In answer to the age-old question of why any woman would turn to infidelity, despite a loving, devoted and wealthy husband, beautiful smart children, and a perfectly respectable home and sex life, modern science has given us at least *one* definitive answer that can be advanced with at least a passable veneer of respectability:
It’s in their genes.
A bit of a flip answer, yes, but also one that holds a undeniable grain of truth.
In the next few hundred words (okay, maybe a few thousand) I will demonstrate that women, far from their long-held reputation as the revered “monogamous sex”, can be just as sexually opportunistic as men — and with more serious results for families.
The Ghosts of Sperm Competition
In some primates, the promiscuous female mates obsessively with just about every male she comes across. She is, in other words, polyandrous.
This promiscuous behavior serves a vital function in primate social life — it ensures, for the female, that the paternity of her inevitable children can never be accurately determined, and all the males of the troop are equally likely to share food with her (and not kill her children).
In primate species with polyandrous females, it happens that the males of species have extremely large testicles. But of course this makes sense — the ability to produce frequent, voluminous, and sperm-rich ejaculate is a feature ofsperm competition; lots of sperm mixing in the female interior, and the necessity for lots of “kamikaze sperm” whose only purpose is to block other sperm from approaching the eggs.
Naturally, if a female has many different mating partners, the partner with the most sperm who is able to ejaculate in the most quantity is also most likely to become the father of the next generation.
In this way, small-testicled males were weeded out by generations of selective pressure.
Does sperm competition exist in humans? Well, human testicles are mid-sized; not as big (by comparison to body weight) as those of some primates (chimps), but bigger than others (gorillas). There is also evidence that human testicles have “powered down” and are actually capable of producing more sperm (per gram of tissue) than they currently do.
As well, a married or partnered human male has an interesting physiological response to his female partner’s absence — if a man’s wife or girlfriend has been absent from him all day and they have sex upon reuniting, he ejaculates more than if she has been with him all day long.
The only context in which this completely unconscious, automatic response makes sense is sperm competition; it is as if a man’s testicles assume that women who are absent have been out “receiving sperm donations” from other men.
These are our first clues that women may have been, or may be capable of being, more polyandrous and less faithful than they currently are.
Silent Oluvation
In some primates (and many mammals) the female’s estrus is announced either by brightly-colored inflamed areas (i.e., pink rear) triggered by hormones, or unique pheromones that are unmistakable to the male of the species (”heat”).
There are no such obvious cues in human women.
“Silent ovulation” makes sexual selectivity by the female even more potent — since even the woman doesn’t know exactly when she is most fertile, not only must her mate stick around and keep sexing her on a regular basis (in order to ensure paternity), but she can easily get better genetic material from another mate, and get away with it, simply by mating with her genetically-superior “lover” at the proper time of the month.
Silent ovulation is pretty clearly an evolved tool in order to make the sexual selection of the best male genes easier for women, just like the female orgasm.
A Hint from an Unlikely Place
It is an established and easily-verifiable fact that legal codes everywhere define “adultery” in terms of the marital status of the woman involved — without regards to the men.
A typical passage, from French Revolutionary law:
It is not adultery per se that the law punishes but only the possible introduction of alien children into the family and even the uncertainty that adultery creates in this regard. Adultery by the husband has no such consequence.
Now it should be easier to see why adulterous women have historically been punished so much more heavily than men (at times receiving the death penalty).
Despite the simplistic accusations that this is just evidence of patriarchy and sexism, the history of legal precedent shows no such disparity in punishing women unequally for murder, or stealing, or any other offense.
So why should adultery be so different? Why has it apparently always been so crucial for society to enforce anti-adultery laws?
The answer is because no act is more threatening to the fundamental fabric of society (the family unit) than adultery, since it threatens to throw doubt onto the question of paternity.
And this conclusion begs the question, Why did our forebears (and why do we now) care about paternity at all? Why not live like chimps, where all the women mate repeatedly with all the men, and all men therefore have a stake in raising all the children safely?
First, because most men (logically enough) want to have some measure of assurance that they are able to pass along their genes. Most men react badly (if not violently) to being duped into spending their hard-earned resources, labor and time in the support of a bastard child. This would not be so if it were not in every man’s best interest to pass on his own genes in the form of a child that is legitimately his.
