Is infidelity ‘natural’ for men?

[Isabelle]

Is jealousy, lust and sexual attraction hardwired in the brain or are they products of culture and upbringing for men?

[UrbanChic]

In my opinion jealousy, lust and sexual attraction are hardwired for everyone, not just men.

[Paranoid Randroid]

And almost every normal person has jealousy, lust, and sexual attraction. Having those things doesn't necessarily mean you'll cheat.

[XT]

I think this is common for our species as a whole, not just for men. Its a minconception from what I understand to say that just men are unfaithful, as a very large percentage of women are also unfaithful. And its not a new thing either...evolution has built in several interesting abilities into us to deal with it (shape of the penis, amount of sperm that the male produces depending on how long he's been away from his mate, sperm that interlock to prevent another males from getting to the egg, the females ability through orgasm and timing to favorably select one males sperm to fertalize her over another...i.e. a lover over a 'mate', etc). I'd say that having multiple partners is the NORM, and that a monogomous bond is not.

I have no cites for the above...most of it comes from Anthropology classes I took in college, mixed with some books and shows on TLC and Discovery by Desmond Morris (sp?).

Hopefully some of the REALLY knowledgable people on this board will chime in on the topic.

-XT

[Whack-a-Mole]

Originally posted by JuanitaTech
In my opinion jealousy, lust and sexual attraction are hardwired for everyone, not just men.

Originally posted by JuanitaTech
In my opinion jealousy, lust and sexual attraction are hardwired for everyone, not just men.

True. Men are more likely to 'stray' but women do as well. The interesting thing is that it doesn't occur as much as is often believed.


In spite of confessed sexual peccadilloes in Congress and the White House, not everybody is doing it. The latest, still-unpublished research shows that about 24% of men and 14% of women have had sex outside their marriages. A national study of 5,000 men and women who have been married is under way at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.
The findings closely match those of a prestigious 1994 study from the University of Chicago. The issue surfaced again when House Speaker-designate Robert Livingston, R-La., announced Thursday that he's had extramarital affairs, then resigned Saturday. He joins an ever-lengthening list of members of Congress confessing infidelities. But the popular belief that about half the married population cheats is a myth, says a co-author of the new study, Joseph Catania, a behavioral epidemiologist. Catania finds that about 28% of men President Clinton's age (52) have had affairs, as have about 17% of women. One finding "popped out," Catania says. "There is very little sex with co-workers." His research shows that most affairs are with friends (57%) of at least six months, not colleagues (9%). Only about 0.5% overall have had multiple affairs. And only about 3.3% have had extramarital sex in the past year. His sample is 55% women, 45% men; the study was done in 1996 and '97.

SOURCE: Smart Marriages Archive (http://www.divorcereform.org/mel/raffairstats.html)

What I think is really interesting here is that multiple affairs are actually pretty rare. It would seem (and this is just speculation on my part) that people's conscience acts up big time after having an affair thus overcoming the need to ever try it again.

I also recall seeing something where a socio-archaeologist (why can't I think of the proper name for the study of societies?) noted that monogamy throughout history is actually far and away the preferred mode for humans. Even in societies where polygamy is permitted it isn't actually practiced as much as one might think and monogamy dominates. He suspected it had to do with the support system a male has traditionally been responsible for. Supporting multiple wives (or females) is difficult and only the wealthy could really manage it. Granted those roles (of males supporting* females) are changing these days but it hasn't been nearly long enough to overcome this combined history.

*-I realize that females did their part as well in support of the tribe and/or family. Indeed they did it every bit as much as the males. Mostly this goes to feeding the family and the man with multiple wives (and presumably more children to show for it) will have a harder time of feeding them all.

[John Mace]

Xtisme got it right, except I'd be pretty cautious about using Desmond Morris as an authority on anthropology. Especially his older books like The Naked Ape. He's not very careful about diiferentiating between what is generally accepted theory and what is his own wild specualtion.

All of our closeset primate relatives exhibit promiscuous behavior, as does every human society that has been analyzed.

[vanilla]

I believe its inbred in men to cheat, more so than in females.
Look at all the famous couples where the man has cheated (publicly and humiliatingly for the wife).
Lots!
The wife almost Always forgives, which makes it much easier for men to think, heck she'll forgive me.
I can't think of ANY famous couple where the woman cheated, and if there is one, I'll bet she was kicked out faster than a torpedo filled cat.

I get these ideas partly from Desmond Morris and his ideas on why men are more likely to cheat and women aren't.

[MLS]

Probably so, but IMHO irrelevant. There are lots of things that are "natural," but as supposedly intelligent creatures we can choose not to do them.

[BlackKnight]

vanilla, I don't think that's very good evidence that men cheat more than women.

For one, it may be that there is a significant difference between the sexual acts of celebrities and of non-celebrities. (I love understatement.)

And secondly, do you have a cite that more celebrity men than celebrity women cheat? Has there ever even been a good study on this? I don't think the tabloids are particularly reliable.

