Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

A couple of thoughts based on reading Cheri of Secret Lover’s Lane response to an anonymous commenter who, evidently informed by the Two Rules of Desire, claimed, roughly, that women want only emotional rewards from sex and men want only physical rewards. (In her post Cheri angrily but ably challenges the commenter, as you can for yourself here.)

Claims of sociobiology not withstanding, it seems like our social structures make it so that women can’t afford to prize physical enjoyment with multiple partners and men can’t afford to prize emotional rewards with partners either. Our traditional social contract says women must be economically marginalized to the point that they and/or their children will suffer if they don’t hitch their wagons to someone who’s earning power isn’t artificially suppressed. And meanwhile under the same contract men are expected to financially and socially support any partner they form emotional bonds with (see “kept woman,” “mistress.”)

“Can’t afford” is obviously not the same thing as “don’t have.” I’m not necessarily endorsing polyamory. I don’t think it’s bad, I’m just not necessarily endorsing it. But, for instance, rethinking the constructed dichotomies would benefit both men and women in serial monogamy, short-term pre-relationship dating, or the kind of studious “hookup culture” relationships. Especially in areas where there’s enough social and economic parity, sufficient income/productivity/social-infrastructure, and access to fertility management to allow individuals of any gender to raise children independently.

Getting back to Cheri, point #2 would seem particularly clear because while she’s married she’s the primary income earner, the primary household manager, the primary child-care provider (though I could be really mistaken about that) and the one most experienced with what she seeks in multiple relationships.

I keep forgetting to do this but if you’re an adult you can click to see a possibly not-work-safe image.

What if we believed our mythology of romance in partnership so thoroughly we had to make up excuses for having affairs?

I mean… y’know how back before there was “no fault” divorce (actually, I hope you don’t... mercifully, at least most places in the U.S. it’s been a while.) Anyway, back before you could just tell a judge “it’s not working” you had to have a reason. One of the big ones back then was “alienation of affection.” And oh the cases people could (and had to!) build to prove just how alienated their affections were. Then along came no-fault divorce and… not so much.

I’m sort of wondering if the same couldn’t be said for the subset of people who seem to have a hard time being monogamous. I mean, if you buy into the idea that true love has to not only be forever but also has to meet all your needs sexual, domestic, economic, social, psychological, etc. then… it’s gotta be hard to admit to yourself that sometimes we just get horny, or lonely, or restless, or bored. Or just curious!

If you’re busy thinking “I’m stronger than that,” or “I’m not that kind of girl,” or “my parents didn’t raise me to be like that” or, especially “he/she’s the love of my life, I want to spend the rest of my life with him/her” then… well, it’s either going to work, in which case great! Case closed. Or it’s not going to work and rather than compromise on what you say about yourself you start cooking up reasons not to be so attached to your partner. They drive you crazy. Or they’re never home. Or there’s that annoying little whistle when he/she laughs through her nose. Or, classically, he/she’s gotten all stodgy/dowdy and settled in his/her ways And son of a gun, after a while you’ve convinced yourself. Whereupon someone you might have enjoyed a casual fling with suddenly starts looking a lot like Christmas.

Problem #2 being that, well, someone who you might have enjoyed a casual fling with is probably not at all an improvement on the person you decided to spend the rest of your life with and then invested a large part of your life with. Which, incidentally, is why such a low, low percentage of people who leave their partners for another person actually wind up staying with that other person.

Point being that we’re so invested in the idea of monogamy (serial or otherwise) we don’t have a lot of narrative for scratching an itch and having it go away after we scratch it. Of having an affair and being really comfortable and happy when we return to our familiar, much-loved regular partners.

Another clue? People who have a fling and then use all that internalized social expectation (“I’m not that kind…” etc.) to alienate themselves from their partners.

If I wasn’t so fond of long-term relationships, and if I wasn’t sort of tired of seeing really good people breaking up with other really good people, often over affairs… if I wasn’t becoming more than a little tired of our explanation that “it’s just that way” ... and if I wasn’t so darned irked at that Ashley Madison ad, I probably wouldn’t keep bringing it up.

Note: I can’t find the link but evidence suggests that, all other things being equal, long-term outcomes for children are no better when parents stay together “for the children” than when they divorce.

Note #2: See another good post and discussion in comments at Dana’s place over at Life Amid Crisis

B of B is for blog, wrestling with a problem between her partner and his most (and evidently only mostly) recent ex-partner, raises little-discussed problem with infidelity (emphasis mine.)

I had always trusted them explicitly, I’m not the jealous type. Earlier this year R admitted (after I had found some damning evidence on his phone) that they had ‘nearly’ slept together in our bed. I haven’t spoken to her since, although not out of my doing. She has been avoiding me.

