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News & ArtsWednesday, September 7, 2011
Sex My Jihad Against Monogamy Has Failed
Posted by Dan Savage on Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 1:27 PM
Monogamy is on the rise, according to a new study that finds that couples these days generally are more monogamous than they used to be.... The study of 6,864 men and women—responses were collected from 6,082 individuals in 1975 and from 782 in 2000—examines differences on a variety of issues, including monogamy. The percentages of heterosexual men who reported having sex with someone other than their wife dropped to 10 percent in 2000 from 28 percent in 1975; among married women, it declined to 14 percent from 23 percent. Among gay men, the percentage who cheated on a partner they lived with dropped to 59 percent from 83 percent; for lesbians it declined to 8 percent from 28 percent.
Give up? Or point out that people in 1975 often stayed in marriages that didn't satisfy them—sexually, emotionally, whateverally—and opted to cheat on their spouses because cheating was less stigmatized in 1975 than divorce? These days, of course, cheating carries a larger social stigma than divorce. (I blame Ronald Reagan.) Consequently people in sexually/emotionally/whateverally unsatisfying marriages today are much liklier to divorce and remarry than people in sexually/emotionally/whateverally unsatisfying marriages in 1975. I hate to burst Ross Douthat's bubble here, but... serial monogamy is not quite the same thing as married-and-sexually-exclusive-for-life monogamy.
I mean, let's say someone who took part in the 1975 study had been married to one person for 40 years and cheated on his one-and-only spouse one time. He would've been counted among the terrible, no-good, really bad non-monogamists. (Assuming, of course, that he answered the question truthfully.) But a guy who took part in the current study who had married and divorced four women and is currently on his fifth wife but who had refrained from sticking his dick in women to whom he wasn't currently married would be counted among the sainted monogamists because he hadn't technically cheated on any of his five wives.
Who, I ask you, was better at monogamy? The guy in 1975 who was married to one woman for forty years and cheated on her once? Or a guy who marries and divorces four women and—odds being what they are—is likely to divorce his fifth wife and move on to a sixth?
The fine print: I'm not actually waging jihad against monogamy! If people in monogamous relationships are content, I'm content! But monogamy isn't for everybody.
1
Look around...how many "Swingin' Single" women are there who you would actually want to (well, not YOU, but...)
Answer: None.
Test Case: Notice an attractive woman in her mid-Thirties at a restaurant picking up take out. Odds are, waiting outside is an oversize SUV bought by her husband, with two car seats in the back.
Guys know they have to lock that stuff in cause there's more demand than supply.
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Anyway these things tend to go back and fourth historically speaking. Be interesting to see the stats in another 20, assuming marriage itself lasts that long.
I'm confused.
Same thing for same-sex marriage. If you want to pattern your relationship on the typical heterosexual couple, then great! I'm all for it. Just let me have the option of creating some kind of alternative.
Related to this, they also report that the number of hetero men who had a "meaningful love affair with someone else" outside the marriage dropped from 30% in 1975 to 1% in 2000. Wow! Must be nobody having an affair by now, at that rate!
The numbers in 2000 are a little better for the other groups:
192 gay men
375 lesbians
127 heterosexual females
So perhaps the claimed statistics for incidence of sex outside the relationship for gay men (down from 83% to 59%) and for lesbians (28% down to 8%) have more basis. Maybe.
Or, it could be that this is a garbage study that's getting publicity because people want to believe what it says.
17
Quite a difference. I wonder what accounts for it? Are lesbians just as interested as gay men are in fucking someone other than their partner but they are more likely to stick with the commitment they made to be faithful? Or are gay men more inclined to want to fuck someone other than their partner? Or both?
19
Ross Douthat is a tar baby.
Also, with regard to gay monogamy, can you think of anything that might have happened to change gay persons' coupling patterns between 1975 and 2000?
Gosh, I sure can't. Clearly, it must simply be a natural biological normal human rational virtuous preference for monogamy, asserting itself after some sort of aberration.
That said, Dan's explanation does have a hole in it. Divorce has not actually increases between the 70s and now. It has leveled off or declined slightly. Since the 60s, yes, but not since the 70s.
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