[Latro]

Beside the fact, as Xtisme said, that a large % of women do cheat..often, women just leave and then start a new relationship.
Indeed, technically, that's not cheating. Usually men stay inside the relationship, even after they become bored with it, either out of a certain sense of duty and/or unwillingness to face the facts and act.
Women are more adept at ending a relationship.

[blowero]

Originally posted by vanilla
I believe its inbred in men to cheat, more so than in females.
Look at all the famous couples where the man has cheated (publicly and humiliatingly for the wife).
Lots!
The wife almost Always forgives, which makes it much easier for men to think, heck she'll forgive me.
I can't think of ANY famous couple where the woman cheated, and if there is one, I'll bet she was kicked out faster than a torpedo filled cat.

I get these ideas partly from Desmond Morris and his ideas on why men are more likely to cheat and women aren't.
There's nothing like good solid scientific evidence.:rolleyes:

[XT]

As to the other parts of the OP, I'd guess that to a certain extent society (or our culture) builds into us how we react to 'cheating'. To me its because in many cases our societ/culture is in direct opposition to our biology. For most societies/cultures monogomy is key to have relative order and peace internally. Setting clear sexual access or not access through pair bonding is one of the things that allows a societ to function well. However, from our biology and through evolution, we are a species that is adapted not to monogomy, but to (whatever the english word is for many pairings). It makes good sense if you look at the behavior from a survival and propagation stand point.

Men would want to spread their genes as far as possible (though selectively, through visual cues that told the male what was the best potential female to mate with), so they adapted to that behavior. With women its more subtle. For them, there are the twin needs of a good provider, and the best genetic material available to propagate the species. Very often, an older established male would be the best provider...but another male may trigger in the female the need for the best genetic material (through visual cues like 'attractiveness' and 'lust' to use the OPs words). And just as these behaviors adapted, counter measures so to speak were incorporated through evolution (like the ones I posted in my first post).

I remember seeing studies when I was in college that this happens suprisingly frequently, and is not known (except by the female) in most cases. Nor is our species unique in this. I remember a bird study (sorry, its memory, no cite) which showed that in a supposed monogomous pair species, a surprising number of eggs were actually fertalized by another male.

I think where the confusion is coming from by some of the posters is that, due to our past of male dominated societies, men were more free to indulge in their nature with less risk than women. The penalities were much less for men than for women if caught 'cheating'. However, women STILL were 'cheating'...they were just, by necessity, more careful about it, than men were, as they faced much stiffer penalties. Think of all the stories of the Rich Old Husband and Young Beautiful Wife(tm).

Anyway, thats my WAG on the subject. Hopefully more authoritative types will weigh in on the discussion with some actual facts, instead of half remembered gibberish like mine. :)

-XT

[Roger_Mexico]

There is the "Sexy Son" hypothesis about why men cheat and women tolerate it. If you believe the basic selfish gene theory, that organisms exist for the purpose of replicating their DNA, it's quite simple. Men and women are promiscuous because their DNA wants to be replicated in as many organisms as possible. Women tolerate a man who cheats because her DNA wants to be hitched to his DNA, and his DNA will be spread far and wide in the gene pool. So her sexy son, with her genes, will be promiscuous and spread her genes and so on.

[vanilla]

Originally posted by blowero
There's nothing like good solid scientific evidence.:rolleyes:

can you give only scientific evidence in Great Debates?
If so, sorry, I should stay outta here.

[blowero]

Originally posted by vanilla
can you give only scientific evidence in Great Debates?
If so, sorry, I should stay outta here.
If the best you can do is make a blithe generalization like:

"I believe its inbred in men to cheat, more so than in females"

And the best you can do to back it up is your biased recollection of what "famous couples" have done, then maybe you should stay out of Great Debates. If you're new to G.D., you should know that you are expected to have a little substance to what you say here.

Perhaps you can't see past your own bias, so imagine the following statement:

"I believe it's inbred in blacks to steal, more so than whites"

Would you expect to be able to say such a thing without backing it up in any objective way?

[vanilla]

Can you show me a cite which shows that women or wives cheat more than men?
I don't see anyone coming up with a famous couple where the woman cheated, eh?

[Lilairen]

I know as many nonmonogamous women as men; further, I am one.

This doesn't do as a provision of a cite for famous cheaters, given that I'm neither, but what the hell.

[vanilla]

It wasn't scientific, but I see others posters have said pretty much what I did.
I truly think if one did an informal study, they would (if all were honest0 find that men do cheat more, maybe because they travel around more and have more opportunities.
I could be wrong, thats why I'm trying to debate.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

I read a recent medical journal article which gave stats that about 50% of women have sex with someone other than their partner, and about 75-80% of men do so. This was a study of western europe, IIRC.

I've got the article in my office, I'll try to remember to post more tomorrow.

[Lilairen]

I know, in the most informal sense of the word "know", probably at least a hundred non-monogamous folks, maybe more. I have noticed no sex biases in the proportions of people in the multiple communities for the non-monogamous of which I am a part. In addition, the majority of well-known books on the subject were written by women.

