Born under a wandering star

“WE have been sold a myth about monogamy; we have not been told the truth. Monogamy does not, and almost always cannot, provide a lifetime of rich sexual excitement for human beings.”

In The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating, US sociologist Eric Anderson argues that human beings are not cut out for monogamy. We value it not because it works, but because we’re deeply conditioned by society to accept it as the only basis for a relationship. He says that we didn’t evolve to be monogamous. He says that it runs counter to our nature, and as a result, we cheat.

At a time when Census figures show that the number of divorced people in Ireland has increased by 150% in just ten years, Anderson’s critique of monogamy is timely. “Monogamy is so highly revered,” he says, “I expected to be highly stigmatised for speaking out against it, but at the same time, there’s so much cultural evidence about that good, honest people cheat that I think maybe our culture is ready to hear the message.”

His basic thesis is that sexual fidelity is not the same as love, and he takes as his starting point research which shows that long-term partners lose their sexual desire for each other.

“It doesn’t mean that they cease to see each other as sexual beings, but they just don’t have the strong desire to have sex with their partners, and that the frequency and intensity of the sex decreases in time.” Throw in the fact that men tend to want more sex than women and you have deeper cause for marital conflict.

Anderson is very critical of the therapeutic response to a mismatch in sexual appetites. “The one who wants the more sex, to keep that individual satisfied, the other partner needs to be creative and dynamic and introduce new things into a relationship and so forth. That puts the responsibility on the woman and I find that quite a sexist thing to do.”

Not all therapeutic responses are the same, however. Tony Moore of Relationships Ireland does not subscribe to that view either. “First we’ve got to sit down,” he says. “A lot of people find talking about this area very difficult, because there’s a lot of social stigma around it.” Moore’s approach centres on communication rather than blame. He agrees that these issues are very real, but contends that solutions can be found without breaking the bounds of monogamy.

What’s new in Anderson’s findings is that this sexual ‘habituation’ is occurring much earlier in relationships between young people. “They’ve seen every sexual position, every sexual possibility so by the time they’re 18-years-old, they know it all and that decreases the rate at which they habituate to their partners, and that makes monogamy more challenging for today’s youth,” he says.

Much of Anderson’s book is based on interviews he conducted with 120 young men aged between 18 and 22. He freely admits it’s a small sample size, but this isn’t supposed to be survey research. Using in-depth interviews, he probed the views and practices of young men to understand their attitudes to and practice of monogamy. He then uses this research to launch his views on monogamy and marriage. What he found was that while all of the men he interviewed fully intended to remain faithful, very many did not.

Anderson is gay, and his book has been criticised for applying gay sexual mores to heterosexual relationships. The gay community tends to be more promiscuous and has largely accepted unattached sexual encounters within long-term relationships. Anderson says, however, that young gay men, no more than heterosexual men, are so heavily influenced by the dominance of monogamy in society that they start out with the intention of remaining faithful to one person. The difference is that as their sexual needs are no longer met within the relationship, opening that relationship to up to multiple partners is more acceptable.

“Young gay men don’t have a desire to be in open sexual relationships, but by the time they’re 30 that attitude will have completely changed.”

Nor is Anderson calling for open relationships for men only. All partners should be able to roam to fulfil sexual desires that can’t be met at home. “I call for total gender equality,” he says.

Separating sex from emotional love lies at the heart of Anderson’s thesis. But is that possible? Anderson believes so, saying that heterosexual couples should take their cue from gay relationships. “There are as many types of open relationships as there are couples. And they all negotiate their own rules around how those encounters happen... There are literally thousands of variations, and the rules are often designed to protect not only the people within the couple but also the individuals they’re having sex with.”

There is, not surprisingly, a vocal opposition to this view. Tony Moore of Relationships Ireland says in the course of his work he has encountered couples who’ve tried to make an open relationship work, but they find it impossible to keep emotion out of the bedroom. “Sex is not just a physical thing, it’s an emotional thing, a spiritual thing if you like. People feel closer to one another when they have sex. Emotional attachment will come, especially for women.”

Conversely, no amount of rationalisation can dispel jealously. “It meant nothing to me” doesn’t stop the wounded partner from hurting, often long after the affair has ended.

Witness the break-up of Ronan Keating’s marriage as a result of an affair that ended two years ago. The star is joined by a galaxy of other wanderers from long-term relationships including Tiger Woods, Jude Law, Ryan Giggs and Ashton Kutcher.

One other interesting stat buried in the book’s research is that while 65% of gay men engage in open sexual relationship, only 29% of lesbians do.

The implication is that women are naturally less inclined to divide their sexual and emotional lives.

Rachel Fehily is a family law mediator and author of Break Up, Don’t Crack Up: A Positive Plan for your Separation or Divorce in Ireland. She agrees with Tony Moore, adding that in her experience open relationships are usually unsustainable because they often involve a power imbalance.

“It would be very unusual to find two people who really wanted an open marriage. If it is suggested, oftentimes you’ll find that one person is putting pressure on the other to accept it. When a relationship breaks down after infidelity it can be difficult to mediate if there has been a power imbalance in their past.” She says that in her experience, infidelity, when it happens, often comes at the end of a relationship. “It’s more of a symptom than a cause”.

Anderson has no illusions that his vision of open marriage will ever be realised. Many of the sexual taboos the previous generation grew up with may have fallen away, but monogamy remains fundamental, among young people as much as everyone else. “The resilience of the desire to be monogamous is so strong with youth, but they’re not doing it. And that places them in a state of cognitive dissonance because they’re not doing something they highly value. What does that mean for the future? The rational outcome is cheating.”