Sex at Dawn полностью

When Harris measured the bodily responses of people being asked Buss’s questions, she found that “women as a group showed little difference in physiological reactivity,” but they still predicted, almost unanimously, that the emotional infidelity would be more disturbing for them. This finding suggests a fascinating disconnect between what these women actually feel and what they think they should feel about their partner’s fidelity (more on this later).

Psychologists David A. DeSteno and Peter Salovey found even more fundamental flaws in Buss’s research, pointing out that the subjects’ belief system comes into play when answering questions about hypothetical infidelity. They note that “the belief that emotional infidelity implies sexual infidelity was held to a greater degree by women than men,” and that therefore, “the choice between sexual infidelity and emotional infidelity [at the heart of Buss’s studies] is a false

dichotomy..”¹¹

David A. Lishner and his colleagues honed in on another weak point: the fact that subjects are given only two options: either thoughts of sexual infidelity hurt more or thoughts of emotional infidelity do. Lishner asked, what if both scenarios made subjects feel equally uncomfortable? When Lishner included this third option, he found that the majority of respondents indicated that both forms of infidelity were equally upsetting, throwing further doubt on Buss’s conclusions.¹²

Buss and other evolutionary psychologists who argue that some degree of jealousy is part of human nature may have a point, but they’re overplaying their hand when they universalize their findings to everyone, everywhere, always. Human nature is made of highly reflective material. It is a mirror—admittedly marked by unalterable genetic scratches and cracks—but a mirror nonetheless. For most human beings, reality is pretty much what we’re told it is. Like practically everything else, jealousy reflects social modification and can clearly be reduced to little more than a minor irritant if consensus deems it so.

Among the Siriono of Bolivia, jealousy tends to arise not because one’s spouse has lovers, but because he or she is devoting too much time and energy to those lovers. According to anthropologist Allan Holmberg, “Romantic love is a concept foreign to the Siriono. Sex, like hunger, is a drive to be satisfied.” The expression secubi (“I like”) is used in reference to everything the Siriono enjoy, whether food, jewelry, or a sexual partner. While “there are, of course, certain ideals of erotic bliss,” Holmberg found that “under conditions of desire these readily break down, and the Siriono are content to conform to the principle of ‘any port in a storm.’ “¹³

Anthropologist William Crocker is convinced that Canela husbands are not jealous, writing, “Whether or not Canela husbands are telling the truth about not minding, they join with other members in encouraging their wives to honor the custom . [of] ritual sex with twenty or more men during all-community ceremonies.” Now, anyone who can pretend not to be jealous as his wife has sex with twenty or more men is someone you do not want to meet across a poker table.

The cultures we’ve reviewed, from steamy jungles in Brazil to lakeside Himalayan foothills, have each developed mechanisms for minimizing jealousy and sexual possessiveness. But the opposite also happens. Some cultures actively encourage the impulse toward possessiveness.

Written by Percy Sledge and first recorded in 1966, “When a Man Loves a Woman” hit a cultural nerve. The song shot to the top of both the Billboard Hot 100 and R &B charts. Another version, recorded twenty-five years later by Michael Bolton, also went straight to the top of the charts, and the song now sits at number 54 on Rolling Stone’s list of the five hundred greatest songs of all time. Nothing is more prominent than love and sex in Western media, and “When a Man Loves a Woman” is an example of the message whispered in romantic ears throughout the world.

What does Mr. Sledge have to say about a man’s love for a woman? What are the signs of true masculine love? Copyright restrictions won’t allow us to quote the song’s lyric in full, but most readers know the words by heart anyway. To review, when a man loves a woman:

• He becomes obsessed and can’t think of anything else.

• He’ll exchange anything, even the world, for her company.

• He’s blind to any fault she may have, and will abandon even his closest friend if that friend tries to warn him about her.

He’ll spend all his money trying to hold her attention.

• And last but not least, he’ll sleep in the rain if she tells him to.