On evolutionary reproductive strategies, affairs of the mind and being a ‘dangerous woman’

Someone once called me a dangerous woman, and I didn’t really know what they meant.

I was young, vulnerable, blonde enough, but the person who called me dangerous was my old boss. My boss’ boss. How on Earth could I be dangerous? I had no power, after all. Or did I?

Well, maybe temporarily. Now, older, wiser and a damn sight less naive,  I know exactly what he meant.Whether consciously or otherwise, I had the ability to exploit my youth and vulnerability to temporarily appeal to someone with more power. It’s a dangerous evolutionary tactic, for sure. It only works until the other person decides they no longer wish to enable said vulnerability. Often, for women like this, their power ends in the bedroom. Like I said, I had no real power. But even I wasn’t naive enough, in that instance, to think that I ever did.

That we all pursue evolutionary reproductive strategies that manifest as (sometimes odd or irrational) behaviour is hardwired into all of us. Most of us just don’t examine our behaviour enough to recognise it for what it is. We all play to our strengths, whatever these may be, and though it might not feel like a game at the time, all relationships are based on a power play of sorts. Many of us use the upper hand to our advantage when it comes to negotiating them, however casual they may be. But, as most of us find out sooner or later, who has the upper hand can change,  sometimes dramatically, over time.

My husband’s particular brand of evolutionary schtick takes the form of a sort of pathological niceness with which he bombards his target until they give in to whatever it is he may be after, whether that’s borrowing a ladder from the neighbours or getting a girl into bed. This was his strategy in pursuit of me, and I enjoyed the upper hand while it lasted. I maintain it, even ten years on, with sort of arch aloofness whenever he’s being suspiciously nice. And these days, I always treat niceness with suspicion. There’s normally a motive of some sort.

I may be a cynic, but I have learned over time that being too nice gets me nowhere but exploited, and so I’m only ever really nice  with people with whom I’m on neutral terms – where there’s nothing to be gained or lost from not being. On the other hand, while I strive to treat people fairly, cold callers feel my wrath rather more than psychopathic ex-bosses, but that’s how power works – shit trickles down. It might feel a bit mean to wrongfoot hapless individuals. But you can be sure that if someone’s not playing nice with you, they are keeping hold of the of upper hand for whatever reason, and normally it’s because they can.

It’s not that I’m not nice to Tom – I roll his pants, and occasionally soothe his ego. It   wouldn’t be a very good long-term strategy for keeping him onside if I wasn’t. It’s just that, because I feel pretty safe and secure most of the time, I don’t always have to make that much effort, and know I can occasionally let rip (I’ve talked about my PMT before and there is a very good reason why low progesterone and high oestrogen turns me into something of a shrieking harridan at the end of each biological month) without him walking away.

Part of having the upper hand, or at least feeling comfortably neutral, after all, is being able to be yourself, warts and all. It’s about not feeling needy, or being so insecure you wear makeup to bed. It even translates as  walking around in jogging bottoms with toothpaste on my chin, and wearing a few extra pounds on a Sunday morning if I feel like it, or not bothering to shave my legs- or anything else for that matter. Most of the time, it’s trivial, but having power in my relationship makes life easier for me.

Sometimes, though, it gets more ugly. Power leads to corruption with a much predictability as e=mc squared, and in my relationship, it can sometimes lead to being the worst possible version of myself, just as a toddler, who’s held it together all day for his teachers has a meltdown with his mum as they walk  home. Partly it’s because I feel so safe I can let down the barriers polite society forces on us, but then, I am an adult, for all the baggage I may carry that means I act this way.

Just how much ‘behaviour’ is tolerated is up to the individual recipient. But as with people in abusive relationships, the amount it’s tolerated might also be affected by that person’s ability to walk away. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I’m a martyr and Tom is a pain in the ass. It’s, most of the time, a good, balanced relationship in that respect. And if I behave like a bitch at home, there is an element of Tom enabling me to do so.

But if Tom, god forbid, decided he’d had enough, I’d seriously have to weigh up how much I have invested in all sense of the word and how much I stand to lose. It turns out there’s a lot, and so the power I have is only really there as long as it’s granted to me. So much for equality.

But who can really say all things are equal all of the time in any relationship? It’s a tricky dynamic to maintain. For a while now, I’ve been acting less secure, and more needy, which has changed the balance of a relationship. Perhaps I know the upper hand has shifted. I am, after all, getting older. Tom is getting richer (and perhaps growing more attractive with age – it is, after all, the way it often goes). It’s not nice, perhaps, but these are no less facts.

