We can learn a lot about human sexuality by studying humans; however, it is important to keep in mind that humans are just one animal species among the millions of species with whom we share our planet. To fully understand human sexuality, we must therefore examine it against the broad context of animal reproduction in general. In other words, the stories told to youngsters about the birds and the bees are far more germane and relevant than the people telling them might care to admit. Let’s take a look at some of the many ways that life on this fantastic planet keeps itself going from generation to generation.

If animals could talk, most any animal you asked would tell you that human sexuality is more than a little aberrant by their standards. As I just said above, fully appreciating just how different human sexuality is requires setting aside our human-centric thinking to look at humans as just another animal among all animals. Only 3% of mammals are monogamous and this percentage plummets when one considers the many millions of animal species in the world. This one trait alone places humans far beyond the +/-2 standard deviations from the mean that is generally considered to be the “normal” range for statistical purposes.

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Traditional psychology thinks of functional families as lacking conflict. A traditional psychologist might label familial strife as dysfunctional but evolution actually predicts- if not demands- a certain level of conflict within families. Every individual in a family has her or his own reproductive interests that have to interact with the reproductive interests of everyone else. A child that helps raise a younger sibling may be passing on part of her or his genes at the expense of being able to mate and pass on the whole package.

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As I said last week, we need to get past our myriad customs, taboos, social mores, etc., to look at the physical human animal if we want to truly understand how men and women relate to each other and why. To do this, we need to look at how the human animal evolved and how those evolutionary pressures continue to affect our daily lives. If you think we’ve moved beyond our evolutionary history, think again: 99.99% of our 5.5 million year history took place before civilization. We may live in cosmopolitan cities and enjoy luxuries unimaginable to our ancestors but our brains remain wired for the primordial African jungle.

This is the second in a series of articles that will look at human sexuality and relationships from a purely evolutionary point of view and will compare and contrast that with the many layers of confusion that civilization has added on top of our evolved instincts.

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Understanding why men and women relate to each other the way we do requires peeling back the layers of customs, taboos, social mores, etc., to look at the physical human animal. To best understand the human animal, we must examine the conditions under which we evolved and how those conditions manifest themselves into our daily lives. Doing this gives us a completely different picture of what a truly healthy relationship looks like because it begins with the most fundamental building blocks available and goes from there to its own conclusion.

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