Why Do People Cheat?

Are there evolutionary motives, natural and logical for women cheat on their husbands?
What is so different from men?

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Science now knows quite a bit about how people associate with one another. The various options include quick sexual encounters, long-term relationships, random cheats, cases of polygamy (one man and several wives), polyandry (one woman and several husbands) Cases of Polyamory, divorce and often serial parity. These strategies are difficult to sort under individual labels like "monogamy" or "polygamy".
And we almost certainly know that long-lived monogamy is not the main pattern.

Divorce rates in the United States have been around 50 percent for many years, and are different but very similar in different cultures around the world. Among married couples, cheating is not a trivial matter. In 1952, sexologist Alfred Charles Kinsey estimated that 26 percent of women and half of the men were traitors, although other studies yielded different data. We know that infidelity is the main reason for divorce worldwide, from the Inuit in Alaska to the ǃKung people in Botswana. And we also know that most adults in the modern world, including about 85 percent in the United States, have at least one romantic relationship.

But there has always been something missing, which has disrupted our understanding of marital strategies, especially among women. Why do women manage so many novels when they do not increase the number of offspring they can bear?

From an evolutionary point of view, the betrayals of men are very simple to understand. In men, a strong desire for sexual diversity developed - a desire that was more intense than that of women, on average - because of the asymmetry in investment in parenthood. Men can reproduce in a relatively easy effort because all they need is fertilization of the woman. To have a single baby, women are required to invest in a nine-month pregnancy and is physically demanding. In other words, a married father with two children could have increased his fertility by 50 percent by having a successful birth with a romantic partner. For women who already have sex partners, betrayal does not increase - and can never dramatically increase - their success fertility.

However, women had an affair. So far, this phenomenon has been explained by the "good genes hypothesis": the notion that women develop a dual mating strategy - they promise the investment of one man while mating with men who have better genes than their regular partner.

But the good gene hypothesis fails to explain why, as a result of betrayal, so many women deviate from the trajectory and cast their current mate in favor of the man with whom they have had an affair. The new idea that came up in my research group - the replacement hypothesis - bridges the gap in scientific understanding and explains what we see in the real world. The wife's replacement hypothesis claims that women manage affairs in order to escape a relationship that is not successful and to advance to a more successful partner.

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For both sexes, the hypothesis explains what we often see: a year after declaring marriage vows publicly, a woman finds herself sexually attracted to a co-worker. After changing the baby's fifth diaper that day, a man wonders if he may have made a terrible mistake fantasizing about his childhood sweetheart who had slipped away from him. After six years of marriage, a woman discovers that she is the main breadwinner and her husband's laziness makes her disbelieve in their relationship; She noticed that her colleague was lingering at the door of her office a little more than needed. After years of living in a quiet depression, a man bursts into a stormy romance with her neighbor opposite. A woman confesses to her good friend that she is in love with another man and begins to secretly prepare the ground for her leaving her husband-a separate bank account and the first payment for an apartment.

These diverse scenarios stem from the same source - people have developed different strategies that allow them to change partners. This is a very common phenomenon among different species. The simplest of all is the "departure" strategy, in which organisms simply physically separate themselves from demanding partners. According to the hypothesis of changing the partner, humans apply a version of the departure strategy, accompanied by human psychological adaptations designed to identify and abandon partners with whom the relationship is too demanding, for the benefit of more beneficial partners.

In modern cultures, many learn to believe in the myth of love for life. We are told of falling in love with one and only. We learn that the path to gratification is paved through one admirable relationship. But the stories of fictional love stories usually end with finding this one and only, and they seldom examine what happened next. The story of Cinderella ends when she joins the Prince. After overcoming countless obstacles, the relationship eventually materializes. Only a few romantic fantasies follow the continuation of the story of the relationship-the gradual erosion of listening to each other's needs, the constant decline in sexual satisfaction, the thrilling temptation of betrayal, the question of whether the gray routine of marriage is really all that life has to offer.

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In fact, we are the result of a long and continuous lineage of our ancestors who went through marital crises - they examined the value of their spouses, measured their satisfaction in the current relationship, prepared substitutions, valued the alternatives and exchanged partners when the conditions failed. To understand why, we must turn our gaze on those ancestors, and discover the challenges they face when it comes to copulation.

The ancient humans had to struggle in three areas: First, the dangers of the physical environment - obtaining enough food, finding refuge from storms, dealing with extreme cold and heat. Second, they had to fight other animals. Snakes, predatory cats, and parasites who settled in their bodies constantly threatened to survive. The third challenge was no less fundamental - competition and confrontations with their own sex. Other human beings, equipped with arrows and braids, were together a powerful and hostile force of nature.

