No, that’s not what I’m saying—and it’s not what the authors of Sex At Dawn are arguing either.
The point of Sex At Dawn—and my point in drawing your attention to it (column, podcast)—isn’t that monogamy is unnatural and therefore no one should attempt it and that people have license to break the monogamous commitments they made to their partners. And for the record: I’m happy to acknowledge that there are lots of good reasons to be monogamous or very nearly monogamous.
What the authors of Sex At Dawn believe—what they prove—is that we are a naturally non-monogamous species, despite what we’ve been told for millennia by preachers and for centuries by scientists, and that is why so many people have such a hard time being and remaining monogamous. I’m not saying that everyone everywhere has to be non-monogamous; the authors of Sex At Dawn don’t make that argument either. (Lots of monogamists, however, run around insisting that everyone everywhere should be monogamous—and the monogamists get a pass because, hey, they mean so well and wouldn’t it be nice if everyone were?)
The point is that people—particularly those who value monogamy—need to understand why being monogamous is so much harder than they’ve been lead to believe it will be. In some cases this understanding may help people find the courage to seek out non-monogamous relationships and/or arrangements and/or allowances that make them—gasp!—happier and make their relationships more stable, not less, as a routine infidelity won’t doom their marriage/domesticpartnership/commitment/slavecontract/whatever. But understanding that monogamy is a struggle for most people, and being able to be honest with our partners about it, may actually help some people remain monogamous.
UPDATE: This letter arrived in the “Savage Love” mailbox as I was writing this post:
I just wanted to thank you for drawing so much attention to the Sex At Dawn book. I am going to get it as soon as possible so I can better understand myself. I have always felt a certain amount of shame because I’ve never had a monogamous relationship. Having been married 14 years (and having married at 19, which I know is a no-no in your book), I’ve had plenty of temptation and only given in a few times. Those events felt like they were saving my sanity, they never had anything to do with me loving my husband any less, or making up for his insufficiencies.
Even if I had waited to get married I still would’ve had these side relationships. It wasn’t until I started listening to your advice that I realized that maybe I wasn’t the problem. Now there’s this book and it gives me hope that our culture might one day be more open about this subject and perhaps more people will come to see the inability to be monogamous as less of a character flaw and more of a fact of life.
For all these years I didn’t even know that’s what it was, or what was wrong with me, all I knew was that I felt like shit because I couldn’t do it. Thanks for cluing me into evolution, reptile brains, etc. This is all very pertinent now, as I am at a serious crossroads and I need all the help I can get.—M
I’m not giving M here a pass on the cheating. I think people should be honest with their partners, etc. What I’d like to see—and what I think a book like Sex At Dawn brings us closer to—is more realism and more honesty. People should have open, honest conversations with prospective partners about their needs, their expectations, what they’re capable of, and what happens if they fall short, before they make what may be, for them, an unrealistic promise that they are not just likely to break, but hard-wired to break.
@14: “many, if not most, of us would fail miserably at non-monogamy.” Wha? Many or most people would fail at the task of being attracted to people other than their spouses, and having sexual encounters with them when the opportunity presented itself?? That sounds a little bit like “failing miserably” to eat ice cream in front of the TV — i.e. it’s an inherently tempting proposition and that’s why so many have a hard time resisting it. I know some people just don’t like casual sex, but jeez, that’s not “most” people.
@17, 18, everyone else: Can people PLEASE stop assuming that the alternative to monogamy is “polyamory”? Polyamory means “many loves,” not many sex partners. When you use the word that way it makes me think that you think that everyone who doesn’t practice monogamy has multiple boyfriends, girlfriends or spouses at once, like on that show about Hugh Hefner. Whereas the alternatives to monogamy include… anything but monogamy. Including one-night stands, long-term fuck-buddies, or girlfriends/boyfriends on the side. No one is suggested that humans’ natural state is to accumulate as many life partners as possible like a Mormon patriarch (although I suppose it works for some).
@50: meaning that their argument would be less valid if they themselves chose monogamy? Or is it a sincere question? I would imagine that if they do have some sort of open arrangement in their relationship, they don’t go around telling everyone in the world about it, since their is still a stigma against such things in most parts of mainstream society.
“there,” not “their” in the last paragraph. Oops.
