Pair Bonding Is Ancient; Sexual Exclusivity Is Modern
For many humans, being married was never about just one sex partner
The western world largely supports and normalizes monogamy as the correct and natural way for humans to mate and spend their lives. So much so that in the year 2000, roughly 95 percent of respondents in a statistically representative sample of cohabiting and married American adults said that they expected monogamy of their partners and believed that their partners expected it of them. But it turns out that in the larger world social monogamy and sexual monogamy are often two different things. Humans have been pair-bonding since ancient times, but that doesn’t mean that sexual fidelity was an expected component of that until relatively recently.
Besides the fact that many people who ostensibly believe in monogamy engage in extramarital sex (somewhere between 20–60% of Americans, depending on who you ask), many other cultures don’t view sexual exclusivity as normal or necessary even though they have some form of marriage. “Quite apart from promiscuous individuals, there are plenty of societies for which monogamy is not the norm — some estimates place the figure as high as 83%.” Source
This suggests that the value we place on monogamy is more cultural than biological and that it is not the…
