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Testing the masculine protective house to make sure it is robust
Mr Fondman 4 April 2001 Updated 30 January 2007,
regarding Pre-Menstrual Syndrome, caffeine
and with a note on
psychiatric conditions which can lead to
really excessive, ongoing,
cycles of conflict and distrust. Also a job-description for a good husband.
Further to what I wrote about testing the man's resolve in the Rambling Introduction intro.html here is an analogy I have created to try to help me and other men understand the woman's feelings when she is testing her man's resolve. Please write to me with your comments on this analogy and any other ways you can help me understand distinctively female modes of thought and action.
This page is a work in progress. There are loose ends and
improvements
to be made, and I regret that it is poorly structured.
It is my impression that unless it is explained to them, most men have no idea that many or most women consciously and unconsciously test their man's resolve. It is an infuriating business, because it upsets and destabilises the man - and his attempts to comply with the woman's demands and desires only lead to more unhappiness and to loss of respect. From the point of view of a decent man, it is simple: if you love someone, you always try to make them happy. So when he finds his beloved woman systematically making him miserable and being unhappy with his attempts to appease her and get along peacefully with her, he is likely to conclude she doesn't love him. This can be much more than upsetting - it can be emotionally really hurtful and lead the man to give up trying to be with the woman. Many women have written to me about their testing ways. They generally are blind at the time to the hurt they cause and to the fact that their man does not deserve this and has no way of understanding her rotten behaviour. There are clearly intense instincts at work. Later they can feel extreme remorse and shame for their actions. But that may not be enough to prevent them doing it all again in the future.
Some thought about PMS and caffeine:
PMS can be a time of infuriating demands, complaints and unhappiness which just seems to grow no matter how the man responds. It is my impression from - what I hear from other people, and from my own experiences in the past - that PMS generally leads to unresolvable arguments, serious conflict, despair etc. only when caffeine is involved. (I can't be sure how caffeine affects every single person, especially people I don't know, such as you, Dear Reader. I am just reporting my impressions based on limited information.)
For some or many people, caffeine leads to increased anxiety, irritability, argumentiveness etc. The US National Institute of Health recommends that people suffering from any kind of anxiety disorder should avoid caffeine. Likewise, panic attacks and nightmares . Every PMS book I have seen says to avoid or reduce caffeine too. If you are having trouble with PMS - or with arguments, distrust, conflict in general - I suggest both the man and the woman stop taking all caffeine. By this I mean coffee, tea, cola etc. - except perhaps moderate levels chocolate. (Obviously other stimulants will cause trouble, so speed etc. is a no-no. Regular use of marijuana typically leads to all sorts of complications, including depression, moodiness, paranoia and psychosis - so smoking dope every day, or probably every month, is a good way to screw up your life and relationships too.)
I think it is not good enough to stop caffeine for a few days. Cut down slowly over a week or so. Then have none (apart from a little chocolate) for a few months and see if life improves. Even a single cup of coffee, for some folks at least, leads to a 2 to 4 day shadow of tiredness, increased proclivity to be irritated, etc. Taking it all the time means you are constantly tired, and overcoming the tiredness from previous caffeine with a blast of it now, which works for 3 to 6 hours or so. However, the tiredness and proclivity to anxiety lasts for days, so if you drink caffeine all the time, for years, you may think this is naturally how you feel. I did.
Probably the worst experiences I have had and have heard of regarding "testing the man's resolve" were when the woman was in the throes of intense PMS. I now think that most or perhaps all of the intense PMS conflict I have written about is really a side effect of caffeine, and not a normal expression of whatever evolved tendency women have to test the man they love. This proclivity to test certainly exists - in general and especially during PMS - but perhaps, for most women, it doesn't become really horrible as long as they (and their men) avoid caffeine.
I am not saying that no couple will have trouble with PMS if they are not using caffeine. Nor am I saying that the only bad thing about PMS is conflict - women suffer many physical and emotional effects other things on their own, whether or not they have a loving man and whether or not they have PMSy arguments with him. All I am saying is that based on my limited experience, reports from women correspondents, and the recommendations of the NIH and countless PMS books, I think that for some or many people caffeine makes PMS much more aggravated and conflictual.
