Sexual Conflict

“NOVELS, SONGS, SOAP operas, and tabloids tell us about battles between men and women and the pain they inflict on each other. Wives bemoan their husbands’ neglect; husbands are bewildered by their wives’ moodiness. “Men are emotionally constricted,” say women. “Women are emotional powder kegs,” say men. Men want sex too soon, too fast; women impose frustrating delays. Are these just stereotypes?”

Drama is commonly perceived as an essential element of life and of relationships between the sexes.

“Conflict between the sexes is best understood in the broader context of social conflict. Social conflict occurs whenever one person interferes with the achievement of the goal of another person. Interference can take various forms. Among men, for example, conflict occurs when they compete for precisely the same resources, such as position in a status hierarchy or access to a desirable sex partner. Because young, attractive women are in scarcer supply than men who seek them, some men get shut out. One man’s gain becomes other men’s loss. Similarly, two women who desire the same responsible, kind, or high-achieving man come into conflict; if one woman gets what she wants, the other woman does without.”

Having outlined conflict within the sexes, the analysis now turns to conflict between the sexes:

“Conflict also erupts between men and women whenever one sex interferes with the goals and desires of the other sex. In the sexual arena, for example, a man who seeks sex without investing in his partner short-circuits a mating goal of many women, who want greater emotional commitment and higher investment. The interference runs both ways. A woman who requires a long courtship and heavy investment interferes with a man’s short-term sexual strategy.

Conflict per se serves no evolutionary purpose, and it is generally not adaptive at all for individuals to get into struggles with the other sex. On the contrary, conflict is typically costly. Sexual conflict is an undesirable outcome of the fact that people’s sexual strategies interfere with each other. We have inherited from our ancestors, however, psychological solutions to problems of conflict management.”

How do people respond when another party interferes with their mating goals?

“The emotions of anger, distress, and upset are key psychological solutions that have evolved in part to alert people to interference with their mating goals. These emotions serve several related functions. They draw our attention to the problematic events, focusing attention on them and momentarily screening out less relevant events. They mark those events for storage in memory and easy retrieval from memory. Emotions also lead to action, causing people to strive to eliminate the source of the problem or to head off future battles.

Because men and women have different sexual strategies, they differ in which events activate negative emotions. Men who seek casual sex without commitment or involvement, for example, often upset women, whereas women who lead men to invest for a period of time and then withhold sex that was enticingly implied will cause men to get angry.”

Sexual Accessibility and Conflict over Perceived Mate Value

“Disagreements about sexual access or availability may be the most common sources of conflict between men and women. When 121 college students kept daily diaries of their dating activities for four weeks, 47 percent reported having one or more disagreements about the desired level of sexual intimacy.² Men sometimes seek sex with a minimum of investment. Men guard their resources and are extraordinarily choosy about whom they invest in. They are “resource coy” in order to preserve their investments for a long-term mate or for multiple casual sex partners, sometimes serially and sometimes in rotation. Because women’s long-term sexual strategies loom large in their repertoire, they often seek signals of investment before agreeing to sex. The investment that women covet is precisely the investment that men most selectively allocate. The sexual access that men seek is precisely the resource that women are so selective about apportioning.”

In addition, conflict can arise from disagreements over perceived desirability:

“Conflict over perceived desirability, where one person feels resentment because the other ignores him or her as a potential mate, is often where the first battle line is drawn in the mating market. People with higher desirability have more resources to offer and so can attract a mate with a higher value. Those with a low value must settle for less. Sometimes, however, a person may feel worthy of consideration and yet the other person disagrees.”

Some women do not welcome romantic attention from men they perceive as having lower mate value.

“This point is illustrated by a female colleague who frequents country-and-western bars. She reports that she is sometimes approached by a beer-drinking, T-shirted, baseball-capped, stubble-faced blue-collar worker who asks her to dance. When she declines, men like this sometimes get verbally abusive, saying, for example, “What’s the matter, bitch, I’m not good enough for you?” Although she simply turns her back, that is precisely what she thinks: they are not good enough for her. Her unspoken message is that she can obtain someone better, and this message angers rebuffed men. The rock star Jim Morrison of The Doors once noted that women seem wicked when one is unwanted. Differences between people’s perceptions of mate value cause conflict.”

Cognitive Biases in Sexual Mind Reading

“Humans live in an uncertain mating world. We must make inferences about others’ intentions and emotional states. How attracted is he to her? How committed is she to him? Does that smile signal sexual interest or mere friendliness? Some psychological states, such as smoldering passion for another person, are intentionally concealed, rendering uncertainty greater and speculation more tortuous. We are forced to make inferences about hidden intentions and concealed deeds using a collage of cues that are only probabilistically related to their actual existence. An unexplained scent on one’s romantic partner, for example, could signal sexual betrayal, or it could be an innocuous aroma acquired during a casual conversation or a walk through a shopping mall.”

Why might women employ sexual withholding as a mating strategy?

“For women, sexual withholding fulfills several possible functions. One is to preserve their ability to choose men of high mate value—those who are willing to commit emotionally, to invest materially, or to contribute high-quality genes, or ideally all three. Women withhold sex from certain men and selectively allocate it to others of their own choosing. Moreover, by withholding sex, women increase its value and render it a scarce resource. Scarcity ratchets up the price that men are willing to pay for it. If the only way men can gain sexual access is by heavy investment, then they will make that investment. Under conditions of sexual scarcity, men who fail to invest fail to mate. This creates another conflict between a man and a woman, since her withholding interferes with his strategy of gaining sex sooner and with fewer emotional strings attached.

