No Trespassing

In a recent article on the disapointing dating tactic of "mate poaching", my favourite sexpert, Josey Vogels, examines the results of a study done at Oklahoma State University (surely, a study performed at UCLA would sound much sexier and more appealing…). To begin, Vogels acknowledges some common unwritten rules about dating etiquette (who you should and shouldn’t date). Let's take a look to read and understand before we continue:

* Friends' exes are out.
* So is asking someone out when you know a girlfriend is already interested in him.
* Hitting on a girlfriend's guy when they are already dating is definitely out.
* Hitting on any guy who's already attached or married even if you're not friends with his partner is a no-no.

The results of the study indicated that 90% of the sluts (errr.... I mean students) at Oklahoma State were more interested in dating a man who’s already in a relationship than they were in dating a single man. The results of past psychological studies have also indicated that some women try to lure men away from their current partners. One previous study, performed in 2004, showed that as many as 1 in 5 relationships began when one or both partners were already in relationships with someone else. Whoa. What’s shocking about this recent study is that it has shown that the cohorts prefer committed men over single men. Huh???!!!

The results:
“Men and women were matched with students based on a description of their ideal romantic partner. When researchers described the women's match as single, 59 percent of the single women in the study were interested in pursuing him. However, when they described the exact same man as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent of the women were interested. Neither the men nor the already attached women who participated showed this preference.
Dr. Melissa Burkley, an assistant professor of social psychology at Oklahoma State University and one of the researchers behind the study suggests that the reason behind this is that single women are more interested in pursuing unavailable men (now, there's some shocking news) possibly because they are more interested in a guy who's already shown he can commit by being in another relationship, indicating he'd be a reliable mating partner.”

I get it. Having suffered through singledom for many, many years, I was convinced that all the good guys were taken. It seemed that all of my friends who were dating were with miserable wrecks, but my girlfriends in committed relationships all seemed happy with their men. As much as I was convinced by these facts, I still never entertained the notion of attempting to steal one of my friend’s dudes. Jeez. I have been pursued by men in committed relationships in the past and, trust me, the minute I found out they were taken, I was outta there. Who needs that kind of drama? Apparently, I stand in a very small segment of the single female population – the 10% who would never go there.

Obviously, men in relationships have proven that they can commit and, to the benefit of other women, they’ve been trained by their partners, thereby releasing that responsibility to the female poacher. Still, my goodness, are these women not afraid of karma? If a man will be lured from his woman for you, doesn’t it stand to reason that he could be lured by someone else in the future?? Or, worse, he could develop a strange, kinky fetish such as falling for a single girl!!!