Well, at least those that support monogamy now understand what it feels like when Dan gets all self-righteous and condescending towards fat people, dogs/dog owners and smokers.
I do enjoy reading Dan, but I often have to remind myself that on some subject matters he writes from his opinion. O-P-I-N-I-O-N.
Once I’ve reminded myself of that, I tend to enjoy the read a whole lot better.
On the subject of monogamy, my partner and I have been in a monogamous relationship for the past 9 years. I guess that could change, but frankly, I doubt it. And we’re both males. But, to that end, I’m all for multiple partners if that’s what both parties want.
My experience is two-fold.
One, most people are SERIAL monogamists. That IS found pretty commonly in nature. I don’t know of a single person who married their first crush/love. (Not saying they don’t exist, just that they’re extremely rare.) So having several partners throughout one’s lifetime, but not all at the same time, is I think quite a different model of monogamy that Ryan and his coauthor are assuming.
Secondly, I think most people might prefer to be poly. They’d like their partners, however, to be monogamous. Then monogamy becomes a quid-pro-quo… I keep it in my pants if you keep it in yours. It’s a check-balance, give-some-take-some approach to relationships, which I think is how most people operate. So this whole “we SHOULD be this” based on biology or evolution or I-saw-this-in-the-latest-bullshit-evo-psy-book completely ignores the emotional and practical reality of most relationships.
Yeah, most people might want to be poly. Most people probably want to be the richest person in the world, have all the cars on the road get out of the way for them, never have to work, and be worshipped for the special snowflake they are. Cause if there is one thing about humans that is “natural”… it’s selfishness.
Okay I was ready to be dubious about this book, since I share most commenters’ suspicion about evolutionary psychology — a lot of the evo-psych explanations that I’ve seen are sexist just-so stories that rely on circular reasoning. But I just went to the Sex @ Dawn website and read some of the excerpts from the book, and reading them gave me a lot more confidence in the authors’ methodology. They seem a lot more concerned to debunk and question evo-psych myths than to create new ones. And they seem ready to acknowledge that a lot of the behaviors we see around us are the result of socialization, not evolutionary forces, as in this quote: “We argue that women’s seemingly consistent preference for men with access to wealth is not a result of innate evolutionary programming, as the standard model asserts, but simply a behavioral adaptation to a world in which men control a disproportionate share of the world’s resources.” I’d suggest taking a look at the excerpts if any of y’all are curious, & have some free time.
I think it’s odd that so many commenters are dismissing this book because it’s “pop science.” I’ve read some damn impressive pop science books by Richard Dawkins, Stephen Pinker, Steven Jay Gould, & others. If a book is by a practicing scientist, and she/he isn’t trying to fool the lay reader into falling for a pet theory, it can be quite intellectually rigorous. For most of us, wading through lots of jargon-laden academic journal articles isn’t really an option, so reading pop science books is our best chance to get some scientific knowledge.
Why can’t I buy this book in the UK???????????????
Hey @56 Gudrun. You’re the ideal reader. Thanks for taking the time to see where we’re really coming from (and explain it to those who don’t have the time or gumption).
@57. You can order it from Amazon.co.uk, and it’ll eventually get to you. We’ll be featured in next Saturday’s Times of London, so maybe that’ll generate some interest from a UK publisher.
“The point is that people—particularly those who value monogamy—need to understand why being monogamous is so much harder than they’ve been lead to believe it will be.”
As Jimmy Dugan said, “OF COURSE it’s hard! Hard is what makes it great! If it were easy, everyone would do it!”
People who are monogamous are, for the most part, better people than those who are not. Period.
Brangwen @52: ” Wha? Many or most people would fail at the task of being attracted to people other than their spouses, and having sexual encounters with them when the opportunity presented itself??”
There are two sides to any non-monogamous encounter: the person going off to sleep with someone else, and the person staying home. If both of these are not happy with the arrangement, then the non-monogamous situation in question is a failure.
It is pretty easy to fail at being the person staying home: worrying that maybe your lover is losing interest in you; worrying that you are inadequate in some fashion; that you personally think of your lover first and foremost when you think sex, and you can’t understand why they don’t reciprocate; worrying about STDs; worrying about what if she comes home pregnant and you are responsible for the baby/he impregnates someone and is responsible for the baby; ad nauseam, literally.
