Sexual faithfullnes

[DrZoidberg]

As a woman, I would not be interested in being in an open relationship firstly for the reason of sexual health and secondly because of emotional and fiscal entanglements that could be destabilizing to long term goals and present living arrangements.

I just spent a weekend in Berlin with a group of women and men, most of who were poly, most had kids. We spent a lot of time talking about raising children. Because of this thread I kept on analyzing through all our discussions. It was interesting how these children were really raised by a tribe. Everybody was in everybody's business (in a good way). Everybody backing each other up.

 

[gmbteach]

I think it depends on what you and your partner deem to be 'cheating'.

For me, it has always been any form of intimacy - whether that be physical, verbal, or whatever. Once in a committed relationship, I am intimate with that one person and no one else. I expect the same of my partner.

However, if you are in an open relationship, then boundaries may or may not need to be defined. Some relationships are open, and in my single days, I met quite a number of men who claim that their wives allowed them to have other partners.. None of them were me!

Not sure if this helps or not.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think it depends on what you and your partner deem to be 'cheating'.

For me, it has always been any form of intimacy - whether that be physical, verbal, or whatever. Once in a committed relationship, I am intimate with that one person and no one else. I expect the same of my partner.

However, if you are in an open relationship, then boundaries may or may not need to be defined. Some relationships are open, and in my single days, I met quite a number of men who claim that their wives allowed them to have other partners.. None of them were me!

Not sure if this helps or not.

I'm thinking about norms. If you were in an open relationship would you be quiet about it?

I think it's way more common to say that you're in an open relationship than actually being in one. Especially in bars when you're trying to get laid.

 

[gmbteach]

I think it depends on what you and your partner deem to be 'cheating'.

For me, it has always been any form of intimacy - whether that be physical, verbal, or whatever. Once in a committed relationship, I am intimate with that one person and no one else. I expect the same of my partner.

However, if you are in an open relationship, then boundaries may or may not need to be defined. Some relationships are open, and in my single days, I met quite a number of men who claim that their wives allowed them to have other partners.. None of them were me!

Not sure if this helps or not.

I'm thinking about norms. If you were in an open relationship would you be quiet about it?

I think it's way more common to say that you're in an open relationship than actually being in one. Especially in bars when you're trying to get laid.

True.

 

[fromderinside]

So I'm hearing rumblings among the "we're doing this" set about mores in bars versus mores elsewhere. Really? If you're in the moment in a bar do you actually think your going to do anything other than you would as a dating/married/committed couple? It didn't work that way for me at all. Truth be said though I was there before and after the beginning of 'the pill' era.

 

[Canard DuJour]

The word 'cuckold' derives from cuckoo. Given that we evolved in a world without contraception, sexual jealousy is as natural as sexual attraction. If you happen not to feel sexual jealousy, it'd be as difficult to explain to you as sexual attraction to someone who doesn't feel it. Neither is arrived at through logic or deduction.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The word 'cuckold' derives from cuckoo. Given that we evolved in a world without contraception, sexual jealousy is as natural as sexual attraction. If you happen not to feel sexual jealousy, it'd be as difficult to explain to you as sexual attraction to someone who doesn't feel it. Neither is arrived at through logic or deduction.

But if you know the source of it, then you can work on it. A person who is jealous is insecure. It's always rooted in some uneasiness in the relationship. The fact that either party is jealous means that something in the relationship isn't working. If a relationship isn't working it needs to be fixed or ended. Staying in a relationship like that without it improving over time is a recipe for unhappiness.

A person who is jealous in every relationship shouldn't be in a relationship until they've learned to love themselves. People like that tend to pick partners as a form of self harm or self abuse. The jealousy is often their least problem. It's also bad for the other party, sine they're prevented from working on themselves. They might go through life thinking their toxic relationship patterns are fine.

And finally, being in a dysfunctional relationship is normal. Our society has completely normalized destructive relationships. So we can't lean back on our elders for support on this one. We're pretty much on our own.

 

[fromderinside]

OK, assume all sexual relationships, being based on emotion, are dysfunctional and that dysfunctional relationships are normal. What I get from that is either human emoton is a normally destabilizing social factor or that, somehow, in our modern societies we've failed to bring emotional maturity into our quest to train our offspring to be functional.

I'm going to presume that nature, genes and evolution, tend to bring us to a functional state whatever our social arrangements be.

