Mankind is naturally monogamous
Otherwise the institution of marriage would not have been the central societal institution throughout history. Religious strictures were hardly a recipe for people’s desire to marry partners in so many cultures.
The question of sexuality and religion was addressed by Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre:
Jane endeavours to attain an equilibrium between moral duty and earthly happiness. She despises …
the hypocritical puritanism of Mr. Brocklehurst, and rejects St. John Rivers’ cold devotion to his Christian duty, but neither can she bring herself to emulate Helen Burns’ turning the other cheek, although she admires Helen for it. Ultimately, she rejects these three extremes and finds a middle ground in which religion serves to curb her immoderate passions but does not repress her true self.
While it’s true that fidelity in marriage or even in that de facto marriage is not the monopoly of the Christian, the results of a new generation of unrestrained promiscuity are there in the community – inability to form strong bonds, two individuals occupying the same space but discrete entities, pre-nuptials, children with single parents never knowing two parents in close bond over many years – it goes on and on.
All the messages in film, TV, music and modern literature are the same – if it’s to do with your own pleasure, just do it. Two concepts – commitment and delayed gratification – are virtually dead.
A women’s website had this:
Should enough people from a promiscuous culture become immigrants to a culture in which men are used to taking their time to date a woman and find out about her as a person, it creates havoc. The two dating techniques are so incompatible that something has to give.
And if you look at the changes happening around us, it certainly can be said that there is far less time spent investing in a bond before sex than used to be the tradition. It is likely that once a man observes the object of his passion being quickly seduced by the skilled techniques of a single-minded lothario with no intention of commitment, he feels either a competitive drive or else he feels depressed and loses confidence.
The result of this has been that more people sleep around and that love has become far less important to people looking for a partner than the cheap thrill of shallow sex.
Taboos have broken down, and sexual imagery has infused our society. What used to be considered inappropriate or shameful is now something widely promoted in every way possible.
A backlash is likely. In the case of Rome, the weakness caused by their degeneracy allowed the Germanic barbarians to conquer them and introduce better standards of sexual behavior. In our case a backlash is more likely from groups within our civilization who refuse to integrate nor to practice the degeneracy of the dominant culture.
If I preach the gospel of keeping sexual relations until matrimony, I sure as hell didn’t practise it and yet I got to talk to a lady once who had done that – waited – and she put up a good case.
For a start it was interesting that she thought nothing of being alone with me and second, she was remarkably upfront about it. She gave all the appearance of being a good-time girl, she laughed, joked, did not seem in the least prudish, was expecting another child and yet … and yet.
For her, pre-marital abstinence had not meant absence of relations and there’d been quite a few guys who saw in her the chance of a bit of nooky but it somehow never eventuated with any of them. It wasn’t specifically a choice she made on moral grounds but it was a good test of a man vis a vis her and her stance was that there was only going to be N1 with the one she intended to settle with.
She hadn’t been brought up in a cocoon and she had no puritan parents – can’t remember what work they did but they were pretty happy go lucky people. They were also original partners. This is the thing I’ve noticed with really long-term couples – there’s a lot of give and take in it and you sometimes wonder how they’ve stayed together but they have.
She considered it half a matter of the way circumstances had gone – with a succession of wrong guys, she’d honed her sense of what she wanted and then she found someone who mainly had those things – and half a matter of self-respect.
Strange that a woman should talk about that, given all the role models we now have.
She worked on this outdated notion that self-respect led to respect from a man – a most radical philosophy these days. She felt that she could allow those suitors Numbers 5, 4, 3 and 2 but N1 was not on the menu until a whole lot of things had been agreed first and that she felt quite sure.
Within marriage
Personally, I think it’s carte-blanche and I just don’t see why the single stipulation about marriage being the mandate should somehow have to entail a puritan lifestyle. This is why I’m a bit intrigued by Tina Fey:
I mean why, if someone wants to keep the final citadel until they feel everything’s in place for a life together does that also entail rules on what you do within marriage? I read an article whose author had scoured the Bible for restrictions on relations in marriage and couldn’t come up with any. It puzzles me why anyone would take a crucifix to bed and mix faith and a good night with the other half.
I suspect that so many hide behind their religion to disguise their own inhibitions and being religious protects them from having to do something they fear, to relax and let themselves go. I don’t know why and it seems a denial of what it was all designed for. You can be moral in your relations with your fellow human beings and still enjoy your partner fully – why not?
Spreading it round
Askmen had this:
An object that has value is worshipped, respected, cherished, and shared with very few deserving people. As soon as you start sharing that object with anyone and without care, the object starts to lose value. The more people use the object, the more it depreciates and the less bargaining power it has: this is a plain psychological fact of life.
I don’t know if I’d agree with the next part though:
Today, it seems that women are the ones who are collecting notches on their Prada belts by giving their bodies away too easily. But if women themselves don’t value their bodies like they used to, why should men?
Some women will argue that if men have the right to sleep around, so should women. But I ask only one question: If women adamantly believe this, then why is it that when faced with the question, “How many men have you slept with?”, most women who have slept around with truckloads of men always lie?
