The problem is that if you have been even remotely following evolutionary psychology, you should know that this is garbage (or at least wildly oversimplified).
For men, yeah, maybe getting some random woman pregnant and having her successfully raise the kid without his investment is like winning the lottery from a reproductive standpoint. But considering how rare the opportunity to meet a fertile, agreeable woman who you wouldn’t see again was in hunter-gatherer societies*, you damn well better have a “day job” too. Men also have a drive to bond with specific women and devote resources to their mutual (hopefully) children; it may be not as rewarding in a cost-benefit way as sleeping around, but it has a much greater chance of ensuring that you will pass on your genes.
For women in hunter-gatherer societies, having at least one committed husband-father** around is important, but men will contribute resources (and not just food and gifts but things like labor, babysitting and social support) to women with whom they have an ongoing relationship, even if it’s not exclusive or permanent; a woman with one or more men on the side has an edge over one with just her primary husband. In line with this hypothesis, across several extant hunter-gatherer societies, as women age (and gain greater social leverage) it becomes increasingly likely that they will have multiple lovers (besides her husband) and children from multiple fathers. (In fact, this is probably the driver of men’s interest in young women just entering their reproductive period; they’re not looking for fertility, which actually increases as women age once you take into account infant mortality, they’re looking for exclusivity… at least for a while.)
TL;DR: “Men want sex, women want commitment” is hogwash that has been picked up by the masses because it conforms to longstanding cultural stereotypes, not empirical evidence.
Back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that a man in a typical prehistoric hunter-gatherer society would be lucky to meet 100 fertile women over his lifetime, much less have sex with them all. (A typical band might have ~20 reproductive-age women, and interact with ~4-5 other bands on a frequent-enough basis to engage in mutual visitation without risking preemptive violent defense on the part of the visitee’s band.)
** It should be pointed out that this isn’t the only way of arranging things; there are societies where it is expected that a man’s primary commitment is to his sisters and their children, with his girlfriend(s) and his own children as an on-the-side arrangement.
Back when I was an active player in the dating game, I never hit on a woman on the first date. If I were interested in spending the night with her, I’d tell her flat out and say the decision is completely yours.
Every one of them appreciated that greatly. Some waited, some didn’t.
I don’t think so. I think it just means that women are more likely to want sex to be part of something more. It’s not that they are rewarding men - they just have a different bar for when sex is appropriate.
That’s assuming being gay alters that evolutionary trait towards more sexual caution. They can intellectually know they can’t get pregnant but still have a preprogrammed instinct to wait. And having two partners preprogrammed to wait is obviously going to end up with less sex compared to a couple where only one is thus inclined.
We also tend to forget that what people really want when they are horny is orgasms, not simply sex. Women are more reticent to have sex because they are not guaranteed a payoff like men, in fact if i remember correctly it’s only like a 30% chance to have an orgasm with a new lover.
Men aren’t necessarily guaranteed a payoff with a new partner on a first date either.
There can be a certain amount of performance anxiety, especially after just meeting someone.
I’m not in the dating market. But lots of my coworkers are. And we spend a lot of time chewing the fat as the world slowly slides by.
Somebody pretty early in the thread tossed out the old saw “If she has sex with me on the first date, I gotta assume she’s done that to a lot of other guys. Eewww!”
I can certainly imagine that making some kind of half-assed sense to a high school or college-aged kid. Not that it’s factually correct, but that it’d seem plausible to that guy.
At the age of 50-mumble, every woman (or man) you’re gonna date is going to have a long history of sex with other people. We’re not talking about the polar opposite choice between blushing virgins and the stereotypical “slutty” cheerleader who does the whole football team.
So ISTM for these sorts of discussions we ought to subdivide a bit: are we talking about high school kid dating, college dating, 20-something dating, or 40-/50-something post-divorce dating?
How much of the stupidity the OP is describing is a matter of 40-/50-somethings applying rules of thumb now that were only sorta appropriate when they learned them in college-age dating in 1980s society?
I really liked igor’s post. Most people really suck at this game of figuring out other people and of getting in sync with strangers. Add in some booze and the imminent prospect of an orgasm and it gets even worse.
