Why Women Have Sex (18 page)

—heterosexual woman, age 33

In sexual competitions, for every winner there is at least one loser, and when sex fails to initiate a long-term relationship, many women say they feel used and depressed. As we saw in chapter 3, the release of oxytocin during sex creates a wave of good feeling and emotional bonding, which may explain this shift in mood. According to Swedish physiologist Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg, oxytocin is part of a “calm and connection system [that] is associated with trust and curiosity instead of fear, and with friendliness instead of anger. The heart and circulatory system slow down as the digestion fires up. When peace and calm prevail, we let our defenses down and instead become sensitive, open, and interested in others around us.” Although this change is very useful when a person succeeds in forming a pair-bond, it can make a failed attempt in a competitive situation more emotionally painful. In fact, some scientists believe that “oxytocin withdrawal” can occur when relationships end, and
the subsequent depression women feel after a breakup may stem partly from this sudden plunge in the hormone.

Sometimes sexual competition occurs not merely because a woman seeks the thrill of conquest or a boost in status among her peers, but because she wishes to exact revenge on a sexual rival:

Well, my girlfriends and I were on holiday, and there was a group of boys staying at the same holiday resort. There was one guy that I liked, and another one of my friends liked him too. I might not have acted on it, but my friends and I had a big fight. I can’t even remember what the fight was about. So I went for it, flirting away with the guy. I was very young (eighteen) at the time, and very sexually inexperienced. But I decided that I wanted to sleep with this man, just to sort of get back at my friend, and to sort of prove that I was the more attractive/better one of us. So I achieved what I set out to do. I felt angry with her, and proud of myself that I won.

—heterosexual woman, age 26

For another woman, having sex with a woman’s ex simultaneously gave her a sense of vengeance and triumph:

In high school there was this girl [who] hated me because I was good friends with her boyfriend at the time. She tried to make my life hell by stalking me and picking fights. So, a couple of years later I slept with an ex of hers (not the same guy) in hopes that it would get back to her somehow and piss her off. It gave me a sense of closure and me winning in the end.

—heterosexual woman, age 22

Sexual rivalries also play out in competition for attention from high-status, short-term sexual mates, particularly those of musical and athletic celebrities. The so-called “bass-player effect” exposes some of the competitive hierarchy among groupies: Typically playing in the background
and hence lower in status, the bass player often is less sexually attractive than the high-status lead singer and lead guitar player. The term “groupie,” though, is not always considered derogatory among many of the most successful companions to rock stars. Cameron Crowe’s 2000 movie
Almost Famous
features a character named Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson, who is modeled after two real-life “supergroupies” Crowe knew, one who actually goes by the name Penny Lane and the other named Bebe Buell. In real life, Lane denies that she’s a groupie, stating instead that she is a “band-aid,” and Buell prefers the term “muse” to characterize her somewhat longer-term sexual relationships with musicians Elvis Costello and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. In addition to the celebrity Buell accrued through her sexual encounters with famous rock stars, she also had a daughter, the movie star Liv, with Tyler—possibly an example of the genetic benefits to be gained from having sex with men who are highly desirable to women.

Groupies are so prevalent in the music world that dozens of bands have written songs about them, including the Beatles’ “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” about a groupie who broke into Paul McCartney’s house. (Perhaps the ultimate status accolade of being a groupie is having oneself immortalized in song.) Some groupies seem to chase an extra boost of status by writing “kiss-and-tell” books that publicize their sexual conquests. Pamela Des Barres, another rock supergroupie, rose to be the unofficial spokesperson for the wild music scene of 1960s Los Angeles through her four books, including the aptly billed
Let’s Spend the Night Together
. She claims to have shared beds with rock legends Jim Morrison of The Doors, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. Carmen Bryan’s memoir
It’s No Secret: From Nas to Jay-Z, from Seduction to Scandal—a Hip-Hop Helen of Troy Tells All
describes her relationship with rapper Nas, with whom she had a daughter, and his hip-hop rival Jay-Z, as well as with NBA point guard Allen Iverson, whom she calls a “lean and muscled . . . warrior.”

Whether they are groupies or simply peers in the same social circle, women who win in sexual competitions stand to gain a variety of benefits
, and rivalry can grow tense—all the more so because desirable men are rare in the eyes of many women.

In cultures that practice polygyny, in which men are permitted to have more than one wife, the most desirable men often find several wives. Many women prefer to be the second or third wife of a high-status man rather than the sole wife of a low-status man. This can be explained by the “polygyny threshold hypothesis.” Stated simply, a woman can sometimes gain more resources by securing a third or a half of the bounty of a wealthy man who already has wives than she can by getting all of the resources of a poor man who has no wives.

In monogamous cultures, women confront a very different problem: The most desirable men may already be mated, and cultural mores and the rules of most religions sometimes put those “good” men off-limits. Some women have developed a solution to this problem, albeit one that is often seen as socially undesirable: a strategy of
mate poaching,
or luring already taken mates away from their existing partners. Men, of course, poach mates as well.

The practice of mate poaching undoubtedly goes back to the emergence of long-term pair-bonds. The earliest written record of mate poaching comes from the Bible, in the account of King David and Bathsheba. One day King David caught a glimpse of the alluring Bathsheba bathing on the roof of a neighboring house. Unfortunately for the king, she happened to be married to another man, named Uriah. David was not deterred. And the fact that he was king certainly didn’t hurt. He succeeded in seducing Bathsheba and got her pregnant. He then devised a treacherous plan to eliminate his sexual rival permanently. He ordered Uriah to the battle front and then commanded his troops to retreat. This exposed Uriah to mortal danger. With Uriah safely in his grave, King David married Bathsheba, a union that yielded four children.

