Why You’re Struggling & Confused About Modern Dating | Ancestral Mating Strategies VS Modern Mating

6 Million Years Ago: Free For All Promiscuity 

How relational dynamics have changed. Six million years ago, open promiscuity was the norm to maximize survival and genetic lineage, living in multi-male/female groups with mating biased towards high-status males, which helps us adapt more quickly. This is a discriminatory system where women are promiscuously attracted by the very top 20% of attractive men.

4 Million Years Ago: Pair Bonding

Four million years ago, some species developed a need for pair bonding. If males contribute more than just genes, then the group gains a greater survival advantage. How did this begin with males becoming more of the providers? Around this time, we hypothesize high-status males kept harems, providing for many females, and/or low-status males would offer provisioning and protection for females to gain a competitive advantage over high-status men.

Hence, low-status men would bias toward pair bonding and longer-term relationships. Because initially, it would never make sense for high-status men to go along with the transition from promiscuous mating to pair bonding. It is more likely that low-status men, excluded from mating, could offer protection and provisioning in exchange for exclusive sex with one woman (monogamy) so ‘I know your offspring are mine.’ So, yes, the monogamy that women so heavily defend today may have been created by low-status men. A hilarious irony. Then, the females had to make a trade-off: do you want the good genes from the best genetic males, or do you want a low-status male with lesser gene quality but someone who can help with provisioning, support with child raising, and protection?

2 Million Years Ago: Polygamy 

Two million years ago, most Homo communities consisted of mostly monogamous females and males, and a small number of polygamists and promiscuous maters. Why does polygamy still exist? Because it will always be beneficial in some instances for females to choose the superior genes of a high-status male and accept the sexual trade-off rather than accept a lower-status male. This is why even today, some women are fine with their husbands having multiple girlfriends (whether agreed upon understanding or something they put up with because they get the good genes AND the superior protection/provisioning).

From 12,000 Years Ago: Heroic Love

From 12,000 years ago, the beginning of the agricultural revolution to 1000 AD, a woman had to be ready to submit to the greater warrior, known as ‘heroic love’. Because there weren’t as many state structures that could protect people. Men would be killed and enslaved, and women would be raped and/or captured. So, if women wanted the chance to survive and protect their children, they had to submit to the man who killed their father/husband. In the meantime, you would have elite individuals who would hoard women as wives, concubines, and sex slaves. The low-value men did not have access to copulation. They were driven in ancient times to, when they had a stronger position, go to their neighbors, kill the men, and take their women. Polygamous mating drove a lot of war and social instability.

The Advent of Monogamy

The Roman empire, from 27 BC to 476 AD, played around with monogamy. Around 1075, the Gregorian reform would take place, and churches wanted to grab more power. If you can control their mating, sexual behavior, and marriages, it gives you a lot of power over powerful men. This is when they dissolved Europe’s tribes by prohibiting cousin marriage, changing inheritance laws, and imposing lifelong monogamy. The churches successfully dissolved kin groups (social structures based on shared ancestry and marriage) like nothing else had before.

Gregorian Reform on Monogamy: How The Church Changed Monogamy

Before the Gregorian Reform, many priests and even bishops were married or involved in concubinage. The church’s stance on marriage was not as strict or as universally enforced as it would become. The reform aimed to sanctify the clergy by enforcing celibacy, thereby ensuring that their full attention was dedicated to their spiritual duties, free from family distractions and concerns about inheritance, which often led to church positions becoming hereditary.

In the context of monogamy and marriage, the reform solidified the Church’s stance on the indissolubility of marriage and its sanctity as a sacrament. This further emphasized the importance of monogamous unions within Christian society. By advocating for clerical celibacy and a stricter adherence to monogamous marriage, the Gregorian Reform sought to elevate the moral and spiritual standards of the church and its followers.

This had a profound effect on European society, gradually leading to a wider acceptance and enforcement of monogamous marriage as the norm, not just within the clergy but also among the laity. It reinforced the idea that marriage was a sacred union between one man and one woman, a concept that would continue to influence Western legal and moral norms regarding marriage for centuries.

