Acidus wrote:

In case you missed the memo (or the stares in Junior high...)

Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.

I like beautiful AND brainy!

The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.

The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.

"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them"

I'm kinda amazed everyone is just starting to catch up to this. It's really the roots of why we do what we do in the dating world. A few hundred years of evolution summed up in a few studies. Women like men who provide. Men like women who are likely to provide more offspring.

Catonic wrote:

Acidus wrote:

In case you missed the memo (or the stares in Junior high...)

Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.

I like beautiful AND brainy!

The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.

The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.

"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them"

I'm kinda amazed everyone is just starting to catch up to this. It's really the roots of why we do what we do in the dating world. A few hundred years of evolution summed up in a few studies. Women like men who provide. Men like women who are likely to provide more offspring.

this is particularly personally relevant because:

a) I'm 35
b) I've been married before
c) I have a toddler daughter out of wedlock, and I'd like to have more children. Preferably while I can still pick them up.
d) Having been in LTR's almost my entire life with women who are older than me, I've recently had to switch 'demographics' to the other side, since Plan A wasn't working so well.

I would agree that this theory is probably more true than not. Even in this modern age, our primordial tendencies can still be apparent. But I would also caution that mating rituals are not so easily explained.

Our current societal state does require quite a bit more complexity. For one, women are not solely dependent on men for well... pretty much anything. This is a fairly recent phenomenon (what, 100 years? maybe?) so it's still fresh, but in upper middle classes, it's pretty visible.

Two, the role of men in relationships has also changed. We're much more involved in child rearing, emotional support, household management and planning. The lines are very blurred. So in order to find a good mate, there's a LOT more compromise involved in modern relationships than previously. That's one reason why the divorce rate is so high. Partners have a much harder time coming to agreement on all the minutiae. In the past, it was much more binary.

Another big reason why divorce is much higher (IMO) is because couples today have WAAAAYYY more options. I mean, people just look better nowadays. Exude sexual tension more freely. We're surrounded by sex. And not the animals on the farm kinda sex. I'm talking highly stylized, targeted, and survey grouped to death sex. It's much harder to concentrate on your mate when you're constantly being bombarded with other options and so are they. The world appeals to wondering eyes and never quenched thirsts. This gets used a lot to explain men's penchant for infidelity as biological. But I think that men were looking for fertile mates to procreate with and that was it. Polygamy is for sadists. Men kinda like to know what they're coming home to is going to be reliable.