Selfish Genes and Overcoming Infidelity
A good female friend of mine is trying to decide whether or not to dump her boyfriend of 2 years.
On the one hand, the decision seems clear-cut to me:
- Her boyfriend is basically a dead-ender; he works waiting tables while not playing in a (bad) alt-rock bad.
- He is not as smart or funny as she is, and can’t challenge her mentally.
- He has no ambition in life apart from playing in his (bad) rock band.
Now let’s look at the flip side:
- She, on the other hand, is smart, ambitious, and wants more out of life.
- She is also young at only 20; and has only had 10 boyfriends in her life.
- She has grown tired of her boyfriend and constantly complains about their incompatibilities.
Despite all the above, this young woman is having an immensely hard time breaking up with this fellow.
Of course he does have good qualities; he is funny, personable, dominant, and he gives her good sex (sometimes).
Thinking hard about her predicament brought me to some interesting conclusions about men, women, relationships and monogamy.
To begin with, I believe women face a fundamental tension in life when thinking of “settling down”.
The Feminine Dilemma
I believe modern Western women are caught between two competing desires for a mate.
- All women want an alpha male.
For one thing, all women want a man with strong masculine characteristics, which include dominance, physical health, ability to attract other women (desirability), wit, and strong sexual skills. An “alpha” male, one who has sex with lots and lots of women, tends to have all those characteristics in spades. - All women also want a man they can keep.
Women have evolutionary reasons for wanting to ensure a man’s monogamy — ensuring his care and support of her and her children, just for starters. In modern Westernized women, there may also be some desire for a man they can “control” — a man whose pocketbook overflows with blessings while he himself stands clear of his wife’s activity and isn’t too much of a nuisance. A negative viewpoint, perhaps, but many men will agree with me. Note I say *may*, and I mean it — I believe a much more powerful desire for a woman is an “equal”, a man to help her raise her children and provide food, shelter and protection for the whole family.
At the same time,
The two descriptions above do not match. An alpha male, by definition, will not stick around to help raise children — he will instead be off impregnating other women.
A kept man, by the same token, typically lacks those “alpha” characteristics that would make him attractive to a woman — dominance, sexual skill, desirability, etc. As a provider, he cannot help but begin losing that attractiveness that gave her chills when she first met him (”betaization”).
Of course a mixture of these traits can coexist in one person, but they do so only with great tension.
An Unattainable Best as the Worst Enemy of the Good
Which brings me back to my friend’s dilemma, but with new light to shed on it:
My friend (let’s call her Lauren) has a “kept” man. Her boyfriend, Dylan, knows he can do no better than her; she is smarter and more ambitious than any woman he is likely to be able to seduce. As well, he has already put many years of work into his relationship with her; and she supports him and is good to him in all the proper ways a caring wife or girlfriend ought to be.
This is not satisfying to Lauren; she knows, on some level, that if she really tried, she could do better, find a man with a better intellect and more ambitious — with more “Alpha” qualities. Yet
she is already deeply addicted to Dylan’s sexual skills and emotional companionship; they are a hook that prevent her from dumping him.
Lauren is afraid that, if she dumps Dylan, she might never find a man she can “keep” as well as she knows she can keep him. She has already cheated on him several times (and not been caught) — he has ostensibly not cheated on her (though I have my doubts here).
Lauren is afraid, in short, that she will not be able to fully replace the precise “mixture” of Alpha and Provider traits she has in Dylan. If she found a guy as attractive as Dylan but with just slightly more masculine (Alpha) qualities, she would not be able to compel his monogamy; if she found a guy just as Alpha as Dylan but with poorer sexual skills, what would be the point?
Which brings me to an important conclusion: modern Western women are really looking for two men in their lives. One to give them good sex, but whose loyalty they can never command; and another to provide for them and their children, but who they will never respect.
I believe it is the tension between those two competing females needs gives rise to a huge proportion of the extramarital affairs and divorce rates.
At the same time, I believe Lauren will never break up with her boyfriend Dylan. I believe she will not allow the (potentially unattainable) Perfect become the enemy of her (often-miserable, but still satisfactory) Good.
