Does sex hormone make some women cheat?

January 20th, 2009, Posted by Lizzie Creedy Smith

It seems that it’s all down to the so-called sex hormone, oestradiol, an oestrogen compound in women, that can make all the difference between a home-loving faithful partner and a bed-hopping flirting one.

While it doesn’t take free will completely out of the equation, research by University of Texas psychologist, Dr. Kristina Durante suggests that high levels of the oestrogen sex compound in some women seems to be responsible for their cheating, flirting behaviour.

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Dr. Kristina Durante, who has written on such subjects as, “Intrasexual Competition Among Women,” “Sex and Mating,” and “Changes in women’s choice of dress across the ovulatory cycle,” believes that some attractive women have a predisposition to have extra-marital affairs, not simply because they want to on a whim, but because they are driven to do so by the sex hormone oestradiol.

It seems that it’s not only the women with increased levels of the sex hormone who are having it all their own way, however. Men have apparently evolved ways to detect the presence of the hormone in women, finding those with increased levels more attractive and being more likely to solicit them in preference to other women.

The so-called sex hormone oestradiol also seems to be responsible for women having the “perfect” waist to hip ratio. In other words, those women who have the curvy, voluptuous hourglass slim waist shape that accentuates her hips. This is the shape that men prefer as experience has shown them that such women are the best bet for getting everything a man wants in a woman.

It seems also that women with high levels of oestradiol know they are attractive. They usually feel more beautiful and desirable within themselves, which all adds to the ease with which they can lure and procure a man of their choosing.

The Texas university study suggest that it’s all down to evolution in the end. The reasons why women do what they do, and men do what they do is down to simple survival responses and has nothing whatsoever to do with responsibility or morals. Women need good looking men who can provide for them so that they can have children and perpetuate the species. Men are always on the lookout for sexy women who can make them feel good. Nature has evolved us all to fit the patterns so that us humans can survive.

This mechanistic view should not exonerate women who cheat on their partners by explaining it away as something they can’t help doing. There’s always free will in any human behaviour equation. People, most of them at least, are not mindless zombies driven by chemical impulses they have no control over.

In the meantime though, dating will keep on being something that is driven by attractive women seeking good looking men, or hunky men seeking sexy women. One thing is for sure – the two will always find a way to get together!

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