My girlfriend of two years had me help her download photos from her phone, and I found about two dozen close-ups of her private parts. She said she was "just curious." Well, okay, but why not use a mirror? Besides, she's in her 30s. Surely, she knows what her parts look like without a photo shoot. Do you think she took these to send to another guy?
--Disturbed
Men aren't used to women being preoccupied with their girlparts. Even in Redneckville, you never see a woman hanging a rubber replica of hers off the back of her pickup.
The truth is, not all women went for a look-see down there with a hand mirror at age 14. Recently, some women may have gotten inspired to do some camera-phone sightseeing thanks to the increased visibility of the ladygarden via free internet porn, the mainstreaming of the waxed-bald vulva, and giant ads for labiaplasty (aka a face-lift for your vagina).
Though it's possible that your girlfriend is texting these to other guys, consider what anthropologist Donald Symons calls the human tendency "to imagine that other minds are much like our own." This can lead us to forget about biological sex differences, like how men, who are in no danger of getting pregnant from sex, evolved to be the less sexually discriminating half of humanity. Note that women don't have to text photos of their naked bits to get sex; they just need to text their address and tell the guy not to dawdle.
It's hard for many people to tell whether another person is lying, especially when they're invested in believing otherwise. Borrowing from research methodology, a way to figure out whether a lone ambiguous event might be meaningful -- like whether the panty hamster pictorial might mean what you dread it does -- is to see how much company it has. (In other words, is it part of a pattern?)
Look back on your girlfriend's behavior over your two years together. Does she act ethically -- even when she thinks nobody's looking? Does it, in fact, mean something to her to do the right thing? Being honest with yourself about whether she has a pattern of ethical corner-cutting will allow you to make the best (that is, most informed) guess about whether you have something to worry about -- beyond coming home to a, um, new addition to the framed photos of her parents' anniversary and your nephew with his Little League trophy.
My relationship ended recently, and I asked my ex not to contact me. But just as I'd start feeling a little less sad, I'd hear from him and fall apart. I've now blocked him on my phone and social media. This seems so immature. Why can't I be more grown up about this?
--Incommunicado
For you, breaking up but staying in contact makes a lot of sense -- about the same sort as trying to drop 20 pounds while working as a frosting taster.
Sure, there's this notion that you "should" be able to be friends with your ex. Some people can be -- eventually or even right away -- especially if they had a relationship that just fizzled out instead of the kind where you need a rowboat to make it to the kitchen through the river of your tears.
However -- not surprisingly -- clinical psychologists David Sbarra and Robert Emery find that "contact with one's former partner ... can stall the emotional adjustment process" by reactivating both love and painful emotions. For example, in their survey of people who'd recently gone through a breakup, "on days when participants reported having telephone or in-person contact with their former partner, they also reported more love and sadness."
It might help you to understand how adjusting to the new "no more him" thing works. In a serious relationship, your partner becomes a sort of emotional support animal -- the one you always turn to for affection, attention, and comforting. This habit of turning toward him gets written into your brain on a neural level, becoming increasingly automatic over time.
Post-breakup, you turn and -- oops -- there's no boo, only a faint dent in his side of the bed. Your job in healing is to get used to this change -- which you don't do by having him keep popping up, messing with your new belief that he's no longer available for emotional need-meeting.
That's why, in a situation like yours, breaking up with your boyfriend should work like breaking up with your couch. When the thing gets dropped off at the city dump, it stays there; you don't come out on your porch the next morning to it saying, "Hey, babe...was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd bring over some of your stuff -- 36 cents, a pen cap, and this hair elastic."
I have a close friend whose relationships always end badly. The new guy she's dating has a reputation as a user. My friend's very successful, and I believe he's dating her for her business contacts. I need to be honest with her about this. How should I do that -- considering she falls in love hard and fast?
--Caring Amiga
People will insist that they absolutely want you to be honest with them when they're doing anything stupid -- and then immediately reward you for it by exiling you from Western society to live and herd goats with a Bedouin family.
Yes, even well-intentioned honesty is often counterproductive. This might be hard for you to swallow, considering how warning your friend about this guy probably seems like warning her that she's about to be hit by a bus. And sure, if that were the case, upon your "YO! WATCH OUT!" she'd whirl around and leap out of the way -- not stand her ground and snap: "You dunno what you're talking about. Buses love me!"
Though it's hard to deny the existence of a 24-ton object hurtling toward us, seeing things accurately is not always the first order of the human perceptual system. In fact, evolutionary psychologist Martie Haselton explains that we seem to have evolved to make the least costly perceptual error in a situation -- a subconscious calculation that sometimes leads to our over-perceiving or under-perceiving risks or opportunities. For example, in the physical risk domain, we are predisposed to over-perceive that stick in the rustling leaves as a snake because it's far more costly to die from a snake bite than to "die" of embarrassment when our peeps mock us for jumping out of our skin at a sinister-looking twig.