The Lady Doth Protest Too Much
Some women will no doubt say otherwise, claiming “My husband is both a wonderful, sexy dominant Alpha lover and a loving, doting, responsible father,” but they are to be suspected of covering the small inconsistencies, making allowances to smooth over the fundamental tensions that must exist in any marriage.
It is in their interest to refute the above assertions, since they paint women as biologically unfaithful, and that is a high crime in a culture where “slut” is the greatest insult that can be paid to a woman.
The Problems of Men
But what about the males? Of course they are not merely accessories in all this.
I believe our masculine evolutionary programming is much simpler: we are driven only to deposit sperm in as many different women as possible. This explains the legendary need for variety, at least, the typical “wandering male gaze”.
Consider too that reproduction is really about the preservation of genetic material; it is really our genes that are responsible for our reproductive compulsions. Our bodies are simply physical shells that enable the genes to interact fruitfully with the environment in order to ensure their immortality. The genes that did not carry such strong “wills” to survive were eradicated long ago; you are a direct descendant of many millions of selfish genes; so is the woman eating olives next to you at the martini bar. With the weight of these millions of generations of selfish, autocratic genes bearing down on us, it is a small miracle we manage to avoid mating more often.
Yet it is just as clear that we are not prisoners to this biological imperative! Men are not mindless sperm-producing automatons; many men chose, against their “programming”, to settle down into monogamous relationships with women in order to raise children. Many of them never cheat; they are faithful to their families until the end. And the same is true of women, with many forsaking their biological need for two men and instead content themselves with one, forsaking lust for family (not easy) and vice versa (no easier).
All of this shows that it is possible for our social minds to triumph over our biological minds; and perhaps the happiest of us are those who are most able to keep these fundamental tensions in constant balance.
And thus ends my momentary (and mercifully brief) digression into evolutionary philosophy.
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January 22nd, 2007 at 7:54 am
I am from the Don’t Get Married Board and nor do I care to get in any lenghty debates but you asked on the Don’t Get Married Board to post a comment so I will. I put other topics in the Public Section for all our visitors to read as well if you care to learn more about the view points of men.
I wrote a piece called Fuckers and Suckers and I will post it here for you.
After reading the nomarriage ebook, the author talks about two groups of men fuckers and suckers.
Keep in mind western women love excitement and hate boredom. When they are in their teens and early 20’s they don’t want stability that suckers have to offer because that is boring.
Keep in mind that women don’t think for themselves but decisions on who they date or sleep with is usually made by the council not by the woman herself. This council is usually made up of her mother, sister, and friends etc. If dating a nice guy is not considered to be fun and popular by the “council” he is going to get snubbed.
There is another group of guys called fuckers. Women love to have sex with these guys during their prime years. Although they offer no stability to these women, however women will still sleep with them. The reason why women will is because they are unpredictable and therefore they are deemed as very exciting.
Once these women get to there late 20’s - early 30’s they will fraudently sell their looks to suckers who make a good income in order to get married. In other words they will put on a pony show for them until they get the ring. After a few years of marriage, these women are going to get bored and everything is the suckers fault. They will look for affairs and cash out on their suckers knowing that they will get the house, child support (if they have children), and alimony. All she has to do is file a false abuse charge (no proof necessary) to make all this happen. Even as a bonus, the sucker even gets to pay for her attorney fees.
Also, remember guys a women’s fertility starts to decline at age 27 not in her 30’s and 40’s. If any of you want to start a family I highly recommend to make sure that the woman you are going to start a family with is no older than 25.
Despite their not being any legal justice in this country, Mother Nature has a justice of her own.
Those suckers who once ached for these women will lose interest in them once they get to be in their mid to late 20’s. The last thing they are going to find attractive are used up women in their late 20’s-30’s. In fact these women must be avoided at all cost. They got a disease called baby rabies. They are going to do everything possible to get pregnant and trap you into a long term relationship where they can get provided for.
However, once those “suckers” get financially stable they will get to travel to foreign countries and enjoy beautiful women. Also, while in the United States, they will have developed fun hobbies to do when they are not working. In fact these “suckers” will not have to deal with the stress of fear of divorce, a nagging whore, false abuse and rape chargers, get to keep their sanity and money, won’t have to worry about raising kid that aren’t theirs etc.