Secondly, it’s difficult to pass along property, capital or any other sort of wealth — including the “divine right” of leadership by bloodlines — unless you can be absolutely sure of paternity.
Why Women Cheat
The answer should be pretty apparent by now.
A woman’s mind has been refined over millions of years of evolution into a social calculator that performs this sociological equation: how can I combine the Best Genes (from an Alpha male) with the best Childrearing Environment (from a Provider husband and his resources).
Remember, however, that women are still above all social and emotional thinkers…their reasons for infidelity are never that unitary and logical. More likely, infidelity is pursued at first not only out of a search for the Best Genes, but also out of an (unconscious) desire to build and develop an extended social network, and to develop a “social safety net” (remember, women value security above many other things — security in finances, emotions, and affiliation).
Fittingly, the surreptitious development of a “social safety net” (essentially a second family) corresponds with an increased chance of need it (if one is found out).
Men Balancing the Equation
Women cheat because of “needs” — genetic, emotional, sexual, affiliation.
But some of these “needs” may have a genetical trigger. i.e., a guy who fails to act “masculine” enough may automatically trigger a woman’s “Whoops-I-Married-A-Douchebag” response, and send her running to the nearest “dominant” man with open legs.
A female orgasm is sort of a subconscious signal that a man’s genetic material is valued. It’s also the result of some very deterministic application of pressure and rhythm to key erogenous zones, but it’s more than either of those things: it is above all a mental event that occurs when a woman has achieved the right mix of arousal, excitement, comfort and surrender.
When a woman has an orgasm during sex with you, it is because she has become convinced, for one reason or another, that your genetic material is very good. Your actions, dominance, ability to rock her world sexually, your looks, how symmetrical your features are, and musculature all go into this equation.
Behavior connotes genetics in a way that makes it almost easy to fool modern women — men with the best genes typically (though not always) act as if they knew they have the best genes (and therefore best chances of reproductive success), and these actions are noticeably different from the other men around them who do NOT have such confidence in their genes.
Hence the constant exhortation to “Be The Man.”
Therefore your average guy, regardless of the quality of his genes, who acts as if he had good genes can typically fool a much more attractive woman (at least for the 7 hour period required to get into her pants).
It may be, as well, that there is a an unconscious feedback loop in women — whereby if a main fails to get them off, they will subconsciously reach the conclusion that his genes are not worth having — so this explains why some extremely attractive men with very good genes don’t get laid very often.
PERSONAL STORY: I once had a District Manager who, despite being a shining example of genetic perfection, had basically no clue what to do with women. This guy was the perfect height, built like Vin Diesel (but more “traditionally” handsome), with beautiful straight teeth, deep blue eyes, and a wonderful smile: but one night, when we were drinking at his house waiting for some girls to show up, he turned and said to me,
“thirtyplus, I think….one thing that works with women….is humor. I think women like humor. What do you think?”
Palm. Forehead. Smack.
The Irony of Sociobiological Thinking in the Age of the Condom
But so what, you say, if women cheat to find better genes? And so what if they have silent ovulation and selective orgasms and all this other evolutionary technology?
Clearly, all this holdover thinking is nonsense because we have GOOD birth control now — not just orgasms that can select the amount of sperm that gets retained — but condoms, IUD, hormonal pills, even a possible male pill.
Of course it’s ridiculous — but it’s still powerful and the driving unconscious motivators for whatever we do in regards to reproduction.
The sexual selection mechanisms hardwired into our genes (and instincts) are too recently evolved to have even been touched by the effect of condoms (which were developed in the last few thousand years) or any other birth control method. If a study exists anywhere that suggests that women orgasm at a lesser rate during intercourse when their partner is wearing a condom, I’d love to see it.
Until then, I will maintain that adultery is natural and to be expected, and women, although they can choose to be faithful (just like men), are much more likely to chase after the signals that connote good genes, in an painfully logical but curiously pointless quest to capture the “Best” genes.
To sum up: our society is built on monogamous pair bonding with rampant adultery. Let’s face it, not fear it.