Disclaimer. I am writing these lines during a heartbreak. My objectivity may be impaired. I do believe, however, that despite the aching I feel in my heart, I maintain clarity over the subject matter. Let’s dive in.
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Have you ever watched The Bachelor? This line-up of women with the sole purpose of getting chosen by the one, THE bachelor?
Have you ever thought that this is a pretty much accurate representation of how heteronormative relationships work in our society?
As a woman, I learned early on that I was on the camp of potentially getting chosen. Boys were on the camp of selecting.
Flashback to my first holidays with my friends, back in the early 90s. Four feromone-high 18 -year-old first-time-holidaying-partying-without-parents girls in beautiful Paros island. Copious amounts of alcohol, little to no sleep, and ridiculous hours spent hanging out at the beach bar, a few meters from the crystal clear waters, flirting the shit out of our lives with horny young males.
How powerful it felt to be a young woman.
I vividly remember that by day 2 a couple of guys were insistingly making moves to get close to our group. I remember thinking how they had been the ones choosing. How they were the ones making the first move. It didn’t take much time before they and my group of friends became a bigger group and sex was added to the picture.
I wasn’t a big fan of this notion that I had to be (passively) chosen and not actively choosing, so in the next couple of years, I made several attempts to break the rule and hit on guys.
At uni, I went to my crush, Ed, short for Edward, a blond rosy cheeks and dark-eyes guitarist/philosophy student, and declared undeniable attraction for him. He thanked me for the courage and honesty and added that he was already in love with his one and only girlfriend, later to be his wife. They’re still together, breaking all the rules and stats of love and relationships.
Another of my epic fails was with Sofokles, a cute friend of a friend, who told me I’m so sorry Mariza I think I’m into boys, not girls. Coming out was not a thing those days, so yeah, I had no clue.
You get the idea. I was hitting wall after wall after wall until I succumbed to the idea that I’d better follow the norm and play a passive role and let men be men and choose me. It pretty much led to a relationship, marriage, and divorce. So I guess it worked, right?
I was a woman and I also wanted to choose myself
I wanted to be in the driver’s seat. However, in all my attempts to play the main character in my life, the hunter, I was failing miserably.
When men were flirting with me, showing their interest I was most of the time turning them down. Gently, turning them down nonetheless.
Thank you, I appreciate your interest but I’m afraid it’s not mutual.
I wasn’t giving them much thought or consideration thinking if they were the right one, I’d already feel attraction, I’d want to get to know them, I’d be the one hitting on them.
When none of that was there, I was simply shutting down. As I was more focused on who interested me, vs who was interested in me, I was building a wall around me and getting less and less hit by men who were sensing rejection miles away. Thank you biology.
I couldn’t understand how it worked for most other women, though. How it could be such a coincidence that the guy who wanted them, they happened to want too! It was beyond logic that this could happen as often as it did. So I started paying closer attention to better understand the game of attraction and relationships.
I started by observing my friends. And how they were falling for men after these men had initially shown interest in them.
In conversations with my friends, it became clear to me that they were accepting quite a lot of the offers on the table.
They would start dating a guy they’d never even noticed before. Sometimes they would start dating a guy and becoming a thing even though they weren’t (yet) feeling attraction. More often than not, they’d enter a relationship with a man before getting to know him well and being able to assess their compatibility.
But we were in our 20s and perhaps they were looking to get some experience in the game. And so why not, it’s not so terrible saying yes to life. Perhaps I needed to chill and say yes more often.
Scarcity and decision-making
Taking a closer look, I noticed the yes/no ratio also depended on their level of self-confidence and perceived attractiveness. How a friend who struggled with self-confidence said yes to a guy without thinking twice vs how my more confident friends considering themselves a better catch played the game adding some level of challenge for their suiters.
One thing that was common across the board, however, was that most women were saying yes or no, not from a place of choosing men, but from a place of responding to their flirt. They were reacting vs acting.
Women around me were convincing themselves that the men were a good fit for them, worthy of their attention, their time, and their companionship based on the mere fact that these men were choosing them.
Taking such important decisions about one’s life so lightly. I was flabbergasted.
