2006-02-22

In which I am attacked relentlessly (?) in the comments section for my views on heterosexual partnerships and the evolutionary undercurrents that govern their recombination. And for the misuse of several words I obviously think I know the meaning of.

Today, I feel like I could write a novel on the various pitfalls of relationships and the myriad means of certain attractions. I feel like this because I have been thinking about it a lot lately, and because I have somewhat recently acquired the status of ‘single’. I’ve been thinking about monogamy, what makes certain people attractive to us, and especially, what kind of evolutionary undercurrents we might be fighting as we strive to meet an equal on the battlefield of love (with apologies to readers and fans of Pat Benatar everywhere. Seriously. What are you thinking?)

What I’ve noticed is that men, generally, while being attracted to women of all shape and size, tend to immediately dispose of attention on other single women having found the object of desire to be ‘taken’. Why is this? Why, upon the dropping of the word boyfriend (or especially husband), do we lose all (sober) interest? Because, I think, our bodies are all about the reproduction, or have been for thousands of millennia, and if undergrad biology memory serves correct, male-female pair bonding strategies have been taking place for even longer. A man needs a woman to deposit his sperm into. Why? TO MAKE BABY! And because, technically, he is unhindered to have as many children as there are available women at a time, it makes sense not to waste time and valuable resources on a woman that is ‘taken’ and quite possibly, already pregnant with another man’s seed. Not to say that any of this takes place at a conscious level, or that one’s conscious urges cannot overcome any kind of subconscious undercurrent, just to say that, hey man, it’s there. It’s part of our collective genetic memory and overall successful behaviour adaptation. If one guy spends all his time on one woman (who is already taken or pregnant) and he then never reproduces with her (or anyone else cause he was too busy doting on her), well, he’s one of evolution’s big losers, right?, he does not pass go and does not collect shit. He dies, face down in the muck, and there are no flowers on his grave. (Evolutionarily speaking!)

And a woman seems to face, theoretically at least, almost the exact opposite subconscious intent and urge. A single man is an unproven resource. He may or may not have what it takes to generate successful offspring and the focus to raise them to maturity. But a taken man, well, he at least demonstrates the (possibly fallacious) logic that someone, another woman, has already given him the once over and found it worth keeping him around, though technically, unless he already has children, it says nothing about his ability to create and raise successful offspring. But it speaks to a referral nature, such that, man A here, is at least good enough to get her, and therefore may be worth mating with me. (Mating. Such a great word. Want to mate later? Come on, let’s mate!) And this, again, is based on the overarching idea that the best scenario for a man (evolutionarily speaking) is maximum total number of offspring (and it is certainly open to debate that having sex with lots of women and having lots of pregnancies would actually produce more successful offspring than reproducing with only one woman in a committed relationship, but, stay with me, I’m thinking of lions here, and I don’t even know if they do this, but were I a lion I’d be having lots of sex with lots of lionesses and man would it be hot, yo! I’d be having tonnes of baby lions (cubs?) and totally be sleeping on the savannah lots. Actually, this may be part of my problem. I act like a lion and women are much less down with this than you’d think.) And that the best scenario for a woman, being limited to only one pregnancy at a time, would be to have one steady and resourceful partner so as to help raise the young after birth (except in the case of lions – RAWRRR!).

That said, I feel the first argument is much stronger than the second, especially experientially. And I know at least one woman who would totally argue and refute the second argument. She definitely finds it less attractive if a man is taken. But, get this! I’m not saying that it makes a man more attractive if he is taken! Well, maybe I am, but I’m adding this addendum, caveat, what have you, redefining the crux, solidifying argumentative gains, if you will. Which is that an unattached women is likely to be less unattracted to an attached man than an unattached man is to an attached woman. Got that? Clear as dirt, right? Good.

And! This just in: what of virgins? Why do men lust after virgins? Because we know (we know, yo) that that soil is seed-free. And then there’s the whole bit about conquest and power, male domination, etc etc.

But! My argument would make one think that a man who’s had sex with lots and lots of women would be even more attractive than a man virgin (a mirgin, or mervin, from here on in), since so many women deemed him prime primary source material. And I do not think this is the case. I do not think that women see Peter North (great name!) and think, I want to have sex with this man – he has sex with so many women! But, maybe, there is some attraction, both conscious and unconscious, in knowing that a man knows his way around the rumpus room. (That’s right. I went there. Rumpus room, hi-o!)

So what’s the point of all this? I don’t know really. I guess I’m trying to explain the perhaps cold mathematical calculations behind why a certain someone turns our head and a certain other doesn’t. Because it matters to me, this continental divide which separates potential partners from everyone else. Why we are sometimes so perfectly suited for another person and it just doesn’t work out. And of course there is no answer, and even if there were, it would be laughable to assume I could come to any kind of conclusion within the margins thus. Ha! Ha ha! But I try, and I like to try, because that is my path, my good and terrible fortune, to always dig and dig and try to come up with a nugget of some interesting hue or twinkle.

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