I think you are presupposing too much, that nervousness around the opposite sex is some unique behavior independent of the rest of life. I agree with Blake and pancakes3, nervousness around the other sex is a general human condition of nervousness when taking risks. It’s all about how the individual assess those specific risks, and his/her confidence with the situation.
That is why most people get over the nervousness - it’s not “having a script”, it is familiarity leads to comfort, which leads to confidence. That’s why adolescents are usually more nervous than older folks - they have no experience to draw upon (except stories from others, movies, etc), and the ramifications of failure or success seem so huge. It has nothing to do with how our ancestor hunter/gatherer cultures behaved and everything to do with the fact that to many people, the social embarrassment/risk of rejection issue is significant enough to trigger the human response to risk - nervousness.
And that’s why some people are less prone than others. Some people are inherently less afraid of risk, or even have a misfounded sense of confidence, which is still confidence and oddly often works simply because confidence leads you to more decisive actions.
The human reaction to risk is not driven by one situation - in this case sexual reproduction. It is based upon the amalgam of what happens in risky situations. Sometimes it pays to be confident, sometimes it pays to be conservative - both choices pay out and both choices lead to survival, so the traits of each remain in the gene pool.
And people that originally lack confidence with the other sex learn what to expect and eventually become more confident, which means they reproduce.
IMO the nervousness in question is not about the opposite sex specifically, but about the prospect of success or failure in bringing about a highly desired state of affairs. Through your efforts, you can influence, but not control, the outcome.
Think about the time when you might not have been doing so great in a particular class, but you studied your ass off for the final. After doing the final you felt fairly confident about the results…but still there was still a hair of doubt in your mind. How nervous did you feel when you looked at your grade report? It’s the same thing.
Exactly. Not everything that exists has to be purposeful. Our nervousness does not prevent us from eventually having sex, at least not enough to be entirely eliminated.
Besides, some girls and guys may find the nervousness cute and be attracted to it. This would help it survive.
Now I’m curious what your response would be now (other than slowly nodding your head with an appropriately serious expression) and what media in particular this came from. Because this seems to be fairly common.
No need for a :smack: at all, I think. As long as the conversation is not long and intimate, it’s a way to show quick empathy, which it should be, even if short. Often the person will respond w/ “It’s OK, it was x years ago” or something, anyway.
Calling humans monogamous as a species is an oversimplification and not really accurate either. Humans tend to be polygynous to significant degree. Most human societies have some mechanism by which dominant/attractive males may acquire multiple mates. In many traditional societies dominant males can formally take more than one wife. In other societies they may have a single formal wife but one or more mistresses or concubines who may be recognized to a greater or lesser degree. In western societies, dominant/wealthy males with some frequency discard their first wife for a younger wife with greater reproductive potential. All of these mechanisms will result in dominant males having more access to reproductive females.
There’s also the possibility that nervous “sensitive new age guys” play a necessary part in the evolutionary balance. The douchebag alpha males employ a “fire and forget” reproduction strategy. Then the SNAMs come along as the rebound guy, and also end up helping to raise DBAM’s kids. Too many DBAMs and too few SNAGs, and society falls apart from aggressive males. Too few DBAM is a happy hunting/mating ground for the few that do exist. It’s a balance that is self supporting and averages out in the long run, like the balance between foxes and rabbits.
Every time on TV someone mentions that they knew someone, who is now dead, the person they are talking to says “I’m sorry”.
So in that situation, I, as a reflex, also said “I’m sorry”, though I wasn’t quite sure why I was saying it (Sorry for asking? Sorry for your loss? Sorry I murdered your father?).
Nor had I ever heard a person give that response in real life, before or since.
I live in England, so it’s likely a UK / US english thing.
Can we also point out that without major social controls, women also have no problem seeking out multiple mates? A woman having an affair is hardly a rare occurrence at any point in history (except those where it’d lead to really brutal socially-imposed consequences), and as our own society’s sexual controls relax we see plenty of women choosing something different than “a single life partner.”
The phrase “I’m sorry” has two meanings. One meaning is “I’m sorrowful for you”, and is an expression of sympathy. The other is “I’m sorrowful for what I did to you” and is an expression of regret. Because the phrase is such a significant part of the ritual of regret/forgiveness, the first usage is slipping.