There’s nothing more ugly than a woman, who is, in the illustrious words of the recently sidelined Beyonce, jealous or crazy, jealous or crazy? What’s worse?, she asks, and I have to say, both are a highway to nowhere. The old bad behaviour that you got away with when you had the upper hand and could act like a princess no longer works, and now acts as an excuse for the other party to walk away, for all they may be inciting it in the first place.

The thing is, Tom has form for being pathologically nice to people other than me, and he has an unfortunate tendency to do it with attractive blondes, or if not blonde, then at least relatively youthful. Having fallen for this schtick once, I know it when I see it. Don’t get me wrong, he’s nice to everyone, but he does like to lend an ear to vulnerable twenty-somethings who perceive this niceness as an opportunity, and while there may not be a conscious ulterior motive to it from his perspective, I’m pretty damn sure there’s an unconscious one.

But how it plays out rather depends on the target. Previously I’ve nipped all these flirtations in the bud sooner or later, by getting pretty pissed off if I’ve felt sidelined, or momentarily felt Tom’s priority shift, before anything serious happens. But because we’ve always, between us, had an open-minded, not to mention realistic acceptance that life would be pretty boring if neither of us was ever allowed to flirt with anyone ever again, I tend to turn a blind eye and wait for it to go away, as long as my nose isn’t shoved in it, or I feel I’ve been made to look like a fool.

This weekend, though, my nose was shoved in it. A situation unfolded  (or was it orchestrated?) in which a person about whom I had reason to feel suspicious (messages had been deleted, which I’d found out by chance)  was invited over. Get to know one another,” I was told. “It will stop your paranoia.” We got along fine, but things between them were getting cosy. A quantity of booze was drunk, and when her partner decided to leave, she decided to stay. When I went to bed, they stayed up. Suddenly not in the slightest bit sleepy, I went to the window and watched,  playing witness to becoming the  jealous third party in their little drama, where I was discussed as ‘she’, while the other ‘she’ turned to Tom for comfort about her own relationship woes, and later a scroll through her intimate iPhone pics.

Though my husband may sometimes be a dick, but he’s generally not dangerous. But this time, I didn’t just feel annoyed, or amused, I felt threatened. So I did what any sane women who feels threatened would do. I threw his phone in the kids’ paddling pool. No need to delete any messages now.

Can you blame either of them – or me, for that matter –  for our respective behaviour? Probably not. Do I have to tolerate it? Well to an extent, that depends on me. Do I expect Tom to change? Nope. Can I stop being a bitch? Even if my period’s due? I can try.

To be honest, I know (I hope I know) in my heart of hearts, no one really wants to rock the boat. Why on earth would anyone really want to disrupt a family? I don’t think this woman is out to get me. But then, Tom was married when I met him too. Maybe, that’s why I have my doubts.

Maybe, Tom is trying to assume more power in our relationship, so I don’t act like a cow when I’m due on or tired, and make more of an effort on a Sunday morning with a hangover. Both are valid enough desires, however unconsciously they are expressed. But like the girl who cries to another man that her boyfriend called her fat, there’s only really one reason why you would show them pictures of your tits. Now I’m wondering if there was a reason Tom didn’t want to put onion in the salad before she arrived. It’s never happened before.

But in the end, whatever anyone’s reasons for ending up in this torrid little vignette, there’s only really one thing to do. Work on myself. For a start,  I need to get more a grip on my own flirtations, however mild, and for all Tom has never seemed to mind – in fact, encouraged, by getting some weird kick out of me being considered attractive by other people, it goes both ways. I hope Tom hasn’t just been giving me enough rope to hang myself with, and sometimes I wonder if this is the ulterior motive. After all, you can’t be blamed for something if the other person has done it too.

Instead,  I intend to pull myself up my bootstraps, stop acting out and set a clear example that my husband needs to do the same. It is damage limitation 101, but for someone who works away and gets far more opportunity than me to ‘make a mistake’, it is worth examining your own behaviour before you go blaming others. And a suspicious mind only  comes from being less than innocent yourself.

Then, if things do go wrong, I can be sure it’s not me pushing boundaries, but rather them being tweaked by someone else with an evolutionary drive to be the dangerous woman. After all, it takes one to know one. And while Tom might try and get away with whatever he can get away with – that being most men’s ultimate evolutionary reproductive game, it’s not unfeminist to be aware that it’s not most other women’s.