Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love: Solving the Mystery of Attraction

The essence of the book in a nutshell:

Over hundreds of thousands of years, sexual stimuli and needs have changed very little. Mother Nature has skillfully ensured the preservation of our species' DNA and created a whole bouquet of chemical reactions that generate passion, love, and attachment. Within the framework of evolution, men and women have different tasks, needs, and desires. By understanding and accepting each other's needs, you can build a solid foundation for your relationship.

Key points

This is my brief summary of the book "Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love: Solving the Mystery of Attraction" by Allan and Barbara Pease. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book, as well as my own thoughts. This summary includes the main lessons and important excerpts from the book.

When it comes to love and sex, men and women behave completely differently:

• Men are aroused by visual stimuli and signs of female health, fertility, and youth
  • The main tool for assessing a woman's sexual potential is the eyes 👀
• Women are attracted to images of male power, status, commitment, and material well-being
  • They rely on memory; Remembering all aspects of male behavior is an adaptation mechanism that has developed over thousands of years;
  • Since raising offspring is a difficult task, a woman needs help and protection to cope with it;
• Love is the result of the formation of specific chemicals
  • Dopamine, Oxytocin, Testosterone, Estrogen, Norepinephrine
• Passion ❤️‍🔥
  • It is based on the release of sexual hormones testosterone and estrogen. During a fit of passion, a large amount of dopamine is produced, which contributes to the production of testosterone and increases sexual attractiveness;
  • The main hormone responsible for sexual desire is testosterone. Testosterone makes men stronger, bigger and more sexually passionate;
  • Oxytocin, the hormone of affection, is produced much less in the male body. It increases during orgasm. That's why caresses after sex are so necessary for women and not at all necessary for men;
  • Higher levels of oxytocin explain why women fall in love more strongly than men at the beginning of a relationship; the more oxytocin is produced in their body, the more caring they become and the deeper their emotional connection with a man;
  • During an erection, hormones are released that suppress rational thinking;
• Romantic love 🥰
  • At the stage of falling in love, the level of testosterone in a man's body decreases, and oxytocin increases. This accelerates the process of forming an emotional connection; It makes men softer, gentler, and more sociable;
  • At the same time, the level of testosterone in women increases, which explains the confidence and excitement that a woman feels at the beginning of a new relationship;
  • This creates the illusion that men and women want sex equally. When the period of falling in love ends, everything returns to normal;
• Nature maintains hormone levels for as long as needed to achieve the evolutionary goal 🎯
  • Romantic love is a trap to keep partners together long enough.
  • The stage of passion and romantic love lasts about two years.
  • Only 10% of married couples who have lived in marriage for more than 20 years maintain the same brain activity and the same chemical reactions as those in love;
• Being dumped activates areas in your brain that make you pursue your ex more
  • This is another attempt to attract the attention of a former lover to avoid pain and suffering;
  • One of the reasons for painful separation lies in evolution. Once, being rejected in a tribe or social group literally meant losing shelter and food, which threatened our survival;
  • Changes in brain reactions when we experience a breakup are similar to those we experience when withdrawing from drug addiction;
  • After a breakup, it takes an average of one month for each year of the relationship to restore hormone levels;
• Long-term attachment
  • The main purpose of attachment is for parents to stay together at least until they raise their offspring.
  • The female brain is designed to look for a man willing to stay with her for at least 6 years and provide her and her offspring with food and protection (pregnancy and another 5 years for the child to reach the age of basic survival);
  • This statement correlates with statistics collected by several studies in Europe. The peak of divorces occurs between the 4th and 7th years of marriage, after which there is a tendency for them to consistently decrease;
  • And the average duration of a marriage ending in divorce is 12 years (according to 2007 data);
  • That's why women pay such close attention to what a man can offer to future generations;

"Understanding Divorce Trends and Risks: The Case of Norway 1886–2018" Rune Zahl-OlsenFirst (Published February 11, 2022) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03631990221077008

"Marriage Duration and Divorce: The Seven-Year Itch or a Lifelong Itch?" Hill Kulu 2014 https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article/51/3/881/169455/Marriage-Duration-and-Divorce-The-Seven-Year-Itch

• Histocompatibility
  • Research on MHC compatibility—exemplified by the 'sweaty T-shirt study'—indicates that women may prefer the scents of men with dissimilar immune system genes. This preference is thought to enhance genetic diversity and offspring viability.
• Marriage has historically been associated with social status, reduced stress, and even increased longevity due to the sense of security it provides.
  • However, modern relationships face challenges from unrealistic media portrayals and the pursuit of idealized perfection.
• We live in a world where love relationships are difficult to start and even more difficult to maintain and support
  • The media generate unrealistic criteria for men and women and false ideas about relationships;
  • When he sees a more beautiful female, he begins to be less satisfied with his own;
  • None of us is perfect. Trying to find the perfect partner or change an existing one is a reliable recipe for personal disaster.

