The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex (24 page)

To find out, David Waynforth at the University of New Mexico
tested 56 men in western Belize, a predominantly Mayan population that has been
relatively isolated. The villages studied, San Antonio and Cristo Rey, were
inaccessible except by canoe, at least until recently. Their primary mode of
subsistence is through slash-and-burn agriculture, a process known among the
Belize population as “milpa.” When Waynforth studied the Belizeans, all the
marriages were assumed to be monogamous, although a few of the men had been
married and divorced and remarried. Despite the norm of monogamy, some men had
extramarital affairs.

Waynforth interviewed the men extensively about how they spent
their time when not working. The two major categories were “time spent with
family and kin” and “mating effort,” which in this case was restricted to time
devoted to casual pickups. The time spent with family and kin included chores
done around the house, time spent with one’s wife, and time spent with
siblings, parents, grandparents, and children. The time spent on casual
encounters included all time spent in situations where the men were likely to
meet other women. Two men hanging out at a village store was counted as mating
effort, since women frequent the village store, and it was clear from the men’s
behavior that they were there to attract women. Waynforth photographed each
man, and then subsequently had him rated by a panel of judges for facial
attractiveness.

The results supported the theory of diminishing returns. More
attractive men spent little time at home with wives and kin, but spent a lot of
time engaged in activities in which they would meet other women. In contrast,
less attractive men, usually unsuccessful in charming women, allotted far more
time to tending the home nest, doing household chores, teaching children, and
investing in the family. A man’s attractiveness, in short, affects how he
allots his limited time to getting outside sex or tending the home fires.

It’s a law of nature that everyone reaches diminishing returns
in spending time and energy on particular adaptive problems. Some individuals,
by virtue of their greater attractiveness, take longer to hit the wall of
wasted effort where what is reaped is not worth the effort expended on getting
it. Sooner or later we all hit that wall.

Common sense and everyone’s grandmother could tell you that
people who are sexually and emotionally unhappy in their marriages are more
likely to have affairs. Sometimes, however, the world is not what it seems. The
earth appears flat to us, but it is in fact round. The universe appears to us
to have three dimensions of space and one of time, but astrophysicists tell us
that it has as many as 11 dimensions. So it is with the psychological dynamics
of marriage. Our folk wisdom sometimes leads us astray, or in the case of
unhappiness and infidelity, partially astray.

Shirley Glass and Thomas Wright explored the link between
marital happiness and extramarital affairs. To their amazement, the level of
marital happiness seemed to have no effect on men’s likelihood of infidelity.
In fact, 56 percent of the men who were having affairs judged their marriage to
be “very happy.”

Glass related the following incident to illustrate the
shattering of her initial beliefs about marital harmony and affairs: “Being a woman,
I believed that if a man had an affair, it meant that he had a terrible
marriage, and that he probably wasn’t getting it at home—the old
keep-your-husband-happy-so-he-won’t-stray idea . . . I found that she could be
everything wonderful, and he still might stray . . . a man I knew, married for
40 years, had recently died and his wife was so bereaved because they had the
most wonderful marriage. He had been her lover, her friend, and her support
system. She missed him immensely. I thought that was a beautiful story. When I
told my husband about it, he got a funny look that made me ask, ‘What do you
know?’ He proceeded to tell me that one night when he took the kids out for
dinner to an out-of-the-way restaurant, that very man walked in with a young blonde
woman. When he saw my husband, he walked out.

“I wondered what that meant. Did he fool his wife all those
years and really not love her? How is it possible to be married for over 40
years and think you have a good marriage? It occurred to me that an affair
could mean something different than I believed.”

The link between marital dissatisfaction and affairs differs for
men and women, and also depends on when in the marriage the affair takes place.
In general, the marital satisfaction of all couples tends to show a gradual
decline with the length of the marriage. The sole exception occurs with men who
have affairs. Unlike all other groups, these men remained unusually happy with
their marriages. This link failed to occur however, when the affair erupted early
in the marriage. Early affairs signal disaster, and these men were extremely
unhappy. But many men appear able to have affairs even when perfectly happy
with their wives, contradicting grandmother’s wisdom.

