Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love (28 page)

Of all complaints filed about sexual harassment, 93% are made by women and the remaining 7% are filed by men about harassment by other men. Occasionally there are complaints from men about sexual harassment from women, but these tend to have ulterior motives, such as one-upmanship or office politics, and are not sexual harassment. On the surface the statistics could easily show that almost all harassment is by men against women, but there are several mitigating factors: First,
women experience a higher degree of stress about what they perceive to be harassment, and second, few men report being sexually harassed by a woman—men dream about it happening! For example, David Buss found that on a 7-point scale of excitement, when a woman rubs her body against a man in a bar he’ll rate it 6.07. When a man does the same thing to a woman, she rates it as only 1.82, and this act is generally seen as a turn-off to many women.

Three out of four complaints by women are from women aged twenty to thirty-five, further showing how a woman’s childbearing potential is the key attraction factor. A small minority of complainants are older women.

Barbara Gutek, professor of psychology at the Claremont Graduate School in California, conducted a workplace study in which workers were asked for their reactions to a coworker asking them to have sex. She found that 55% of women reported that they had been sexually harassed in the last five years, whereas only 9% of men were likely to have been sexually harassed by a woman in their working lives, and hardly any reported it. She also found that 63% of women would be insulted by a sex request versus 15% of men and that 67% of men would feel flattered by the request versus 17% of women.

David Buss conducted another experiment in which he asked women to rate the degree of upset they would feel when approached by men from different status levels. Women were most offended by a request for sex by construction workers and garbage collectors (60% were upset). The offense decreased as the man’s occupation and potential for resources
improved. Successful rock stars and college graduates caused offense to only 38% of women, demonstrating the difference a man’s potential for resources plays in a woman’s decision to have sex with him.

For most women, the attraction to bad boys usually happens over a two-to three-day period when she is ovulating. Her body craves the Russell Crowe bad-guy type because aggressive men have a greater survival rating than nice guys—and she wants his genes. As we said in
Why Men Don’t Have a Clue & Women Always Need More Shoes
, dominant, high-testosterone males have always survived over the quiet, timid types, and on a primal level, this has an attraction to ovulating women. For the rest of the month, she’s happy to settle for the quiet, reliable, nurturing type.

Although a woman consciously looks for a man who can provide support and will commit to her, she also wants a man who has good genes. Unfortunately, these two requirements don’t always exist in one man. This is evidenced by current DNA tests, which reveal that around 10% of babies born in wedlock are not the offspring of the husband. This has probably been the case for centuries, but DNA testing has proved it.

In times of high stress, this phenomenon is amplified because the brain drives people to procreate in the face of their possible death. Hospital records in the United Kingdom reveal that during World War II, one in six babies born in Britain in wedlock was not the child of the husband. The combination of wartime stress and the opportunities to mate with visiting U.S. soldiers increased people’s desire to procreate.

For men, chocolate is just another food and not an addiction as it can be for so many women. Women with low serotonin
levels are the most addicted chocoholics because phenylethy-lamine (PEA)—a feel-good chemical contained in chocolate—improves their feeling of well-being. Women eat more chocolate during their periods than at most other times, and chocolate is the number one choice for recovering heroin addicts. Chocolate’s ingredients also attach to the cannabinoid receptors in the female brain, meaning that when a woman eats it, she feels the combination of both falling in love and being high on marijuana.

1. Chocolate satisfies you even when it goes soft.
   

2. You can safely have chocolate while you’re driving.
   

3. You can have chocolate anywhere (even in front of your mother).
   

4. You can have chocolate at any time of the month.
   

5. With chocolate there’s no need to fake enjoyment.
   

6. The word “commitment” doesn’t frighten chocolate.
   

7. You can have chocolate on your desk and not upset your boss.
   

8. Having chocolate doesn’t mean keeping the neighbors awake.
   

9. Chocolate doesn’t keep you awake snoring after you’ve had it.
   

10. With chocolate, size doesn’t matter.
    

It should be apparent to you by now that women do enjoy sex but for very different reasons from men. Women want to feel special, be respected, and be involved in decision making and they want their opinions to be valued. For men reading this information, if you treat women as if they were different from you in their perceptions of love and sex, you will discover a new world of female sexual response you could never have imagined.

Bob was popular. He was the only man in the nudist camp who could carry four coffees and ten doughnuts
.

