Glued-In Allergy
I've been dating a guy for three months, and I'd like us to be exclusive, but I don't know how to go about addressing it. I'm worried that if I say I need him to commit, he'll feel pressured and bolt.
--Quandary
For a man, agreeing to go exclusive is a bit like wedding vows lite, as posed to the man's penis: "Do you swear off sex with all the other ladies forever?" Penis: "Frankly, that sounds a little grim."
Men evolved to have the hots for sexual variety -- casual sex with a slew-apalooza of different partners -- to a degree women do not. (An ancestral woman could get pregnant and stuck with a kid to raise after a single hookup with some rando, while the more randos Grok had sex with, the more likely he was to pass on his genes.)
Feminist scholars contend that "patriarchal" culture -- not evolution -- leads to men's greater preference for the sexual variety pack, but it even shows up in "gender-egalitarian" Norway. Evolutionary scientist Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair and his colleagues asked Norwegian men and women the number of sex partners they'd want over a 30-year period. Women, on average, wanted about five sex partners. Men? About 25!
Still, many men eventually tire of the swipe-right hussy of the night lifestyle (which, admittedly, isn't an option for men low on the mate-value ladder) and start feeling ready for a relationship. However, even if this guy's open to commitment and maybe already pointed in that direction, consider the lesson from "psychological reactance," a term coined by psychologist Jack Brehm. Our getting the sense that somebody's trying to control us, limit our freedom, motivates us to "react": rebel against being controlled.
Give yourself a (silent) deadline so you won't be waiting around forever, and then ask him how he sees things going forward: what he's looking for, what works for him. The conversation itself should give him the sense that you might be headed for the door if he doesn't boyfriend up. Wanting to be with you might motivate him to make the necessary sexual trade-off -- which is ultimately a pretty big deal for a dude. Picture the Souplantation buffet, but all those stainless steel bins are filled with the same one item, and you'll have to eat it for every meal for the rest of your life: "Welcome to the suburban gulag. Table for two?"
For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.
Hunter gatherers live in family groups, your Dad or brother or uncle would get you the big game and as a woman your gathering is getting most of the nutritional needs met anyways. There were no nuclear families alone on the tundra. Not to mention in many hunter gatherer societies women sometimes give each other their kids and it isn't weird to them.
The need for women to not have random kids came later, when amassing stuff inheritance became an issue.
NicoleK at August 14, 2021 10:32 PM
Um Australian Aborigines are one of the closes to hunter gatherer according to archeology and current research they have a crazy high violent child death rate estimates of 30%
Joe j at August 17, 2021 2:09 PM
Joe j throws out some isolated percentage regarding Australian Aborigines without a shred of evidence or fact to back it up. You might want to read “The Fatal Shore” by Robert Hughes to gain some insight into the white man’s attitude to, and treatment of Australia’s indigenous peoples. Then you might begin to comprehend how that horrific treatment, murder and attempted eradication of these peoples has had results that echo down to the present day. You cannot blame the Aborigines for the effects of all the suffering, cruelty and vile treatment that they have had to endure and in many instances, still endure.
Via at August 18, 2021 2:35 PM
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