Folk wisdom, however, turns out to be absolutely on target for
women. Most women who had affairs stated that they were extremely unhappy with
their marriages. This sex difference provides a clue to the realization that
affairs serve different adaptive functions for men and women. Men’s affairs are
more likely to be purely sexual; women’s affairs are more often emotional. In
Shirley Glass’s study, 44 percent of the men who were having affairs declared
that they had little or no emotional involvement with their affair partner. In
the words of one man, “Why can’t women understand that it’s no different than
playing tennis with a different partner; you’d get bored if you played with the
same partner every time.” The same study found that only 11 percent of the
women having affairs reported little or no emotional involvement, revealing a
huge sex difference.

In another study, Glass and Wright asked 148 men and 155 women
what would justify an affair: “Here is a list of reasons that people sometimes
give to explain why they have been involved with someone of the opposite sex
outside their marriage in a very close relationship. To what extent would each
of the following reasons justify either an emotional or a sexual extramarital
relationship for you?” Women were far more likely than men to say that
emotional factors, such as love, intimacy, sharing, and companionship would
justify their affair. Men, in contrast, were more likely to cite sexual
justifications—sexual novelty, change, experimentation, or mere curiosity.

Although the motives for men’s affairs vary, and certainly some
men have affairs because they are miserable in their marriages, the majority
seem to have affairs to satisfy their lust for sexual variety, a lust that
historically had a clear adaptive impetus. The functions of women’s affairs
remain more mysterious and complicated, and so warrant an entire chapter (see
chapter 7).

One final sex difference must be described: what constitutes
infidelity. Women think that spending time with someone of the opposite sex and
keeping nonsexual secrets from one’s partner constitutes infidelity; men do
not. Men, on the other hand, are more likely than women to state that any
sexual interaction with someone else constitutes an infidelity. The sexes
evidently differ in the very definition of infidelity. This difference in our
intuitive understanding of what constitutes an infidelity likely stems from the
different adaptive threats men and women have faced over the long course of
human evolution. Men, as we have seen, have faced the threat of paternity
uncertainty, women the threat of loss of a partner’s commitment. These
differences influence how we define betrayal.

Although most research has focused on the aspects of
relationships such as relative desirability and emotional dissatisfaction that
lead to affairs, an often-overlooked predictor of infidelity is personality.
Are people with certain personality characteristics more likely to leap into
the arms of another? To answer this question, Todd Shackelford and I gave an
extensive battery of personality tests to a group of 107 married couples in
their newlywed year. Rather than settle for mere self-reports of personality,
we secured three relatively independent evaluations: self-reports, reports from
the spouse, and reports from two interviewers, a man and a woman. More than 100
measures of personality were examined, ranging from adventurousness to
zaniness, but only three proved to be strong predictors of susceptibility to
infidelity.

The first was narcissism. People high on narcissism have a
grandiose sense of self-importance, often exaggerating their accomplishments or
talents. They expect to be recognized by others as superior, and often get
infuriated when such admiration is not forthcoming. Typically preoccupied with
fantasies of unlimited success, power, status, or brilliance, they believe that
they are “special” and unique, and that the usual rules and norms of social
life do not apply to them. Narcissists require excessive admiration and go to
great lengths to evoke it from others, often in a socially charming manner. A
hallmark of narcissism is a profound sense of entitlement. Narcissistic people
have unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment, expect that others will
automatically comply with their expectations, and become furious when they
don’t. They take advantage of others, and although all people sometimes use
others for their own ends, narcissists turn interpersonal exploitation into an
art form. They make friends specifically for their wealth, generosity, and
connections, and especially for the ease with which they can be exploited.
Narcissists selectively choose those whom they can exploit, neglecting people
who are more skeptical of their grandiose claims of superiority and
specialness.

