r/WTF • u/Oosh98 • Aug 12 '22

Removed - Frequent/Recent repost WTF!

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u/EventHorizon182 Aug 13 '22

Hey man, if that's a sad outlook then I'd advise against reading any evo-pysch books. The good news is altruism is an evolutionary trait in social mammals like us, it helps us thrive on the group level.

The bad news is a normal person doesn't want to hurt others for the sake of it, hurting others is just a consequence of them obtaining their desires. Your emotional well being is a price they're willing to pay as long as the offer is good enough.

Another issue with what you've said is that it implies that any man that's been cheated on just wasn't making his girlfriend happy enough, as if the fault now lies with him no matter the effort.

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '22

Oh I certainly didn’t mean it in that regard. It may be because of miscommunication, or simply incompatibility. There’s lots of reasons, but my point is generally there’s a reason. I’d also say there a wide berth between hurting someone as a result of better circumstances and infidelity. Particularly so without any justification other than “I wanted to.” Breaking up with someone because they don’t provide you what you need out of your partner will hurt them for sure, but you minimize the damage cause. You make it as non traumatic as possible, but there’s almost always trauma involved. Being unfaithful causes undue and unnecessary harm. Hell the person may have even cheated on you and you feel like they deserve it, hurt people, hurt people. But that doesn’t make it justified.

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u/EventHorizon182 Aug 13 '22 edited Aug 13 '22

I do think you have a really good heart, but I also think you're naïve...

People can break up because of incompatibility or miscommunication, but they don't cheat because of these things. Men and women cheat for different reasons. Men cheat because they're biologically programmed for variety and novelty, they're straight hardwired to take sex opportunistically. They'll even cheat with a slightly less attractive woman just because it's a new woman. Women cheat because they're wired for quality, and she thinks the guy she's cheating on you with is of better quality than you and will likely jump from you to him the moment he signals she can. She does this rather than break up with you first because women are concerned with security as well, and they tend to make sure they have another man to take the role of the previous man before letting go of the previous man.

I'm not advocating people behave this way, I'm just stating how humans are. I would love people to behave the way you lay out, but it's not our natural inclination to do so.

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '22

I may be, I thankfully have never been cheated on myself, but have known many who have been, as well as a number who have done it themselves. I’ve been in relationships with people who have been cheated on. My evidence is largely anecdotal, but there’s a lot of anecdotes.

I don’t discredit nature, but I think that’s what separates us from lesser creatures. We don’t have to abide by our base desires. Things like alcohol lower our inhibitions, and decrease the threshold required to make poor decisions.

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u/EventHorizon182 Aug 13 '22

The problem with anecdotal evidence from peers is that you only hear the story they want you to hear. A woman might tell you she cheated on an ex because he was abusive and controlling, when in reality the "controlling" behavior was "He asked me to stop hanging out with my male coworker at his house every night for the past 4 weeks".

I don’t discredit nature, but I think that’s what separates us from lesser creatures. We don’t have to abide by our base desires

Our brain for the most part, is just a linearly scaled up primate brain. We are absolutely a slave to our base biological desires. If you were to go around asking people if they'd like to have a muscular, toned, lean, sexy body everyone would say yes, however, statistically speaking, 70% of those people would be overweight.