Here’s a provocative and stimulating video about sexual conflict in humans:
I have to confess that my first reaction to the talk was scepticism, for two reasons. First, it seemed to reinforce stereotypes about men and women, and that causes a kind of reflexive suspicion in me. Second, I don’t personally relate to the stereotypical male behaviour. For example, if a random woman came up to me and asked for sex, I would certainly decline (I’m not into casual, and I would be extraordinarily suspicious of her motives).
There are plenty of other grounds for scepticism – for one thing, questioning people about their beliefs is very vulnerable to preference falsification. To stick with the “random stranger asking for sex” scenario, the assumption that the response of each individual reflects their actual level of sexual interest is pretty dubious. Even if a woman was attracted to a man, I would imagine most of her concern about stranger sex would be to do with physical safety rather than whether or not he seemed an appealing mate.
Similarly, there could be lots of confounding factors to do with social stigma. People aren’t honest about their true beliefs if they fear embarrassment, harsh judgement, or ostracism. Statistics are useful, but you can’t draw straightforward conclusions about the underlying motives driving a particular set of observable behaviours just by tallying them accurately.
On reflection, though, I think my gut reaction was too hasty. Once I thought more deeply, I realised that there is value in this research that would be lost by dismissing the data out of hand. Especially on the rather flimsy basis of personal disquiet.
Populations versus individuals
First up is one of the most fascinating phenomena in all of science – at least, in my opinion.
If you have a truly random process (like a coin flip, or radioactive decay), it is impossible to predict the outcome of a single event (whether the coin will land heads or tails; whether the radioisotope will decay in the next second). But, if you scale up to a large population of the events, you can predict the behaviour with extraordinary precision.
This phenomenon – unpredictable individuals, but predictable populations – applies to a very wide range of scenarios. I’m not going to pretend you can scale from a molecule to a national culture, but populations of people are far more predictable than individuals.
If you study ten thousand women and ten thousand men, you will be bad at predicting the opinion of any one person, but you’ll probably do much better at predicting the commonest behaviours in each population. Trends will undoubtedly emerge. Some differences between the populations will be robust.
Stereotypes develop for a reason, and it isn’t just the malice of prejudiced people. Ignoring the population trends because individual people are exceptions to them is foolish.
To make it personal: there is a fair amount of hubris in my rejecting longstanding cultural conventions, and a large body of empirical data, on the basis that they reinforce a stereotype I dislike.
Predicting behaviour
In practical terms, it is difficult to live completely free of preconceptions. You can’t realistically approach every new person you meet as a total blank slate. We generally need some sort of starting assumption to guide our conduct in a social situation.
That is probably where the data that the video presents has most value. The true underlying motives for “typical” behaviour don’t really matter if you are just interested in predicting how a social interaction is likely to play out. In the most crass example: it is a bad idea for a man to assume that the next woman he meets is one of the few that would respond positively to an unprompted request for sex.
Once you realise that there are average behaviours that are highly predictive, you can use that baseline assumption as a starting point. It is useful to know that on average men over-interpret women’s sexual interest, and that on average women rate emotional betrayal more significant than men. Where population statistics show strong associations between sex and behaviour, they are helpful for managing expectations and identifying where likely sources of conflict can arise.
To repeat the point: these average behaviours are not reliable for predicting any one person’s individual proclivities. They are, however, worth knowing. Start with the likelihood of average behaviour and you will reduce the risk of common misunderstandings.
When it comes to it, you’ve actually got to get to know someone before you can update your prior assumptions.
Bias awareness
The final reason these sorts of analyses are useful is for identifying your own biases. I found it fascinating that men tend to over-interpret friendliness as sexual interest. That knowledge can help downgrade men’s positive error rates and give them a more realistic view of what a smile does and does not mean. It can also help friendly women understand why they might be getting more male attention than they want.
To take a counter example, the idea of a “backburner” man – where women will offer just enough encouragement to retain the interest of a man who is not their primary mate choice – is also valuable knowledge. For a man, recognising the pattern of behaviour (and realising they are in the backup category) is useful, but it’s also valuable for women. Recognising that this behaviour opens them up to potential conflict when the backup man feels aggrieved is an important insight.
Overall, spending time reflecting on our own behavioural blindspots, and learning what population statistics tell us about the average behaviour of men and women, can make us better at anticipating and avoiding conflict.
It’s also more purposeful than getting enraged at the unspeakable irrationality of the other sex.