To amplify on that third one: when you think sex, you think of your partner first and foremost, and anyone else is the merest afterthought. That would make you an affirmative monogamist, as opposed to all the others, which make you a failed polygamist.
Well, in this case, the politics of it matter. Equality as an idealized state, matters.
the thing is, even in the circles where I’ve seen the ‘poly’s’, the truth seems to be, that the financially successful guys get busy, sometimes keeping two or three woman around for their pleasure. And these guys are fine with their others getting with another guy.
So in a sense, the ‘new’ polyamory easily becomes the ‘old’ polygamy.
On the other hand, the ‘dominant monkey’ is pretty hardwired too. Top monkey gets his pick of the females. Bottom monkeys get resentful, and take it out ON EACH OTHER (never top monkey) and so, we see this pattern repeat with enraged males on the lower end of the socioecomic ladder, who often don’t have a woman to ‘moderate’ them.
So just because it’s hardwired, and understandable, doesn’t mean that this style of living fits in with our current value system. Because there is also a lot in biology that is absolutlely ruthless. Certainly, the developmentally disabled, or those that can’t naturally survive, in nature are often simply cast out, not taken care of. Nature can be very ruthless.
I confess, I’m a science chauvinist. So sue me. Evolutionary Psychology differs a lot from the hard sciences in that the theories it produces aren’t testable (there also tends to be a rather myopic focus on western culture). It bears a much closer resemblance to literary criticism. Propose a model and then find data to support it. Intriguing, thought provoking, fascinating and highly enjoyable – but it’s still science fiction
I don’t need to read every book on ID to know it’s not science. Evo-psych has more than earned it’s reputation as being much closer to Sci-fi than Science. Also, Dan, you’re not helping by making claims that even the authors do not.
To the authors, I appreciate you stopping by and I will check out your website.
For me, this is such a straw man, cause I was never taught that monogamy was natural. Rather, it was always presented as something that humans could choose, for (correctly or not) their long-term well being, like eating healthfully or wearing pants (both unnatural). Or exercising, or holding back on violent impulses. Being human involves doing lots of unnatural stuff. That’s a good thing.
First, Dan, while I get that what you meant to say was that monogamy isn’t easy for most people, you did actually say that “anyone who’s made a monogamous commitment is struggling with monogamy,” and that simply isn’t true.
Second, I think a lot of people here on both sides of the debate seem to be under the mistaken impression that monogamy means everlasting, continuous monogamy. Some people have pointed out that serial monogamy is a common occurrence, and I would like to add to that that if a couple is monogamous for a while and then decides not to be monogamous, that doesn’t mean that they never were monogamous or that monogamy was always a struggle for them. My husband and I are still in the honeymoon phase of our marriage, and at the moment neither of us has eyes for anyone else. Monogamy is totally easy at this point because we are infatuated with each other. Down the road it might become harder, we might decide to have an open relationship, one of us might cheat, etc, but none of that would nullify our current monogamy or the fact that it is currently easy. None of that would mean that choosing monogamy at this point in our lives was wrong, or that we simply aren’t capable of monogamy. And if then, after years of non-monogamy, perhaps after age and children had changed what we wanted/expected from sex and relationships, we chose to be monogamous again, that wouldn’t mean that choosing non-monogamy was wrong or that monogamy would never work for us after experiencing non-monogamy.
I think what frustrates me is that everyone seems to be painting it as “some people are monogamous types, some aren’t,” whereas I think it is more complicated than that. A person can be very willingly, happily monogamous at some times, and not at others. I don’t think either is so much about a person’s fundamental nature as about the particulars of who they are at any given time/place/relationship. We need to get rid of this “us and them” mentality and just embrace people knowing who they are and what they want and pursuing what makes them happy, but also being capable of change and growth.
Well, at the very least it’s something to smack the idiots who come out with alpha-male evo-psych crap round the head with. Not that replacing it with “hurr, women like gangbangs! PROVED BY EVOLUTION!” is much of an improvement, but… well, I guess I need to stop hanging out with idiots, basically.
@65 for the win.
Why must the question always be phrased as “humans are innately predisposed to monogamy” vs “humans are innately nonmonogamous”? What ever happened to “humans are innately selfish, shortsighted douchebags”?
