It’s well-known to researchers of human sexuality that women are more apt to stray from their mate when they’re ovulating.
And it’s also been found that women are more likely to pick out a man with better apparent genetics (as in “ruggedly handsome”) than their mate’s when they’re ovulating. They do stray more than at other times during their monthly cycle.
To students of sociobiology, such an observable pattern makes perfect sense in evolutionary terms. For example, all males and females alive today have descended from an unbroken line of ancestors dating back to the time humans first evolved.
If your ancestors had missed even a single generation, you’d not be here.
The principles which enable that unbroken line in our “genetic investment portfolio” parallel the investment policies that would enable a financial investment portfolio to last for generations. And the most important of these is a concept called “portfolio diversification”.
You’ve heard of the concept even if you haven’t heard of that phrase:
“Don’t put all of your eggs
in one basket”
Ideally (from an evolutionary standpoint), a man would have multiple children with multiple women — that would improve the chance that at least some will survive whatever pitfalls the future holds for each child.
And at either end of the social spectrum (big names in the entertainment business or folks living in a ghetto), that’s not an unusual pattern. In the absence of significant constraints, Nature triumphs.
If you’re a guy, did you ever wonder why you have a roving eye? It’s because you evolved that way. That’s Nature’s way of trying to ensure that at least some of your kids survive long enough to have kids of their own: by giving you a strong urge to hump anything in a skirt.
Why should it be any
different for women?
After all, they have the same evolutionary imperative vis-à-vis diversifying their genetic portfolio.
As a result, they’re just as likely to stray as we are. It has to be that way … otherwise, with whom would we be straying? Sex is a zero-sum game (for every guy having sex with a woman who is not his wife, there necessarily has to be a woman who is having sex with a man who is not her husband).
For women, the problem is complicated. They need not only “good sperm” (that is, from a “high quality” male), they also need someone to support them and the kid or kids while raising them.
And guys can usually be corralled into that role only if they believe that the kids are their own. As a result, there is very considerable risk to a woman who strays that her primary partner will abandon her (and the kid or kids) if he discovers her infidelity.
“…
Nature (evolution) has given women some help … Their urge to stray increases considerably when they are ovulating
…”
As it turns out, Nature (evolution) has given women some help in this regard. Their urge to stray increases considerably when they are ovulating (i.e. likely to get pregnant).
Also, the likelihood of her achieving an orgasm (or several orgasms) is higher if straying while ovulating (especially if she strays with a good-looking hunk). And achieving orgasms during sex increases her chance of getting pregnant from that encounter (due to the uterine contractions which accompany female orgasm and their impact in drawing sperm into the cervix).
As a result, it takes only a very small proportion of “side investments” (straying with someone other than her mate) for a woman to diversify the fatherhood of her children. Nature (evolution) has designed her to get the most “bang for the buck” possible (so to speak) by increasing the odds that she’ll get pregnant when straying.
And it does that by increasing her urge to stray at those times where she is most likely to get pregnant.
And it works
In recent years, it has become possible to establish paternity using DNA analysis and research on this topic shows that some portion of the babies born were not fathered by the husband. I’ve heard of rates (of the hubby not being the father) being as low as 2% in very high socioeconomic neighborhoods and as high as 30% in very low socioeconomic neighborhoods.
In the article High Hormone Levels In Women May Lead To Infidelity, Study Shows on the Science Daily website (published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biology Letters), Doctoral candidate Kristina Durante and Assistant Professor of Psychology Norm Li at The University of Texas at Austin reported that:
“Women with high levels of the sex hormone oestradiol may engage in opportunistic mating. The study offers further evidence that physiological mechanisms continue to play a major role in guiding women’s sexual motivations and behavior.”
They go on to observe that women having a high oestradiol level were more likely to engage in kissing, flirting and having an affair, and that high oestradiol levels were negatively associated with a woman’s satisfaction with her primary partner.
“Our findings show that highly fertile women are not easily satisfied by their long-term partners and are motivated to seek out more desirable partners.”
“…
I don’t buy that interpretation as it conflicts with everything that I’ve seen over the past few decades
…”
They insist that this did not mean that women are likely to engage in “casual sex” as a result, but rather that they are apt to practice “serial monogamy”. However, I don’t buy that interpretation as it conflicts with everything that I’ve seen over the past few decades and would also not make theoretical sense. It’s a politically correct interpretation but not a logical one.
After all, women are fertile for only about three days per month (since sperm cells live for about 24 hours, the woman is very unlikely to get pregnant unless she has unprotected sex on the day before ovulating or during the next two days while her egg is still in transit).
And as luck would have it, oestradiol levels peak (drum roll please!) the day before ovulation. So it seems that changes in oestradiol levels may well be the causative factor in pushing women to stray when they’re ovulating.
Imagine that!
Stay tuned,
-Mack Doppler