On the main page of this site I have some links research on caffeine and anxiety.
There are many accounts on the Net of women (and their hapless husbands) suffering horrific "PMS" when taking Clomid (clomiphine citrate) - which they usually don't take at the PMS time of the cycle. If taking Clomid, I think it might be best to use divided doses throughout the day, rather than one whole tablet (assuming Dr. says this is OK) and to avoid caffeine at the time and in the week before.
Clomid inhibits estrogen receptors, and my theory is that this activates some neurons which detect the decline of estrogen in the week or so before menstruation in order to turn on the systems in the brain which cause the PMS symptoms and ways of thinking and feeling. I don't think the physical and emotional impact of PMS is a direct by-product of hormonal or other changes, since the body isn't doing anything dramatic pre-menstrually. (Of course menstrual cramps etc. have a direct physical cause.) I think PMS is one or more evolved mental/emotional/physical mechanism, turned on by dropping estrogen, and turned off (sometimes within hours) by menstruation itself. Maybe the PMS Monster can also be halted by overwhelming tactile evidence of the close presence and full attention of a committed loving man who won't tolerate too much nonsense from his beloved woman!
There is a little dip in estrogen around ovulation, so perhaps the PMS mechanism might be triggered a little then too. More on my evolutionary psychology theory of PMS below.
While it is true that pushing limits and being a pest is a unisex human trait, the woman's testing the man's resolve has no general equivalent I know of in men - though I guess it manifests in some M-M and a few M-F relationships. (Below I mention a diagnosable disorder which I think can also lead to terrible conflict.)
I can relate to quite a few feminine ways of thinking, but not to this.
Why would a woman become blind to her man's suffering - or take pleasure and pride in her ability to twist the knife with words, contradictions and demands? Why would she ask for or demand impossible or unlikely things - becoming angry if he does not provide them and changing her requirements and becoming more bitter and angst-ridden if he does comply?
Why do some woman ramp the campaign up to systematic emotional abuse and physical violence (as some have admitted to me)? Some feel no guilt, but only contempt that their men for allowing them to get away with this or for merely hiding or pleading with her to stop? It is a very weird business indeed. I now wonder how much caffeine, pot and/or alcohol was involved in this F->M violence. (M->F violence seems to result in more deaths and serious injuries but see these pages if you think that F->M partner violence is insignificant. cdc.gov, Hamel and ncfmla . )
It may be some consolation that women, as far as I know, only do this to men they are seriously interested in. As far as I know, it usually arises only when the woman is, or is contemplating, living fully with the man on a permanent basis, such as in marriage.
My analogy helps me understand how it feels when the woman is in this mode. It is not a justification or a complete model - but it is a way of understanding why she kicks and shoves harder and harder at the man and the relationship they have built, sometimes to the point of destruction.
Initially I though of the man's protective role being like a house. Then I thought of it as a protective "cage" to protect her from every threatening creature or man who threatens her. But "cage" implies captivity and nothing in the way of comfort or homeliness. So the analogy is primarily to a house - built for comfort, for raising a family and for protecting the woman and her children (and hopefully the man!) against the elements and the strongest, most dangerous attackers.
You only feel safe in a house which is strong enough to protect you (and your children - present and future) from many powerful external threats. (For our ancestors, these included storms, wild animals and warriors from other tribes.) If you, a mere woman (mere in comparison to the forcefulness of those threats - I don't mean "mere" in terms of being less worthy of respect and care than men) can break the house your man has built for you - force its doors, make holes in its walls, break down its framework - then this house is not strong enough and was never going to protect you anyway. So it is better you smash your way out now. Leave this house behind without any sentimental feelings about how happily you moved an and made it yours.
Go on to find another man who will build you a proper house. A house so so strong that you can't destroy it, no matter how hard you try. A house so strong you can relax, leave the outside world for your man to cope with, and busy yourself with your life's fulfilment - the womanly art of home making, caring for your man and raising a family with him. (I am not suggesting women don't, or shouldn't, have a vibrant life outside the home. I am suggesting that from an evolutionary perspective it would not be surprising or unhealthy for a woman in the modern world to want to devote her energies primarily to her man, their children and their home.)
