We have always been taught that after college we will find someone, get married, maybe have children and then live happily ever after.
When entering college, those fairy tale endings are pushed further and further away. You realize that life isn’t a Disney movie and breakups happen more often then you would have hoped.
We are also conditioned to believe that one of life’s ultimate sins is adultery.
Whether you are reading the Bible, Dante’s “Inferno,” “The Scarlet Letter” or “The Iliad,” terrible things happen to those who go against the value of monogamy.
Like those books, tradition can become old and outdated. Society today doesn’t seem concerned with the repercussions of adultery. In fact, monogamy itself seems to be going out of style.
A new study by Oregon State University found that many young couples disagree about whether their relationship is monogamous or not. In a survey conducted on 434 heterosexual married and non-married couples ranging from ages 18-25, 40 percent disagreed about whether they were exclusive.
One partner thought that they were monogamous, while the other said they were still dating other people. Only 30 percent — about 130 couples — were actually monogamous and proved so by not straying.
“The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and Humans,” written by David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton, describes that there are only a few dozen monogamous mammal species out of 4,000.
So, are we reverting back to our animal instincts?
It is believed that monogamy goes against basic human biology. Men naturally want multiple partners because their nature is to, in lighter terms, “spread their seed.” Women, however, are supposed want to care for and nurture their children.
While these traits may be the most basic human motivations, nothing is ever black and white. We don’t live in the time when women sit in silence while their husbands are off having affairs. Equality has redefined a woman’s natural biology.
Back in 2006, Michael Noer, a misguided writer for forbes.com, posted a story titled “Don’t Marry a Career Woman.”
He said that a career woman is more likely to divorce, cheat and decide against children. He asserts that many women now are less likely to want to just bear children.
The changing status of a woman’s biological makeup shows that, as humans, cultural ideals shift and evolve dramatically over time.
So, the question is, why are younger couples straying from monogamous relationships? There are many different factors that could be contributing to this. From the decline of religion in America to the high number of divorces, the idea of monogamy is slowly fading.
Mainly, this change is occurring because of the lack of communication within young couples. With data collected from several cities, Scarborough Research found that 49 percent of text message users are between ages 18 and 24. There is a large chance this figure could be accurate in Tempe, given all the texting we see when walking around campus.
Also, according to istrategylabs.com more than 40 percent of Facebook users are within the same age group. The highest percentage of technology communicators can’t communicate their feelings or talk about their relationship.
While I can see that the science is hard to argue with, I also think that, as humans, we make conscious decisions. Just because we aren’t made to be monogamous doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel good to have one person to share everything with.
Contact Lindsey at lindsey.kupfer@asu.edu
