promiscuity as it relates to the field of evolutionary psychology/biology

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend on female promiscuity and how it may or may not serve a woman who is trying to formulate a partnership with a man. Much of my thoughts on the subject were colored by things that I've read through the years as promiscuity relates to the field of evolutionary psychology/biology. When you think along these lines, you must suspend your modern views (formulated over the past 100 years), and look at this through the lens of human evolution (the past 1.3M years). We are a product of our past and thus wired towards certain predispositions, whether we like it or not. I thought my notes on the subject were interesting enough to share. They are as follows with my conclusion at the end.

A recently released study by Judith Easton, notes that women in their 30s-early 40s are significantly more sexual than women in their 20s (this includes women who are married). Though there is speculation that this may be because prevailing cultural attitudes towards women having casual sex in this age category is lessened, the evolutionary thinking behind this is that, a woman in this age category is more likely to carry on her genetic code is she is putting herself out there. Given that for most of human history 50% of a woman's progeny would die before becoming sexually mature themselves, it was necessary for her to continue to increase her likelihood of childbearing before her fertility waned.

The desire to have sex (and fall in love) is propelled by a set of hormones that happen in your brain. Namely, dopamine, norepinepherine, and oxitocin. Here's an article on the subject, but there Helen Fisher discusses this in great depth in her book, "Why we love: The nature and chemistry of romantic love". When you have sex, you get massive shots of dopamine in the head. Dopamine, of course, is a highly addictive component of why people become addicted to something. It's the pleasure hormone. Oxytocin helps with attachment. When a woman has sex she gets very large doses of it - thus, women are far more likely to become attached to a man after having sex with him. Men get the oxytocin thing too, but not in such great quantities. An extrapolation here is that you can get addicted to the dopamine highs. If you physically NEED to have sex all the time, then you're probably after alot of the highs that you're getting from these hormones. Of course, biology and evolution have programmed us to seek out dopamine through sex in efforts to perpetuate ourselves.

In a number of studies that have been done, they have found that after a man has sex with a woman, his sexual attraction towards her goes down significantly. The theory for why this happens is called the "Affective Shift Hypothesis" and it goes like this.... Men who are able to have sex and then leave a potential relationship without getting involved, open themselves up to the possibility of having multiple partners (and procreating more) while limiting the number of resources that he would spend on the progeny. Thus men have evolved to have a negative change of perception of a woman’s sexual attractiveness following sex promoting a hasty post-copulatory departure. Secondarily, a hasty departure (not getting involved) would also reduce the risk of retaliation by a regular male partner of a woman should she be already mated. Here is one of many papers on this subject.

Ergo, once a woman has given a man what he's biologically programmed for, there isn't incentive to get to know her better. Thus a long term relationship would be hard to formulate.

In the "Female Brain" Louann Brizendine posits an extrapolating theory that a woman who is quick to hop in bed with a man would be more likely to cuckold him. Thus a female quick to bed him isn't as desirable to stick around and spend his resources on. This was also reflected in the book, "Promiscuity: The evolutionary history of sperm competition".

Interestingly, it didn't take long for me to find a guy wondering why he was so disgusted by women after having sex with them here on a men's chatter forum: http://www.theattractionforums.com/newbie-discussion-forum/108621-disgusted-girl-after-sex.html

More fun facts:

I love this paper, "Human Mating Strategies". To increase the likelihood of men being able to copulate with multiple partners the mechanisms that seem to have evolved to help increase their odds:

• Men will dramatically lower their standards (agreeing to have sex with women they don’t necessarily find attractive) to have sex with someone in a short term arrangement (Buss & Schmitt, 1993).
• Show a marked decrease in attraction to a sex partner immediately following sexual intercourse, perhaps to facilitate a hasty post-copulation departure (Haselton & Buss, 2001);
• Report exaggerating the depth of their feelings to gain sexual access (Buss, 1994);
• Report that they would have an extramarital affair if they knew that no one would find out (for reviews of this evidence, see Schmitt et al., 2001).

From another paper: Studies of the content and response rates to personals ads also confirm the results found with expressed preferences. Women mentioning physical attractiveness and young age as part of their self-description in their ads receive significantly higher response rates than women who are older or who fail to mention anything about their physical attractiveness. Conversely, men who mention excellent financial resources in their self-descriptions in their ads received a higher response rate from women than men who fail to mention this attribute (Baize & Schroeder, 1995).

I guess, my conclusion from the things I've read through the years: If you want to increase your odds of creating a 'pair bond', then it would behoove you to resist sex long enough that attraction is established physically, emotionally, etc. But not waiting so long that you aren't enjoying the beauty comes with human sexual expression.