Besides the great pressure from religious and cultural mores to stay faithful, and the threat of retribution, there are prizes for fidelity.
"There are more complex types of happiness to be found in behaving in an open and moral way, negotiating whatever problems there are," Kramer says.
Monogamy is "essentially an arms treaty," Lipton says. "Given the ubiquity of sexual jealousy, I will agree not to make my partner crazy with sexual jealousy by foreclosing some of my sexual options, if my partner agrees not to make me crazy by foreclosing his options."
From an evolutionary standpoint, it also has advantages for men. First of all, it ensures that the child you're working so hard to rear is biologically related to you, and secondly, to ensure that you get a mate, if you're an average guy. In social groups that form harems, males at the top of the heap get all the women. "Monogamy equally distributes males and females in the culture, instead of Wilt Chamberlain getting 20,000 women, and somebody else getting zero," Lipton says.
And there are warm, fuzzy reasons. "As I'm growing older and my husband's growing older, and we're monogamous, it's so pleasant to have one other person that you trust completely," Lipton says. "It's a treasure."
Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD, on April 25, 2005
SOURCES: Judith Lipton, MD, author, The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People. Peter Kramer, MD, host, The Infinite Mind, author, Listening to Prozac, Should You Leave?, and Against Depression. Don-David Lusterman, PhD, marriage and family therapist; author, Infidelity: A Survival Guide. Luanne Cole Weston, PhD, sex therapist; author, Sex Matters®. Priya Batra, PsyD, psychologist, Kaiser Permanente. "American Sexual Behavior: Trends, Socio-Demographic Differences, and Risk Behavior," General Social Survey Topical Report No. 25, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, April 2003.
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