Marriage and commitment
Quote:If this were actually true, men would not leave their wives for other women. Men do become emotionally attached to the other women in their lives. If they did not, a man would have sex with various women for sexual gratification - and not just one other woman besides his wife. Do you see this as limiting himself? The vast majority of men that are with other women only have one, maybe 2. Would you attribute this to the amount of sex partners a man really wants to have, or a social construct?
Neither. I would attribute it to it being no easy thing for a man to find multiple sex partners who really want to have children by him without requiring caring of him. (And of course, if a man has serial marriages, after a while women realize a marriage proposal from him really likely isn't a commitment, and so that no longer is fetching.) In fact, I daresay that many of the males who say they don't commit adultery because they
won't in fact don't commit adultery because they
can't. (True, it wouldn't be too hard for a typical husband to find a female who would have sex with him with various strings attached or a female who would have sex because she is dissipated and sleeps around, but I'm not talking about such (immoral and unrewarding) sex or adultery, which men aren't very much pleased by anyway, if at all.) I seriously doubt that men commonly leave wives because of having developed emotional attachments with other women stronger than those between himself and his wife. I mean, after all, the man has been with the wife--she would seem to have so much of an advantage along those lines as to more-or-less preclude other "emotional attachments" with other females.
If a man loves his wife, of course he likely will be emotionally attached to her just because he has loved her and become accustomed to living with her. IMO, men who leave their wives usually do so because they want sex from other females. It is the sex they want.
Quote:But I'm not sure the 'benefit' has been expressed. I'm not saying that I am for or against your theory as I feel as individuals, people lead their lives as they see fit. Is the benefit purely sexual gratification or is there more?
Yep, the benefit is purely sexual gratification. Of course, sex being real (i.e., likely to lead to reproduction) is what tends to be gratifying, though men are often too confused in their emotions to see that. Of course, men can learn things from the sexual gratification experience (not that they can't also be misled by it if the mistress is manipulative) and this knowledge has usefulness, but that is secondary--the same is true of most experiences.
Quote:I don't think you are suggesting a world full of single mothers with support from nowhere, as single mothers have a hard time finding a marriage partner and men do not tend to stay married to women who have children by another man within the marriage.
What I am suggesting is a world with some single mothers and some married mothers (and fathers). I do think that the male caring for a female should tend to be all-or-nothing, though, and the caring should be preceded by commitment. Basically, my reasoning is that it is a good thing if bad women mate for money, because that would tend to only cause good women to be mistresses, and good women tend only to be mistresses to good men--thus good men would reproduce more, as desirable. And good men marrying when wanting to care for a woman makes it easier for bad women to without stigma marry for money and resources.Thus the tradition of marriage allows good men to get more mistresses than bad men, a good thing. Also, if marriage didn't imply a more-or-less complete commitment of resources, bad males would have an unfortunate advantage in bad-mistress chasing, since bad mistresses would more tend to get males they could screw some money out of, who would be the bad males. Also, I think marriage being expected to have strong male caring responsibilities more encourages bad males to squander their youth chasing mistresses rather than in throwing out caring to whatever likely bad females might be attracted to them. The exact reasons are complicated and hard to come by, but basically, I don't like the idea of it being considered acceptable by society for men to spread caring on so many females like it's just so much Halloween candy. (An exception is the phenomenon I call
quasimarriage, when a female's girlfriends or female relatives have behaved toward the husband as to make it quite unlikely the quasiwife wants him just for money.)
Ideally, the economy should be set up (e.g., with less inequality in incomes) so that it is somewhat easier economically for non-rich females to become single mothers if not rich. Particularly in more respecting the economic rights of females, society has come a long way in that regard since (say) 1800, but it is true it still has much farther to go--I don't mean to imply otherwise. But even with today's excess inequalities there are often females that can sufficiently afford single motherhood that this single motherhood should be an option open to her if she finds a man she loves very well who for whatever reason doesn't or can't care for her.
Quote:And lastly, by categorizing women to have the following issues, you include all women - including the women that the married men are having sex with. So, by this explanation, there would be broken commitments everywhere, as a woman's primary list of complaints would be EVERY women's primary list of complaints - whether married, looking for a provider or looking for a mate and remaining single - the last 2 points refer to women in general. If women are like this, in general, how would anyone stay in a marriage or a sex relationship for any period of time at all?
I'm not exactly clear what you are saying here, but perhaps I can clarify by pointing out that some women are selfish and some are not (and of course there are gradations in between, but it is usually too unwieldy to speak of those gradations otherwise than tacitly). However, unselfish females more tend to look for a mate while selfish females more tend to look for a provider. Different considerations do apply differently to different females. How has anything I said implied that a good female couldn't stay in a marriage to her (likely good) husband? He will if loved sufficiently by other females have carefree sex with them, but Why should that cause him to love his wife less or to leave her? Perhaps you are thinking that I'm saying good females won't or shouldn't get married. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that good females are and should be less willing to get married than bad females and more willing to merely mate. Since good husbands will care more than bad husbands (because the latter will tend to have squandered their youth in mistress chasing), it may in fact be that if marriage is as I suggest, good women as a whole will get more caring and resources in marriage than bad women will. Certainly, if marriage is as I suggest, then, compared with bad women, good women will more tend to have children with (genetic) fathers who have better abilities (and character) that have been passed down to their children than bad women. Accordingly, if marriage is considered by society as I suggest, good women and their descendants should prosper more than bad women, a good phenomenon.