My personal guess would be to presume that those people who are interested in dishonest multiple relationships would have roughly the same sex distribution as those who are interested in honest multiple relationships. I have seen no evidence that there is a different distribution of people who would be willing to bend, break, or otherwise disgregard agreements depending on gender.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Well, I've explored a few reputable medical sites on infidelity statistics. Basically they all say that the statistics should be taken with a big shaker of salt. But they do tend to support the hypothesis that while men cheat more, women cheat a lot too.

[Otara]

Id be pretty surprised if there werent fairly large gender differences. For a start theres likely to be differences in why people have affairs in the first place and thier course.

Consider issues like who makes most use of prostitutes and the like. Theres a whole lot of reasons why thats so, and I suspect similar is true in regards to why people have or dont have affairs. Risk taking behaviour in general shows gender differences for instance. 'Studs vs sluts' is another issue. And fairly basic issues like fear of pregnancy.

How much thats biological and how much environmental is always the debate, and as is almost always the case, its going to be a mixture of the two I suspect.

Otara

[Guinastasia]

Originally posted by vanilla
Can you show me a cite which shows that women or wives cheat more than men?
I don't see anyone coming up with a famous couple where the woman cheated, eh?

Let's see, the most famous adultery story is about King Arthur's wife, Lady Guinevere, with his best friend, Sir. Lancelot.

Does that count?



;)

[AHunter3]

jealousy: no

lust: yep

sexual attraction: ?? distinguish from "lust" please?

[Marley23]

Is jealousy, lust and sexual attraction hardwired in the brain or are they products of culture and upbringing for men?
I don't think these are useful definitions of cheating. Lust is at least partly physiological - I mean, getting turned on can be pretty unvoluntary at times. Does jealousy mean being attracted to other people, or are we talking about "coveting?" (I ask because lumping in lust and sexual attraction with cheating strikes me as a traditional Christian "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" kind of definition. Being attracted to someone is quite different from actually having an affair with them, as I think more goes into cheating than just attraction.)

[blowero]

The results of studies I have looked up on the web vary wildly. Most show men as cheating statistically more than women, but as Qadgop pointed out, most advise taking that with a grain of salt.

There could be any number of reasons why surveys show men to be statistically more unfaithful than women. Two that I can think of right now:

1. Women have traditionally stayed at home more, and simply have less opportunity to cheat. If this is the case, the statistics will no doubt change as more women enter the workforce.

2. People aren't always honest on surveys. Since there tends to be societal pressure on men to exaggerate their conquests, and for women to under-report theirs, the surveys could reflect that bias.

Among my friends and aquaintences, I know of more women who have had affairs than men, but I don't think anecdotal evidence is going to get us anywhere. The point is that it happens with both genders.

In my opinion, it's disingenuous to look at statistical surveys and say "men cheat somewhat more than women, so they must be hard-wired to do so". To repeat my analogy, I don't see any difference in that kind of reasoning than saying, "more black people are in prison than white people, so they must be hard-wired to commit crimes". It's just absurd.

[Typo Negative]

Originally posted by vanilla
I don't see anyone coming up with a famous couple where the woman cheated, eh? Meg Ryan tossed over Dennis Quaid for Russel Crowe. It made a few headlines.

[istara]

Terrible lack of cite, I know, but I read about a study which found that going away on business conferences, women were just as likely to cheat as men were. So although there were (and probably still are) far less women than men attending conferences, pro rata they're just as likely to cheat.

The only strange thing about this is it must mean many of the men aren't cheating with the female delegates, eg if 10% cheat rate and 100 men, 10 women: that's 10 cheating males and 1 cheating woman. Unless it's gang bang time, the male cheaters must be looking elsewhere for their playing-away kicks.

[Typo Negative]

That assumes they are cheating with fellow delegates.

[Marley23]

I don't see anyone coming up with a famous couple where the woman cheated, eh?
Didn't Princess Di cheat on Charles? Hard to get much more famous than her...

[David Simmons]

Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole
Men are more likely to 'stray' but women do as well.

I'll say. In a number of adulterious affairs the woman is also married to someone else. In others the woman is trying to steal someone's husband and doesn't give a damn about the adultery.

[vanilla]

Originally posted by spooje
Meg Ryan tossed over Dennis Quaid for Russel Crowe. It made a few headlines.

Ah! I recall that now.
Thanks for finding at least one.
But its not like they then forgave and stayed together either.

FTR, my former husband cheated (I'm guessing about 200 times) me, once.

[Marley23]

But its not like they then forgave and stayed together either.
If memory serves, SHE left HIM. There wasn't any forgiveness to be had. In the case I mentioned, both parties cheated or were cheating, and nobody forgave anybody either. Virginia Woolf cheated on her husband, I think (although they had a weird relationship) and I don't recall them divorcing. I'm not sure if we can attribute who stays together and who splits to some pattern, as it depends so much on the circumstances and individuals involved.