However, the women who neglected the “suckers” in favor of the “fuckers” during their prime years are going to have to face justice. It’s not legal justice but Mother Nature justice. Once they get to their late 20’s for every year a man ages, they will be aging by two years. They will wrinkle and get ugly very fast. Investing thousands of dollars in makeup in order to form a bond with a “sucker” is not going to get the job done because they failed to form a bond with a “sucker” during their prime years. Their biological clocks will be ticking and they will get very desperate. They are going to want to be talking care off, like living off a “sucker” so they won’t have to work. Disgusted by their behavior, the “suckers” will not want anything to do with them and will rebuke them. They are going to have to work long hours for the rest of their life because they could not find a “sucker” to take care of them. They will whine and complain that the “suckers” will not commit despite them snubbing them in favor of the “fuckers” during their prime years. They will rot all alone with no one to take care of them, many of them will not get to have children, and will be living very miserable lives until death all because they thought it was cute to let the “suckers” rot all alone while they go squander their prime years to the “fuckers” That my friends is what I call justice!
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Great comment man, thanks for reading. And it sounds like the ebook is pretty much spot-on as well.
The dichotomy between “suckers” and “fuckers” it refers to is what a lot of people also call the “beta” and “alpha” male, respectively.
And it’s good that the book details how so-called “beta” males, instead of buying into the Disneyesque American Romance fairytale, can simply become celibate for a time, focus on their work/careers and personal development, and then go exploring abroad once they’ve stacked some cash.
Only problem is, these guys, if they have neglected relationships for so long, are going to have trouble handling even *foreign* women because of lack of experience. A guy who’s still a virgin or functionally virgin (fewer than 5 sex partners or 1 LTR) at age 35 is not going to be able to rock a foreign woman’s world sexually (the #1 reason women behave).
So, I believe every man — whether he want to date American women or not — needs to learn this stuff, and learn how to be good with women, how to charm them, have charisma, handle his business in bed, handle her shit-tests, vibe, pace and lead her in interactions, etc.
My own experience with international women bears this out. They may be less “immoral” than American women but they are still women. GL from Russian Women (in my blogroll) has agreed with me and the material I’ve written so far, based on his interactions, saying it’s just as applicable to Russian or Northern European women as American.
January 25th, 2007 at 2:08 am
You sir, have thankfully finally hit the nail on the head, or at least gotten as close to the truth as I’ve seen on the blogsphere. I think that you are quite correct in pointing out that women desire bad-boy types for their genes, and not for some cheap thrills. Most blogs take the position that bad-boy types are good for excitement, but this seems just too simplistic. An instinctual explination therefore, is simply more convincing.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
if men and women’s minds are different then there’s no point in trying to interpret a woman’s
actions using a male brain. no, scratch that. change interpret to ‘harmonise’. i don’t
think this sort of thing is a dilemma for women. i think it is a dilemma for men. because
the female mind says ‘give me more emotions’. the male mind says ‘give me logic.’ that’s
at a very low level. at higher levels, our minds are not so different… i.e. morality.
that’s what this article is about: morality. what should she do? should implies some sort
of standard, consensus from some outside observer.
morality gives us a realtively consistent answer.
alas, morality is a higher level brain activity and it doesn’t always sync up with the low
level female and male brains. i think in one of your other articles someone mentioned that
indeed morality may have been a means of reigning in the consequences of low level male and
female behaviour.
your friend is just doing what she naturally does, as a woman. doesn’t make sense to a man
because what a man naturally does is quite different.
and then we have morality. an attempt to modify the inherent female and male behaviour. this
bahviour occurs without us even thinking. naturally. morality on the other hand… gives us
something to think about. we can even judge people based on whether they’r living up to the code.
fun!
February 11th, 2008 at 5:45 am
With all the focus on the benefits of mltr’s for men, I would like to see a similar focus on mltr’s (or at least “tltr’s”) for WOMEN. This should be about liberating ALL people from the societal constraints that are unrealistic in the modern milieu of many options/extended longevity/birth control/paternity testing. If other sexual lifestyle options are acceptable nowadays,then so should polymorous ones.
Notice that I said “option”, NOT a new dogma. MOST people probably either don’t prefer or can’t properly manage such arrangements. But for those that can, let’s go forward and find fucking satisfaction in the here and now!