If the men did well in a couple of first steps, not showing all the red flags at once, the next thing you knew they were together. Months or years down the road when the novelty and sex drive slowed down and eventually wore off, they’d see in sober eyes their partner’s annoying habits and less agreeable personality traits and would often break up with them. A new circle of getting chosen and saying yes would start.
Are we our biology?
Why can’t we break the rules and reverse the game? Why do men have to choose and women stand in line and wait to be chosen?
What was behind my failure as a hunter? It wasn’t that I wasn’t eligible or good enough. It was the vast choice these guys had and the power they had to choose which woman could win over and get offered the role to be their partner.
In this market, it seems men are investors seeking a partner to spend a good part of their life with. And women are the investment.
Where does this power come from? Why do a lot of men think of relationships as traps? That a relationship is not the best thing that can happen to them?
It’s a serious commitment — hence an investment — and it can wait for later. After they’ve had their fun. It’s coming from their natural preference for a casual thing without commitment, in other words, a natural preference for putting in less effort and enjoying more comfort.
In contrast, women typically think of an exclusive committed romantic relationship as a good thing to have. They value security and love.
Ask 10 women and they will tell you they like to share their life with a partner. Ask 10 men and they will tell you they prefer to be single and enjoy their freedom.
Watch how a man’s best friends react to the news of him getting married. Tying the knot. Watch how a woman’s best friends react to the news of her getting married. Look at them competing to catch the bouquet and be the next one in line. Have you ever seen men fighting for a bouquet that symbolizes they’re the next in line to marriage and commitment? I didn’t think so.
I’m heavily generalizing here to make a point, and mind you, my best friends were not happy when I announced my getting married, and neither did they try to catch a bouquet, nor did I throw one. Again, many rules were broken there and there are exceptions to all rules. But I still see these stereotypes going strong today.
Society has conditioned women to crave relationships and men to crave their freedom. From the magazine stories we women read in the 90s ‘How to Make Him Get Down on his knees and Propose’ to the magazine articles fed to men ‘50 things to do in bed before the age of 40,’ we’re conditioned to behave differently, view things through a different lens, and effectively value relationships and sex differently.
Most men value casual over committed relationships and most women the reverse. And here’s the catch-22.
This creates a dynamic in which once a man decides that he’s ready to commit he has a good pool of candidates to choose from. Similarly, once a woman decides to go casual, she has a good pool of candidates to choose from.
This explains why men are getting very few right swipes on dating apps, as the way these apps are built looks are prioritized over everything else, and fast decisions over well-thought ones, leaving women the lead to swipe right based on sex appeal and photogenic six-packs.
Women choosing their sexual pleasure however is still not happening as broadly as men choosing relationships. While almost every man will at some point in his life feel ready — even if he may not at all be — to enter a relationship, many women will never feel ready or willing to explore their sexuality and play the hookup game.
The majority of women, still highly influenced by well-held patriarchal beliefs, will not engage in casual sex practices deeming them unethical or inappropriate behavior.
What does this mean for men who simply look for a fun carefree commitment-free hookup? Some casual fun? He’s amidst the sea of men looking for that one woman who’s after casual sex. Cause there ain’t that many of them.
On the same dating apps, there are also these rare pearls of men, let’s say some 20% of men who are seeking a relationship. The trouble is they get so few swipes they soon give up. The remaining 80% of men who are there for casual encounters, will typically play the six-pack quick impressions game better and hit their target.
See how this works?
Sex in women’s favor. Relationships in men’s favor.
Biology allows a man to have enough sperm to fertilize thousands of women. In theory, considering hundreds of millions of sperm in one ejaculation, a man could fertilize two women per day over 40 years, amounting to 28,000 children. Go sperm!
Biology also allows men to postpone thinking about having kids and take time to focus on their careers, or simply enjoy the single life, play video games, and resort to hooking up to cover basic sexual and connection needs.
Biology puts pressure on women to settle down early and find their partner before their good looks fade and their reproductive years drift away.
Even when we’re still fertile, our fertile window is the five days leading up to ovulation, plus the day of ovulation and the day after ovulation — so about seven days in total. Whereas a man can fertilize women 365 days a year.
The moment a man decides to commit, to sacrifice his freedom, he practices his power to choose. It’s a numbers game.
Meanwhile, women in their late 20s or early 30s start to hear the tick-tack of their biological clock. They sit in line waiting for the right one.
