As with all things concerning the human heart, it's complicated. “The human mating system is extremely flexible,” Bernard Chapais of the University of Montreal wrote in a recent review in Evolutionary Anthropology. Only 17 percent of human cultures are strictly monogamous.
Humans are now mostly monogamous, but this has been the norm for just the past 1,000 years. Scientists at University College London believe monogamy emerged so males could protect their infants from other males in ancestral groups who may kill them in order to mate with their mothers.
Only 3 percent to 5 percent of the roughly 5,000 species of mammals (including humans) are known to form lifelong, monogamous bonds , with the loyal superstars including beavers, wolves and some bats. Social monogamy is a term referring to creatures that pair up to mate and raise offspring but still have flings.
Even in societies where polygamy is permitted, monogamy is by far the most common human mating arrangement. In this regard, we are unusual animals: fewer than 10 percent of mammals form exclusive sexual relationships.
Three studies have used nationally representative samples. These studies in 1994 and 1997 found that about 10–15% of women and 20–25% of men engage in extramarital sex. Research by Colleen Hoffon of 566 homosexual male couples from the San Francisco Bay Area (2010) found that 45% had monogamous relationships.
Monogamy does exist in nature, as, of course, do females who seek out multiple partners. But nature does seem to push things in the direction of polygyny on our branch of the evolutionary tree. Among mammals, just 9 percent of species are monogamous; among primates, just 29 percent are.
Balance of evidence indicates we are biologically inclined towards monogamy. Science has yet to definitively pronounce on whether humans are naturally monogamous (lifelong male-female breeding pair) or polygamous (single male breeding with more than one female).
Both monogamy and nonmonogamy can yield healthy, happy relationships for those involved. It's just a matter of personal desires, needs, and preferences.
1. Our romantic drives are loosely coupled networks. Probably the biggest factor in why it is hard to remain monogamous is that there are several drives built into us that contribute to reproduction, but they do not work in unison.
The current model of lifelong, cohabiting monogamous partnership has never been such an outdated ideal. We are living longer, for a start. One third of babies born today are now expected to live to 100, according to the National Office of Statistics. A woman born in 1850 could expect her marriage to last 29 years.
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.
In essence, men are only socially monogamous rather than genetically monogamous.
Humans do it faster: True, to an extent. A large-scale study found that human copulation lasts five minutes on average, although it may rarely last as long as 45 minutes.
Expert 1: No, We Were Not Meant To Be Monogamous
He says that having one partner at a time isn't monogamy, it actually fits into the category of serial polygyny. According to Ryan, humans have sex hundreds of times for every baby conceived, as opposed to other animals that have a ratio closer to 12 to one.
While history has determined monogamy as the ideal type of relationship, studies have shown that our brains might not be wired to follow such parameters. Biological impulses could be the reason why divorce rates exceed 50 percent in many societies. While some animals are bound for life, others are not.
We are termed 'socially monogamous' by biologists, which means that we usually live as couples, but the relationships aren't permanent and some sex occurs outside the relationship.
Toxic monogamy dictates that there is a hierarchy for love, with the romantic relationship on top. One must forsake all else—anything that threatens The Relationship, and even at times friends and family—in order to protect The Relationship.
Scientists now estimate that only about three to five percent of the approximately 4,000+ mammal species on Earth practice any form of monogamy. 2) Before the advent of DNA fingerprinting, scientists believed that about 90 percent of bird species were truly monogamous.
Monogamy in Popular Culture
Being monogamous or otherwise in relationships does not necessarily directly affect mental health by itself. That said, violations of agreements to be monogamous can cause severe anxiety, jealousy, depression, and relationship problems for one or both partners.
Monogamy is an intrinsically unstable mating strategy. Benefits include the (relative) certainty of access to the partner's reproductive potential, but the chief disadvantage is that access to other potential partners is strongly diminished, particularly in those cases where males exhibit strong mate-guarding behavior.
Toxic monogamy has three basic pillars: you should never be attracted to others; your partner should fulfill all of your needs; and love and affection are finite resources and showing them to other people or things takes them away from your partner.
Rubel and Bogaert suggest that non-monogamists have relationships that are just as happy, or happier, than monogamous relationships. More recent field research on a large Canadian sample also found that those in open or polyamorous relationships were just as happy as those in monogamous relationships.
John Gill comments on 1 Corinthians 7 and states that polygamy is unlawful; and that one man is to have but one wife, and to keep to her; and that one woman is to have but one husband, and to keep to him and the wife only has a power over the husband's body, a right to it, and may claim the use of it: this power over ...
According to the New York Times, a 2011 paper showed that early humans, or hominids, began shifting towards monogamy about 3.5 million years ago—though the species never evolved to be 100% monogamous (remember that earlier statistic).
Socially imposed monogamy was first established in ancient Greece and Rome (even if sexual infidelity with concubines and slaves was largely tolerated).