Women have two, conflicting instincts when
choosing men. On the one hand, women want superior
men, a.k.a. "alpha" males. On the other hand, women
want men who can materially provide for their
families, commit to a long-term relationship, and
enjoy interacting with children, a.k.a. "good
relationship skills."
"Alpha" Males
What kind of "alpha" male are you?
If you're a gorilla, you're big and strong.
You're twice the size of a female. You fight any
male you meet. You live with your harem of two to
five females. Your females are monogamously faithful
to you. Your penis is one inch long. Sex is quick.
If you're a gibbon, you mate monogamously for
life. You live with your mate and your children. You
sing to your mate. She sings back to let you know
where she is. You and your mate are the same size
and look identical. You start each morning with a
half-hour of loud hooting to frighten other gibbons
away from your forty acres of forest.
If you're a chimpanzee, you live in a group of
fifty individuals. When a female is ovulating, she
has sex with every male in the group. You have a
large penis, large testicles, and ejaculate lots of
sperm. You reproduce not because you dominate
females or other males, but because your sperm is
more active than other males' sperm (i.e., you're
healthier than other males).
If you're a baboon, you live in a troop that
varies from 10 to 200 individuals, depending on
habitat, time of year, and predation.[1]
You make friends with other males. When another male
threatens you, your friends back you up. You avoid
fighting. Fighting leads to injuries, and lions eat
injured baboons.[2] You
also make friends with females. Female baboons mate
with their male friends. They like males who have
many friends.
Women Go For Tail Feathers
Among the Aché hunter-gatherers of Paraguay, the
men hunt big-game animals. They bring home a big
animal about one day in ten. They return
empty-handed the other days. Men, on median, bring
in 4,663 calories per day.
Aché women gather plants and small animals, and
care for their children (see How Our Ancestors
Lived). The amount of food a woman brings home
depends only on how many hours she spends
laboriously picking and processing foods. Women, on
average, bring in 10,356 calories per day.
When an Aché man brings home a deer, he shares it
with other families, not only with his wife and
children. Why do Aché men hunt large animals, only
to give away this relatively rare food? Why not help
their wives gather food? Such a man could easily
bring home enough plants and small animals for two
wives and their children.
Aché women view big-game hunting like peahens
view peacocks' tail feathers. Big-game hunting shows
that a man is physically and mentally fit. Giving
away meat shows that he has more than enough
strength and skill to survive. Women like men with
many friends, and giving away meat maintains
friendships. Men give meat to lower-status
individuals to show their superior place in the
social hierarchy (see The Great Male Hierarchy).
Extramarital sex isn't unusual among the Aché.
When asked who had fathered their children, Aché
women named, on average, 2.1 possible fathers for
each child. On the list of possible fathers, the
best hunters' names came up most often.
Status
Women prefer high-status men.[3]
In workplace affairs, men are equally likely to have
sex with a superior or subordinate woman. Women, in
contrast, are seven times more likely to have sex
with superior, rather than subordinate, men.[4]
Many societies expect the sons of leaders to
become leaders. Women who want "alpha" sons marry
"alpha" husbands. E.g., the 2000 presidential
election was between the son of a president, the son
of a senator, the son and grandson of four-star Navy
admirals, and the son of a wealthy banker (George W.
Bush, Al Gore, John McCain, and Bill Bradley).
To attract women, improve your social status.
Give away stuff to make friends. Help less-fortunate
individuals, to show that you're above average. Lead
groups, e.g., captain your softball team. Dress
well. Speak well, perhaps by joining
Toastmasters
International.
Money
If money attracted women, Bill Gates would be
sexier than the Beatles in 1965.
Women are conflicted about money. Women want
"alpha" males who show off their money like peacocks
show off their tail feathers, e.g., buying a round
of drinks in a bar. But women also want
"relationship" men who put their paychecks into a
mortgage.
Show off your money to attract a woman's
attention. Then talk about the home you're buying to
make her want a relationship.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors owned nothing but
what they could carry to the next campsite.
