Mate for Life?
By BetsyG
Teasing out the overall divorce rate isn’t straightforward but, suffice it to say, divorce is prevalent. Despite this prevalence, having a marriage end in divorce is considered a mark of failure.
But divorce has gotten a bum rap when, if you think about it properly, it’s really marriage that’s the problem. There has to be something wrong with the institution that it fails so often.
Marriage was created by man when people weren’t particularly long-lived. Staying married until the age of, say, 30—long enough to have children and raise them to an age when they can reproduce—seems pretty easy. Since our purpose on the planet is to perpetuate the species, staying with a mate who would help raise those children was good for the offspring’s health and safety. Thus a legal binding between man and woman made sense at the time.
But now, we typically live well past the childrearing years. Mating for life can mean 50 or 60 years with the same person. A lot of people do it, but I think it’s asking a lot to expect everyone to be able to, or to want to.
I’ve given this some thought, because I’ve observed that some people seem meant to mate for life and others seem less suited to it. My theory is that the tendency is a genetic predisposition. That’s not to say that the people who aren’t genetically predisposed can’t or won’t have a lifelong marriage. Just as those who don’t have a natural talent for music can still manage to learn to play an instrument and, with enough desire and practice, play it well, people who aren’t built for lifetime monogamy can manage to play that tune.
On occasion, I meet a couple of the “mate-for-life” variety. It’s obvious they’re perfect together and perfectly content in their marriage. The people I’m referring to are not the ones who make a lot of noise about how great their marriage is. It’s not ostentatious perfection, which is often a cover for a marriage that has a lot of volatility below the surface. Instead, there is something you can almost smell on these people that says they belong together, that only death will separate them, and that they will be as in love with their mate on that last day as they were on the first.
I’m a cynic, but I believe in this.
I have an interest in evolution and biology and why we do the things we do, given that procreation is the focal point of our existence. Because of this interest, I have to wonder why it seems that some people are meant for this and some—most, actually—are not. Biology is surely a factor. The article, “The Science of Romance: Why We Love,” in Time magazine, reveals that people are attracted to and repelled by members of the opposite sex based on suitability for reproduction:
Among the constellation of genes that control the immune system are those known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which influence tissue rejection. Conceive a child with a person whose MHC is too similar to your own, and the risk increases that the womb will expel the fetus. Find a partner with sufficiently different MHC, and you’re likelier to carry a baby to term.
The article goes on to explain that, in one lab study, women smelled shirts that had been worn by anonymous males. They consistently found the ones worn by men with a safe MHC to be the most desirable. (The MHC signal is also contained in saliva.)
I hate to kill the romantic notion that there’s such a thing as true love, but I imagine there is something about having two mate-for-life type people together that is good for the continued health of the species, and thus they attract each other. If we call such people Type A procreators, I’m thinking there must be something about Type A and Type A that is genetically favorable such that these people tend to find each other.
So what about the rest of us? Is it possible we’ve been fighting nature by attempting to stay married to—and have all our children with—the same spouse? If we label the non-mate-for-lifers as Type B, perhaps the Type Bs are meant to mix it up, and the hardiness of the species depends on the variety caused by multiple couplings. As far as protecting the offspring goes, that notion is nearly extinct, because women in our society are increasingly able to care for their offspring without the child’s biological father.
So how do you know if you’re a mate-for-lifer, or if you’re erroneously buying into a tradition that doesn’t apply to you? I don’t know. Maybe if I get a good whiff of you…
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 am
I just have to bring up one more aspect. And please this is not all inclusive but needs to be considered and that’s selfishness. We live in a selfish world, a world where people want instant gratification, the “easy” life. Some even feel they are “initled” to something more than they have gotten thus far for themselves. I have also noticed, there are people who aren’t willing or don’t know how the “work” for the things they want and get it in the quantity they feel they deserve. This holds true to marriage. We have seen the quintessential “families” on T.V. and the “love everlasting” in the movies and we know (ok, hope)it can be so for us. Unfortunately these venues don’t show you the “how to’s” and all the work that goes along with a good marriage, even an Ok marriage. I get the feeling people now-a-days think it just happens and then when they realize “Oh, you mean I have to work for this too?”…alot of people don’t want to put the time and effort into the relationship to keep it going. So just a thought but maybe if only one person it putting the work into the marriage and the other is not, well people have quit good jobs for less…… JMHO.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:57 am
Absolutely Jane. I agree 100%. If you believe in marriage and it’s not coming naturally, there is a lot of work involved. I remember being stunned when I had my first child that life was not The Brady Bunch.
