Fifteen months into their marriage, Brenda (surname left out on her request) was faced with a harsh reality of her husband’s infidelity.
She recalls how a harsh knocking on their Bugolobi flat door had startled her and her four- month-old daughter she had just put to sleep that Sunday afternoon.
“On opening the door,” narrates Brends, “I saw two women.”
The younger one was well-known to her; she was a pump attendant at one of the filling stations from where they often fuelled their cars although Brenda hadn’t seen her there in a while.
She was heavily pregnant but that did not ring a bell to Brenda, who thought they had simply missed their address. That was until the older woman, who happened to be the young lady’s mother, started talking.
In a nutshell, Brenda was given orders to instruct her husband, Stephen, to marry the pregnant lady! Incensed, she tried calling her husband who was out with his boys watching soccer to no avail and, instead, she decided to wait for him to get back home.
To her surprise, he was aware of the baby that was on the way and to her utter annoyance, he did not make any effort to deny it.
“He instead told me he was sorry, he still loved me and he was only waiting for the right time to tell me,” says Brenda. “That was going to be his fourth child from four different women.”
See, when Brenda met her husband, a banker, he already had two children from two different women. He told her he had been simply unlucky with relationships. Their plan had been to get married, have two children in addition to his two children and raise their four lovely children.
“That was when it dawned on me that he was the problem, and not his previous partners,” notes Brenda, who went ahead and had the two children but threw in the towel when Stephen sired another kid outside their marriage.
Of course, he never married any of the women but as Brenda disclosed, the most painful thing was he often bragged among his peers about how he had sowed his wild oats wide and far.
IS IT THE GENES?
Stephen is just one among many men who believe in having children with more than one woman. While both men and women are driven to cheat by lust and carnal desires, research has indicated that men have one more reason as to why they cheat.
According to www.thegoodmenproject.com, research on male sexual behavior confirms what we know – that men are more likely to have an extramarital affair.
The research also tells us that men want more sexual partners than women, have more lifetime partners than women, are more willing than women to have sex with a complete stranger, and have their first sexual experiences at a younger age than women.
What the research tells us is that guys are more likely to have or want an affair or to agree to a hookup. But the research also tells us that the majority of guys don’t actually do these things.
In the largest study of its kind involving about 100 male and 100 female undergraduates from 62 countries, approximately 25 per cent of men and six per cent of women said they wanted two or more sexual partners in the next 30 days.
These percentages are consistent with other studies like this, and they confirm that men report a greater desire for promiscuity and they do it the world over.
But look at the number of men again: 25 per cent! That means that 75 per cent wanted no more than one partner in the next month. That is, most guys want monogamy, at least in the short term, according to the survey.
NATURE DICTATES
These statistics are not without logic. Evolutionary psychologist David M Buss, a professor of Psychology at the University of Texas and author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, says men are simply wired to seek out as many female partners as possible.
According to Buss, men have ‘evolved the desire to be with different women’ because there is simply no biological barrier in place stopping a man procreating with as many women as possible.
Men have limitless sperm compared to the limitations on women and their eggs; men can effectively have back-to-back babies whereas women have to wait nine months in between each birth; men can wake up and leave, whereas women are in for the long haul.
The research findings thus prove that non-monogamy doesn’t always have to be driven by perfunctory carnal desires. Passionless polyandry can also be due to evolutionary reasons, namely, making sure one’s genes stay in the game.
In resonance to the above, one of the sources that The Observer interviewed about this topic had this to say; “Having sex with another woman does not mean that I don’t love my wife and it doesn’t mean that I necessarily love the woman that I am having it with.” He went ahead to state that he can never have all his children with the same woman.
“That will be a very big mistake that I don’t intend to make. I have to diversify my off-spring,” revealed the elite gentleman who requested anonymity.
In reverberation with the above respondent, several other people that The Observer engaged about the topic found it agreeable for men to cheat and even have children outside marriage and with multiple partners. The same, was however, not expected of women.
Barbara Kagoya, who originally wanted four children, had to stop at two children having lost her husband.
“I can’t have children with more than one man. It will cheapen me and breed confusion,” Kagoya says, adding that such behavior is for men, and not women.
Charlotte Birungi, a student of Social Sciences at Makerere University, says although both sexes cheat, the habit is more suitable for men.
“I don’t know how to put it but it just doesn’t sound right for women to have multiple partners. Polygamy is for men. We ladies respect our bodies so much,” notes Birungi.
As a result, men are programmed to expand “their genetic legacy by spreading their cheap seed, while females are inherently made to maximise their investment by being choosy, by securing a male likely to be a good long-term partner”.
Scientifically, according to internet sources, men have an urge to spread their seed in order to ensure the survival of their genetic legacy.
It’s, therefore, alleged to be a man’s biology to want to wander, which is not the case with the fairer sex. As explained by various internet sources, the usual culprit hormone, testosterone, is responsible for the level to which a man will cheat. The higher a man’s testosterone levels, the higher his chances of cheating.
Among women, the hormone, oestrogen, is responsible for their non-monogamy. Women are more likely to cheat when they are most likely to get pregnant, during their ovulation period which lasts about two to three days in a month.
This incidence is significantly lower compared to the males whose urge is a daily phenomenon. This, however, goes to show how hormones play an incredible role in human beings’ sexual behavior.
These biological influences might make it sound like people can’t help cheating because they are at the mercy of their hormones.
However, according to www.scienceofrelationships.com, that is not what the research shows.
If biology were destiny, then every high-testosterone male and high-oestrogen female would be a serial cheater, which clearly isn’t the case.
Rather, hormones may make resisting harder, but people have the ability to be self-aware and self-reflective and thus should be held accountable for their own choices.
pbaike@yahoo.com