Accumulation of wealth wasn't possible. Women's
cerebral cortexes have learned to appreciate
accumulated wealth, but their brains aren't
hardwired for this. In a conflict, women tend to
choose their more basic instinct—love—instead of
their newer appreciation of wealth.
Confidence and Stress
Aché men gamble on bringing home a deer one day
in ten, instead of choosing the safety of helping
their wives gather food. Gambling—and a man's life
in general—is stressful.
Mammals produce glucocorticoid hormones in
stressful situations. Too much glucocorticoid causes
health problems. In male and female primates,
high-status individuals produce minimal
glucocorticoid in stressful situations. Low-status
individuals produce too much glucocorticoid.[5]
Stress—"the fear of fear itself"—physically hurts
low-status individuals. Stress doesn't affect the
health of high-status individuals.
Confident men—who believe that their powers or
circumstances can handle stressful
situations—attract women.[6]
To attract women and improve your health, take a
stress-reduction class. Learn to handle stressful
situations with confidence.
The common belief that men are hardwired to be
alone ("go to their caves") after a stressful day
and that women are hardwired to talk to a supportive
partner is a misconception. The former is the
avoidant attachment style and the latter is the
secure attachment style. It's true that
attachment styles are hardwired in adults, and it's
true that this distinction is of paramount
importance in relationships (mismatched partners
have more relationship difficulties, and avoidant
individuals have more relationship difficulties in
general) but the hardwiring is from the individual's
early childhood relationship with his or her mother.
Men and women can have either attachment style.
Looks, Height, and
Strength
Women rate tall, strong, athletic males as "very
desirable" marriage partners. Women are almost twice
as likely to value physical strength in men, as men
are to value physical strength in women.
However, women prefer men with feminine-looking
faces. E.g., women prefer Leonardo DiCaprio to Tom
Selleck.[7]
American women prefer men 5'11" (180 cm) or
taller.[8] Tall men
receive more personal ad responses than short men.
If you're short, study Japanese. Then vacation on
Guam, the Hawaii-like American island where Japanese
women vacation.
Never-married women are more likely to prefer
physical attractiveness. Conversely, divorced and
widowed women are more likely to select good
character over physical attractiveness.
Language Skills
Men with good language skills attract women. The
language area in women's brains is better developed
than in men's brains. Women love talking. To improve
your language skills, take a creative writing class.
Or memorize a few romantic poems.
Or learn a foreign language. The words
conjugate—to form variations of a verb—and
conjugal—relating to marriage—come from the
same root word. Foreign women will think that a man
who can conjugate verbs correctly in their language
will make a good husband.
Age
Women select personal ads primarily by age.[9]
Women select men who are, on average, three and a
half years older. Older men, in general, have more
social status and emotional maturity.
The worldwide average age difference between
brides and grooms is three years. Americans marry
closer in age.[10]
In 1890, the average age at which men first
married was 26. Women married at 22.[11]
Figure 1: Age At First Marriage
During the first half of the twentieth century,
increasing affluence enabled younger men to support
families. Secondary education and increased leisure
time facilitated dating. Dating sometimes led to
sex, pregnancy, and early marriage. In 1956, men
married at 22, women at 20.
The FDA approved oral contraceptives in 1956. The
Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. Women
delayed motherhood to start careers.[12]
In 1998, men married at 27, women at 25.
Couples now live together from the age that their
parents' generation married. The average man now
first lives with a woman, either in marriage or as
an unmarried couple, for the first time at 22. The
average woman moves in with a man at age 20 or 21.[13]
Couples that marry younger than 25 have
dramatically higher divorce rates.[14]
Our brains' prefrontal lobes don't mature until 25.[15]
This "executive decisions" brain area is where we
make good judgments. Automobile insurance rates drop
at 25 because drivers with mature prefrontal lobes
get into fewer accidents. Similarly, men and women
make better relationship decisions after 25. (If you
want to marry younger than 25, ask your parents to
arrange a marriage for you. That idea sounds radical
but it has worked for thousands of years.)