What women want

• Women always need men with resources who are willing to share them with the woman and her children
  • In the past, women closely studied the qualities of a potential long-term partner. After all, a woman's well-being depended on the man. Food, protection, survival... And a wrong choice threatened serious consequences;
  • Women are attracted to intelligence, status, and ambition; If a man has no means or ambitions, most women will not be interested in him;
• Women always put love above all else. The strength of relationships determines their degree of life success and self-esteem
  • Men, on the contrary, evaluate themselves by what they have done or achieved, not by words and feelings;

• For women, the main thing is the emotional component. While men need wild sex that knows no prohibitions.
• Foreplay to sex is very important, but what happened before it is also very important
  • If a woman is tired or anxious, her sexual desire drops to zero; A man should help her relax, feel loved and needed;
  • If a pair of primitive people were completely focused on sex, they would be easy prey. Someone must always be on guard, and this task falls to the woman;
  • Convince the woman that she is completely safe and that nothing will disturb her;
• Dominant men with high testosterone levels always defeat quiet, intimidated guys, and these guys are absolutely irresistible to women during ovulation; And at all other times, a woman is absolutely happy with her quiet, caring husband.

What men want

• The male brain is attracted to everything related to hunting skills, sex, and conquering space.
• Men of the 21st century look for the same things in women that their distant ancestors sought:
  • The ability to preserve their genes; The male brain is designed to recognize reliable biological signs of female reproductive potential.
  • The ability to take care of the men themselves and their offspring;
• For most men, the desire to be together is based primarily on what services a woman can provide him.
  • She needs resources, he needs services: sexual, household, culinary, and so on..
  • The basis of any personal relationship is simply an exchange of goods and services;
  • Society calls this compatibility, as it is more politically correct.
• An unattractive wife lowers a man's status, while an unattractive husband does not.
  • What turns men on? 70% ratio between waist and hips;
  • Lack of confidence in one's own attractiveness is repulsive;
• A man is guided by the highest goal - to spread his genes by fertilizing as many women as possible.
  • An 18-year-old man thinks about sex every 14 seconds. A 40-year-old every 4 minutes;
  • Most men love it when women initiate sex themselves;
  • In primitive society, a man had to use any opportunity for sex, as pregnancy was often not carried to term, many children died during childbirth or in infancy, most did not survive to adolescence;
  • If women constantly wanted sex, they would not be able to focus on children or would be constantly pregnant, and both are bad for women and their children;
  • Men can separate sex and love, women cannot;

What men need:

• Fidelity. Demonstration of devotion. These qualities are so necessary for men because they firmly convince him of his own paternity; Primitive men could not be sure that children were born from them;

One-night stands and affairs

• A woman is willing to engage in casual sex for physical satisfaction only when the level of testosterone in her body is above normal.
  • This is characteristic of less than 20% of women;
  • Or when she is ovulating and her body is looking for a male with the best genes;
  • The woman's decision is also influenced by the duration of acquaintance; For example, studies show that most women consider sex with an attractive man whom they have known for at least 5 years to be acceptable;

• Men's infidelity is typically driven by sexual passion, a desire for novelty or variety, diminished attraction to their partner, or a need to assert themselves.

• In contrast, women are more likely to engage in affairs seeking emotional fulfillment, often due to feelings of loneliness, neglect, or unmet emotional needs within their primary relationship.

• Men rarely manage to hide their affairs, the main problem being the inability to think rationally in situations related to sex.
  • Most men do not plan infidelity, while women, on the contrary, think through everything in detail in advance;
• For long-term preservation of relationships, there must be common beliefs and values.
  • The greater the emotional gap between you and your partner, the higher the probability of an affair;
  • Core relationship values include aligned views on parenting, household responsibilities, finances, living standards, and intimacy, while fundamental beliefs encompass spiritual, ethical, political, and cultural perspectives.

How to find a suitable partner?

• The words that you find true love when you're not looking for it is the greatest misconception.

• Make a list of qualities and what you want from an ideal partner. And then start communicating with the maximum number of people; Play the numbers game, why settle for mediocrity.

  • Based on the demographic situation and probability theory, by 2009 there were approximately 7.6 million people on earth who can make your heart beat faster; And if at least every 5th person's values align with yours, then you have 1,520,000 ideal partners;
  • Most people simply lack choice; The more candidates you meet, the more chances you have of finding the right one;
  • If you feel that a person can make your life simple and fun - develop these relationships; If not, but you still feel comfortable - maintain these relationships until they exhaust themselves, and then move on.
  • Never settle for mediocrity and don't allow a potential partner to treat you the same way;
• Everyone has a certain marriage rating, you can dream about anyone, but it's best to find someone equal to yourself
  • Problems begin when the marriage rating of one of the partners changes dramatically. For example, a man got a promotion at work - the rating increased. At the same time, a woman's rating may decrease if she stops taking care of herself or gains weight; And then the man begins to be critical of his partner;

• If a person does not awaken passion in you - your relationship will always be calm, orderly, and reasonable; It is the ability to awaken passion in a partner that is the basis for long-term attraction and desire;

• Opposites do attract at the early stages of acquaintance, but in long-term relationships, this is a sure path to tension and arguments.

What I took away from this book

I was amazed at how evolution conducts us, for the sake of preserving our species...

I realized that the perfect sex life develops when partners do not condemn each other's needs, but strive to satisfy them.