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Zeb comments on Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics - Less Wrong
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Unfortunately I can't provide sources at the moment (Luke probably can), but I have seen research both sociological and anthropological showing that women and female higher primates in general have a tendency to try to mate with multiple dominate highly masculine males, sometimes secretly, while they tend to have long term pairings with less dominate, less masculine males. The theory is that the genes of the more masculine men lead to more fecund offspring, while the parenting of the less masculine men leads to higher offspring survival. In society this works out to women dating more masculine men (and testosterone is of course linked to the aggressiveness and risk taking we associate with "bad boys") prior to marriage, and then marrying less masculine men (nice guys). And if they cheat, they tend to cheat with "bad boys" and have their "nice guys" raise those kids.
EDIT: For pure anecdote, I am a nice guy (I think) who always complained about the "bad boy" thing, and now I am raising a step-daughter from my wife's youthful short term relationship with a guy everyone would still call a "bad boy." My wife is winning at natural selection! As is that jerk :(
If it makes you feel better all sorts of unpleasant people are currently winning at natural selection (no offence intended to any LWer with many children or your wife).
I have a hard time understanding how this would make anyone feel better.
Suffering is often ameliorated somewhat by knowing you are not alone in your situation.
It can also be made worse by knowing that the suffering is a direct and inevitable result of forces they cannot plausibly alter.
Awkward news from the world of science: Women with less-masculine husbands or boyfriends are more likely to lust after other men during the fertile part of their cycle than women partnered with butch guys.
That reminds me of that game that girls sometimes play "Given three choices of guys, which would you sleep with, date, or marry?"
Guys play it too.
The criteria are a little different, though.
I've played it in mixed groups, its generally about perceived personality features rather than subjective attractiveness.
I wouldn't expect this to be a recipe for honesty.
I would expect this sort of game to have difficult honesty issues even when it is a single gender. For example, if some individual has a fetish that is in some way connected to one of the individuals (say for example a celebrity that frequently wears some sort of clothing, or only one of the three falls into a racial group they have a fetish for) how likely is it that someone is going to be honest about that motivation.
That said, I agree that mixed groups will likely have more severe honesty issues.
I've never treated the game as a data collection exercise. IT is more suited to social bonding and conversation stimulation.
For more statistically useful data okcupid has done studies, as have hotornot and its various imitators.
Reading this anecdote made me wonder if it would be possible for a group of rational "nice guys" to cooperate with each other, refusing relationships with and shunning women who had previously been involved with and fathered children by "bad boys" even though each one of them would have to sacrifice the benefit they would individually get from entering into such a relationship. The idea being to make having a later father care for a baby sired by a jerk not a viable strategy for women, thus incentivizing them away from that behavior.
(I also thought about what would happen if nice guys switched to a jerk strategy until they were ready to settle down and then switched back, since that mixed strategy appeared to dominate either pure strategy, but then I realized that that would reduce the number of childless women for guys to marry, thus leading to a tragedy of the commons.)
Roughly speaking you seem to be describing the norm for a lot of historical civilisations that I'm familiar with. The consequences for siring bastard children by bad boys is far lower now than it often has been.
The origins of the madonna/whore complex?
Why would you do that? Have you thought about killing the step-daughter or something of that nature? (People, please don't reflexively downvote that suggestion.)
Wait... you mean it as a suggestion, not a query?
That made me laugh hysterically for no good reason. Oh, LW and wedrifid, how I missed ye.
No, I'm not literally suggesting murder. But it's what most animals would do.