I'm also going to presume social evolution tends to weed out dysfunctional relationships if they are destabilizing.

Of course all this breaks down if our socialization capacities are exceeded by our population productivity. Such things as 300 unique face recognition capacity is destructively exceeded or that normal semi-permanent pairing tendencies, looking at all civilizations together, are violated by sheer availability and variety of possible mates or something.

Given the variety of extant models for sexual behavior, for tolerance of such, in modern sub-sustaining population producing conditionds in advanced densely populated nations it seems to me that density and freedom from sexual behavior consequences are probably the result of failure for proper social response to release of sexual and physical comfort need constraints.

Then all bets are off vis a vis normal reactions such as the prohibiting power of shaming or punishing for cuckold behavior.

If consequences for behavior aren't socially held in check at acceptable levels then breakdown of semi-permanent bonding would be imminent.

Here is where I think the current evidence of discounting cuckolding comes into play.

Apparently we are in some sexual behavior social shifting paradigm where multiple partners are viable because of fewer holding consequences, like children, as products of such behavior.

Just my take or just sayin' ....

 

[DrZoidberg]

OK, assume all sexual relationships, being based on emotion, are dysfunctional and that dysfunctional relationships are normal. What I get from that is either human emotin is a normally destabilizing social factor or that somehow in our modern societies we've failed to bring emotional maturity into our quest to train our offspring to be functional.

I'm going to presume that nature, genes and evolution, tend to bring us to a functional state whatever our social arrangements be.

I'm also going to presume social evolution tends to weed out dysfunctional relationships if they are destabilizing.

Of course all this breaks down if our socialization capacities are exceeded by our population productivity. Such things as 300 unique face recognition capacity is destructively exceeded or that normal semi-permanent pairing tendencies, looking at all civilizations together, are violated by sheer availability and variety of possible mates or something.

Then all bets are off vis a vis normal reactions such as the prohibiting power of shaming or punishing for cuckold behavior.

If consequences for behavior aren't socially held in check at acceptable levels then breakdown of semi-permanent bonding would be imminent.

Here is where I think the current evidence of discounting cuckolding comes into play.

apparently we are in some sexual behavior social shifting paradigm where multiple partners are viable because of fewer holding consequences like children as products of such behavior.

Just my take or just sayin' ....

Where's your evidence that permanent pair-bonding is natural for our species? No animal is capable of having sexual and relationship behaviours not natural for it. It's a fair assumption that the same applies to human. Otherwise it would be special pleading.

We've clearly evolved to raise children communally, in small groups. It's also a fair bet that pair-bonding was fairly fluid within the tribe. We've no reason to believe that our ancestors had any clue that sperm led to children. That's an insight that probably arose when we became farmers. Ie, not that long ago. And farm life was unnatural for us. So is modern life.

I think we've evolved for exceedingly complicated relationships, with one or more partners. Why, do I think that? Because we are capable of it. Some of us will want to be monogamous. Some of us will want to be serial monogamists. Some of us want to be polyamorous.

Among social species there's hierarchies. Monogamists tend to not-be-so monogamous if they have a chance to bonk somebody higher on the status ladder. I think that is how it works for humans.

Jealousy is when we don't like reality and we try to stop it. That never ends well.

 

[fromderinside]

There is a large body of evidence supporting long term pair relationships as the mode in humans.

One study is presented here: Sexual Strategies Theory: An Evolutionary Pwespective on Human Mating https://www.researchgate.net/profil...man_Mating/links/0deec5181791b73d35000000.pdf

At core are strategic considerations of males and females under a variety of environmental and social conditions. At the root of women's choices are long term relationships and caring for offspring in their strategies which favors long term pairing whenever possible. Just as with male genes male choices are more tactical and less consistent in nature. This is the sort of thing that leads me to believe long term relationships tend to be modal in humans just as it does in other species that invest a lot of resources in child rearing.

That being said I agree we are capable of many forms of sexual relationships which our kind of flippy genetics tends to tell us. My point was not that we are of this and this only, but rather, we are in a climate where our strategies are testing our social cohesiveness leading us toward strategies where resources and child rearing are less dominant in our strategy formation and realizations. Also our populations have increased so that we can no longer readily manage even local social cohesiveness or constancy. In other words our local sexual history is being compromised.

As for awareness of capabilities and causes I believe we were much earlier than agriculture able to know our exchanges of fluids were at the heart of reproduction.

