, and most likely broken up with. Thus,
honesty doesn't meet their desires of having both
a long-term partner and recreational sex with
others.
The way cheating men see it, it's either cheat or
don't cheat, but telling their partners they want
sex outside the relationship, or telling their
partners that they actually cheated, is viewed as a
surefire way of achieving relationship termination.
When men cheat for recreational sex -- not affairs
-- they DO love their partners. If they didn't, they
would break up with them.
Wouldn't it be less harmful to relationships
if we became serial monogamists --
marrying two, three or four times as our
sexual needs change?
Rather than marrying 20 times or more in one's
life via serial monogamy, we can keep one
emotional lover and just have casual,
meaningless -- and hot -- sex with strangers.
This gives us the long-term emotional stability we
desire psychologically, alongside the hot, carnal
sex we desire somatically. It makes much more
sense than lying and cheating , or the difficulty of
breaking up with a loved one simply because you
want someone else's body for an hour.
Infidelity breaks up many marriages, but
often it isn't the act of sex that's so
upsetting -- it's the deception and lying,
clearly problematic for the emotional
intimacy you say men want. So cheating for
sex may be "just about the sex" for him,
but not for his partner.
Infidelity does not break marriages up; it is the
unreasonable expectation that a marriage must
restrict sex that breaks a marriage up. One of the
reasons I wrote the book is that I've seen so
many long-term relationships broken up simply
because one had sex outside the relationship. But
feeling victimized isn't a natural outcome of casual
sex outside a relationship; it is a socialized
victimhood. I'm not advocating cheating; I'm
advocating open and equitable sexual
relationships. When both in the couple desire this,
when both realize that extradyadic sex makes
their partner happy, and they therefore want their
partner to have that sex, a couple will have
moved a long ways toward facilitating emotional
honesty, while simultaneously withering at
jealousy scripts, which can be very damaging to
a relationship. But if one can't achieve this with a
partner that's hostile to the idea, cheating is the
reasonable action.
Most of the men in your study were OK
with sex on the side for them, but not their
girlfriends. That seems unfair and incredibly
selfish.
Monogamy is culturally compelled, so the
decision has been made for us. How much of a
chance would a man stand to have a second date
if on the first date he said that he was interested in
an open relationship? At the point men enter into
relationships they, too, think they want
monogamy. It's only after being in a relationship
for months or years that they badly want sex
with others. But by this point, they don't want to
break up with their partners because they have
long-standing love. Instead of chancing that love
by asking for extradyadic sex, they cheat. If they
don't get caught (and most don't) it's a rational
choice.
But it is indeed selfish for men to want sex with
others but not to want their partners to do the
same. This however is not just a "man" thing.
Women also cheat; they also lie about it; and they
also want to be able to cheat without their
partners doing the same. Monogamy is a
problem for all sexes; it builds in an ownership
script regardless of gender.
You say love is a "long-standing sense of
security and comfort." So, wouldn't open
relationships potentially pose a threat to
that security since, even if couples play by
their own sexual rules, there's always a
chance one could end up preferring a new
lover over one's partner?
People in open relationships structure their
engagements as to reduce emotional intimacy.
But, yes, of course it can happen. What I find
from those in open relationships, however, is that
once they have had sex with that person they
fancied, they tend to get over them.
If we really want to prevent our lovers from
developing the lust of others, or worse,
emotional intimacy with others; if we really want
to prevent men and women from cheating, we
would be best to sex-segregate our jobs, our
classrooms and social arenas, too. Emotional
intimacy is the real threat to a relationship, not a
one-off hour with a stranger from Craigslist.
Ultimately, there are no guarantees that one's
partner won't find love elsewhere. But controlling
one's partner to prevent it only makes matters
worse -- it makes them want to leave you. A
better strategy is to be open, emotionally and
perhaps sexually, too.
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