Between The Cheats

 

I ran into this very interesting article - The Different Types of Infidelity Which Make Men and Women Most Upset. 64,000 people in the study were asked to imagine:

1) Their partner falling in love with someone else, but not having sex with them.

2) Their partner having sex with someone else, but not falling in love with them.

"The results showed that 54% of heterosexual men would be more upset by sexual than emotional infidelity. The corresponding figure for women was 35%. Women were much more likely than men to be upset by emotional infidelity (65% of women versus 46% of men)."

So, basically, all infidelity (emotional and sexual) is bad and most unwelcome, but heterosexual men are much more likely to be upset by sexual infidelity than women, and heterosexual women are much more likely to be upset by emotional infidelity than men.

Naturally, this is only a common pattern; it does not speak for everyone. But I suspect there is some biological basis behind the claims. As it goes, homo sapiens has been the lone survivor of what is believed to be many other very similar hominin species that died out. As well as many subtle differences (adaptability, environmental factors, social cohesion), the main difference is that we, the surviving species, made a better job of passing on our genes.

Males increased the chances of passing on genes by as much copulation as possible. Females increased the chances of passing on genes by limiting the number of children, in order to be able to raise the ones she had. She would do this best with a supportive male standing by her. The hands of evolutionary biology have thus dictated that to pass on genes, the emotional relationship is more important for females than males, particularly as the mother has to ensure that her children's father is attentive to her and the raising of their children. But equally, males have to guard against female infidelity, lest they get stuck helping to bring up other males' children.

Given the foregoing, we probably have brains that are primed for the above figures to be accurate, where being more upset by sexual infidelity should be much higher for men, and being more upset by emotional infidelity should be even higher for women. We should also expect, then, that for the purposes of self-preservation, couples who work very hard to be monogamous have more chance of a successful and durable union.