Monogamy Can Be A Calculated Sexual Strategy

Reader Question: I’m not sure I have a specific question for you, so much as a general topic. How do you deal with random other men in your spouses life and what are the appropriate reactions? I don’t mean male friends… we don’t believe in that. Rather, I’m talking about the randomly assigned project partner or the TA in her graduate class; the occasional substitute yoga teacher; basically any man that she cannot avoid, but isn’t going to be a complete stranger either.

I try my best to be aware of it all, without ever tipping my hand and asking too obviously. Should I just not worry about it at all? Is there a specific way to handle it that you’d recommend? What are your thoughts on these types of unavoidable situations?

For background (although I would assume this question can also be answered more generally for everyone), we’re newly married (less than a year).  She’s naturally friendly and outgoing, which sometimes bothers/worries me around strangers, but she also comes from a traditional family, is a first generation American, and cooks/cleans/runs errands since I work. I have a good job, and almost certainly have a higher sex rank than her by a point or two, but had almost no success with women before her despite being handsome and smart because of a lack of confidence with girls (I didn’t discover ‘game’ until after we began dating). I was her first sex partner and she might as well have been mine (I had a handful of one night stands that I look back on with shame due to awkwardness and poor performance), and there’s plenty of passion in the bedroom.

Athol:  You don’t have anything to worry about with these guys.

Also it’s impossible to police her over incidental interaction with other men and trying to will start to be viewed as controlling and needy. Speaking of The Police, how creepy is this song?

The defense against incidental contact becoming something more, is you maintaining a good Sex Rank and her being sexually moral/conservative – and it sounds like she is.

Reader Reply: That’s what I figured, but the confirmation from you is helpful.

Athol: I didn’t go into the exact reason in my exchange why this is so, but I’ll extend it now. Monogamy is as I’ve said many times before, a sexual strategy. We are all wired for the possibility of opportunistic sex outside of our primary relationship partner. The shorthand for such sex is usually ”EPC” for “Extra-Pair Copulation”.

Because we all invest a lot of time and energy into our primary relationship, and we would like our primary partner to remain faithful to us, most people in relationships typically advance the default position of monogamy as being a good thing and their moral viewpoint as well as their personal preference. While this is not exactly a lie, it is a bit of relationship spin control.

However before one breaks away from the actual practice of monogamy and actually has an EPC rather than just idly dreaming about one, there is a serious weighing up of the risks involved before going ahead with it. The people that say “it just happened” are full of it… it never “just happens”, the feelings may just happen, but actual action to do it always is decided on with the deliberation of a chess move. The EPC always risks some form of discovery and potential loss of the primary relationship.

So for our couple in question, let’s take his claim he is two points higher than her at face value and say she is a 6 and he is an 8. For her to benefit from an EPC and do better than an 8, she’s got to pull the interest of a 9 or a 10. That’s going to take a fair bit of work to pull off and very likely she will tip her hand that she’s trying to EPC with someone. That of course would risk her relationship with her 8 husband, who is frankly already a far better primary partner than she deserves or could ever hope to replace. So the risk/benefit decision strongly suggests that she not try and find an EPC.

The majority of men she will have incidental contact with will be in the 4-8 range anyway. So none of them are actually better than her husband. So it is essentially convenient and efficient that she simply have an enjoyable day and come home to her husband for her sexual needs.

The other thing is that she is sexually conservative by nature/upbringing, so when she makes a risk/benefit decision about having an EPC, she weights her decision toward the staying monogamous option. Or in other words, a male 9 asking for a quick fling with a female 6 (who has a male 8 partner) is going to have a reasonable chance at succeeding. But if the female 6 is sexually conservative, she is far less likely to crack for a 9. She might crack for a full male 10, but that’s very likely a moot point as male 10′s have to be having a slow day to take the time out for a female 6.

So a sexually conservative female 6 paired with a male 8, is going to have an extremely high likelihood of staying faithful – even if offered discrete sexual opportunity. The one thing that could screw it all up though, is excessive mate guarding behavior where the male 8 acts like a male 4 or 5 and hovers around her trying to intercept every other male approaching her for sexual reasons or not. Acting like you’re on the verge of losing her will make her start to think that she is the hotter half of the couple… and therefore could do better.

So if you are truly hotter than her, just relax and be yourself. It’s rational for her that she stays faithful to you. For her the monogamy sexual strategy is a winning plan. After all, she’s a female 6 that landed a permanent 8, so that totally rocks for her. Though of course she’ll just call it being in love and being a moral person…

…which is also true. So enjoy it.

So back to our reader asking the question. She’s probably so playfully chatty and “up” with the whole world because she can’t stop thinking about you… cue her theme song.