Lust for Life

TOI, Patna 16.01.09

Lust For Life

Researchers from the University of Sheffield recently discovered that getting a second wife is a sure shot way to a longer life. Keeping socio-economic differences in mind, it has been observed that men over 60 from 140 countries who practice polygamy live, on average, 12 percent longer than men hailing from monogamous nations. Fathering more kids with more wives leads to increased male longevity. So to live long, do men need to turn into baby-boomers? A look into humanity’s past and present might suggest that more cultures have practiced consensual non-monogamy than monogamy. The Bible did not condemn polygamy. Old Testament and Rabbinic writings frequently attest to the legality of polygamy. There is Quaranic sanction for polygamy. Polygamy and polyandry were prevalent in ancient India; many Hindu gods and kings are also depicted as polygamous, with two or more wives. The received notion is that polygamy comes most naturally to men. Where polygamy is allowed, it is almost always polygyny (one man with many wives) and almost never polyandry (one woman with many husbands). But interestingly, Tim Birkhead, an expert in behavioural ecology, writes in his book ‘Promiscuity’ that in the majority of species across the animal kingdom, the general pattern is for females to copulate with more than one male. Then why must Homo sapiens be left behind?
Sexual infidelity is one of humanity’s great obsessions, perhaps second only to violence. Perhaps for humans, monogamy does not come naturally, and biology ‘predisposes’ us to seek multiple sex partners. Zoologist David Barash and psychiatrist Judith Eve Lipton argue that virtually all animals are far from being 100 per cent monogamous 100 percent of the time. Then, are we all programmed to live long? Living long is fine but the only rub is that broken marriages are fast becoming more a norm than an aberration and there are many men who would rather court the life of a monk than tie the knot again. For them, the idea of taking a second wife is re-invocation to the hellfire they’ve escaped. Perhaps the study should have taken note of the mortality records of people who increasingly beat around the bush of a monogamous marriage and run into extramarital affairs.