The belief is widespread that the desire to have one or more sexual partners is associated with sex. We decided to check if this opinion has a scientific justification.

Allegations and disputes about unequivocal polygamy of men and a lesser tendency of women to betrayal are found at sites About psychology, c Media, on forums, in posts and comments on social networks. More than once Such an opinion was expressed sexologists And Columnists Russian federal media. Bloggers And Motivational coaches They talk about the historically established male polygamy, believers Looking for The priests have the answer to the question of why God created men sinners, and the creators of jokes joke: “If men are polygamous by nature, and women are monogamous, then with whom then men are polygamous?”

All systems of sexual interaction (Mating Systems) is accepted divide For four main types:

Monogamia - a male and a female form a stable pair for a long time or for a lifetime, they are not supposed to be other partners;
Polyginia - one male mates with several females;
Polyandry - one female is mating with several males;
PromiSkitet - both the male and the female have many partners, stable relationships are not formed.

Polyginia and polyandry are also sometimes called the general term “polygamy”.

For one type of animal, only one way of sexual behavior is usually characteristic. So, monogamy adheres to up to 90% of birds and only 3-5% of mammals: otter, wolves, foxes, beavers. Polygyny characteristic For lions, tigers, giant pandas, koal, hyenas. Polyandry They prefer First of all, fish, snakes and lizards, from mammals it is practiced by naked diggers, and from birds - ostriches of emu. Promiscuity Distributed Among the axolotils, platypes, kvkk, raccoons, raccoons, small pandas, Tasmanian devils and many primates-bonobo, chimpanzees, macaca-rhizus, orangutan.

Initially, people, like most other primates, are also adhered PromiSkiite, but as a result of evolutionary development, moved to the system of formation of stable couples. However, in the modern world, anthropologists say, only 17% of cultural communities Practicing Exceptional monogamy, in the rest there is a mixed model that allows polygamy, and even in such cultures, most people are in monogamous relationships due to personal choice, financial restrictions or for other reasons.

Usually a system of sexual interaction of a modern person (both men and women) called serial monogamy - people in relations Do not Alternative sexual partners, but after parting they usually seek to form a couple again for a particular period. This approach is often presented as an innovation that distinguishes us from people who lived 100, 200 and more years ago. However, anthropologists They argue With this concept: serial monogamy was inherent in people long before the present, just today, relations in such a system more often end in divorce, and earlier the reason for finding a new partner often became the death of a woman during childbirth or the death of a man in the war. Having examined the proximity systems within the family (the comparative value of the brother / sisters compared to children, the relationship of grandchildren with grandparents, the father of the father to the care of the offspring), scientists came to an unambiguous conclusion: “Monogamy is a dominant type of relationship in any cultural group.”

Clinical psychologist, candidate of psychological sciences Galina Laisheva Corrects The view of anthropologists: “The choice of reproductive or marriage strategy in a particular person does not depend on biological factors. A monogamous or polygamous person is based on social and cultural attitudes and ideas about which relations are preferable. ” That is, as such a dependence of a specific strategy of sexual interaction on the floor, everything is largely determined by attitudes in society - both for men and women.

Moreover, it is important divide Sexual behavior strategy and formal social ties between people. For example, people legally arrange a marriage and live together in open relationships. Formally, they are monogamous, but from the point of view of biology, this pair is pro -Misculite. If a man who is in a registered marriage starts a mistress, then the strategy of his sexual behavior becomes polyginia, although it will be monogamen legally (and for society). However, unlike the first union, where both partners in marriage know what real strategy they adhere to, in the second case, at least their wife, and often both women can consider monogamy with their strategy of sexual behavior.

Finally, simple logic contradicts the hypothesis of different strategies for sexual behavior in different sexes. Imagine a certain population in which men are strictly polygamous and want to have two or more wives at once, and women seek to make exclusively monogamous relationships. In order for a man’s needs to be realized, a certain number of women who wish polygamous interaction are needed. Of course, such a model does not provide for compulsion marriages and forced unions, but since it is about the desires of a person of this or that gender (that is, his nature, as stated in the popular narrative), then the elements of violence should not be taken into account.

