The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating

by David M. Buss

TREMENDOUS BENEFITS FLOW to couples who remain committed. From this unique alliance come efficiencies that include complementary skills, a division of labor, and a sharing of resources, as well as mutual benefits such as a unified front against mutual enemies, a stable home environment for rearing children, and a more extended kin network. To reap these benefits, people must be able to retain the mates they have succeeded in attracting. People who fail to stay together incur severe costs. Bonds between extended kin are ripped apart. Essential resources are lost. Children may be exposed to potentially dangerous stepparents. Failure to keep a committed mate can mean wasting all the effort expended in the selection, attraction, courting, and commitment process. Men who fail to prevent the defection of their mate risk losing access to valuable childbearing capabilities and maternal investment. Women who fail to retain their mate risk losing the mate’s resources, protection, and paternal investment. Both sexes incur opportunity costs, the lost opportunities for exploring other mating prospects. Given the high rate of divorce in Western cultures, and the existence of divorce in all cultures, it is obvious that staying together is neither automatic nor inevitable.