AsiaOne Article - Strayers and Stayers

[g8crasher]

http://www.asiaone.com/Just%2BWoman/About%2BMe/Columns/Story/A1Story20080520-65974.html

Strayers and stayers (the age old topic on infidelity)

I was sitting in a hotel wine bar with some friends, having a quiet drink after a long, tiring day recently.

Suddenly, the calm of the lounge was broken.

In came three young women with mainland Chinese accents, dressed to the nines and speaking at the top of their voices.

Trailing them were three middle-aged Chinese men with Singaporean accents, with what looked like wedding bands on their ring fingers.

They had the satisfied, slightly sheepish look that some men get when they are in the company of flamboyantly attractive women who are not their wives. Maybe I over-interpret, but that's how they came across.

I wondered what their wives thought the husbands were doing that evening. Over the last few days, I did some "research" into the topic of fidelity, in particular whether men expect to remain faithful to their women. I asked the experts: the men.

Over lunch with a businessman in his 50s, who travels extensively and has a wide network of friends and associates, men and women, I asked how realistic it was for a woman to expect her husband to be faithful. Pause, and then: "Unrealistic."

The reasoning is simple: Say you're a man who likes to socialise, but your wife likes to stay home. She's a good mother and a good wife. What's a man to do but to hang out with his friends?

And say you're in the air and on the road much of the time because of business. If sometimes an attractive available woman comes along, what's a man to do?

So would the man want the wife to do the same? Would the man be okay if the woman "socialised" and flirted with other men?

A grin and a confession. "No."

Smart young man, in his 20s: "Monogamy is a social construct. Men are biologically made to stray. But the restraints of society and religion may make some faithful."

Okay, maybe I just asked the wrong sort of men.

Maybe most men out there love their wives and remain faithful ever after. Or maybe these men are speaking the truth about what they think.

What do women think?

When it comes to expectations of fidelity, there are two extremes.

Many women are brought up to think that marriage means happily ever after. They may think, in the abstract, that other men may stray, but not their own darling who loves them so much.

Years ago, I initiated a discussion of this topic with a close girlfriend and her husband. She was confident her man would never have an affair no matter what.

I painted a scenario: "You're travelling, and there's an attractive woman or man available. Do you indulge in a fling?"

The man said it would be tough not to. She was aghast. They ended up quarrelling. That was the last time I ever broached this subject with a man in front of his wife.

Women who expect their men to remain faithful always, as though it's an easy thing to do, live in a fairy tale world removed from reality.

They underestimate the discipline and commitment required to remain monogamous in today's modern society, when sexual attraction is the undercurrent in many a relationship, the sex act has been denuded of love and commitment, and religious and moral strictures are cast adrift.

Some men similarly try to re-create a make-believe world for themselves, keeping mistresses and girlfriends.

They justify infidelity to their wives by saying "what she doesn't know won't hurt her". The truth is that the woman usually knows anyway, but chooses to close one eye - and numb her bruised heart.

While unfaithful, these men expect their women to be chastely devoted to them only, justifying the double standards they practice with the statement that "men and women are different".

A lawyer friend solicited views among people he knew, and got this candid comment from a bachelor: "Men have millions of sperm, and women have only one egg at a time. So nature intended men to be polygamous." (ROFLMAO - g8crasher)

Evolutionary biologists in fact support this view and make a case for a biological difference that explains why men stray more.

They say men are prone to sexual straying because men can father offspring with multiple sex partners. This way, they spread their genes far and wide, without having the responsibility to care for their offspring.

In contrast, a woman who gets pregnant, can carry only one child at a time. She also needs the mate to provide for the child. Thus biological make-up, and the pressure to keep the mate, act as constraints on female infidelity.

My retort to this is simple: Biology need not be destiny.

My own view is that both sexes have the capacity to be faithful - or unfaithful.

Perhaps men are biologically more primed to do so. It is certainly socially more acceptable for men to stray than for women. The male philanderer is viewed with tolerance, even respect, as a stud; the female philanderer is viewed with contempt as a slut.

Whether from biological or social imperatives,the result is that more women try harder to be faithful to their mates, and more succeed. Men try less hard, and more fail.

This should not be an excuse for either sex to give up. Human beings are volitional creatures: We have the power of choice.

We can choose to surrender to impulse and instinct and live at that primordial level - or we can choose to honour the tenets of a humane society and the marital vow.

In the end, the biggest constraints on infidelity have to be love and commitment and the desire to protect the sanctity of an exclusive, committed relationship.

Mature love requires self-restraint and sacrifice - values so out of vogue in today's society, yet so central to maintaining a loving relationship.

A man who strays, knowingly hurts his wife - and vice versa.

No amount of self-justification can paint away the reality that every act of infidelity is an act of wanton destruction, an ugly red gash in the canvas of marriage.

Both sexes honour each other by respecting the strength of commitment that keeps one faithful to the other. It is true that in the end, many - men and women - will fail. But not to try at all is to make a travesty of love.