Dollars and Sex (29 page)

FINAL WORDS

Remember the young man I talked about at the beginning of this chapter, the one who told me he is going to wait until he is 21 to have a girlfriend? The funny part of that story is that his mother is bitterly disappointed that her son is not out there getting some action, just as she was when she was his age (and, in fact, far younger).

Not everyone remembers the sex they had when they were teens as fondly as my friend does, but it is interesting to note that the current generation of parents with teenage children might very well be the first generation in which the parents were more sexually active in high school than their kids.

Personally, I remember realizing in my early 20s that my cohort was on the tail end of the sexual revolution and that subsequent generations wouldn't take the same sexual liberties that my generation had when we were young. At the time, my belief that the sexual revolution was over came from the growing awareness around HIV/AIDS. In hindsight, fear of disease has probably played a role in decreasing teen promiscuity, but the steady persistent decline in teen promiscuity over twenty years suggest that an economic explanation is warranted.

Recent media reports on declining teen promiscuity suggest that fear is playing a major role in that change in behavior and I think they are right. It isn't just fear that life will be hard with a baby; teenagers didn't need reality TV to inform them that trips to the mall aren't the same with a crying baby. It is a fear of being left behind in an economy in which the only workers who have seen real increases in their standard of living over the past thirty years are those who continued their education after high school. It is fear of being at the bottom of the income distribution when those at the top lavishly consume while everyone else races to keep up. It is an understanding that childbirth early in life leads to a permanent decrease in lifetime earning ability that has encouraged both young men and women to be more cautious regarding their sexuality.

Of course, for these economic incentives to bring teen pregnancy rates in the United States to the low levels observed in other countries they would have to be available to everyone. All teenagers, for example, would have to believe that their lifetime earnings would be reduced by a teen pregnancy in order for that incentive to change their risk-taking behavior. But the reality is that the lifetime earning ability of a low-skilled worker is completely unaffected by having a baby as a teenager. And moving from unskilled to skilled worker requires an investment than many low-income families cannot afford for their children, regardless of their sexual behavior.

I started this chapter with a description of the way in which economics has shaped social norms regarding teen sexual behavior. I have one thought to add: Social norms within the socioeconomic groups that have been the most disadvantaged by the modern economy have evolved to take a more permissive view of teen sexuality. This economic perspective is important because without it we are tempted to believe that the causality runs in the opposite direction—that people have become economically marginalized because of their sexual behavior. That skewed perspective conveniently ignores the reality that teenagers in high-income families are not less promiscuous because they have higher moral standards, but because they face an entirely different set of economic incentives that have shaped the way that standards have been set within their communities.

If you read the tabloids, you might be tempted to believe that people who have the most sexual partners belong to an entirely different socioeconomic group—that of extremely wealthy married men. I wouldn't be too quick to jump to that conclusion, though. In fact, as we are about to see, income is a much more important determinant of whether or not women are unfaithful than it is for men.

TILL DEATH DO YOU PART . . . OR AT LEAST UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO SAY “TIME FOR A CHANGE”

Google has a very interesting feature called “predictive queries,” which when used for marriage terms reveal a searching history that would convince any casual Web searcher that marriage is an extremely unpleasant state of being.

According to Google, for example, if you are typing the phrase “Why does my wife . . .?” the most likely question you are phrasing is: “not love me anymore,” “cry for no reason,” and “not want to be touched.”

If you are typing the phrase “Why does my husband . . .?” Google will kindly offer up the most obvious completions: “hate me,” “ignore me,” and “cheat.”

This chapter is about the people who have reached a stage in their lives where they are searching the term “My marriage is . . .” and the finishing phrase is “over,” “failing,” and “in trouble.”

And while I can't tell you “How do you know when it is time . . .” “to end a relationship,” “to break up,” or “to divorce,” I can give you some economic insight as to why infidelity happens.

Here is a story to get us started.

Leonard was a good man. He was committed to social justice and worked to support local politicians who shared his beliefs. He was involved in his church, playing an important role in raising enough money to renovate the building. He was successful in his career, priding himself in the role that he played in his workplace as a strict but caring father figure for those just beginning their careers.

It was fairly well known that Leonard had been married once before he met his current wife, but there were problems in his first marriage that he would rather not discuss publically.

They had married in the early 1970s, while he was still in graduate school and, despite the birth of two children, had maintained a very active sex life. Through the years they had kept their fire burning by frequently acting out their sexual, and often bisexual, fantasies with other like-minded couples they met in swingers clubs.

Over time, though, even those encounters bored Leonard, and he tried to convince his wife to escalate into sexual behaviors that took her farther and farther out of her comfort zone. Eventually she had had enough; he had pushed her too far, and she called a stop to all sex outside of their marriage. Initially he agreed to the new arrangement, of course, but two months later, she heard from a friend that he had tried to enter a swingers event without her.

That betrayal brought an end to their marriage and, ironically, without a partner, it also brought an end to his participation in the swingers club.

Being single was far less sexually exciting than Leonard had imagined. So much so, in fact, that for the five years prior to meeting his second wife, he had depended on the services of sex workers for sexual release. Now in his mid-50s and married again, he was convinced that his need for sexual diversion was behind him. He committed himself to building a more mature relationship with wife number two that involved sex, certainly, but only within the confines of their marriage.

The problem with this arrangement was that over time Leonard began to grow lonely. He loved his second wife, he really did, but he longed for the type of intimacy that comes with new love. More than anything, he wanted to be with a woman who was enthusiastic in her desire for him, extolled his sexual prowess, and would do anything to please him.

In short, he wanted to be adored.

Leonard was just beginning to come to terms with what he had come to consider his externally imposed impotence when something changed. A promotion at work gave him greater authority over, and more one-to-one contact with, some of the younger employees in his firm. He felt
appreciated, if perhaps not adored, by his new charges and that appreciation convinced him that he had something to offer a younger generation of sexually vibrant women.

A friend of mine once said to me that loneliness when you are alone is one thing, but loneliness within marriage is loneliness stripped of all hope. And for that reason, part of me would like to tell you that Leonard found the fulfilling relationships that he had been seeking. But hope was all that this new position of authority gave Leonard. Even when he was younger and single, he didn't appeal to women looking for short-term relationships. The women he came into contact with now liked him, maybe even enjoyed flirting with him, but they had no interest in being his part-time lover.

And so, Leonard was a faithful husband to his second wife, not because he believed in fidelity but rather because the market on which extramarital lovers operates did not offer up any alternatives.

No one really knows how prevalent extramarital sexual relationships really are; a very rough estimate places infidelity at about 50 percent—half of all men and women will cheat on their spouse at some point in their marriage.

The problem with that estimate, however, is that what it means to be “faithful” is often specific to the marriage and, as a result, is very imprecisely measured in the data. If you sit at your desk and fantasize about a coworker, are you being unfaithful? To some people the answer is yes, and some of the very high estimates of marital infidelity include this behavior in their measure. If you have had sexual intercourse with someone other than your spouse at some point over the course of your marriage, are you being unfaithful? Often yes, but if your spouse condones sex outside of the marriage, or was with you and having sex with that same person, is it really infidelity?