Sexual Relationships 
Sexual Health 
The model
A good model is not an expression of perfect truth. Instead, it’s something that explains what we see, and lets us make good predictions. With that in mind, I’ll present a relatively simple model of explaining human sexual –impulses-. It is based on what I see, and what makes ‘sense’ in terms of ‘past humans who behaved this way would likely have had greater evolutionary success, so it is not surprising if many humans exhibit these behavioral impulses’.
A roman razor found in England. Occam’s razor might have looked similar.
The model does not touch on morality or ethics, or most of our higher order reasoning. Those things matter. For some people they are the main drivers of their behavior. I’m not trying to explain everything about how people act; I’m trying to present a simple model of why they’d feel urges to act in certain ways. Our urges around sex are tied to reproductive success. The fact most people don’t want to have children outside of specific situations doesn’t change our impulses.
Each sex has two strategies. Some people likely have a higher urge for one than the other, but nothing (except ethics or society!) prevents individuals from pursuing both at the same time.
Male strategies
Play the field: Have sex with any available, fertile looking (i.e. reasonably attractive) female that he can. This –might- result in a pregnancy. If multiple women are available at any given point in time, prioritize the most healthy/fertile. Variety in partners is good: he can impregnate more than one woman at the same time. Since he could impregnate a different woman later in the day, the question his urges are asking is ‘is this the best partner I can get in the next few hours?’
Relationship: Bond with the best female available who is interested in a monogamous relationship with him (she’s monogamous to him at least). Shower her with resources if he can. Why is this strategy effective? Because she’s only sleeping with him, so any kids she has are probably his. And by providing resources to her, the odds of success for the children that are most likely to be his, are improved. Note that men would be choosier about this woman than the women they’d sleep with when playing the field. While playing the field can be used on a new woman every few hours, this is a long term investment. He’s now asking “is this the best partner I can get over the next year or more?” He might invest time in building this relationship on the understanding that sex will come later, but ultimately, it’s regular sex that makes the strategy worth pursuing (from a reproductive standpoint). Otherwise he’d end up raising someone else’s children.
Female strategies
Relationship: Find the best male who has a combination of strength (not just physical) and good fatherhood characteristics. If he will bond with her and commit to helping out as a father and providing for her, it’s appealing for her to sleep with him. Good genetics for the kids, and help to improve the odds they make it. Be relatively picky – she can only have one child every year or more, so this is a major potential investment. She’s looking for signs of his commitment to her before following through on this strategy.
NSA (No strings attached): Have sex with the most successful and probably most aggressive male around. He won’t be around to help her out, but he would produce the strongest (in all senses) children. Bonus points if lots of women want to sleep with him: hopefully he gives you a son who has similar traits, who would produce many, many grandchildren.
How the strategies play out
Men have an urge to sleep with virtually any decent looking woman who seems available. For some men this urge is stronger than others. This does not mean they are attached to her. Variety in itself is a plus. Standards for playing the field, even in terms of looks, are lower than for relationships. However they are not zero. Essentially, men have an urge to sleep with any woman who is as attractive as the level of woman he knows he can comfortably ‘get’. A guy who sleeps casually with models all the time is probably not very interested in sleeping with an average woman. An average looking guy will have much lower standards if he is pursuing playing the field.
Tiger Woods is an excellent golfer. Where were we? Oh yes, men who pursue both strategies ... back to that.
Men may feel a desire to do both strategies simultaneously: this is why you’ll see men who are married to one woman, who are then cheating with many other women. Most often (not always) men report the women they cheat with are actually less attractive than their main partner. Men who cheat regularly cheat for variety and for more quantity of sex partners. They are quite possessive about their main partner’s sexual behavior: if they are not, they are investing in another man’s children. If the main partner stops sleeping with him, their feelings will fade – again, they’d be investing in another man’s children.
Men who are only pursing the relationship strategy will actually appear to be pickier about looks than men playing the field.
Women benefit very little, from an evolutionary standpoint, from having lots and lots of partners. They win by being selective. This doesn’t necessarily mean they only desire sex with a relationship. But their standards are different (and in terms of physical aspects, higher) for non-relationship sex. If the man is not going to stick around helping out as a father, the genes he’s providing better be excellent. Of course a woman regularly pursuing NSA may end up with a lot of partners, since she might (or might not) be with the same man each time. Women as well might pursue both strategies at the same time, by cheating on their main partner. Most women who cheat, report cheating with a man who is higher status than their regular partner. Not only has that, but women’s attraction to very high testosterone influenced facial features rising when they ovulate. They are probably more likely to feel the urge to cheat with a stronger, more aggressive male when they are ovulating.
Unless the male being pursued by a woman using the NSA strategy is literally dangerous to be around, or really abrasive, there’s a high chance she’d be tempted to pursue the relationship strategy with him. There’s no downside from an evolutionary standpoint, if she’s not in a relationship already. Put another way – women are more likely to want a relationship with a friends with benefits than vice versa, since the male more often sees her as meeting his ‘play the field’ standards but not his higher ‘relationship’ standards.
What kind of man do women want NSA with only? Ones who project bad boy to the point being around longer than sex might feel dangerous.
It might be the neck tattoos.
So what does this mean?
It means these urges are present to varying degrees in most of us. Life experiences may nudge us more to one than another. Men who have given up on relationships will likely throw themselves into playing the field. Women who aren’t used to men actually sticking around are more likely to (quite reasonably) pursue the NSA strategy, which for women is actually a more successful mating strategy if men aren’t going to be around.
We might also note that traditional society essentially funneled all men and women into pursuing their respective relationship strategy, grooming both to meet what the other would look for in that situation. Men were encouraged to be decent, reliable, employed, steady men who could support a family – the sort of men appealing to monogamy focused women. And women were encouraged to be pretty and chaste – instinctively appealing wives for men who were looking for commitment where paternity is unquestioned. As society is changing, more people are pursuing other strategies. More men find they don’t meet the standards of women’s NSA strategy, and women are unsure as to the intentions of the men they interact with.
Final thought
I don’t consider any of this depressing. Impulses to cheat are not cheating. We are more than our urges. Understanding them – and how our partner’s urges may be different from our own – is a step to better understanding and increased likelihood of mutually satisfying relationships.
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