[caffeine5150]

In graduate school, I took a class on evolutionary biology. One of the principles put forth was that women (think cave women) evolved to focus on seeking a mate that provided time and resources because women are more focused on the long-term reproduction strategy of investing in their offspring and want a mate to help maximize their success (i.e. that offspring surviving to reproduce). Both men and women were shown to engage in both short and long term reproduction strategies of sorts. Men sleeping around (short term) and supporting a child (long term). Women supporting a child with a mate's help (long term) and sneaking out on mate to have sex with genetically superior mate (short term). One of the supporting studies showed that in a list of things that would most anger a man or women relative to their mate, men rated sexual infidelity as number one (this is in part because men have paternal uncertainty and their worst outcome is investing in the long term strategy of raising another male's child). Women listed sexual infidelity as somewhere in the top few, but number one was their mate spending time/money/resources on another woman. For example, imagining their guy taking another woman out to dinner, spending time and thought on her, buying her a gift, etc. upset them more than the thought of him simply have sex with a women he wasn't otherwise invested in. Within this theory, an expensive diamond communicates that the male is making a large investment and communicates to other women that the woman with the diamond is worthy of that large investment. In real life, women of course range from "don't care or think that way" or "achieve that validation through non-material means" to "totally obsessed with sucking material goods and services from a man and showing that off to other people (mostly women). It was an interesting course and study.