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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Are we biologically inclined to couple for life?
—Chelsea Brennan, Minneapolis
Jeannine Callea Stamatakis, who is an instructor at several colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area, responds:
"Till death do us part” is a compelling idea, but with the divorce rate exceeding 50 percent, many people would very likely agree that humans have a biological impulse to be nonmonogamous. One popular theory suggests that the brain is wired to seek out as many partners as possible, a behavior observed in nature. Chimpanzees, for instance, live in promiscuous social groups where males copulate with many females, and vice versa.
But other animals are known to bond for life. Instead of living in a pack like coyotes or wolves, red foxes form a monogamous pair, share their parental and hunting duties equally, and remain a unit until death.
For humans, monogamy is not biologically ordained. According to evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss of the University of Texas at Austin, humans are in general innately inclined toward nonmonogamy. But, Buss argues, promiscuity is not a universal phenomenon; lifelong relationships can and do work for many people.
So what distinguishes the couples that go the distance? According to several studies, a range of nonbiological factors can help pinpoint which pairings are built to last—those who communicate openly, respect each other, share common interests and maintain a close friendship even when the intense attraction wanes.
John Gottman, a psychologist emeritus at the University of Washington, developed a model to predict which newlywed couples will remain married and which will divorce, a method that he claims is 90 percent accurate. He found that most divorces happen at critical points after a couple unites. The first period occurs after seven years, when pairs tend to feel the strain of their relationship (does the Seven Year Itch ring a bell?). After 20 years, couples may encounter “empty nest syndrome”—a lonely feeling that can take over when children leave home, causing a rift in the marital bond.
A couples’ therapist recently shared with me one key question that he always asks his clients: “Tell me about your wedding day.” An answer composed of positive memories is a good sign. A couple that instead begins talking about the rain and stress is also offering a telling clue.
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27 Comments
Add CommentWe have to be very careful with our definitions here. Red foxes are regarded as monogamous, but have a high level of mixed paternity litters. A rule of thumb may be that 30% of offspring are not by the resident male for many mammals and birds. This appears to be similar in humans. In all cases, where pair bonding has a genetic component, it is the individuals that leave the greatest number of offspring that do best (i.e. that gene spreads). Sex-based body size is a good predictor of the number of females that a male mammal will mate with. This suggests that we evolved to have more than one female mate. However, it is clearly a personal choice whether this occurs concurrently, sequentially, or not at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo matter how you look at it, we are all animals and act similar. Since divorce rate is so high in humans, could it be because we are not really attracted to the person other than to mate and move on to the next mate? We are always looking for something better. I have noticed in most people, when the sex stops...so does the marriage. For those humans who mate for life, could it be because they have become so dependent on each other that they are afraid to look for better or become to believe that they cannot get any better?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, it's simplistic to think that all of our instincts and behavior impulses are integrated. Many are in direct conflict with each other. What makes us unique is how they intersect. It makes our lives difficult that we must struggle with multiple purpose or contradictory dictates. The more integrated these facets are, then the more peaceful a person's internal life may be. But who gets to choose their programming?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I have noticed in most people, when the sex stops...so does the marriage."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you marry for the sex, you'll divorce when it stops. That's why the article talks about friendship. Sex should be a side benefit, not the main reason for marriage.
We should be careful using stats like "the divorce rate exceeding 50 percent" as an indicator of monogamy, for several reasons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis first is that this particular stat is about marriages, not marriage participants. Many people have multiple marriages ending in divorce - in fact it's quite common. So when you factor serial marriages into the equation the divorce rate starts looking a lot better.
The second is that stats aren't a determination of odds. Our success in marriage has more to do with our choices than our biology, and we can, and do, train ourselves against internal stimuli all the time. We can also enlist others to help us in this process.
For example, early in my teens, I learned NOT to check out other women while in the presence of my girlfriend - the internal stimulus to do so didn't go away, though. I have since expanded on this training to also not check out women while NOT in the presence of my wife - the internal stimulus didn't go away there, either. (Both of these habits were developed with the assistance of others, if you catch my meaning.)