Another function of sexual withholding is to manipulate a man’s perception of a woman’s value as a mate. Because highly desirable women are less sexually accessible to the average man by definition, a woman may influence a man’s perception of her desirability by withholding sexual access. Highly desirable women are, in fact, hard to get, so men interpret the difficulty of gaining sexual access to a woman as a cue to her mate value. Finally, sexual withholding, at least initially, may encourage a man to evaluate a woman as a long-term mate rather than a sexual fling. Granting sexual access early often causes a man to see a woman as a casual mate.

By withholding sex, women create challenges for men. They circumvent the component of men’s mating strategy that involves seeking low-cost sex. Certainly, women have a right to choose when, where, and with whom they want to have sex. But the exercise of that choice interferes with one of men’s deep-seated sexual strategies and is therefore experienced by men as bothersome or upsetting; hence, it is one of the key sources of conflict between the sexes.”

Emotional Commitment

“In the most abstract sense, people solve adaptive problems by one of two means—by their own labor or by securing the labor of others. In principle, people who can successfully obtain the effort of others with a minimal investment can be more successful in solving life’s adaptive problems. It is often in a woman’s best interest, for example, to have a man so devoted to her that all of his energies are channeled to her and her children. It is often in a man’s best interest, however, to allocate only a portion of his resources to one woman, reserving the rest for additional adaptive problems, such as seeking additional mating opportunities or achieving higher social status. Hence, individual women and men are often at odds over each other’s commitments.”

Is men’s emotional restraint a source of conflict in long-term relationships?

“A key sign of conflict over commitment centers on the irritation women express about men’s tendency not to express their feelings openly. One of the most frequent complaints women have about men is that they are emotionally constricted. Among newlyweds, for example, 45 percent of women, in contrast to only 24 percent of men, complain that their mates fail to express their true feelings. During the dating phase, roughly 25 percent of women complain that their partners ignore their feelings; this increases to 30 percent in the first year of marriage. By the fourth year of marriage, 59 percent of women complain that their husbands ignore their feelings. In contrast, only 12 percent of newlywed men and 32 percent of men in their fourth year of marriage make this complaint.”

Why is emotional expressiveness in a mate particularly important from a woman’s perspective?

“From a woman’s vantage point, what are the benefits she gains by getting a man to express his emotions, and what are the costs she incurs if he fails to express them? From a man’s vantage point, are there benefits to withholding the expression of emotions and costs to expressing them? One source of this gender difference stems from the fact that men’s reproductive resources are more easily divided than women’s. Within any one-year period, for example, a woman can only get pregnant by one man, and so the bulk of her reproductive resources cannot be easily partitioned. Within that same year, a man can divide his resources by investing in two or more women.”

In addition, men’s emotional restraint can be understood as a strategic form of information concealment.

“One reason men fail to express their emotions is that investing less emotionally in a relationship frees up resources that can be channeled toward other women or other goals. As in many negotiable exchanges, it is often in a man’s best interest not to reveal how strong his desires are or how intensely he is willing to commit. Turkish rug dealers wear dark glasses to conceal their interest. Gamblers strive for a poker face to disguise telltale emotions that give away their hands. Emotions often betray the degree of investment. If emotions are concealed, one’s sexual strategies remain concealed as well. The lack of information causes women to agonize, to sift through the available signs trying to discern where men really stand. College women, far more than college men, report spending time recalling and dissecting with friends conversations and activities they experienced with the people they are dating. They try to analyze their partner’s “real” inner states, intentions, emotions, and motivations. Conflict over commitment resides at the core of complaints about men’s emotional constrictedness.“

If women criticize men for emotional constriction, men often voice the opposite complaint—excessive emotionality:

“While women complain that men are emotionally constricted, men commonly complain that women are too moody and emotional. Roughly 30 percent of dating men, in contrast to 19 percent of dating women, complain about their partner’s moodiness. These figures increase to 34 percent of men during the first year of marriage and jump to 49 percent of men by the fourth year of marriage, in contrast with married women, of whom only 25 percent make these complaints.”

Why do men tend to dislike moodiness in their partners?

“Moody partners absorb time and psychological energy. Appeasing responses, such as efforts to get the partner out of the bad mood and putting one’s own plans aside temporarily, take up energy at the expense of other goals. Women impose these costs on men as a tactic for eliciting commitment. A moody woman may be saying: “You had better increase your commitment to me, or else I will burdon you with my emotional volatility.” It is one tactic in women’s repertoire for eliciting male commitment. Men dislike it because it requires that they expend effort that could be allocated to solving other adaptive challenges.“

Moodiness can also function as a test of relationship strength:

“Moodiness also functions as an assessment device to test the strength of the bond. Women use moodiness to impose small costs on their mates and then use men’s reactions to the costs as a gauge of their degree of commitment. If a man is unwilling to tolerate these costs, it is a cue that his commitment is low. Men’s willingness to tolerate the costs and to be responsive to the increasing demands for investment signals a greater level of commitment. Either way, the woman gains valuable information about the strength of the bond.“

Resource Investment

“In addition to emotional commitment, couples also skirmish over the investment of time, energy, and resources. Neglect and unreliability are manifestations of commitment conflicts. More than one-third of all dating and married women complain that their partners neglect them, reject them, and subject them to unreliable treatment. Among their common complaints are that men do not spend enough time with them, fail to call when they say they will, show up late, and cancel arrangements at the last minute. Roughly twice as many women as men complain about these events. Approximately 38 percent of dating women, for example—but only 12 percent of dating men—complain that their partners sometimes fail to call them when they say they will.”

