Helen Fisher: Getting Out Alive
Helen Fisher is the author of Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray (Fawcett Columbine) and of The Sex Contract: The Evolution of Human Behavior (Quill)
Tracy Quan: At what point are women likely to cheat?
Helen Fisher: The height of female adultery in America is age 38. That's partly because, as estrogen levels begin to decline, women become more assertive.
TQ: Are we just like all the other females in the animal kingdom?
HF: In this one respect, we're more like birds because about 90% of birds pairbond. In order to have cheating, you have to have the reproductive strategy of monogamy. 97% of the mammals do not pairbond, and our closest relative, the female chimp, has sex with almost every male in the social group. The only ape that forms pairbonds is the gibbon.
TQ: So, what's it like to be among the monogamous 3% of mammals?
HF: A male and female gibbon have paired up at puberty. They get up in the morning and go to the edge of their territory, which they defend from all outsiders. He defends it from other males, she defends it from females, but they have been seen slipping into other territories to copulate with the neighbors. Then they come on home. A male and a female prairie vole will pair up after their first copulation. The male builds the nest, but he slips next door, copulates with a neighbor, then comes home. The female, too, slips next door. In just about every species that forms a pairbond, extra-pair copulations occur. There's one little mouse, in the California foothills, which I think must be the only faithful mammal in Californa -- until we find out otherwise. I've looked at adultery in 42 cultures and, even in societies where you can have your head chopped off for philandering, men and women cheat. In studies where they have taken DNA samples from birds, they find that 20 to 70% of the infant birds in the study are not the children of the male who is feeding them. The female has been cheating.
TQ: With whom?
HF: A female chickadee cheats with a male who has a better piece of real estate -- a well-situated territory -- or with a healthier looking male. Females throughout the animal kingdom are attracted to males with nice homes -- who can provide us with a good dinner, protect us and give us presents in exchange for sex. For millions of years, if a woman had one husband and got all his protection and resources, that was fine -- but if she occasionally had extra lovers on the side, she might get extra protection and resources for herself and her children. She might even get pregnant and have more variety in her gene pool. Monogamy has never meant fidelity. It's a parenting strategy. Basic to female sexuality is an appetite for males with resources, power and status, who will help us rear our young. Even exceedingly rich women often choose a man who's richer.
TQ: What, then, explains a woman cheating with her gym trainer, instead of her husband's boss?
HF: He's probably good-looking -- he has what she would regard as good genes. If you ask her, she'll tell you, "I think his jokes are funny," or "I kept seeing him at the club." But she finds him attractive from a Darwinian perspective -- it's unconscious. It could be that the trainer is symmetrical. Women have more orgasms with men who are symmetrical. Our standards for whom we cheat with are different from our standards for whom we would marry because adultery is a short-term mating strategy. I think she would go for the boss if she could get away with it. But she doesn't want to jeopardize her marriage.
TQ: Men who cheat don't always accept it in a wife or girlfriend. Why?
HF: The entire mating game is about who spreads their genes into the next generation and who does not. For millions of years, an adulterous man was far more likely to succeed. From the Darwinian perspective, if a man spends his life rearing another man's genes, he's lost, big time. Men around the world unconsciously want to send their own DNA into the next generation. If a woman is adulterous, his genes are jeopardized. In cultures around the world, adultery on the part of the woman is the main reason a man will leave.
TQ: So, monogamy just leads to harder stuff. Has your research made you more objective? Do you know when a partner is cheating?
HF: I've walked out of some relationships sooner than other people might because I know more. But I make the same mistakes everyone else does. The difference is that I know why. I've avoided some pain because I know what's going on in the brain's physiology. Pain ends. But nobody gets out alive when it comes to love and sex, because we were built to do two separate things -- to pair up and to cheat.
