The natural underpinnings of infidelity

As the media pays far too much attention to every tawdry detail involved in the dalliances of Peter Cook and Alex Rodriguez; I'd like to take a moment to discuss the subject in abstract. I'll start by making a blatant and controversial statement:

Infidelity is fairly normal.

"The evidence is overwhelming that monogamy isn't natural," says David Barash, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington. He reached this conclusion after studying the behavior of humans and animals. Both men and women engage in infidelity; although men tend to hold a higher percentage in published statistics. Some studies indicate that, as women spend more time in the workplace and become financially successful, they tend to behave far more like men with respect to infidelity. The advent of the internet has served as a convenient enabler; allowing both men and women to more easily find and vet potential partners.

Infidelity has existed throughout history. In fact some believe that the emotion of jealousy was originally developed as a defense mechanism against infidelity long before it was ever associated with anything else. Not all historical "infidelity" could be accurately defined as such, though. Polyamory was also involved, and was forced upon us naturally. This was originally a situation whereby prehistoric men would go out to hunt, and not all would survive the adventure. Their widows would then invariably require another source of love and protection. In this way the acceptance of multiple mates became a natural and perhaps eventually instinctual part of male psychology. This trend continued for thousands of years as warfare--first between tribes, and later between nations--killed off large numbers of men; resulting in large numbers of widows or severe male:female ratio disparities. Monogamy, therefore, is nothing more than a difficult (but not impossible) attempt at deprogramming to fit modern societal expectations; a feat which becomes less and less achievable if a relationship does not border on absolute perfection.