Although the practice of mate poaching is ancient, the phrase did not enter the scientific literature on human mating until 1994, and the first scientific study of human mate poaching was not published until 2001. That study, conducted by the Buss Lab, discovered that 60 percent of American men and 53 percent of American women admitted to having attempted to lure someone else’s mate into a committed relationship. Although half of these attempts failed, half succeeded.

Sometimes mate poachers just want sex and nothing more. For short-term sexual encounters, the sex differences were larger, and do not show men in a positive light—fully 60 percent of men reported attempting to lure an already mated woman into a sexual encounter. In contrast, 38 percent of women in the study reported comparable behavior—still a substantial number. One woman in our study described her mate poaching in these terms:

I was younger, and I used to like my friend’s boyfriend, and another friend of mine dared me. She said, “I dare you to have sex with [her] boyfriend,” and I said, “Please don’t tempt me, because I will do it.” So one night I went to their house and she was not there (by the way I knew at the time she was not home). I talked to him for a minute, and he started the situation. He kissed me, then touched me, and we had sex, right there in their living room. It made me feel good, superior to my friend for getting her boyfriend.

—heterosexual woman, age 27

Given the social stigma sometimes attached to mate poachers, the figures cited above probably represent underestimates of the actual incidence—especially since far higher percentages of both sexes report that
others
have attempted to entice them into leaving an existing relationship. Ninety-three percent of men and 82 percent of women say that someone has tried to lure them out of an existing relationship into a long-term commitment. For short-term sexual flings, the figures are 87 percent of men and 94 percent of women.

Evolutionary psychologist David Schmitt found similar patterns in the most massive study of mate poaching ever conducted—16,964 individuals from fifty-three nations. The reported rates of mate poaching, of course, differ somewhat across cultures. They tend to be higher in Middle Eastern countries such as Israel, Turkey, and Lebanon, and lower in East Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and China. But in all of the cultures surveyed, substantial numbers confessed to trying to poach a mate. In the Middle East, where in many countries women’s sexuality is restricted by Arab custom or Islamic religious law, one might expect few women to engage in mate poaching. Yet roughly 64 percent of men
and 54 percent of women admit to succumbing to the lures of a mate poacher. Worldwide, 12 percent of men and 8 percent of women report that their current partner was actually romantically involved with someone else when they first met.

Poachers sometimes insinuate themselves into a couple’s life as trusted friends, become emotionally close, and then switch into poaching mode when the opportunity presents itself. “Friends” frequently end up becoming mating rivals. The principle of assortative mating—that “similars” attract—explains why. We tend to pick friends because they share interests and values with us, and they often share the same desirable qualities we possess. Because of assortative friendship, people have an above-average probability of being attracted to the mates of their friends.

Mate poachers are often skilled at driving a wedge into a couple’s relationship. One common way of doing this is to imply that the person’s current mate is cheating or might be straying. Another is to point out flaws in the partner or in their relationship. For example, a woman hoping to poach a mate might tell a man who’s already involved with another woman that his partner doesn’t treat him well. Others try to boost a target’s self-esteem and sense of desirability, saying such things as “You’re too good for her” or “You deserve someone better.” The mate poacher’s goal is to create a discrepancy between one partner’s sense of mate value and the other’s, thereby lowering the target’s commitment to the existing relationship. Some mate poachers wait in the wings and pounce when the couple has a fight.

A particularly insidious form of mate poaching is what has been called the “bait and switch” tactic. This tactic involves a mate poacher presenting herself to the man as “costless sex,” a fling with no strings attached. This creates two potential outcomes, both beneficial to the mate poacher. One is that the man’s regular partner discovers the infidelity. The Buss Lab encountered a case in which a mate poacher intentionally left her earrings in the folds of the couple’s couch after she had sex with the husband. When the wife discovered another woman’s earrings in her house, the infidelity was revealed, and the marriage broke up, rendering the man available. The other outcome involves converting a short-term liaison into a long-term relationship—sometimes stealthily,
sometimes unintentionally. The mate poacher either consciously takes the opportunity to develop an emotional and physical connection with the target, or does so unwittingly, and one day the targeted mate realizes that attraction has turned into love.

What makes mate poaching as a sexual motivator of women so fascinating is that women often want to hide their sexual competition from their rivals. Otherwise, a woman risks meeting retaliation—for instance, through derogation of her sexual reputation—and failing to secure her targeted mate. In this sense, mate poaching differs from other forms of sexual competition, which usually involve public displays such as wearing revealing clothing or sending observable sexual signals. Despite women’s efforts to minimize the risks associated with mate poaching, it is a mating tactic that carries with it imminent dangers.

This point became apparent from an unusual source: the studies conducted by the Buss Lab of homicidal fantasies that everyday people experience. Much to our amazement, we discovered that the vast majority of people have experienced at least one vivid homicidal fantasy in their lives—in fact, out of more than five thousand participants we studied, 91 percent of men and 84 percent of women said that they had at least one. And sexual competition in its many forms was the main reason both sexes had fantasized about murder.

One particular example brings this to life:

My boyfriend is always telling me how gorgeous he thinks Kate Moss is. Really, she is just a skinny, drug-addict bitch. What method did I think about using to kill her? I thought about taking a wire coat hanger and putting it through her eye to make her brain dead. Then I would hang her skinny body up in my closet and show my boyfriend that she isn’t so gorgeous after all.