I’ve always had unwritten rules about who you should and shouldn’t date.
Friends’ exes are out, for example.
So is asking someone out when you know a girlfriend is already interested in him.
Hitting on a girlfriend’s guy when they are already dating is definitely out.
In fact, in my books, hitting on any guy who’s already attached or married even if you’re not friends with his partner is a no-no. It’s just bad karma.
But it seems karma is no match for biology.
Ninety percent of the single women in an Oklahoma State University study on ‘mate poaching’ were more interested in dating a man who was already in a relationship than a single man.
Past psychological studies have shown that some women may try to lure a man away from his current partner, a phenomenon known as ‘mate poaching.’ One 2004 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggested that as many as one in five long-term relationships began when one or both partners was already in a relationship with someone else.
But this new study, published in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology shows that most single women actually prefer men who are already in a committed relationship.
Men and women were matched with students based on a description of their ideal romantic partner. When researchers described the women’s match as single, 59 percent of the single women in the study were interested in pursuing him. However, when they described the exact same man as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent of the women were interested. Neither the men nor the already attached women who participated showed this preference.
Dr. Melissa Burkley, an assistant professor of social psychology at Oklahoma State University and one of the researchers behind the study suggests that the reason behind this is that single women are more interested in pursuing unavailable men (now, there’s some shocking news) possibly because they are more interested in a guy who’s already shown he can commit by being in another relationship, indicating he’d be a reliable mating partner.
Of course, the study doesn’t show that, if you pursue the committed man and he goes for it, he’s also clearly capable of breaking that commitment and cheating.
Haha… I used to get a LOT more attention when I was with my long standing gf. She would come out socially but wasn’t really into my scene. A lot of females knew that and knew I was taken, but it didn’t stop them from trying their hardest to get my attention and try and hook me away.
I keep hearing the same thing among my older friends - no-one I know in their 20s and early 30s is married - and they wonder where these women were hiding when they were single, because they had a hard time finding dates. The women weren’t interested.
But women seem to drop out of the sky and land on them right, left and centre now that they’re taken. They tell stories - and I’ve actually seen it happen - of being flashed, proposed to, invited on dates, one night stands etc.
Humans are not naturally monogamous. Modern sexual mores run counter to biology on that score, it’s just a holdover from Christianity (although I think J. hinted at this when he said “to those who have, more will be given”. )
Single guys can take advantage of this phenomenon by having female friends and talking about them when meeting new women, hinting that there are other women he could be dating.
My ex was beauty and brains, I never ever would have cheated, but at no time in my life would it have been easier than when we were together. Girls that knew both of us would show IOI’s and when we were out, random girls would as well. The girls that knew us I’m guessing, might have seen it as a coup if they could have stolen me away. Of course that would mean it’s less about me!
Anyway, it’s more support for social proof theory.
I keep reading this in the gutter tabloid press trying to whip up a moral panic, or filling column inches on a slow news day, but those papers play fast and loose with facts and almost never quote a source. If you’re lucky, it’s an anonymous ‘expert’.
I think Gegogi once posted a study showing that x percentage of children have a blood group that doesn’t match the mother’s or the ‘father’ whose name appears on the birth certificate but I can’t find it now.
I remember seeing an episode of a sitcom years ago (for the life of me I can’t remember which show it was) where a guy went out wearing a fake wedding band and everywhere he went he had women approach him asking him out on dates and what not.
That would be a really interesting social experiment to perform one night, if I could ever get my hands on a fake wedding band.
I’ve heard different statistics for the % of children not fathered by the ones on the birth certificate, ranging from 10%-20%. The high end of the range seems to come from statistics of fathers who get divorced and check to see if the kids are really theirs, obviously they do it because they have some suspicion. So it may exaggerate the rate in the general population. A good book on human reproductive strategies is Sperm Wars, by Robin Baker. It also neatly explains the difference between “-none” men and “-rone” men without ever referring to pheromones in any way.
I know someone who knows a thing or two about metalworking. I’ll show him this study. He might be able to make up a minimalist wedding band from scrap steel, similar to those I see advertised on jewellery websites and good enough to pass under a cursory inspection.
Then we’ll both hit the town. I’ll leave the pheros at home on the first run to establish a baseline. Then I’ll repeat the experiment with them on.
Of course, this is purely in the interests of science.
)