Hey, it’s Dean again. I’d like to share with you a comment that was posted on the Mack Tactics blog. It came from a guy who had an interesting question about this topic. My reply includes some revealing information about the whole idea of the “mid-life crisis,” which in my opinion, is fiction as far as men are concerned. With women, however, the notion of the “biological clock” is absolutely real.
Dean,
I recently turned 40. This birthday hit me harder than I thought it would. I’ve been reflecting on my life, and I decided to “turn back the clock” and start acting and feeling younger. (Most of my married buddies act like they’re 40 going on 65!)
I went to the salon and had the gray colored out of my hair, I bought a new wardrobe of cool clothes, and I’ve been going to the gym and getting in shape. I see this as self-improvement, but my wife says I’m going through a “midlife crisis.” She’s even suspicious that I might be cheating on her. (I’m not.)
I’ve been with her for 12 years and we’ve got two kids together. I still love her, but to be honest, there’s a part of me that does want to be back out there on the scene, flirting with women and dating. Maybe I just want to prove to myself that I’ve “still got it.”
Is this just a natural phase that guys my age go through, and grow out of?
Ray, New York
I recently read an interesting book called “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters.” It was written by two evolutionary psychologists.
This brand of psychology believes that people are basically an animal species, and that today we’re still driven by the same animal needs that motivated us 10,000 years ago.
As men, our most powerful impulse is the need to find the right mate (or mates) and produce healthy offspring, in order to ensure our genetic legacy.
Women, meanwhile, are searching for a man with the right qualities to make them feel secure, and to have children with.
A woman might date around or get married in the meantime, but if her husband doesn’t have Alpha Male traits, it won’t be long before she starts checking out other options.
Simply put, a non-Alpha is never going to completely fulfill her core needs. He could be the nicest, sweetest guy in the world. He can give her everything she wants. But if he’s not supplying what she needs qualities such as emotional strength, and the ability to make decisions and lead he’s either going to lose her, or they’re going to wind up stuck in a hostile, unhappy relationship.
Throughout history, the great conquerors, politicians and moguls have usually been driven by the desire to become more sexually attractive to women, which therefore gives them more reproductive options. (Do you actually think most politicians choose that career out of a sincere desire to better the world…or do you think, perhaps, they’re motivated by more primal hungers?)
Men of high status are much more likely to attain “high reproductive success” than men of lowly status. Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, the last Sharifian emperor of Morocco, left more offspring—1,042—than anyone else on record. A more recent example we all know is Bill Clinton, the most powerful man in the world during his tenure as president, who risked everything for a fling with a 24-year-old intern.
People said Clinton was crazy to do so, but from an evolutionary perspective, what he did was perfectly logical. Asking why a powerful man would cheat on his wife is like asking why a rich man would spend money. They do it because they can.
Midlife Crisis
I don’t condone cheating, and I’m not excusing it, but I understand why it happens. And we’ve all heard about guys going through the dreaded “midlife crisis.” Usually this involves a guy who hits a certain age, and suddenly feels the urge to look and act more youthful. (The cliché is the balding middle-aged guy who goes out and splurges on a new sports car.)
Evolutionary psychologists believe the “midlife crisis” is real, but it happens for reasons you wouldn’t expect. It’s not because the man has reached middle age; it’s because his wife has.
The “crisis” is triggered because his wife is about to enter (or has entered) menopause, meaning she can no longer reproduce. She has hit the “wall of death.” This makes the man feel a subconscious need to attract younger women, in order to have a way to continue producing offspring.
On a conscious level, the middle-aged guy might not have any interest in having more kids. But on a deeper, primal level, he is being driven to pursue this. He’s not thinking to himself, “My wife is getting too old to bear children, so I’d better go out there and find a fertile young babe.” But his subconscious mind is telling him to do so.
Here’s the other interesting thing. According to this theory, a 50-year-old guy married to a 25-year-old woman is not going to experience a midlife crisis. But a 25-year-old guy, married to a 50-year-old woman, will!
So, the crisis really doesn’t have anything with the man reaching a certain age. It’s all about the age of his partner.
Some other interesting points that are raised by the evolutionary psychologists who wrote, “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters”:
Why do many men consider the “perfect hottie” to be a young woman with long blond hair, large breasts and a slim waist? (And why do so many women color their hair, diet and exercise, and undergo cosmetic surgery to achieve this look?)
The authors say it has nothing to do with the famous sex symbols who have embodied this look over the years. There is a much deeper evolutionary logic.
Long before the creation of television and the movies, in 15th century Italy, women were dying their hair blond. A recent study conducted in Iran, where access to Western media is limited, showed that women in that country are more concerned with their body image, and have a stronger desire to lose weight, than women in America.
In other words, it’s impossible to blame the media and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Pamela Anderson, Britney Spears, etc. for the fact that blond, slim and busty is generally considered to be the “ultimate” form of beauty.
This has been the most widely admired “look” for centuries, because men are biologically compelled to want to mate with these women.
But why, exactly? First, men prefer younger women because they tend to be healthier and more fertile. Thousands of years ago, nobody maintained birth records or carried ID; in order to know someone’s age, their appearance was all you had to go on.
Hair is one obvious indicator of age. Healthy young women have lustrous, shiny hair; sickly people do not. A woman with long hair has obviously been healthy for a number of years (long enough for her hair to grow to that length).
Likewise, breasts especially large ones are going to sag with age. If a woman’s breasts are large and firm, that’s another clear indicator that she’s still young and healthy. Just by looking at her, a man in ancient times could evaluate her age, health status, and reproductive value.
Men’s Preference For Women
Men also have a preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio, because this also indicates that they are healthy and fertile. They’re better able to conceive children because this body type means they have high amounts of the necessary reproductive hormones. Studies have shown that women with large breasts and small waists have the highest levels of estradiol and progesterone, hormones that are necessary to reproduce.
This is why subconsciously; most men are drawn towards women with this “look.” They’re not attracted to young, slim, busty blonds because these women resembles the famous beauties they see on television and in magazines; the reason that we’re attracted to these women, and why women with this look are able to become famous in the first place, lies in our genetic programming and our primal desires.
Furthermore, blond hair tends to change with age, unlike other hair colors. Young girls with light blond hair usually evolve into women with brown hair, which eventually turns gray.
Interestingly, blond hair first evolved in northern Europe and Scandinavia. Evolutionary psychologists believe that this was an evolutionary response to the heavy clothing that women wore in those times, to conceal their bodies; regardless of how they covered up, blond hair was a giveaway that they were young and had reproductive value.
Nowadays, of course, there are various ways for women to alter their looks to fit this model: facelifts, liposuction, breast augmentation, hair coloring, etc. The funny thing is that men fall for it or at least, our subconscious minds do.
You can look at a 40-year-old woman and know she’s had a tit job, various other cosmetic surgeries, and colors her hair (Pamela Anderson comes to mind), but because she’s still got the qualities that imply reproductive value, our “primitive brains” desire her.
Centuries ago, plastic surgery didn’t exist but today, we’re still sizing up women using the same visual cues that our ancestors used, when they were hunting for women to mate with. Fashions change. Music changes. The world moves forward. But our internal hard-wiring will always remain and this not only means that we’re programmed to want younger women, it also means they desire us.
