ANSWERS: 1
  • Biologically we are designed for non-monogamous relationships, and for short term relationships. Monogamy appears to go against the design of the penis. Its shape and the motions needed for sexual intercourse all lead to a 'sucking' out of any fluids that may be in the woman's vagina prior to depositing his own semen, this suggests that earlier in our history males were sexually competitive with other males. This action would remove earlier deposited semen, increasing the chances of the new male having his genetic material survive. Males testicles tell us that we are less sexually active than some primates, and more sexually active than other primate. Those primates with larger (in proportion) testes tend to be highly competitive, if you will the potential for a single female to mate with many males is high, the added extra sperm production therefor increases a single male's chance of successful procreation. On the other spectrum we have harem males, those who have several females and there is nearly no competition, they have smaller (in proportion to their body) testes, having no need to deliver a large amount of semen, their genetic survival is not threatened by competing semen. From some earlier state we went from strictly non-monogamous to part time monogamy, where for the sake of the young it became important for the male to work with the female to raise the offspring. We find that marriage or relationships start off with the heat of passion and then the love begins to cool, around about that time offspring enter into the picture, this gives added life to the relationship, were the couple become more intent (in most cases) on providing for the young. Once the young are around age 5-6 the need to tend to them becomes less of a male thing who will, unless otherwise well trained, start to wander. Thus we are psychologically 'hard wired' for short term relationships until the offspring at at an age where one parent can take care of them. Anthropologically speaking if our ancestors were strictly monogamous our species would not exist today. DNA suggests that our fathers and mothers had to intermingle a wee bit more than just one on one in order to lead to the diversity that our species has today, even within sub groupings of 'race' or 'regional' DNA types, there is evidence of lots of mixing that could not have taken place in the short period of time we have existed since the bottle neck (where a major die off of our species threatened our very existence) to the present if we had strict one man one woman lifetime mating. The number of years needed for each generation if far more than the time allowed. Marriage most likely sprung up around the time people started settling into settlements, where such things as ownership becomes very important to our species. Prior to that marriage may not have worked out too well, consider a small band of people always on the move, no way to mark ones territory effectively. But once you have a hut and some land then you can claim that woman as your property. Monogamy is a rather new idea, it appears that polygamy (one man, many wives) is or was considered a 'right' and many cultures have their roots set in polygamy, or still view polygamy as being a matter of prestige. Think 'King's Harem' and you see where the prestige comes in. Psychologically we humans are most likely not well suited for living with the same person for 60+ years, if you figure a couple meets when 20 and lives to just 80. 20 years is most likely the optimal period, which if we go back in time a few generations the life span was around 40 to 50 years of age, marriage took place, the couple had children, and soon after the children were adults and setting up their own housekeeping the parents died. A 'life long' commitment is easy if your adult life is 20 to 30 years, today your adult life is easily 60 years with an increasing potential to be 70, 80 even 90 years in future. Statistically first marriages *young marriages* end rather early on, then the second marriage or sometimes the third marriage becomes the 'one' that lasts for life, in like 50% of the population. This suggests that we humans are not well suited for a life long commitment at an earlier age (20 something) and become more settled, more mature in our 30's or later and can take on the longer marriage with higher success.

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