I liked the video but it didn’t surprise me.
As for a random stranger asking for sex…
This story is purely anecdotal but knowing the person who told me, the person who the story is about, and The Hill in Boulder, CO, in the 1970s, I have no reason to doubt it.
There was a guy in our D&D group. The guy was overweight, dressed like a street person, and had marginally acceptable hygiene. According to the person telling the story, the guy would wander The Hill and ask women “Wanna F–k?” It worked 3 times for him. However, each time he ended up with an STD.
There was a guy in the dorms that was the poster child for sexual perception bias. He probably met the clinical criteria of a narcissist. It was so bad that any woman that looked in his general direction with a smile on her face wanted him. He lasted one semester at that college.
“For a man, recognising the pattern of behaviour (and realising they are in the backup category) is useful, but it’s also valuable for women. Recognising that this behaviour opens them up to potential conflict when the backup man feels aggrieved is an important insight.”
That’s putting it mildly. I’ve been in that position twice in my life. The first time in HS. That girl wasn’t stupid enough to tell me directly. Another girl did.
LO #2 was dumb enough to admit it. That conversation did not go well for her. None of the subsequent ones did either. She had an overinflated opinion of her relative worth. There’s nobody that I can’t live without and that included her. The gloves came off and I let her have it. She thought she could do better. I told her to go find him but made it clear she couldn’t come back if she didn’t.
There wasn’t a lot of conflict because it was a one-sided bloodbath for her.
Well, just from what I’ve read on the forum (which of course has its own biases in terms of who is posting comments) … in terms of women and affairs … I don’t know if the guys they want to have affairs with have qualities similar to their long-term partners, as the video says … but what they want from the affair is not what they are getting from their marriage. They want something hot and torrid from the affair. And they don’t plan on using their affair partner to trade up to someone better. There isn’t this backburner issue the video mentions. They don’t want to leave their spouses. It’s rare to have a comment from a married woman who wants to divorce her husband for their desired affair partner.
Agree totally, I don’t relate to the female stereotype particularly either. I wonder about the demographic spread of this study and where it took place.
Myself and my mid-life girlfriends all just fancy sex (and love) with someone different. We do not want to trade our spouses in and our long relationships are mostly good. We just want variety, passion & gut twisting desire after over a decade of same-y vanilla. It is not about having a dozen different partners, just one different extra would do.
Tbh, as a single person, this kind of answer makes me want to run for the hills any time a married man or partnered man so much as says hello to me. I never want to become limerent for a taken dude again. I just want to say, “Thank you. Drive through.” 🙂
If my last (married) LO ever thought of us getting together, he was probably thinking what you are, and I have no interest in being the entertainment. Taken people just don’t have anything to offer a single person. Unless they are looking for entertainment as well. However, if there were real feelings involved (and you mentioned the word love), I can’t see it as being anything but a train wreck.
Unless you found a married man or partnered man who was ok being a priority below your spouse, kids, extended family, job, etc. And was ok with your limited time.
“I have no interest in being the entertainment”
That is a harsh take on what I am saying 🙂
As you know Marcia, my ideal would be to have a second man of equal priority to the first that I love just as much. He certainly wouldn’t be my “entertainment”.
“As you know Marcia, my ideal would be to have a second man of equal priority to the first that I love just as much.”
I don’t think it’s possible if you already have an SO. And if you have children. You have too many other priorities. If you had to pick, you’d pick your SO I’m assuming. And the life you already have. That tells you everything.
“there is a fair amount of hubris in my rejecting longstanding cultural conventions, and a large body of empirical data, on the basis that they reinforce a stereotype I dislike.”
I totally agree with that Dr L! Due to the conformist, highly social and sensitive nature of most humans, cultural stereotypes are self fulfilling prophecies that write the scripts that we are coerced to follow from infancy. By the time we develop an independent mind, it is often too late, we are too deeply enmeshed to even realise that what we believe about ourselves and others was never a choice that we knowingly made.
Makes them so very hard to break.
I agree, and I’d add that assuming other people will mostly think, act and feel like yourself can be a much more inaccurate superstition that internalizing useful stereotypes or study results like this.
As a teenager, first I wondered how everyone else seems to be finding a romantic partner with relative ease. Well, it’s easier if you don’t need the glimmer to get interested in the first place.
Then I wondered how everyone else was behaving so normal when they were „in love” with someone, having experienced a fully blown LE and assuming it’s like that for everyone.
