I would agree that she is honest and her rapport reflects a sizeable body of research pointing to said direction. I also would not give a f***.
Read this for starters, bottom line: women are way more flexible in their sexuality, they have sex with people they like and desire and sex is not such a factor as it is for men.
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Desire-Strategies-Human-Mating/dp/046500802X
Though culture can have an effect on biology cross cultural studies have shown that across cultures men want to have more sex, with more women and women want less sex and desire less partners.
I think this is tied to the fact that men and women’s primary purpose in procreation is different. Males primary purpose is to create the children and women’s primary purpose is to raise the children. This is why men have a higher sex drive and the male orgasm is essential for procreation to occur.
Women’s sex drive’s are lower because a high sex drive can distract from raising children. The fact that the female orgasm is completely unnecessary for procreation to occur.
I’d recommend this book if you want to read further on the topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Desire-Strategies-Human-Mating/dp/046500802X
This might be a debate that really boils down to specific definitions between you two. If you define monogamy as pair bonding with one partner for life, having no urges to sexually stray from that one partner at any point in the relationship then certainly humans are NOT monogamous. If you define monogamy as a tendency among a species for members of the opposite sex to form relationships that last longer than the time required for attracting and copulating with a mate, then humans most definitely fit that description. I'm guessing you both are defining monogamy somewhere in between those two extremes and that might be the argument.
There is no doubt that males and females have very different (and probably in many ways at odds) optimal mating strategies because females have a finite number of eggs and can only carry one child at a time so they are looking for the best genes available from the best male in the environment who has access to (and shows signs of willingness to invest) resources. Males on the other hand are only limited in the number of offspring they can sire by their access to females and the consequences they might incur from mating with those females. In theory they could father dozens of children in a year while maintaining a "monogamous" relationship with one specific female who he invests most of his resources in.
Anyway, I would recommend a book called The Evolution of Desire by David Buss to help settle this as well. It is pretty much the most massive study ever conducted on the mating preferences and habits of males and females across many many different cultures :)
>you can care about different things without belittling your partner's contributions to the relationship or engaging in a one-sided relationship where you take and don't give.
Sure, but that's not what you said, right? We're talking about credit, praise, etc. My point is it comes with the territory.
>Cleaning up after myself is making effort for me. Cleaning up after him is making effort for him to be in my life.
Which is for you. You are maintaining the lifestyle you want with a partner. It's not a favor to him or for his benefit.
And that's totally fine.
>Which books says that modern gender roles are innate personalities and not socialization?
In case you want the truth, The Evolution of Desire by the psychologist David Buss is a study of nearly 40,000 people across like 30 countries and it is the cold hard data on what people ACTUALLY seek in a mate. And you're absolutely right, looks do matter (but not as much as you'd think for men).
Bottom line is that she has a lower sex drive than you but loves you and your relationship. You need to have a talk with her on what she wants sexually and what you want and come to some compromise or walk away.
I’m close to fifty and have been married 22 years. Before getting married I read a lot of books on marriage and relationships because my parents were divorced and I didn’t have a good model for marriage. After my wife lost her libido after the birth of our second child I started researching female sexuality to find a solution to the problem. I’m going to share some of this knowledge.
Here is what I know for certain from all my research. Women have a lower libido than men, on average. If your familiar with bell curves if you could create a bell curve graph of male and female libido and overlapped them the mean of the female libido is lower than the mean of the male libido. (Now female libido also changes more frequently than men’s. It tends to ebb and flow with their menstrual cycle. Men’s tend to decrease with age.)
Does this mean all women have a lower libido than all men, no. What is does mean that there are far more men with a high libido than women. For example if we define high libido is wanting sex 6-7 times a week on the male bell curve that would probably be the 90th percentile. On the female bell curve it would be the 99th percentile.
That means if you had a room with 100 men and 100 women ranging from the lowest percentile to the highest you would have ten men that wanted sex 6-7 times a week and 1 woman that wanted sex as much.
A good way to look at men and women’s sex drive is to look at the sexual activity of lesbians and gay men. A study I read in college compared the sexual activity frequency between straight and gay couples. It found that, on average, lesbians had sexual activity 1-2 a month, straight couples 1-2 a week, and gay males 6-7 times a week.
The big take away that I want to leave you with is that the chances of a high libido male finding a high libido female is low. Before you marry anyone I would recommend sitting down and making a list of want you must have in a marriage, what would be nice to have, and what is a deal breaker. You should also have your future spouse do the same.
One of the things that should be on both your lists is how often you would like sexual activity. If there is a wide discrepancy between you two you need to discuss it and come to some sort of compromise. If you can’t you need to be ready to walk away. I really believe if people did this and set clear expectations before getting married it would make there marriage better.
Of course this is not a pre-nup or an ironclad contract. You both should be willing to give and take on it depending on circumstances and changes in your life.
You can Google and research this on your own but here are a couple of books I found really helpful(though they all have flaws IMHO;
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Desire-Strategies-Human-Mating/dp/046500802X
I promise the answer you are looking for is in The Evolution of Desire by Dr David Buss :)
I'll do what most people won't do here, and instead, just give you the factual, data-based truth:
The whole: "If you want a partner, just be more positive and confident." - is unfortunately largely nonsense.
