Once again I have to cite my favorite magazine The Week for reminding us of a question that seems eternal. Is it true evolution has bred the male of the species to philander?

This was asked of David Barish in the L.A. Times and he answered: “Among our fellow mammals, males are invariably aggressive sexual adventurers driven by their genes to couple with as many partners as possible.”

Mr. Barish went on to remind of the movie scene in Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn” where the father tells the weeping Meryl Streep “You want monogamy? Marry a swan.”

Also in the Times, Jennie Dusheck answered back that DNA analysis of offsprings’ parentage reveals that infidelity is common among female animals as well as male. She added, “Scientists have been pushing this threadbare argument that men just can’t help themselves for years … The larger question is why we’re even looking to the animal kingdom for lessons in morality. Unlike animals, which have no consciences, human beings can choose whether to act upon an impulse or to suppress it.”

Then, also in the Times, Meghan Daum writes, “Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, most of us desperately want to think that long-term sexual monogamy will work … That’s why people find these public sex scandals so fascinating — and so terrifying. When a straight-arrow family man such as Spitzer gets caught hiring hookers, or an anti-gay crusader like Sen. Larry Craig is arrested for soliciting sex in a men’s room, it suggests that human beings – including your spouse — are, sexually speaking, secretly capable of anything.”

I, Liz, know some happily married people where it appears neither of them cheat. But I know hundreds of other unhappily married people. And even happy ones who cheat.

I would like to hear from our women friends on this subject …

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