In relationships, social psychologist Garth Fletcher and his colleagues find that it's sometimes in our interest to err on the side of "positivity" -- the rosy view -- over "accuracy." (Love is blind versus love gets Lasik!) Whether positivity or accuracy is active is context-dependent -- meaning determined by our situation. So, for example, when you're in no rush to settle down, positivity vision prevails. Positive illusions are "associated with greater relationship satisfaction and lower rates of dissolution." Other times, "the need to make accurate, unbiased judgments becomes critical," like when a little voice inside you is yelling "It's baby o'clock!" and you'll need a guy who'll stick around and "dad."
Unfortunately, your even hinting that this guy may have ulterior motives is likely to make your friend snarlingly defensive -- which is to say she may end up throwing somebody out of her life, and it probably won't be him. Of course, it's possible that you're wrong about the guy. Regardless, per the Fletcher team's finding, your friend's being able to see anything beyond how dreamypants he is may be driven by context -- like when maintaining the rosy view would prove fatal to her achieving some essential goal. At that point, she might start noticing that their threesomes invariably involve the head of HR -- and that if she asked him "Baby, what's your favorite position?" his answer would be "vice president!"
I'm a single guy, and I just never know how to start conversations with girls. I have a sense of humor, but I'm bad at coming up with funny lines on the fly. I've thought of using a "line," but if I were a girl, hearing one would just make me annoyed. Do you have any advice on good conversation starters?
--Speechless
There's a reason the line from that chick flick is "You had me at hello" and not "You had me at 'Those jugs yours?'"
Granted, it's better if you can be funny when hitting on girls. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller believes "humor production ability" is a "hard-to-fake" sign of intelligence in a potential partner. Research by Miller and others suggests he's right -- finding correlations between humor and "verbal creativity" and intelligence. But note "hard-to-fake." Trying to be funny when you aren't all that funny is about as successful a tactic as trying to remove someone's appendix when you aren't really a doctor.
However, even if you aren't naturally funny, what you can be is genuine. To do this, just say something -- perhaps about something in the environment. Ask about that book she's carrying or whether she's survived the vegan Reuben. Maybe comment on the attire of the two armed men running out of the place with a bag of money. Just saying something is basically like opening a tiny door to see whether anything's behind it. If a woman finds you attractive, she'll pick up and respond -- and probably not by announcing that if you were the last man on earth, she'd develop a sexual attraction to trees.
July 11, 2017I'm a guy who hates fake boobs. I've dumped women I really liked upon discovering they have them. Total dealbreaker for me. However, I obviously can't just ask whether a woman has them. What should I do? I don't want to waste my time or hers.
--Real Deal
Right. Not exactly a first-date question: "So...did you get your boobs from your mom's side of the family or from some doc's Yelp review?"
Your aversion to counterfitties doesn't come out of nowhere. Breast implants are a form of "strategic interference," evolutionary psychologist David Buss' term for when the mating strategies of one sex are derailed by the other. Women, for example, evolved to seek "providers" -- men with high status and access to resources. A guy engages in strategic interference by impressing the ladies with his snazzy new Audi -- one he pays for by subletting a "condo" that's actually the backyard playhouse of the rotten 8-year-old next door.
A woman doesn't need an Audi (or even a bus pass) to attract men. She just needs the features that men evolved to go all oglypants for -- like youth, an hourglass bod, big eyes, full lips, and big bra puppies. Men aren't attracted to these features just becuz. Biological anthropologist Grazyna Jasienska finds that women with big (natural!) boobs have higher levels of the hormone estradiol, a form of estrogen that increases a woman's likelihood of conception.
Women with both big boobs and a small waist have about 30 percent higher levels -- which could mean they'd be about three times as likely to get pregnant as other women. So, big fake boobs are a form of mating forgery -- like a box supposedly containing a high-def TV that actually contains a bunch of no-def bricks.
There are some telltale signs of Frankenboobs, like immunity from gravity. Women with big real boobs have bra straps that could double as seat belts and bra backs like those lumbar support belts worn by warehouse workers. However, an increasing number of women have more subtle implants (all the better to strategically interfere with you, my dear!).
Though you might get the truth by teasing the subject of plastic surgery into conversation, you should accept the reality: You may not know till you get a woman horizontal -- and the sweater Alps remain so high and proud you're pretty sure you see Heidi running across them, waving to the Ricola guy playing the alpenhorn.
I went out with this guy twice. He was really effusive about how much he liked me and how we had the beginnings of something awesome. He seemed sincere, so I ended up sleeping with him, and then, boom. He vanished. Was he just telling me he was into me to get me in the sack? I can't imagine ever doing that to somebody.
--Integrity
A guy's "I really care about you" makes a woman feel that he's got a real reason for being there with her -- beyond how the neighbor's goat's a surprisingly fast runner.