Against the backdrop of these three struggles, humans have developed a variety of mating strategies, the most important being the committed and long-term relationship. A committed partner can provide meat during the cold winters when fruit bushes do not produce fruit. A permanent partner over time can offer protection against hungry predators and hostile humans. A lifelong spouse can care for children - the irreplaceable tool that carries precious genetic baggage into the future. In short, long-term relationships offer a wealth of advantages and help fight all three fronts.

But something can always go wrong. A hunter who initially looks promising may start to limp due to injury or infection. A permanent partner may be stung by a venomous spider, injured in battle or killed in a war between groups. His position among the team may drop, and as a result, he may lose his preferred approach to important team resources. The value of a partner, who initially promised a way to move up, may go down for various reasons. Choosing a long-term partner involves the future, but often the future holds betrayals and tragedies.

Another challenge facing committed couples is the fact that more valuable partners, who were initially absent or available, sometimes appear in the picture. Your value as a partner may increase, making you more attractive to potential partners who at first were not interested in you. A potential partner who was not available in the past may suddenly be evacuated because of the death or abandonment of his partner. The union of two tribes may suddenly introduce a new wealth of coupling possibilities. In short, unexpected happenings in life have given our ancestors new opportunities to convert their spouses into better partners.

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On the other hand, individuals might find themselves losing partners who have ceased to be interested in them. Baal was liable to start a novel and divert precious family resources to another woman and her children. A man might feel that his position justifies a second wife, and the share of the first woman in his resources is suddenly reduced to half. Or he might have driven her out completely, abandoning her and her two dependent children just as her advanced age had reduced her value as a partner and reduced their chances of finding a new relationship.

All these challenges faced by our forefathers led to the development of strategic solutions. Some of the solutions included tactics for keeping partners, an urge to remove those who might seduce the couple and cling tightly to committed partners. These tactics range from alertness to violence. But there is another important set of solutions - accommodations for spouses - that we will now discuss.

Despite the great scientific research that focused on the early stages of choosing spouses and attraction to spouses, and despite several studies devoted to the protection of spouses, relatively little attention has been paid to the various adaptations of spouses. One of the most important is monitoring the value of the partner, which consists of dozens of traits. These are social characteristics - the status or evaluation they receive; Their network of friends and allies; The power that their family ties give them. Physical attributes also contribute to the value of a couple: for example, athletic abilities, physical strength, attraction, and signs of health.

Personality is also important. Is your partner energetic, dependent, ambitious, emotionally stable, sociable, relaxed or bossy? Most of these features change over time. Social status may rise or fall. Health and welfare improve or deteriorate from day to day, but may also be permanently damaged by a parasite, illness, or injury. The personality changes. Energy levels may change due to mental or physical trauma. Post-traumatic stress disorder is caused by suffering from war or sexual assault. In a life that is not cut off and completely isolated, changes in these components, which are essential for determining the value of the partner, are inevitable and require constant monitoring.

The value of the couple is largely determined as a function of the value they attribute to you. The technical term is "welfare-trade-off ratio" (WTR), which is the ratio between the degree of importance that the couple attributes to their well-being, as opposed to the importance they attribute to your well-being. It may be one of the reasons why divorce is particularly common in the first few years after marriage, and their rate stabilizes in the years to come.An especially considerate spouse may cut back on his or her investment in you and your relationship as time goes by. The central psychological monitoring mechanism that tracks Ben's value components The couple, their level of investment and commitment, and their WTR in relation to you.

the value of each spouse is, of course, proportional. So his monitoring is not enough. Self-worth tracking is also required. The value of a man or a woman may increase over time. Their social status may rise, they may inherit wealth or resources, or stand out through acts of heroism, leadership or wisdom that make them more desirable in the coupling market. A woman raised by the couple may find that she is dissatisfied with her husband, even if his general desire remains as she was.

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Especially attractive women tend to raise their mating threshold and expect more qualitative qualities from their partners, in areas such as status resources, commitment, and collaboration. A woman's marital value changes even during the monthly ovulation cycle - since her marital value depends on her fertility, she becomes more desirable during ovulation than at other periods of the cycle. Small changes in the woman's attractiveness reflect the stage in the ovulation cycle. The skin is a little more glowing, the waist-to-hip ratio is slightly smaller, and its voice is slightly higher - features that are linked to the perception of female beauty. The fact that women are more stringent in their spouse preferences at exactly the same stage of their cycle may indicate that they are monitoring their marital value and changing their standards accordingly.

