It's true in the context of men who want monogamy, as well as in the context of men who just want to sleep around as much as they can. Both types of sexual behaviour exist in all of us. As humans, we can be monogamous and we can be promiscuous or polygamous, or anything else.
Humans are now mostly monogamous, but this has been the norm for just the past 1,000 years. Scientists at University College London believe monogamy emerged so males could protect their infants from other males in ancestral groups who may kill them in order to mate with their mothers.
In short, whatever its benefits when it comes to child-rearing, monogamy is a great democratizing institution, enabling men to have a wife and a chance at a family, the great majority of whom would otherwise be left out.
In essence, men are only socially monogamous rather than genetically monogamous.
Monogamy does exist in nature, as, of course, do females who seek out multiple partners. But nature does seem to push things in the direction of polygyny on our branch of the evolutionary tree. Among mammals, just 9 percent of species are monogamous; among primates, just 29 percent are.
Rubel and Bogaert suggest that non-monogamists have relationships that are just as happy, or happier, than monogamous relationships. More recent field research on a large Canadian sample also found that those in open or polyamorous relationships were just as happy as those in monogamous relationships.
Evolution dictates that genes have the final say. And if there is one thing genes want, it is to spread as far and wide as possible. That is why monogamy is rare among mammals. Females have to wait for a long gestation period to have a child, where as males could go and inseminate many other females in that time.
Researchers from the U.K.'s University of Sheffield looked at men older than 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy and found that they lived an average of 12 percent longer than men from 49 monogamous nations, according to a report from the Times of India.
The higher the average intelligence of the population, the more monogamous the society is.
There are many reasons that people may engage in polygamy. These reasons may be religious or societal, including stability, safety, companionship, economic resources, reproduction, or love. In some cases, people are also polyamorous, meaning they have the capability to love more than one person.
Reasons a person might choose monogamy:
You enjoy feeling special and uniquely prioritized by a romantic partner. You struggle with maintaining many relationships at the same time, whether because of limited time or limited energy. You like the simplicity of having just one relationship to nurture.
In contrast, most men benefit from a monogamous society. Given a 50-50 sex ratio, monogamous society virtually guarantees a wife for every man, even a third-rate one.
Monogamy is an intrinsically unstable mating strategy. Benefits include the (relative) certainty of access to the partner's reproductive potential, but the chief disadvantage is that access to other potential partners is strongly diminished, particularly in those cases where males exhibit strong mate-guarding behavior.
As with all things concerning the human heart, it's complicated. “The human mating system is extremely flexible,” Bernard Chapais of the University of Montreal wrote in a recent review in Evolutionary Anthropology. Only 17 percent of human cultures are strictly monogamous.
Let us assume that the 12 men with the highest status marry 12 of the 20 women in monogamous marriages. Then, the top five men (25% of the population) all take a second wife, and the top two (10%) take a third wife. Finally, the top guy takes a fourth wife. This means that of all marriages, 58 per cent are monogamous.
While human patterns are distinct from genetic monogamy, defined as two individuals who only reproduce with one another, levels of extra pair paternity are relatively low compared to other socially monogamous species.
Only about 2% of the global population lives in polygamous households, and in the vast majority of countries, that share is under 0.5%.
Born Acentus Ogwella Akuku, he married his first wife in 1939. At the age of 22, he had married five wives and by the time he was 35, he was on his 45th wife. His love for polygamy and women earned him the nickname 'Danger' from his peers who believed that his every move was made to attract women.
Love is already hard to find, and it is even more difficult for intelligent people. It might be because of their mind, understanding of things, approach towards life, etc. If you are also struggling with the same, here are 7 reasons why intelligent people have a hard time finding love.
The median duration of first marriages that end in divorce is just under 8 years, while the median duration of second marriages that end in divorce is around 7 years.
It is a very common experience that discriminative behaviour of the husbands and unequal treatment with their wives causes several mental health issues in polygamous families. These are jealousy, poor marital satisfaction, unhealthy competition, lack of trust, and many other mental health problems [12].
When asked in September 2016 about their ideal relationship, 61 percent said it would be completely monogamous. In January 2020, that number has dropped slightly, to 56 percent. Many Americans are already in non-monogamous relationships or marriages.
Monogamy is due to insecurity, at its heart – that your partner will leave you, and cloaking it under the guise of romantic notions of commitment is disingenuous.
Some insecure people want monogamy, but that doesn't necessarily mean someone who wants monogamy is insecure. Some people who don't want monogamy are also insecure, after all.