Relationship Skills
Women want men who'll stay in a faithful,
long-term relationship. But a woman can't predict a
man's behavior twenty years in the future. Women
instead look for signs that a man is relationship
material.
Predictability
Women prefer men who have a steady job, are
dependable, and are emotionally stable.[16]
A predictable man may be boring, but a woman feels
that she can predict his behavior twenty years into
the future. Unpredictable, "flighty" men turn off
women.
E.g., if you want to date a certain waitress, eat
at her restaurant every day for months, at the same
time each day, ask for the same table, and order the
same meal (and leave the same big tip).
Home Ownership
One of the highest factors correlating with
likelihood of a man to marry is home ownership.[17]
If you own a home, when asking a woman out, give
her your business card and write your home address
on the back. She'll drive by and look at your home.
On a date, talk about your home.
If you don't own a home, say that you've been
looking at homes to buy. Women enjoy talking about
buying homes.
Family Relationships
Another sign that a man will be a good husband
and father is his relationship with his family. Show
women photos of yourself playing with your nieces
and nephews. Invite your date to meet your siblings
or cousins and their nieces and nephews (meeting
your parents and grandparents is less effective).
Men positively interacting with children attract
women. Men who ignore a child in distress turn off
women. Women's favorite pinups show bare-chested,
muscled men holding smiling babies.
In contrast, men have no preference for women
interacting with children versus women alone.[18]
E.g., men like pinups of bare-chested women, but not
holding babies.
Astrology and Personality
Types
Astrology and personality types fascinate women.
They hope to predict the future of their
relationships. Talk about personality types on dates
(see Personality Types).
Or put astrology software on your laptop
computer. If a party is boring, sit down at the
kitchen table and offer to do astrology charts.
Emotional Connection
The prefrontal lobes (part of the cerebral
cortex) enable affect-regulation, or the
ability to regulate our emotional reactions,
control our impulses, or moderate the survival
reflexes of our ancient reptilian system.[19]
— Joseph Chilton Pearce, The Biology of
Transcendence (2002)
The prefrontal lobes are our most recently
evolved brain area.[20]
This is also the last area to develop in each
individual—maturing between the ages of 15 and 25.[21]
Women want emotionally mature men. An emotionally
mature man changes his emotions as situations
change—or to change a situation. Although his limbic
brain experiences a wide range of emotions, his
higher self (his prefrontal lobes) stays constant.
Such an individual is capable of a long-term
relationship.
E.g., in Roxanne (1987), a man insults
Steve Martin. Martin at first shows anger at the
insult. But then he switches to humor. Martin first
makes jokes about himself. Then he switches the
subject of his wit to the other man, making a crowd
laugh at the man. The other man shows only one
emotion—anger—in response to each of Martin's
changing emotions.
Imagine that your emotions are like a car with a
standard transmission. To shift from one emotion to
another, you shift through neutral. In neutral, you
quiet one emotion before shifting to another
emotion. When you quiet your own emotions, you can
feel your partner's emotions. Buddhists call this
state egoless. Christians say selfless.
When you feel your partner's emotions, you can
select the best emotion for the situation.
Fear Reduces Us to
Reptilian Responses
You meet an attractive woman. Your cerebral
cortex imagines your friends' envy if she goes out
with you.
Your limbic brain fears that she'll reject you.
Your reptilian brain wants to have sex with her.
In a conflicted brain, the older brain area wins.
You're capable of having sex with her. Your
reptilian brain is perfectly functional.
Your limbic brain is warning, "Don't emotionally
connect with her! You'll get hurt!" You're unable to
feel her emotional state. She seems like a beautiful
statue in a museum.
You've locked out your cerebral cortex. Language
is a cerebral cortex activity, so you can only stare
at her breasts and mumble incoherently.
When integrated, [the triune brain] offers us
an open-ended potential; an ability to rise and
go beyond all constraint or limitation. But when
that integration fails, our mind is a house
divided against itself, our behavior a
paradoxical civil war—and we become our own
worst enemy.[22]
— Joseph Chilton Pearce, The Biology of
Transcendence (2002)
Developing Awareness of
Choices
Cerebral cortex activity won't get you out of an
internal conflict. E.g., repeating positive
statements (affirmations) while blocking
awareness of your emotional state won't help.
