Men will insist that they love when women ask them out—and they do. They love the ego-rub, but they tend to devalue the woman who gives it to them, just as they’ll often lose interest in a woman who has sex with them right away. Once again, the evolutionary explanation applies. Women evolved to be the choosier sex because of the costs of pregnancy and feeding and raising any resulting child, and men co-evolved to expect female choosiness, and they value women they have to work to get.
