Evolutionary psychologists say that men have evolved a "desire for sexual variety" adaptation. (stock photo)

My boyfriend swears he doesn’t look at other women.

But there was that time at the airport.

We were in a post-holiday layover in Atlanta. I was searching for a seat with a plug for my laptop. My boyfriend was helping. And that’s when my eyes fell on her: Potential trouble. She was probably a model (we were next to a gate departing for New York): tall and thin, of course, with dark, long hair and doe eyes against a poreless olive complexion. It was a matter of time before he saw her.

I told myself I didn’t care. That if I had had this sort of reaction to her, his would inevitably be—almost justifiably—worse. And it was. So bad that I can’t believe how tactlessly he acted, though I know he thought he was being discreet. About three or four seats over, when she got up to continue her travels, she passed in front of my boyfriend’s seat before blending into the everythingness in the main corridor behind him. My boyfriend gave it a good seven seconds or so before he actually turned around to look after her, making it appear he was scanning the crowd, perhaps the monitors, for some information necessary to our voyage.

Nice try. He looked like a dog whose eyes were following a piece of meat. He was, in fact. I was mad at him for the rest of the day.

But the truth is, all men look at women. More than women—committed women, anyway—look at men. And it’s not because men don’t love their wives or girlfriends, if they happen to not be single. It’s because they simply can’t help it. They’ve evolved that way.

But what kind of prognosis is that for monogamy? And how do women’s “looking behaviors” differ?

Caveman Corneas

Knowing the worst would be confirmed for me, I sought the help of Dr. Ellen Melton with Angelo State University’s Department of Psychology, Sociology, and Social Work to help me make sense of this infraction. Why, I begged of her clinical knowledge, do men seem so much more likely than women to ogle the opposite sex—even when out with their significant others? And why do they seem so damn helpless to conceal it?

“The evolutionary perspective of psychology would say as far as attraction, it serves the purpose of reproduction,” Melton says. “On the male side, evolutionary psychology says males are much more interested in finding different mates so they can maximize their [reproductive] success. In that light, men would be constantly ‘on the prowl’ for new mates. And females would be looking for someone they could depend on to raise their children and provide resources to raise children. So if we think about gazing behavior from that evolutionary perspective, men gaze longer than vice-versa because they are seeking out more mates, and are doing an assessment of [a particular] woman’s characteristics as a potential mate.”

Simple enough. But it still left me with questions. I wanted to know how this residual male trait was still so virile in our more-or-less monogamous society. Luckily, one of the nation’s premier evolutionary psychologists, Dr. David Buss, is just east of us at the University of Texas at Austin.

I knew he’d be the perfect person to consult. In college, his class on human sexuality was one of the first to fill up. I once attended a speech of his, post-grad, at the Pearl Brewery conference room in San Antonio. Mostly, he presented choice research from two of his most popular books, “The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating,” and “The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex.” He presented straight facts from his world that made most everyone—marrieds in attendance, especially—squirm: Men are attracted to younger women—increasingly so, as they age. And beautiful women. And, casual sex is not just the urge for debased men—it’s the urge for all men.

All of this to set the background for the exposition Buss gave for my question on males’ sexual evolution, and how it informs their “looking behavior”:

“Men look at women because they have evolved adaptations for doing so,” Buss says. “A woman's physical appearance provides a wealth of information about her health, age, and hence, fertility.”

So that’s why they look. I get it. By why do they look, even while with a woman—even a gorgeous one?

“Mating is rarely a ‘once in a lifetime’ phenomenon,” Buss says. “Something bad could always happen to one's mate, necessitating the need to re-mate. Plus, men have an evolved ‘desire for sexual variety’ adaptation. Hence, they subconsciously scan the mating horizon for potential mates. There is also evidence that when men look at attractive women, it literally activates a pleasure center in their brains. Basically, men are wired to look, and the ‘potential mates’ is the evolved function. Even if one in a thousand such looks historically led to an added copulation, this looking adaptation could have evolved.”

And where does that leave women? Caught in the rat race of looking young and beautiful so that other women won’t “lure” or “poach”—these are the words Buss used—their mates. Because we’re out for something, too—a mate with that offers us and our children—who take nine long, complicated months to incubate—protection.

Coquettish Inclinations

Women look, too. They spend a lot of time sizing up their same sex. My lifelong observation has been supported by science: Given a man and woman to look at, a woman will usually “scope out” the female first, to compare herself along the looks/body/dress fields.

A handsome man catches my eye. But I never ogle. I’m usually not interested enough to (unless we’re talking about Christian Bale). Buss and other evolutionary psychologists would say that’s because I’m in a relationship, and I’m not evolved to seek many mates.

My looking is different from a man’s, which is only concerned with physical attractiveness. A handsome man is great. But there are so many things that can ruin this visage: He’s driving a lemon. He’s wearing a loud floral print. He looks dirty. He looks like a womanizer (whereas: A girl that looks “easy” to a guy? Party on!). This “picky” visual checklist makes me just another hamster in the wheel, according to Buss.

“Physical appearance of a man per se offers less information about a man's mate quality,” he says. “Things like status, ambition, drive, kindness, loyalty, etc. are more important than appearance. Except in short-term mating. So women look, they just do so less than men, at least when they are in a committed relationship. If single, then they definitely look.”

I’ve never been much of a short-term mater.

But wait.

Of course, these theories are all based on the field of evolutionary psychology. Some people don’t believe in evolution at all. Some would say men look more because they’re socialized to do so. Some would say men look because women invite them to with increasingly scanty fashions—to which others might respond, “they’re just trying to compete. If men are dogs and women need to secure a bone, that’s the only way to survive in this rat race.”

There’s still some science that confounds the evolutionary perspective. A recent study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology confirms that men ogle attractive women. But it also says women do it too, just as much—even if they’re attached.

“Our research suggests that it’s inevitable to a degree,” study author Dr. Jon Maner was quoted in a report from MSNBC last November. “People’s eyes are automatically captured by attractive members of the opposite sex, although our research also suggests that self-control can take over after that initial attentional bias.”

Perhaps women are just more discreet oglers. Or men are less inclined to notice our visual infidelity. Perhaps this has to do with males’ perception of being more attractive than they really are, another tenant borne out by evolutionary psychology. Contrarily, women are more likely to underestimate their physical attractiveness than men.

There is other perplexing research about what each sex looks at what when looking at the opposite sex. Remember the movie “Kinsey” that came out a few years ago? His Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is still alive and well in its Bloomington, Indiana digs.

The Institute conducted a study last year that examined men and women's attention patterns to sexually explicit pictures. More importantly for this article, it sought to track the different sexes’ gaze patterns while viewing the stimuli.

Bet you know what the men vs. the women looked at, right?

Right. Women looked at genitals more. Men looked at faces.

Seriously.

Except for this odd turn: Half of the women in the study—the half on birth control—looked more at contextual things—clothes, background details, etc.

That one’s for a whole different article altogether.

Conclusion

Shall we chalk the high divorce rate up to roving eyes? Should women put up with man-wolf behavior, and men not even try to disguise it because it’s how they were made?

I’ll let the Dark Prince of Promiscuity speak to that one.

“Men can help it,” Buss says. “It's like having a sweet tooth. It's impossible not to experience the sensation of sweetness when you eat a cookie, but you can choose not to eat the cookie. Same with looking—it will always be pleasurable if it occurs, but men can consciously inhibit themselves from looking. And they do, so as not to evoke jealousy from their mates.”

But if you’re really vain and insecure like me, go and find yourself a computer programmer. I’ve found my aerospace engineer to be a little too visually liberated.