Another- Evolutionary Reasons for Hotwifing -post

[amayzed]

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!}

[subtoall]

I share your fascination, and appreciate that you wrote it up for us here for our consumption. Thank you.

[SamWarrens]

Interesting discussion.
I think it has merit.

[briggs]

Very informative thank you for taking the time to write

[amayzed]

Thank you all for the feedback. Appreciated.

[eonco]

This is one of the best dissertation that I have ever read anywhere about the hotwifing phenomenon. Thank you so very much.

[tennesseered]

This is a thoughtful and plausible explanation for the male impulse toward cuckoldry. It deserves wider discussion. I've often wondered if forums like this are being mined by PhD students of human sexuality. OHWs is a trove of raw data waiting to be mined and processed.

The last paragraph before "Disclaimers" zeros in most convincingly on the real reasons for wife sharing. The last sentence, especially. Here is first hand testimony from someone who knows what it's like, and knows how to put it into words.

[manmuscle]

Thanks for the article. And, thanks for using full sentences and paragraphs. In this day of texting, it is amazing how poorly written many posts are and how challenging they are to read.

I will add opinions on the subjects of creampie and being bisexual.

It would seem as if a woman is able to mate with multiple men even though she is pair bonded with an"average male", then her dedicated mate would want to make sure his children are the one she has. Therefore, it would be instinctive to go down on the female after she has had sex with other men. The desire to "reclaim" her would also be instinctive.

Speaking from my first experience, it was instinctive to go down on my GF for my first creampie. I had never even heard the label or knew about the concept. I just did it. The reclaiming sex was really hot too.

Then there is the "bi" issue. It would also seem a competitive advantage to relieve a male that may have sex with my female partner. Getting him off would improve my odds of being the winning sperm. Again, my first example with a man and my GF, I did not hesitate to give him head and make him cum. I was the last man (cock) standing and I made the last deposit.

Just a thought or two.

[veub]

If there were an evolutionary basis for this kink, wouldn't it be common? Wouldn't most men and women want to practice it? Instead, only a tiny minority engage in this activity.

[54321]

If there were an evolutionary basis for this kink, wouldn't it be common? Wouldn't most men and women want to practice it? Instead, only a tiny minority engage in this activity.

It's important to distinguish between our primary drives and what society dictates.

In hunter gatherer societies, women being in pair bonds but having sex freely with other males is common practice.
What changed everything was the discovery of agriculture. Suddenly, it became an issue of:
1) Ownership of land by men who had the physical strength to defend and work that land.
2) Who would inherit that land when that man passes on.

It became important to know if the children were fathered by the land owner or someone else. Women's sexuality was then seen as a problem
which gave birth to two contradictory fallacies:
1) Women don't/shouldn't have any sexual feelings at all.
2) Women's sexuality is dangerous and needs to be controlled/eradicated

To this day, men's sexual role in society is straightforward and women's role is complicated and contradictory.

To embrace hotwifing (which is now made possible due to the invention of effective birth control) is still difficult because of ten to twenty thousand years of societal conditioning. A sizeable minority do embrace it and that number is growing.

54321

ref. Sex at Dawn: How we mate, why we stray, and what it means for modern sexuality Paperback by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha

[veub]

Your reference is, at best, based on pure speculation. There is simply no research in any field to support the ideas it purports to prove.

[54321]

Are you referring to the book 'Sex at Dawn'?
Have you read it?
Have you followed up the long list of references at the back?
If you have an alternative view, please feel free to share it along with any references you may have.

54321

[Amayzed]

It would seem as if a woman is able to mate with multiple men even though she is pair bonded with an"average male", then her dedicated jo would want to make sure his children are the one she has. Therefore, it would be instinctive to go down on the female after she has had sex with other men. The desire to "reclaim" her would also be instinctive.

Speaking from my first experience, it was instinctive to go down on my GF for my first creampie. I had never even heard the label or knew about the concept. I just did it. The reclaiming sex was really hot too.

Then there is the "bi" issue. It would also seem a competitive advantage to relieve a male that may have sex with my female partner. Getting him off would improve my odds of being the winning sperm. Again, my first example with a man and my GF, I did not hesitate to give him head and make him cum. I was the last man (cock) standing and I made the last deposit.

Just a thought or two.

Thanks for sharing these experiences of what seemed instinctual - of what you found yourself doing before you even thought about it.

I hadn't thought of going down on a woman after sex as conferring some advantage against other mates. But is interesting to note by contrast that most men have little interest in going down after they themselves have been the ones having sex. Wonder if there is some mechanism indicated by that.

Giving head and getting another male to cum before he has sex with your partner is downright diabolical from an advantage perspective! It looks on the surface like you are giving in and letting him have his way. But it could be as you say you are setting him up to make a weaker deposit while you are the last man standing with the strongest deposit.

Again almost impossible to figure out what evolution has calculated from millions or billions of trials over the ages. But the instincts we've inherited and carry around today have to serve as pointers somehow. We are all descendants of successful survival strategies - the ones that aren't are not around as much to tell their story.

[Amayzed]

If there were an evolutionary basis for this kink, wouldn't it be common? Wouldn't most men and women want to practice it? Instead, only a tiny minority engage in this activity.

A trait doesn't have to be dominant to be a valid evolutionary mechanism. Certainly as you suggest the dominant trait is toward sexual exclusivity. That a trait counter to that even exists, enough to have forums like this dedicated to discussing it, seems quite remarkable.

Evolution gives us the pulls and tugs of many traits and behavior inclinations. I find it fascinating when there is a glimpse of connecting the dots - of seeing where something we would describe as a 'kink' could actually have some survival advantage reasoning behind it.