As way of introduction, we will quickly reference two other articles on women and competition.
First, in “Where Women Are More Competitive Than Men,” the authors conducted an experiment with men and women to find out which gender was more competitive. They found women were just as competitive—it simply depended on whether the test subjects belonged to a patrilineal or a matrilineal society—one of these exists in a certain part of northeast India.
Second, in “Elite Professionals Hold Back Other Women,” we read the following:
It is, genuinely, a brave new world for women, but it is also a world that requires a completely new divide: between a cadre of educated, elite women at the top and the great female majority for whom things have barely changed except that now instead of cooking, cleaning or taking care of their own children in their own home, they’re performing such duties in restaurants, office buildings, and ironically, the homes of the successful female professionals.
Powerful women have no problem pushing other women down—administrative assistants are 97% women.
We need to face the truth at last: there certainly may be gender differences, but women are just as competitive as men. It wasn’t all that long ago that the vast majority of sports players and fans in the United States were men— and we see how that has changed.
But as the experiment in the the patrilineal and matrilineal societies showed, a great deal of social malleability exists.
There are three major areas of competition: sports, business, and—love.
Byron once wrote, “Man’s love is of man’s life a part; it is a woman’s whole existence.”
We’ve all heard the phrase, “love is a game,” and what people tend to mean by this is not that love is a mere toy, but that love is marked by intense competition—in love there are winners and losers, which has a profound impact on the emotional life of a person, and the stakes are not trivial; they are life-changing, extremely significant on many levels, and Darwinian.
It is said that men are “players;” they love and run; but the woman—traditionally shut out of sports and business—is the original Player when it comes to Love and Romance. She is the female spider who eats the male, beautiful, but nasty, like nature red in tooth and claw; male players “run” only because they don’t want to be caught and eaten.
Even advocates of love must admit love is a nasty business. It takes our worst traits: jealousy, anger, insecurity, doubt, lust, greed, and hooks us in.
When we “lose” in love, the “game is over,” and the “winner” wants no more to do with us: run along, little boy, you lost. So says the woman, who a short time before, wept and worried over us, covered us in kisses, told us we were all they cared about.
Women are more competitive in love because this is where they can be competitive.
If women are as competitive as men, then their competition needs somewhere to go.
Men are freely competitive in sports and business—so they have no competition left for love. A man doesn’t want to fight in love; when a man is with a woman he likes, he is happy, and just wants to be happy with her. But for the women, it is far more complicated.
Kept from the competition of sports and business for so long, many women traditionally find reasons to be competitive in a place where the man is not—in romance.
Women choose a man, not based on how attractive he is, but on whether or not she thinks she has a chance to beat him in a good, well-played game. This may sound crazy, but we have a hunch it is true.
Love is a game for women, but not for men.
If men seem to be “game players” in love, it is out of fear, as we mentioned above, fear of being devoured by the female spider—or beaten soundly, trounced and humiliated, by the original “player,” the Female Player (femme fatale). It is the woman who truly relishes love as a game totally and completely.
This is not to say that men are not vaguely aware that love is a competition—they know love has winners and losers, and that in love gone wrong one can dump or be dumped; they know, of course, men compete, generally, at least, with other men for women.
It is this “competitive” aspect of love that makes it an arena for competition—and women, if they are competitive—and we think they are—find this the most convenient place to be competitive. And they get to compete (in the U.S.) against the most “competitive” creature on earth: the American male.
When we meet someone frustrated by love, single and no longer looking, we don’t say they are not “loving,” and we don’t cruelly assume they have given up because they are unloving; they are simply sick and weary of the “competition,” because that’s what love is.
Women, traditionally shut out of sports and business, have made it so.
Love either has a clear winner and loser (someone is dumped), or it is unclear who is winning, or the whole game is cancelled, or, and this happens fairly often, the man simply refuses to play the game, and while not “winning” with this strategy, can maintain a certain dull stability in a relationship.
How one plays the game of love depends on three things: 1) one’s personal history; 2) the kinds of gambits, strategies, and defenses one chooses; 3) how attractive, reckless, and heartless one happens to be.
The most common way to cancel the “game” is to have a child with someone. Therefore, those who don’t want to have children tend to be real players—be careful of them, no matter what they say.
Of course, one can have a child with someone and then be dumped by them—and so the dumped will be anxious to get in another game and win.
Having a lot of children with someone, however, is a pretty good way to get “love as competition” out of one’s system—but if a nasty dumping occurs, all bets are off. One may give up, or look for a win.
Those who have lost will often want to play again—so they can win. One should beware of them, obviously.
But there are some who may be addicted to “winning,” and so it is their “success” that makes them dangerous.
The addictive “winner” probably became that way because of a particularly heart-breaking “loss” which happened long ago.
Relationships that last for any length of time are those in which no clear winner is established.
One “wins” when a tipping point is reached on the issue of “trust;” for whatever reason, a threshold is reached in which jealousy belongs almost entirely to one person, and not the other—and that person, the one who is overly jealous or clingy—loses, and because they are too jealous, they are dumped. Interestingly, “evidence” and actual behavior mean little; both of you may be cheating, or one, or none, but if you don’t care and the other person does, you win.
One can dump, fearing one will get dumped, but the first one to dump does win. That is the iron rule of winning, and there are no exceptions—except if the one dumped doesn’t care. Not caring is the ultimate triumph.
If one dumps, but then undoes the dump, one is winning, but has not yet won.
When a woman chooses to start a relationship with a man, thinking she can win, she will find out pretty quickly if a man is very much a man: a simple, jealous creature, devoted and simple-minded when it comes to love, not effeminate and cunning in the least. He will be easy to vanquish.
The gay man is the natural antidote to the femme fatale—because he is gay, she cannot harm him; but if there are degrees of homosexuality, men may present different and exciting challenges to the woman hungry for a challenging win.
A fool can dump a genius. Love is the great equalizer.
The unlearned beloved knows, the poet lover doesn’t.
The genius poet thought love was enough. It wasn’t.
One can dump, however, and think one has dumped successfully, when one really hasn’t. It is possible for the “winning” fool to remain a fool.
If a couple dumps each other simultaneously, this can mean a variety of things, but it mostly likely means they both lose.