In testing and trying to break the house, you have as little concern for the house as a voracious attacking monster (including a rapacious man) would have for it when breaking it down it in order to devour you.
If your man (and his protective house) is the one who will feed and protect you, he will be so committed to you that he won't let you out of the house either - unless of course it is for your own good and the good of the relationship.
The above is an attempt to develop an analogy to help men understand one facet of womanly thinking which I assume results from one or more instincts, as they react to the woman's position and state of mind. It is not an attempt to say what is right or wrong, or how life should be lived.
Some women are attracted to the notion of their man being in total control. This could be caused by an instinct which served our ancestors well if the man did control the woman and keep her hard at work.
To completely follow that instinct today (perhaps by living as a captive wife-slave for years or decades) would be very satisfying - for that instinct - but it would be deeply unsatisfying for many other instincts and many other non-instinctual needs and desires.
A more likely path to happiness today is for each partner to rejoice in many, most or all of the other partner's personal qualities and aspirations, and to make it a lifelong project to support and perhaps collaborate to realise each other's goals.
No doubt our ancestors would have liked the luxury of doing just this - but it was a scramble for survival then, and probably the only couples who survived to be our ancestors were those with less lofty goals than we can pursue today.
After the questions below, I discuss instincts and happiness in the modern world. Its an unfinished ramble - if you are curious, patient and tolerant of loose ends you might find it interesting!
Women: if you can write to me about these questions, I would really appreciate it. On one level, I want you to forget morality, reason and what anyone might think - to report what you feel, what you do, what moves you. I want you to report without self-censorship or shame. This is dispassionate science! The task is to inquire into something powerful and perplexing which, as far as I know, only happens in the minds of women.
On another level, once you have thought about your actions and reported them and whatever reasons you think underlie them, there is the here-now question of whether this is really what you want to do. These actions may satisfy deep urges (instincts and perhaps other fundamental drives) - but in the context of your relationship, are they the best path to harmony? It is a personal question. Harmony is how you and your man define it. For some couples minimising all conflict is the goal. For others, some level of conflict - typically with resolution and correction - is the healthiest arrangement because it seems that some women have a profound need to be forcibly reminded of their man's commitment and dominance.
So on the first level, forget morality. Just the facts, ma'am!
On the second level, try to see past the instinctual and other urges and biases and consider how, in the long term, you really want to live. Nonetheless, if your man can't deal robustly with a misbehaving woman, you should show him this whole website and see how he goes. If he still doesn't get your gusty nature and see the need to forcibly control you for gentlemanly purposes, your own good and the good of your loving relationship, then I fully understand you being pissed off with him.
Do you feel that a man deserves to be attacked and stressed?
Do you have a feeling that your testing is a way of improving his combative skills?
Do you take secret pride in his decisive responses - all while resisting his efforts to quell your disruption?
How do you feel if his response is flaccid and ineffectual?
What if he hides or tried to pretend that your destabilising is not occurring?
What if he suppresses discussion and leaves you arbitrarily? (I think this can be a very good idea to insist on an hour or two of absolute silence, enforced by threat of a thorough spanking or strapping - but only for the short periods when she is unwilling or unable to discuss something in a civil and reasonably balanced way. One thinks of duct tape . . . but it might be best to her close for that hour or two. I suggest an overwhelming OTK spanking to put a stop to the rant - then an hour or two of silent cuddling. With luck she will return to being her usual self.)
What if he pleads for you to go easy on him?
What if his eyes narrow, he goes quiet for a moment and you know he had decided that you have stepped over the line which separates good adult behaviour from unacceptable behaviour which he will put an immediate stop to?
Do you have a sense that by making him fight for you to be happy time and again, he will come to value you more than if you were less troublesome?
Do you have a generalised fear of the unknown and of other men - beyond a rationally based fear resulting from what you consciously know about actual risks today? (This may be a silly question, since someone can't usually know their fears are irrational.)
