Long-Term Sexual Monogamy and Human Consciousness

Much recent writ­ing and dis­cus­sion addresses the topic of humankind’s evo­lu­tion­ary back­ground and the likely incom­pat­i­bil­ity of this with long-term sex­ual monogamy. One of the most recent books gen­er­at­ing this dis­cus­sion is Sex at Dawn by Christo­pher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. The book, and many oth­ers, present strong argu­ment and rea­son sup­port­ing a con­clu­sion that long-term sex­ual monogamy should be expected to be the excep­tion rather than the rule; there are just so many pres­sures work­ing against it happening.

Two per­sonal expe­ri­ences make me won­der if much of the cur­rent debate it not miss­ing a very impor­tant point. The first comes essen­tially from my own expe­ri­ence with long-term sex­ual monogamy. The sec­ond comes from an exten­sion of my expe­ri­ence as a phys­i­cal sci­en­tist. Both require con­sid­er­a­tion of the degree of devel­op­ment of con­scious­ness within humans rel­a­tive to other animals.

I am in a long-term sex­ual monog­a­mous rela­tion­ship because I choose to be. It is a choice and com­mit­ment I made many years ago. I am extremely grate­ful that the rela­tion­ship, for all of its ups and downs, has remained one that I want to in. I have seen so many that have not lasted. And I fully under­stand and accept and, in most cases, in no way hold blame for the par­ties involved. It hap­pens. It hap­pens for a lot of rea­sons. And when the rela­tion­ship breaks down, it is only the busi­ness of the peo­ple involved how to resolve the break down. I am how­ever, very grate­ful not to be in one of these relationships.

There is a well estab­lished prin­ci­ple of quan­tum mechan­ics, known as the Heisen­berg uncer­tainty prin­ci­ple, which relates the pre­ci­sion to which cer­tain pairs of phys­i­cal prop­er­ties can be deter­mined. The prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tion of the Heisen­berg uncer­tainty prin­ci­ple is that the phys­i­cal act of mea­sur­ing the state of an object influ­ences the object. I believe it is too often for­got­ten that there is a sim­i­lar effect when under­tak­ing any study of human sex­u­al­ity, espe­cially any study involv­ing live sub­jects. I sus­pect that merely ask­ing ques­tions about sex­ual monogamy and infi­delity will influ­ence the behav­ior of peo­ple. The more peo­ple hear that other peo­ple are not remain­ing com­mit­ted to long-term rela­tion­ships, the more other peo­ple will con­sider not remain­ing com­mit­ted. It is the way we are. We are very sus­cep­ti­ble to sug­ges­tion. Just ask the ad men.

It would be a bald-faced lie to say I do not see sex­u­ally attrac­tive peo­ple all around me. Per­haps it is sim­ply that I am con­sciously aware of all of the soci­etal pres­sures that seem be con­spir­ing to work against con­tin­ued monogamy (times have changed haven’t they). With­out the abil­ity to con­sciously assess, eval­u­ate, con­sider my reac­tions, would I be the purely human ani­mal? But that is not what I con­sciously choose to be. I really won­der what hap­pens if all the stud­ies, if all the advice, if all the social pres­sures tells all of us that the human ani­mal is what we should be. My guess is that is what most of us will be because that is what we are being told to be. Trou­ble is, none of this answers the real ques­tion which is what should we be. That really is some­thing that we each have to answer for our­selves. Too bad so few seem to be able to not just fol­low the crowd. Well, apes do live in groups, or is it; mon­key see, mon­key do?

Hope you were not look­ing for me to give you any answers. I don’t have them. I have a lot of ques­tions. I have what I have cho­sen to do. What that is, is use both my men­tal capac­ity and my phys­i­cal makeup to guide me. That is it.

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