Are humans wired to cheat? Americans have strong opinions.

Monogamy is a topic people talk about as if it’s either a sacred truth or a scam invented by the wedding industry. There is rarely much space in the middle. Most people have a personal theory about it, usually built from a mix of religion, heartbreak, biology, denial, and what they saw imploding in their parents’ marriage.

A new YouGov survey suggests Americans are pretty divided about whether humans are wired for monogamy, though not by a landslide by any means. Only about a third of Americans believe that most or all people are monogamous by nature. More specifically, 7 percent said all people are monogamous by nature, and 24 percent said most people are. Another 16 percent said about half are, while 12 percent said most people are not monogamous by nature and 8 percent said all people are not.

Which feels right, honestly. People love certainty about sex and relationships, but actual human behavior must always enter the chat. Then everything quickly gets complicated, and the grand theory doesn’t seem to stick.

Of course, there is always a gender distribution. Americans were more likely to say that women are naturally monogamous than men. Thirty percent said most women are monogamous by nature, compared to 17 percent who said the same about men. Meanwhile, 18 percent said most men are not monogamous by nature, compared to eight percent who said that about women. In other words, people are still operating from the very old idea that women are the loyal ones and men are the walking disaster.

Politics also sways views on one-person committed relationships. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say that all or most people are monogamous by nature, at 44 percent versus 27 percent. Americans 65 and older were also more likely than younger adults to believe that people are monogamous by nature, by 39 percent to 29 percent.

It shows that this issue of monogamy is not as black and white as people would like it to be. People don’t answer from a sterile science lab. They answer from within their values, their age, their disappointments and the stories they grew up hearing about what love should look like.

The survey also asked about people’s actual dating histories, which are far more varied than the culture war version of romance tends to admit. Seventy percent of Americans said they have been in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex. About half said they have dated someone at least five years older or younger, and nearly half said they have dated someone much more or less educated. Smaller shares said they have dated across race, religion, wealth or party lines.

So are humans monogamous by nature? The Americans don’t sound terribly convinced.