Do you recognise PMS as such a deviation from your normal self that you would write your man a letter, giving him complete authority to refuse conversation when you are ranting or impossible and to keep you silent to stop you saying things you will soon regret, all enforced by corporal punishment? Provided he holds you close and contains you lovingly?
I would really appreciate anything you can write about how it feels to be testing the man's resolve, PMSing (including any manic, creative aspects of PMS, in the 7 to 10 days before your period), feeling intensely and unreasonably bitter about previous male partners and any other distinctively female experiences us men find hard to understand!
Men: I think there should be an outright ban on dredging up old stuff to make a PMS fuss. If it hasn't occurred in the past month, rule it out of order and tell her that her PMS Monster really needs to find something more credible to for you both to get upset about! This may not work so well with unresolved issues, which is another reason why it is best to resolve things sooner rather than later.
It is easy to detect the PMS Monster being in charge of her emotions and thoughts. Every path of thinking and feeling leads towards despair. Her experience may be that she feels desperately unsafe - that the (emotional, relationship) floor will suddenly open up and drop away from under her. No matter what you say, she will not be happy.
She is not deliberately doing this! Her brain works differently at this time and she has no other way of thinking and feeling. (Probably these things are not so intense, or occur less frequently, without caffeine.) She is typically trying to be helpful by discussing something which troubles her, but it leads to conflict because the man finds that no matter what he says, she finds new reasons to be unhappy and to think he doesn't love her, is not committed etc. etc.
Side note on diagnosable disorders:
If you have this sort of conflict frequently and unpredictably, not just at PMS times, perhaps the woman - and maybe the man - is suffering from something like the horribly named Borderline Personality Disorder. (Think "Drama Queen", "turn on a dime" etc.) References: NIH, DSM, WP. I think this disorder, or milder versions of it, are quite common and tend only to be a problem in close personal relationships. I understand (and I have no qualifications in any field) that they often arise from childhood neglect and abuse, that no medication is effective and that long-term psychotherapy can help. However, many sufferers won't see a therapist because a central theme of their life is that all their problems are caused by other people who should love and protect them are not being caring enough. There are other "personality" disorders, such as narcissistic and histrionic. These disorders are in a different dimension to "thought" disorders like schizophrenia or "mood" disorders such as major depressive disorder or bipolar (previously manic depression).
PMS is a diagnosable psychiatric condition too, but I think it is best prevented and treated with a committed relationship, loving care all day every day, avoiding caffeine etc. and probably a good old fashioned spanking at just the right time followed by some kind of sex romp.
Just because the woman is despondent and going crazy about perceived lack of trustworthiness and commitment doesn't mean she is nuts. Maybe the man really can't be trusted. Maybe he can be, but the woman is so used to untrustworthy men that she has not yet learned that this man is different. Old, protective, habits which were essential to her survival in the past may be hard to overcome. If this is the case, then it might be a good idea to see a family therapist, ideally as a couple - in addition to the therapy of cuddles, togetherness and probably discipline and spankings at home.
Men: I think that one telling pattern of PMS conflict is that while you are successfully responding in a genuinely constructive and reassuring manner to the last thing she was so unhappy about, in the middle of your sentence, she suddenly launches into something else about your past, current or purported future behaviour, thoughts and feelings that she finds distressing. You know you have beaten the PMS Monster when she responds, rationally, that what you have just said or done really is helpful and loving. When she is in the grip of the PMS Monster, it is highly unlikely she will acknowledge anything you do or say as being helpful.
I think the whole trajectory of this intense conflictual phase of PMS is that the woman's brain works in ways which makes her feel thoroughly insecure and unloved, and that she therefore behaves in ways which make the man feel he hasn't been devoted enough to her. It is a gruelling process, with the "evolved purpose" (in my opinion) of instilling feelings of guilt in the man, to keep him more attentive and to stop him wandering in the days to come when she is menstruating.