Why are neglect and unreliability interpreted as serious relational threats by women?

“Upset over neglect and unreliability reflects a conflict over investment of time and effort. It takes effort to be on time. Reliability requires relinquishing time and resources that could be channeled toward other goals. Neglect signals a low investment, indicating that the man lacks the depth of commitment necessary to perform acts that require even minimal cost for the woman’s benefit.”

Marriage does not resolve conflicts over investment.

“Marriage does not extinguish conflict over investments. Indeed, as the marriage progresses from the newlywed year to the fourth year, women’s complaints about neglect and unreliability increase. Roughly 41 percent of newlywed women and 45 percent of women married for four years express irritation that their partners do not spend enough time with them. The analogous figures for men are only 4 percent during the newlywed year and 12 percent during the fourth year of marriage.”

Conflicts over investment frequently center on financial resources:

“Conflicts over investment often center on money. A study of American couples found that money is one of the most frequent sources of conflict. Seventy-two percent of married couples fight about money at least once a year, with 15 percent fighting more than once a month. Interestingly, couples fight more about how the money they have is to be allocated than about how much money they have in their joint pool of resources.

American men, far more often than women, complain that their spouse spends too much money on clothes. The percentage of men who express this grievance starts at 12 percent during the newlywed year and increases to 26 percent by the fourth year of marriage. In contrast, among women, only 5 percent during the newlywed year and 7 percent during the fifth year of marriage are bothered by their husband’s spending on clothes. Both, however, complain equally that their spouse spends too much money in general. Nearly one-third of men and women by the fourth year of marriage complain about their spouse’s overexpenditure of mutual resources.“

Women are particularly likely to complain about insufficient financial investment or resource acquisition:

“More women than men complain that their spouse fails to channel the money they do earn to them, especially noting their failure to buy them gifts. By the fifth year of marriage, roughly one-third of married women voice this complaint; in contrast, only 10 percent of husbands express similar complaints. Conflict between the sexes corresponds remarkably well with the initial gender-linked preferences in a mate. Women select mates in part for their economic resources and, once married, complain more than men that those resources are not forthcoming or abundant enough.”

Concluding Remarks

“Conflicts between men and women pervade their interactions on the mating market, in the workplace, and within relationships. These range from conflicts over sexual access in dating couples to fights over commitment and investment among married couples … most sexual conflicts have their origins in men’s and women’s evolved mating strategies. The strategies pursued by members of one sex often interfere with those of the other sex as each tries to influence the other toward gender-linked mating goals.”

Under what conditions do men and women experience anger?

“Both genders have psychological adaptations, such as anger, sadness, and jealousy, that alert them to interference with their mating strategies. A woman’s anger is evoked most intensely in the specific contexts in which a man interferes with her mating strategies—for example, if he acts in condescending, abusive, controlling, or sexually coercive ways toward her, constricting her personal power or freedom of choice. A man’s anger is most intensely evoked when a woman interferes with his mating strategies, for example, by spurning his advances, refusing to have sex with him, or hooking up with another man.”

This dynamic gives rise to an evolutionary arms race between the sexes:

“For each escalating test that women impose on men to gauge the depth of their commitment, men develop increasingly more elaborate strategies to mimic or minimize commitment. This development in turn favors more refined and subtle tests by women to weed out the pretenders. And for every form of abuse inflicted by one sex on the other, the other evolves methods for circumventing the manipulations. As women evolve better and more sophisticated strategies to achieve their mating goals, men evolve increasingly sophisticated strategies to achieve theirs. Because the mating goals of the sexes interfere with each other within evolutionarily delimited domains, there is no evolutionary end to the spiral.”

When the costs imposed by a partner become too high, adaptive emotions can lead to relationship dissolution:

“Adaptive emotions such as anger and psychological pain, however, help women and men reduce the costs they incur when someone attempts to interfere with their mating strategies. In the context of dating or marriage, these emotions sometimes lead to the end of the relationship.”

Some extended sections of this chapter—specifically those addressing deception, sexual assault, and rape—were not reviewed here. Consistent with the concluding argument of the previous section, the following chapter turns to relationship dissolution and examines when leaving a relationship becomes adaptive.

Attracting a Partner

“KNOWING WHAT WE desire in a mate provides no guarantee that we will succeed in getting what we want. Success hinges on providing signals that we will deliver what the partner we desire is seeking. Because ancestral women valued high status in men, for example, men have evolved motivation for acquiring and displaying status. Because ancestral men desired youth and health in potential mates, women have evolved motivations to appear young and healthful. Competition to attract a mate therefore involves besting one’s rivals in developing and displaying the characteristics most keenly sought by one’s desired partners.”

So the core question is: how can individuals signal the possession of traits that the opposite sex desires?

“Just as the successful angler uses the lure that most closely resembles food that fits the fish’s evolved preferences, so the successful competitor employs psychological tactics that most closely fit the evolved desires of the other sex. The characteristics that men and women value are keys to understanding the means of attracting a mate.”

Once I took a look at The Pragmatist’s Guide to Relationships, where different lures for attracting a mate and their desired effects (as well as their often undesired side effects) are discussed in detail.

