Why Women Have Sex (19 page)

—heterosexual woman, age 20

It is unlikely that Kate Moss is truly a sexual competitor of this woman. But the media bombard men and women with images of celebrities, sometimes with deleterious consequences. Research has documented that men repeatedly exposed to images of attractive women report lower levels of love and commitment to their regular partners, and
men who frequently view sexual pornography often become dissatisfied with the physical appearance and sexual performance of their sexual partners. Women repeatedly shown photographs of attractive women suffer in self-esteem. As Mary Schmich captured it in her “Wear Sunscreen”
Chicago Tribune
column, “Do not read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.” So although most women are not in literal sexual rivalry with the cover girls of the world, in a very real sense gorgeous models and movie stars become competitors by lowering women’s self-esteem and reducing the love and commitment of partners. In our psychological world, we are surrounded by imaginary as well as actual sexual rivals.

Using sex to lure a man out of an existing relationship can, of course, fail. Other women become leery of befriending women known to be mate poachers, and the failed poacher may develop a reputation as “the other woman.” Even if a woman succeeds in luring the desired mate away from his existing partner, she may suffer anxiety about how faithful her poached mate will actually be to her. After all, if you’ve succeeded in luring someone away from a committed relationship with sex, you have first-hand evidence that the person is susceptible to external sexual advances!

One retaliatory tactic has an impact on why women have sex: exacting revenge for mate poaching by having sex with the mate poacher’s partner. In our study, women mentioned having sex to get revenge on a cheating mate as well as on the mate poacher, who in both cases was the woman’s best friend:

My husband cheated with my best friend, so I had an affair with her husband for three months. I did not feel guilty at all.

—heterosexual woman, age 44

I had sex with my ex-boyfriend whom I knew still had feelings for me even though I did not feel the same. My ex-boyfriend had begun dating my best friend and I wanted to get even with her as well as with him.

—heterosexual woman, age 22

Women also use sex to exact revenge on sexual partners who succumb to the temptations of a mate poacher, focusing the blame entirely on their mates rather than the poachers:

My partner cheated on me once so I thought if I cheated back on him that would make us even, so I went out with some friends one night and ran into a high school friend and we ended up having sex. My partner never found out but it made me feel like I got my revenge.

—heterosexual woman, age 34

And some women took special delight in using sex to get revenge:

My ex was an asshole to me, so when we got out of a relationship, I had sex with his friend. It was fun and I enjoyed it because I knew it would piss him off.

—heterosexual woman, age 22

My husband cheated on me a few years ago. I was a lot bigger after having our daughter so I felt incredibly worthless. In only six months I had lost my weight and cheated on him with his best friend just so I could get the same satisfaction that he did when he cheated on me.

—predominantly heterosexual woman, age 27

The fact that many instances of sex for revenge involve sleeping with a former partner’s best friend highlights the delight and relish with which the vengeance is taken—in this case, retribution for allowing a mate poacher to succeed. It exemplifies one of the many facets of sexual competition—rivalry with other women for desirable sex partners, struggles to attract desirable committed mates, antagonism toward imaginary rivals from visual media, and the insidious threat of sexual interlopers. Because problems of sexual competition have occurred repeatedly over human history, evolution has fashioned powerful defenses that help women to combat them. One defense comes in the form of a much maligned emotion—sexual jealousy—a topic to which we now turn.

Think’st thou I’d make a life of jealousy,
To follow still the changes of the moon
With fresh suspicions? No; to be once in doubt,
Is once to be resolved.

—
Othello
, William Shakespeare

 

In this chapter, we’re going to look at what happens when rivalry turns defensive, and jealousy—and provoking jealousy in a mate—enters a woman’s sexual motivations. As one woman in our study put it:

I had been sleeping with someone (and not dating them) for more than six months. My partner, his best friend, and I were drinking together one night. My partner fell asleep and his best friend “seduced” me. I decided I would have sex with him to make my partner realize that other people wanted me.

—heterosexual woman, age 19

Understanding why sexual jealousy exists has perplexed social scientists for decades. The traditional and long-held view is that jealousy is an immature emotion, a character defect, and a sign of low self-esteem. In the early 1930s, the well-known anthropologist Margaret Mead posited that jealousy is little more than wounded pride: “Jealousy is not a barometer by which depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity . . . it is a negative, miserable state of feeling, having its origin in the sense of insecurity and inferiority.” Other researchers have joined her in contending that jealousy is primarily fueled by damaged self-esteem and the fear of loss or violation to one’s “property.” Those who endorse this view typically believe jealousy is largely a product of culture, and consequently varies greatly from culture to culture.

