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 The Dating Doctor
The Dating Doctor, Serena Mackesy, brings her hard-won dating wisdom to bear on your problems. You can drop Serena a line about your own dating conundrums and catch up with her words of wisdom here every week. Read her latest advice here.
Just How Picky Are Women?
October 23, 2006
So just how much pickier are women than men? It depends whether you're talking marriage or a quickie, of course. Men and women have pretty similar wish lists for long-term relationships. But when it comes to casual encounters, the gap is at its most marked. Much of this probably stems from the fact that, being burdened with the gestational short straw, women, however subconsciously, see sexual partners as potential mates and are less willing to burden themselves with offspring with characteristics that will make them harder to be around. Imagine the horror when you discover, a few years too late, that the slurred speech of your one-night-stand was physiological rather than alcohol induced.
Two studies, by Douglas Kenrick and David Buss, illustrate the difference in gender choosiness. Kenrick listed a range of positive attributes, including kindness, physical attractiveness, financial stability and intelligence; and asked respondents to assess percentage levels of each that would persuade them to date, have sex with, go steady with or marry someone. Women were pickier right across the board: but interestingly, it was in the realm of casual sex that they got really choosy. On average, they had to have 46 percent positivity (damn, even we're not that choosy), as opposed to 35 percent demanded by men.
Buss did a similar thing, but with negatives. Assembling a list of imaginary mates with what most people would think of as unattractive attributes - dullness, dishonesty, heavy drinking, bigotry, bisexuality, low educational levels and unpopularity - he got men and women to rank them between "extremely desirable" and "extremely undesirable". The women's judgments were universally hasher than the men's over the whole list. They wouldn't marry people with those attributes, and they wouldn't date them either. Men, on the other hand, were a tad more pragmatic. While they saw certain qualities as undesirable, they didn't actually see that they would put a stop to possible sexual encounters. Bless 'em. And then, presumably, they'd spend the next six months panicking every time the phone rang.
Read Serena's latest advice here.
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