“Attracting a mate does not occur, however, in a social vacuum. Desirable partners elicit strong social competition for their attention. Successful attraction therefore depends not merely on providing signals that one will fulfill a potential mate’s desires but also on counteracting the seductive signals of rivals.”

So in the mating game, attraction involves not only self-promotion but also the denigration of rivals.

“Derogatory tactics, like tactics of attraction, work because they exploit the psychological adaptations that predispose people to be sensitive to certain valuable qualities in possible mates, such as their resources or appearance. A man’s communication to a woman that his rival lacks ambition can be effective only if the woman is predisposed to reject men who have a low future resource potential. Similarly, a woman who tactically “slut-shames” her rival works only if men are predisposed to reject women who might have difficulty remaining faithful.”

Derogation of rivals works only if corresponding mating preferences are present in the opposite sex.

“The success of both attractive and derogatory tactics hinges on whether the target of desire is seeking a casual sex partner or a long-term committed mate. Consider the case of a woman who denigrates a rival by casually mentioning that the rival has slept with many men. If the man is seeking a spouse, this tactic is highly effective, because men dislike promiscuity in a potential wife. If the man is seeking casual sex, however, the woman’s tactic is likely to backfire, because most men pursuing easy sex are not bothered by a woman’s past promiscuity. Similarly, overt displays of sexuality are effective short-term tactics for women but are ineffective in the long run: such displays get men’s sexual attention but do not motivate them to invest or commit. The effectiveness of attraction, in short, depends critically on the temporal context of the mating. Men and women tailor their attraction techniques to the length of the relationship they seek.”

Women emphasize different traits to the opposite sex depending on whether they seek a long-term partner or a short-term liaison.

“The rules of play on the sexual field differ substantially from those of the marriage market. In long-term mating, both men and women prefer a long courtship—a process that permits evaluation of the nature and magnitude of the assets each person possesses and the costs they carry. Initial exaggerations of status or resources are revealed. Prior commitments to other mates surface. Children by former mates emerge. Prolonged assessment also allows both individuals to evaluate their mutual compatibility, which is essential for long-term mating.”

In other words, prolonged courtship is essential for evaluating and selecting a long-term partner and is not merely a cultural artifact of the Victorian era.

“Casual affairs truncate this assessment, dramatically increasing the opportunities for deception. Exaggeration of prestige, status, and income may go undetected. Prior commitments remain concealed. Information that damages a reputation comes too late. Casual mating, in short, is a rocky terrain where manipulation and deception can trip the unwary with every step. To compound this problem, deception usually occurs in the domains that are most important—status, resources, and commitment for women, appearance and sexual fidelity for men, and personality qualities for both.“

Interestingly, some highly successful Casanovas seem to exploit this dynamic by convincingly signaling commitment—precisely the domain most valued in long-term mating—despite lacking genuine intent.

“For every attractive and sexually willing woman there are usually dozens of men who would consent to have sex with her. Women can be very choosy because they have so many options to choose from. In committed relationships, in contrast, this level of choosiness is a luxury that only very desirable women can afford.”

Generosity and Resource Display

“Typically, men tell women that their rivals are poor, have no money, lack ambition, or drive cheap cars. Women are far less likely to derogate a rival’s resources; when they do, the tactic is less effective than when men do it.”

“Telling a woman that the rival will do poorly in his profession or lacks ambition is highly effective in the committed mating market but relatively ineffective when it comes to competition for casual sex. These findings mesh perfectly with the preferences that women express in the same two contexts—desiring immediate resources from brief affairs and reliable future resources from enduring mates.”

“Wearing costly clothing works equally well in both contexts. Women shown slides of different men are more attracted to men who wear expensive clothing, such as three-piece suits, sports jackets, and designer jeans, than to men who wear cheap clothing, such as tank tops and T-shirts. Clothing has this effect on women whether they are evaluating a man as a marital or sex partner, perhaps because expensive clothing signals both immediate resources and future resource potential. The anthropologists John Marshall Townsend and Gary Levy have verified that the effect of the expense and status of clothing in attracting women is robust across any sort of involvement, from merely having coffee with a man to marriage.”

While resource signals must be tailored to the mating context, costly clothing appears to function as a effective signal across both short- and long-term contexts.

“Displaying honesty is in fact a powerful tactic a man can use to obtain a long-term mate. This tactic conveys that the man is not simply seeking a transient sex partner. Of the 130 identified tactics to attract a female mate, three of the top ones suggest openness and honesty—acting truthful with the woman, communicating feelings to her directly and openly, and simply being oneself. All of these tactics are among the most effective 10 percent of all attraction tactics that men can use.”

In life more broadly, honesty tends to be a good long-term strategy.

“Because of the adaptive problem historically imposed on women by men’s dual sexual strategy of short-term and long-term relationships, tactics that allow women a clear window for evaluating a man’s actual characteristics and intentions prove to be highly attractive. Signals of dishonesty conceal those characteristics and intentions, rendering that assessment window cloudy or opaque.”

Honesty enables more effective mate choice for both potential partners.

