Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love (12 page)

If a man is not having sex with a woman but is investing time to do things for her, then the silent debt ledger comes in force, just as it would if she had been a man. He wants to be repaid for his efforts with either sex or future credits.

The threat of withdrawal of a woman’s services is why, when a neglectful, uncaring man unexpectedly gets dumped by a woman, he often pleads everlasting love and commitment to her and even says he’ll marry her or wants to have babies with her. He will tell her whatever is necessary to get back his food, washing, and sex or to beat off a competitor. Fortunately for men, most women believe these lines. The lesson here for women is to enjoy the fun ride he’s offering but don’t always believe his stories.

As we revealed in
Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps
, most male brains are attracted to anything to do with “hunting” skills, sex, and spatial movements. The magazines men buy clearly reflect these needs—men read
New Fisherman, Which Camera?, Hot Wheels, Computer Buyer, Trader Boat
and any magazine featuring scantily clad women. Men’s magazines would
never
have articles like:

Men’s magazines feature articles like:

Women read anything that involves people and relationships:
Woman’s Weekly, Hello!, OK!, New Woman, Cosmo, Marie Claire, Mills and Boon, New Idea
, and
Woman’s Day
. And of the thousands of relationship books on the bookstore shelves there are hardly any dealing with what women think, because men generally aren’t interested. Men just want to be fed, loved, played with, or left alone. Few relationship books discuss this because most self-help books are written by women and over 90% of readers of relationship books are women. The main reason most men are poor at building relationships with women is that men just don’t think about it much, and when they do imagine it, they often picture screaming kids, no money, baldness, nagging, a potbelly, and eternal monogamy.

Most men, especially younger men, secretly see a relationship as preventing them from taking the wild opportunities that may present themselves to them on any given day. Hey, if Tommy Lee had committed himself to the first groupie who dropped her panties, he never would have had a romp in the hay with Pamela Anderson, Heather Locklear, and many other gorgeous blondes, right? And even though these scenarios may, in reality, only apply to less than 1% of all men, they never want to burn their bridges, just in case. And that’s how most men think. “Till death do us part” is a scary concept for them.

The perfect remote control for men

Men have a repertoire of standard phrases they use to convince a woman to provide one of their four basic services, especially sex. Here are men’s top ten lines and the translations:

1. “You’re pretty/beautiful/stunning.”
   

   “Your face is clear and symmetrical, indicating that you could successfully carry my genes. Let’s have sex.”
   

2. “You look gorgeous tonight.”
   

   “I want to have sex with you as soon as possible.”
   

3. “Let’s be friends.”
   

   “I don’t fancy you or I’m over you. Hopefully you won’t call or text me forty times a day leaving messages asking where I am.”
   

4. “You look hot in that outfit!”
   

   “That clothing highlights your hips-to-waist ratio and makes your boobs stand out. This all fires up my brain circuits and hormones, and I want to have sex with you right now.”
   

5. “Like to come in for a cup of coffee?”
   

   “Let’s have wild monkey sex while I’m half drunk and there’s no bright lights to highlight any defects you may have.”
   

6. “Let me get you a drink.”
   

   “Let me loosen up your inhibitions with alcohol so maybe you’ll have sex with me.” The advanced version of this is “Have another drink.”
   

7. “I can’t stay late tonight: I’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
   

   “Thanks for the sex. I’m out of here!”
   

8. “I want an open, honest relationship.”
   

   “If I play up in the future, this line will let me say, ’Well, I said I’d be honest with you.’”
   

9. “I’ll call you/meet you after the club closes.”
   

   “If I don’t get lucky tonight, I’ll have sex with you instead.”
   

10. “It’s not you … it’s me.”
    

    “It’s you, so go away.”
    

As humorous as these lines are, the dilemma is that women fantasize to themselves that there is some truth behind them and most women encourage men to use these lines. Consequently, few women discover early whether a man is a serious contender for a long-term relationship. If women were
to decode these lines for what they really are, they could better separate the studs from the duds.

Ancestral men placed their priority on women who were capable of bearing the most children, and this could be determined by two observable factors: youth and health. The younger a woman is, the more children she is capable of bearing. A woman’s reproductive value is high at age twenty, medium at thirty, low at forty, and nil by fifty. This is why today’s men have inherited from their ancestors a preference for younger women—because of their greater reproductive value. This is also why the younger a woman is, the higher risk she has of being raped. Statistics in the United States show that 85% of rape victims are under 36 years of age, and this is directly related to a woman’s reproductive value.