I do think for some people it comes easy. I have seen some of the best couples. But for most mortals, it is work if you want to keep it going and thriving.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:04 am
I agree with both of you; I think the attraction is chemistry, then the marriage part is a lot of work (at least after a while, and especially once the children arrive)… And if both partners don’t put the work in, the Chinese torture starts and hardly anyone has survived Chinese torture.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:07 am
I too have observed that marriage and “mate for life” seem to come much more naturally for some than others. And that few really know where they fit on that spectrum until they try. Like you, I think “why?” is an interesting question.
I started by asking, what is the evolutionary advantage of promiscuity? I imagine that speeds up natural selection by increasing genetic diversity. That increases the chances for valuable new combinations to arise. But then I realized that I don’t really have to answer this question. Most species are promiscuous so that must work best in general. Think trees, corn, horses, and many more life forms bigger than a few cells.
So, what is the evolutionary advantage of mate for life? I don’t know but I imagine increased chance for survival during tough times. Two parents might mean taking turns such as by alternating guarding and sleeping. It allows for complementary skillsets: imagine a pair of birds where one prospective parent is better at finding nest parts and the other better at finding food. Or in more human terms, hunting and gathering. Etc. Human babies are particularly helpless which probably magnifies the importance of this advantage in some circumstances.
So evolution probably is best satisfied by what we have observed: some of us naturally mate for life and others don’t.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Evolutionary Observer,
I recommend “Why is Sex Fun?” by Jared Diamond. He poses the question, “Why is human ovulation not observable?” Actually, one of the interesting side effects of that (and I don’t think it’s truly non-observable, as the Time article suggests) is that this provides a possible explanation for why men (in general) are so randy all the time: they never know when they’re going to hit one, so they’d better be ready whenever opportunity presents itself. (I don’t think he stated that in the book, but it seems obvious to me.) But the other is that the male had better hang around and not give another male a chance to copulate, so that he can be sure the offspring is his. The stupidest thing for a male of any species to do (in terms of going forth and multiplying, not as a life choice) is to inadvertently raise someone else’s babies, because then he is losing an opportunity to pass on his own genes. Knowing the offspring is his, he will hang around to improve the baby’s (his own genes’) chance for survival.
Again, Diamond doesn’t mention this in the book, but it’s certainly been observed that newborns—particularly first-borns—tend to look a lot like Dad when they’re out of the shoot. Certainly a baby that does would have had a better chance of survival, so it’s a pretty clever adaptation.
Part of my theory is that there is something about Type A + Type A people that works together. Perhaps people of that variety have the perfect demeanors, thus why mess with it, whereas the rest of us are perhaps a bit nutty (I know I am), so trying on different mates might increase the chance of producing a stable offspring. I think the dad would hang around long enough to ensure his own baby’s survival, so I don’t buy into your “complementary” theory above. Of course having these complementary skillsets improves the offspring’s chance of survival. But this is no more true for mate-for-lifers than for those who have offspring with multiple mates.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Interesting subject. As a “mate-for-life”er — genetically determined or not — I have to share an experience that relates to the women with the shirts. When I met my “mate-for-life,” Janet, I was dating a woman I’ll call Sandra. The first time I’d made love with Sandra, she’d said, “Mmmm, you just smell right to me.” And as soon as she said it, I realized that, without a doubt, she did not smell right to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow this clear, strong intuition, and stayed with Sandra. So, when I met Janet, who smelled absolutely right, it was soon over with Sandra. Janet and I went on to have two children — even though, at the time I met her, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to have children. I know this is circumstantial evidence in relation to the MHC theory, but I’m convinced that something related to smell is important in sexual attraction.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
My Mother talks a lot about the “right smell” of my Father, compared to other men she went out with. Couldn’t get a real answer out of my father cause, to him, everything was perfect about my Mother! They were married over 60 years.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
i thought your article was very beautiful. you obviously have a great understanding of love. thank you very much.
March 1st, 2009 at 11:23 pm
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