🌻If Your Partner Is Cheating On You, Read This

We don’t want to harp on celebrity drama because their lives seem so far removed from reality that relating to them- seems almost comical.

But recently, two stories caught our eye. Not only have they played out in public for the world to see, but cheating scandals have obliterated the boundaries of betrayal all the way to Mars and back.

There is a Kardashian story where one sister’s partner cheated on her. Once while she was pregnant and the second time while a surrogate was pregnant with their child and he fathered a child with someone else.

Read also: 10 quotes that make you say yes to life ( must read)

The other story is about a lead singer and a band who wanted to name his baby after his affair partner.

Both bizarre, confusing, stupid, and so traumatic.

And you know, as a society, we don’t seem to talk about the trauma of cheating enough. In the celebrity world, it looks like people move on so quickly despite their retrial being so public. Maybe they’re robots or maybe there’s a lot we don’t see behind closed doors.

Our society is complicated! Are humans even meant to be monogamous? Well, when the publication puzzle posed this question to a biologist, psychologist, and sexuality expert, they all said no, but with some caveats.

In the animal kingdom, monogamy is rare. Some societies in Africa, South America, and East Asia practice polyandry, polygamy, and polyamory which all involve having more than one person in the relationship. The idea that two people should be together just with each other is really a social construct.

You know, having one partner at a time isn’t even true monogamy, that’s serial polygyny, which is a succession of reproductive partners.

We really like sex. We’ve always had sex for reasons other than procreating, which is usually the only reason most animals have sex.

Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies. She says that based on her research —

Humans weren’t meant to be monogamous or polyamorous. We like both. Both options work for us, but depending on our country, culture, and circle of friends, we gravitate toward one side more than the other.

Monogamy isn’t a biological certainty. There’s no code in our genetic makeup that pushes monogamy.

A scientist at the University of Washington has studied sex, evolution, and infidelity for most of his career. He says that —

Monogamy is quite a recent social construct. We’re more hardwired to seek out multiple sexual partners because it increases our chances of reproduction.

We’re actually fighting biology by pushing the company, which, but let’s be clear, isn’t an excuse to cheat — far from it. But it’s hard to think about and understand because if monogamy is supposedly unnatural, then —

Why does it hurt so damn much when a partner strays from the relationship?
Why is being cheated on so incredibly dramatic?
When do our survival instincts kick in to save us from the hurt while simultaneously preserving the production of our species?
Well, unfortunately, there are two counterforces pulling us apart when it comes to monogamy and dishonesty. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that men are more likely to cheat because they’re wired to spread genes.

For many women, their priority is their child, so they value safety and stability more than variation, and while they’re geared to also seek out the best partner, women do it differently.

“Men like to play with quantity while women play with quality.”

Monogamy, as we know it today, has only been around for the last one thousand years, which isn’t very long when compared to three and a half million years of evolution.

We’re not really sure why monogamy started. Some evolutionary psychologists suggest that the emergence of STDs play a role. As we humans grew in numbers, so did our risk of spreading STDs, and diseases actually play a major role in the way that we style social norms.

Chris Bock, a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Waterloo, Canada, used mathematical models using demographic and disease data to see how the social pressures from monogamy correlated with the rise in STDs which makes perfect sense.

Kit Opie, an evolutionary anthropologist from University College London, says that —

As we evolved and became more social, the brains of infants grew and needed more attention from their mothers. Females were less readily available formatting again after birth, so potential mates would kill babies, which defeats the purpose of growing our species.

We had to find a way to protect the babies and others. These days, it’s also suggested that having one partner makes it possible for more men to get mates. In the past, one man could marry multiple women, which meant there were more available men than women.

So, the slightly smaller weaker men who couldn’t win a fight, well, they were left with nobody but themselves.

Now, with all of this said, monogamy might be a biological anomaly for us, but connection and attachment, those aren’t. These things are hardwired into us.

As children, we form strong bonds with our caregivers. We have to. They’re responsible for our survival when we can’t do much ourselves.

Psychologists believe that in romantic relationships, we seek to recapture the unconditional love we should have experienced as a child. We have an internal attachment system that keeps us close to the people we love.

When there’s a damage or threat to a social connection like that, we experience deep pain similar to physical pain. The betrayal makes us feel unsafe, and it spills over into all areas of our lives.

Cheating doesn’t just ruin the relationship we have now. It shatters our childhood idea of safety and protection. This doesn’t count when there is an agreement between two parties. That agreement builds connection. It solidifies trust.

When an agreement is broken, it feels like you don’t know that person at all. It feels like you never knew them and it leaves you questioning other people and experiences in your life. It even leaves you questioning yourself.

Betray partners may experience nightmares, anxieties, flashbacks, depression, and numbing. The memory of betrayal can sometimes become stuck in the body and your brain. In trying to process the threat, it runs through it over and over again trying to find out what it could have done differently, but there’s nothing that you could have done differently. So, there’s never a solution to that.

Read also: 10 steps to change any habit (Highly recommended)

There’s a powerful bridge between the biology of monogamy and the pain of cheating — it’s an agreement.

Yes, cheating is painful, but it’s the betrayal of trust that is really and genuinely more painful.

In the past, people could easily handle polygamy because they knew what they were getting into. People have gotten jealous at times, but the big lies and betrayals didn’t pose a threat to them. It didn’t risk their safety and belonging in the world, it wasn’t secretive. People were rarely blind-sided.

However, when there’s an agreement to be monogamist and someone breaks that agreement, we realize that we can’t trust that person that we put all of our faith and energy into, but when there’s a discussion and discourse about our needs and wants, and we can test the boundaries of what our trust is capable of, perhaps in some cases and for some people, their biological and social needs can be met.

At end of the day readers, one thing is for certain, we need trust, safety, and belonging. Without that everything is a threat.

So, always lean into communication and trust in your relationships.

Contributed by Entrepreneuria

For more information and updates join our WhatsApp group HERE

Like our page on Facebook HERE

Join our Telegram group HERE