Dr. David Buss

Even if there are no mate poachers and no cues to infidelity, if a mate value discrepancy opens up in a relationship.

So colloquially, people say things like he's not good enough for you, you know, or I think you could do better to people and implicitly have a notion of.

relative mate value and discrepancies therein.

Okay, but discrepancies can open up where none previously existed.

So you get fired from a job all of a sudden, you know, and most people are very understanding and forgiving about that.

if it's not too long, but you go six months, eight months, people start having problems.

Or if someone's career takes off, let's say a woman becomes a famous singer or actress or a man does, career takes off, all of a sudden there's a mate value discrepancy where you have access to a larger pool of potential mates and higher mate value potential mates.

So

So people are attentive to mate value discrepancies.

And so jealousy can get activated even if there are no immediate threats to a relationship.

But the mate value discrepancy is a threat that looms on the horizon of the relationship because we know statistically the higher mate value person is more likely to have an affair.

and is more likely to dump the other person and trade up in the mating market.

And then what people do about it depends on what their options are.

And people do things that I, in my published scientific work, I say range from vigilance to violence.

And that can include stalking, following, hacking into iPhones or computers, monitoring animals.

the behavior of mate poachers, looking at eye contact between other men and your partner.

There's a whole suite of things that, you know, is involved in vigilance.

And then at the other extreme is violence.

In America, something like 28 to 30 percent of all people who are married will experience intimate partner violence in their relationship.

So it's not a trivial percentage.