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One of the big mysteries of relationships that women sometimes ponder is how they can best find and keep a man.
Thus, in the same way that men sometimes have the crazy idea that if they quiz a woman, she will tell them some big secret about how to shag loads of hot babes; women get the daft notion that any man can reveal some confidential information about how they can keep a man faithful.
In this latter case, typically, the man will skirt the issue, and say “why would you want to do that? Isn’t variety the spice of life?” Or worse, he’ll give her an answer based on some fantasy situation he’d like to encounter, i.e. he’ll say “Put on a short skirt, a tight top, walk into a bar and get completely drunk”. Then the girl protests that she’s not a slut, and gets rather upset about the whole episode.
Obviously, the girl knows that this option is available to her, but she doesn’t want to choose it. Rather like the old diet joke that suggests you can lose 10 lbs of weight by chopping off your leg, there’s been a communication breakdown; the girl really meant she wanted a relationship that lasted longer than breakfast the following day.
However, in this case, gender stereotype roles aren’t useful to us. And, in my experience, its better to take the view that men are a little more complicated than they’re generally given credit for; whilst women, instead of being complicated, just vary more in their responses to the men around them (which, naturally, gives them an appearance of being complicated).
This is not to say that there are no men that are simple, or no girls that enjoy sex a lot. But, society does tend to admonish those women as the sort of people you wouldn’t take home to meet your parents, and then labels them as sluts, harlots or jezebels etc.
So, bearing the above gross generalizations in mind, as well as the fact that this article makes no attempt to offer a complete or in-depth explanation, it seems that males actually have two meta-sexual strategies that constitute a proximate answer to the question:
Firstly, men are attracted to nymphomaniacs: As an example, a man sees a girl somewhere, and she offers him sex – Of course, the answer is almost invariably “Yes please!” Then, so long as she maintains good bi-lateral symmetry, good health, stays free of parasites, and most importantly, keeps having sex on demand, a relationship may develop. Or more likely, the girl changes, or becomes defective in some way, and then things break down.
It should also be noted that especially beautiful girls often tend to attract kamikaze idiots, without enough skills to find their own girls, but just enough ability to make a nuisance of themselves. Jealously seems to drive these people to play cockblock (even if they know they haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell with the girl, were the couple to split up). This usually takes the form of dragging up any embarrassing events they might know about the man’s past, pointing out and exaggerating character flaws to the girl, or maybe just old fashioned spreading rumours and lies amongst her friends, to try to destroy the relationship by proxy.
I can only guess that low-status males with no hope of finding a half-decent girl of there own get a power-trip out of this, but if anyone has a better answer, please do tell.
Secondly, men can appreciate a girl that’s intelligent, with a good personality: This is the more complex of the two meta-strategies, so an example might be most useful here. Perhaps a man meets a girl that’s clean, healthy and free from parasites; not necessarily gorgeous, but not downright ugly either. However, most importantly, she’ll be a pleasant, cheerful person that takes an interest in the world around her, doesn’t believe that everything revolves around her, and is prepared to invest a little time and effort into having fun with a new partner, maybe even trying new experiences, being reasonably open minded, and even helpful and supportive of a partner.
Now, this isn’t intended to be an absolute set of rules, just a vague description of someone that’s basically a good person, with a nice personality.
In this case, the tendency is that the woman isn’t model quality, but other factors make up for minor deficiencies, and since men don’t usually have firmly fixed rules about the women they like, they’ll tend to grant some leeway, especially if the woman is lower maintenance, doesn’t demand too much, and generally gives everyone less earache.
Now here’s the interesting bit; at the same time, friends, colleagues and relatives are seeing the pair together having fun, and they’ll start saying what a great couple they make, and similar statements; this reinforces the couple, and a relationship starts to develop. So, oftentimes, when relationships happen they seem to go via the route of ‘relationship by default’. I.e. a man goes out with a woman for a bit, they have sex a couple of times, and even though nobody said anything about a relationship, it’s just assumed that a relationship exists - often for quite a considerable length of time afterwards.
