ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the major forms of sexual conflict—conflicts over the occurrence and timing of sex, sexual aggression and defenses against sexual aggression, jealous conflicts that arise from potential “mate poachers” and signals of infidelity, mate guarding that limits a partner’s behavior by preventing full freedom of mate choice, and conflict over access to resources. Strategic interference occurs when a person employs a particular strategy to achieve a goal and another person blocks the successful enactment of that strategy. If a woman delays sexual intercourse until she feels some emotional involvement or commitment from a man, for example, and the man persists in his sexual advances even after the woman has indicated her desire to wait, then the result is interference with the woman’s sexual strategy. Disagreements about the occurrence and timing of sex might be the most common sources of conflict between men and women. Humans live in an uncertain mating world.