Similar to Dr L, I’d probably say no to a woman asking for casual sex even if I was single. Not that I wouldn’t fancy the idea, but while I’ve ended up in bed with a woman I just met on a night out a few times, I’ve learned that it simply doesn’t work for me. I’m much more like the stereotypical woman and I need emotional bonding and trust in order to get intimate.
I find the MBTI stereotypes especially useful since they tend to be accurately descriptive. All of my longer term relationships with women and most of my closer long term friendships were along the „NF” axis.
And no, that guy you’ve met and talked with for a few times most likely isn’t developing mutual limerence for you – he’s just looking for casual sex.
“It’s also more purposeful than getting enraged at the unspeakable irrationality of the other sex.”
Speaking from my own perspective as a gay man, I am happy to report that in my opinion neither sex has a monopoly on “irrationality”. That is to say, I think both men and women project all sorts of weird notions on each other. 😉
Speaking as a limerence-prone gay male, I’m not actually looking for sex in my interactions with other males. What am I looking for then? I think I’m looking for evidence that I am desired. I.e. I don’t see myself as a “sex object” so much as a “love object”. Tell me I have pretty hair, or great taste in shoes, or whatever. 😆
I believe many heterosexual women have a similar psychology to me. However, my psychology ironically puts me at odds with most other gay men, who are very much overtly and unapologetically “on the prowl”. Emotionally, I’m kind of on the same page as straight women in general, and I feel straight women in general do embrace more cautious, conservative ideals regarding sex than men. (Or, at least, in public, straight women embrace more conservative ideals regarding sex).
Yes, absolutely, some of women’s cautious attitude to sex would originate from concerns about physical safety, fear of disease, and investment in one’s own social status/reputation. Women have practical reasons to be wary of sex. Women also have complex emotional reasons to be wary of sex – complex emotional reasons which include wanting to land the best partner possible and pour the bulk of her emotional resources into a relationship with him. Last but not least, a woman may have moral and/or religious values that shape her views on sex.
However, women do flirt with men they wish neither to wed or to bed. I think if the average heterosexual woman flirts with a man, it’s not because she wants to have sex with him, but because she wants to feel desired. Maybe she wants to be desired by that one specific man. More likely than not, she just wants to be desired/feel appreciated in general. Men have egos. Women have egos too. And, yes, maybe that’s terribly confusing and unfair on dudes. Not to mention frustrating if the guy in question really likes the girl in question. 🤔
As a gay man, I have thankfully never interpreted a woman’s “friendliness” as sexual interest. I have, however, unwittingly committed the opposite sin – I have dismissed a woman’s sexual interest (or, more accurately, a woman’s interest in starting a committed romantic relationship with me) as mere “friendliness”.
I had an interesting experience once that illustrates the kind of comic misunderstandings that arise between straight women and gay men. I was sitting in a crowded cafe, all the tables taken, and it was raining outside. Two women walked into the cafe. They were then going to leave the cafe immediately because no tables were free. However, I overheard the women’s conversation and offered them a place at my table – purely out of a desire to “be a gentleman”/old-fashioned good manners. (My mother raised me right, doggone it). 😆
The women debated the matter between themselves. Should they accept my offer or not? One woman was reluctant, while her friend was very keen. The will of the less reluctant female prevailed. However, the women let me know, in no uncertain terms, while accepting my offer, that they were both in relationships!!
The women and I ended up sitting at opposite ends of the table – as far away from each other as humanly possible. The women seemed terrified that I was only being nice to them because I was some young stud looking to chat up random skirt. It was apparently inconceivable to these women that a well-spoken, nice-looking man would be nice to them for no reason. Also, it was apparently inconceivable to these two women that I was gay, and I was not about to enlighten them otherwise. I found their heterosexist assumptions about me highly amusing. 😉
I got the impression that the women were reluctant to share a table with me, not because I was inherently offensive or undesirable in any way, nor because I was utterly irresistible, but because they both feared judgement – the judgement of other women in their extended social circle who might accidentally walk into the cafe and see them supposedly “socialising” with an unidentified male. Who knows?
Let’s frame the whole situation another way. I saw these two women only as fellow humans who needed a place to sit down. I viewed them through a neutral lens. Nothing romantic was taking place, in other words. The women’s reaction to me, however, forced me to see them as sexual beings. I did not objectify these women. These women objectified themselves. Consequently, they believed that i was seeing THEM through an erotically-charged heterosexual male gaze. 😆
I don’t really socialise a lot with single straight people. I don’t have the time.
