Preface to the Revised and Updated Edition

SINCE THE PUBLICATION of the first edition of The Evolution of Desire in 1994, the field has witnessed an explosion of new scientific research on human mating. Although neglected within mainstream psychology for decades, mating is beginning to command the attention it properly deserves. Nothing lies closer to the reproductive engine of the evolutionary process. Those who fail to mate do not become ancestors. Each living human, therefore, has descended from a long and unbroken line of successful mateships stretching back millions of years. If any one of our ancestors had failed to traverse the complex hurdles posed by mating, we would not be alive to ponder these improbable feats. Our mating minds—the glory of romance, the flush of passion, the triumph of love—are fortunate products of this evolutionary process.

The original publication of Desire was greeted with a gratifying amount of attention, but it also provoked some strong emotions. The intensity of sentiment probably reflects the importance of the topic. Humans don’t seem well designed for dispassionate intellectual discourse about domains that have profound personal relevance. Some readers told me before the book was even published that the information it contained might be so damaging if it became widely known that it should be suppressed. Some refused to believe that gender differences in mating strategies exist, since the dominant dogma in social science for decades has contended that women and men are essentially identical in basic sexual psychology. Others acknowledged the formidable body of scientific findings, but refused to believe that gender differences have evolutionary origins. Many like to think that humans have been magically exempt from the processes of natural selection and sexual selection. It is encouraging that the hostility to this work has largely, although certainly not entirely, subsided. Mating research has entered the mainstream and is now known throughout the world; the first edition of The Evolution of Desire was translated into ten languages.

The original publication of The Evolution of Desire shed some light on previous mysteries of human mating, but it also pointed to gaps in knowledge, notably those surrounding the complexities of female sexuality. These are now covered in greater depth. The new edition also deals with some enduring mysteries of mating. Why does homosexuality exist? Can men and women be “just friends”? How do people who pursue short-term mating strategies avoid entangling commitments? Do women have evolved anti-rape defenses? Are men and women hopelessly biased in reading each other’s minds? Some of these topics were briefly discussed in the original edition and addressed at greater length in two supplemental chapters added to the 2003 paperback edition. Now this material has been integrated throughout the book, which has been fully revised and updated from beginning to end to reflect the past twenty-two years of theory and research.

Although I am aware of the cliché that if you give someone a hammer everything looks like a nail, I’ve come to believe that human mating strategies permeate nearly every human endeavor. I see them everywhere. They shape status hierarchies among women and foster sexual treachery among men. They delay male puberty early in life while causing premature death at the other end—both products of mate competition. They unite people in love’s embrace and drive mates apart with jealous rages and sexual infidelity. Human sexual psychology is deeply embedded in the fabric of our social endeavors, in all of its glorious and disturbing manifestations.