“If signs of commitment are highly effective, cues that resources are already committed elsewhere undermine attraction. Roughly 30 percent of the men on the Tinder app, which is widely regarded as a short-term mating app, are married. Among the men who patronize singles bars, many are married or have steady relationships. Some have children who command large shares of their resources. These men report removing their wedding rings before entering the bars. After intensive grilling of men at one singles bar, researchers found that “12 people admitted that they were married. . . . We suspected that others were married, by somewhat rather undefinable qualities, sometimes connected with a rather mysterious withholding of various kinds of information about everyday life styles.” Because being married clearly interferes with attracting women, it becomes a liability for men who fail to conceal it.”

Married men or men with children have fewer resources available for a new relationship.

“University students confirm that knowledge of prior commitments hinders a man’s efforts to attract a woman. Indeed, out of eighty-three tactics that men can perform to render a rival less attractive to women, mentioning that he has a serious girlfriend is seen as the most effective one.”

Men undermine other men’s mating efforts by mentioning that they are in a serious relationship.

Showing Bravado and Self-Confidence

“Displays of masculine self-confidence prove effective for men seeking to attract mates but are significantly more effective in attracting casual than committed mates. Acting conceited or macho, bragging about one’s accomplishments, and showing off are all judged by college students to be more effective for men in attracting sex partners than wives.”

Displaying Fidelity

“In light of men’s emphasis on fidelity in a committed relationship, displays of fidelity should be paramount in women’s tactics of attraction. Faithfulness displays, such as honesty and trustworthiness, signal that the woman is pursuing a long-term mating strategy and that she is doing so without deception and exclusively with one man.

Out of 130 acts of attraction, remaining faithful, avoiding sex with other men, and showing devotion proved to be the three most effective tactics for attracting a committed mate. Participants rated all three over 6.5, with 7.0 indicating the highest possible effectiveness. Signals of fidelity offer a man a solution to one of the most important mating challenges he faces—the problem of ensuring his paternity in his children.

The centrality of fidelity shows up indirectly in the tactics employed by women to derogate mating competitors. Saying that a rival cannot stay loyal to one man was judged to be the single most effective derogation tactic for a woman to use in the marriage market. Calling a rival a slut, saying she was loose, or telling others that she slept around were in the top 10 percent of effective derogation tactics.”

The term slut is more derogatory than the term Casanova:

“The fact that women exploit men’s desire for faithful mates to undermine their rivals is reinforced by the prevalence of derogatory sexual terms in human language. Although there are terms for men who are promiscuous, such as player, lady’s man, Lothario, and Don Juan, they are fewer in number and carry less negative valence than comparable words for women. And sometimes such terms are applied to men with admiration or envy rather than as put-downs. In contrast, John Barth’s The Sot Weed Factor illustrates the range of insults hurled by women at other women. An English woman competes against a French woman by using these labels to cast aspersions on her character: harlot, whore, sow, bawd, strawgirl, tumbler, mattressback, windowgirl, galleywench, fastfanny, nellie, nightbird, shortheels, bum-bessie, furrowbutt, coxswain, conycatcher, tart, arsebender, canvasback, hipflipper, hardtonguer, bedbug, breechdropper, giftbox, craterbutt, piss-pallet, narycherry, poxbox, flapgap, codhopper, bellylass, trollop, joy-girl, bumpbacon, strumpet, slattern, chippie, pipecleaner, hotpot, back-bender, leasepiece, spreadeagle, sausage-grinder, cornergirl, codwinker, nutcracker, hedgewhore, fleshpot, cotwarmer, hussy, and stumpthumper. The French woman uses a comparably long list of counter-derogations in her native language, including bas-cul, consoeur, poupinette, briballeuse, gaure, gourgandine, saffrete, redresseuse, drue, fille de joie, champisse, and marane. In literature as in life, denigrating a competitor’s promiscuity decreases her attractiveness in the mating market.”

Sexual Signaling

“Most men want one benefit from casual mating: low-cost sex with attractive women. For women, therefore, explicit overtures that signal sexual availability or receptivity are exceptionally effective tactics. These include talking seductively, making a man think of having sex with her, and simply asking a man if he wants to have sex. These attraction tactics are maximally effective for women in casual mating contexts.”

But women also sometimes lure attractive men into relationships by signaling sexual availability:

“Signals of sexual accessibility are sometimes part of a larger strategy to lure a man into a long-term relationship. Sometimes the only way a woman can gain the attention and interest of a man is by offering herself as sexually available with no apparent strings attached. If the costs in resources and commitment are made low enough, many men succumb to sexual opportunity. Once a woman gains sexual access to a man of her choice, her proximity offers opportunities for insinuating herself, for making the man depend on her for various functions, and for gradually escalating both the benefits he will receive by staying in the relationship and the costs he will incur if he leaves her. What seems initially like costless sex without strings attached ends up being transformed into commitment.”

The Fitness Signaling Hypothesis

“According to Geoffrey Miller’s fitness signaling hypothesis, humor is one among an array of uniquely human abilities that convey genetic quality to a potential mate. Others include high verbal dexterity (a large and fluent vocabulary and facility with language and its nuances), intelligence, artistic ability, musicality, and creativity. Even displaying moral virtues such as honesty, cooperativeness, fairness, and conscientiousness can be signals.”

The discussion of these signaling mechanisms in this book remains relatively brief. Other books treat this topic in greater depth.

“Selecting an intelligent mate confers this bounty of adaptive benefits on oneself and one’s children. The genetic benefits that intelligence provides to offspring may be important as well, but it seems rash to discount how intelligence helps to solve a host of adaptive problems linked with enabling the mate selector and children to survive and thrive. Displays of morality, undoubtedly important in attracting a mate, also signal that one will be a good and generous partner, a good and fair cooperator, a self-sacrificing parent, and a high-quality long-term ally—all qualities that directly solve practical adaptive problems.”

