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.