Do Men make affairs with multiple women’s Is It true?
Humans are naturally polygamous
The history of human civilization aside, humans are
naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very
rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced
in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy
is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have been polygynous
throughout most of history because men are taller than women.
Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of
polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are
larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size
disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and
20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans
have been mildly polygynous.
Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater
fitness variance (the distance between the "winners" and the
"losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among females
because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The
greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to
compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating
opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and
females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with
big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against
predators and other males.
In societies where rich men are much richer than
poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy
men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better
than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal
instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the
exclusive possession of a third-rate one." Despite the fact that humans
are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men
tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors
in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in
complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization
tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
Most women benefit from polygyny, while most
men benefit from monogamy
When there is resource inequality among men—the
case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a
wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.
The only exceptions are extremely desirable women.
Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they
must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is
exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife.
True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much
better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be
better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who
are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are
lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under
monogamy.
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