Have you heard of the Coolidge Effect?
Note that this is a characteristic of animals, not specifically human beings. I’d wager that, if someone relates to sexual partners on a strictly physical, animal level, variety is going to trump familiarity. It’s only when your attraction to a person includes attraction to their mind/heart/soul/personality that that attraction can grow and deepen over time, making monogamy desirable.
If “inclination” = “temptation”, yes, we do.
If “inclination” = “acting on it”, no, we don’t have to.
Regards,
Shodan
Um, because you’re tapped out from all the infidelity you’ve been doing?
And one of the reasons for infidelity is boredom.
Next time you see a stunningly attractive woman be sure to remember that no matter how hot she is, somewhere, some guy is tired of her shit!
Is there any research to suggest that a married* man is significently more likely to be unfaithful than a married* woman? Or is this one of those things that is just assumed to be true?
*in an at least apparently monogamous relationship
No, that wouldn’t get you off the list. I think it would just mean that someone wouldn’t cheat even if the opportunity presented itself and you knew you’d never get caught, and that it wouldn’t be a very hard decision and wouldn’t take a huge amount of will power. And for me it wouldn’t be hard, but even then I can’t say for sure how I would feel after 20 years of picking up a man’s dirty socks.
In 49 years and counting, I’ve never had the slightest interest in fucking other women. I look, yes, but that is all.
Well fuck you too, asshole. :mad:
obviously kidding; mods don’t flip out.
So I guess Chris Rock is saying he cheats on his wife all the damn time then? I’m sure that he, like almost every celebrity, has no shortage of options, and he is married.
Well in the same act he claimed to have paid for a ton of girls college education.
We all, men and women, have a horny ‘freak’ buried deep inside of us.
Most of us, are able to keep it there. 
YMMV
In the sense of pure, animalistic lust the case seems to be yes, sadly, due to our fallen nature. However in the intellectual and moral sense, I don’t think most men are (at least once married).
I don’t believe men are naturally as promiscuous as we are often accused of being. My first marriage I did cheat, I loved my wife like crazy and we had plenty of good sex. But, I never felt she loved me.
My second marriage I was not in love, sex was mediocre at best but I never considered cheating. I always felt she was madly in love with me and that seemed to satisfy the need to cheat regardless of the lousy sex.
I’m a man, serially monogamous though not currently married, and like a lot of men here, I have a inclination towards wanting to sleep with a lot of women without actually wanting to act on it. I recognise that a lot of women I meet are sexually very attractive, but I also recognise that there are benefits to having a stable relationship, which would be jeopardised by sleeping around.
In short - look at the menu, maybe even happily wonder for a bit what it would be like to try that meal you’ve never had, but don’t actually go into the restaurant and order. I’m not sure what I would do in a “guaranteed not to get caught, and with a willing and wonderful woman who was the amalgamation of everything you ever wanted in a physical partner” situation, but I suspect I’d be tempted, start making out with her, feel awkward and guilty, and then stop. I might regret the stopping for the rest of my life, but hey, you can’t have everything you want.
As an aside, I think the idea of “the one” has a lot to answer for in terms of general unhappiness in relationships, and this is something I get increasingly irritated with the more I see it in popular culture. The idea that there exists some perfect one person who will fill all your physical, emotional, intellectual, sexual and social needs strikes me as converting the idea of monogamy into a kind of fetish, taking it to ridiculous lengths, and should be roundly derided. We are social animals, and have multiple relationships with lots of people. These relationships take work, and don’t magically turn up wrapped in a perfect little bow. Perfect Life Together, just add “The One”. Bah.
</rant>
There truly is no “the one.” If there were only one person for everyone, the odds of you meeting them are about 7 billion to one. The human race would have died out long ago (Hilariously, I can hear my neighbors having sex as I write this). Expecting your mate to never find anyone else attractive is unrealistic; expecting them to never act on that attraction is perfectly reasonable.
That is absolutely true. I am old enough to know people that truly believe that not only should you not have sexual interactions with anyone but your spouse but you should also not have any meaningful contact with anyone of your preferred sex at all. That applies to phone conversations, car rides, written communication, or recreational activities. This isn’t the Middle East we are talking about, it was Middle America 10 years ago and still is to some degree today. Your spouse was supposed to be THE ONE for all your social, intellectual, and social needs or desires and even giving the hint that anyone could fulfill any of those roles better, even temporally, was considered to be grounds for action.
I wonder how social tools like Facebook and others (even this one) have changed that for younger generations and even older ones. I suspect it will be counter-intuitive for some people the way online porn is. You can have it any time you want so why bother screwing up your primary relationship just to chase a temporary unfulfilled urge. It is a fallacy to think you will be happy doing the same things with the same person for 50 years even if neither of you never cheat. No pair of people can do that consistently over the long-term.
I don’t even understand why that is an admirable goal in the first place. I do understand why it is important to have marriage but those reasons have almost nothing to do with the happiness of the people involved. It is about childbearing and rearing first and foremost and then providing a foundation for societal stability whether you like it or not. There is a reason why many people stray from that model whenever they can.
You are correct about modern men not acting on their desire to procreate with as many women as possible, as it is a normal genetic programme that men want to have sex with as many women as possible, and I am suspicious of any man that claims not to want to- lacking in hormones perhaps?
I doubt if women do feel the same though.
This idea get bandied about a lot, but no one has bothered to offer a cite for it yet.
I’ll offer some counter possibilities to think about.
One is, simply being very horny all the time just means you want to have a lot of sex. Now this may certainly make you more inclined to give into any temptations that present themselves to you, but it doesn’t speak to any mechanism specifically geared towards seeking new and unusual places to stick it. Quantity is not the same thing as variety.
Secondly, we also have pair bonding hormones such as oxytocin.
Third, humans have multiple levels to them, and it’s not rational to single out one particular level as more natural than the others. We have various internal influences. Part of our instinct is fight or flight - are we going to argue that men are naturally inclined towards killing?
Fourth, infidelity has several important differences from promiscuity.
I’m suspicious of any man citing genetic urges for his actions who isn’t wearing a loin cloth and hunting with an antelope thigh. :rolleyes:
This is not genetics, it’s cultural, and the last clause of your sentence is an indicator of the culture involved. A man who doesn’t want multiple partners is “lacking in hormones, not a real man” and other slurs. A woman who does is a slut, freak, nympho, groupie. It’s as delusional for a man to think “women aren’t like that”
The truth is both genders are generally equal in their interest in sex, but most cultures - thanks to firmly patriarchal foundations - encourages such interest in one gender and discourages it in the other; the skewed viewpoints evidenced here are the result of cultural socialization rather than genetics.
Most people are happy with observations such as “on average, men are more violent than women”. They appreciate that such statements are not making a value judgement (the ideal amount of violence to be in the world is zero IMO).
But when it comes to sexuality there’s a lot of baggage; to note any kind of difference is saying to some people “good girls don’t like sex” or whatever.
So the claim that it is entirely cultural appeals to many people, the small problem being that it’s not true.
For something cultural there’s a huge amount of commonality across cultures on points such as which gender is more willing to engage in “transactional” sex.
We’ve had a number of threads where people have tried to find cultures where this is inverted and it’s been embarrassing. The couple of obscure examples that get passed around have both been thoroughly debunked.
None of this is to make a value claim. I’m not saying how women should act. Heck, I think it would be great if the sexuality of hetero men and women were more closely aligned.
Which gender is that again? I’m honestly not even sure what you’re saying here.