A provocative new study shows that men who don’t cheat are setting themselves up for ‘socially-compelled sexual incarceration.’
Men who cheat, however, gives them the best of both worlds, sociologist Eric Anderson says.
And most of them who do still want to stay with their partner – they just want to have more sex on the side.
The American sociologist who teaches at the University of Winchester in England says monogamy has ostracised men from doing what they most want to do.
He writes in his new book The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating, that cheating is the norm, not the exception to it, and it’s high time that people start embracing ‘sexually open relationships that coexist without hierarchy or hegemony.’
In the study, Mr Anderson surveyed 120 undergraduate men – both gay and straight. He found that 78 per cent of those with partners cheated, ‘even though they said that they loved and intended to stay with their partner.’
Professor Eric Anderson says men cheat because they simply like sex
In an interview with the Huffington Post, he says men want to be emotionally monogamous, though their ‘body craves sex with other people somatically.’
For the purpose of raising a family, he says, it’s the emotional – and not the sexual factor – that counts.
He says: ‘Our physical desires don’t die; they just change from our partner to other people…When the sex dies, the relationship has just begun.’
To Mr Anderson, it’s better for men to cheat and repent for it, since telling their partner that they want sex outside the relationship is a tried-and-true relationship-ender.
‘When men cheat for recreational sex – not affairs – they DO love their partners,’ he tells the Huffington Post. ‘If they didn’t, they would break up with them.’
He states that the feelings of betrayal many partners inevitably feel after a man cheats is simply because of a ‘socialised victimhood.’
The Huffington Post noted that in the study, men were perfectly alright with sex outside of a relationship for them, but not for their partners.
To this, Mr Anderson says it's not necessarily fair, but he says monogamy often drives men to pursue sex with another in the future.
The sample size and targeted group is questionable to stand alone as a study, the Media Research Center Network said, and asking undergraduate men about monogamy - in a time many are exploring and pushing boundaries.
In the article, the writer criticizes the idea that society is to blame for the issue and makes it an impossible standard for men to uphold.
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