No, cheating is not just "biology"

[Parkingmoan1]

I've just had to block somebody on another forum for continuously spamming me with comments about how cheating is simple biology, is acceptable and inevitable, and the real problem is "people like me" who want monogamy.

Its because of people like me and the majority in society (who don't agree with infidelity) that men feel "forced" to take vows that go against their basic biology.

Apparently all of our husbands are at it, will have been at some point, or will be in the future.

She isn't a troll, just an aggressive twit in a polyamorous relationship who thinks those of us who don't want to be - are fools.

What's your take?

(Disclaimer, I have nothing against polyamorous people - power to them if that's what makes them and their partner(s) happy. What I have an issue with is how people like this person believe that their way is the right way and the rest of us are fools)

But it is particular genes that survive that drive our biology. If Fred has more children who survive, because he is monogamous and his ‘drive’ to have sex was able to be monogamous, then those genes and behavior from those genes will survive more than Henry’s genes.

A lot of things are biological including a lot of things relating to libido, who you’re attracted to, etc. But that doesn’t matter. One of the main features of being human is to control our biological urges and overcome our biological limitations. In this way, cheating is both biological and a choice because you could just not do it in the same way I don’t just eat a whole tin of Pringles in one go even if my brain screams yes! Mature people deny their biological urges.

Wasn't there some bit of research a few years ago which took this (victorian, sexist) assumption that men are biologically designed not to be monogamous, and actually ran the statistical numbers to see if they'd back up the theory, because it didn't make sense in a patriarchal society to have this institution which apparently 'didn't suit' men.

They calculated the amount of women back in Neanderthal times, and took into account that people lived in tribes and therefore a man would basically risk death if he tried to get access to females in other tribes, and they also threw women's limited fertile window eaxh month into the sums - and taking all that into account, they realised that a man would be better of having one woman that he had access to all the time and therefore he could have sex with her as frequently as he wanted, and would be more likely to get her pregnant and pass on his genes.

So actually, men for thousands of years have been programmed for frequent sex in a monogamous relationship.

Whereas for a woman, her interest is in getting the best genes for her offspring, which means she's actually motivated to have sex with as many different men as possible (frequency isn't such a big feature, because she's only fertile for a few days each month). So women aren't programmed to be monogamous - hence the invention of marriage by the patriarchy, to enable each man to control 'his' woman.

So yeah, this woman is wrong.

Another man, call him Fred, has sex in prehistoric times with one woman. Stays with her. Has 4 kids. Most survive as he knows they are his and gives them extra meat and fights off predators.

That's interesting and plausible. I suspect, though, given how few humans survived to adulthood in those days, the idea of a stable, nuclear family of four kids in the model model was vanishingly rare back then. A lot of women would have died in pregnancy/childbirth and a lot of their children would have died of disease or starvation long before they reached reproductive age. But that would have been "replacing your widow" as opposed to cheating.

The model of a monogamous marriage lasting 50+ years would have been freakishly rare in those days because few couples would have had the opportunity to remain in a stable partnership for long, so people just didn't have time to think much about the ethics of sex outside marriage.

At any rate, I agree with a PP that just because something is biologically determined doesn't mean it's totally justifiable.

"replacing your deceased wife". Not widow.

@Speedweed no, that's nonsense. Cheating is one strategy for getting your genes into the next generation/accessing good genes for your offspring and is used by both male and females in many species, including humans.

Group disapproval among mammals is a powerful force to drive out behaviour considered immoral by the group. So I would say both the urge to cheat and the decision not to are driven by our biology including neurobiology. We are complex and we exist in a world and a culture. Survival depends on social success. Their messages sound dull.

Birds... lots and lots of birds actually.

Swans, mate for life... and cheat.

The birds that only pair up for a season and are supposedly monogamous throughout that season... mostly are not and its more often the female who has a male on the side!

People who can't accept that others have a different view and instead pursue them and make pests of themselves are stupid. What aspect of biology explains that bizarre time-wasting habit, I wonder...