Evolutionary Reasons for Hotwifing

I received this from a reader and I wanted to share it because I think it adds to the conversation and aligns with some of the evolutionary sexuality pieces that I’ve written in the past. I’m really happy to see others exploring this sort of thing. Enjoy!

I enjoy trying to figure out evolutionary reasons for Hotwifing – specifically the sexual lifestyle where ‘she plays and he doesn’t. I don’t believe hotwifing is a kink that exists by accident – rather that in some way it represents a successful survival strategy to procreate in the face of odds males face (please see disclaimers at end of this post).

I believe the hotwife-evolution connection starts with recognizing how vital pair bonding was to offspring survival throughout most of human existence. Hard to appreciate in today’s age of relative abundance, but through much of time humans lived at subsistence level where small differences in resources could have major impact on survival. Committed pair bonds not only doubled the resources to raise offspring but offered the complementary support of one partner protecting and nurturing the children while the other was off hunting or gathering.

Conventionally we think of women being more committed to pair bonds because of the time needed to carry children to term. Men can impregnate a woman in as little as five minutes as we recognize early on. But this ‘spread the seed’ strategy only works for men of high reproductive status (the ‘studs’ or the wealthy/powerful).

Men of ordinary reproductive status tend to have precious few opportunities to procreate – maybe fewer than women overall because some of women’s reproductive opportunities will be monopolized by high status males. So men with little ability to attract a dalliance with a wandering female must invest all their reproductive hopes into their pair-bonded partner. Ordinary males thus on average end up with as much evolutionary drive to be committed to the pair bond as their female partner.

On the surface then this would seem to place men and women on equal footing as far as inclinations toward fidelity vs. the drive to mate opportunistically. Disadvantage lurks for the male however. When a man sires children outside his primary relationship he creates the conflict that some of his children reside inside his pair bond and some reside elsewhere.

He cannot care for both sets (excluding polymorphic type relationships which are rare) so the all-important survivability of his children that he can influence by being around as a parent is diminished. Females especially see their men mating with others as a potentially huge distraction of his interest in the pair bond. Lifestyle stores (including the reactions my own almost murderously-jealous partner) indicate an almost universal disinterest in females for her partner playing with others.

Note a completely different set of realities apply if a woman bears a child from an outside male. Since women carry children to term any child she births is unmistakably identified as hers — who the father is on the other hand always shrouded in a bit of mystery (and topic for jokes). Any woman’s child automatically becomes a member of the pair-bonded family and thus is not inherently disruptive to the pair bond regardless of parentage.

For women then being able to successfully mate outside the pair bond carries every advantage. She not only gets to maintain her pair bond, of which she generally only truly desires one for life, she also gets to raise offspring from studs she may happen across.

For the male partner of this end of the pair bond the evolutionary reaction is mixed. On the one hand he suffers some genetic dilution as not all the pair-bonded offspring are his. On the other hand he potentially gains more commitment from his female partner because she is getting everything she wants (happy wife, happy life). A stable, long-lived pair bond improves the survivability of offspring that are his.

Note survival is measured by evolution as not just a child old enough to live by his own means but by the whole arc of the grown child attracting successful mates of his/her own and, through the resulting social standing and resources, generating offspring that are high on the survival/success curve into subsequent generations. Angst mixed with excitement are the evidence that he experiencing both an aversion and a pull in accepting the benefits of this arrangement.

Males face another disadvantage in depending on his pair-bonded partner as his sole opportunity to procreate. The same ease and quickness in mating that would seem to be a universal advantage for males works against the male of ordinary reproductive status that can’t attract females on his own sexual merits. His female partner can rather quickly and deceptively pick up the sperm she desires for her offspring while her devoted mate may be none the wiser. Thus the male realize at some level that not only the extra-curricular mating patterns he is aware of works to the female advantage, he realizes his female may be mating in instances he is unaware of altogether!

Yet another, related factor to the hotwifing drive seems to be in the additional resources a woman can garner for the pair bond if she can play as free and available. I got a flavor of this a couple of times while standing back and watching my wife at bars and clubs.

Once she met a man in commercial real estate who was very intent that she come and work with him. Now my wife has some experience around commercial real estate but nothing that would make an impressive resume. Had we met him as a couple and discussed her interest he probably would have made a half-hearted offer for her to send in her resume where it would have sat and gathered dust. However meeting her as a potentially available solo female motivated him to go to great lengths to try to fit her in.

A second time my wife was chatting up a guy who said he could fix a problem with her car. I was the one that eventually fixed it, but I felt an odd twinge of excitement at the time hearing her accept a phone invitation to meet her at a bar at 8pm, saying after she was off the phone “a girl’s got to do what she’s got to do” (to get her car fixed).

A woman can tease and intrigue men with the chance of sexual favors in a way men can’t. The fact that men can spread their seed so easily diminishes their value from a sexual standpoint. A woman sees a man as provider potential and, unless he’s a super stud that women will fight over, she’s not going to do him any favors for sex. Men on the other hand see women both as provider and sexual potential, which she can use to advantage of the pair-bond.

Men are prone to deep suspicions and fears about what their female partner is up to. These fears relate to fidelity but perhaps more deeply to fear of his partner building a bond with someone else and abandoning his pair-bond. Acceptance of cuckold or hotwifing behavior may be a practical evolutionary adaptation to the realities that males are largely at the mercy of what female choose to do reproductively.

Stories repeated over and over in these forums, and examination of my own deep-seated reactions, suggest the cuckold/hotwifer recognizes at some fundamental level that his suspicions and fears are rooted in the female partner abandoning the pair bond more deeply than the fear of her physically mating with someone else. He accepts that he loses the fidelity battle but wins the war of a lifelong pair bond that enhances the security of his offspring. I’ve experienced myself a profound sense of security, almost beyond words, knowing her being with other men is a completely open fact between us and causes for her zero stress in her relationship with me.

Disclaimers:

1. Many will call futile and presumptuous attempts to figure out evolutionary reasons for hotwifing, especially in a pop setting like this forum. I would say If hotwiving has an evolutionary basis then it’s underpinnings must be embedded in the feelings and drives we experience around it – our collective memory so to speak. This anonymous forum, a possibility borne of the Internet age, surfaces and records more primal and deeply-rooted reactions to hotwifing than any academic asking questions for a study could. These reactions may be the most valuable pointers available to something inherited inside of us. If we can listen without bias and agenda we might find puzzle pieces falling into place more than we expected.
2. Recognizing that everything about human behavior involves trends and distributions, not absolutes. For brevity this post make black and white, ‘is’ and ‘is not’, statements, but recognizes the subject is about tendencies that vary widely across individuals.
3. Not meaning this write-up to sound overly serious – hope it is an enjoyable read!

Don’t forget to thank @open_to for sharing today’s blog!

-Emma

open_to

I enjoy exploring what makes us tick, what drives us, what behaviors we inherit as human beings I believe by looking at who we are with compassion and without judgement we offer a path to grow and arise to possibilities that embrace us all.