The standard evolutionary explanation for short-term relationships that women enter into is that such relationships may be the optimal behavior strategy. It allows you to have a sexual relationship with someone more physically attractive than a regular partner - a reliable, caring guy. The author of the article tells about the attempts of scientists to explain the "novels on the side".
After reaching a certain age, most adults enter into long-term partnerships that remain relatively stable for a few years or even a lifetime. But often people have shorter-term relationships with less serious intentions and with lesser obligations: fleeting relationships, "sex for friendship", extramarital affairs and the like.
This creates some problem for specialists in the field of evolutionary psychology, who are trying to explain basic human behavior as a system of various types of innate adaptations that have arisen over tens of thousands of years. The adaptive reason for the desire of men to establish short-term sexual relations is easy to determine. After all, a man who often changes sexual partners can potentially give birth to dozens, even hundreds of children, thereby passing on more of his genes to the next generations, which, from the point of view of evolution, is an advantage. But a woman, due to pregnancy and lactation, is in an unequal position with him, which means that she cannot have hundreds of children, therefore, in evolutionary terms, she does not derive much benefit from the "hobbies of youth." Why, then, should women even enter into frivolous short-term relationships?
Of course, one of the reasons, perhaps, is that there is no evolutionary goal in frivolous behavior, flirting, that women are simply taking advantage of our modern, relatively egalitarian society, which offers free access to contraceptives. There is probably a definite plus in this explanation. If we talk about human behavior in simple terms, as evolutionary psychologists do (as if we are another species of animals driven by instinct), you can irritate some sociologists and members of the general public, who think otherwise - that fate is not determined by biology and that people control their own own behavior. But evolutionary psychologists are wondering whether other forces are at work in the woman's choice of mate. This would represent a strategy of active sexual behavior with specific evolutionary goals. The search for an answer to this question has become one of the most attractive topics of modern research in the field of marital (sexual) human behavior.
Love affair theory
The standard evolutionary explanation for short-term relationships that women enter into (at least those who already have a long-term partner) is that romance on the side can be the optimal strategy for behavior.
The fact is that such a strategy allows you to enter into a sexual relationship with someone physically more attractive than her regular partner - a reliable, caring guy. "These sexually attractive men are likely to have more partners - and generally more children - than 'good fathers," says Sarah Hill, an evolutionary psychologist at Texas Christian University at Fort Worth., a woman who acquires these sex genes for her sons should have more grandchildren.
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To test this hypothesis, scientists tried to find out whether women have a clear preference for attractive men as partners for short-term relationships in the favorable period for conception, which comes monthly and provides the only opportunity to actually acquire these sexual genes for their offspring. So far, the evidence is mixed: some studies point to this "ovulatory change" in preference, while others do not. “This gives me reason to believe that something like this is probably happening,” says Hill. "It's just a more subtle process." For example, an analysis of as-yet-unpublished research by evolutionary psychologist Steven Gangestad of the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and colleagues found thatthat the expected "ovulatory change" in preferences occurs only in women in long-term relationships, and does not occur in women without partners.
If the results of the study are confirmed, it could mean that women who have no partners, using strategies of sexual behavior in order to establish short-term relationships, are not seeking sexual genes, but something else.
A similar reason is that women are not necessarily looking for better genes than their regular partner suggests, but simply others. This strategy would be justified in uncertain times when it is difficult to predict which genes will give offspring the best chance of success. In such circumstances, the best strategy for a woman's behavior may be to search for "backup options", that is, different fathers for their future children, in the hope that one of them will eventually receive the "necessary" genes (of course, genes are just one of the many factors contributing to a child's success in life (but if they matter at all, the strategy of looking for alternatives in times of uncertainty should pay off).
This hypothesis also finds some confirmation. For example, Hill and colleagues gave a presentation to some women about the dangers of future disease outbreaks, an evolutionarily familiar threat that genetic diversity can help counter. Other women were offered a presentation on the economic downturn, which was supposed to show a threat that human ancestors could not cope with due to their evolutionary nature. Predictably, women who were told about the disease soon after began to show interest in more partners. “These women wanted more variety,” says Hill. - This is quite expected. Atlantic salmon do the same”(in conditions of high morbidity, female salmon prefer to spawn with the participation of several males).
But David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the first to explore strategies for sexual behavior, believes that women should strive for more than just genes. After all, women enter into short-term relationships not only during the period favorable for conception, when the genes of their partner matter. What's more, a 1992 study found that 79% of women end up falling in love with their casual partner. (As for men, there are only a third of them). “This is exactly the opposite of what you would expect if it were only good genes. If you're just getting genes from your fickle partner, allowing yourself emotional attachment would be a disaster,”says Bass.
