Decoding Love - Andrew Trees [44]
I know that on a conscious level all of this seems a little far-fetched. But remember—heuristics are a way to help us simplify a complex world. To try to determine precisely the degree of promiscuity that is acceptable, by taking into account individual and societal factors, is an enormously difficult task. The Madonna-whore dichotomy is a way to cut through all of that and divide women quickly and easily into suitable and unsuitable mates. At the very least, women’s sexual liberation has played a direct role in decreasing male commitment. According to a national marriage survey by Rutgers University, the No. 1 reason men give for not committing to one woman is that they know they can get sex without marrying.
There’s also another twist to this story, one that carries a pointed betrayal of sisterhood. It is quite possible that the currency of a term like slut is largely due to women, not men. A sexually promiscuous woman is, in many ways, a larger threat to women with partners than she is to men, because that sexual availability can lure away a boyfriend or a husband for a short-term or even a long-term relationship. The use of a term like slut is a way for women to police the sexual practices of other women and to convince men that certain women are to be avoided precisely because of how sexually available they are.
The obvious advice to take from this if you are a woman is that you should avoid having sex until a man is fully committed to you and that you should not offer your charms to many men. And many of the women I interviewed adopted precisely this strategy once they became more serious about finding a longtime partner. As one woman said, “You need to wait as long as possible. Once you have sex, you lose your uniqueness and become more of a commodity.” Many of the women said that, paradoxically, the more that they like a man, the longer they make him wait before having sex.
But there are obvious drawbacks to this. In the first place, women enjoy sex just as much as men. In the second place, our culture has become so promiscuous that a policy of strict celibacy practiced by any individual woman is likely to keep men away as much as it attracts them. Perhaps the wise strategy is for women simply to increase the amount of time that must pass before they will have sex. With this in mind, I offer my completely unscientific and tongue-in-cheek rule to women trying to decide how long is long enough: double down! In other words, if you typically have sex on the third date, wait until the sixth date. If you typically wait four weeks, try to wait eight. Although this will involve some self-sacrifice in terms of short-term sexual pleasure, it will strengthen the signal that you are a high-quality woman who can afford to be selective about your sexual partners.
It is also worth considering the flip side of this, the stud. Academic studies and common sense both agree on a simple point: attractive men have more sexual partners than average men. Going back once again to our sperm/egg distinction, the reason why becomes obvious: women are willing to sacrifice long-term partnerships for good genes—and they do this quite knowingly. According to one study, women put more emphasis on a man’s looks when they expect the relationship to be short term. For women interested in a relationship, the paradoxical advice is to avoid this type of man altogether. Even if you can convince such a man to commit to you, studies show that he is much more likely to be unfaithful. In other words, the term “stud