I can do this because I have the self-will and higher thinking that other animals don't possess. I can think though the long-term advantages, and disadvantages, not only to myself, but to my wife and kids, on all kinds of decisions. And since I know the devastation that weighs in the balance of a few fleeting moments of pleasure...
I agree with you, and also realize that you are giving good examples. In the spirit of dialog I would like to add that it would be unfair to assume that every man's urge is equal to yours. Some may have little urge to check out the sexual prowess of other potential mates in the presence of their significant other, whereas some may have greater urge than you. Therefore, some may need no 'training' to override the urge while some may be hopeless victims of overwhelming pull that no amount of 'training' will help them overcome. We can't judge each other based on our own instinct and experience. In other words we can't assume each of us can or will find the same balance on any particular aspect of life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Most" people? Or most people 'in your circle of friends and acquaintances'? I've noticed that most people are together for the long haul, with sex or not. But my life doesn't overlap much with singles, serial monogamists, or divorcees. I dropped out of the party crowd when I settled down with my partner 25 years ago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI meant this reply to be to JamesDavis, not ET3D with whom I agree!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn terms of why some couples stay together forever and others don't, I think it depends on such detailed interpersonal configurations that it is very hard to scientifically generalize about. The coincidence of meeting someone that you want (and keep wanting) to be with forever and exclusively is a rare event (you're lucky if it happens once in your lifetime), but it is worth examining a number of social factor to discover *why* it is a rare event. In general, I don't think people are open enough. Too many people are not truly capable of loving others, but opt instead to cling to someone as a quick cure for insecurity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf people understood love, I am convinced we would embrace polyamory; the ability and inclination to love several/many people at the same time. I think this is all about cultural evolution. At some point we will have matured enough to spread the love more. There was a great temporary instance of it in the hippie era, and that means the tendency is still latent in many people today and will come to the fore again, even stronger next time. Hopefully soon.
Part of biology is that a sired child needs to succesfully survive to adulthood and reproduce itself. Here humans are unlike red deer and stickleback, whose children can quickly live for themselves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMonogamous couple raises children better - both materialy and emotionaly. Promiscuity or divorce allows more sexual partners - but emotional and material cost to children may well cancel the advantage.
Evolutionary psychologists always confuse chance encounters with raising succesful children - but sexual fantasies make sloppy science.
It takes a village to raise a child. That a child is better off in a nuclear family than in a collective environment is not going to be supported by any studies that are objectively looking into such cases - quite the opposite. Conservatives are free to believe whatever they want, but children are far better off when they're able to run around and learn things from many different adults. In fact, examples are legion of how monogamous child-rearing has negative effects - but it all depends on the specifics of the social situation. As long as the social environment consists of stable, harmonious and non-abusive people, collective upbringing is by far the better situation, making children both emotionally and rationally healthier. But a lot of conservatives don't trust "outsiders" (anyone from outside the nuclear family) to be non-abusive. Which says more about their own problems than about the outsiders.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis sounds like unfounded conservative speculation to me:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Monogamous couple raises children better - both materialy and emotionaly. Promiscuity or divorce allows more sexual partners - but emotional and material cost to children may well cancel the advantage."
I very much doubt you can present any corroborating sources for that view.
"If people understood love, I am convinced we would embrace polyamory"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think you are correct in our intinctual abilities conceptually speaking. But it isn't practical. There are competing forces at play. Even if you were to love many, you would have to rank each one on your priority for them to thrive and survive. That doesn't sound very loving at all. I think that for some to find the balance of one love, one commitment, one marriage is extremely appropriate even if it is not appropriate for others.
"Rank each one"? Whatever for?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@rshoff - "We can't judge each other based on our own instinct and experience." We can and we do judge each other this way. It is the most harmful mistake in human existence, and sadder still, the most common.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur maltreatment of others almost always includes something that translates to, "All you have to do is be me and you'll see how obvious it is that you are..." [insert derogatory descriptive here]!