Perhaps most central for infidelity, narcissists typically lack
empathy for the pain and suffering they cause others. The are so preoccupied
with their own needs and desires, they neglect to consider how their actions
might hurt even those closest to them. Finally, narcissists are frequently
envious of others, resentful of those who might have more success, power, or
prestige. Their envy may be linked to their fragile sense of self-esteem, since
narcissists oscillate between feelings of grandiosity and feelings that they
are worthless. Good behavioral markers of narcissism include showing off one’s
body (exhibitionistic), nominating oneself for a position of power (grandiose),
taking the best piece of food for oneself (self-centered), asking for a large
favor without offering repayment (sense of entitlement), laughing at a friend’s
problems (lack of empathy), and using friends for their wealth (interpersonally
exploitative). All of these qualities seem conducive to gaining gratification
outside marriage.

Narcissism proved to be highly linked with susceptibility to
infidelity, even in the first year of marriage. Narcissists admitted that they
are more likely to flirt with others, kiss others passionately, and go out on
romantic dates with others. Their spouses concurred. They were also judged to
be more susceptible to having one-night stands, brief affairs, and even serious
affairs, and again their spouses concurred. These judgments of susceptibility
to infidelity were borne out over the next four years. On follow-up, we found
that those who scored high on narcissism during their newlywed year were indeed
more likely to have sexual affairs with others. Interestingly, narcissism
proved to be as strong a “risk factor” for infidelity in women as in men.

Narcissists, of course, can be very charming, entertaining, and
highly engaging in social contexts. But those married to them are in for some
suffering. Because of their excessive self-absorption, wild sense of
entitlement, and lack of empathy for the harm they cause others, narcissists
seek sexual gratification and esteem boosts from affair partners. They
undoubtedly justify their actions—after all, they are special, not subject to
the same petty rules that others must slavishly follow, and so deserve special
sources of gratification.

Two other personality characteristics make it more likely that a
spouse will stray: being low on conscientiousness and being high on a scale
labeled
psychoticism
. Low conscientiousness is characterized by
traits such as unreliability, negligence, carelessness, disorganization,
laziness, impulsivity, and lack of self-control. Good behavioral markers of low
conscientiousness include neglecting to pay one’s bills on time, forgetting to
pick up a friend after promising to do so, forgetting to thank others for their
help, arriving late for a meeting, forgetting to turn off the lights after
leaving a room, and impulsively purchasing an item without considering whether
it’s affordable.

The psychoticism scale is something of a misnomer, since high
scorers are not really psychotic. Rather, high scorers tend to be very
impulsive and lack inhibitory control, much like those low on
conscientiousness. In extreme cases, high scorers closely resemble the clinical
picture of
sociopathy,
a personality disorder marked by a short-term
sexual strategy, social conning, manipulativeness, and interpersonal
exploitation. High scorers on this scale also lack empathy, like those high on
narcissism. Good behavioral markers of psychoticism include laughing when a dog
is hit by a car, showing indifference when a child is injured, suddenly
breaking off friendships without warning or explanation, disappearing for
several days without explanation, and impulsively shouting “obscenities” at
other drivers he believes cut him off. Men, as you might guess, score higher on
psychoticism than do women.

Both low conscientiousness and high psychoticism proved to be
solid predictors of marital infidelity. Like those high on narcissism, these
people flirted, kissed, and dated others more frequently than their more
conscientious and less impulsive peers. And they more often leaped into bed
with others without thinking of the consequences, both for one-night stands,
brief flings, and even more serious affairs. These personality predictors
showed remarkable consistency for men and women. Neither sex, it seems, is
exempt from the long reach of personality in luring some married people into
the enticing arms of others. A selfish, manipulative, and impulsive personality
does not inevitably cause infidelity. But it raises the odds.