 

[DrZoidberg]

There is a large body of evidence supporting long term pair relationships as the mode in humans.

One study is presented here: Sexual Strategies Theory: An Evolutionary Pwespective on Human Mating https://www.researchgate.net/profil...man_Mating/links/0deec5181791b73d35000000.pdf

At core are strategic considerations of males and females under a variety of environmental and social conditions. At the root of women's choices are long term relationships and caring for offspring in their strategies which favors long term pairing whenever possible. Just as with male genes male choices are more tactical and less consistent in nature. This is the sort of thing that leads me to believe long term relationships tend to be modal in humans just as it does in other species that invest a lot of resources in child rearing.

That being said I agree we are capable of many forms of sexual relationships which our kind of flippy genetics tends to tell us. My point was not that we are of this and this only, but rather, we are in a climate where our strategies are testing our social cohesiveness leading us toward strategies where resources and child rearing are less dominant in our strategy formation and realizations. Also our populations have increased so that we can no longer readily manage even local social cohesiveness or constancy. In other words our local sexual history is being compromised.

That's not so much a study as speculation. It's fun with numbers. I don't think you could have possibly have found a softer study. I'm not saying it's wrong. But it's about on par with your opinion without that study to back it up.

Hunter-gathers take care of their off-spring communally. Everybody shares everything. The pay off for a man for being a good hunter isn't that he'll have more food. It's that he'll get higher status in the group. The pay-off for a woman to be paired bonded with a high-status man is that she'll also get high status. But the care of the off-spring is the same, high or low status. So the so-common argument made by your study does not hold water. And it has gotten a lot of critique, ever since it was first proposed, of being overly simplistic. It just doesn't match or explain how actual hunter-gathers live their lives.

That study assumes a society something like the Flintstones.

As for awareness of capabilities and causes I believe we were much earlier than agriculture able to know our exchanges of fluids were at the heart of reproduction.

How could they possibly have known? Even hypothetically? We've studied surviving hunter-gatherer societies now for a long time. In hunter gatherer society they often have rituals surrounding sex. These often lead to young women having sex with many men. Sometimes simultaneously. Various initiation rites. Women often have enough partners for it to be impossible to track fatherhood. Many hunter gatherer societies have initiation rites where the tribal shaman takes the virginity of every girl. I don't think that would be happening if they had a clear understanding of the birds and the bees.

Nah... I don't buy it.

 

[Canard DuJour]

The word 'cuckold' derives from cuckoo. Given that we evolved in a world without contraception, sexual jealousy is as natural as sexual attraction. If you happen not to feel sexual jealousy, it'd be as difficult to explain to you as sexual attraction to someone who doesn't feel it. Neither is arrived at through logic or deduction.

But if you know the source of it, then you can work on it.

Perhaps, but that doesn't contradict what I said.

A person who is jealous is insecure. It's always rooted in some uneasiness in the relationship. The fact that either party is jealous means that something in the relationship isn't working. If a relationship isn't working it needs to be fixed or ended. Staying in a relationship like that without it improving over time is a recipe for unhappiness.

A person who is jealous in every relationship shouldn't be in a relationship until they've learned to love themselves. People like that tend to pick partners as a form of self harm or self abuse. The jealousy is often their least problem. It's also bad for the other party, sine they're prevented from working on themselves. They might go through life thinking their toxic relationship patterns are fine.

And finally, being in a dysfunctional relationship is normal. Our society has completely normalized destructive relationships. So we can't lean back on our elders for support on this one. We're pretty much on our own.

OK, that's morbid jealousy - irrational fear that a partner is cheating. Perhaps I wasn't clear, but I was talking about aversion to being cheated upon, which is common in healthy relationships between people not lacking in self-esteem etc. There are pretty obvious evolutionary rationales for that.

That's not to say that polygamy or polyamory are unhealthy or anomalous. If claims by some anthropologists about some extant hunter gatherers are to be believed, I'd guess that sexual jealousy - like most emotional responses - varies in extent with environment. We might expect more sexual jealousy (and morbid sexual jealousy) in more atomistic cultures with less resource pooling, and to that extent I'd agree with you.

 

[fromderinside]

OKey DOkey then DrZoidberg.

How does this sum up our dispute?

