Overriding Love
I must digress. I have proven myself wrong, as scientists usually do. There are some instinctual properties that humans may never be able to override. One such property is love.
If you have been in a long-term relationship – and I mean really long term, as in, willing to marry – then you know what I’m talking about. It has been a long standing question about whether humans are a monogamous species or not. It is my argument today that monogamy does, in fact, exist, as its presence runs deep within my own veins. Oxytocin is our wonder-drug of choice. Those people who are in long term relationships have the joys of feeling a bond with their partner that runs much deeper than many people think.
Oxytocin is released during physical interactions with your partner, forming emotional and physical bonds with that individual. My theory is that no matter how bad the relationship gets, no matter how horribly bad that you want out, there is some instinctual property of monogamy that is not easily overridden by the conscious acknowledgment of a failing relationship. Your body has set your biological clock in motion – ticking away, knowing that a mate has been discovered. You are therefore not keen to let that mate go, as evolution insists that you sire offspring in order to keep your genes in the population. You can look back on a relationship all you want, and try to convince yourself that everything about it was poisonous – but in the end, oxytocin seems to prevail, and it takes the will power of a saint to get through a break-up.
Well, I’ve given a great argument for monogamy, but this doesn’t explain why people cheat on their partners and seek out multiple relationships at once. I do not know the statistics (and would be interested to find them out), but it would make sense if most cases of adultry were initiated by men. Why? Because men are able to have several partners in a short period of time, and therefore can spread their genes to several females. Females, on the other hand, have a lengthy gestation period, and then must care for the young (in most cases) once the young have been born/hatched etc. Females cannot have multiple partners as easily as males can. (There are a few exceptions to the rule, but not many.) So perhaps there are sex differences in how oxytocin is metabolized, released, inhibited, or bound. It is an interesting topic for investigation.
This was my poor attempt at analyzing my personal feelings on a scientific level. Somehow it makes it easier to bear sometimes.
