Marital Fidelity

What "glues" a marriage together is not what most people consider "love". It's actually mutual need-fulfillment. Natural selection provided us with a set of instincts (needs) at birth. Thereafter, our experiences provide us with conditioned needs. Together, these genetic and conditioned needs determine our behavior. As long as a husband and wife meet their spouse's needs better than anyone else, they'll remain loyal. What are those needs?

Genetic needs of both male and female include survival of self and species. It's not quite so easy to nail down needs created by conditioning. These are driven by a person's zeitgeist -- the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate they live in. I realize this "animal instincts" stuff is not very romantic. However, knowing the motivators for human behavior provides us with the possibility of using them to our advantage. God forbid that I'd use the phrase "manipulate others". At the very least, it might allow us to know whether we are able, or willing, to fulfill the needs of another, thereby ensuring their "loyalty". It might help us maintain or repair a relationship -- or know when to move on.

A couple notes:
1. Marriage does not switch off the instinct for sex. Therefore, wives having male "friends" and husbands having female "friends" is, zoologically speaking, playing bonding roulette. Exercise extreme caution.
2. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. "Out of sight, out of mind" is far more accurate. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also serves to condition the norm -- to cement the relationship. We grow comfortable with what we're used to, so it's risky to make absence the norm.

Granddad