Instead, connect to your limbic brain. Feel your
emotional state.
Slow down. When you react quickly, your brain
selects myelinated or habitual responses.
Instead of going with your first reaction, pause and
breathe.
Imagine your choices. Imagine alternative
responses.
No one needs to be completely hemmed in by
circumstances; no one needs to be the victim of
his biography.[23]
— George Kelly, The Psychology of
Personal Constructs (1955)
Think through your general fear to specific
fears. E.g., you fear that she'll say that you're
too old for her. Imagine different responses you
could make to that rejection:
When Hugh Hefner first asked Barbi Benton out,
she said, "Well, I've, uh, never dated anyone over
23 before." Hef responded without hesitation,
"That's okay. Neither have I."[24]
You'll no longer feel fear. What seemed like an
insurmountable problem now looks like a variety of
choices, each leading to a positive conclusion.
Imagining different possible futures is a
cerebral cortex activity. Feeling emotions is a
limbic brain activity. Imagining your emotions in
various scenarios connects your cerebral cortex and
limbic brain. You unblock your internal conflicts.
Play a Game
When an unexpected event upsets you, the problem
isn't the event. The problem is that you don't know
how to respond. When you're upset you fail to see
positive opportunities. You see only that your plans
are blocked. Instead, stay flexible and look for
opportunities in unexpected events.
E.g., a man sees a woman sitting in a bar booth.
He walks over, bends down to talk to her, and bonks
his head on a lampshade hanging over the table.
Momentarily stunned, he stands there while the
lampshade swings back and bonks his head a second
time.
He says, "Excuse me. Let me do this again." He
returns to his bar stool. He comes back to the
woman, puts his hand calmly on the lampshade, bends
down, and introduces himself.
This happened to one of my friends. He and the
woman dated for several months.
He managed his fear by playing a game. Play
boosts emotional experience, and develops
relationships with other individuals.
Children play obvious games. Adults play subtle
games. Let's make my friend's game more obvious:
- Shift to a pretend world.
- He said, in effect, "I'm going to
pretend to meet you." In pretend worlds
we're less afraid of showing emotions.
- Focus on a bipolar construct.
- Psychologists call a pair of opposite ideas
a bipolar construct. A literature major
would say irony. Whatever you call it,
when an individual does two, opposite things at
the same time, we laugh. In this game, the
bipolar construct was being cool vs. being
clumsy.
- Exaggerate emotions.
- If my friend had played the game to
entertain a child, he would've amplified his
emotions. E.g., he returns to his bar stool.
Then he pretends to see the woman for the first
time. His eyes pop open and his jaw drops. His
hand shakes and he nearly spills his beer in his
lap. He exaggerates preening in the bar mirror,
then swaggers over.
- Repeat the game
- If he were playing the game to entertain a
child, he'd bonk his head on the lampshade—three
times. Then he'd repeat the skit. He could
repeat it thirty times and the child would laugh
every time.
- Exchange roles.
- If he were entertaining a child, he'd trade
places with the child. The child would pretend
to be clumsy Joe Cool.
- Make your game physical and unstructured.
- Children play physical, unstructured,
non-competitive games. Adults play abstract,
non-physical, structured, competitive games,
e.g., spectator sports, casino gambling,
ballroom dancing, and board games. My friend's
game was physical (bonking his head on the
lampshade) and unstructured (he didn't hand out
a sheet of rules).
- Schedule playtime.
- For your next party, tell your guests that
the first hour will be games, e.g., Twister.
Laugh to Connect Your
Limbic Brain and Cerebral Cortex
Only humans laugh. Other animals express emotions
as they occur. Our emotional regulation stops us
from suddenly expressing unexpected emotions.
