Married men are more likely to think they are more attractive than they actually are. The reason? Well they are no longer in the dating market and are likely to misread social cues from single women as a result.
Author of Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love, Marina Adshade said that this phenomenon often results in cheating, divorce and men opening up their relationships only to find themselves quite alone and their dating eligibility not as high as they think.
“This is really common, and I think a lot of it is being driven by men overstating their value. They think I’m married to this woman, but if we’re non-monogamous or polyamorous I’m going to have a new woman every week and it doesn’t work that way.”
In fact one post on Reddit which didn’t have the sympathy of anyone was the story of one man who convinced his girlfriend to have an open relationship only to find that she was in fact highly desirable and he was not.
What about married men
Part of the reason men tend to overestimate their stock or worth in the dating world is because they have the endorsement of the woman who married them, says Adshade.
“Women think other women are going to steal their husbands when they’re some middle-aged overweight man that no other woman is trying to take off their hands. So it’s not only men who overestimate their value,” she said. She also puts a lot of it down to cultural norms where men are always taught to be over-confident.
Often women who speak to married men are more relaxed with the assumption that they are taken and that can be misinterpreted by men as interest.
“I think this is generational, but it’s all coming from this inability to properly interpret what it means when a woman is nice to them. Just because a woman at work is nice to you doesn’t mean she wants to date you. This overconfidence creates very real problems,” added Adshade.
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