We do not know whether these cyclical changes or longer lasting changes in the extent of a woman's desired effect, for example, the degree of satisfaction of a woman from her current partner, her attraction to potential alternative partners, Her efforts to prepare for herself an alternate partner or her degree of temptation to have an affair. But there is convincing evidence. One study found that women are more likely to evade their partner's efforts at the very best of fertility, a phenomenon that is particularly evident among women whose partners are not very attractive. These women suddenly become more interested in social events, perhaps because they may meet alternative partners there. And they report more flirting with other men. These findings suggest that women may monitor their marital value, and when it does, alternative partners may seem more appealing, and therefore they value their value.

According to the hypothesis of changing the partner, the search for the marital alternative also continued among those who are in a happy marital relationship. Sometimes this search takes place at a low intensity, when newly vacated partners enter the picture, or when the degree of desire or interest of a potential partner rises. Sometimes the search is triggered at high intensity, such as when a woman ceases to be satisfied with her regular partner and wants to break out of the relationship.

Sometimes members of the opposite sex serve as a backup. Women, more than men, tend to attribute greater weight to the economic resources and physical benefits of their members of the opposite sex - gender differences that accurately reflect gender differences in preference preferences for long-term spouse selection. But is it possible that the qualities that women value in a friend of the opposite sex and in a long-term partner are almost identical? According to our theory, women will invest more effort in positioning members of the opposite sex as potential alternative partners when circumstances indicate that the time has come to replace a partner.

Another clue is that people rarely disclose to their partners the fact that they see someone as a possible alternate partner. The common denial is "we're just friends." But being "just friends" is also a tactic used by potential hunters who try to entice someone out of a long relationship. Such alternative partners tend to hide their own marital intentions.

That's logical. Betrayal is a useful means of encouraging divorce, but it is also dangerous. In fact, betrayal is the leading cause of intimate partner violence, and it is also the main motive behind the murder of a couple. Despite these risks, about a quarter of women still do it. It is interesting to find that married women in their early thirties are the ones most inclined to conduct novels, perhaps from where they want to change partners as long as they are still very desirable.

There is ample evidence to support the hypothesis that for women, an infidelity is a tool for exchanging a partner. First of all, women who initiate romances often suffer from greater dissatisfaction with their marriage than women who are not Romanian initiators. This may seem quite obvious, but these studies also show that this is not the case in men. In fact, the happiness level of traitorous men in marriage is no different from that of men who refrain from having affairs. Second, women are much more likely than men to be emotionally involved or fall in love with those with whom they have an affair. About 70 percent of women report that they fell in love, compared to only 30 percent of men. In addition, women tend to excuse the existence of romance in emotional involvement. Men generally claim to be pure sexual desire. These significant differences between the sexes point to very different practical reasons for the betrayal of women and men. They point out that for women, in particular, a betrayal is a tool designed to allow the replacement of a partner

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For those who want to end their current relationship, leaving the sexual relationship is certainly the final step. The tactic of getting out of one clique includes the phrase "It's not you, it's me," trying to reduce the possibility of furious revenge. Another tactic involves transforming the existing romantic system into a social system - also in an attempt to reduce the anger of the ex. In some cases, women may continue to provide sex for the same ex for a period designed to reduce the cost of parting from it or try to direct their desire to other women. The effectiveness of such departure tactics, and the circumstances under which each is applied, still require scientific research.

Why do most people make backups in the form of alternative partners, why the qualities required of members of the opposite sex reflect the qualities required of a real partner, and why potential alternative partners do not usually raise the suspicion of the current spouse. She explains why women experience less satisfaction from their current relationships as soon as the potential pairing of spouses has a higher variant than that of their regular partner. It provides a compelling explanation for why women are willing to risk so much to manage novels - a question that is considered an evolutionary mystery because such novels do not help them in terms of fertility.

The recognition that people have developed a psychological system dedicated to the replacement of spouses must seem to many to be very disturbing. A man may be threatened by the possibility that his wife is carrying a double insurance policy, as well as from work that has sexual fantasies that include her co-worker, or that she has a "total friend" who is actually his rival. Understanding that you can be replaced more easily than you think can be depressing. And it is certainly not pleasant to realize that your unhappiness and your partner's discomfort is not temporary but a disguise to a secret plan designed to break up your relationship.

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But in a relationship, nothing is permanent. Evolution has not designed humans for a happy marriage that will last their lives. Our ancestors lived in a world where something in a relationship might always go wrong. Those who survived together in good and evil may be valued for their loyalty, but modern humans are the offspring of the successful fathers, who had alternative marital insurance; Who invested energy in planning scenarios that imagined possible partners and planned exit possibilities; And who worked to realize these scenarios when their secret calculations showed that they should switch partners.

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