Throughout this book, we have shown you the primary motivations men and women have in relation to sex and love. Based on the surveys by the evolutionary psychologists and biologists mentioned in this book about what makes a man attractive to women, here’s a collective summary of the things more than 20,000 women said were the most valuable steps a man can take to improve his Mating Rating.

Displaying commitment is a powerful attractant to women
because it implies a man’s long-term potential to share his resources with her. The top signals women use to gauge a man’s commitment are:

1. Showing concern for her problems
   . This demonstrates that his commitment may be there in times of need and that he will offer emotional support.
   

2. Consistent courting
   . Continually taking her out, buying flowers, phoning her, sending letters, and sending texts or e-mails shows that he is a good long-term prospect and is less likely simply to want casual sex. Studies have shown that the more persistent a man is in courting a woman, the more likely she will be to marry him. The crucial part of constant courtship is that the woman being pursued must have at least a mild interest in the man. Persistent courting without her interest is seen as stalking.
   

In 1989, Barkow found that the level of a man’s self-confidence is directly related to his income and therefore his resources, correlating with the studies that show that men with higher incomes have more casual sex partners. Several studies have also found that the higher a man’s confidence is, the more likely he is to approach attractive women in a club or bar. Faking confidence is also one of the tactics used by many men in an attempt to attract women, but most women are fairly good at detecting fakers. Setting clear goals to improve his abilities and resources increases a man’s genuine self-confidence, and as a result, his body produces even more testosterone, which further increases his self-confidence. A man should set goals, have a variety of interests, get into shape physically, and show he is ambitious.

Men who act compassionately toward a woman, show sensitivity to her needs, and do helpful things for her indicate that they will be there for her in the long term and will direct resources to her. Most men whose goal is quick, short-term sex understand this and will fake kindness by acting more polite, considerate, and compassionate than they really are. It is a tactic that men seeking casual sex will use. This is the man who is over the top with attention to a woman he has just met.

From a range of women’s magazines, we collated the results of fifty-three surveys that asked women what they found attractive in a man. Other than fidelity, here are the top five:

1. Showing empathy and understanding
   

2. Listening
   

3. Displaying good manners
   

4. Caring
   

5. Offering help
   

These are also the least expensive tactics used by men to attract women into brief sexual encounters. Men looking for casual sex do so by feigning the things a woman looks for in a permanent partner and by acting out the virtues she wants in the “right” man. Pretending to have long-term intentions works well only for men—women never use it.

Many women understand that to attract a man, they need to make him feel strong, so they feign inability to carry a heavy bag, open a jar, or kill a spider. When describing the men they are attracted to, 92% of women say they like a man with a well-developed chest and arms—in other words, he looks like an animal catcher. Here in the twenty-first century, health clubs and gyms are full of men grunting and groaning and pumping iron in an attempt to make their bodies appear
as if they are capable of catching animals and fighting enemies. A highly muscled male body has little real practical purpose nowadays, but men know that women admire this look. A set of perfectly defined abdominal muscles has no real functional value today other than for women to admire.

To attract women, men will instinctively display their hunting skills in things like sports, pressing weights, flexing their muscles, carrying heavy items, and opening jars. Studies show that athletes have around double the casual sex that nonathletes have. So if you are a man, join a health club or start your own exercise regime and make yourself fit and strong. As we’ve said, lazy, fat guys shaped like an apple get beautiful women only in the movies—and movies are fiction. The fitter you are, the more your self-esteem and confidence will rise and the more high-quality mates you will attract.

Anthropologists John Townsend and Gary Levy from Syracuse University conducted an experiment to demonstrate the power of expensive clothing as an attraction signal to women. They showed women photographs of men wearing high-status clothing, such as three-piece suits, navy blazers, white shirts with designer ties, and Rolex watches. The women were asked to rate their level of attraction to the men and how likely they would be to have coffee with each man, go on a date with him, have sex with him, or marry him. The women were also shown pictures of the same men dressed in low-status clothing, such as T-shirts and jeans, singlets, baseball caps, and a Burger King uniform. Overall, the women said they would consider having coffee, dating, having sex with, or marrying the men in the high-status clothing but would not consider doing the same with the men dressed in the low-status clothing. These experiments have been replicated in other cultures, producing the same results. The bottom line is that the hunter with the best hunting skills, the most cattle, or the best beads and bracelets gets the most women.