Gen. David Petraeus stepped down from his position as CIA director last week due to an extramarital affair with his biographer -- married author and West Point graduate Paula Broadwell. Ironically, in the book authored by Broadwell, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus," the former general claims his number one rule is to "lead by example from the front of the formation."
Was he leading by example when he had an affair?
President Clinton, former Senator John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and now the retired four-star general are all examples of men in power who publicly cheated on their spouses. And they stand in "formation" along with the rest of us; more than 55 percent of Americans will cheat on their spouses at some point in their marriages.
Why?
Monogamy in marriage is not an easy choice. Long-term monogamy is difficult; it's hard to maintain sexual desire for one person for 10 or 20 years, much less for half a century.
In fact, researchers claim that monogamy may not be genetically inherent to humans as a species. Even man's closest primate relative, the bonobo chimp, is sexually active without distinction for partners or pair bonding. The female bonobo monkey chooses a mate, drags the male out into the jungle and has hot monkey sex with him for about two weeks before bringing him back into the pack, spent and exhausted. Then, she chooses another male and repeats her process. And she is our closest primate relative. (Females of our species sometimes do the same!)
Yet, monogamy is not so much a sexual dilemma as it is a moral dilemma. If we promise to stay faithful to one person for a lifetime, how do we keep that promise and not lie or cheat? If we are at heart a moral person -- as most of us believe ourselves to be -- how do we maintain our own morality and preserve our own integrity in the face of our basic desire to feel wanted, to feel alive and to find passion?
Human monogamy is a choice -- a learned decision that we practice every day. It may not be something we are biologically predisposed to, yet we are not biologically predisposed to eating with a fork either. And monogamy as a moral choice means that humans can work on staying faithful, but that marriage itself is not natural or easy.
What couples struggle with is how to live in society and follow a higher order without acting on their baser, more primitive needs. How do we honor our need for love and passion and at the same time, create a modern moral code that we can live with and feel good about?
The larger question about the monogamy-morality link is whether it can work in marriage as we know it. If monogamy fails more than half of the time, are we looking at a system that no longer serves our needs? Are we holding onto a romanticized notion of love and desire, hoping that we can get it right, but continuing to fail at it over and over again? What is the moral code that we are holding ourselves up to and why do we continue to fall short of our ideal? Do we just give lip service to the model and continue to follow our own desires and lie behind our partners backs, hoping we don't get caught?
Perhaps we need to create a new monogamy that begins with honesty. It seems that the hiding and the lying is what gets us into real trouble. The shame that comes with being caught is not so much from the sexual betrayal as as it is from the fact that the affair was kept hidden. It's the lying and the lack of honesty that challenges our moral code.
Monogamy is not a sexual dilemma but a dilemma of integrity.
What separates us from the primates is our ability to the tell the truth. We know the difference between lying and being honest. We may not always have a clear choice between our desires and our sexual dilemmas, but we can decide to take the higher moral road and tell the truth.
So perhaps Gen. Petraeus is still leading from the front of the formation by admitting his mistake and coming clean. Living with integrity doesn't mean we never make mistakes; we're not perfect. But we have choices. Telling the truth is not always the easier path, but it can save us from a whole mess of problems later on.
Dr. Tammy Nelson is a sex and relationship expert and the author of The New Monogamy; Redefining Your Relationship after Infidelity
Follow Tammy Nelson, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drtammynelson
The only possible structure for building a family and other long term intimate relationship.
This idea, that almighty god has decreed that only OUR form of marriage is valid - the myth of eternal monogamy for all.
First off, the "monogamy" we REALLY practice, at best could be called "serial monogamy".
We are with one person until the union crumbles, then we go on to the next.
Frequently violating even THIS form of "monogamy".
Most people, THE WORLD OVER, do NOT even try to practice monogamy and opt for polygamy or - here's a thought: HONESTY!!
When you are FORCED into monogamy, as the ONLY option, cheating is inevitable.
Men are hardly the only one's to cheat...
Right now modern humans are in an unsettled period. Contraception has made it possible for women to enjoy sex without fear of pregnancy. In the meantime, porn has hijacked the minds and hearts of men and men have created hookup culture to let them have loveless meaningless drunken sex with whoever they pick up that night. Eventually, humans will adapt to the new technologies and settle into whatever forms the technology dictates.
The author's non-monogamous notions will lead to the complete destruction of the family; if that happens, the society will not thrive. To keep the species going, women need to reproduce and the reality is that children do best in a stable intact home with two biological parents who love, support and encourage them. The data has shown unequivocally that children of single parents have much higher rates of drug abuse, suicide, dropping out of school and failing generally in life. Indeed, in my Stanford graduating class, almost every graduating classmate came from an intact family of two parents. If you get rid of monogamy, as this author recommends, then you get rid of marriage and family and successful offspring and your society degenerates. What you are left with is promiscuous men living in bachelor houses and women struggling to raise and support themselves and their children.
This is only the case because our society still does not accept "alternative" scenarios. There have been (and some still exist) societies where children were raised by the community, and I do not believe there is any evidence that this was harmful to the children.
"The data has shown unequivocally that children of single parents have much higher rates of drug abuse, suicide, dropping out of school and failing generally in life."
What does non-monogamy have to do with single parents?
"If you get rid of monogamy, as this author recommends, then you get rid of marriage and family and successful offspring and your society degenerates."