Like the women participating in The Bachelor, these women too, are crossing their fingers in hopes that the right man will choose them.
Some are casually seeing someone and hoping that he wants to commit to a relationship. Some are in a relationship and hope he will pop the question. Some are single and are scouting men on dating apps in hopes of landing the right man for the job. Some are out there looking for a man in real life, hoping we can still meet people offline, even in 2024. Whichever is the case, a majority of women are led by their biology to take care of what needs to be taken care of.
Motherhood is not for all and for sure some women are free of this ambition and desire. They are free.
For the rest of the women who want to experience motherhood, time is of the essence. And just like in online marketing, and the message the item in your basket is low in stock, scarcity is a big factor in explaining how we choose our primary partner when supply is limited and time is ticking.
Think of a company looking to hire top talent in a saturated job market with low unemployment. You will not be surprised if they will end up internally promoting or hiring subpar candidates.
Men are fully aware of the situation. They may be dating 3 or more women and they know if one day they feel ready to commit they are in a position to choose. Women know fully well that they get to choose when it comes to sex, from a line of willing candidates.
I can feel your frustration as you read these lines. I’m frustrated too.
The paradox. We are strong at the opposite of what we want.
Thanks to our biology, men seek women who are good at reproducing (looking for support, respect, and sexual satisfaction) and women seek men who are good at parenting their future children (looking for love, safety, and security, ie relationships).
Also, thanks to our biology, testosterone and estrogen drive lust; dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin create attraction; and oxytocin and vasopressin mediate attachment. You can blame testosterone on men looking for sex so actively and oxytocin on women catching feelings and bonding quickly after having good sex.
Men have relationship power and prioritize sex, while women have sex power and prioritize relationships.
Women have more sex options while men have more relationship options.
Relationships game: the ball is in the men’s court. Sex: The ball is in the women’s court; they get to decide if and with whom they’ll offer their yummy vagina.
How do we reconcile this paradox?
Wait there’s more. Things get a little more complicated.
A lot has happened since the 90s and although women are most of the time still in a reactive role, considering and then accepting or rejecting men’s proposals, they’re also statistically more often than men to file for divorce and leave relationships that don’t work.
So men have the power to choose relationships and women have the power to choose break ups.
Interestingly enough men tend to jump quickly from one relationship to the next after a breakup while women take some more time to heal and get back on their feet.
Saying yes or deciding to stay in a marriage no longer serves as financial means as the days are long gone when women were financially dependent on men. Men, however, seem less ready to leave homecooked meals and tidy homes.
What’s happening here is these women who’ve had the marriage and kids are now in a position to take care of themselves and provide for themselves, meaning they are allowed to raise their standards and expectations.
In recent months, a ton of research articles, YouTube, TikTok content, and everything in between, are discussing the latest stats of men between ages 18 and 30 going one year without sex. Dating and relationships experts and coaches are sounding the alarm that women’s empowerment in the last couple of decades and their ever-increasing requirements and expectations of traits of their relationship partners is making this an elusive game where more and more men are not tall enough, rich enough, educated enough, sexy enough, eligible enough to meet these high-achieving womens’ relationship standards.
The relationship power is still with men. But women are gaining power in rejecting men as they are raising their standards and are less and less reliant on men.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of liberated women are exploring sex with multiple partners, open relationships, polyamory, fluidity, and so on. More and more couples are expanding their sexual repertoire with additional partners outside of the strict boundaries of their relationships.
Let’s pause for a second here and consider this; these are men and women who are getting laid in the first place. It’s not the singles. Well, it is some singles who are getting a lot of sex and most who aren’t. But I digress and that’s another article for another day.
Love is a losing game.
One I wish I never played, oh what a mess we made. Self-professed, profound till the chips were down, though you’re a gambling man, love is a losing game. Though I battle blind, love is a fate resigned, memories mar my mind, love is a fate resigned. Over futile odds and laughed at by the Gods, and now the final frame, love is losing game.
Men and women hold different cards in the love and relationships game. They are powerful in different ways and are wired to want different things. And oftentimes we battle and we fall and we hurt, and we heal and learn and get back on our feet. And sometimes we meet at a very special crossroads and we do the work and it lasts. And magic happens.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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