She said it here.

Think there’s a corollary of the Washington-D.C. maxim that “it’s not the scandal that brings you down it’s the coverup” in there somewhere? Oh yeah!

I think in a lot of cases the real consequences don’t arise from what the “betrayed” partner feels about betrayal (especially if it’s undiscovered.) It’s how the betrayers feel, and consequently behave, about the betrayal.

Thoughts?

Em and Lo of Daily Bedpost have a nice Q&A feature where they ask three different men, usually a single straight man, a single straight man, and a committed gay man, for their take on a question. Their take on the question “Do you think guys cheat more than women?” was pretty interesting.

The straight single respondent, “Max,” said men are just lousier than women. Also, succumbing the dominant women as the “no-sex” class ideology, he adds

A girl, on the other hand, is more likely to be satisfied with the attention and flirtation alone. She doesn’t NEED the physical confirmation to get an ego boost.

Read all about it here.

“Matt,” the straight married respondent, also bashes men, blaming what he sees as more cheating as a result of poor impulse control. He also says “variety is a more constant drive” for men. Also, without considering, say, this point by Audacia Ray he says (emphasis mine)

They would sleep with someone different every day—maybe even several times a day. I just don’t believe that would be appealing to most women over the long term. (I’m not talking about on occasion here, I mean different partners every day, for years. If you offered women the choice between that and a daily massage, they’d take the massage.)

And, getting closer to what I think the real answer might be, adds

This inherent desire for variety is a constantly suppressed impulse for pretty much every guy I know—even the ones who would never, ever stray.

Hmm… really? Wonder if anyone besides men has to spend time suppressing impulses?

Finally, though, “Terrence,” the gay committed man, brings up the most interesting points. (Emphasis also mine.)

Do men cheat more than women? My intuition is screaming yes. But I also think our perception of men as cheaters feeds their cheating behavior — which is another column entirely.

...

[I]f we’ve got to look at it in absolutes, then I believe yes, technically, men cheat more than women. But with life’s continuous chaos and change, I’d rather stick with a partner who may have some random shags here and there if he’s consistently emotionally monogamous with me.

Actually I’m with Terrence on the cheating question. Sure, men cheat at… rates only a little bit higher than the rates women cheat.

What’s the difference then? Why do men (at least Euro/Anglo men) get the label? I think Terence touches on that but doesn’t land square.

There are any number of kinds of intimate relationships where sex isn’t involved at all. Think lifelong platonic friendships, family ties, and partnerships in intensely competitive and/or adventurous environments. Conversely, sad to say, in many monogamous relationships the partners themselves can be quite distant from each other.

What (heterosexual) monogamy does have going for it is a guarantee that men’s family’s property will be inherited by the “right” person’s offspring. For most of the history of marriage, in virtually all history-leaving cultures, that’s been the biggest consideration behind virginity, abstinence, fidelity, and monogamy. (Compare the meanings of the words “adultery” and “adulterated” for instance.)

Anyway, in cultures where men and their families have tended to control economics, and where it matters to their families that offspring really is “theirs,” and where women have been kept completely economically and even legally dependent on men (even here their fathers “give them away” to their husbands at wedding, remember, a vestige of what used to be cold, hard, Common-Law legal truth) the deck has been substantially stacked against women who cheat (stoning, anyone?) and… stacked pretty flipping indifferently against men who do.

Anyway, since the rules of monogamy were initially created to protect men’s interest in women as their property (“thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife… no his house nor cattle nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s!) you’d sort of expect to see two things: first, that men wouldn’t see much wrong with collecting a little extra “property,” or even that they’d judge each other’s status by how much “property” they could accumulate (unless, of course, they were married to that “property” in which case it would be “theft.”) And second that as the metaphorical, and sometimes real property even when women did cheat they’d have to be a lot more circumspect — the consequences, at least of being caught, (stoning, divorced, faced with raising children on their own) have tended to be way, way, way higher for them.

Anyway, I think all that adds up to explain why men have the greater reputation for cheating… and the statistically significant but not that much higher actual rate of cheating than women. A difference, by the way, that’s therefore more cultural and not nearly as “natural” as Matt and Max suggest. Take away those cultural different consequences, and throw in more legal and economic parity, and I’m pretty sure the statistical difference largely disappears, with men not feeling sex with multiple partners is a status builder, and women not seeing fewer partners as a survival mechanism.

I happen to think, by the way, that if we could get closer to real economic, social, and legal parity we’d wind up with Terence’s position: perhaps a little more sexual “cheating” (which might not even be considered cheating) but a lot more room for intimate and emotionally monogamous partnerships inside relationships.