Wrong
"What you are left with is promiscuous men living in bachelor houses and women struggling to raise and support themselves and their children."
Incorrect.
I'm going to go ahead and assume that you probably don't support gay marriage, either.
The reality is that we live under a patriarchy and in patriarchy kids do best with a mother and a father, in part because patriarchy values men, but also the orgnaism has what could roughly be called an unconscious cellular knowlege that s/he was formed from a mother and a father and should have the love of both.
Read some anthropology about cultures where the men live in bachelor's houses. Think even of militaries.
I agree that over human history, different societies and cultures have organized family in various and different ways; that the strongest family bond is mother/infant, mother/child; most cultures and societies have formed families based on marriage or its functional equivalent, a mother and father raising children, in the old days in the context of the tribe or village, nowadays in single-family homes or apartments. Technology has put things in flux and it remains to be seen how things will settle out.
But I will say that more and more I am seeing couples of my generation (aged 29-35) making it work better than our parents generation because we have more information about how to make a marriage work (advice, books, programmes etc) and also, because marriage is such a sacrifice these days, most people, in cities atleast, are making it work because they understand the disadvantages of it all going wrong.
Many women are also not willing to compromise since they are financially independent. Many men can't therefore find a woman because they are not marriage-worthy.
I think the reasons many people used to marry have become defunct (financial, societal status, acceptance) and only the people that really want to marry or have found the person they want to marry are taking the plunge. Yes, technology and contraception have a part to play, but the choice element has the greatest impact. It is no longer unacceptable to choose to remain single.
I don't think we all quite as doomed as you make it out and I also don't think the author is right about monogamy being unnatural.
1. I have seen that people are often more generous with strangers than they are with their own spouses. Setting narcissism aside, I think it is because we just haven't seen the stranger baggage yet--they are a clean slate.
2. Speaking of narcissists, the vows we make, even the for better or worse, I think assume a standard of reasonableness and mutuality, traits the increasing number of narcissists do not have. When a spouse exhausts all efforts to communicate with the other, it is time to detach and take care of ourselves. This usually happens after months and years of anguish, study counseling...and it is not the comfort and connection seeking adulterer who is selfish, but rather the withholding, cold, full of himself spouse who gets left at home.
3. I am more attracted to someone who connects with me on an emotional level regardless of looks, thoughts, and false presentations.
How do I know? Personal experience......
I'm in a marriage of 35 years in duration, 4 children, tough times and fabulous times and ultimately the realization that we, above all others, absolutely enjoy each other as much and even more so on many levels than we did 35 years ago.....
So go ahead and rationalize WHY people can't stay married and WHY it's not inherently expected.
And we who enjoy the magic of a long marriage to someone who knows us better than ourselves and loves us unconditionally can smiling knowing that we are the lucky ones....
When self-awareness and long-term memory developed in homo sapiens,, so more complex behaviour patterns forged what we now know as civilization. Morality, cheating and guilt are mere by-products, ...BUT!
So is trust. It operates at the primitive level of animal herds and suchwise; even more so with homo sapiens. Throw that out of the window (not just in sexual relationships) and the road to decline has been trod. It's the bond that glues society.
Also, what happens to the potentially dysfunctional offspring (disregareding any convoluted contract or arrangement) if free-for-all behaviour prevails. In fact, not once was the effect on children mentioned in this blog.
It seems that self-interest - like the business world - is now king or queen.
This Tammy drags in hack and simplistic biology when comparing monkeys to humans. Many other creatures have matching DNA, but wildly different lifestyles and sexual proclivities. The crunch point is also self-awareness and long-term memory both only in homo sapiens.
The sexual drive is third in the pecking order of survival forces, below hunger and thirst (excluding auto motor reactions such as breathing and heart beats). Such forces come under the overweening umbrella of the pleasure-pain principle. And that's where marriage, infidelity, morality and whatever else comes into play. Forget just sexual urges and cheating, any form of relationship and social bonding depends on trust. Throw that out of the window and you tread the road to declince and extinction: a purely Darwinian brick in the structure of civilisation.
Lastly, something that was not even raised in the article; what happens to the potentially dysfunctional offspring in a free-for-all society. It seems - like business ethics - that self-interest rules the roost nowadays.
People should think of relationships like modern-day jobs. You'll have lots in your life. If we stopped expecting things to last forever, people could be more intelligent in planning their lives. When a relationship no longer works, the parties should move on. If you move to a new community, we don't see that as failure -- it's just change.
Some people say it's a telling revelation of their character. Really? Under that theory, the public should examine how often somebody flosses -- a failure to floss several times a day suggests a reckless disregard of their own health, as well as laziness and inability to follow simple rules. Let's just leave the personal stuff personal.
If we want to judge character, there's usually a lot available outside of the bedroom. We don't need to sniff the sheets or the panties to decide if somebody is doing their job well. It's just the gossipy side of us that likes this stuff.
Or something like that.
Problem is, in a long term relationship usually one of the two is dedicated and doesn't want this. One person may be more desirable to the opposite sex and therefore have multiple opportunities to carrying on with extramarital relations while the other may not engage in these activities at all. Once these activities are part of the relationship then there is less need for the original relationship to exist. Sounds like it's better for people who are "naturally" not set up for monogamy to just not get married. That solves a lot.