At the other end of the spectrum, evolutionary psychologists have proposed that sexual jealousy is a highly functional adaptation. Jealousy, according to this view, is an evolved emotion that gets triggered when there is a threat to a valued relationship. In romantic relationships, threats can come from outside the relationship, as when a mate poacher sexually hits on your partner or attempts to lure your partner away from the relationship. Threats can come when a partner signals cues to sexual infidelity or expresses signs of leaving the relationship. And threats can come from the dynamics of the relationship itself, as when an argument creates a rift that breaks down trust, or when one partner’s life circumstances change to create a discrepancy in desirability. Jealousy functions, then, to alert a person to a threat; to devote attention to the sources of the threat; and ultimately to motivate action to ward off the threat.

In general, the more insecure a person is, the more dependent he or she is on a partner. The more threatened their relationship is, the more intense the feelings of jealousy. Consistent with this account, several women in our study wrote about having sex out of jealous feelings, mentioning that low self-esteem played a role in their decision:

I was dating someone and they had just broken up with me. I was very upset and felt rejected and like my self-esteem had been hurt.
Perhaps a week later I went on a blind date and had sex, and told the girl I had been dating about it (we were still friends) hoping to make her jealous. I didn’t find the woman I had sex with to make her jealous [to be] attractive and would not have had sex with her if I had not felt I had something to prove.

—gay/lesbian woman, age 21

It’s not something I feel comfortable talking about, and definitely not something I’m proud of. But in the past, when I’ve just gotten out of a relationship and my self-esteem is at a low point, I’ve had sex thinking about the person I used to be with in the relationship. It’s like, “what would they think if they could see me, wouldn’t they be jealous, wouldn’t they wish we were still together?” It’s a pretty pathetic line of thought, and it shows I’m obviously not over the other person.

—heterosexual woman, age 19

What triggers jealousy and how people respond to it show some similarity and some difference across cultures. In one study, researchers interviewed more than two thousand college students from seven countries—the United States, Ireland, Mexico, Hungary, the Netherlands, the former Soviet Union, and the former Yugoslavia—about how they would feel viewing their sexual partner engaging in a variety of acts with another person. They were asked to contemplate relationship transgressions including flirting, kissing, dancing, hugging, having sex, and engaging in sexual fantasies. Some behaviors—flirting, kissing, and having sex—elicited intense jealousy among all cultures, while others—dancing, hugging, and sexual fantasies—generally triggered weaker emotional reactions in all cultures.

There were, however, some interesting cultural differences in what evoked jealousy. For example, while Americans were not terribly bothered by a partner hugging someone else, Hungarians got their feathers seriously ruffled when thinking about it. Slovaks expressed intense jealousy over flirting but were the least of all groups to be upset by a partner’s sexual fantasies or kissing someone else. The Dutch apparently take kissing, hugging, and dancing in stride, but a partner who fantasizes sexually
about another person sets off alarms. Compared to the other countries surveyed, dancing with another person was most upsetting to people from the Soviet Union.

Cross-cultural studies of jealousy have shown that sexual infidelity is most likely to be viewed as threatening under certain conditions: 1) if the marriage is required for companionship, status, or survival; 2) if sex is hard to attain outside of marriage; 3) if property is privately owned; and 4) if having children is highly valued. The situations of two tribes described by psychologist Elaine Hatfield illustrate how these conditions have played out in the world. Among the Ammassalik Eskimos, everything required to survive—food, clothing, shelter, and tools—had to be produced. They were completely self-sufficient and depended on one another, and especially on a competent mate, to survive. The Ammassalik Eskimos were also known for their extreme jealousy—not surprising, given that a sexual rival could mean a threat to their survival. In stark contrast to the Ammassalik tribe, the Toda tribe of India practiced a clan economy whereby private property did not exist, clan members shared tasks, and sex was abundantly available. The Toda considered marriage a luxury, not a necessity, and the most common form of marriage was something called “fraternal polyandry,” meaning that when a woman married, she became the wife of all of her husband’s brothers.