Long-term mating and short-term mating

Abstract

Human mating is neither uniformly short-term nor long-term but a flexible system responsive to evolutionary pressures, developmental history, and ecological context, and this chapter examines the theoretical and empirical foundations of that flexibility. It introduces sexual strategies theory as the core framework, explaining how sex-differentiated reproductive costs produce divergent mate preferences, jealousy responses, and mating tactics in men and women, and draws on large-scale cross-cultural research to show how these patterns hold across diverse populations while varying in their expression. The chapter evaluates short-term mating strategies and their associated debates, addressing sperm competition, ovulatory shifts, good genes hypotheses, and the mixed evidence surrounding each, before introducing strategic pluralism theory as a context-sensitive account of how individuals adjust their strategies across the lifespan. It considers mate preferences in depth, examining what men and women prioritise in long-term and short-term partners and how those preferences interact with resource availability, operational sex ratios, and cultural norms. Finally, the chapter situates human mating within the broader framework of sexual selection, showing how ancient reproductive pressures continue to shape contemporary relationship behaviour.