Regarding resolving things sooner rather than later - or rather than never at all - AKA "Don't allow icebergs to persist in your loving relationship!":
One of the advantages of a genuinely trusting DD relationship is that one person (the woman in a Fondly and Firmly or Taken in Hand setting) recognises it is best not to argue forever, and accepts the leadership of the other. This involves the dominant partner (in our discussion, the man) taking full account of the submissive partner's reasonable concerns. It also means the man needs to make difficult decisions, take responsibility for them and accept that this will make his beloved woman unhappy in the short term. She needs to trust him to make the best decision, and she needs to trust his leadership, even if she disagrees with the decision and even if she doesn't understand it.
This requires a lot of trust and respect, and not every man in the dominant role can earn it. Even if they do deserve this respect, maybe not every loving woman can overcome her fears, anxieties etc. to trust him properly. (Another reason for getting caffeine out of your lives, and to work with a good therapist if there are problems reverberating from the past, such as abuse from parents, bad-news boyfriends, violent men etc.)
Even if the man does earn the trust and respect of his beloved woman, in her wisest mine, it may take years for this trust to be fully emotionally and habitually established, so it is robust in the trying moments when it is most needed.
So the the job description for the man is along the lines of:
Tough, affectionate, stable, emotionally sensitive, dominant, playful, wise, patient, hard-working, devoted husband who is prepared to enforce his will on his beloved wife, and so make her unhappy in the short term - and who always makes the right decisions in heated moments when there is no-one to compare notes with.
This is tall order, and I suggest that women cut their genuinely devoted husband a little slack if he makes a few wrong decisions, or doesn't punish her in exactly the way she thinks is appropriate.
As a woman... I find that the testing of a man is purely instinct, And the reason I say this is because I have felt this need to test or see if he will respond to me if i push him in this direction. I have asked myself many times.. why have I done this? and the answer is always the same.... I need to feel his power and strength as a man because this makes me feel more like a woman. It is somewhat of a circle with no end in sight.
The key to stop this kind of testing that Mr Fondman was talking about in his analogy where -as, a woman tries to break out of the cage, is to find the harmony and balance between a man and a woman. When a woman's needs are being met, there will be no more of the woman breaking out of this cage.
A women does not deliberately set out to be destructive in the beginning of a relationship, she will only become this way when the instincts she is born with are being denied... what this means is that the instinct is actually a drive in her... this drive pushes her to have her needs met, and in turn she pushes her man to meet these needs.... if he doesn't, well... hence Mr Fondman's analogy... She will break out of the cage forever.
There's no question that insecurity (a perception of needs being unmet now or in the future) typically leads to the woman testing her man more. Sometimes the insecurity has a real basis.
Sometimes she feels insecure, because the signals she is getting do not meet her instinctual expectations - yet in reality she is secure in the love and protection of her man.
Sometimes (probably very often in recent decades) her testing behaviour destabilises the relationship because the man does not respond as she instinctually expects him to - and because her actions are at odds with the man's understanding of loving, caring, behaviour. Then, the insecurity has a real basis - the relationship is being tested to death. If the man understood what was happening and put a stop to the rot decisively, then instead of a descent into antagonism, lost of respect and loss of love, the relationship might be saved and may indeed thrive.
Most of our instincts evolved almost one or more million years of our ancestors being hunter-gathers and eking out a precarious living. There were many threats, but a prime threat to each small tribe was the desire of neighbouring tribes for land and so the limited food resources. Beyond starvation and disease, perhaps the greatest threat to a woman and her children was other men - particularly the threat of attack by men of another tribe who would kill the men of her own tribe, and many of the children, and take her, the other women and the land - so destroying most or all of her reproductive investment with her current man.
So there was little point falling in love with a man and having children with him if, within the next fifteen or so years, that man was not going to feed and protect the woman and her children.
In these circumstances, men were bred to be aggressive and good protectors. One mechanism was by them being killed by other men if they were not fit enough (natural selection). Another mechanism was by women choosing men (and so having children with them) according to the woman's perception of the man's fitness to fight and defend (sexual selection).
