SUMMARY: A long post with my theory as to why it matter if women sleep around and why it matter who men sleep around with.

This post is in response to some recent threads discussing partner counts for men and women and asking why it matters if women have high counts and in which some responded that it is always good for men to add another notch. My intent is to help explain the former while showing that the latter is not always correct and to provide a bit of theory for the newbies.

This is based off of my understanding of evolutionary psychology (and personal observations). I'm not going to take the time to go over all of the theories, though for the uninitiated, Rollo is a good place to start reading on the subject.

Men and women have competing sexual/reproductive strategies which evolved to counter consistent environmental and societal pressures. It is a bit simplistic to say that each developed a strategy based on two competing aspects, but it is accurate enough for my purposes.

TRP has long and often argued women pursue the alpha fux/beta bux strategy, so I won't explain it. Men developed their own. It is Opportunity/Investment. That should be fairly explanatory, but just in case, Men can best ensure their progeny's survival by impregnating as many women as possible even if it means impregnating far more women than he could ever provide for and therefore provides little or no assistance in child rearing. He could also heavily invest in a few women thereby exchanging opportunities to impregnate other women in exchange for the opportunity to maximize the success rate of a smaller group of children. He could also engage in a mix of the two strategies.

Inherent in both men's and women's strategies is the competition for the best possible genes. Women want to be impregnated by the best possible genes. The tension forms when she factors into it the need for provision. Being left high and dry by the uber alpha is not always the best option. Likewise, men also want the best genes. The better the genes of the female the more likely he will choose to invest in her and the children. The better her genes, the more willing he becomes to exclude other women (perhaps not to complete exclusivity, but to a greatly reduced number; think harem). All of this is played out on a social stage. Success relies, at least in part, in how others view you (SMV). And, it is all driven by biology.

What this means is that women should be willing to risk losing commitment in exchange for better genes. Men will be willing to risk losing multiple partners for better genes. How each handles this risk goes a long way in determining SMV.

A woman who sleeps with lots of men indicates, from a biological perspective, that she has low genetic value. Her genes are so low value she cannot pass up the opportunities to capitalize on these reproductive opportunities with genetically superior men, even though commitment is extremely unlikely. Her biology overrides her capacity for self concern in favor of her unborn child's. The greater her number the clearer the indication of what her biology is making her do. Biology will out. Her own biology knows it's value and is making it clear. She has low quality genes. She occupies the quantity, not quality, niche of the market. She can only get low quality men to commit. Given how low her quality is and how willing her biology is to override herself concerns, commitment is a terrible option for a man. He loses opportunity in exchange for low quality. And, she's likely to cheat because his low quality can't satisfy her biological demands.

Men go the other way. We have lot's of opportunity, but only if we are good enough. We take lots of risks to rise so have to truly make good on our successes. This is typically done through multiple partners. This is best for the species. It is better if only the best reproduce as opposed to all reproducing. However, if he should meet a very high quality women, with very high quality genes, then commitment becomes a very viable option. Through commitment he can mate guard, which maximizes his access to her eggs, and resource invest which maximizes quality gene expression in his kids. Half a dozen extremely high quality children will likely do more than several dozen mixed quality mutts. This is how men use and show their SMV. The ability to mate shows they have exhibited gene value. The more partners they can mate with the better the gene value (they are so valuable they can mate even without offering commitment). The better the women they mate with the higher the gene value. The ultimate expression in male gene value is the ability to mate with multiple high value women. This also means that all notch counts are NOT equal. Sleeping with 3 high quality women does more for a man's SMV than does sleeping with two dozen low quality women. There's also risk in how a man does this. If he sleeps with many low quality women, but no high value women, it may be perceived not that he doesn't have to commit but that he isn't worth committing to; he's just a bottom feeder because he can't do better. Stated another way, his genes are so low quality all women are upgrades for him so there is no benefit in committing to just one woman so his biology predisposes him to a strictly opportunistic mating strategy..

This also sets up alpha widows and alpha orbiters. If a woman hooks up with a very high alpha, her biology never forgets. It will ALWAYS be predisposed to chase that alpha without thoughts of commitment, or even thoughts as to the commitment she has and may lose. It never goes away, it can only be eclipsed. This causes problems for men, after all, if he could eclipse the prior alpha, he wouldn't have needed to commit to her.

This also leads to alpha orbiting in men. A low value man will always offer commitment to a woman, or women, who were above him. No matter what he may have at home, he'll still try to orbit the high value women. Who he's with is not quality, just quantity, and he'll be biologically predisposed to jettison her in exchange for quality any chance he has, these are the notorious "nice guys."