What women want
Have you ever wondered why, when it comes to finding a romantic partner, women seem to be much fussier than men? If you like, you can go to practically any bar in the world on a Friday night and you will will find a similar scene unfolding. You will see that it is the men who are actively seeking out women, who take the first step in approaching them, generously buying drinks and trying to sell themselves as potential romantic partners. It is the men who are the more aggressive in seeking out partners, and the women who wait to be approached. Should the initial meeting go well, we can fast forward to a little further along in the process where it will generally be the man who asks his opposite gender out on a date, and who will more than likely do what many men feel is expected in insisting on paying for their meal. Now of course this is not always the case, and many women feel very uncomfortable at having a meal paid for by their dates, not to mention being hounded by overly-aggressive men in bars. However, for the male of a species to be more sexually aggressive and for the females to be more coy is a trend which is universal across all human cultures, and equally well documented amongst the vast majority of other animal species.
So why does this difference between the sexes exist, and to such a universal degree? Well, evolutionary psychologists have pondered this for some time, and the general consensus is due to differences in parental investment, should the burgeoning romance that began on that Friday night pan out into the more advanced stages of producing children.
For a woman to bear a child, she will be pregnant for nine months, and while the effect is certainly lessened in a modern, empowered society, in our evolutionary past this kind of a burden would require for a large amount of help from her partner. He would, amongst other things have to bring her food, make sure she is comfortable, protect her from harm, and then once the child is born, invest a significant investment of time and resources to help raise it. Women also have a limited capacity for the maximum number of children that they can produce, given the amount of time and investment that it takes. Men however, are much more able to sleep around and can potentially produce far greater a number of children than women. Genghis Khan for example, who travelled with a harem of slave women would reportedly sleep with a different woman every night and is thought to have had up to a quite staggering 10,000 children in his lifetime. And I think it’s probably fair to say that he did not stay around to help raise his offspring horde. And so, because of the differences in levels of investment of both time and resources it therefore makes sense for women to make sure they choose sexual partners who will be nice, stick around and be a loyal father to their children, rather being less fussy and accidentally stumbling upon a man who is doing a Genghis Khan and playing the field.
Of course, these days contraception is prevalent, and sex does not simply equal children. However, these tendencies we have are instinctual; the product of hundreds of millions of years of gender differences and it will take more than a few decades of easily available prophylactics before they are drummed out of us.
So what does this mean for you, man or woman, reading this article? Well, probably very little in terms of practical dating advice. This is simply the way things are, and the reasons as to why they are the case. But I’m sure that the women of the world would appreciate it if men were at least a little less aggressive in their approaches in bars, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to just be a bit nicer. This is, after all, what women want.
Photo credit: © Janet Biel https://www.etsy.com/listing/190044406/original-watercolor-painting-cubist-bar?ref=market
