A fantastic article right here from the Huffington Post which is essentially an interview of Dr. Eric Anderson, author of The Monogamy Gap.  The article is mostly about men cheating and how monogamy doesn’t work (duh) but open relationships are also discussed.  It’s just awesome.  Here are some excerpts with my comments.

-By Caleb Jones

Cheating, however, serves men pretty well. An undiscovered affair allows them to keep their relationship and emotional intimacy, and even if they’re busted it’s a lot easier than admitting that they wanted to screw someone else in the first place, he writes.

Exactly.  Cheating is perceived as easier by men because men know that women will yell at them if they suggest the alternative, which is an open relationship or marriage.

In his study of 120 undergraduate men, 78 percent of those who had a partner cheated…

Note the percentage there.  78%.  Shall I remind you that I’ve been saying for years (because the studies all show it) that 70% to 77% of everyone eventually cheats?  I love how all the studies keep bringing up the same statistics over and over again.  Like the guy in Close Encounters said, “It means something!”

…”even though they said that they loved and intended to stay with their partner.” Contrary to what we may think, most men aren’t cheating because they don’t love their partner, he says; they cheat because they just want to have sex with others. And society shouldn’t pooh-pooh that.

EXACTLY.  Though I am 100% against cheating (everyone should just have open relationships instead), I can tell you for a fact that men who cheat on their wives, in addition to women who cheat on their husbands, still love their spouses.

Fact: Every married woman I have ever had sex with  (which is not a lot, but some) still loved her husband and is still married to her husband to this day.

Cheating isn’t about love.  It’s about sex.

Monogamy isn’t the only “proper” way to be in a relationship, and he says it’s time that society finds “multiple forms of acceptable sexual relationship types — including sexually open relationships — that coexist without hierarchy or hegemony.” It’s especially important for today’s young men, for whom monogamous sex seems more boring than in generations past because of easy premarital sex and pornography.

Exactly what I’ve been saying for years.

(Interviewer:) The men in your study experienced a sharp decrease in the frequency and enjoyment of sex after two monogamous years…

What have I been saying about monogamy having an only three-year happy lifespan?  The doctor here contends it’s only two years, and often it is.  When I say “three years” that’s a maximum…an “if you’re lucky” time frame.
…Since no one can sustain the kind of thrilling sex couples have in the beginning of a relationship, isn’t it a healthy thing that it decreases?

Now let’s try something.  Based on that question, would you like to guess the interviewer’s gender?  JUST TAKE A WILD GUESS.  Heh.  If you said “woman”, you’re right.  Only a Disney-infested woman would postulate that less sex in a long-term relationships is a good thing.  I think I want to throw up.

Dr. Anderson: I wish young men got two years of good sex before it dropped off; it’s a lot less than that! It may, however, be good that the sexual desire for one’s partner weans; it means that we end up staying with our long-term partners for the socioemotional connection and not for the sex. If a couple is going to raise a family, it is the emotional connection that counts, not the sexual.

Correct.  Most married couples don’t stay together because of love or soul mates or romance or “self fulfillment” or other Disney reasons.  They stay because it’s the easiest way for (most) women to pay their bills and the expenses of having children (just have him pay them or help to pay them) and the easiest way for him and her to look normal to their family / friends / acquaintances / co-workers / church / etc.

Notice how things like sex and happiness are no where in there.

Our physical desires don’t die; they just change from our partner to people other than him/her.

Correct!

We falsely believe that when the sex dies, the relationship has also died.

Ah, that’s exactly what WOMEN believe.  Most MEN actually want the relationship or marriage to continue despite this.  (They just want to fuck women on the side as well.)
Interviewer: What about the idea that long-term relationships make sex become deeper, more intimate and more meaningful?

Pure, utter Disney.  False societal programming at its worst.  You can tell this entire topic makes the female interviewer very uncomfortable.

Dr. Anderson: The diminution of sex is simultaneous to one’s emotional bonds growing stronger. Long-term partners may have more intimate sex (most just have very little) but when men see a guy or girl who turns them on, it’s not intimate and meaningful sex they are craving.

The good doctor knocks it out of the park again.  Holy crap, I love this guy.  When a man or woman is deeply in love with a partner but wants to fuck someone else, it’s not intimacy they seek, IT’S JUST SEX.  People in marriages or “serious” relationships like to conveniently forget that sex and intimacy are usually two completely different things that have nothing to do with one another, especially when we’re talking about men.

GOD DAMMIT it’s so difficult for society to come to terms with such a simple concept!

Interviewer: Honesty is a huge part of a relationship. How good a relationship can one have when there’s deception, especially since you say after men cheat spontaneously, they are more likely to plan cheating?

Now here’s where I agree completely with the interviewer.  Lying is bad.  Period.  Cheating is a form of lying. Therefore it’s bad, period.  That’s my opinion.  Forget cheating!  Learn how to do open relationships instead.
Honesty is good sometimes, and horrible other times. There are good reasons to lie; it is an essential skill for keeping community and relationship peace.

I disagree, but I think he’s talking about woman asking “Do I look fat in this dress?” and the man answering truthfully “Yes, you look very fat.”  So I get where he’s coming from.  Where I disagree is a man has options other than to either lie or to say she looks fat.