Because you do not have unlimited resources to support their survival and success (love isn't passive, it's active). You will at times find that you must choose between your lovers' needs. When those times occur, you would be better off to have only one life partner. Of course if you do not feel the need to contribute anything to your partner's and lover's, then it's a moot point. But then that's not love either.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSkeptical - I absolutely and completely agree with your comment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a good civilization, basic resources *will* be effectively unlimited. If population exceeds available resources, this should be dealt with on a governmental level far transcending ordinary people's immediate relations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou could perhaps argue that one individual does not have the emotional and sexual resources to satisfy many partners, but this argument cancels itself out because every partner will have multiple partners. Individuals will not need to be everything to each other; it will be everyone's right to love as many as they want. The more people you love, the less crucial a relationship to any one person will be. Although I'm not saying that situations of unhappy love will necessarily be done away with entirely.
You could also argue, as en evolutionary psychologist might, that we did not evolve under civilized conditions and therefore our instinct are not adpated to life in a civilization. I think, by and large, this argument (as many arguments in evol. psych.) does not work, because we do not yet have any clear idea of what emotion and basic human instinct really are. My theory is that we are equipped with two sets of instincts; one for harmonic situations, and one for stressful situations. And most of what we think we know about human nature today actually relates to stressful instincts. Life in any unharmonic culture or society will be deeply unsatisfying to us, making us exist primarily with our stress instincts enabled. This is why there is so much war, greed, jealousy and general misery and conflict in human history. These instincts are made for coping with an unfavorable environment, which is what we can define all cultures that have so far existed as.
But our primary instincts, adapted to a harmonic state in a favorable environment, come to the fore when we are properly loving and live in a good civilization, which is a state we are, in my opinion, slowly evolving (culturally, not physiologically) towards, and which science is increasingly helping us to define. Science will have the last word on true human nature. Evolution works, among other ways, by punctuated equilibrium, and our primary instincts are evolved for a state in equilibrium; a state where the human flock lives in harmony with plenty of resources. This is the state that I think global civilization will increasingly approximate, because our deep instincts and desires and general proclivities tend in that direction.
I respectfully disagree. It's probable that we (you and I) have found different life balances between our instinct and experience. Although we both speak english, it's apparent that we do not speak the same language.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do love many, but take particular pride in my love, commitment, and loyalty to a single partner where we have created a life together that cannot be measured by its sum parts.
Thanks for the discussion though! I imagine that it represents ambiguities for many.
The problem with discussing radically different ways of organizing things like love and family is that those who feel happy and secure in their own relationship and family will often see any alternative suggestion as a personal threat to their way of life. And it will be hard for them to imagine anything else as possibly being better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not intend my suggestions as any kind of threat to the way people prefer to live their current lives; if you are happy, that's great. But the radically different way of life that I am interested in is something that I believe will evolve slowly over many generations. Try looking at it as such, casting your imagination into the future, rather than believing that your own current situation is the be-all and end-all of how people might live.
No threat perceived. Please don't mistaken that. I was using my own happiness with my balance between intersection of what I think are multiple instincts and experiences at play as an example of how a permanent and monogamous marriage can be an appropriate situation with a good outcome. As far as my life applying to humans, I am human, therefore it is a valid example. Often times I encounter the myth that socialization is inherently superior to individualism. What I put forward is that they are both inherent instincts and we all reach a balance that is appropriate for our own lives. Yes, I think the author is right that we are biologically 'inclined' to couple for life. But I don't think that is the only appropriate outcome of our instants and experience. I think that for many it's appropriate to remain un-partnered, or participate in serial partnering, or any combination therein. I'm not drawing lines in the sand or defending one extreme over the other. I'm simply responding to your comment that 'polyamorous' behavior is an evolved state. It is not. It's simply one of many states.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLove it. "So what distinguishes the couples that go the distance? According to several studies, a range of nonbiological factors can help pinpoint which pairings are built to last— THEY ACT LIKE GROWN-UPS!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"So what distinguishes the couples that go the distance? According to several studies, a range of nonbiological factors can help pinpoint which pairings are built to last—those who communicate openly, respect each other, share common interests and maintain a close friendship even when the intense attraction wanes."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, I get it... THEY'VE GROWN UP. SURPRISE!!!