Beyond mere fitness indicators, intelligence and moral character function as mate-choice signals because they reliably indicate a partner’s capacity to solve practical adaptive problems over the long term.

The Sexes at Cross-Purposes

“Success at attracting a mate depends on more than grasping the context and the intentions of a potential partner. It also hinges on surpassing the competition. For this reason, men and women do not merely enhance their own attractiveness; they also derogate their rivals. While making themselves appear attractive by exhibiting the qualities sought by the other sex, people also denigrate their rivals by making them appear to lack these desired qualities.”

In short-term mating contexts, deception is particularly prevalent.

“Perhaps more than in any other part of the mating arena, in casual sex men and women suffer from the strategies of the opposite sex. Men deceive women by feigning an interest in commitment to achieve a quick sexual score. They also feign confidence, status, kindness, and resources that they lack. Women who succumb to this deception give up a valuable sexual benefit at bargain-basement prices. But women battle back by insisting on stronger cues to commitment and by feigning interest in casual sex as a means of concealing their long-term intentions. Just as men deploy tactics to sexually exploit women, women turn the tables and exploit men’s sexual desires. Some men take the bait and risk becoming ensnared in a web of hidden costs.”

Women’s choosiness compresses the mating market: Many men fail to meet women’s minimum mate-selection criteria and are eliminated early from the mating market.

“women’s high standards for a mate: their choosiness dramatically shrinks the effective pool of eligible men. Many men are eliminated from contention for failing to pass even preliminary screening. This leaves just a few survivors—men of reasonable social status, with adequate self-confidence and good resource potential, who are willing to commit—over whom women then compete. Those who succeed in attracting a lasting mate then face the next adaptive problem—staying together.”

In a nutshell:

Attracting a partner is fundamentally a problem of signaling: success depends on displaying traits the opposite sex values while simultaneously counteracting rivals’ signals. These tactics are highly context-dependent, differing sharply between short-term and long-term mating, with courtship length, honesty, fidelity, and resource commitment becoming critical in long-term contexts, and deception and sexual signaling more prevalent in short-term ones. Because mating occurs in competitive environments with conflicting interests, both sexes engage in self-promotion and rival derogation, exploiting the other’s evolved preferences and vulnerabilities. Ultimately, traits such as intelligence, moral character, and honesty function not merely as fitness indicators, but as signals of a partner’s capacity to solve practical adaptive problems over time.

What Men Want

The Puzzle of Why Men Commit:

“WHY MEN WOULD ever commit to just one woman poses a puzzle. Since all an ancestral man needed to do to reproduce was to impregnate a woman, casual sex without commitment would have achieved this goal. For evolution to produce men who desire commitment or marriage and who are willing to devote years of investment to one woman, powerful adaptive advantages to that strategy over one of seeking casual sex, at least under some circumstances, must have been present.”

And the answer to that question is:

“One solution to this puzzle comes from the ground rules set by women. Since it is clear that many ancestral women required reliable signs of male commitment before consenting to sex, men who failed to commit would have suffered on the mating market. They might have failed to attract any women at all. Or perhaps they failed to attract the more desirable women and had to settle for those lower in mate value.”

Thus, in historical contexts, women’s desire for commitment as a precondition for sex largely shaped the rules.

“Women’s requirements for consenting to sex made it costly for most men to pursue a short-term mating strategy exclusively. In the economics of reproductive effort, the costs of not pursuing a long-term mate would have been prohibitively high for most men, and men would have benefited as their odds of attracting a mate, as well as attracting a more desirable mate, increased with their willingness to commit.”

When men provide commitment, they can punch above their weight relative to when they do not. In this sense, commitment operates as a bonus that increases access to more desirable mates:

The economics of the mating marketplace typically produces an asymmetry between the sexes in their ability to obtain a desirable mate in a committed as opposed to a temporary relationship. Most men can obtain a much more desirable mate if they are willing to commit to a long-term relationship because women typically desire a lasting commitment, and highly desirable women are in the best position to get what they want. In contrast, most women can obtain a much more desirable casual partner by offering sex without requiring commitment, since high-status men are willing to relax their standards and have sex with a variety of women if the short-term hookup carries no commitment. High-status men impose more stringent standards for a partner to whom they are willing to commit.”

Which brings us to male selection criteria:

“Much of what men want in a long-term mate coincides with what women want. Like women, men want committed partners who are intelligent, kind, dependable, emotionally stable, and healthy. For men as well as for women, these qualities are linked with mates who will make excellent partners, excellent allies, and excellent parents. These qualities could also signal good genetic material and low mutation loads, that is fewer copying errors within the partner’s genome—qualities that make for healthier and more robust children.”

Beyond this, certain criteria matter more for male mate choice than for female mate choice.

“But men face an adaptive problem not faced by women, at least not as poignantly choosing a fertile partner. To be reproductively successful, the most obvious criterion would be a woman’s ability to bear children. A woman with high reproductive capacity would be extremely valuable in evolutionary currencies. Men need some basis, however, on which to judge a woman’s reproductive capacity.”

However, fertility cannot be estimated that easily.

“A woman’s fertility is not stamped on her forehead or advertised with flashing neon signs. It cannot be observed directly, and it is not imbued in her social reputation. Her family is clueless. Even women themselves lack direct knowledge of their reproductive value.”

