Dissertation Musings: Why it *may* genuinely be harder for men to be monogamous (which affects sexual fidelity)

Somehow, I’ve got in my head over the last two days that I am, indeed, still a grad student (whoda thunk?). Which has had me reading all sorts of relationship websites touting the benefits of marriage to heal … hell just about everything in the black community. My unorthodox perspective on marriage (which tends to get me in trouble), is already known to everyone who needs to know; so the less said about that the better. (Bless you ATJ 4^th LOML for letting me know at least 1 person on the planet gets me). In any case, looking at the ins and outs, and trials and tribulations that these websites addressed, I got to thinking about a conversation I had with one of my soon to be married friends a while back – which, per usual, may not have made me the most popular person in her life – fortunately she respects & loves me for my honesty, not for our convergence of thought.

Here’s the upshot – looking back over her experience and that of her friends, male and female, she argued that men cheat – plain & simple. It’s a fact & force of nature; simply what they do. And when I contested that 1. not ALL men cheat and 2. women cheat too – she was willing to concede that. She was resolved, however, that a much greater percentage of men cheated than women. A point which I was willing to concede (w/the caveat, of course, that I can’t say for sure; I don’t know the numbers). Fine – seems like we’re in agreement… but not quite. In her eyes, the proclivity to be unfaithful resulted in some pretty dismal conclusions about the nature of men on a spectrum of good & evil. My response, eh. It makes sense… and I don’t it really says anything profound about the nature of men or any given man in particular.

So here’s my musing for the day: I do think it may genuinely be harder for men to be faithful than it is for women. And the reason for that is perfectly logical... & thus not all that interesting to me. The reason, however, NOT about some underlying flaw & failing in the nature of men. Much less because of some innate biological need to mess around & spread their seed... As much as we like to cite nature at the cause, how in the wild animals, males animals, dilly with multiple females in order to preserve the species … we also know that there are a grand number of animals that mate for life. So to that logic alone … non sequitur…

The reason I think it’s harder, however, has much more to do with culture and socialization than biology. And I don’t think the logic is all that profound. It boils down to this: where my friend saw betrayal (which I concede when it comes to the issue of lying - OWN WHAT YOU DO!!!) – I saw habit.

It’s like this, in order for a person to stay with someone faithfully, to WANT to stay with a person – a whole host of things have to converge, but I think a chief requirement is that the individual has to have a strong desire for that end that’s consistent with who they are and what they’ve been. But herein lies the rub – both parties of the quintessential heterosexual couple are NOT shaped and molded to that effect (and yes, I am making some sweeping generalizations about men & women en masse – and about to make many more).

I’d argue that if it seems that women are more likely to remain faithful or less likely to cheat it’s because they’ve been taught to fantasize and I daresay eroticize … the ONE. Being breastfed on Disney and happily ever after – our target for fulfillment gets trained on a great, singular love from a very early age. Certainly that’s what everything in our training tells us – find the one, get the one, be with the one, love the one, keep the one, lose yourself in the one … all beginning with a great, grand, mind-numbing, breathtaking, stomach-wrenching FALL for the one. (I, for one, have no desire to FALL in love. Something about that imagery grates on my spirit like nails on a chalkboard. What sense does it make to want to be lost, disheveled and tumbled in a place that’s supposed to take and lift you higher? I, for one, would much rather, & intend to, “stand” in love. Oh, but I digress). We may do all sorts of things up until the point that we find one of those XYs that we think is the one – but he IS the goal & once we meet, that inculcation kicks in and we develop what is sometimes an intense case of tunnel vision. 

And so, because the central quest for womenfolk tends to be centered on – the one – to have our attention singularly trained on the man that earns that title is perfectly aligned with a vision of a normal or right relationship culminating in a till death do-you-part marriage. So, because we’ve been taught to fantasize and eroticize settling down with our one and only true love, taking up the banner of monogamy is entirely consistent with the course of our lives thus far. Thus, our walk down the aisle towards wedded bliss keeps us moseying right along the same path we’ve always been on. 