Our cerebral cortex sends emotions it doesn't
know how to regulate to our speech area, and we
laugh. We associate laughter with humor because
humor is always unexpected. But humor isn't one
emotion. Humor is any emotion we can't regulate.
Because different individuals regulate different
emotions well or poorly, different individuals laugh
at different events.
A sense of humor attracts women. Laugh in
emotional situations, e.g., when you do something
embarrassing. Laughing connects your limbic brain
and cerebral cortex, enabling better awareness of
your emotions.
Reveal a Secret to
Emotionally Connect
In 1957, a young man arrived in Nashville. He
stuttered, but played guitar, and could sing without
stuttering.
Soon he had a job performing with Minnie Pearl,
the country comedienne. Pearl encouraged him to talk
on stage. He refused, afraid that the audience would
laugh at his speech.
Pearl replied:
Let 'em laugh. Goodness gracious, laughs are
hard to get and I'm sure that they're laughing
with you and not against you, Melvin.[25]
The singer developed humorous routines about his
stuttering. Audiences laughed. His career took off.
Word began to circulate around Nashville
about this young singer from Florida who could
write songs and sing, but stuttered like hell
when he tried to talk. The next thing I knew I
was being asked to be on every major television
show in America.[25]
— Mel Tillis
Don't be afraid to share a secret. Women share
secrets with girlfriends to emotionally connect (see
Women's Support Circles). But don't whine about your
problems. Instead, talk confidently about a secret
to show that you've turned a weakness into strength.
Entertainment Skills
Entertainment expresses emotions. Effective
entertainers emotionally connect with their
audiences.
Entertainment integrates limbic brain emotions
with cerebral cortex imagination. When an
entertainer expresses an old emotion in a new way,
we applaud.
Other animals do the same mating rituals
generation after generation. E.g., peahens never get
bored watching peacocks show off their tail
feathers. Like peahens, older women enjoy
300-year-old operas. But young women want only new
music, the latest clothes, and the coolest actors.
Their greatest put-down is "that's so ten minutes
ago."
Mankind might well be a tool-making and
tool-using species, but nothing so separates us
from the lower animals than our almost comic
enthusiasm for the new, new thing.[26]
— Nick Schultz, editor of
TechCentralStation.com
Effective entertainers have integrated brains.
Conversely, to improve your brain integration,
develop your entertainment skills.
Entertaining men attract women. When a man's
performance makes a woman feel emotionally
connected, her limbic brain tells her that she's in
a long-term relationship with him.
A woman with an integrated brain responds, "I
want a long-term relationship with this man. I'll
buy his CDs (or watch his movies). I'll feel as if
I've known him for years."
A woman with a poorly integrated brain might try
to have a physical relationship with the man, even
though her cerebral cortex tells her that he'll
never commit to a relationship with her. In a
conflicted brain, the older area wins.
Entertainment skills can make women ignore a
man's faults. E.g., Woody Allen's sense of humor
attracts women, even though he's small, scrawny, and
married his stepdaughter.[27]
(At least he's a family man.)
Women's Entertainment
Skills
Male entertainers, in general, have both male and
female fans. Female entertainers, until recently,
had only female fans, and had fewer fans than male
entertainers. E.g., your local ballet company has
fewer fans than your professional basketball team.
Masculine individuals (generally, but not always,
men) use entertainment skills to attract sexual
partners. Feminine individuals (generally, but not
always, women) use entertainment skills to keep a
partner in a long-term relationship.
E.g., a woman who makes her husband laugh each
day, and makes his heart ache when she sings
lullabies to their children, has a husband who's not
going to leave her.
Legendary King Shahryar took a new woman to bed
each night, and then killed each woman in the
morning. One woman saved herself by telling a story
with a cliffhanger ending. Shahrazad kept this up
night after night, spinning Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, and other stories into
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (circa
A.D. 1000).
Truth and Lying in Art and
Entertainment
Entertainment skills increase reproductive
success so effectively (i.e., get women to have sex
with men, and get men to stay with women) that
sexual selection for entertainment skills may have
driven our ancestors to evolve larger cerebral
cortexes.[28]
Art and entertainment are lies, from the point of
view of the liar. E.g., when an actor playing Hamlet
says that he's going to kill his stepfather, the
actor isn't threatening his stepfather's life. A
painter creates an image that looks real, but isn't.
