is it in men's nature to cheat?

[singledomisgood]

Hi, i'm usually a lurker on here but the subject of cheating on your partner has cropped up a lot on here. It makes me very angry that anyone can do this to another person for whatever reason/excuse.

The lies, deceit, hurt, disruption etc that's involved could all be prevented if the cheater either tries to face the problems in the relationship or decides to end it in a MATURE manner!

Anyway, I decided to google why do partners cheat and it came up constantly that men (not much there on women) can't help themselves as they are biologically programmed to spread their seed with as many women as possible. Goes back our caveman days etc. Lots of men seem to hark back to this excuse.

well my argument is then surely WOMEN should be cheating just as much as men as we are programmed to find the best male to impregnate us from puberty to menopause. As the best male would be the fittest, youngest bestlooking one then we should be dumping any partner over about the age of 25! In fact, men over that age would be surplus to requirements as their 'seed' would not be of the highest quality! And that includes George Clooney and Brad Pitt!

I don't mean to trivialise affairs but it just makes me so angry that this is so often seen as a reason to cheat as if it's not in their control. Yet other aspects of our biology are not applied eg hunting (Asda should only be frequented by male shoppers doing the weekly hunt!).

I wish this argument could just be dropped and people would be honest about why they cheat ie the flattery, escapism, thrill, selfishness towards partner etc.

What do you think?

If they are strange then don't bother getting involved. Your post is general is strange.

This is a forum and everyone is entitled to their opinion, so I wrote what I thought about it. So what!! doesn't make me wrong??

Quite amusing that your nickname is Warbride, as I wanted to pick up on what you said about the "good old days" (to paraphrase.)

My paternal GPs were born in the year 1900. They got married when Granny was 5 months pregnant. They survived both World Wars. When my Dad was 40, he found out that Grandad had a secret 2nd family. The woman still lived with her daughter - Dad's half sister - in the home Grandad bought for them and maintained. Gran had known about this for at least 20 years. Neither their shotgun wedding, nor Grandad's secret family, were ever mentioned: not once, by anybody (they both had dozens of brothers & sisters, etc.)

The times weren't different, my love. It's simply that levels of shame were higher, and more suffering took place in private.

Surely adultery and extramarital sex were rife during WW2 - if for no other reason than "we might die tomorrow"?

They most certainly were, tribpot! Everybody knew English women would do ANYTHING for a pair of Yankee nylons - and a Dime bar

what part of my post have you taken offense to? I responded in a measured way to a couple of comments on here which seemed to leave the womans capacity to have opinions about who they have sex with out of the equation entirely.

i find it strange (again) that you have reacted so strongly to what I said TBH. If you don't like people responding to your posts, then don't post.

Women are just as likely to cheat as men, it's your personality and moral compass that decides whether you cheat or not.
I wouldn't cheat under any circumstances and neither would my husband.

I have to take issue with the inane comment made by one poster who equated monogamy with not being interested in sex !

Just because I've been in a monogamous relationship with the same man for almost 30 years and not had any other partners ( nor him) doesn't mean we're not very interested in sex.

Lifelong monogamy with the same partner doesn't mean boredom - far from it, it brings the kind of connection you could never have with casual sex and multiple partners.

I feel quite sad for people who see sex as meaningless fun only, but then they probably feel as sorry for me and my extreme monogamy fetish - I think they're missing out and vice versa I imagine.

Was that me

Yes i realised afterwards that was the implication and for some reason thought of you mal, but I never did come back and clarify.

Of course people can have high sex drives and have wholly satisfying sex lives in monogamous relationships.

the point I was trying to make (not very well obviously) was that people who cheat and people who have rich and varied and unusual sex lives and people who are highly sexed sometimes seem to have difficulty understanding that not everyone is like that. For some people, sex is just not very important, and so the whole idea of being unfaithful for that reason is just a non issue. To look at faithfullness and sex, one has to accept that some people aren't really interested, and some people are not interested at all, and so their drivers will be different to those who are more highly sexed. Does that make more sense?

I'm not sure I agree with the notion that the more highly sexed you are , the more likely you are to cheat tbh.

I know people who are very highly sexed yet won't even have casual sex when not in a relationship, they need a deeper connection than pure sexual attraction and then there are those who sometimes have sex with people they don't see as attractive, just because they can - that strikes me as more to do with personality than anything else.

Possibly the more selfish/less you care about your partner you are, the more likely to cheat?

I agree Mal, its more to do with selfishness.

And I think SGB is right that we have been conditioned to beleive monogamy is the correct way to live. But it only seems to apply to women. From what i've seen if a woman (particularly a mother) cheats its seen as more despicable than if a man/father does it.
Personally, I prefer monogamy and could never cheat as couldnt live with the guilt and hurt it would cause. And it must be exhausting having to lie and be secretive all the time.

Frog, travelling sperm banks are what we need! But Johnny Depp would be rejected as too old .