Of course, if the girl isn’t model quality, and more certainly once the relationship is on a more secure footing, then the couple become more resilient to the hassles of jealous idiots playing cockblock.
We can also turn to Behavioural Ecologists for the distal explanation. These people tell us that ultimately men want to impregnate as many women as possible, because they are driven by their genes to reproduce; sex is enjoyable, and they have a lot of sperm to distribute.
Ironically though, whilst women are certainly capable of having a lot more sex than men are, the overall risks are much higher for women, since if they become pregnant, they are gestating for next nine months, lactating for several months after that, and then responsible for feeding, clothing and educating the child for several years thereafter. Not to mention any problems that might arise from the pregnancy itself.
So, if that’s to be the case for the human race to continue into the future, the woman would very much like to know who fertilized her eggs, and the man would like to be sure that he is the father; or else there is no reason for him to stay around and provide support, parental care, protection and companionship for the mother, or even guaranteed paternity for her future offspring.
Thus, we come to the concept of hypergyny. This essentially means that women tend to pair with a man of slightly higher socio-economic status (SES) than themselves (although in more recent times, this may be more likely isogamy, meaning equal SES). In this case, that would be an indication that the man has the gumption to be able to look after himself, herself and any children they end up producing, share the burdens of life, and thus probably won’t just abandon her at a moments notice for another woman, because he has now more heavily invested in the relationship too.
It’s worth noting that in cultures which permit polygamy, the rules are always that the man needs to be able to support all the women he is paired with. Conversely, the opposite is also true (although less common), where men are unable to support even one woman, they end up sharing a wife (polyandry) with a brother or other men. Several primitive tribes in extremely harsh environments, such as the Nyinba of North West Nepal, or the Ladakhi Buddhists in the Himalayas exhibit this phenomena.
In the case that a woman decided to have sex with every man that asked, she’d be permanently sore, plus there’s the risk that she’d finish up pregnant by some man that her major histocompatibility complex (MHC) was incompatible with, or the resulting child may receive poor quality genes from a diseased, deformed or otherwise low genetic viability father. This may result in spontaneous abortion, or a sickly child that might not survive to adulthood - obviously a bad deal after all the effort expended by the woman, and much better avoided by choosing a partner wisely, in the first instance.
A quick caveat is needed here, to debunk some common myths: (1) why don’t women dump men more often, or only choose a muscled Adonis that the media tries so hard to make guys think they have to become? And (2) why don’t men drop women every time a better looking / younger / sluttier one comes along?
The answer here is that there’s this crazy little thing called ‘love’, which so often seems to cause artists and poets everywhere so much heartache…
But then, what is love really? Obviously, it’s just a feeling. And, as every good Biochemist will tell you, all feelings are esentially biochemical. For example, you feel hungry, but you don’t eat to stop yourself feeling hungry, you eat to maintain a level of nutrition in your body - your body just told you that you needed more food by making you feel hungry. Likewise, with the feeling of love, your body tells you to stay with the person you’re with, because that person is physically (and quite possibly even biochemically) compatible with you. Thus, any children you have will tend to survive better with two parents rather than with just the one. The genes get to replicate; two people get regular sex, and all the other attendant benefits of a stable relationship.
In summary then, the answer is that a girl needs to do a little bit more than just sit back looking pretty, claiming she’s too shy, or that it’s the man’s job to do all the running in a relationship (acting like a parasite), unless she wants meta-strategy #1. On the other hand, in some ways, men are lucky that they only need to maintain a basic level of smart appearance and hygiene etc., after which the additional benefits of beautification start to diminish exponentially (remember, Adonis was only a god of vegetation (fairly low SES compared to the rest of the pantheon)), at which point sensible men will generally concentrate on incresing their rank, by being successful at whatever interests or career path they have chosen. Women on the other hand must constantly fight a battle with ageing, to remain pretty, as well as whatever else they choose to do.
Posted by Jonathan in Anthropology, Sociobiology