Needle, Meet Haystack

NOTE: I do not condone or endorse cheating, infidelity or affairs.  This post is for illustrative and entertainment purposes only, and should not be taken as advice or tips by anyone.

There’s a lot of power in numbers.  Statistics can be manipulated to swing opinions one way or another, to discover hidden truths, or even for proving silly points (like this one or this one).  Economists, scientists, politicians, web developers, marketers and millions of other people depend on statistics for their livelihoods and professional success.  Statistical results drive the progress of the modern world.  They also drive your dating life.

In a recent-to-me post on Musings on Life and Love, dating blogger extraordinaire Dennis Hong  used math to debunk the myth of male promiscuity (in terms of quantity of partners, at least).  It’s highly worth a read.  But I’ll attempt to summarize it a lot more plainly and quickly:

In an environment with a split that is drawn right down the middle (ie: men versus women), it’s impossible for the sides to not even out.  The average of 5, 0, 0, 0 and 0 is the same as the average of 1, 1, 1, 1 and 1 (they’re both 1), and the average of 5, 1, 1, 1 and 1 is the same as the average of 1, 2, 2, 2 and 2 (it’s 1.8 in both cases).  Unless you decide to fake some alarmingly false and misleading restrictions, you cannot create a 3:1 ratio between both groups.  As a contribution to the set requires an even contribution for each side (1 point to each), the numbers will always balance.

Dennis explains it much better.

The thing about Dr. Hong’s post is that it made me realize that there are other mathematical procedures that are involved in the dating dance.  And one of the biggest proponents of this is infidelity.

If you’ve seen the film A Beautiful Mind, you might remember the scene in which Russell Crowe’s character explains to his colleagues that by dividing their attention evenly among several women instead of all competing for one, they increase their chances for enjoying some mattress mambo that night.  The men expand their search group and remove overlap, resulting in less competition an an easier time attracting the ladies.  This exemplifies Game Theory (specifically the Nash equilibrium described above) and is a good example of why competition is bad.  But that’s just the beginning.

Let’s say that you’re getting $50 in cash.  You have two choices: a $50 bill, or two $20 bills and a $10 bill.  Which would you rather have?

Wait, let’s change that.  Which of these would you like? You can have: a twenty, two tens, a five and five ones; ten ones, two fives, a ten and a twenty; two twenties and two fives; five tens; fifty ones; or seven fives, a ten and five ones.

Which one of those choices was easier to make?  Chances are, it was the one with less options, unless you really like George Washington or Abe Lincoln.

The more choices a person has, the more difficult is is for them to make a decision.*  When we have fewer options to work with, it is simpler to think analytically and critically.  A or B?  True or False?  Yes or No?  Eliminating the middle ground and reducing comparisons makes things so much simpler.  It’s far easier to fight one person than ten.  And this is why it’s easier to attract someone who’s in a relationship: your competition is much lower.

When you’re single, you could feasibly have all of those plenty of fish in the sea people keep talking about.  Your potential dating pool and all of your possible suitors are literally everyone who matches your partner preferences when it comes to gender and orientation.  That’s between 10 and 50 percent of the population if we don’t skim down spiritual, personality, ethnic, physical, mental and emotional restrictions.  And even then, there are hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people you could be with.

When you’re in a relationship, you’re with one person.

For those of you who failed out of basic math, 1,000,000 is a heck of a lot more than 1.

For the enterprising homewrecking cad, laziness is key.  They don’t need to be more attractive, clever, intelligent, wealthy, interesting or powerful than everyone else in the club or bar.  They just need to be better than the person their target is with.

There’s more that could be said about the travails of a serious relationship, the difficulties of monogamy and the psychology of a cheater.  But really, it’s just more convenient to choose from one of two options than it is to choose from a veritable smorgasbord of thousands.  When we’re more limited in our options, we make easier (but not necessarily better) decisions.  That’s why it’s easier to find someone you want to be with when you’re in a relationship than it is when you’re single.

Then again, that could just be statistics manipulating your brain.

*For more on this, read up on choice modelling if you feel so inclined