At least, there would be lots of very happy women. and the men over 25 can go hunting in Asda then protect the children while we are having fun! Cant see that being accepted somehow!

"Females desire monogamy to ensure 'protection' and 'provision' for offspring."

Um, shouldn't that be 'desire loyalty' rather than monogamy necesarrily? By the time you're after protection and provision, surely group families is a better set-up: Either with cavemen or in the modern day, if I have two husbands and a girlfriend (or two husbands and my husband2's wife as a co-wife, if I'm straight, for example) then that's four adults to collectively protect and raise the children while also hunting-gatheing on an either shared or alternating basis. One stays home with the pile of offspring while two others work and one goes to tescos/the hunting grounds, then everyone swaps, for example.

As for other cultures, I know it's debatable regarding historaical accuracy, but has anyone here looked at the bible? It's full of tales of both monogamous and polygamous mysogyny and monogamous and polygamous (apparent) functionality, depending on which set of people you look at. So even that small sample has cultural variation.

SGB, have you read Wifework? It's such a great book.

I wish I had a wife, too.

You're probably right Grace, with me coming across Victorian and all that. Well I guess it does make sense to a certain extent. However, the theory falls apart if the woman has a great education and the possibility to excel in the workplace. Then they rely on themselves and don't need a provider.

I had such a great career, was a Managing Director in the City at 27 when I married my H, he persuaded me to have kids young and follow him abroad for more pay (for him).

I gave up my job, had the baby, currently cooking another one, became a SAHM and will face difficulties getting back into the position I left behind. All the cleaning, ironing, cooking, primping and cocksucking have not helped to keep him

So yeah, I will definitely tell my daughters to trust no man and not do what I did and make themselves vulnerable.

'Yeah, but Sunny, you're virtual swingers aren't you? That would be way past my acceptable limit.'

Yeah but we have never actually done anything sexual in real life with anyone else. We would never cheat on each other. e have discussed 3somes etc but my husband thinks it would be too emotional for him to do in real life, cause he is very protective over me. I agree to I dont think I would ever do it in real life but I cant say I have ever been jealous of any woman and there is nothng I wouldnt let my husband do as I 100% trust him.

Additionally I dont agree with all the wifework stuff either as when my husband met me he used to drop all my ironing round to me even from the first week we met as we were in the military and I couldnt iron and kept being put on daily inspections. I was 18 at the time and I didnt even know that you had to put water in an iron as I have never seen my own mother iron. She is in her 50s and never even used an iron as when she married my dad at 20 she just said I dont wash and I dont iron and I never will!

My husband still was very eager to marry me even though I had never cooked any meal ever, couldnt iron, or had ever used a washing machine in my life. We had been married 4 years (lived together for 5 and half) before I made a meal with meat and a stir in sauce and even now I have never ever cooked him a meal from scratch and I doubt I ever will. I had never even touched raw meat until I was 21 and learnt how to fry and egg at 21 cause he showed me! I only started learning to do it after our child was born as I was doing less hours than him. I didnt need to be able to do any of that to find and keep a man and I was married at 20.

Just read that back it makes it sound like I am a strange one. I suppose I am a bit but all I am saying is I was never brought up to think I needed to have to do anything to get a man just told men would love me cause they will think I have a great personality. I suppose I always believed it and it must have worked so why do women go all out of the way to impress a man to try and get him and keep him? Just be yourself you dont need to cook and clean for him.

I do stuff now as I do less hours and feel guilty if I made him do it as he does such long hours and works harder. I dont count childcare as work because that is something I really love as well as tidying up. I definitely would do it all if I was a housewife as it would be unfair. I have always enjoyed cleaning and making the house look nice I just never really ironed, cooked etc. My husband has never used any kind of tools and never even hung a picture, he doesnt earn a decent wage (he has a job though) or do anything else that men are 'supposed' to do but i love him all the same and we get on like a house on fire.

You've got a point there too mal!

I think what I was getting as was that people who are very interested in sex are surely more likely to be sexually unfaithful than those who have no interest in sex - that is logical surely?

I do take your point though.

And of course affairs are not just to do with sex etc etc. My original thought maybe needs a little more work!

I have no problem with monogamy as a fetish and wish mongamy/romantic love fetishists the same happiness as everyone else ie good times and suitable playmates who share your fetish.
What I take issue with is the cult of monogamy and this insistence that monogamous relationships are better, that they are the only ones that 'work;. When it is so very clear that this is bullshit. If monogamy 'worked' for everyone, people wouldn't breach it so frequently.
Mind you, one of the other reasons monogamy is still peddled so forcefully is, of course, capitalism: because to many people (probably the majority) being restricted to one sexual partner is boring, a whole, very profitable industry has grown up around making it less boring by buying stuff, whether that's knickers, massage oils, 'couples holidays' or all those ghastly How To Be Monogamous And Not Kill YOurself books.

