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many partners she may have. But the male, by contrast, has no such automatic confidence: “Mommy’s babies, Daddy’s maybes.” Accordingly, males who spend substantial time away from their female partners may be especially inclined to copulate frequently when they are at home, to increase the chances that their offspring are in fact theirs. We might conclude that they “love” their mates all the more when given the opportunity to make love with them. Moreover, the more loving they do, the more love they feel, with “love” in such cases defined as a powerful inclination to remain with and be devoted to one’s partner. In biological terms, the greater is the confidence of shared genetic investment, the greater is the love.
    Now, let’s take the female’s perspective, and say that the lady osprey, goshawk, or white ibis is occasionally inclined to have sex with males in addition to her mate, perhaps because her extracurricular partner is particularly able or inclined to invest in her offspring or because his genes are especially fitness enhancing. At the same time, however, she dearly wants to retain the parental assistance of her social mate. It would make sense in such cases for the female to indulge her social partner’s sexual inclinations and to copulate often, if only because by assuaging his unconscious anxieties, she is more likely to obtain his continuing assistance and commitment while still remaining free to indulge her own extra-pair inclinations when her mate isn’t around.
    Maybe all this has nothing to do with human beings. But it is probably no coincidence that other species among which pairscopulate frequently are particularly likely to do so outside the pair bond as well. The prospect looms, therefore, that the remarkably high frequency of in-pair human sex isn’t so remarkable after all, considering that human beings are more than a little prone to sexual dalliance.
    So perhaps we don’t advertise our ovulation, at least in part, because to do so would be to invite an unacceptably high level of sexual jealousy and obsessive mate guarding on the part of the male at these times. This would be all the more biologically awkward for females in proportion if they are somewhat inclined to infidelity … which they are. Women would accordingly be more fit if they didn’t incite their social mates to keep too-close tabs on their sexual activities. Lacking a powerful peak of sexual desire—and of desirability—women would also have been liberated to have sex with other males, and not just their designated mates. This possibility is a variant on the earlier notion of keeping control by keeping him guessing, and it emphasizes the sexual liberation of women, but it differs in paying attention to each woman’s payoff, benefits that needn’t involve purchasing infanticide insurance or even sire choice, but rather, covering her tracks. Not only that, but such liberation might also free a woman to have abundant sex with her designated partner as well, in the process keeping him sexually satisfied and also less worried about his paternity—perhaps less worried than he ought to be.
    Had enough? For better or worse, the above suggestions do not exhaust the many possible explanations for concealed ovulation. It has been suggested, for example, that concealed ovulation has been selected for as a means of keeping the peace. Imagine, if you will, the situation in an otherwise staid commercial office, university, or bank—or Pleistocene campfire or Ice Age cave, for that matter—if the women regularly underwent a dramatic and readily apparent transition each month when they became fertile. The resulting chaos and heightened competition might well be so disadvantageous as to give an advantage to those women whose reproductive status remained demurely incognito.
    This may seem compelling, but actually it is not persuasive to most evolutionary biologists, for the simple reason that under such conditions, any