I ran across an article in the Chicago Maroon website titled “Faithful or no, couples misunderstand monogamy, scholar says” which was written by Leland Bybee and was dated May 4, 2010.
Leland recaps some of the main points of a presentation that had been given by anthropologist Katherine Frank, a scholar-in-residence at American University.
One comment in particular caught my eye, that being:
“Whether they’re cheaters or chaste, people in relationships often set the bar higher for their partners than they do for themselves.”
Is that an accurate observation? Absolutely!
If you believe that evolution did play a role in human development over the eons, many patterns of behavior then become highly logical. And that includes men and women both having double standards regarding the topic of sexual monogamy.
After all, it would make good sense from an evolutionary standpoint for each of us (of either gender) to be driven to have more than one sex partner during our lifetimes. It’s an analogous concept to “portfolio diversification” in investment theory … and also to the common folk wisdom which says “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”.
The natural conclusion to that logic is that each of us (male or female) will be better off evolutionarily (and therefore would have developed strong biological urges pushing us in that direction) if we stray … and also if our partner (or partners) do not stray.
That’s particularly true for men (since until the advent of DNA testing men never knew for sure if the children they were raising were actually theirs). As a result, few men are open-minded and accepting about “their” woman or women straying.
Women, of course, don’t have to worry about whether their kids are really their own, but they’ve got a separate worry (being abandoned and therefore being unable to give a proper upbringing to their kids). And therefore, not surprisingly, they also tend not to be open-minded about “their” man or men straying.
Saints and Sinners
That’s one of life’s conundrums: how can we stray ourselves but prevent our partners from straying, all at the same time that they will be strongly tempted to stray but also prevent us from straying?
Society’s official “solution” to that conundrum is to preach to people that they should be saintly and just ignore those pesky biological urges (in much the same way that we tell overweight people to “eat less”, and with similarly dismal results).
If you have access to accurate statistics on cheating in relationships, you’d find that many people do cheat but that we (male or female) cheat less than we’d otherwise do had we had greater opportunity to cheat, a bigger range of potential cheating partners and more confidence that we’d get away with it.
So the end result is that we end up being somewhere between the concepts of “saint” and “sinner” … we’re a little of each.
Busted
One of the more intriguing aspects of cheating in relationships (or what scientists more clinically refer to as “extra-pair copulation”) to me is what happens when one partner catches the other in the act of cheating.
Men (based on most men whom I’ve seen get caught over the years) tend to be at a loss when caught … they just assume that the discussion is over. After all, how can you logically claim innocence if the other person either saw you doing it or had other clear evidence of your infidelity?
It’s the same problem criminals have when a surveillance camera catches them red-handed committing a crime. If you can’t deny the wrong-doing, then most guys throw themselves on the mercy of the court and do their absolute best acting job in terms of showing “remorse”.
You would assure the authorities that you’ve “learned your lesson” and will never ever do wrong again if they’ll just cut you some slack this time for having been a first-time offender. And to show what a truly fine person you really are, you’ll volunteer to do community service.
Guys do the same to their wives or girlfriends when caught cheating: show maximum “remorse”, beg for forgiveness, promise to never do it again, accept whatever punishment she gives you (cold shoulder, you sleeping on the couch for the next week, her yelling and screaming at you about what a miserable excuse for a human being you are) and try to “make nice” going forward (buying her expensive jewelry, agreeing to get married if you had been dragging your feet previously, and so on).
You adopt a totally deferential tone: she was right and you were wrong. And women will insist that you admit that you were wrong (in much the same way that the police, the court system and the parole board will be very unlikely to cut you any slack unless you first admit your guilt). In a way, it’s like theater and that’s the role of the miscreant.
Female Logic
Oddly enough, though, most women don’t follow that path to reconciliation when it is they who are the miscreants. For example, women will rarely (if ever) admit guilt even when caught red-handed.
Suppose you’re in what you thought was a monogamous relationship and you find out that your wife or girlfriend is cheating on you … will this be her fault?
Of course not … she’ll use “female logic” to talk her way out of the blame game. More likely, she will blame you … perhaps “you weren’t romantic enough” and therefore she had to look outside the relationship to get the needs met that you weren’t meeting.
So the blame for all that followed falls on you for being insufficiently “romantic” (whatever the heck that means in this instance) rather than on her for violating the most sacred tenet of relationships.
Or it will be “no one’s fault” (sort of like the “act of God” excuse which many insurances companies like to make to get out of paying some claims). Richard Nixon perfected that sort of meaningless third-person apology (“Mistakes were made”).
“… one thing led to another …”
The “female logic” version of this one is the “one thing led to another” excuse. As in “we were just chatting very innocently … and then one thing led to another and the next thing I knew I was naked and he was on top of me”. Nope, she didn’t cheat … it just happened all by itself, so it isn’t really anybody’s fault.
Reverse Psychology
Most guys consider “female logic” to be an oxymoron, but it’s really just a special sort of language which women use to justify their double standards.
Don’t think so? Just try it in reverse with your partner if the occasion should ever arise.
Did you just get caught red-handed by your partner? Instead of apologizing (admitting that it was your fault), place the blame on her: tell her that you had to cheat on her … because she “wasn’t romantic enough”.
Or indicate that it was no one’s fault: just tell her that you were having lunch and were just doing some “innocent flirting” with the cute waitress … and then “one thing led to another”. It just happened.
She’ll go ballistic. Men aren’t supposed to be able to use “female logic” themselves, men are only supposed to be on the receiving end of it. So you using it will be seen by her as being the relationship equivalent of her hitting below the belt.
Plus she’ll understand full well that that the underlying excuses are total nonsense (including the lame excuse about “innocent” flirting). She’ll use them on you if you’re naïve enough to let her get away with it (and most guys will give in here in order to maintain continuing sexual access, they hope).
But she’ll balk at accepting such lame excuses in the reverse circumstances. And that makes for an interesting interchange if she’s used those excuses on you earlier in the relationship.
Stay tuned,
Mack Doppler
