Here is another answer to an comment from a reader. It was a lengthy dissertation defending monogamy using a recent brain study on the 'Coolidge Effect.' The contention of the writer on the Coolidge Effect is that men have a dopamine high from their outside partner and then suffer a 'downer' when they return to their partner, thereby damaging their primary relationship. The reader also pointed out that the Preying Mantis male pays for his fooling around. Here is my answer.
I read your comments with interest and they do raise some interesting points. But I admit I’m not convinced. The research into brain biology is too new to make wide spread conclusions about behavior. The few times researchers have made broad conclusions based on laboratory research like this and then tried to prove it with field studies they have been disappointed with the results.
This is not to say that the research might someday find ways to override inclinations and make humans happy with monogamy. But I don’t see it happening. I’ll give you an example of why I think research and real world behaviors can disagree. You made the assertion that when a man has sex with a stranger all the brain chemistry gets heated up, and then he comes back to his partner on a downer harming their relationship. But you also pointed out that in the rat experiment, rats quickly tire of their usual partner without having outside partners. How many monogamous partners have tired of sex with their usual partner without ever experiencing the Coolidge Effect? Every man I know. I suspect that brain chemistry and the Coolidge Effect you are commenting on have nothing to do with the fact that males want sex with outsiders after they grow accustomed to their monogamous partner. I suspect the Coolidge Effect comes well after the male is already bored with his monogamous partner. There can be multiple reasons or even conflicting reason why things happen in the real world. Brain chemistry doesn’t explain much, if anything at all, yet. Maybe someday.
What happens when a man has been separated from his monogamous partner, let's say on a business trip? Doesn’t he get a dopamine high upon re-establishing his sexual contact? I sure seem to and most men I’ve talked to seem to exhibit that sort of reaction. Does that mean having sex with his partner now harms the relationship because of the Coolidge Effect? Again, there are serious problems with applying experimental results to real behaviors.
About the Coolidge Effect and the real world, there is a lot of research on ‘cheating’ that shows that men come back from an occasional foray feeling much more loving toward their partner. This is different from ‘affairs,’ those where the relationship goes beyond the sex, which are almost universally harmful to the first relationship. This field work on ‘real’ behavior would suggest that the laboratory results don’t translate well to the real world. As these examples show it is very difficult to take a small part of human chemistry and translate that to real world complex behaviors.
I prefer to look at the broad social environments and real life behaviors. There we have billions of lives over thousands of years to test our conclusions. And there, it is easy to see that most societies, 1,000 out of 1,154 studied, have had polygamy of some sort and that arrangement seems to have led to better relationships between men and women. The biology of actual behaviors is more interesting than artificial laboratory results, at least to me, in confirming our understanding of real behaviors.
As for the Praying Mantis, I think it better to look at our close genetic relatives such as the Bonobos for analogies in behavior. We share little with the Mantis but 98% of our genetics with the Bonobos. They are quite happy in their promiscuousness. Females and males do not ‘suffer’ from their sexual proclivities: incest, same sex and multiple mating. The brain study might be correct that we suffer when we engage in polygamy but I believe that it is our social programming and not brain chemistry that makes us suffer when we experience sex outside socially accepted bounds.
As far as I can see, monogamy simply doesn’t serve mankind well historically or currently. Maybe the brain chemists will find a way to turn off man’s desires or channel them towards monogamy. But why? Polygamous relationship can be just as fulfilling as monogamous. I think this is the flaw in the current thinking about monogamy/polygamy. Our current thinking starts with the unfounded assumption that monogamy is better. That simply isn’t true. Polygamous relationships, in societies that accept them, have been just as pleasurable and just as fulfilling as monogamous, and they have been more natural to human desires and therefore, easier to maintain. If we start from the viewpoint that 87% of human societies have been polygamous, happily so, and then look at the data, it quickly becomes apparent that polygamy is better. It is only our current prejudice against polygamy that skews our thinking.
Namste!
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