Universally, all men prefer their wives to be between two and four years younger than themselves, and the older a man becomes, the younger he prefers his women. In a study of the preferred ages men have for women, Professors Kenrick and Keefe found that men who are twenty prefer women who are age eighteen, a thirty-five-year-old male prefers a thirty-year-old
woman, a forty-eight-year-old male prefers a thirty-year-old, and a man in his fifties wants a woman at least twenty years younger.

Instinctively, men seem to understand the relationship between resources and the ability to attract younger women. German ethnologist Karl Grammer studied a computer dating service involving 2,638 men and women and found that as men’s incomes go up, they seek younger women. For example, he found that a man who earned $15,000 a month wanted women who were five to fifteen years younger than himself, whereas a man who earned $1,500 a month wanted a woman up to five years younger. Each $1,500 per month corresponded to a decrease of one year in the desirable woman’s age.
⁴
In other words, men recognize that the higher their resources, the more mates they can attract and the higher their reproductive value will be. When a man is prepared to commit his resources to one particular woman, he increases his chances of securing a higher-quality mate because women who are desirable can hold out for the thing they want—long-term commitment from a man.

So does this mean that if you are a woman over fifty with no reproductive value, you are destined to be lonely? No, it means that like younger women, an older woman needs to keep herself looking attractive if she wants to stay in the mating game. Women’s magazines are full of articles about mature women and how they keep themselves looking young. Looking younger by taking care of yourself is what attracts men of all ages, not the fact that you can’t have children anymore. Think Joan Collins, Cher, Ivana Trump, and Madonna.

None of these male preferences could be viewed by women as fair, sensible, politically correct, or reasonable, but they are reality and it doesn’t matter whether you like it. When you understand the origin of male preferences and know that they are part of the male brain hardwiring, it makes male behaviors more understandable and therefore easier to deal with.

Here’s what men look for in a long-term partner:

1. Personality
   

2. Attractiveness
   

3. Brains
   

4. Humor
   

5. Good body
   

When you compare this to the next list—women’s list of preferences for a long-term partner—you’ll see that they are very similar to men’s, with personality being number one for both. The main difference is that women want a man who is also sensitive, whereas men prefer a woman to look good.

Here’s what women want in a long-term partner:

1. Personality
   

2. Humor
   

3. Sensitivity
   

4. Brains
   

5. Good body
   

Ancestral women never had such an extensive list because all they needed was a man who had enough motivation to catch food and fight off aggressors. Ancestral man didn’t need to be
able to crack a joke to impress a woman, be able to play chess, or understand her feelings. Ancestral women would have also had far less difficulty in finding a mate than women of the twenty-first century because cosmetics, designer bras, and surgery were never an option. Our ancestors’ playing field was much more level.

Now here’s a twist that most women don’t know: Men have two mating lists; most women only have one. Whether a woman is looking at a man as a long-term or short-term mate, she uses the same criteria on her list for evaluation. Men, however, have a long-term list
and
a list for short-term, casual relationships.

Here is their short-term list:

1. Attractive
   

2. Good body
   

3. Breasts
   

4. Butt
   

5. Personality
   

As you can see, this list is largely composed of visual cues that cause hormone activity in the brain’s hypothalamus and amygdala, so men’s short-term list is about lust. David Buss listed sixty-seven characteristics nominated by men and women as desirable in a casual mate. These included loyalty, sociability, honesty, wealth, kindness, intelligence, charm, education, generosity, responsibility, and cooperativeness. He found that men rated these characteristics as dramatically less important in a casual mate than women did. Men were also significantly less concerned about negative characteristics in casual mates, such as promiscuity, alcoholism, education, bisexuality, and mental abuse, than women were. Conversely, men rated these things as significantly unattractive in a long-term partner. For long-term mates, men were concerned about the need for commitment and physical attractiveness, whereas hairiness and low sex
drive were deemed undesirable. Men rated women’s need for commitment from them as highly undesirable in a casual partner, but rated it as very important in a long-term or marriage partner. Even a casual mate who was married rated higher than a single one because the married woman was less likely to want a commitment from him.