hypothesis, we are designed to be serial monogamist

[Mrlonelyone]

....or just a little polyandrous. Hear me out.

 

 

The most successful and attractive people are in demand. The top man can get and keep the top woman, for a while. They break up and date other comparable men and women, for a while. They have children with eachother who have better genes and they have more such children. The rest of us just scramble to keep our genes from being totally washed out in five or six generations.*

 

 

I look at the people I know who have the most full romantic lives male or female, they all had a series of long term relationships which produced a variety of children.

 

 

My mother has had two husbands and five children, two grand children and now two great grand children. In as little as ten more years she could be a great-great-grandmother.

 

 

My father has had one wife and has two illegitimate children from when he was in college. One of the women did not tell him he was a father at all until years latter. The other could not stand the social pressure of being in an IR relationship at the time and moved away. He has four children and a number of grandchildren and one great grandchild we know of.

 

 

My mother and father have been together for 40 years this year.

 

 

So serial monogamy can't be said to be a sign of low quality or lack of commitment ability or any other such thing.

 

 

___

 

 

My Uncle, has had three wives, six kids, many grandkids and one great grand kid in addition to one illegitimate kid.

 

 

 

 

I look around and I see that everywhere in the world most people have a series of significant relationships, almost never just one. It's not quite polyandry, but it is not monogamy in the truest sense of that word. It is universal as well. Even in places where more than one wife is possible most men have one wife at a time.

 

 

 

 

Have others noticed this pattern?

 

 

 

 

*Example, there is no one now living who is descended from Abraham Lincoln. (Lincoln family tree - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Alpha male president of the United State of America, savior of the Union, freeer of slaves. In strictly Darwinian terms his lineage was not fit enough. :shrug:

 

 

 

 

"Designed" by evolution and natural selection that is.

[D-Lish]

I don't think humans are "designed"- I think we're a random anomaly of nature just like every other living thing. We have opposable thumbs, and we have cognition. We think and feel on top of our instincts. What a recipe for disaster.

 

Monogamy is a human construction.

[jba10582]

this thread can go SO many different ways when assuming something so concretely. you can probably think of MANY different cases where this is just NOT the case with EVERYONE.

[Mrlonelyone]

this thread can go SO many different ways when assuming something so concretely. you can probably think of MANY different cases where this is just NOT the case with EVERYONE.

 

 

 

Well the thing is something like this only needs to be true "on average". It does not need to apply to 100% of people 100% of the time.

 

 

Some people meet one mate when they are 15 date only them, marry them at 18 and live to be 100 with them, then die at the same time. So for them they never know heartbreak and are really monogamous.

 

 

The other 99.8% of us probably have to date person, after person, and be in LTR's with person after person to find one person who's marriage worthy. Then about 1/2 of us who get married get divorced. Most of those who get divorced get re married and over 1/2 of those people get divorced again. Then remarried and divorced....

 

 

What I'm saying is that such a life is not actually failure. These people with multiple children from their various relationships are actually doing better, in the Darwinian sense, than someone who has only one or two kids from one person. It may feel like failure since we idealize monogamy in western culture right now. However it really is just the normal human condition.