Assuming the above is true, then women were bred (that is, humanity evolved such that women's behaviour was) to choose their man very carefully and to ensure that he protected them and her children (which were not necessarily his children). Part of the man selection process was falling in love with the right kind of man in the first place - which explains a lot about how fairly crude cues of aggression, strength and wealth elicit such strong sexual/romantic responses in many women. Another part of the man selection process was testing him and leaving him if he failed to show the required levels of fitness. To survive, the woman needed a man who could feed her and repulse the most aggressive men of other tribes, and perhaps men of her own tribe too. Those attacks are not necessarily at convenient times for the defender, so he needed to be able to spring to the defence instantly in the event of a pre-dawn raid.
Leaving the man means first of all losing respect for him and falling out of love with him. To successfully find another man, it would help if her attentions and hopes were un-distracted by previous men - so it would be expected that humanity would evolve such that a woman's love for the man would best be transformed into hate and fear once that man is the previous, rejected, partner. (I think the same thing can happen with the relationship ends for other reasons too.) So, I believe, humanity has evolved so that many women have a profound instinct which distorts their memories of past relationships in a most bitter and destructive manner. Memories appear to us as a record of the past, but in an evolutionary sense, "memories" are are best filled by whatever notions will promote reproductive success in the future. This would mean that that humanity evolved brains which provide "memories" for the woman which best facilitate the bonding with a new man.
A somewhat oversimplified overview is that the combined pressure of natural selection and sexual selection bred men to be a bunch of big, strong, aggressive, strongly defensive brutes! But they had to get along well with the other people in the tribe if anyone was to survive, so it was a bad idea to be really reckless and aggressive in general. Also, the man is perfectly capable of killing or maiming the woman in a moment of anger, so his aggression needs to be directed very carefully. He also needs to be very careful with babies and children. This is an awkward specification to breed a man to!
Women evolved physical and emotional stamina, sensitivity for caring for children and wounded and sick adults, strong social skills and a wide range of capabilities for influencing and controlling the actions of their men. They also evolved some intense instincts regarding selecting and rejecting men - which manifest as various testing behaviours and intense feelings of respect, trust and love - or contempt, fear and revulsion.
From an evolutionary point of view, a woman will not be successful (that is, she will not enhance how many of her genes are in the following generations) unless she either has children of her own (who survive to reproduce) or her efforts help in the survival of her nephews, nieces and other close relatives.
The most direct way of achieving "evolutionary success" - and therefore the most important genetic aspect of our female ancestors which has been handed down to us, their surviving descendants - was the woman's ability to have her own children: with as many as possible surviving to have children of their own.
In ancestral, hunter-gatherer times, we can safely conclude, she generally couldn't have done this on her own. The most effective way a woman could maximise her reproductive success was to build a close bonding relationship with the strongest, toughest, man she can find. (In general, he will be the father of her children, but in some cases the woman will mate with another man if she thinks there is some advantage, such as his superior genes, or some other angle such as getting support from him as well in the future.)
The right kind of man (the sort who will feed and protect her and many children) will be smart enough to try to keep her to himself and to keep her busily working for him and their children. So if the woman finds that her man doesn't care too much if she comes and goes, or if he doesn't expect her to work damn hard, then she is likely to lose respect and love for him, just as she would lose respect if she finds that he does not cope will with challenging situations.
The "protective house" analogy relates to the man providing a cage to protect the woman from outside threats. But the house analogy might also resonate with feelings have regarding:
- The actual housing he must provide.
- His expectations that she work very hard.
- His expectations that her work and attentions be focussed on him and their children, not on other men or on pursuits not directly related to survival. (However, many social aspects of life were essential to survival - such as ceremonies, singing and dancing - so men would have evolved to be attracted to women to pursued these activities too.)
This is an unfinished exploration. Pursue it if you are in the mood!