A poem makes us visualize a scene we don't see.
Novels and movies take us into a worlds we've never
experienced.
But art and entertainment are truthful, from the
point of view of the audience. Effective artists and
entertainers communicate emotions that "strike a
chord" in the listener or viewer. They tell the
truth not about themselves—e.g., you don't want to
know that an actor is afraid of forgetting his
lines, or is hoping that a movie producer might be
in the audience and offer him a better-paying
job—but instead quiet their own emotions and emote
the audience's feelings.
Religion and Evolution
Art, entertainment, religion, and reproductive
success are entwined. Religious men and women sing
in church or synagogue, dramatically recite Bible
stories, dance at rituals, etc. Most societies
encourage religious men, e.g., rabbis, to marry and
produce large families. Men prefer to marry
religious women, because they're more likely to be
sexually faithful.
Our ancestors' sexual preference for partners
with deeply moving emotional skills may have driven
them to evolve brains capable of spiritual thought.
I.e., evolution enabled humans to think
spirituality, and, conversely, spiritual thinking
may have driven human evolution.
Consumerism as Runaway
Sexual Selection
For our ancestral fathers, entertainment was "do
it yourself." Dinner was killing and roasting an
animal. After dinner, they played music, danced, or
told epics of their heroes.
Now consider what happens in modern
courtship. We take our dates to restaurants
where we pay professional chefs to cook them
great food, or to dance clubs where professional
musicians excite their auditory systems, or to
films where professional actors entertain them
with vicarious adventures. The chefs, musicians,
and actors do not actually have sex with our
dates. They just get paid. We get the sex if the
date goes well. Of course, we still have to talk
in modern courtship, and we still have to look
reasonably good. But the market economy shifts
much of the courtship effort from us to
professionals. To pay the professionals, we have
to make money, which means getting a job. The
better our education, the better our job, the
more money we make, and the better the vicarious
courtship we can afford. Consumerism turns the
tables on ancestral patterns of human courtship.[29]
— Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind
(2000)
I can't stand dinner and a movie.[30]
— Julia Schultz, Playboy centerfold
Onstage, I make love to 25,000 people—then I
go home alone.[31]
— Janis Joplin
Consumerism hotwires our brains' relationship
circuits. Cars, shopping malls, television, and
Julia Schultz's Playboy poses hit these
neural circuits.
Women are especially susceptible to consumerism.
E.g., on eBay, women described 11% of their shoes as
"sexy." Men described only 0.005% of their shoes as
"sexy."
Consumerism makes us work longer hours to buy
more stuff for our mates. Women have less time to
exercise and look attractive. Men have less time to
practice entertainment skills. Couples have less
time together.
The effects of consumerism range from
environmental destruction to anti-American hatred.
Runaway consumerism—not war, crime, or disease—is
the greatest threat to human survival. Focus on
relationships, not buying stuff. You'll be happier
and your grandchildren will have a planet to live
on.
References
- Cohen, J. E. 1969. "Natural primate troops
and stochastic population models," American
Naturalist 103:455-477. Cohen, J. E. 1971.
"Social grouping and troop size in yellow
baboons," Proceedings of the 3rd
International Congress of Primatology, 1970
March 2-5 3:58-64. Cohen, J. E. 1972. "Aping
monkeys with mathematics," In Tuttle, R. ed.
The Functional and Evolutionary Biology of
Primates. Aldine-Atherton, Chicago.
Samuels, A. and Altmann, J. 1991. "Baboons of
the Amboseli basin: demographic stability and
change," International Journal of
Primatology 12:1-9.
- Sapolsky, Robert. "Gorilla Tactics,"
Men’s Health, March 2002, p.68.
- Buss, David M. Evolutionary Psychology (Allyn
& Bacon, 1999,
ISBN 0-205-19358-7), p. 110.
