Monogamy and infidelity: are we made to live as a couple?

Some evolutionary keys to understand monogamy and infidelity.

Let's talk about one of everyone's favorite topics: infidelity. infidelity. Traditionally, adultery has been seen as a kind of unnatural mistake, something like a set of small cracks in the surface of what human behavior should be. Thus, the concept of "extramarital affair" has been associated with a failure on the part of individuals to appease their impulses and start a family.

In general, infidelity has been considered as an exception, something that does not represent the human essence. However, one might wonder if this approach is realistic. Have you ever wondered if there is a mechanism in our brain that orients us towards monogamy? monogamy?

The quick answer to this question is: no, there is not. Generally speaking, that humans are not monogamous in the same way that some animals are is beyond doubt. First of all, we must distinguish between sexual monogamy y social monogamy. Sexual monogamy is something strongly determined by genes, and consists in the practical impossibility of reproducing with more than one partner. This type of "fidelity" is a long way off, and it is doubtful that anyone would have much interest in experiencing this form of monogamy. For example, some species of lanternfish: when they reproduce, the male remains physically attached to the much larger female, and the female digests her partner until she is completely absorbed.

Infidelity between social monogamists

Sexual monogamy, then, is a rather rare phenomenon in nature, since almost all species that reproduce sexually and take care of their offspring with a specific partner, copulate with others at the slightest change and then continue to devote themselves to family life with the same partner as always. In these cases we speak of social monogamy, that is, a pattern of behavior guided by circumstances and not by genetics.

In our case, it is more or less the same. The most we can say is that we are animals that sometimes practice social monogamy, but not sexual monogamy. This is the only type of monogamy to which we aspire, since we have the option of living fidelity as a pact. fidelity as a pactThis is something that is arrived at between two people by choice, but it does not occur spontaneously in the members of our species (or at least not in a generalized way).

Although frowned upon in some cultures, extramarital relationships are relatively frequent in our species when compared to other animals: gibbons, albatrosses, seahorses, etc. Therefore, to consider them the fruit of the exception would be to deliberately ignore a large part of reality. Moreover, non-compliance with genetic monogamy is not the exclusive patrimony of men, as it frequently occurs in both sexes.

If adultery scandalizes us so much, it may be, perhaps, because it is a violation of the rules, not because it has no reason to be. It can be argued whether infidelities (understood as the breaking of a deal with a partner) are something desirable or not, but it cannot be denied that they are totally settled in reality: there are even contact agencies that make infidelity an added value in their marketing campaigns.

But then... How and why did life as a couple originate in our evolutionary history? What sense does it make that there is a gap between sexual monogamy and social monogamy? Evolutionary psychology has certain hypotheses in this regard.

Evolutionary psychology and its horrible, horrible propositions

In general, when we study the reproductive patterns of human beings, we find a great variability depending on each culture, but we do not see a strong genetic predisposition that leads us to have children with only one person, as we have seen. However, some evolutionary psychologists believe that in earlier stages of our evolution as apes there may have been a propensity towards monogamy that natural selection assigned to us for its utility. What was the main utility of having a stable partner, according to them?

The chances of having many sons and daughters to survive us. According to this approach, romantic love, which is associated with a feeling of obligation towards one's partner, is actually born of a kind of selfishness that is invisible to our eyes. Social monogamy would be, in short, an agreement based on self-interest. self-interest and on the ceding of a trust that is to some extent undeserved.

It should be noted that adultery in itself need not be a disadvantage from the point of view of natural selection. For example, it has been shown that women with children from extramarital affairs may have more reproductive success in certain contexts; that is, they may be more likely to leave offspring. So it is not even possible for us to say that infidelity is unhelpful from a natural selection perspective. But there is something else that we have to take into account if we want to study the fidelity pact: the differences attributable to sex.

