Earning the meat on your wedding night.
Welcome to the 11th edition of Discover Intimacy!
Read time: 7 - 9 minutes
We are continuing our exploration of Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá.
As a reminder, the overall premise of the book is that monogamy is not a natural, biologically designed practice for human beings. This is the book’s foundation and everything after that seeks to provide historical, anthropological and scientific evidence as to why it is the case.
In part 1 of our 4-part series, we tackled evidence related to prehistoric foragers, science following societal beliefs and bonobo behavior.
In part 2, we discussed conception practices and concepts of family in non-Western cultures.
And this week, in part 3, we’re talking about concepts of marriage, cultural marital practices and jealousy.
WHAT DOES THAT WORD MEAN TO YOU?
When it comes to dating, mating, relationships and marriage, the words we use to describe the concepts can be just as important as the concepts themselves.
Have you ever been “seeing someone” and in your mind, you’re in a committed relationship but in your partner’s mind, you two are “just talking?” What does that mean – to “just talk?” What does it mean to “see someone?” What does it mean “to date,” “to mate,” “to marry?” Because there are no universal truths associated with these terms and phrases, there can be little to no expectation of universal understanding.
The frustrations we experience in our dating and relationship lives extend to the scientific study of these topics as well. And that is what Ryan and Jethá call into question.
The authors contend that:
“Indeed, when familiar labels are applied, supporting evidence becomes far more visible than counter-evidence in a psychological process known as confirmation bias. Once we have a mental model, we’re much more likely to notice and recall evidence supporting our model than evidence against it.”
In other words, if scientists are examining relationships through their understanding of Western concepts of dating and marriage, they will see exactly what they believe they see based on their understanding.
This inherent bias among researchers produces scientific work that will have its readers believing that monogamy is a global, universally understood, widely applied practice that has been in existence since the dawn of time.
Jethá and Ryan say no.
WHAT ARE FOLKS DOING AROUND THE WORLD?
One need only look at the myriad of examples of marriage and monogamy around the world to see that there are few universally understood truths on the matter.
BOTSWANA: Among the !Kung San people, girls marry several times before settling into a long-term relationship.
BRAZIL: Among the Curripaco people, “marriage is a gradual, undefined process.” When a woman hangs her hammock next to a man and cooks for him, some community members will consider them married while others, especially older community members, will say they’re married only after demonstrating that they can support and care for each other over time.
SHIA MUSLIMS: “In the Shia Muslim tradition, there is a similar institution called Nikah Mut’ah (“marriage for pleasure”), in which the relationship is entered into with a preordained termination point, like a car rental. These marriages can last anywhere from a few minutes to several years. A man can have any number of temporary wives at the same time (in addition to his ‘permanent’ wife). Often used as a religious loophole in which prostitution or casual sex can fall within the bounds of religious requirements, there is no paperwork or ceremony required.”
BRAZIL: Among the Canela people of Eastern Timbira, “ ‘Virginity loss is only the first step into full marriage for a woman.’ There are several other steps needed before the Canela society considers a couple to be truly married, including the young woman’s gaining social acceptance through her service in a ‘festival men’s society.’ This premarital service includes sequential sex with fifteen to twenty men. If the bride-to-be does well, she’ll earn payments of meat from the men, which will be paid directly to her future mother-in-law on a festival day.”
INUIT: Among the Inuit, “Erotic exchange played an important role in linking families from distant villages in a durable web of certain aid in times of crisis. Though the harsh ecology of the Arctic dictated a much lower population density than the Amazon or even the Kalahari Desert, extra-pair sexual interaction helped cement bonds that offered the same insurance against unforeseen difficulties.”
MELANESIA: Among the Marind-anim people, “Semen was essential to human growth and development. They also married quite young, and to assure the bride’s fertility, she had to be filled with semen. On her wedding night, therefore, as many as ten members of her husband’s lineage had sexual intercourse with the bride, and if there were more men than this in the lineage, they had intercourse with her the following night… A similar ritual was repeated at various intervals throughout a woman’s life.”
CHINA: “The Mosuo are a matrilineal, agricultural people, passing property and family name from mother to daughter(s), so the household revolves around the women. When a girl reaches maturity at about thirteen or fourteen, she receives her own bedroom that opens both to the inner courtyard of the house and to the street through a private door. A Mosuo girl has complete autonomy as to who steps through this private door into her babahuago (flower room). The only strict rule is her guest must be gone by sunrise. She can have a different lover the following night – or later that same night – if she chooses. There is no expectation of commitment, and any child she conceives is raised in her mother’s house, with the help of the girl’s brothers and the rest of the community.”
These examples present a dramatically different understanding of mating, marriage and marital practices than the Western understanding of marriage (which has considerable variation in and of itself).
One of the most fascinating things about these groups and the “biased” scientific work Jethá and Ryan discuss, is that these groups of people – from Botswana, the Amazon, China, various remote islands and non-Christian backgrounds – have long been the subjects of the belief that they are “primitive,” “uneducated,” “unrefined,” “heathens,” and any number of other terms used to describe peoples who are not participants in Western, European ideology. Ryan and Jethá don’t go so far as to say this (yet), but we are…
Is it possible that these distinctly different understandings of marriage, mating and relationships are ignored among mainstream scientific study of marriage and monogamy because these people are “backwards?”
WHAT TYPE OF JEALOUS ARE YOU?
Have you ever heard of or been presented with this classic relationship dichotomy?:
Would you rather your partner develop a deep, emotional connection to someone else, or a strictly sexual connection to someone else?
If this dichotomy is familiar, it’s likely that you’ve heard the common wisdom on this topic – that women are much more averse to their partners developing an emotional connection with someone else, while men are much more averse to their partners developing a strictly sexual connection.
And, this assertion is backed up by research – research that is problematic for our authors. Ryan and Jethá contend that this research is incomplete. In a popular study of 1,122 people on this very topic, the results aligned with the common knowledge. Women don’t want their men in love with someone else. Men don’t want their women having sex with someone else.
But Ryan and Jethá say that we must look deeper. First, this study, as with many studies of sex and sexuality, are based on college students due to their accessibility to researchers and their likelihood to participate in studies for money. That is potentially problematic. If you attended college and you did so more than 5 – 10 years ago, it’s quite likely that your understanding of relationships and what you care about in them has changed since that time. After all, we’re grown now.
Second, when this study was revisited and included measuring the physiological responses of female participants, they physically responded the same way when considering their partner cheating emotionally or sexually. Meaning, both were a problem. And, it begs the question… “This finding suggests a fascinating disconnect between what these women actually feel and what they think they should feel about their partner’s fidelity.”
And lastly, when this study was revisited (again), participants were presented with a third option – are both types of infidelity equally problematic for you? When presented this third option, participants across the board stated that both types of infidelity were indeed problematic.
Why does this matter? Because, according to Ryan and Jethá, it flies in the face of widely accepted, Western wisdom around jealousy in relationships, jealousy based on gender and expectations of what is and is not acceptable in relationships.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of Discover Intimacy. We will complete part 4 of our 4-part series next week.
Until then, continue awakening your sexual intellect...