People actually make a living at this?
A lot of sociology, it has to be said, proceeds with the inheritance of previous prejudices. A great deal of what passes for experimental evidence disappears or is reversed in later studies. It makes no sense mathematically or in any other way that men should be driven to be promiscuous, and drawing parallels from birds who are descended from dinosaurs, or from cold-bloodied animals like fish and lizards to justify the presence of that behaviour in humans does not convince. The fact is if promiscuous behaviour was favoured by selection we'd all be it before you could say 'Darwin.' The reason why divorce is so common is that we are freer, nowadays, to try to correct relationship mistakes. What could those mistakes be? Finding the right partner. In the software of our brain that we call our personality, we find a need to link up up with and make the best go of parenting with certain types of people, and are less able to do it successfully with those who do not fit the profile that fits us. What's the evidence for this? Among a great deal of evidence from circadian rhythms to language, there is the simple fact that love and life-long commitment exist - indeed are not rare - are what people crave even to the extent of defying social exclusion and death, and which modulate pretty much all social interactions whether we want them to or not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's an interesting link to a book about this theme http://tiny.cc/paeGD
I think two aspects of marriage have been overlooked:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMarriage as a "love affair" is a new fangled thing, for most of our race's history, and still is in many parts of the world, marriage was (is) more a practical work-unit, both were necessary to be hunter/gatherers, work the farm etc. Once, I went through old records in Denmark, on average farmers, men or women, reamarried within less than a month, to the best farmhand/milking girl, otherwise they couldn't keep up the family/farm/income. I don't think love was a major part of the (new?) marriage, money/social standing/morality etc was the main factor. This is vastly different from life today, where most of us spend more time /awake) at work than at home!
Somewhat related to this, longevity is a "problem", being married "till death do you part" is quite another matter today, when your "risk" of married life, uninterrupted by either parts death, is 40-60 years. In not so distant times, being alive for 20 years after marriage (at a much younger age)was more an exception than a rule. The other day, I read on Sciam, that an exceptional fossilized skeleton from early stone age had been found, a male of more than 30 years!
But, after more than 35 years of living with the same woman. with no "excursions", I think commitment to the marriage and the ability to think through (beforehand) the consequences of philandering are important parts of succesful longterm relationships!
I've always had the hunch that one of the factors that keeps a couple in monogamy is that their relationship being the very first for both parts; even non full intercourse sexual playing builts a bond with the first person you have that kind of engagement,and is this feeling that is in the basis for monogamy. If this first experience, even more if included full intercourse, is broken for a reason different to the partner's death, many of it remain inside you, and difficults the build of a new bond so strong and long lasting as the original one. Some macho men use to say that if you're the one in first having intercourse with a women, she remains bond and willing to have sex with you for the rest of her life, something like a high amount bank account or a farm you own and you are always in the position of getting revenues from it. It was not Sade Adu who sung "Never as good as the first time" ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery interesting there are so many factors to this, but i personally believe that it's how the couple see each other and what type of person they are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example i know i will remain with my fiancee the rest of my life as she gives me what no one else can.....(getting married in Feb 2013) i am a believer that love exists,and she also believes this...i just think it's down to the individual and finding your partner as when we are old (i'm 27) and our lives are over wouldn't it be nice to have that person with you that you can sit down with and think about all you have done together etc.... this makes more sense to me than just having sex with random girls which just leads to a very lonely life with no meaning to me.... anyway this is my opinion peace out guys!!!! :p