There’s so much false rationalization these days, attempting to justify promiscuity, from citing Inuit hunters to pushing this thing about man being naturally polygamous and those who push this stuff are hardly paragons of fidelity and commitment in the first place.
So where does that leave those who’ve hardly done a Tina Fey and yet would agree that one-to-one is the only real way to satisfaction? Where does that leave shallow people unable to form relationships but can only think in terms of dipping the wick or getting laid? What hope is there for them?
I have to come back to the Charlotte Brontë quote:
Ultimately, she rejects these three extremes and finds a middle ground in which religion serves to curb her immoderate passions but does not repress her true self.
I don’t think someone has to get religious to live right but the Christian view on indiscriminate relations is a useful yardstick nonetheless.
Filed under: Society & human issues
The titles a bit misleading as in part you’re on about promiscuity not monogamy, anyway history is littered with cultures that practised polygamy even polyandry. In essence a lot of today’s hang ups about sexual relations and religion boil down to guilt, people being complex and highly imaginative can become very confused when said feeling contradict what they’ve been told is acceptable whether by family, society or religion. It boils down in the end to trust in each other, trust not to break the rules set down between a couple/group and trust in the love you have within the relationship to tied you over any problems.
Unsanctioned promiscuity is a breach of trust within a relationship, many couples find a way around it, by fantasy or role play, some by open marriage. Humanity as such isn’t naturally monogamous, yet the restrictions are usually put in place to control breeding or female sexuality and that’s at the core of most religions, seeing that the man involved only supports his children, not the children of the females other “partners” That in essence is why women were stoned in certain societies for adultery and men got off with a warning, it was control of the breeding that was at stake, not the act, a warning to other women, not a morality stance.
Birth control by women has changed the rules in modern western society, it remains to be seen where it takes us, but the rules are definitely in flux at the moment.
Mankind is naturally monogamous?
An army of lawyers would not be immersed in an orgy of personal enrichment, were it so.
It’s fair to say that some people are monogamous all of the time and most people are naturally monogamous most of the time, i.e. serial monogamy, and some aren’t in the slightest bothered either way.
It’s a problem of definition. People who get married and stay married are on the whole happier etc than others, but is their happiness purely down to stable marriage, or are they just lucky in choosing the right partner, being the sort of people who can commit to things and see them through etc?
It was a bit naughty to use that title. Better I’d said that most people are naturally monogamous and then are drawn to cheat but that doesn’t mean they necessarily don’t go back to the partner. It’s a double standard really.
Good post. Nice to see someone not afraid to mention Christianity. I think I’ll do it more often as well.
What do you mean by naturally? Is there a difference between naturally and preferably? I can see the argument that we are preferably monogamous ie it makes us happier etc. But to say we are naturally monogamous implies that in nature that is what happens- human beings are monogamous. Is that what you are arguing and if not why are you using the word naturally?
Not sure that we are. We might say so when asked but the first time extra nookie is offered it seems to be like a politicians campaign promise. Worthless.
I say “naturally” because it has been the tendency of almost all advanced societies through history to move towards marriage as the state for male and female to be in although they might prefer to be with other partners and therefore cheat. Even in your ancient Rome, the excesses were despite the basic monogamy, not in place of it and they tended to multiply the higher one rose in society [the fish rots at the head]. Naturally, the last few centuries of Rome saw major changes as we’re doing now – a general falling away, as JC puts it in the Bible.
Ah James, so after your clarification it seems that what you really mean is that most people are naturally sneaky double-dealing b@$tards. You seem to have a politician’s gift for “clarification”, as in saying pretty much the opposite but implying it’s what you were saying all along. You have missed your vocation my man
That goes in the testimonials, Andrew – I need a few backhanders in there.
because it has been the tendency of almost all advanced societies through history to move towards marriage as the state for male and female to be in
But life is never quite that simple is it?
In the Bible it says something about being “unevenly yolked”…..until I met my Wife I was always unevenly yolked. Ever since I was 12 years of age all I wanted was to get married and settle down?
Why?
Because that’s the way God made me………Unfortunately I had to sleep with other women before I met my wife. I gave “sleeping around” a bad name in my mid to late 20s I wish I could have known she was coming because I would have waited for her.
TEV,
‘Had to’ Are you sure?
Lord T please ignore anything I write at the moment I am running a very high fever………
I was monogamous… till the wife caught me.
I believe that there is no reason to look elsewhere if you are completely happy with what you have.
To me, sexual relations are not the basis of a relationship, i would have to trust someone an awful lot to be close to them.
I struggle to understand how people are tempted to ‘cheat’ on their partners?
A friend of mine tried to explain why men do so when they very much love their wives. He argued that it is instinct that we are not monogamous by nature, referring to the
‘just club them over the head, pull them by the hair into the cave, and leave a portion of mammoth before you go’
attitude of the neanderthal man.
I am atheist personally but i think rules set out re;ten commandments, are nothing but logical and common sense.
My attitudes towards relations probably stem from my being born in the 80′s with the mind of a 1950′s house wife
ive had one partner, 4years that i sadly lost, i had no need to look at another man…none whatsoever !