However, Bass argues that women may be using short-term relationships to find a better partner. To support his hypothesis, he cites the same 1992 study, which found that women are much more likely than men to have romances on the side when they are unhappy with their current partner. Moreover, women, when choosing a partner for a relationship on the side, as a rule, do not reduce their requirements. They prefer men who are smart, ambitious and reliable - these are the qualities they look for in a partner for a long-term relationship. Bass said women who are not currently in long-term relationships can also use short-term relationships as a way to test potential long-term partners.
One strategy
Interestingly, some critics question whether women have any particular behavioral strategy for establishing short-term sexual relations at all. They argue that all actions aimed at establishing a relationship with a partner are, in principle, similar, regardless of whether the relationship is long-term or short-term. This means that most short-term relationships are just relationships that never get to the point where the attachment develops, which makes the relationship long-term, says Paul Eastwick, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis. Eastwick and his colleagues asked several hundred volunteers to recall their most recent short-term and long-term relationship and cross out those stages from the list.through which this relationship passed - from dating a person to dating, sex, and then marriage. The volunteers also rated their level of romantic interest during each of these events.
Scientists found that the development of both short-term and long-term relationships followed almost the same pattern, and the level of romantic interest in the early days of these relationships was the same. Of course, the number of stages in the development of short-term relationships was less. In other words, all relationships start out the same, and the differences only appear when two people get to know each other. “People often have no idea if they just want to have sex with this person just a few times and then say goodbye, or if this is the person with whom they might want to start a long-term relationship,” Eastwick says. (Some relationships, such as one-night stand with strangers, are definitely short-lived, he admits. Few of the volunteers in his study reported such relationships - about 3 percent. Although other studies have shown that the number of people entering into such a relationship is much higher (almost 10%).
Eastwick believes that at the beginning of a relationship, women prioritize their partner's physical attractiveness because it can be noticed immediately. However, as partners get closer, their priorities shift towards traits such as caring, humor, and reliability.
“I think we have two adaptation systems acting one after the other, not two kinds of relationship, taking into account two kinds of adaptation outcomes,” Eastwick says. Since many short-term relationships never go through the stage of physical attraction, it seems that women (and men too) choose one of two different strategies (preferring sexuality for short-term relationships and reliability for long-term relationships), even if they are not.
Of course, these options for explaining the sexual behavior of women in short-term relationships are not mutually exclusive, and it is possible that women have other reasons for having a short romance. “Sex is used for many different purposes, many of which have nothing to do with reproduction,” says Sarah Hill. Others point to the rigid boundaries of thinking about human sexual behavior strategies, which have remained unchanged for centuries. In particular, human behavior evolved and became extremely flexible, which allowed our ancestors to quickly adapt to changing environmental conditions, notes Alice Eagly, a social psychologist at Northwestern University. “The fact that we live in different conditions and in different circumstances,is one of the manifestations of our success as a species, so we invent ways to overcome these circumstances, she says. “We choose a partner, thinking: 'What will positively affect the life that I think I will have?' We are creative and our preferences change. '
This flexibility is shown, for example, in cross-cultural comparisons. In more traditional societies, where gender roles are more clearly defined, women value the financial prospects of a potential partner more, while men value women's skills in housekeeping. In cultures that are more amenable to Western influences, where women are more independent and more equal, preferences for both sexes become more similar, says Eagli.
And even evolutionary psychologists advise against giving too much importance to the evolutionary trends they talk about. When you say that men are more interested in casual sex than women, people think that we are talking about all men and all women, says Peter Jonason, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. “Nobody says the word“everything,”but people hear it.” Jonason, like most respected experts in evolutionary psychology, does his best to emphasize that he does not study rigid rules, but general trends. People are very different from each other. and differences in sexual behavior appear only in general in many men and women, and these patterns cannot be used to predict how a person will behave.
In the future, Bass says, we have to answer a very important question about how our long evolutionary strategies for sexual behavior work in today's world, where contraception allows women to reduce the risk of pregnancy, and economic independence frees (at least partially) women from the need to rely on the financial resources of a partner in raising children. An even more unpredictable factor is online dating, which allows millions of potential partners to find each other within the reach of our phones. Do people become more picky with so many partners? Nobody knows yet. We will follow the development of events.
Bob Holmes