The innate human urge, from my experience, has been to monopolize multiple partners. (Men tend to care more about physical monopolization, women tend to care more about emotional monopolization, but the desire is inherently asymmetrical.) Note how popular harems are across multiple cultures and indeed across species.
@ 68 – Humans are not naturally selfish, short-sighted douchebags. In fact, it was in our prehistoric ancestors best interest to live communally and share everything – food, shelter, sex, etc – as sharing food lowered the risk of starvation for everyone in the group while sharing sex and space established bonds among members of the group. Our ancestors understood that living in a tight group of people who looked out for you was the ideal as hunter-gatherers.
This changed with agriculture as farming required land… and people to protect the land.. and women to create the people to protect the land. The concept of “ownership” forced our ancestors to change their behavior radically. Now that things were “owned”, they suddenly wasn’t “enough” as it take more people to work more land, and more land to support the more people it takes to work more land. Everything became a commodity, including women and sex.
It was the constant demand for MORE that turned our once generous, sexually open ancestors into selfish, shortsighted douchebags you see today.
Dan, it’s time for you to write a movie script. Something that illustrates…
My main beef with this admittedly interesting sounding book (I’ve only read the exerpts on the authors’ website) is being asked to see 10,000 years of human evolution as a tiny amount of time. Yes, in the history of the world it is a miniscule amount of time, but if we consider how much influence one generation of humans has on the next then the amount of development and adaptation of our our species over thousands of years is very significant. Of course human behaviour will change over its history – the stone-age was the human race’s infancy. And look where all that healthy sexual sharing (probably) got us – civilisations wiped out by STDs.
The natural/unnatural argument is filled with holes when it comes to sexulaity. This book basically seems to bring science’s view of sexuality back round to ‘for pro-creation only’. Where does homosexuality fit in here? Just another symptom of straying from our ‘natural’ baby-making state? Is it time to throw away the condoms? They’re not natural and are most likey detrimental to psychological well-being as they stop us making babies. Do rapists now have a new excuse to use in court – “I couldn’t help myself, I’m genetically predispositioned to want to have sex with any ripe looking woman I see.”?
Human sexuality and the history of eros is so much more fascinating than monogamy=bad polyamory=good. There is no such thing as ‘normal’ and every relationship is different. We now live on an over-populated planet- our reasons for having sex have adapted and changed into many wonderful and disturbing shapes as we no longer desperately need to spread our genes. The memory of this need may well still be hard-wired in us and this book’s findings certainly seem to help diagnose this. Having monogamy hammered home by government interference as the preferred ideal way to conduct a sexual relationship is patronising and damaging, so ‘Sex at Dawn’s message does go some way to offset peoples guilt caused by failing to live up to societies unrealistic expectations.
I’m 30 pages into the book and loooving it!
It’s interesting because this philosophizing on human behavior ran under a different name in the 1980s. They called it ‘sociobiology’ back then and a couple of leering geeks from Stanford University used ‘sociobiology’ to explain (excuse) a lot of the most inhuman behavior, namely rape. The ‘sociobiologists’ claimed rape was adaptive despite the fact a sizeable percentage of rape survivors are: children, elderly women and men (none of these can pass on the rapist’s DNA).
These same leering freaks said child abuse (on the part of stepfathers or 2nd husbands) was adaptive because they were destroying the genetic descendants of a competitor and this would facilitate their mate/wife to produce their offspring, pass on their DNA.
I think ‘Sex at Dawn’ offers two big theories that most psych evos before them haven’t. Firstly, that the advent of agricultural societies brought about the demand for paternity, women’s sexual fidelity and warfare. That’s HUGE!
The second theory that ‘Sex at Dawn’ offers — and this is the one that’s got EVERYBODY’S panties in a twist — is that not just men tend toward polyandry (infidelity) but women too. That there are definite evolutionary advantages in the female who keeps a nice reliable mate, has his kids, but in her free time tries to catch the eye of other maybe more sought-after hunter/gatherer males. This flies in the face of the traditional Man-as-Philandering-Stud theory that’s been propped up for ages. It also violates what Mistress Matisse calls the One Penis Policy. Gee, too bad.
