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I’ve been asked repeatedly in the last few days, “Why would a man
who has everything—A beautiful wife, loving family, a fortune
estimated at $1 billion—endanger it all to have affairs with women
that don’t hold a candle to his wife? What’s going on here?”
Woods, the world's number one golfer and a married father of two
young children, said in a statement published on his website that
he had "not been true to my values and the behavior my family
deserves," without directly addressing the allegations of infidelity.
"I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with
all of my heart," Woods said. Woods said his Swedish wife Elin
Nordegren "has always done more to support our family and
shown more grace than anyone could possible expect."
For many, why men do dumb things is self evident. “Because men
are dumb beasts and all they want is sex,” they say. For others,
they wonder what all the uproar is about. “You can’t expect a man
to have sex with only one woman. It’s not natural. What’s the
problem if he gets a little on the side?”
An evolutionary psychologist like myself looks at things through a
wider set of lenses. Let’s start by taking a look at what it means
to be a man.
2. Y Am I Like This?
All human cells, other than mature red blood cells, possess a
nucleus which contains the genetic material (DNA) arranged into
46 chromosomes, themselves grouped into 23 pairs. In 22 pairs,
both members are essentially identical, one deriving from the
individual's mother, the other from the father. The 23rd pair is
different. While in females this pair has two like chromosomes
called "X," in males it comprises one "X" and one "Y," two very
dissimilar chromosomes. It is these chromosome differences
which determine sex. That’s the good news about the Y
chromosome. If we didn’t have it we would all be females.
However, the bad news is that the Y is very short compared to the
X with which it is paired. Until quite recently it was believed that
the Y chromosome was becoming ever shorter and some felt that
it might lose function all together. However, a 40-strong team of
researchers led by Dr. David Page of the Whitehead Institute at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found that the Y
chromosome is much more important than scientists once
believed.
3. The Dating and Mating Game: Small Sperm, Large Egg, Look
Out.
The small gametes are designed to fuse with a large one, and the
large ones are designed to fuse with a small one. The female
strategy produces gametes that are large, and have a high rate of
survival and fertilization. The male strategy is to produce as many
as possible, to increase the chances of finding a large one. About
400 eggs are ovulated in a woman's lifetime. A healthy male
produces 500 million sperm per day.
An individual must either invest in a few large eggs or in millions of
sperm. Thus, there will always be many times more sperm than
there are eggs. Consequently, sperm must compete for access to
those rare eggs. Although these basic facts of life may be
obvious, the importance and implications may not be.
In fact, this difference in the size of our sex cells makes a huge
difference in how we act as males. As we will see, it helps explain
why men can become so irritable, why we die sooner than
women, why we are involved in more violent arguments, and why
we become more depressed. “The cellular imbalance is at the
center of maleness,” says geneticist Dr. Steve Jones. “It confers
on males a simpler sex life than their partners, together with a
host of incidental idiosyncrasies, from more suicide, cancer and
billionaires to rather less hair on the top of the head.”
This is one of the reasons that there will always be more irritable
and insecure men than women. Because they carry the larger,
scarcer, and valuable eggs, women will always be more sought
after than men. Men will always have to take the initiative and
women will always get to choose the most attractive male from
those who present themselves and reject the others. In the game
of life, women hold more of the evolutionary valuable cards.
None of your direct ancestors died childless. Think about that for
a moment. It’s obvious that your parents had at least one child.
Your mother’s parents and your father’s parents had children. If
we could look backward and trace our ancestors as far back as
we could go, we would find an unbroken chain of reproductive
success.
We all know people today who don’t have children. However, that
was not the case with any of our direct ancestors. Over a period
of 5 million years, not one of our family members dropped the ball.
We are a product of their reproductive success and you can bet
that what it takes to pass on our genes to the next generation is
built into our attitudes, desires, and behaviors. From an
evolutionary perspective, whatever contributes to our genetic
success makes us feel good. Whatever stands in the way of our
evolutionary success makes us feel irritable, angry, and
depressed.
Have you ever watched Dr. Phil, the psychologist who became
famous on Oprah Winfrey’s show? One of his favorite answers to
women who ask “why does he do that?” (Usually the “that” has to
do with some way in which the man is treating the woman badly.)
Dr. Phil’s answer is often an in-her-face “Because he can.” What
he usually means is that he does it because she lets him get away
with it.
Let me be very clear here. I’m not saying that because men have
a genetic urge to leave their wives or have affairs with younger
women that this is a good thing. I’m not saying that we are
prisoners of our genes and that we have no power to decide what
is right or wrong. I am saying that our biological urgings to
reproduce and pass on the most genes to the next generation is
powerful. If we are not aware of the strength of these desires we
will have less success controlling them.
Remember, too, that for every older man who hooks up with a
younger woman, there is a younger woman who wants to connect
with an older man. As we will discuss later in the chapter, men
have a biological attraction to young, attractive females because
they have the best chance of producing children. Women have a
biological attraction to successful men with resources available to
share with them and their children (These are often older men
who have had a chance to become successful in the world).
Yet, biology is not destiny. Older men don’t have to leave their
wives and have affairs. Younger women don’t have to go after the
husbands of those older wives. We all can choose, but the
choices aren’t always easy.
Are you one of the people like me who has a hard time keeping
your weight under control? I do well until I see the candy, cake,
pies, or pudding. I can’t resist. Why is it so difficult for us?
Evolutionary biology can help us understand our desire for sweets
and other strong urges. It tells us that for most of our 5 million
year ancestral history, sweets and fats were scarce. Those who
learned to find the most and eat what they found were the most
successful and passed on their genes to the next generation.
The problem today is that we still have the same biology, but now
sweets and fats are everywhere. If we followed our biological
urgings all of us would be 400 pounds and unable to walk. My
point is that we can and do control our evolutionary desires, but it
isn’t easy.
We may not like the ways our genes influence us, but we better
pay attention to their pull. “Genes never sleep,” say Drs Terry
Burnham and Jay Phelan, two experts on genetic influences and
authors of Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food—Taming
Our Primal Instincts. “Instead of a blissful ‘they got married and
lived happily ever after,’ gene fairy tales end with offspring and
more offspring—any way the genes can get them.” In order to
further our understanding of the ways males are losing our
position in the game of life, we need to look more deeply into the
differences between males and females.