If you, as a young woman, ask your grandmother or mother for the best strategy to hold a man forever, they will tell you: get married and have children with him.
This strategy has most probably worked well for your grandmother and your mother. In their times.
But the world today is not the same as when your grandmother and mother applied the strategy they recommend.
Just one thing has not changed, because most likely, it is genetically encoded in the mind of most females of the human species: girls and women, especially when they are at the beginning of their sexual careers, and then again when they are beyond their prime, are thrilled by the idea of having a lifelong male partner.
Men, not only in in the modern world but since much, much earlier in human evolution, start out with a different idea. Rather than being thrilled by the prospect of spending their lives with a single woman, they dream of having sex with many girls. This, too, may well be genetically encoded.
That doesn't mean that men would not eventually settle down with one woman. But often, this happens (and happened) not because men would consider it the ideal setting, just as women do.
Often, practical considerations play a major role. In earlier times, it was a proven workable solution for the challenges of everyday life, that unions were formed (marriages) between one man and one woman. The two shared the tasks that needed to be done to sustain their lives. This was very practical indeed. They also had sex together, but this was far less central to their union than it is to modern male-female partnerships, and it was not just for the pleasure of it, but, too, was a practical necessity. Offspring had to be sired so that there would be somebody who would take care of them in old age.
In today's world, in which the demands of food and shelter are more easily met for ever more people, relationships between men and women are far more focused on sexual experience than they were ever before.
But still, men do settle with one women for an indefinite period of time (often until one of the two dies) for practical reasons. It's just that the practical reasons today are of a different kind.
One simple practical reason why men end up with one women is that for many men it is rather difficult to find other women. Or the other ones would be so much further down the scale of sexual market value (an index that takes into account such factors of desirability as beauty, youth, charm, education, and financial means) that men just don't consider these other women appropriate.
This simple practical reason, obviously, applies all the more the lower the sexual market value of the man.
Conventional wisdom is that poorer, less educated, older, and shorter men are less likely to divorce a wife than richer, better educated, younger, and taller men.
Not because they have better characters but because they have fewer alternatives.
But are you the kind of person to marry an unattractive, even an ugly man, just because you can be more sure that he will not, one day, desert you? If you can answer this in the affirmative, just go ahead. No need to read any further. Ugly men, who also are poorer, less educated, older, and short, are easy to find.
But what should your strategy be if you want to net an attractive guy, one with money, a good education, not too old, and six feet tall or more?
If you are beautiful and young, it may not even be too difficult to find a man for a marriage. So, if you got married, possibly rather young, should you now proceed to part 2 of your grandmother's and mother's advice and have as many children as possible rather quickly to seal the deal for a lifelong relationship with your husband?
Wait a moment!
Anywhere in the world today, the strategy of simply getting married and having children works less and less well to hold a man forever. Marriages can be divorced, and anywhere in the world, divorce rates point only in one direction: upwards.
In the US, it is meanwhile not unusual for successful men (men with a high sexual market value) to be married for the fourth or fifth time. There is good reason to doubt that on any of their own weddings, they were ever serious about staying with the bride forever.
But not only in the US, marriages become more and more temporary. In many Third World countries, too, men increasingly move on to other women after having been together with a previous one, the difference to richer countries just being that they often don't bother with formal divorces.
Even in traditional societies, and in societies that hold marital loyalty in very high esteem, such as China, divorces and separations are becoming ever more common.
And it's clearly not just childless marriages that get divorced. Which proves that the 2nd part of the recipe of your mother and grandmother (holding a man by having children with him), is less applicable today than it used to be.
The causes why marriages break up may be manifold. However, many of the causes are merely excuses, the one underlying reason often being the same: men just want to move on to have sexual relationships with other women.
This desire of a man usually is the underlying reason even when a woman decides to move out, and even when apparently, she is the one who terminates a marriage or non-formal love relationship. For a man who, deep down, desires other women, there are many ways to make her leave. Just treat her badly enough.
So, what are the best strategies by which women can make a guy stay with them forever (or long enough so that they will be together until an age at which his philandering impulses subside, with the subsequent homestretch to the grave for one of the two being easy)?
While there are non-sexual strategies, such as running a business together, the best strategies today must have a sexual component.
One aspect of a sexual strategy for holding a man forever is for a woman to be beautiful. Not that I would be telling women something new here.
But general beauty clearly is not enough. General beauty no longer can give a man a sexual kick when he has been with a woman for a number of years. Sooner or later the relationship will reach a stage when husbands will calculate how much they spend for the general beautification of their wives (in the form of cosmetics, hairdressers, and clothes), and that, thank you, they rather have the money; never mind the beauty of their wives.