The fact we have posters here insisting that only 1950s morality and gender roles are consistent with true human nature and others arguing that’s mostly BS points out pretty clearly that there is a range of opinions out there amongst your favored sex. Which ever that may be. Figuring out which set of attitudes your first date counterparty has won’t be easy. Lots of room there for an attack of foot-in-mouth disease.
Some HG societies survived into the mid-20th centuries. Relationship structures are all over the map, really. Humans are very flexible in many ways. There are few constants.
Right. And I’m not sure why you would argue with that. “Men should pay for everything on the first date” has some cultural significance. Maybe we both think it is bullshit. But if for some reason I don’t pay, knowing that some women expect me to, says something interesting about my personality that is a legitimate reason for further exploration.
Conversely, if I do pay, then that is a reason to inquire further. Did I do so only because society expected it? Am I controlling? Am I generous?
It seems as if you just want to pretend that these stereotypes don’t exist and have not influenced our behavior throughout our lives. They do and have.
I don’t doubt that there are benefits from a man staying around to raise his children. That’s probably why society evolved the way it did into monogamy.
Men, at some point, probably decided that it wasn’t worth trying to find 100 women per year, fighting her brothers, making his pitch, etc. It’s easier to find this one woman who puts up with my shit, makes me reasonably happy, cooks wooly mammoth, cleans the cave, and takes an interest in my children. Maybe if I treat her well enough, I won’t have to worry that she is sleeping with someone else and I am raising HIS kids.
I don’t dispute any of that, and am in favor of monogamous relationships. But at its biological core, a man sleeping around is furthering his own procreative interests. A woman is not.
Of course, we don’t live in caves, so is any of the above valid in 2017? Yes, and no, for the reasons stated above.
There are some recent studies looking at the ‘hookup culture’ myth asking people why they do and don’t have casual sex. (Not quite the same thing as first date sex, but similar). While the greater risk of pregnancy and STDs, and greater risk of being assaulted were factors for women, the overwhelming reason is simply that hookup sex is vastly more likely to be satisfying for a man than a woman - triple the chance of the guy having an orgasm than the woman. How many guys would be keen on sex on the first date if their biology made it unlikely for them to orgasm during the sex, social pressure encouraged them to not complain about it, and their partner probably doesn’t care about it?
That could easily be an effect not a cause of female sexual caution. If women prefer sex to be part of a more permanent or meaningful relationship they would be less likely to orgasm during a one-nighter even though they decided to go for it.
Putting aside sexism, fear of slut-shaming, etc., I can understand the sentiment behind this.
Some people see sex as being like dessert. You eat it after you’re finished with a good healthy dinner. Dinner is yummy too but the point of dinner is not pleasure so much as getting balanced nutrition.
If you eat dessert first, you can still go back and eat dinner. I mean, it happens all the time. But once you’ve skipped over dinner early on, it’s tempting to keep skipping over it. Dessert becomes the defining experience, the thing you associate the other person with. Not their personality or other intangibles.
And then before long, you start getting sick of the other person because you’ve both eaten too much sugar and haven’t really developed a sense of shared trust and security and emotional attachment.
I think men and women can be wired to feel this way. I just think men are just conditioned to shrug it off.
Your response as about as much relevance to my comment as telling me the sky is blue. In other words, you said a load of nothing.
Don’t partake in activities you condemn others as immoral for doing and don’t shame others for doing the same things you do. It’s that simple. There is no justification for being a hypocrite, especially in the name of maintaining sexist double standards.
This. Getting to know someone and developing a relationship with them takes on a completely different context when there’s a sexual component behind it. I personally think it’s good to have that period of nurturing a romance before introducing sex into the relationship.
Plus if you’re looking for something serious and long-term it helps to know if your guy will demonstrate this by sticking around or dumping you for not putting out fast enough. Giving in to your urges early on will obfuscate this.
Dude. Did you read what I wrote? Both men and women have incentives to “sleep around”, and both have incentives to form long-term, invested relationships. If you want to rewrite the phrase to be true to “its biological core”, it should be “Both men and women want sex, and both men and women also want commitment”.
My thought exactly