At lunch with one of my best girlfriends AG1 yesterday, we got to talking about relationships, which in turn led to the question of fidelity or rather the feasibility of fidelity, which in turn - turned to the role of social constructivism in dictating the temper of intimate relationships between humans. Simply put, is monogamy nothing more than a social construct? Or is it something innate that is part of our genetic blueprint?Both of us, eternal pessimists admittedly, werent entirely convinced that human beings are genetically coded to co-exist in monogamous relationships for all perpetuity i.e. humans, people, men and women will inevitably 'cheat', eventually. Why? Because monogamy contradicts the one overriding genetic blueprint i.e. survival, cue arguments for and against evolutionary theory/natural selection/social Darwinism etc etc.
It got me to thinking... (always a bad thing). Perhaps the difficulty women (and men) have with partners who cheat, is not so much down to the physical act itself, but rather the deception, or lies that come with the territory. Hmmm I wonder. If a man (or woman) honestly said to the other, "I'd like to f*ck so-and-so, purely physical, I still love you to bits - are you cool with that?", shouldnt the rational and logical answer be something like "oh, okay, make sure to use protection"???Cue 'social construct' that has us all believing that life should be about one 'true' love, one person, one soulmate (and no one else,) forever? I blame Hollywood. Now, that has me sounding all broken-hearted and depressed, but really, I'm perfectly content. All warm and fuzzy feelings all round - so people, no need to worry ;o) This is merely an academic curiosity...
On a completely random note, last night I dreamt I broke into RMC (yes thats the Royal Military College) and rescued a childhood sweetheart from some sort of military evil... now what would Freud say???
Probably, that I've been watching too many episodes of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer!!!