However, while a lifetime of being forced fed “the one” may make one great love the baseline “natural” for (most) women, I'd argue that it’s anything but natural for men. In fact, their early baseline “natural” for female-male relationships seems to be the polar opposite: get as much as you can, as often you can, from as many as you can. Multiplicity and diversity is the rule of the day. Get it, get more, sample something else. Have you tried that? Well you must, and while you’re out, you *must* get a little this, that and the other on the side. Accordingly, cultivating a desire for one person - and only on person - is/can be a complete break with what they’ve been taught to desire and fantasize up till that point: returning time and again to partake of the smorgasbord of women in the world. To settle down then, even if there is personal desire & pleasure in a having one partner, the wife, kids and picket fence and whatever it’s benefits – and the stats show marriage DEFINITELY benefits men way more than women in a plethora of ways – settling down with one woman requires both a break with and rejection of the sense of self that they’ve constructed up to that point in their life. Which is to say, even if it’s where they think they should be heading – that “right” final destination may be as foreign to them as ovaries. So is it any wonder that they may struggle with a bit (read: a lot) more? To become the "settled down" man, they must first stop being the man they’ve been trained to be thus far. (The problem, my dear Watson is not nature but nurture – and our dysfunctional society does little to bring the opposite genders into alignment). But because womenfolk (en masse) operate under the auspices that desiring or aching to find & be with just one person, to have just one love is “natural” they can get mad at men for having less of a proclivity to want, or more importantly, to be able to "simply" settle down with one person. But it may not be simple ...

And just to be clear, again, I put no stock in the notion that men & women are inherently, intrinsically different in their desires. Oh no - you’ll get no support for Mars men and Venus women here. Quite the contrary – what I’m saying is that there may not be ONE natural or normal or “right” way for our relationships to be structured, no one thing that we all – eventually, as we mature or come into our own, etc, etc - should be aiming for with the assumption that’s where supposed to want to end up. There’s only what we’ve been taught and at some point come to accept as normal & natural – and those things, from by vantage point, just don’t seem to be the same. What’s “natural” is not what’s innate or intrinsic, but rather what’s become “normal” by virtue of habit. And more importantly, we fantasize, crave and eroticize the things we’re told we should want. (There’s a reason marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry).

    The upshot of all this, is I think women can associate the struggle (SOME!) men face in transitioning to monogamy as being about their own worth. We have a proclivity to thinking that there may be some personal failing or inadequacy we have - because if we were enough they wouldn't stray, right??? We've been mistakenly taught that the power of our love should be able to alter or change someone a man's nature (can't *even* get into that here - that requires a whole other post...). AND unfortunately, men too have bought into this flawed logic, so they too often have doubts about their beloved and whether she's the "right" one when their transition to a new way of thinking and being (i.e. monogamy or more simply learning to desire and be fulfilled with just one person) isn't smooth (or conversely, the may think they are inherently flawed). Yet, it seems to me in both cases, where each partner is locating the problem in their "fit" or in their individual traits, the driving force of the tension or struggle may simply be more about habit and the amount of work it takes to break old habits and develop new ones ... At the end of the day, I think we, humans, are mainly creatures of habit. We tend to do those what we’ve always done – and breaking outta habits is a mutha! More significantly, it takes inordinate effort to revise and re-tool our sense of self. It takes work ... a lot of it and it doesn't happen over night. BUT it is possible 

All that said – this is not plug to condone hetero male cheating (OWN what you do! The act is one thing - but the lying & deception - that ish is TOXIC!!!), much less ridiculing the hetero female’s desire to settle down with one partner. No judgment from me – do you. I’m simply saying that if we are, indeed, creatures of habit, the trends we see in who strays and how often… well, to me at least, it’s not so difficult to understand. It is, however, a call for empathy for the perspective of the other partner and a challenge to be more introspective with the self about our individual desires and the places from which they arise. Empathy and introspection in the aim of going into our intimate relationships with eyes wide open, holding expectations (of our partners and ourselves) in line with the humans we are (even as we aspire to be more) and most importantly, so that we’re clear of what we can genuinely commit to before we go signing our names on the dotted line, making promises that we’re ill-equipped to keep – so that perhaps we can actually stand, together, in love.