Don’t think there’s any validity to women having evolved to be just as promiscuous as men??? How many married or attached women swoon over pictures of Brad Pitt or George Clooney? Think all those groupies were just being flirty when they threw their underwear at the Beatles??? They were perceived socially as lower-rung females (beta females maybe?) trying to catch the attention of what were perceived as alpha males. And John Edwards’ mistress was successful. She caught the attentions of a (socially perceived) alpha male and was able to produce offspring with him. Mission accomplished indeed.
@ 3
This is FAR from a pop-sci book. and regarding 19, you REALLY need to read the book. Your entire argument is uneducated and irrelevant.
Okay, I think the people posting the most offended and retaliatory words here should understand this: This book is not trying to change your mind about weather or not YOU should be monogamous. The book and it’s authors are NOT condemning monogamy as wrong. They are NOT stating unequivocally that humans WERE not and therefore CANNOT be successfully monogamous. This book simply is NOT trying to subvert, or destroy your way of life, so you can all just relax a little.
For you Polyamorists: I really don’t think the point of this book is to justify a lifestyle choice. It is to further explore and discover both truths and falsehoods within what we’ve all been taught to believe about ourselves.
For anyone who’s used the term Polygamy in any of their posts, that really doesn’t enter into it. It is addressed in the book as an innately non-human behavior, but you’ll have to actually read the book to understand that.
Sex At Dawn is a truly brave and brilliant book, daring to challenge the most ingrained preconceptions that we have about ourselves and our socio-sexual behaviors throughout our history and prehistory, exposing an astounding amount of ignorance and misinformation that we have all been raised with as “Truth,” while approaching the subject of sexuality and human interaction from a uniquely enlightened and unburdened anthropological perspective. If knowledge is power, than this book is an enormous powerhouse, full of tools we can benefit immeasurably from in attempting to understanding ourselves and each other.
That being said, this book did not change my mind, or even raise new questions about how I feel about relationship dynamics, or monogamy. It merely provided extremely compelling evidence that there might actually be reasons that monogamy is difficult for some people. And through the very eloquent presentation of meticulously collected and impeccably well documented data, shed further, much needed light on what has always seemed to me to be a dubiously clouded, remarkably suspect and largely under-discussed school of thought.
I just started reading this book, and it is significantly better than I hoped. It gains much of its compelling power precisely because it DOESN’T focus solely on western cultures. It tries very hard to include the full spectrum of current observed human sexual behavior as a datapoint.
The best thing I can say about what I’ve read so far is that the book is unflinching. I get the strong sense that the authors would’ve been happy to come to any conclusion the evidence suggested. The book has a bit of a preachy tone, but that’s mostly because they express (in a scientific way) a sense of upset and betrayal over how so much evidence has been ‘monogamy washed’ when it’s been interpreted. Some of the examples given in the book are incredibly egregious examples of clearly serious scientists having blinkers on that are opaque to all known forms of radiation, not just visible light.
As for the people here who proclaim that monogamy is just ‘better’ or that we’re ‘rising above our nature’ when choosing it, why do you feel that way? What’s better about it? Who’s kool-aid have you drunk, and which unicorn did you listen to?
The woman who was cheating and suddenly saw her behavior as not pathologically bad may now choose to go to her spouse and state what she really needs. Being told that you’re evil or wrong your entire life for wanting something tends to make you really reluctant to bring it up with a partner and tends to cause people to do things shamefully in secret. I don’t think that her revelation makes her cheating less of a betrayal, but I do hope that it gives her the courage to begin living a more honest life.
And for the people who claim that monogamy is only ‘designed’ to last as long enough to raise a child, you’re just coughing up the same fallacies that have been fed to us for so long in a more palatable form.
One really striking example from the book is that there are a large number of hunter-gatherer tribal cultures in which its thought that paternity is a shared responsibility. That all the men a woman has had sex with are responsible for raising the children the woman has.
And this isn’t just a quaint ‘myth’ they share, it has real consequences in their everyday behaviors and their value systems, it’s as serious a belief as any of our hard-core religious beliefs and assumptions.
The model you assume must be correct is not the only model. There is no need for a pair-bond to ensure that offspring are cared for. Your assumption that its required is a pernicious form of circular reasoning.