The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating

by David M. Buss

After menopause, women shift their effort toward parenting and grandparenting, aiding the survival and reproduction of their descendants rather than continuing to reproduce directly. Women pay for their reproductive strategy of early and rapid reproduction in the currency of a shorter period of fertility.

Roughly half of all married men pursue some extramarital mating over their lifetime, and for those who do, liaisons occur at the expense of sex with their wives. Some men continue throughout life to compete for new mates, divorcing older wives and marrying younger women. Long attributed by traditional scientists to the fragile male ego, to psychosexual immaturity, to “male menopause,” or to a culture of youth, men’s effort to mate with younger women as they age instead reflects a universal evolved desire that does not go away.

Given all the changes that befall men and women over their lifetimes, it is remarkable that in fact 50 percent of them manage to remain together through thick and thin. The lifelong convergence of interests between two genetically unrelated individuals may be the most extraordinary feat in the evolutionary story of human mating. Just as we have evolved mechanisms that draw us into conflict, we have adaptations that enable us to live harmoniously with the other sex. My lab’s massive cross-cultural study, for example, found that as men and women age they place less value on physical appearance in a mate

and more value on enduring qualities such as dependability and having a pleasing disposition—qualities important for long-term mating success. The adaptations that promote this strategic harmony between the sexes, just as much as the mechanisms that produce strife, stem from the adaptive logic of human mating.

Everything that every individual has ever done in all of human history and prehistory establishes the minimum boundary of the possible. The maximum, if any, is completely unknown.

Both sexes place a tremendous value on intelligence and dependability in a lifetime mate. Both seek long-term mates who are cooperative, trustworthy, and loyal.