Is cheating on your spouse caused by genetics?

Why do some men and women cheat on their partners while others resist the temptation?  We have thought all this time that the answer was located on individual will and degrees of individual sexual motivations....can it be determined by other variables?

A new body of research focuses on the "science of commitment." Scientists are studying everything from the biological factors that seem to influence marital fidelity to a person’s psychological response after flirting with a stranger.

Recent studies have raised questions about whether genetic factors may influence commitment and marital stability. Hasse Walum, a biologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, studied 552 sets of twins to learn more about a gene related to the body’s regulation of the brain chemical vasopressin, a bonding hormone.

Over all, men who carried a variation in the gene were less likely to be married, and those who had wed were more likely to have had serious marital problems and unhappy wives. Among men who carried two copies of the gene variant, about a third had experienced a serious relationship crisis in the past year, double the number seen in the men who did not carry the variant. 

If there was such an easy explanation, like genetic predisposition, why do we humans see cheating as a moral issue? This is interesting research, but we need to know more to be able to leave cheaters off the moral obligation they violated, right? 

A successful marriage requires personal growth and development

We all need a lot of help if we wish to have lasting, loving marriages. Even from the world of business leadership, there are voices giving positive indications. For example, Shundrawn Thomas tells us that:

"While character is important, the ability to mold that character is paramount as well, Thomas said, drawing a parallel to marriage. “Are you still married to the same person you married five years ago? You’re probably not. You wouldn’t still be married. A successful marriage requires personal growth and development.

“This thought in your head that you can’t be anything different that what you were — if that is the position you take, you will not be effective as a leader.”

Does he mean that we need something similar to a business plan for our marriages? probably yes! At least, the assumption that a performing marriage is a contract based on the simultaneous development of both spouses, as people, is clear. Why and how we confuse ourselves thinking that we can continue as the same person we were ten years ago when the whole world is evolving around us? Perhaps because marriage is seen, basically as a refuge from life. 

Nothing can be farther from the truth, in marriage....it is either both keep growing up and developing together, or one is left behind and as the gap grows, the estrangement between spouses grows, up until the "irreconcilable differences" perception settles in.