SGB - very funny, especially those books!! Please anyone interested in the reality behind how some people feel in long term relationships take a look at some of those dating web sites for people who are already in relationships. People say the same thing again and again about being 'comfortable' but 'lacking passion'. I just think this is probably the reality in many long term relationships which is fine for a lot of people but other people find it stifling.

Whether people do anything about it (ie: have some kind of affair whether emotional or physical, 'swing' separate, divorce, experiment with an open marriage etc) is a lot to do with each individual's attitude to risk and whether they can be bothered with the possible traumatic fall-out. The grass may not be greener and all that.

You are very right about a whole industry existing to 'put the spark back in'!

Interesting thread, especially the discussion on the cultural basis of monogamy promotion.

Biological explanations of human behaviour are always built on sand because we have NO way of knowing what is biological and what is cultural. So any such explanation is totally unfalsifiable, and is about as much use as a just-so story.

Related to this are appeals to some Platonic, natural state. One could argue that it is natural to die of a bacterial infection, but surely shouldn't lead to us abandoning antibiotics?

Our individual motivations are complex and varied and reducing them to simple, universal biological drives serves no purpose.

But Capitalistic industries will always spring up in response to consumer demand - like the no-strings-sex sites that FabatForty peruses, the business you run SGB, fetish clothing/equipment companies, hotels that sell rooms by the hour - I don't see why these are any different, or less capitalistic, to companies that make money out of monogamy.

Historically there would have been very strong and valid reasons for women to be extremely selective when it came to a choice of life partner. She would be looking for someone who would be a good provider, who would provide a home for bringing up children, and her position in society would very much depend on her husband's personal characterisics and behaviour.

For instance, if her future husband ran around getting all the maids pregnant, it would be the wife (rather than him) who would feel shame. Society would protect his bad behaviour by making sure that the pregnant women were written off as "fallen women", when in fact it would have been the husband who seduced them. His adulterous activities would be covered up with the illigitimate children being farmed out somewhere or even being brought up in his wife's household (the ultimate humiliation!)

In other words, he could get off pretty much scott-free without damage to his marriage or reputation.

Equally, if he was a drunkard, gambler, wife beater, it would be the wife who would have to bear the brunt of the shame while his behaviour would be broadly tolerated (especially if he was an aristo - ie: rich and influential).

So, while a woman might have fallen in love or fancied the pants of a number of people unless they were deemed to be "suitable" as marriage partners, it wouldn't matter a fig what her personal feelings were on the matter.

A man would have all the advantages of a male-dominated society when it came to his choice of wife. He could afford to select the most beautiful/seemingly fertile/best connected/most docile/most rich etc (obviously commesurate with his social status). He would also have the advantage of being able to chose someone on the basis of sexual attraction or 'falling in love'. He would know that, even if his wife ended up hating him, her choices were heavily restricted by society. Also in general sexual activity is more dependent on the male being sexually attracted to the partner rather than the other way round (ie: lie back and think of England).

Given the above scenario, I would have thought that historically it would be the women who would espeically want to have taken lovers to satisfy their desire for sexual/romantic attraction as those needs would often have not been met in the marriage.

When will I feel normal - sorry but there is no such thing as "no strings sex" and your rather transparent jibe that I "peruse" these sites is slightly childish. I find them funny because people on them are all chasing an absurd fantasy which doesn't exist.

No strings sex is an illusion peddled by such sites. However the existence of such an industry and other associated industries, suggests that they cater for a need.

Hmm ..on the biological angle I'm not sure that young fit men are the best mates. Mature males who have survived a long time and accumulated prestige and experience are a better bet. Men can father children later than women can conceive so age isn't such an issue. Women should be running off after older richer men not young bucks.

But I think the biological thing is a red herring - we can use that for any kind of behaviour that isn't seen as acceptable.

Looking at other intelligent mammals and their mating habits; dolphins for example, whilst the female is fertile the male dolphin will guard his partner whilst she desperately tries to escape him to mate with as many males as possible. The sneakier and cleverer the other males, the more likely they are to mate, meaning that brains as well as braun are maintained in the genes.

Whether or not we are supposed to be monogamous, there is no definitive evidence that women are and men are not.

We're all individuals

"

What do you mean, no such thing as no-strings sex? Loads of people have sex with someone they meet and want to have sex with, wish them well and move on.

to no such thing as no strings sex

and

to having to settle down with older men

Just

And can I also mention that sperm quality declines with age, meaning that while men may still produce sperm and be able to make a woman pregnant, the chances of her miscarrying or having a child with abonormailites are higher than when conceiving with a younger man.

The idea that it is fantastic to settle down with not terribly attractive old men is surely a con peddled by not terribly attractive old men? Like bladness = virility. Pah.

Well, ISNT, it sounds like quite a good idea as long as these old men are also rich and frail Check out the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales if you want some historical back-up for that approach!

Unfortunately my not terribly attractive old man didn't have a bean. Bad planning there.