Evolutionary biologist and author of the popular science bestseller “How we do this” Robert Martin I asked The same question: who are these additional partners of a polygamous man in the society of monogamous women? He analyzed many surveys showing that on average, men in their lives seem to have more sexual partners than women. Martin offers a possible explanation of this imbalance: “Although the participants of such polls guarantee anonymity, men are inclined to exaggerate the number of their partners from boasting, and women are modesty to underside.”

This hypothesis is confirmed by the results of several studies. So, survey Among students in the UK, held in 2001, showedthat, counting their sexual partners, men, unlike women, are more likely to take into account those with whom they had only oral or manual sex. At the same time, as much as 6% of respondents, as it turned out, is considered sexy contact of touch with lips or fingers to the chest and nipples. Such vague understanding of sexual contact can distort the results of studies that do not specify by what criteria of a person should be considered a sexual partner.

In 2014, similar survey He revealed another aspect: 20% of the girls, answering the question of the number of partners, intentionally understand the real meaning, while 12% exaggerate among men. Another survey also conducted in the UK in 2019, showedthat, answering the question of the number of their sexual partners, men are more inclined (24% versus 15% for women) do not remember and count, but simply evaluate. Scientists learned about this thanks to the additional question of the questionnaire about the calculation methodology. Volunteers chose one of the four options: “I knew (-a) before”, “I remembered (-a) of each partner and indicated (-a) number”, “I appreciated (-a) or approached (-a) number”, “I remembered (-a) and added (s) the approximate number for the rest”. It should be noted that the authors of the research, judging by the formulations used like the “partners of the opposite sex” (Opposite-Exel Partners), studied only heterosexual sexual intercourse.

Analyzing the prejudice about the polygamy of men and monogamy women, Martin also Turns The attention is that “if this or that society is generally monogamous, that is, only two possibilities: either women and men change equally often, or the sexual needs of many men who are wrong with their partners are satisfied by few women, each of whom has a lot of partners.” This assumption is also indirectly confirmed by scientific data. Within the framework of the 2019 study mentioned above, scientists Interrupted 15,000 men and women about their sexual activity and found out that the number of sexual partners is two times depending on the gender - 14 in men and seven in women. This situation looks extremely implausible, because in this case it is not clear where men find additional partners. After the researchers excluded respondents with an extremely high number of partners (110 or 50 or more for men and women, respectively), the picture began to level out. After adjusting the results, taking into account the fact that men are more often assessed, and do not remember the number of partners, the average gap between the indicators in men and women was only 2.63. However, scientists were able to explain this difference: firstly, men count as new partners of sex workers regardless of the service provided, secondly, the sex workers themselves were either not presented in the sample, or did not consider their customers partners, finally, the men often entered into sexual intercourse during the vacation, and their partners remained “overboard” the study, limited by British subjects. It is assumed that the amendments to these three parameters will be able to fully explain the gap of 2.63 partners between men and women. However, this team of scientists has not yet made appropriate measurements.

Although the opinion is that in recent decades due to universal emancipation and detailed the topic of sex, the average number of partners in people has increased, scientific data testify to the opposite, at least in the USA. From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1960s, both men and women gradually acquired more and more sexual ties. However, the generation of millennials (1982-1999) was more restrained, and the number of their sexual partners began to decline. For example, an American born in the last quarter of the 20th century, on average, had fewer sexual partners on average than his parents, and about the same as his grandparents from Generation of boomers. Unlike other studies, this review also included homosexual contacts.

Thus, there are no biological and anthropological evidence that people of different sexes adhere to contradictory systems of sexual interaction. The main strategy of a person is serial monogamy, when betrayals in stable relationships are not allowed normally, but after parting, new relationships with another partner are acceptable. The idea of polygamous men is largely related to stereotypes and sociocultural factors. They also affect how men and women speak of the number of their sexual partners, and, as a result, form the impression that in general men have much more partners than women.

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