Nevertheless, for ancestral men, youth and health were the most useful cues for estimating a woman’s fertility. How these features are recognized and evaluated is discussed below.

Youth

“It is a fact of fertility that women’s reproductive capacity declines steadily with increasing age after the midtwenties. By the age of forty, a woman’s reproductive capacity is low. By fifty, it is close to zero. Women’s capacity for reproduction is compressed into a fraction of their lives.”

It is also notable that human females are the only land-living mammals to experience menopause, resulting in a complete cessation of reproductive capacity well before the end of the lifespan.

“Among European countries, the age difference ranges from about two years in Poland to roughly five years in Greece. Averaged across all countries, grooms are three years older than their brides, or roughly the difference expressly desired by men worldwide.”

To look beyond Europe:

“In summary, contemporary men prefer young women because they have inherited from their male ancestors an evolved preference that focused intensely on this cue to a woman’s reproductive value. This psychological preference translates into actual mating decisions much of the time—although as we will see later, people can’t always get what they want.”

Physical Beauty

“A preference for youth is merely the most obvious of men’s preferences linked to a woman’s reproductive capacity. Evolutionary logic leads to an even more powerful set of expectations for universal standards of beauty. Just as our standards for attractive landscapes embody cues such as water, game, and refuge, mimicking environments beneficial to our ancestors, so our standards for female beauty embody cues to women’s reproductive capacity. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but those eyes, and the minds behind the eyes, have been shaped by millions of years of human evolution.”

To put it bluntly—and with a touch of humor—men are, from a female mate-choice perspective, success objects, whereas women are, from a male mate-choice perspective, fertility objects.

“Our ancestors had access to two types of observable evidence of a woman’s health and youth: features of physical appearance, such as full lips, clear skin, smooth skin, clear eyes, lustrous hair, and good muscle tone, and features of behavior, such as a bouncy, youthful gait, an animated facial expression, and a high energy level. These physical cues to youth and health, and hence to reproductive capacity, constitute key elements of male standards of female beauty. Because physical and behavioral cues provide the most powerful observable evidence of a woman’s reproductive value, ancestral men evolved a preference for women who displayed these cues.”

In a nutshell:

“Men who failed to prefer qualities that signaled high reproductive value—men who preferred to marry gray-haired grandmothers lacking in smooth skin and firm muscle tone—would have left fewer offspring.”

We are not the descendants of those men.

Body Shape

“While men’s preferences for a particular body size vary, one preference for body shape that is fairly invariant, the psychologist Devendra Singh discovered, is the preference for a small waist size relative to hip size. Before puberty, boys and girls show a similar fat distribution. At puberty, however, a dramatic change occurs. Boys lose fat from their buttocks and thighs, while the release of estrogens in pubertal girls causes them to deposit fat in their lower trunk, primarily on their hips and upper thighs. Indeed, the volume of body fat in this region is 40 percent greater for women than for
men.

In other words, the waist-to-hip ratio is similar for the sexes before puberty, but after puberty women’s hip fat deposits cause their waist-to-hip ratio to become significantly lower than men’s. Healthy, reproductively capable women have a waist-to-hip ratio between 0.67 and 0.80, while healthy men have a ratio in the range of 0.85 to 0.95.”

In other words, a feminine body shape—but not BMI per se—signals fertility.

“Abundant evidence now shows that the waist-to-hip ratio is an accurate indicator of women’s reproductive status. Women with a lower ratio show earlier pubertal endocrine activity. Women with a higher ratio have more difficulty becoming pregnant, and those who do become pregnant do so at a later age than women with a lower ratio. The waist to-hip ratio is also an accurate indication of long-term health status. Diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, heart problems, previous stroke, and gallbladder disorders are linked with the distribution of fat, as reflected by the ratio. The link between the waist to-hip ratio and both health and reproductive status made it a reliable cue for ancestral
men’s preferences in a mate.”

The Importance of Physical Appearance

“Because of the bounty of fertility cues conveyed by a woman’s physical appearance, and because male standards of beauty have evolved to correspond to these cues, men have evolved to prioritize appearance and attractiveness in their mate preferences.”

This leads us straight to the next topic:

Men’s Status and Women’s Beauty

“Men value a woman’s attractiveness for reasons other than her reproductive value. The consequences of women’s attractiveness for a man’s social status are critical. Everyday folklore tells us that our mate is a reflection of ourselves. Men are particularly concerned about status, reputation, and hierarchies because elevated rank has always been an important means of acquiring the resources that make men attractive to women. It is reasonable, therefore, to expect that a man will be concerned about the effect that his mate has on his social status—an effect that has consequences for gaining additional resources and mating opportunities.”

In short, both men and women prefer partners—or allies—who are themselves desired by others.

“In my study of human prestige criteria, dating someone who is physically attractive greatly increases a man’s status, whereas it increases a woman’s status only somewhat. In contrast, a man who dates an unattractive woman experiences a moderate decreasein status, whereas a woman who dates an unattractive man experiences only a trivial decrease in status.”

This phenomenon is observed globally.

“These trends occur across cultures. When my research collaborators and I surveyed native residents of China, Poland, Guam, Romania, Russia, and Germany in parallel studies of human prestige criteria, we found that in each of these countries, acquiring a physically attractive mate enhances a man’s status more than a woman’s. In each country, having an unattractive mate hurts a man’s status more than it does a woman’s.”