The truth is that lazy eye is generally something that is considered less attractive.
Most people want an attractive partner - and attractiveness goes along with facial symmetry (Study/book: https://www.press.umich.edu/11394732/physical\_attractiveness\_and\_the\_theory\_of\_sexual\_selection).
Having asymmetrical facial features (which strabismus is) - is known to decrease one's attractiveness (Study: https://bjo.bmj.com/content/95/4/450).
And if you want to have a 10/10 partner - you should generally aim to be a 10/10 yourself.
So no matter how you twist and turn it - no matter what other people say - according to the data, having a lazy eye is unfortunately indeed decreasing your attractiveness.
But instead of going all negative here, here's a solution for you:
Hope I could help here? I feel you, and want you to make the best possible decision.
I want to stress that a big source/motivation for this this comment is my personal experience. Born with a birth defect that caused exotropia. Was ridiculed in school for my lazy eye - and everyone told me that 'confidence is all that matters'. Nonsense.
Didn't date for years following that well-meant, but nonsensical advice.
The reality is that attractiveness does matter. But so do many other things (physical shape, career, social skills) which you have ABSOLUTE control over. My last girlfriend was a Brazilian model, so yep, it works.
Read this book asap https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Desire-Strategies-Human-Mating/dp/046500802X
I'm a biocultural anthropologist and teach evolutionary theory at university. The science behind what I'm talking about is pretty simple and was worked out a long time ago. Men have genes. Women have genes. The evolutionary problem of producing offspring is equal for both at the basic level. Keeping all your eggs in one basket is bad strategy for passing on genes, for both sexes.
If you want a pretty solid description of the evolutionary psychology literature behind this, get David Buss's The Evolution of Desire. Here's the book on Amazon
But keep in mind, that it's a touch of a biased book and ignores the impact of enculturation and epigenetics.
The problem becomes more complex and interesting when we consider minimum time investments for producing offspring. At the biological level, these differ dramatically between men (1 orgasm) and women (9 months). If you completely ignore socialization, cultural expectations, social punishment and costs put on men by women and culture, then you can make simple predictions like OP's husband did that go something like "men should have sex with as many women as possible to produce as many offspring as possible."
However, we are a cultural species and costs are imposed on men to counter balance the biological costs of pregnancy. Depending on the culture, these involve lengthy courtships, marriage and support, social networks that punish short term relationship seeking, etc. Additionally, our offspring have extremely long periods of development that require heavy investment by the parents, which means to produce offspring who survive and do well, parents have to invest in them considerably, thereby decreasing the value of short term strategies for producing offspring.
Last, because the genetic problem holds for women, too, women are biologically equally likely to cheat as men. They simply have different strategies imposed on them from the moment of cheating, like having the husband raise someone else's child (above board or not), seeking support from multiple fathers, cheating and preventing pregnancy, etc.
The evidence that women cheat as often as men is in Buss' book, but also pretty much everywhere. Parental tests generally show that, even in stable marriages, roughly 10% of children aren't the husband's (which led to Canada, for ex., stopping blood tests in High School as a teaching aid).
It's not only stupid to think that women aren't "programmed" to cheat and men are, but sexist, arrogant and belittling. It's like claiming that "men are programmed to be breadwinners." Only people ignorant of social science and evolution make such sexist claims. The truth is far more complicated, involving genes, enculturation, social circumstance, economics, and so on.
Clearly, however, men and women are also capable of monogamy. Biology doesn't govern our behavior. We aren't fitness maximizers, but cognitive, moral beings.
G,G&S is probably the most influential book I've ever read. I only wish I read it sooner.
As far as sexual strategy literature; as someone else mentioned, The Red Queen is a great read. I would also recommend The Evolution of Desire (or anything by David Buss) & A Billion Wicked Thoughts.
The good sex literature is difficult to come across because so many people pull from the same studies then write a book about what it means to them. However, some do it better than most. Get to know the authors who KNOW what they are writing. Instead of those looking to make a quick buck off an interpretation of someone else's research.
Hope this helps.
The best reference for this would be the following 2 books:
"The Evolution of Desire" by David Buss http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Of-Desire-Revised/dp/046500802X
"The Red Queen" by Matt Ridley http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060556579/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687682&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=046500802X&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1Z8G4DV0CAKSXV6349Z0
Both are excellent reads in the field of evolutionary psychology and biology. When David Buss was about to publish his book, some of his female students suggested him not to do it because it's going to cause quite some pain to the female readers. For man, among all the factors that defines his attractiveness, only HEIGHT cannot be conciously altered or worked upon. Everything else is purely based on his personal effort. While for women, almost all the things that makes her attractive are genetically defined, which makes the world all the more cruel to girls who are born plain.
> Here's why they don't
The bigger reason is that they don't have to; they've been evolutionarily selected to be the chooser, and contemporary culture reinforces that. The average man is not immediately attractive to the average woman, while the reverse is true.
These constraints mean women will rarely approach. While your two points are correct, there are deeper reasons.