12th Century 1100 – 1200: Courtly Love

Courtly love, emerging from romances and ballads of the 12th century, represented the one true love. This concept was the antithesis of heroic love, exaggerating the emotion of love as something incredibly strong and irresistible, lasting a lifetime. This ideal was meant to discourage high-status men from being polygamous, shifting priorities to not only being great warriors but also great lovers and seducers, skilled in sophisticated social interactions, including flirting.

Why Did the Marriage Age Increase? From teens/early 20s to late 20s, the marriage age increased. Why? Because the churches dissolved kin groups. Without the need to move in with kin, individuals began to accumulate resources, pushing the marriage age up to allow more time for this. This shift also shortened people’s fertility range.

1400s: The Sexual Laxness

The 15th century witnessed sexual laxness, where people engaged in more promiscuous sex. This behaviour was largely due to the environment’s inability to support a larger population following the Black Death plague.

1500: Tightening of Sexual Norms

By 1500, the population had been rebuilt, leading to a tightening of sexual norms. Puritanism emerged, promoting a modest, disciplined lifestyle to prevent Europeans from having too many children. Female sexuality, once celebrated, now became vilified. Women who were lustful were aligned with Satan. This shift was a response to overpopulation, addressed either through infanticide (fourth-trimester abortion) or demonizing female sexuality. But why focus on women and not men? Because women were seen as the sexual selectors.

Women’s Rights

From ancient times, marriages were decided by others. However, the church’s imposition of a woman’s right to consent to marriage began a shift towards female emancipation in the West. Women, though still often coerced into marriages, gained the leverage to say no.

1500-1700: Companion Love

During this period, the ideology was that a man and woman should marry for pragmatic reasons, such as running a farm and keeping their children alive. Whether they liked each other was secondary. This was a very pragmatic ideology that focused on submitting to the needs of the family and community without giving in to erotic or romantic impulses.

1750: Second Sexual Revolution of Individual Choice

Present-day mating dysfunction can be explained by our lack of evolutionary adaptation to regimes of individual choice. Traditionally, mates were selected by families or communities, not individuals.

This era saw individuals becoming entitled to make their own mating decisions. The commercial revolution facilitated this, with people working as servants in their youth for cash and moving away from family to accumulate resources for marriage.

Understanding courtship and flirting is relatively new. Before 1750, since marriages were arranged, these skills were less necessary. A handsome man who slept around was seen as a threat to the arranged marriage structure. However, in just a few hundred years, this perception has shifted dramatically, with such behavior now often celebrated.

1700s: Romantic Century

There was a significant increase in illegitimate births, ranging from doubling to quadrupling.

High numbers of lower-class women gained the freedom to make their own mating decisions, a skill their parents and ancestors lacked, particularly in assessing mate value.

Consequently, high-status men often courted these women, promising marriage, engaging in sexual relationships, and then abandoning them.

In Stockholm, Sweden, 50% of childbirths were by unwed mothers.

Late 1700s: Liberty Love

The emergence of the Casanova ideology, where people sought and enjoyed sex for its own sake, encouraged higher promiscuity. This trend placed a significant burden on women, particularly because contraception was not available. Some high-status men took advantage of impoverished women and then abandoned them.

1850: Romantic Love

As a response to the social ramifications of previous trends, there was a shift back to the idea that men and women should only have sex within the confines of marriage.

This shift re-prioritized the stability of the romantic relationship to avoid female relational insecurity. Romantic love became about sharing a life together.

1960s: Third Sexual Revolution

Today: Confluent Love (1850-Today)

First introduced in Scandinavian literature in 1839, this mating ideology emphasizes gender equality, convenience, reward, and self-realization – a union makes sense only as long as both partners are mutually beneficial.

This could be for opportunistic casual sex or a romantic relationship, as long as there is an emotional connection or other benefits.

The idea is not of lifelong commitment but of staying together as long as desired by both parties.

This ideology could only thrive once contraception became widely available, as it would have otherwise placed an excessive burden on women.

Post WWII: Peak of Romantic Love

Post-World War II, due to economic prosperity, the romantic utopia of marrying young and building a life together flourished.

However, this romantic utopia also revealed its shortcomings: love does not always last a lifetime, and the idealized concept of staying at home was not fulfilling for all women.

1970s: Disintegration of the Modern Marriage Pattern

• Divorce rates began to increase.
• The average age at which people married started to rise.
• There was an increase in casual sex outside of marriage.