The modern colloquialism that seems to be replacing the first usage is “that sucks”.
person A: “My dad died when I was little.”
person B: “That sucks.”
I know, seems a tad weak for the sentiment, but effectively conveys the intent of recognition of pain and avoids the ambiguity over the regret/forgiveness routine.
A more eloquent person might say something more along the lines of, “Oh, that must have been rough for you,” or “Wow, and I thought I had it bad.”
According to TV shows, a form used by police officers when dealing with family of recent deaths is, “I’m sorry for your loss.” A slightly more formal version of the same thing.
One might try “saddened” to replace “sorry” in an effort to avoid that confusion as well.
Calling humans naturally monogamous is a vast oversimplification. It is true that we tend to engage in a form of pairbonding. That is built into the social fabric of every human society in formal and informal ways. But it is not usually an exclusive permanent pairbonding. There are all sorts of other patterns.
Including the bed hopping and one night stand models, to structures of polygamies, to extra-marital affairs by both parties. While stereotype has it that men are the more frequent committers of infidelity, it is common enough among women, too. And then there’s divorce, which shows that our pair-bonding methods aren’t permanent or infallable.
None of which has anything to do with nervousness. Nervousness is a natural response to risk-taking. The degree of nervousness felt is conditional upon the individual involved, the situation, the perceived balance of payoff vs risk, the familiarity of the situation, the previous experiences of that individual, and how that person’s brain processes risk. Social risk taking is no different than any other form of risk taking, from the brain’s perspective.
True, but open simultaneous polyandry is extremely rare in traditional societies (which are, of course, the kind of social organization under which the vast majority of human evolution has taken place). And surreptitious simultaneous polyandry in these societies, if discovered, is likely to result in the death or at least severe punishment of one or more of the parties. So females have generally had much fewer options for multiple mates than males.
It’s like that with voles too; most males mate with as many females as possible and take off before the children are born. The prairie vole however stays with one female and rears the children. It would be a mistake to assume that he never strays, but they do normally bond. What species is truly monogamous, though? I suppose many species of cephalopod technically mate with one partner, if only because they die soon after. Somehow I think that violates the spirit of the definition of monogamy, though.
As a legal institution, sure (I’d argue that’s more related to inheritance patterns inherent to agriculture, but that’s just my opinion).
That doesn’t change the fact that pretty much throughout history, women have been happily banging the milkman, their husband’s friends, and whoever else. After all, not a lot of ladies stayed single in agricultural societies, and men have to be having those affairs with someone. We may not marry multiple men, but women have always had multiple partners except when that faces them to the most draconian penalties.
You are overlooking the fact that prior to the 20th century the penalties for infidelity were interminable.
The vast majority of couples struggled to raise their children. Most people died before the age of five. With an average of 7 children per woman, the population was static, meaning that fully 70% of people died before they produced children at all. And that was the reality for stable couples. For a single woman, trying to raise a child was essentially impossible.
And any woman caught cheating was almost certain to be single in short order. Divorce was pretty much demanded in almost all societies upon discovery of infidelity. Often the husband would keep any existing children that he believed were his, and the unfaithful wife would be turned out with any suspected bastards and any child she happened to be carrying. At least in Europe, accounts suggest that, unless they turned to prostitution, most such women died within a few years.
So the idea that most women took the terrible risk of killing themselves and their existing children in order to cheat makes no sense at all if you understand the basic mechanics of marriage throughout world history. Certainly some did, but it was never the majority as you seem to imply. Genetic tests indicate that infidelity rates were never higher than 10%, and probably in the range of 1%.
So this idea that woman have been “banging the milkman, their husband’s friends, and whoever else” has no basis in fact and is extremely unlikely given the difficulties faced by a single woman in raising a child.
I think it comes down to a couple of simple points:
Nervousness, while not a perfect emotion, does help an awfully lot of people when they are in an important situation. It puts you on the top of your game, ready for physical action or witty conversation if it need be. I would guess that the number of people who “choke” or perform poorly under tense circumstances are in the minority.
Evolution tends to only weed out traits that will get you killed. Being nervous around a girl might make you strike out a couple of times, but you will eventually get laid and pass your genes on to the next generation of nervous nellies.