Blah blah evolutionary psychology blah blah (or: another book defending non-monogamy in men)

January 5th, 2012

Vicki Larson, writing in the Huffington Post interviewed Dr. Eric Anderson, author of a new and “controversial” book that talks about how monogamy is wrong for men, who need to be having sex with different people to be happy. The non-monogamy thing becomes a hot debate every once in a while and while I’m all for opening it up again and again, I’m kinda fed up of the whole evolutionary psychology bull that comes with it and seems to put men in the centre of the need to have different partners, while women are assumed to be more into picking a partner that would care for the children. Then again, I’m also fed up of hearing about how men cheat because their brains are programmed to make them spread their seed and women cheat because they want to breed with alpha males but have the betas look after their young. I’m not saying this book says this last bit, by the way. I’ve not read it so I couldn’t tell you for sure. It’s just that whenever the non-monogamy debate is raised it’s all men men men and, frankly, we’ve already had the school of man-only polygamy being the norm (and in some countries it still is) and focusing on it from a pseudo-scientific angle seems dangerously close to the school of thought that claimed the female orgasm doesn’t exist – it completely ignores the fact that many women experience the same urges and have the same psychological needs as men when it comes to relationships.

In the conservative society we live in (and conservative it is, even though it pretends to be liberal) saying that men need to stray to be happy may be controversial, but it’s certainly not groundbreaking or new. It would be nice, just for a change, to have a broader debate about the whether monogamy is suitable for either men or women. I suspect, though, the answer to that is a little bit more down to the individual, which would paint a much more complex picture than going on about how men need to get off with other women all the time to be happy.

Entry Filed under: Relationships and dating