A mother knows that all the efforts she can make to conceive and raise offspring will be rewarded by the perpetuation of her genes. Compared to the male, a female has the certainty that the sacrifices she can make for the survival of her offspring will not be in vain. Males do not have this certainty (in their case there are more reasons to doubt whether the offspring they are protecting is theirs or not) but, on the other hand, they do not become more vulnerable during the gestation period. It is precisely for this reason that, according to the logic of natural selectiona male is less valuable than a female as a reproductive partner, because the latter, in addition to being fertilized, takes care of the offspring for a long time. If half the population of a species invests much more time and effort in raising offspring, evolutionary psychologists will tell us, the individuals that make up that half of the population will become a resource for which the other half of individuals will compete fiercely. Moreover, if the survival of the offspring is compromised by their fragility, it may be in the male's best interest to always be around to provide resources and offer security. Hence, an emotional state akin to romantic love, relatively long-lasting in time and involving the exclusivity of a mate, may be useful.

Monogamy explained by jealousy and infantile deaths

One of the starkest conclusions about the origin of social monogamy centers on the important role of something akin to jealousy. According to a study published in the journal Sciencemonogamy tends to appear in mammal populations when females are far apart and their density over the territory is low, which would make it difficult for males to guard them all and prevent intruders from fertilizing them. So, if this is true, the care of the young by the males would be a kind of necessary evil.

There is another study, published in PNASsuggesting that monogamy may have arisen to avoid infanticide by males. This could have been so because, in many polygamous mammals, it is common for each change of dominant male to kill the offspring of the previous dominant male in order to make the females sexually receptive again. This is all horrible, isn't it? If you want, you can rethink the monogamous habits of the lanternfish. See if that gets you back on your feet.

You may have noticed that all of the above is painfully reasonable if we think of the human being as an animal guided by certain impulses. animal that is guided by certain impulses. In the vast majority of vertebrates, offspring are able to move on their own within hours of birth, and some are completely independent. By comparison, our babies are born myopic, unable to coordinate arms and legs and with difficulty even keeping their heads off the ground. They need all the attention they can get, and the help of a single organism may not be enough.

However, many psychologists and anthropologists believe that cultural dynamics, not genetics, explain the allocation of parenting tasks. That is why we are so unpredictable, they believe. There are many people today who, despite experiencing romantic love and the need to be attached to a person, do not even consider having babies. Other people do not even believe that such a form of attachment exists. This may be true because the large brains originated thanks to this process of "pairing" would have made possible the emergence of a type of thinking abstract enough to diversify the forms of love: love for the community, love for friends, etc.

All these bonds are characterized by allowing the creation of groups of close people who can help to raise sons and daughters. Although the couple formed by the Biological parents is not always in charge of raising the youngest children, there is almost always a protective social circle around the baby, and in certain contexts this type of parenting may even be more beneficial, as proposed by Skinner in his novel Walden Two. In these situations, love can be seen as the glue that holds this circle of nurturers together and substitutes for one another. Ultimately, the roles of "protective figures," like any other role, are interchangeable.

Nuancing

One of the problems of evolutionary psychology is that it provides explanations for human behavior that most people do not like and that, moreover, are in themselves insufficient. For this school of psychology, a large part of behavior is explained as a result of adaptation to the environment. of adaptation to the environment (i.e. ensuring that our genes are passed on to the next generation). For example, relationships between men and women are seen as a game in which one seeks to use the opposite sex to make more likely the perpetuation of one's own genes, or of the genes that most resemble one's own. Moreover, it must be taken into account that the object of study of this discipline is something that cannot be experimented with: the evolutionary history of species.

In a way, evolutionary psychology provides possible explanations for certain behavioral patterns, but does not identify or fully explain them. Human beings are characterized by being acculturated, and learning explains much of our psychological aspects.

However, although evolution does not determine our behavior, it can explain certain very general tendencies, and it can also help to formulate experimental hypotheses in the species to which we belong right now: Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens.

It is true that the attachment or love we feel towards people who are not our children could also be understood as part of an evolutionary strategy. evolutionary strategy to ensure the transmission of our genes. However, it could also be understood as a phenomenon that escapes explanations based on biology. Nevertheless, if we want to descend from such an idealistic conception of love to dive into the swamp of crude scientific explanations, we must admit that there is nothing in nature or in our genetics that seems to go against occasional infidelity, we must admit that there is nothing in nature or in our genetics that seems to go against occasional infidelity..... It is even possible that natural evolution looks favorably on these dalliances.