Or we could all just be poly.

[may_dryad]

This contradictory article by Lisa Belkin acknowledges that "men find it more threatening when women cheat than vice versa," but then goes on to focus exclusively on why women find it so threatening. Belkin suggests that it's natural for us to worry "that a man will take his support and protection elsewhere," except that "as many as 76 percent of

Comments

[joreth]

As an independent female, it just drives me up the wall to hear people parrot back that old line about females needing a male's "support and protection". Not only has study after study shown that even species that appear to be socially monogamous are actually not sexually monogamous, but the whole intelligent monkey-brain allows us to perform acts directly contradictory to our programming (birth control, for instance).

And last time I checked, although there is still a wage discrepancy, women in this country do have the option of providing for themselves.

There's a reality TV show that my ex has introduced me to. It's called Tough Love and the premise is that a male matchmaker takes fucked up women and finds them partners. In the process, he tells them things that men think about women that women don't seem to know or want to hear. I'm actually in favor of this idea in theory, but how this anecdote is actually relevant is because of one particular girl on the show.

She's a money-grubbing gold digger. She immediately rules out every guy that doesn't make 6 figures. And she's obnoxious about it. In one episode, it finally comes to a confrontation where she breaks down and admits that the reason why money is so important to her is because she once fell in love, got pregnant, the guy left, and she had no means to support herself. She had to give the baby up for adoption and she wants to avoid that ever happening again, so she wants to find a rich man to marry so that she can have access to his funds in case she ever finds herself alone again.

My response to this was to shout at the TV set and say "my method of never being alone and penniless is to make my own fucking money!"

But I do wish people would get over the shock value of infidelity. We are simply not wired for sexual monogamy, and if we just accepted that, we could build our relationships based on a more realistic set of expectations and still treat each other with respect and dignity.

Oh wait, you and I already do that. It's called polyamory.

[may_dryad]

My response to this was to shout at the TV set and say "my method of never being alone and penniless is to make my own fucking money!"

Amen. And as a married woman, I can attest that a stable marriage does not equal being provided for by a man. Disabled husbands aside, the single-income family is far from the norm, so most women, married or single, can and do provide for themselves to a large degree. And despite cultural and gender norms that try to tell us differently, women throughout human history have always been significant contributors to the support of themselves and their families.

[joreth]

It's amazing how many people don't know that, even in the so-called "hunter-gatherer" societies (and I say "so-called" because they assume the hyphenization is for a division upon gender lines, not just that it's a 2-part survival system), the "gatherers" actually provided more sustenance for the tribe than the Flinstones' image of big-hunter-bring-meat-save-family myth. So, technically, the females have always been the "providers" of the family (although, to be perfectly accurate, it was more of a collaborative effort than any strict gender role, but I can't break apart every myth at once).

But back to your point, my mother provided the most stable income for a good number of years while my father tried to get his business off the ground and never really did. Eventually he had to give up the business and get a job working for someone else and now they both contribute more or less equally, but my mom was the provider for a long time, paying for a suburban middle-class home and putting me through private school all as a secretary. It helped that, before my dad had his business, he did make a good living in his previous job, and they had some savings to utilize, but the point is that stable marriage does not automatically equal being provided for, as you said, and the most stable marriages that I've seen are a collaborative effort - either equal contributions at the same time or taking turns supporting each other for special circumstances.