Thanks, Janina. You write: To me, sexual relations are not the basis of a relationship, i would have to trust someone an awful lot to be close to them.
In the book I am just finishing, what you say is precisely the thing the couple are discussing, having had a quite rough time of it to that point.
To be honest, there (for myself anyway) is so much more involved in it than just a physical act. I look at the way family’s are torn apart and reputations of both sexes, all due to that short space of time spent together. It seems to me that women mainly give themselves to men in the hope that they will stay with them. Some say it is because they are not getting the closeness they want in their relationships? Sex is not love, i could sit with my partner all night watching television and that was more than enough to me.
I feel that if you love someone and truly trust them then you share other things. I may sound naive, but i really don’t understand how you can give yourself to someone without love being present. Even my partner would say that if you feel the urge to be with someone in that way then you should stop the relationship there and then. I definitely could not trust a partner if they were unfaithful, the though of carrying on the relationship would make me feel sick. I’m not sure i could even stand to look at them again.
You’re not naive – you’ve hit the nail on the head. There is something symbiotic in a man and woman working in together for each other and if I could give an example. Before other issues and my own stupidity broke us up, I had a debate one day with my lady – she was actually arguing how rough men had it and I was arguing how rough women had it. Now that was really something.
The thing is today that the notion of this symbiotic relationship where both work to get things done for them both seems to have been replaced with the chauvinism on one side and the “my rights” on the other. What chance? Children seeing a working partnership with both parents are going to be vastly better adjusted and that will then flow on to their kids.
Let’s face it, the state of male/female relations today is a disaster, statistically. Even if someone read your comments here and thought them through, that would make a difference.
I am very glad to see other people see the world like i do! I think you may of pulled me back from the edge of the cliff, the word ‘civilization’ is used too often in my mind. What ever we try to find equality between the two sexes, does not seem to work.
We saw the suffragettes campaign for womens rights to work, which is good by all means. Although, we also fought to limit the hours woman were allowed to work. We did not want to see these women working up to 20 hours a day inside factories, perhaps it may of been better to campaign to limit the hours everyone was allowed to work rather than concentrating on women.
I tend to believe in the man being the head off the house idea.
although not in being treated as property. I think the more we try and adhere to or abandon stereotypes, the less likely we are to be content. Humans rebel if told how to or how not to behave, we for some reason thrive on conflict. A woman will fight for her right to work, even if after she has gained the right to do so, she becomes unhappy and misses looking after the children… she will not admit it! She would rather suffer than fall back into the stereotype.
I loved cooking for my partner but, when he cooked a meal you should of seen the amount of pride in his face
He would spend the day planning it , he rang me once and said how he had all the ingredients for a stew. I have never liked stew! I couldn’t say anything because he was so passionate about doing so. I was dreading the meal but, i really enjoyed it the first time i had ever eaten a whole portion! If you do not try to act as other people do, if you are in a loving relationship you will find that each plays their part doing equal amounts of work. Of course in different ways, i wouldn’t expect a partner to cook for me (in fact would rather do so myself) but when they do its lovely.
Janina,
You sound like a very moral person. It is unfortunate that morals are sadly lacking today, in both sexes.
The main problem however with males is built into our genes. Some of us can control it, some can’t but we still have the urge to prove our worth and finding other females that are interested in us is one of the ways we can do it. Some collect money, some collect power and those with no money or power collect notches on the bedpost. Some like to collect notches as an add on to the money and power. Some people are never satisfied.
So all men are tempted when someone younger, hotter or just different comes along and shows an interest in us. We know we are irresistable and this just proves it. Some can control it and say ‘No’. That is rare and most can be led astray by a seductive woman. In some cases it barely has to be a woman from what I can see. Sad but true.
Good luck in your search for your moral man and be careful. No mercy shown to those that stray.
Lord T, not ignoring you here.
Janina – rather than ‘head of the household’, I prefer to think of it as in this line from my book [which I'm not plugging so I won't link to it]:
“I want you to be an example for me. I might fight it but I will always accept it in the end if I think you’re doing the right thing.”
You wrote:
“If you do not try to act as other people do, if you are in a loving relationship you will find that each plays their part doing equal amounts of work.”
Exactly. It doesn’t need laws for this – it needs a paradigm, a culture where a man and woman can find their own level together and do it their way. It all evens out when there’s give and take. If I know she cares, I’ll go out of my way to make it good for her … and so on.
One of the greatest buzzes is the unpredictable surprise – I used to love doing that and seeing her go red in the cheeks. If that sort of thing makes readers sick, then that seems sad to me. The sex is just something which happens as a result of all the other things being right. And it’s better then too.
“Some collect money, some collect power and those with no money or power collect notches on the bedpost.”
Bravo!
to james higham and lord t
I must say i am slightly confused… Have i by any chance stumbled upon the place that society has been hiding common sense? All these years i thought it had been sent to the gallows?
Quid est in homine ratione divinius?
James,
You ignored me but I think I’ll live.
Janina,
Nope. Common sense is one of the most uncommon things in the universe. I have it, you clearly have it and to think James has it would stretch it too far.
Quid est in homine ratione divinius… You will embarass us.