Sure, other men (not the women's husbands)will be more appreciative of a woman's effort to have a beautiful face and hairdo, at least at the onset of a (extramarital) relationship. But their attitude may change, too, once they were to become the husbands.
So much for general beauty.
Now, let's discuss another strategic aspect that has largely been overlooked or ignored (as a matter of good taste) by the mainstream media, and that also is lacking from the advice grandmothers and mothers give: let's call it genital beauty.
Because it is a taboo topic, and certainly not a topic grandmothers and mothers talk about in most cultures, young women, and even older ones, have little awareness of what role female genital beauty can play in causing sexual excitement in men, and, by extension, in holding men forever.
The little awareness of women in this respect, on the other hand, is a little bit surprising as women clearly know of the excitement men feel from looking at or touching female genitals.
Furthermore, women in general also are aware of the strong sexual signal, female youthful beauty sends to a man.
So, why is there so little awareness among women that youthful genitals are so much more exciting for men than genitals that appear to be possessed by a grandmother?
When your grandmother and mother told you that having children with a man is a sure recipe for holding him forever, they did not consider this: no part of the female body takes such a bad hit from pregnancy and childbirth as do the genitals.
Sure, the breasts of a woman who has become pregnant and given birth are no longer as beautiful as the breasts of a woman who has never been pregnant. Already some three months into pegnancy, the nipples enlarge and become darker. And after childbirth, they will become fingerthick and disshaped, and they will never return to a pre-pregnancy appearance.
But the impact on the primary female sex organs, the vagina and directly connected parts of her body, is even worse. Just like the nipples, the vulva and genital lips swell well during pregnancy, well before childbirth. And after a normal delivery, within less than a year from conception, the female genitals turn from those of a girl to those befitting a grandmother.
All men feel sexual excitement from the prospect of sexual intercourse with a teenage girl, but very few do the same when they imagine sexual intercourse with a grandmother.
And the same applies when just the female genitals are considered. Teenage-like genitals can give many men an extreme sexual kick, which the genitals of an apparent grandmother no longer can.
No, husbands will never admit this when talking to their wives, even if they don't love them anymore. They still feel sympathy, and also, they may feel at fault, as they have caused this loss of teenage genital beauty.
Furthermore, it's really not just the appearance of the female genitals that sets teenage girls and mothers (and grandmothers) apart. The vagina of a woman that has been pregnant and given birth is no longer in a shape that can provide supreme pleasure to a man who inserts his penis.
The vagina of a woman who has given birth is much wider than the vagina of a teenage girl or any woman who has never been pregnant and has never given birth. The vagina of a woman who has given birth is also much more likely to get flooded during sexual excitement.
Both is not ideal for men, for reasons that are so obvious that they do not need to be explained here.
So think twice before you take the advice of your grandmother and mother that having children with a man is the best way to hold him forever.
Sure, if you have children with a man, he is unlikely to ever fully disappear from your life. He will want communication with his children, and he will quite possibly provide support, either on his free decision or because the government forces him to do so. He may even live together with you.
But the risk is always there that while, and even tough, you still hold him, it's not you who captivates him sexually.
So, by all means, consider it well before you agree to bear children, regardless of all the romantic talk betwee him and you about 'love forever' and sharing a grave together.
Any alternatives on the horizon? I think, yes. Extravaginal conception and embryo implant with surrogate mothers. Once the moral objections of religious fundamentalists, primarily in the US, are defeated, this may well become big business for women in the Third World. Bear another couple's children and receive lifelong financial support.
In the meantime, the big business is of another kind. Plastic surgeons worldwide have to deal with a surge in requests from women for genital remodelling.
Because the more virgin-like the female genitals, the greater the pleasure for husbands (and other men), an ever increasing number of American and European women have their genitals operated. Top on the wish list is a size reduction of 'meaty' vaginal lips and a protruding clitoris. Apart from that, the surgical tightening of the vaginal canal is often requested, even though childbirth is, after such surgical tightening, only possible via Caesarian section.
And in Indonesia (easily the one counrty on earth where not only most spices used in cooking originate from, but where, furthermore, shamans have a herbal for about every condition) practically all woman use sirih leaves to effect a vaginal tightening after having given birth, as they are well aware of the fact that both, their husbands' pleasure and the success of their marriages, to a good degree depends on whether they can still provide that ultimate pleasure, even though they have given birth.
