I think there’s a big rhetorical difference between “I have no desire to do this” vs “I have a desire to do this, but it’s small and unlikely to matter”, for someone who cares about whether you’re likely to do it. Naively, the former sounds like, “Oh, so you’re no more attracted to other women than a gay man would be? Wonderful! I’ve met such a faithful man!” Whereas, to an audience that needs to be persuaded, the latter might raise questions like “Might the desire grow in the future, as desires sometimes do? Under what circumstances? How likely is it?”.
And if one takes the “outside view” and looks at general statistics about divorce and infidelity rates, I got a total failure rate approaching 40% after 10 years. I suspect at least half of those people were earnest about their marriage vows, so the mere fact that you’re earnestly stating that you’ll be together for the foreseeable future don’t seem especially reassuring. The statements must be evaluated on their merits.
I see your argument about your personal situation, but one could also argue that your history implies you have a high sex drive plus a high ability to get new partners, and that this will have implications if your partner becomes unattractive to you some years down the road. I’m not actually sure about the direction of the net update.
From your post:
To be fair, the prevalence of cheating is very strong evidence that monos (especially men) are indeed dishonest about their desires for extra-relationship fucking, either because they’re lying to themselves, or because they’re willing to abandon this desire as a practical concession to finding a partner in a monogamy-dominated landscape.
Or because they naively reported “Yes, today I have no desire to fuck other people” early in the relationship, and thought that was the end of the story. They didn’t look into the causes of infidelity in relationships and really evaluate the likelihood of each of them. “Will I become less attractive to my partner as I age, and vice versa? Can we, and will we put in the effort to, do anything about that? Will our sex drives remain compatible? Will one person be afflicted by stress or something, and just become unpleasant to be around, etc.? What is the actual probability that we’ll be happy together in 5 years, 10 years?” They were short-sighted, and probably motivated to be that way for multiple reasons. (But also, some of this is hard to predict even if you’re trying hard.)
Then the situation changed, and their desires changed, but they were already in the relationship, and at least initially their desire wasn’t strong enough to justify leaving the relationship. But it grew stronger. At some point they have to choose between renegotiating / preparing to leave the relationship, or cheating, and some end up choosing the latter.
I think monogamists have significant motivation to self-deceive upwardly about their propensity towards fidelity. I think you’d have to agree that the incentive exists: both because it lets them earnestly tell prospective monogamous mates that they’ll be faithful, and because they probably think it’s morally good to have that quality. Believing and stating outright falsehoods is not the only possible manifestation. Making honest mistakes that point in that direction—by being reluctant to follow “dangerous” lines of inquiry, or by quickly seizing upon claims that support the desired conclusion and not scrutinizing them for flaws—can achieve similar results.
I think there’s a big rhetorical difference between “I have no desire to do this” vs “I have a desire to do this, but it’s small and unlikely to matter”, for someone who cares about whether you’re likely to do it. Naively, the former sounds like, “Oh, so you’re no more attracted to other women than a gay man would be? Wonderful! I’ve met such a faithful man!” Whereas, to an audience that needs to be persuaded, the latter might raise questions like “Might the desire grow in the future, as desires sometimes do? Under what circumstances? How likely is it?”.
And if one takes the “outside view” and looks at general statistics about divorce and infidelity rates, I got a total failure rate approaching 40% after 10 years. I suspect at least half of those people were earnest about their marriage vows, so the mere fact that you’re earnestly stating that you’ll be together for the foreseeable future don’t seem especially reassuring. The statements must be evaluated on their merits.
I see your argument about your personal situation, but one could also argue that your history implies you have a high sex drive plus a high ability to get new partners, and that this will have implications if your partner becomes unattractive to you some years down the road. I’m not actually sure about the direction of the net update.
From your post:
Or because they naively reported “Yes, today I have no desire to fuck other people” early in the relationship, and thought that was the end of the story. They didn’t look into the causes of infidelity in relationships and really evaluate the likelihood of each of them. “Will I become less attractive to my partner as I age, and vice versa? Can we, and will we put in the effort to, do anything about that? Will our sex drives remain compatible? Will one person be afflicted by stress or something, and just become unpleasant to be around, etc.? What is the actual probability that we’ll be happy together in 5 years, 10 years?” They were short-sighted, and probably motivated to be that way for multiple reasons. (But also, some of this is hard to predict even if you’re trying hard.)
Then the situation changed, and their desires changed, but they were already in the relationship, and at least initially their desire wasn’t strong enough to justify leaving the relationship. But it grew stronger. At some point they have to choose between renegotiating / preparing to leave the relationship, or cheating, and some end up choosing the latter.
I think monogamists have significant motivation to self-deceive upwardly about their propensity towards fidelity. I think you’d have to agree that the incentive exists: both because it lets them earnestly tell prospective monogamous mates that they’ll be faithful, and because they probably think it’s morally good to have that quality. Believing and stating outright falsehoods is not the only possible manifestation. Making honest mistakes that point in that direction—by being reluctant to follow “dangerous” lines of inquiry, or by quickly seizing upon claims that support the desired conclusion and not scrutinizing them for flaws—can achieve similar results.