Discussion of evolution and the instincts we have inherited is vital to understanding humanity. But that doesn't mean that our current goals must be based on evolutionary history. The instincts are not uniform - some individuals have them strongly and some hardly or not at all. Many of the perplexing human instincts - especially the sexually differentiated ones - are likely to be the product of uniquely human evolution as our ancestors struggled for survival in harsh physical and social conditions. These more recent instincts are likely to be more haphazard and imperfectly developed than those which go back tens or hundreds of millions of years. Such a relationship between inherited variability of a trait and the recent development of that trait can be seen physically. Arms legs and indeed penises have been evolving for a hundred million years or so - and the variations in their size is relatively small compared to a uniquely human and very recent development - fulsome female breasts. These were probably only evolved in the few million years since we began walking on two legs - I imagine as a way of attracting men around to the front where the woman can engage them with eye contact and verbal communication. (This is my theory - Desmond Morris wrote that breasts were to get the man round the front for sex, on the basis that frontal entry would be more likely to produce children. I guess both ways would work fine, so I figure the women survived better if they had the men in front of them than chasing their tails.) Breast size and shape varies enormously compared to other bodily dimensions.
I think many distinctively human social instincts - including many sexually differentiated instincts affecting man-woman relationships - are comparatively recent in origin. Basic attraction and sexual instincts are strong and consistent - they date back well into our mammalian ancestry. But instincts regarding the characteristics of desirable partners and relationships are much more recent - the last million years or so - since they developed in the environment of small hunter-gatherer groups. Those instincts shaped humanity and society then as they do now. But I think these recent developments are flaky and variable compared to well established instincts such as desire for food and shelter.
If we can find evidence of instincts in humans today, and a reasonable explanation of how such instincts might have developed, then this forms a "reasonable working theory" on which to ask further questions and on which to perhaps explain and resolve some perplexing questions in modern life. Perhaps the most obvious question is "Why do some, or many, women repeatedly fall in love with aggressive, dangerous, domineering men who make their lives a misery?". A simple answer to this might be "Because our ancestral mothers only survived by living with the biggest brute they could find - on account of the threat posed by all the other brutes!".
I think there is a lot of truth in this explanation.
Another answer may be that the woman had a violent or abusive father, and that young adults are instinctively attracted to opposite sex partners who resemble their opposite sex parent. The fact that the parent got them to this reproductive age indicates they were successful, in an evolutionary sense, so by seeking a partner with these characteristics, the young adult would have a better than even chance of finding a partner who was well adapted to current circumstances. This is not the way to happiness, in the modern sense, but in the current environment, it may well be a highly successful pattern for having more surviving children. (It is easy to see this at work today, with abusive fathers - and mothers - having daughters who have children early, with abusive men - and their children having children early. This wouldn't have been such a good idea in difficult ancestral times when children needed to be cared for in order to survive, and to reach a stronger mature, age before attempting to have their own children. But now, when virtually no-one dies before adulthood no matter how abusive and uncaring their parents are, any characteristic of parents which results in frequent childbirth, and especially doing so at a young age, will tend to result in reproductive success.)
But the fact that such instincts exist (lets assume for the moment that they do) does not make it "right" for women to follow them to the exclusion of all other considerations. "Right" and "wrong" are moral constructs - and morality seems to be a uniquely human creation. It is a minefield, so lets concentrate on "happiness" - where this is defined as whatever it is for that person which in the long term gives them the life which most satisfies and pleases them. That is a very personal criteria - as it should be.
For most of us to be happy, there are many compromises and interrelated goals to be achieved. There's no simple way of describing it, but for most people, our needs are a sophisticated network of relationships, pleasures and achievements which takes quite a bit of planning and work to realise.
Such sophisticated, variegated, healthy, adaptable lives are unlikely to be realised if all we do is simply follow the most obvious urges or a few basic instincts.
So, for most people today, happiness involves not slavishly following any one instinct, socially developed urge, or any other single drive or priority which is innate in us as an individual.
Some people believe that we are sophisticated and conscious and so are completely different from "animals". They think that humans either never had instincts, or lost them millennia ago, or that whatever vestigial instincts which remain are insignificant compared to our conscious minds and our socially "determined" characteristics. I think this is a completely false notion!
