Asking a Wayward when did he/she stop loving the betrayed or if they ever fell out of love with the betrayed are the wrong questions. That's playing on the Wayward's home turf. They know all about love. They're so full of love they can spread it around to multiple people and still have more to give out. There's no limit to their love. You truly cannot expect a wayward to answer those questions in a way that truly conforms to the Betrayed's perception of the relationship.
5 pages of 'Love' and yet not much, if any, mention of 'Respect' or more on point 'Mutual Respect.'
Can you really love something that you don't respect?
Nuke zombie,
While I agree that is the wrong question to ask a cheater, I am confident that cheaters have very little knowledge if any of love. Most of us have difficulties to understand love as much as we have difficulty to understand trauma and pain.
People who indulge in promiscuity are often the farthest away from understanding love than others. I am such an example, I grew up with my own unresolved issues, got betrayed at my first "serious" relationship as a kid and since then I vowed to never allow someone to hurt me that deeply.
It was rarity when I only entertained 1 or 2 different girls per week, and considering I wasn’t letting anyone In The turnover was pretty quick, sometimes weeks, rarely more than few months when either I or the girl cut off contact.
Then there were those random encounters, some I have not clue what their name even was.
I am speaking of regular pick up encounters, I never liked prostitutes for it felt gross to have sex with a woman who has sex with other men. (And I had a couple of sex worker friends, is not lack of respect for them or their choice, is the skin level feeling of sharing bodies with others, mine included).
Was it love? Zero, absolute zero. There was excitement, attraction, lust and craving, there could be "friendly love" developing and there was always respect.
But that’s not love, it’s simply trying to fill the emptiness you hold with bits and pieces of emotions and sensations that "since they exist in loving couples, maybe if I farm enough of them wherever I can, I will feel fulfilled ".
It doesn’t work.
Its the opposite of love:
It’s not nourishing, it’s draining.
It’s not fulfilling it leaves you empty.
Doesn’t give you peace, it leaves you more alone and afraid for you slowly lose trust into ever achieving it.
And there was respect in those "relationships". Respect for boundaries and honesty.
So respect alone doesn’t make a difference or defines fidelity.
Truth is respect is a safeguard from lies: when you lie to someone you dropped respect.
But alone is just an effect of something else.
Here's a simple truth: evolution doesn't favor monogamy. While plenty of animals are socially monogamous, dedicated to raising their offspring as a bonded pair, biologists have performed genetic studies of animals that we once believed mate for life and discovered that most cheat.
I also love that kind of things, but the data and the conclusions are to be taken carefully.
I disagree evolution doesn’t favor monogamy (not even entirely correct in the animal kingdom, let’s better say "favors polygamy ").
The discovery that animals "cheat" is likely a stretch of projection from human bias into animals:
- animals in the wild will have no issues in forcefully mating given the opportunity. Rape isn’t uncommon and genes will be passed on.
- most species with gender dimorphism where males are bigger and stronger than females, will have males fight for the female. If one make tries to "steal" the female from her partner, the female "legitimate partner " will fight the "affair partner" possibly to the extent of killing him. The winner usually takes it all. And often kills the offspring that might belong to the other male.
- animals do not lie, deceive or sneak out to betray their partner.
- the above example true for those "monogamous " species, others have looser or no sexual boundaries at all (see bonobo)
Hard to say what animals experience emotionally but is still a stretch to equate them to humans.
Also the senses animals have are different, they can often smell when a foreign smell is present on their partner far better than we do, they aren’t always sexually receptive like we are, they have often once or couple of times per year, the mating season where they select partners. And often the selection process is a dominant male with a harem (but I imagine that wasn’t in the topic for this one).
There are few exceptions. It would seem that cheating actually has evolutionary advantages. IOW, cheating is a part of animal nature.
Even swans - those beautiful icons of monogamy we often see at weddings - are often cheaters.
Unless they trick and lie is not cheating. It can be rape, it can be a new dominant male defeating the older one, there is a lot of factors at play.
Also the species where polygamy is likely tend to have a nasty ritual every time there is a chance that a female mated with another male:
Murdering all the kids, eventually eating them or just abandoning them to die.
That’s a pretty brutal and common behavior that is a counter to the "evolutionary advantage ". Murdering your own species infants for the risk of illegitimate offspring is quite the evidence of where evolution takes us.
No animal is very keen into investing energy to raise a bloodline that is not theirs. There are social behaviors where adults nurture others children along theirs, but your genes take the priority always.
Monogamy has the best possible outcome for a strong and healthy offspring, survival of the parents (sex disease risk is lower) and survival of your genes. It is a high return investment.
Polygamy-cheating is the loser choice most often (in some species not, is a social bonding, we are talking of those monogamous species and "cheating ") because they failed to secure a partner (or partners, in some species) they can’t invest in "fidelity " and secure their offspring future and genes, so they have to resort to opportunistic mating, rape included, which is the equivalent to buy as many lottery tickets as you can and cross your fingers.
If you manage to nail few healthy partners, not get infected or die by sexually transmitted diseases, and if you generate an offspring that survives and doesn’t get murdered or left to die by the "betrayed partners " then your genes are transmitted.
But if the two, is the less efficient strategy for survival, high energy waste, low returns. Over billions of animals some will survive and pass on their genes, and we will find it, thus "validating " the animal cheating evolutionary strategy.
It’s a strategy, but a loser one, evolution is clear and I see a completely different story that what those biologists concluded.
The opposite conclusion I. Fact, which begs the question wether isn’t the researcher personal bias or perhaps even validation for their life choices seeping into the conclusion. It shouldn’t be but it’s one of the most common biases in research.
Humans are cheaters. Not all, of course. Not even half, according to some statistics. However, infidelity is so prevalent throughout history that it's clearly absurd to think it's abnormal.
Yep! That's the truth.
I don’t know if that’s the researcher conclusion from the animal study, if so is really skewed. Humans are cheater as much as they are murderers.
We have infidelity and murder pretty consistently found throughout our history, and still both were always severely punished.
That sounds more akin to the widespread animal behavior of killing the "cheaters" and their offspring just adapted to humanity and their social dynamics.
We may have stopped at some point to kill children and the unfaithful, but we have a word surviving to describe the fruit of betrayal still surviving to this day: "bastard" describes that outcome. It’s an unfair name for the innocent offspring of two guilty parents, but it’s charged with all the sentiment humanity has to this "cheating acceptance ".
Only in very recent times we have softened towards this, because the children are victims of the guilt of their parents, it wasn’t their choice like all the others surrounding infidelity, they were never given any.
But yes, human cheat. A minority most likely, it is still a loser strategy risking stability, future and health (sex diseases are a major cause of death and population collapse throughout history) of not only individuals but groups at large.
But humans do lie, plot and exploit to satisfy their lust and cravings consciously and intentionally harming others.
Like in the animal kingdom there is opportunity, but only humankind has added to it the intentional abuse.
So yes, this last claim is in fact correct.
Does this simple truth justify infidelity? Nope! Not at all. Does knowing that evolution didn't write monogamy into our genetic code make it suck any less?
Not at all. But evolution did write survival strategy into our code.
Monogamy (not entirely correct, let’s say exclusivity is more fitting) is the winner strategy. Infidelity is the backup loser solution, high risk of consequences, low rewards, but better than zero chances of reproduction.
I see a good argument for why it sucks, rather than on why is "okayish".
Interesting though.
