Metrocards & Condoms

A great article from Alternet:

Is Monogamy Natural?

By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet. Posted July 25, 2007.

A lifetime of love versus a quick roll with a stranger. It’s funny how we can have two seemingly opposite urges at the same time.

Why Do Doctors Get to Decide When a Woman Is Old Enough to Have Her ‘Tubes Tied’?
Bonnie Zylbergold

A hot naked chick hit on Joe Quirk at Burning Man. That’s what he calls her: a hot naked chick. He’s married. But his wife wasn’t there.

“I was in the middle of a desert,” he remembers. “Nobody would ever know.”

It’s funny how we can have two seemingly opposite urges at the same time. A lifetime of love. A quick roll with a total stranger.

He said no.

Because he loves his wife. Because he wouldn’t want to ruin his life by losing her. But choices such as the one he made that day on the sand aren’t totally matters of morality. They’re not about cartoon angels and devils sparring on our shoulders.

They’re science talking.

Vaunted in the mainstream media, two new reports from the Pew Research Center report and the National Survey of Families and Households indicate that couples become bored and unhappy sooner than was previously thought: more like three years into their togetherness than seven.

Well, sure, says Quirk, whose book Sperm Are From Men, Eggs Are From Women (Running Press, 2006) details what he calls “the science of relationships.” A three-year itch makes plain biological sense, he says. (keep reading)