In most mammalian species, males compete for access to mates and invest nothing in parenting. The best reproductive outcome is achieved by the males that sire the most offspring (Andersson, 1994; Clutton-Brock, 1989).Men’s parental investment complicates reproductive dynamics. Specifically, men are predicted to show a more mixed reproductive strategy, preferring multiple casual sexual partners and a single (or serial) long-term partner.In the latter relationships, men are predicted to be and are similar to women in many of their mate choice criteria(Geary, 2000; Kenrick et al., 1990). The primary differences are that men are more focused on the physical traits of a long-term mate and less concerned about her cultural success or her potential for cultural success (Buss, 1989;Li et al., 2000). In theory, men should have evolved to focus on those physical attributes of women that are predictive of their reproductive potential, specifically their ability to conceive, carry, and birth healthy children. These traits include age, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, and breast symmetry, among others (Andersen et al., 2000;Singh, 1993a; Møller et al., 1995; Zaadstra et al., 1993).As predicted, men do indeed focus on these traits when judging the attractiveness of women as potential short term and long-term mates (Kenrick & Keefe, 1992).

Although there is still much to be learned, it has become clear that the evolutionary perspective adds to our understanding of human mate choices and other reproductive and sexual behaviors. It is important to understand that this perspective does not mean there is a single strategy for women and another for men. Rather, how men and women use their reproductive potential is predicted to vary with resource availability, social dynamics (e.g., the OSR), cultural mores, and characteristics of the individual (Flinn & Low, 1986; Pratto & Hegarty, 2000). The goal should not be to debate the utility of evolutionary versus cultural and experiential influences on human sexuality, but rather to study how our evolutionary history interacts with current and developmental circumstances to produce observable mate choice patterns and other aspects of human sexual behavior.

from: Evolution of Human Mate Choice https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/86c5/0f78d2270272b9252aa18b0944070e1868e1.pdf

IOW evolution must be taken across cultures over history to arrive at overriding factors. Its not hunter gatherer, agricultural, migrant, explorer, urban, etc. Its patterns across time. Those type examples illustrate the range across which the overriding factors universally apply. What we see today across mankind pretty much illustrates our evolutionary patterns. Quibbling about communal and single women caring isn't really important. Rather its children need women caring including grandparents in the culture. Men are pretty much allowed to be brutes except when there is little demand for their brutality in resources getting such as modern society in the industrialized nations where birth rates are way down below ZPG without natural hazzards.

Interesting how the immigration play is going where men seem to be responding with their typical physical us-them behavior doncha think.

As for men observing and playing with semen that pretty much goes across time to our Ape cousins. Pretty sure even they recognize the relation between that and babies later. If not we may as well be cats with almost no long term memory except place and goal.

 

[Underseer]

Different strokes for different folks. I got nothing against people who enjoy open relationships, but it's definitely not for me.

When I was a randy teenager, I read about swingers and thought their lifestyle was amazing and enviable. Just imagine: a relationship that got stronger with infidelity instead of weaker. I was convinced that the swinger lifestyle was the lifestyle for me. I read what I could about it (which wasn't much): such as about the rules couples would establish at the start of a relationship. I had lots of fantasies about being in such a relationship.

At the ripe old age of seventeen, I dated a 22 year old and we had an open relationship. We weren't swingers, it was just an open relationship. Turns out I hated it. I was completely wrong about myself.

When I was with other women, I felt dirty, like someone who didn't deserve to be loved. When I thought about her being with other guys, it didn't make me jealous (I never get jealous), but it made me sad because it meant that the relationship wasn't the kind of relationship that I wanted.

So that was my one and only foray into the world of open relationships. I didn't like it at all and have no interest in ever doing it again. I do kind of envy swingers, I will admit, but I know all too well that it's not for me.

 

[fromderinside]

What is it about sexual faithfulness? Lying to yourself about how great your partner is, feeling the touches again and again, reifying memories, or is it just some feeling.

I concluded its just a feeling.

Got me thinking about things like evolution of autonomic nervous system, fighting fish waggle dances, design being blown all to smithereens when scientists found some sympathetic innervation switched from cholinergic to adrenergic in mammals better defining the function of sympathetic and parasympathetic aspect of the autonomic NS function based of effects. Another factor of autonomic evolution is the trend from action to inhibition across phyla, and within a being, across age.

Of course this wandering has to go somewhere. Well is signals to me that feelings of love and fidelity are actually wired into us to a large extent with the cerebrum arbitrating or being arbitrated by the tendencies of ANS described above.