Men Who Achieve Their Desires

“Although most men place a premium on youth and beauty, it is clear that not all men succeed in satisfying their desires. Men who lack the status and resources that women want, for example, generally have the most difficult time attracting good-looking young women and must settle for less than their ideal. Evidence comes from men who have historically been in a position to get exactly what they prefer, such as kings, emperors, despots, and other men of unusually high status.”

High-status men are more likely to marry younger women and thus fulfill their preference for youth.

“Marriage patterns in modern America confirm the fact that the men with the most resources are the best equipped to actualize their preferences. High-status men, such as the aging rock stars Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger and the movie stars George Clooney and Johnny Depp, frequently select women decades younger. One study examined the impact of a man’s occupational status on the woman he marries. Men who are high in occupational status are able to marry women who are considerably more physically attractive than are men who are low in occupational status. Indeed, a man’s occupational status seems to be the best predictor of the attractiveness of the woman he marries. Men in a position to attract younger women often do.”

An increase in income makes the fulfillment of these preferences more likely.

“Men who enjoy high status and income are apparently aware of their ability to attract women of higher value. In a study of a computer dating service involving 1,048 German men and 1,590 German women, the ethologist Karl Grammer found that as men’s income goes up, they seek younger partners. Each increment in income is accompanied by a decrease in the age of the woman sought.”

In short, mating heaven is experienced by only a few.

“Mate preferences are not invariably translated into actual mating decisions for all people all of the time, just as food preferences are not invariably translated into actual eating decisions for all people all of the time. But men who are in a position to get what they want often partner up with young, attractive women. Ancestral men who actualized these preferences experienced greater reproductive success than those who did not.”

One essential ingredient in the formula of desired traits is still missing: fidelity.

Fidelity

“For an ancestral man to reap the reproductive benefits of marriage, he had to seek reasonable assurances that his mate would indeed remain sexually faithful to him. Men who failed to be aware of these cues would have lost out in the currency of relative reproductive success. Failure to be sensitive to these cues so as to ensure their partner’s fidelity would have diverted years of her parental investment to another man’s children. Men who were indifferent to the potential sexual contact between their wives and other men would not have been successful in the game of differential reproductive success.”

In ancestral environments, premarital chastity served as a cue to likely future fidelity.

“Our male forebears solved this uniquely male adaptive problem by seeking qualities in a potential mate that might increase the odds of securing their paternity. At least two preferences in a mate could solve the problem for males: the desire for premarital chastity and the quest for postmarital sexual loyalty. Before the use of modern contraceptives, chastity provided a cue to the future certainty of paternity. On the assumption that a woman’s proclivities toward chaste behavior would be stable over time, her premarital chastity signaled her likely future fidelity.”

In modern environments, the likelihood of fidelity must be assessed differently than in ancestral conditions.

“From a man’s reproductive perspective, a more important cue to the certainty of paternity than virginity per se is the assurance of future fidelity. If men cannot reasonably require virginity, they can choose mates for sexual loyalty or fidelity. In fact, the study of short-term and long-term mating found that American men viewed having little sexual experience as desirable in a spouse. Furthermore, men saw promiscuity as especially undesirable in a permanent mate, rating it –2.07 on a scale of –3.00 to +3.00. The actual amount of prior sexual activity in a potential mate, rather than virginity per se, would have provided an excellent guide for ancestral men who sought to solve the problem of uncertainty of paternity. Indeed, the single best predictor of extramarital sex is premarital sexual permissiveness—people who have many sex partners before marriage tend to be more unfaithful than those who have few sex partners before marriage.”

“Modern men place a premium on fidelity. When American men in the study of short term and long-term partners evaluated sixty-seven possible characteristics for their desirability in a committed mateship, faithfulness and sexual loyalty emerged as the most highly valued traits. 60 All men give these traits the highest rating possible, an average of +2.85 on a scale of –3.00 to +3.00. Men regard unfaithfulness as the least desirable characteristic in a wife, rating it a –2.93, reflecting the high value that men place on fidelity. Men abhor promiscuity and infidelity in their wives. Unfaithfulness proves to be more upsetting to men than any other pain a spouse can inflict on her mate. Women also become extremely upset over an unfaithful mate, but several other factors, such as sexual aggressiveness, exceed infidelity in the grief they cause women.”

“The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, with its promises of sexual freedom and lack of possessiveness, apparently has had a limited impact on men’s preferences for sexual fidelity. Nor has the overhyped hookup culture on college campuses today significantly changed these preferences.”

A final note on fidelity:

“A man does not relax his desire for fidelity in his wife just because she takes birth control pills. This constant demonstrates the importance of our evolved sexual psychology—a psychology that was designed to deal with critical cues from an ancestral world but that continues to operate with tremendous force in today’s modern world of mating.”

The chapter ends with an unvarnished statement about the unequal distribution of mating advantages:

“These preferences upset some people because they are unfair. We can modify our physical attractiveness only in limited ways, and some people are born, or develop into, better-looking individuals than others. Beauty is not distributed democratically. A woman cannot alter her age, and a woman’s reproductive value declines more sharply with age than a man’s; evolution has dealt women a cruel hand, at least in this regard.”

The review of this chapter can be succinctly concluded with the following statement:

“Men worldwide want physically attractive, young, and sexually loyal wives who will remain faithful to them over the long run.”

I will probably not review Chapter 4, which deals with casual sex.