The evolutionary roots of cuckolding lie beneath all the spreadsheets, Starbucks orders, and swiping through dating apps, we’re still basically animals. Yep, you—sitting there in your comfy modern life sipping your chai latte—have a brain that’s been evolving for 400,000 years. That’s way longer than the 10,000 years of so-called “civilized” society. The evolutionary roots of cuckolding, our primal, tribal instincts are still running the show, even if we like to pretend otherwise. This is bot a follow-up and a different take on a blog that I wrote a few months ago about cuckolding being an adaptation of human mating practices.
One juicy example of the way our mating practices have adapted to our highly social and tribal roots is cuckolding. Yeah, that thing where a guy gets turned on by his partner being with someone else. Perhaps even a sense of pride that the alpha wanted to take a turn with his partner. It might seem wild or “out there” at first glance, but when you peel back the layers of modern life, you’ll see it’s not so strange after all. In fact, it might just be a throwback to how humans operated for hundreds of thousands of years. Let’s dive into the animalistic side of things—because let’s face it, that’s where the fun is!
Picture life in a prehistoric tribe: no TikTok, no HR departments, just raw survival. Tribes had a hierarchy, plain and simple. At the top was the alpha male—the guy who called the shots, protected the group, and, most importantly, got first dibs on all the women. This wasn’t about being romantic; it was about spreading his strong genes far and wide.
And what about the other guys? Well, they had a choice: challenge the alpha (and risk getting eaten by a saber-tooth tiger), or find a way to stay in the tribe and survive. Submitting to the alpha wasn’t weak—it was smart. It kept them alive, gave them access to the group’s resources, and even mate with the women of the tribe when the alpha didn't want them.
Fast forward to today, and those ancient survival strategies are still baked into our brains. That little voice in the back of a cuckold’s head—the one that says, "It’s okay to let her enjoy someone else"—is really just your lizard brain saying, "Stay in the tribe. Survival first."
Studies on human mating strategies back this up. Research shows that men’s sexual jealousy varies widely depending on context. In some situations, men experience arousal instead of jealousy when their partner is with someone else—likely because it triggers deep, subconscious cues about their role in a larger hierarchy. This is more common than you might think, and evolutionary psychologists argue it stems from our tribal past.…
