That fickle female!

Some readers probably read the fascinating article about female desire in last Sunday's New York Times. The main point was that female sexual desire remains a far more elusive subject than male sexual desire. While doing my own reading for Decoding Love, I came across numerous studies that illustrated this point. I think it is worth making one additional point: female desire as it pertains to selecting a mate is also extremely malleable.

Let me give just a few examples. One study has found that women prefer a different sort of man depending on her ovulation cycle. During peak fertility, women prefer more masculine men, but they choose more feminine men the rest of the time. Another study found that during peak fertility, women preferred poor but creative men to rich ones for a short-term liaison. One study even revealed that marriage itself can change the type of man a woman prefers.

Why all this variability? I believe that it points to how intimately our sexuality has been shaped by evolution--in this case, the dual necessity for women of trying to secure not just the best genes but also a man who will support the family. The two don't always go together, and depending on context, a woman's sexual preferences will shift to secure whichever is more important at the moment. So, far from being a problem, female fickleness may represent a sophisticated response to the challenges of dating and mating.