If to Flirt Is Human…

                Adam and Eve by Mahmoud Saïd                 

From the archives: this article was originally posted April 27, 2000, on SheNetworks.com.

“So her life was falling forward, she was becoming one of those people who ran away.  A woman who shockingly and incomprehensibly gave everything up.  For love, observers would say wryly.  Meaning, for sex.  None of this would happen if it weren’t for sex.”  Alice Munro, “The Children Stay”

Because of our heads and hearts, we humans do much other beasts don’t seem to do.  Trying to remain faithful to one partner at a time is one of them.

Marriage, for instance, is a most unnatural union.  The binding of two hearts, two minds, two bodies, and two souls with little more than “I do” is a dicey proposition—especially for a lifetime.

The stats have been well mooted: probably 50 percent of first marriages in North America end in divorce.

In a poll taken the year before President Clinton’s infelicities were made public in ’98, two in ten Canadians admitted to having extramarital sex.  The figure was double for Americans and remains high today—much like the outgoing president’s popularity.

Whether the reasons for this activity are social rather than biological—based more on opportunity than inevitability—depends on who’s doing the justifying.

Is to flirt human, to make love, divine?

There are those, like the publishers of Loving More, “the only magazine dedicated to topics involving multi-partner relating,” who say as much on their site (www.lovemore.com).  These true believers are all about responsible, ethical “polyamory” or “polyfidelity.”

While it’s tempting to condemn their views as being hopelessly, self-servingly male, consider this: according to a study by Scottish and Japanese researchers published in the scientific journal Nature last year, when a woman is ovulating, she favours men with “masculine” features, when she is menstruating, she goes for guys with soft faces.

In the researchers’ opinion, this underscores biology’s hold on us, regardless how highly evolved we may think we are.

But who knows?  Closer to the truth may be that men and women can be, well, beastly.  Ever since the species began to mate, the practice of polygamy has existed in some form or fashion in most cultures—Western, Eastern, Jewish, Christian.  Nor can the element of choice in it be ignored.

In the words of Barbadian sociologist Funmilayo Jones, “We have got to review our current positions as human beings and understand that one person cannot meet, really, all the needs of another.”  Adam and Eve certainly did.

· Robert is the critically acclaimed author of the NBM Amerotica titles Great Moves, Attractive Forces and Stray Moonbeams.  His other books include the novel And Sometimes They Fly; the story collections Fairfield: The Last Sad Stories of G. Brandon Sisnett, Intimacy 101: Rooms & Suites, The Tree of Youth, and Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall; and the memoir Sand for Snow: A Caribbean-Canadian Chronicle.

All of his graphic novels are available as e-books from NBM.