If he’s an intelligent nice guy, he can say “Hm.  Let me look at it for a while, then ask me later.”  If he’s an honest Alpha male he can say “Ha!  Sweetie, you know I don’t answer questions like that.  Your tits look good though.”  My point is if you just think a little bit and get a little creative you don’t have to lie to maintain “relationship peace”.

Lying = laziness.

The reason men lie about cheating is mostly because they know that if they ask for permission to have recreational sex: 1) they will be denied 2) after they are denied, they will be subject to scrutiny and increased relationship policing; 3) they will be stigmatized as immoral, and most likely broken up with. Thus, honesty doesn’t meet their desires of having both a long-term partner and recreational sex with others.

Bingo.  As I said in the beginning of this post, if women just relaxed their Disney about 20% and if men manned-up about 20%, men would never need to cheat.  We could create long-term relationships and marriages where cheating would be impossible (open or semi-open relationships).

Interviewer: Wouldn’t it be less harmful to relationships if we became serial monogamists — marrying two, three or four times as our sexual needs change?
Ohhhh boy.  Again the feminine nature of the interviewer shines through like a beacon through fog.  As I’ve said many times, even in my own glossary, women are serial monogamists and pro-divorce.  Women want to get with one guy, love him for a while, get bored, dump his dumb ass, get a new guy, love him for a while, and repeat the process, over and over again until they get into their 50’s when they finally start to calm down.  It’s how women work.

Dr. Anderson: Rather than marrying 20 times or more in one’s life via serial monogamy, we can keep one emotional lover and just have casual, meaningless — and hot — sex with strangers.
DINGDINGDING!  I am officially in love with this man.  I’m ready go gay for this guy.  Couldn’t have said it better myself.

This gives us the long-term emotional stability we desire psychologically, alongside the hot, carnal sex we desire somatically. It makes much more sense than lying and cheating , or the difficulty of breaking up with a loved one simply because you want someone else’s body for an hour.
Keep going doc, you’re doing great.
Interviewer: Most of the men in your study were OK with sex on the side for them, but not their girlfriends. That seems unfair and incredibly selfish.
A common feminine point where I actually 100% agree.  Men need to calm the fuck down.  Sadly, it is MEN who have more a problem with open relationships than women.  Women will eventually go along with it.  It’s guys who suddenly need to grab a shotgun whenever “their girl” fucks some other dude.

Dr Anderson: Monogamy is culturally compelled, so the decision has been made for us. How much of a chance would a man stand to have a second date if on the first date he said that he was interested in an open relationship?
Not much!  Ask me how I know!  Years ago when I was first mastering all this stuff, I tried that about three times before I said “Uh, yeah, this method isn’t working.”

At the point men enter into relationships they, too, think they want monogamy. It’s only after being in a relationship for months or years that they badly want sex with others. But by this point, they don’t want to break up with their partners because they have long-standing love. Instead of chancing that love by asking for extradyadic sex, they cheat. If they don’t get caught (and most don’t) it’s a rational choice.

Wow.  On the nose with every point, again.  This guy is fantastic.
But it is indeed selfish for men to want sex with others but not to want their partners to do the same.
Yep.  Fucking men.  You guys really need to calm down about this.  There are bigger things to worry about in your life than your wife or girlfriend having bad sex with some needy beta AFC.  Really.
This however is not just a “man” thing. Women also cheat; they also lie about it; and they also want to be able to cheat without their partners doing the same. Monogamy is a problem for all sexes; it builds in an ownership script regardless of gender.

Yep.  Women cheat just as much as men, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that in long relationships or marriages, they cheat more.

Interviewer:  You say love is a “long-standing sense of security and comfort.” So, wouldn’t open relationships potentially pose a threat to that security since, even if couples play by their own sexual rules, there’s always a chance one could end up preferring a new lover over one’s partner?

This is a good question and I’ve been asked it often.  I have a good answer for it.  Let’s see if the doc has a good one too.
People in open relationships structure their engagements as to reduce emotional intimacy.
Bingo!  In an serious OLTR, all other people the man or woman fucks on the side are fuck buddies only.  You’re not dating other people, you’re just fucking other people.  I have never in my entire life fallen in love or gotten romantic feelings for a fuck buddy, even decades ago when I was a young AFC.

But, yes, of course it can happen. What I find from those in open relationships, however, is that once they have had sex with that person they fancied, they tend to get over them.
Good point.  I have noticed this in longer-term OLTRs as well.

If we really want to prevent our lovers from developing the lust of others, or worse, emotional intimacy with others; if we really want to prevent men and women from cheating, we would be best to sex-segregate our jobs, our classrooms and social arenas, too. Emotional intimacy is the real threat to a relationship, not a one-off hour with a stranger from Craigslist. Ultimately, there are no guarantees that one’s partner won’t find love elsewhere. But controlling one’s partner to prevent it only makes matters worse — it makes them want to leave you. A better strategy is to be open, emotionally and perhaps sexually, too.

Wow.  Just awesome.  This guy should go on tour with me, Gene Simmons and Marc Rudov.  That would scare the shit out of everyone.
(Okay, maybe not Gene Simmons.  I forgot he he’s been corrupted by the dark side of the force.)

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