In the late 20th century, a dogma of "social determinism" even arose - that each person was a product of their social conditioning and not much more. I think this dogma was based not on rational analysis of humanity, but on a desire to portray every aspect of character and behaviour as non-instinctual and so amenable to change. The driving force behind this was the social program of feminism (and perhaps other movements aimed at eliminating racism and other forms of unjust negative discrimination). It would be uncomfortable for their arguments if, for instance, a man said "I can't stop groping the breasts of women - it is an instinct!". I think false social theories were developed and promulgated because they suited the programs of particular social reform movements.
I think human instincts are as powerful today as they were 100,000 years ago - and that they will still be strong and little changed in the thousands of years to come.
We are animals. But we have some rather strange, highly strung and imperfectly developed instincts. On top of this we have a huge capacity for conscious thought and for adopting what surrounds us as if it was naturally true. The brightest, most emotionally charged, people also have the greatest capacity for bullshitting themselves and others, including coming up with elaborate, plausible-sounding, cerebral justifications for actions and urges which are, I think, primarily instinctual.
If there is a pattern of inexplicable behaviour across all humanity - in many or most cultures - I suggest the first place to look for an explanation is to find some instinctual basis for this pattern. If the pattern manifests solely in particular societies (and if social developments can be isolated from the likely divergent instinctual development of different races, who have evolved in the last few tens of thousands of years in different environments), then I suggest the next thing to consider are social causes.
To my knowledge the womanly traits - testing the man's resolve, PMS, the desire for discipline and the desire for spanking - and the distinctively male problematic traits - such as a proclivity to thump whoever or whatever does not co-operate with them - exist in all cultures.
By understanding whatever processes underlie things which make us unhappy, we are on the way to learning to live with those aspects of ourselves - and managing those propensities in order to live according to our modern, personal, vision of happiness.
There are several factors which mean that simple following of instincts is unlikely to lead to happiness:
Understanding humanity required some imagination, sensitivity, capacity to think in a variety of ways at once - and a relatively dispassionate, scientific approach to analysis. Science does not work by proving things - but by developing theories which have predictive power and which can be shown to be false if they are in fact false. Then, by testing all theories, one or more survive all known tests, and are considered healthy working theories. To consider them as proven facts is a dangerous mistake. (It is a mistake made by some scientists and many who write about science. For instance the statement that "Scientists know that 3 seconds after the big bang the universe was X million kilometres across" is rot. Scientists have theories, but they cannot know any such thing.)
- Instincts developed in hunter gatherer society (and later, a little, in agricultural societies) - which are very different from our current society and conditions.
- Many human instincts developed rapidly and imperfectly. What we have now is a crude, awkward adaptation to particular challenges which faced our ancestors. If those conditions remained the same, and humans kept evolving in them for another few million years, those instincts would become much more closely attuned to the problem. At present, they are imperfect and widely varying - they don't do their job very well, because it is early days yet.
- Instincts are genetically determined thoughts and their resultant behaviours, and they developed according to the criteria of reproductive success - not happiness. Those who had 4 miserable children are more reproductively successful than those who had 3 happy children. More precisely, the couple who had 4 miserable children who survived to adulthood and any number of children who didn't survive, is more reproductively successful than the couple who only had 3 happy surviving children, and perhaps no other children who died young.
- Many instincts conflict in ways which may be difficult or impossible to reconcile. For instance the desire of a woman for a man who is a fierce warrior but who can hold a baby and care for her tenderly when she falls ill. Likewise, a man who wants a sexy, attractive wife so that his children will be sexy and attractive - but who also wants her never to have sex with or devote her attentions to another man.
We can develop tentative theories about instincts, social factors, developmental aspects of human character and and many other aspects of life - such as the role of facets of the universe beyond the physical.
With caution, these can help us understand ourselves and develop new ways of living.
Its not a bad thing to satisfy instincts - but we can't satisfy them all, since many of them are in direct conflict with each other, and with other constraints on how we live today.
Even if we did understand ourselves and each other very much better than we do today, "how to best to live" would be primarily an art rather than a science. Science would help us plan and make our brushes and paints, and guide us in what to eat - but life is not science, and its complexities outstrip the descriptive and optimising capacity of science and technology.