For instance, Underseer as a teenager held one view, but now, as a practiced adult, he has another. It may be that this change from experimenting to considering was inevitable due to his gaming function having become more cautious simply because cholinergic effects were now dominant. Putting this into words isn't either poetic or satisfying. So, perhaps, God is invented and morality has a rational place where its actually just biochemistry and evolution.

 

[rousseau]

What is it about sexual faithfulness? Lying to yourself about how great your partner is, feeling the touches again and again, reifying memories, or is it just some feeling.

I concluded its just a feeling.

Got me thinking about things like evolution of autonomic nervous system, fighting fish waggle dances, design being blown all to smithereens when scientists found some sympathetic innervation switched from cholinergic to adrenergic in mammals better defining the function of sympathetic and parasympathetic aspect of the autonomic NS function based of effects. Another factor of autonomic evolution is the trend from action to inhibition across phyla, and within a being, across age.

Of course this wandering has to go somewhere. Well is signals to me that feelings of love and fidelity are actually wired into us to a large extent with the cerebrum arbitrating or being arbitrated by the tendencies of ANS described above.

For instance, Underseer as a teenager held one view, but now, as a practiced adult, he has another. It may be that this change from experimenting to considering was inevitable due to his gaming function having become more cautious simply because cholinergic effects were now dominant. Putting this into words isn't either poetic or satisfying. So, perhaps, God is invented and morality has a rational place where its actually just biochemistry and evolution.

Holy **** man just get your wife some roses already!

 

[DrZoidberg]

Of course this wandering has to go somewhere. Well is signals to me that feelings of love and fidelity are actually wired into us to a large extent with the cerebrum arbitrating or being arbitrated by the tendencies of ANS described above.

For instance, Underseer as a teenager held one view, but now, as a practiced adult, he has another. It may be that this change from experimenting to considering was inevitable due to his gaming function having become more cautious simply because cholinergic effects were now dominant. Putting this into words isn't either poetic or satisfying. So, perhaps, God is invented and morality has a rational place where its actually just biochemistry and evolution.

Well obviously. To think we have any conscious control over sexuality and mating would be delusional. Of course it's 100% instinct.

 

[Underseer]

What is it about sexual faithfulness? Lying to yourself about how great your partner is, feeling the touches again and again, reifying memories, or is it just some feeling.

I concluded its just a feeling.

Got me thinking about things like evolution of autonomic nervous system, fighting fish waggle dances, design being blown all to smithereens when scientists found some sympathetic innervation switched from cholinergic to adrenergic in mammals better defining the function of sympathetic and parasympathetic aspect of the autonomic NS function based of effects. Another factor of autonomic evolution is the trend from action to inhibition across phyla, and within a being, across age.

Of course this wandering has to go somewhere. Well is signals to me that feelings of love and fidelity are actually wired into us to a large extent with the cerebrum arbitrating or being arbitrated by the tendencies of ANS described above.

For instance, Underseer as a teenager held one view, but now, as a practiced adult, he has another. It may be that this change from experimenting to considering was inevitable due to his gaming function having become more cautious simply because cholinergic effects were now dominant. Putting this into words isn't either poetic or satisfying. So, perhaps, God is invented and morality has a rational place where its actually just biochemistry and evolution.

My position didn't change so much as I found out what it really was through evidence.

And god isn't moral. Never was. Theists use specious moral claims to get people to be afraid of questioning the religion. I think the idea that everyone should be monogamous is outdated, but there decision should be up to individuals. What is right for one person may not be right for another.

 

[Bronzeage]

Of course this wandering has to go somewhere. Well is signals to me that feelings of love and fidelity are actually wired into us to a large extent with the cerebrum arbitrating or being arbitrated by the tendencies of ANS described above.

For instance, Underseer as a teenager held one view, but now, as a practiced adult, he has another. It may be that this change from experimenting to considering was inevitable due to his gaming function having become more cautious simply because cholinergic effects were now dominant. Putting this into words isn't either poetic or satisfying. So, perhaps, God is invented and morality has a rational place where its actually just biochemistry and evolution.

Well obviously. To think we have any conscious control over sexuality and mating would be delusional. Of course it's 100% instinct.

If it's 100% instinct, I wish someone could explain the instinct to dress up as furry animals. As far as the data indicates, humans are the only animal to indulge in sexual fetishes and other behavior which is sexual, but definitely non-procreative.

 

[fromderinside]

The two above reminds me of "seven in one blow" and dragons.

Tell me, did the hook hurt?