Why is it that some people can lie in bed at night, next to their long term partner, and smile, stroke their hair, say 'goodnight, I love you,' then roll over and peacefully reflect on the sex they had earlier that day. The sex they had not with their loving spouse, but with someone else.
What kind of person can do that? What kind of person can kiss their so-called 'one true love' then turn their mind to another person? Who can separate lives like this? Is it the sign of a deeply disturbed soul plagued by a psychological disorder? Should you seek help if this happens to be you?
Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher has some answers to this problem. A problem that is probably more common than we credit. So before you panic, read on.
According to Fisher, basically it's complicated. Love, she says, isn't something the brain understands in just one way. In fact there are actually three different brain systems related to what we might all commonly understand as 'love'. There is a system for romance, one for attachment, and one for sex. Together, these three systems fire up the love phenomenon, and when they are focused on one person, the experience is extremely powerful. Powerful enough for us to want to do crazy things like co-habit, remain together through sickness and poverty, and never have sex with anyone else, ever again. These are things that, from a popular social perspective, symbolise the achievement of ultimate relationship success, but, when combined and put into practice, might strange seem strange when considered from an evolutionary point of view. Why abandon your home? Why remain with a crook mate? And, most importantly if the point of it all is to pass along your special gene sequence, why limit your mate to just one?
Here's where we consider an alternative, less ideal view. Bids for beautiful forever-you-darling commitments are easily made when all of the three brain systems behind love are in sync. But what happens when they are not? For Fisher points out that our reproductive strategies are complex. Indeed, the three love systems are themselves complex, having evolved over thousands and thousands of years. Romantic love, for instance, came about so we'd be motivated to focus our urge to reproduce on just one person, "thereby conserving our courtship time and metabolic energy," Fisher writes. Partner attachment encourages us to stay with our mate at least long enough to rear at least one child through its vulnerable infancy, to the point where it might stand a chance of continuing our genetic line. Then, of course, there's the sex drive.
The sex drive evolved to "motivate individuals to seek copulation with a range of partners," says Fisher. On the surface, this is the system that seems to be the root of all relationship strife – a basic, animalistic urge to shag far and wide that may be controlled by the civilised mind, and civilising social institutions like marriage. Of course, if it happens that the sex drive is pointing us in the same direction as our other love drivers, the word 'control' doesn't look and feel right.
Some of us know what it is to truly feel as though we wouldn't want to shag anyone else, ever, because we've found someone who satisfies all our other systems. But some of us do not, and even those that do might discover, from time to time, what it feels like when one drive shifts gear. So, Fisher's message remains the same, and widely relevant; our complex "brain architecture makes it biologically possible to express deep feelings of love for one partner, while one feels intense romantic love another individual, while one feels the drive for even more extra-dyadic partners."
So if this answers how it's possible for a person to 'split' their relationships, what about what you're supposed to do when or if it happens. How do you handle it if your partner is adulterous? How do you handle adulterous feelings of your own? And does the fact that this all seems scientifically explainable and biologically natural mean we should adjust the moral view on infidelity; that is, it's wrong.
Well, like most things, it's helpful to look at the problem through a wide lens. Unless there's evidence of some pathological behaviour, there probably isn't cause for alarm, or need to seek urgent, behaviour-altering therapy. Some people may find it harder to command their sex drive than others. Some people may find they cling to people more than others. Some people are overly romantic with new partners. The trick is to have enough presence of mind and sense of self so that you may be aware which way you might lean. Keeping in mind, of course, that life's experiences may alter our bearing. A death, for instance, may bump the attachment system up in neural pecking order.
And for those in relationships confronted with the infidelity dilemma, there's little else to do but talk about it. Before any instinct is acted on, preferably, but especially if some deed has been done, and the ultimate ambition remains remaining with that original life partner.
Well that's what I reckon anyway.
What say you?
Katherine Feeney is a journalist with the Nine Network Australia.