However, the impression I get is that young attractive women must get an INCREDIBLE amount of attention from interested and possibly somewhat-desperate guys, which makes them (the excessively-pursued females) understandably abrupt and angry and paranoid. I overheard one young lady scream at a young man in my town that: “You don’t just walk up to a girl in the street and ask her if she has a boyfriend!”
Some males try to be friends with a female, because they hope the friendship will turn into someone more once the girl trusts them. This tactic often backfires, despite the fact some females are indeed demisexual and need to get to know a guy over a long period of time/exposure. The guy is “friend-zoned” by his own actions and then resents the girl for supposedly putting him in that situation.
Females, on the other hand, are annoying in their dealings with the opposite sex because they often won’t explicitly tell a guy when they really, really like him. Women apparently expect men to be mind-readers. Or they send their female friends to do the dirty work for them of accessing the man’s potential interest. The guy then might feel social pressure to pursue a girl he doesn’t really like…
Stereotypically, I’d say men have affairs opportunistically and women have affairs strategically. I.e. men have affairs because they can and women have affairs because she wants to upgrade. However, this stereotype assumes women are smarter than men, and nature’s greatest manipulators. I’m not sure if every woman on earth organises her day around devastatingly brilliant manipulation of the opposite sex. Nor is every woman alive a diehard social climber. 😆
Men are often stereotyped as being these cold, emotionless, predatory, and just plain horrible creatures when it comes to sex. And I’m sure there are some younger, emotionally immature males who are quite callous in the way they treat girls. However, if we’re talking about men who are older and more mature, I think most men develop strong (albeit unconscious) feelings for any sexual partner.
I.e. even men who conspicuously pursue “casual sex” and revel in their supposed “freedom” from social norms eventually want to pursue causal sex with the same woman – over and over and over again. Men want comfort and familiarity and intimacy as well as danger and pleasure and excitement. Men (past a certain age) are basically great big teddy bears concerning sex in my experience. Women (especially women past a certain age) are the adventurous ones/tigresses. Women over 40 probably don’t want to be protected from cads and rakes. Women over 40 probably want to know where they can go to meet cads and rakes!! 😉
If sex breaks down between men and women in committed relationships, I believe this is because women actually have very vivid sexual imaginations, and men don’t do enough to stoke the fires of the female erotic imagination. Even in marriage, sex needs to remain a fun consensual game of inspiring desire and curiosity in the other. 😉
Just some of my wry observations on human beings from the sidelines of real life!! 😎
> Stereotypically, I’d say men have affairs opportunistically and women have affairs strategically. I.e. men have affairs because they can and women have affairs because she wants to upgrade. However, this stereotype assumes women are smarter than men, and nature’s greatest manipulators.
No, from an evolutionary biology standpoint both approaches make a lot of sense: For men, an affair is a smart opportunity to pass on his genes without having to do the work. For women, it would make sense either if she’d get better genes for her offspring but have her partner raise the kid or if she’d be willing to leave.
But luckily, there’s more to human behavior that just this.
Your observations were a fun read, Sammy!
“I’m looking for evidence that I am desired.”
As a hetrosexual woman, I can confirm this (at least for me). My limerence has shown me what my Achilles heel is. It is precisely this. And I realize how vulnerable it makes me, and how I don’t want ANY person, man, woman, child, or dog (yes, dogs are persons in my book) to have that sort of power over me. The only solution I can think of is to be desirable in my *own* eyes. If I am sure of it, I won’t need evidence of it from any external source. Especially not some LO behaving irrationally!
Not watched the video but read some of the analysis.
What about women on certain Dating sites, for example Seeking Arrangement?
I have noticed some who claim to be in Open Relationships who may well in fact be engaged, married or otherwise spoken for.
Is this affairs, is this e.g. an “Open Relationship” albeit without the consent of the husband- or even the knowledge! I notice they tend to have fake names, pictures that don’t link etc.
There are two possible sources of conflict here. Perhaps more!
1) Husband/fiance/partner finds out…may not be happy with the woman or indeed the side- unwitting maybe- chap!!
2) Side chap may find out that the woman who is seemingly in an Open Relationship, is in fact has a fiance or husband!
While that is compatible with marriage in theory, the game names, photos that don’t reverse image search make me wonder!! Side chap wouldn’t be too happy.