Men evolved to be the worker bees of sex -- the wooers of the species, trying to sell women on their level of love and commitment with mushy talk and bunches of carats. Women generally don't need to work to get sex; they just need to let men know they're willing -- which is why around Valentine's Day, you don't hear the tool-time version of those Kay Jewelers commercials, reminding the ladies, "Every kiss begins with a circular saw!"
This difference aligns with what evolutionary psychologist David Buss calls men's and women's conflicting "sexual strategies" -- in keeping with how getting it on can leave a woman "with child" and a man with a little less semen. Accordingly, Buss finds that women are more likely to be "sexual deceivers" -- to dangle the possibility of sex to get a favor or special treatment from a man. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to be "commitment deceivers." In Buss' lab, when the researchers asked 112 college dudes about whether they'd "exaggerated the depth of their feelings for a woman in order to have sex with her, 71 percent admitted to having done so, compared with only 39 percent of the women" who were asked whether they'd done that sort of thing.
Knowing the different ways men and women deceive and are prone to be deceived is the best way to avoid being a victim of that deception. Borrow a motto from Missouri, the Show Me State. And note that this "show me" thing takes time. Wait to have sex until you've been around a guy enough to see that he's got something behind those flowery words -- beyond how getting you into bed is preferable to staying home, dressing his penis in a tiny cape, and playing video games.
July 4, 2017I'm a 35-year-old masculine gay man. I've had relationships with (masculine) gay men, but I'm often attracted to masculine straight men. I'm not looking to "turn" them, and I'm ready for a relationship, so I'm concerned that I'm so frequently attracted to men who won't be interested in me. What is this about? Do I need therapy?
--Worried Gay Guy
Like you, I happen to like men who look like their hobbies are chopping down trees and going to war with foreign powers.
I am not attracted to femmy men in body glitter with My Little Pony haircuts. Luckily for me, the sort of people I am attracted to did not require me to come out to my parents ("Mom and Dad...I-I-I'm straight"), nor are my preferences considered reason for suspicion that I might be a self-loathing heterosexual.
As for you, because of the ugly views and behaviors toward gays, sure, it's possible that your being attracted to straight men is some sort of internalized version of those camps for "praying away the gay." (If that seems to be a possibility, yes, you should look into that -- perhaps with a therapist's help.) But if you were really so self-loathing and in denial about being gay, wouldn't you just be sneaking glances at all the manly men on your way to marrying a woman and buying a house with a lot of closet space?
Your being a manly man who's into boyfriends who wield power tools not intended for hairstyling might be explained by research on "assortative mating." This basically means "like mates with like" -- reflecting how we seem motivated to choose mates who are similar to us on various levels, from age to looks to race to personality. In the gay world, psychologist J. Michael Bailey's research finds that masculine gay men tend to prefer masculine partners (Conan the Barbarian versus Conan the Featherboa-tarian).
Increased similarity between partners is associated with happier, longer-lasting relationships. This makes sense, considering that more similarity means more compatibility -- from shared beliefs to shared interests and activities. So, it's good news you're eyeing the manlier men, even if many are ultimately "for display purposes only."
Of course, it is possible that you're telling yourself you want a relationship but picking people totally unavailable for one. (For straight women, this often involves a one-sided affair with a member of the British royal family.) If that isn't the case, why worry that your ideal relationship is basically a nature preserve for chest hair and testosterone? Just accept that it might take a little more effort to find a boyfriend for whom "contouring" is not skillful makeup application but helping you get the back of your head with the Weedwhacker before your welding group arrives.
I went through a crazy party girl period in my 20s. My boyfriend recently asked me how many men I'd slept with before him. I told him, and he freaked out at the number -- despite his having his own wild past. Now I wish I hadn't been honest. What should I have said instead?
--Glum
It's usually best to keep mum if the number of men is something like "I'm not exactly sure because the census takers keep fainting from exhaustion while they're tallying up my total."
There is a sexual double standard, though it doesn't come from men wanting to keep women's sex drives in park (which wouldn't exactly serve their interest). What's telling, however, are sex differences in jealousy -- specifically, jealousy over infidelity. Evolutionary psychologist David Buss finds that men across cultures are most distressed by sexual infidelity -- the sex acts themselves. Though women aren't exactly "yeah, whatevs" about their partner's doing the nudie tootie with another woman, women are substantially more distressed by his being emotionally gaga about someone else. (A woman's first question is inevitably: "But do you luvvvv her?!")
These differences in freakouts dovetail with men's and women's differing evolutionary concerns. Women evolved to worry that their partner would divert his investment of time, energy, and resources in her and her children to a rival. Men, however, have a different worry. Because a man can never really be sure whether a child is his ("paternity uncertainty"), any sex act his partner has with another man could lead to his spending decades feeding and caring for some other dude's genetic offspring.
The thing is, having a crazy party girl period doesn't mean you're unethical. It's possible that pointing that out to your boyfriend might help. If, in the future, another boyfriend asks for your sexual tally, be generally honest -- you were a bit of a party girl -- but avoid giving any specific number that suggests that this involved much of the Democratic Party (and a few straggling Greens).