Just recently I came to know a few truths about a girl I had been becoming fond of. They were revealed to me by somebody she claimed to be her friend. This guy confided in me that he had been in a relationship with her and she had been in a relationship with his friend prior to him coming into her life. She had even slept with that other guy (after a few months of speaking to him on the phone).
Naturally, I was quite hurt by this revelation, not because she had been involved with the other guys but because she had hidden these facts from me even though I had asked her about it. I felt that was a breach of trust. I felt that was a breach of expectations. She had been a blatant liar. I called her up today and gave her a piece of my mind. I was rude for the first time in years to a girl, blatantly rude. It’s not that I am a saint and she’s the sinner, but I think my offensiveness was due to the fact that she had been a liar. I felt bad later. The guy who had revealed everything to me about her called me up to justify her silence, to defend her innocence. I felt how people could play games with their own minds, keep themselves in self-imposed illusions. I don’t want to be rude to people, but neither can I be pleasant at all times. There are times when rudeness is justified.
Well, I just formed a theory of human sexual behavior of my own after all that I have experienced in 28 years of my life. I think adultery is hardwired into us because:
a. The sex drive is as strong as the other basic biological drives.
b. The desire to have a sexual partner is very strong.
c. We humans are mostly attracted to qualities present in our mates and not to our mates themselves.
Let me explain (primarily for my own satisfaction):
a. The sex drive: It is one of the most primal instincts present in us. The desire to have an orgasm. It is as strong as the survival instinct, the instinct to give more priority to our own lives more than to that of others. There are exceptions like the people who put their own lives at risk to save others, cases of extreme altruism. However, these are exceptions. There are exceptions to the priority of sex drive too like monks who vow to remain celibate for life. However, for the majority of us ordinary men and women, the sex drive is irresistible when nature calls. Our body takes control and leaves us with guilt and incomprehension at times. We don’t know why we did it sometimes, but as always, the mind wants to stay in a state of harmony with the body and therefore devises ways of justifying our instinctive behavior. Nevertheless, as long as the body is capable of engaging in sexual acts, it will.
b. Sexual partner: The desire to have a sexual partner is as strong as the sex drive itself. It makes us see potential mates in every person of the opposite sex we come across (I will speak in heterosexual terms as I am heterosexual myself) and with whom it is socially acceptable. However, sometimes the desire for sexual partner extends to persons who might not be socially acceptable but the desire is so great that we tend to seek gratification at any cost, even though we might know that it might not be a very socially acceptable decision. We are all seeking sexual partners at all times, primarily people who still do not have a stable partner to gratify the sex drive.
c. Attractive qualities: Finally, we humans tend to fall in love with primarily the qualities present in our sexual partners and not with the partners themselves. The partners might change, but we always seek the same qualities we are attracted to in different partners. The bodies change, the characteristics that give the bodies an identify remain the same. Therefore, we might get attracted to one person today and the very next day fall for another because we see the qualities that we find attractive in that other person. Sometimes, we rise above this basic biological programming by being faithful to one partner in spite of having others around us with better representations of the qualities we seek, but that is mainly due to the need for stability. We do not like change or chaos in our lives. We seek stability and hence the need to have stable partners, but sometimes the desire to seek better representations of the qualities we seek make us unfaithful and our mind again comes up with ways to justify our actions because it wants a maintain state of harmony within itself.
Therefore, in conclusion, I have realized that unfaithfulness is a basic human quality which is mostly unavoidable. Virginity is not a matter of choice in most cases but of circumstances. Lastly, conceit is resorted to at times to get sexual partners and it is justified by the mind by its own strange logic. Perfection is an illusion. Expectations are bound to be shattered.
For a happy state of mind, have low expectations, do not seek perfection, and be in a state of acceptance.
JBL
