Because of their heavy obligatory investment in offspring and limited offspring number, ancestral women faced the challenge of securing sufficient material resources for reproduction and gaining access to good genes. We review evidence indicating that selection produced two overlapping suites of psychological adaptations to address these challenges. The first set involves coupling-the formation of social partnerships for providing biparental care. The second set involves dual mating, a strategy in which women form longterm relationships with investing partners, while surreptitiously seeking good genes from extrapair mates. The sources of evidence we review include hunter-gather studies, comparative nonhuman studies, cross-cultural stud· ies, and evidence of shifts in women's desires across the ovulatory cycle. We argue that the evidence poses a challenge to some existing theories of human mating and adds to our understanding of the subtlety of women's sexual strategies. Key Words: dual mating, evolutionary psychology, ovulation, relationships, sexual strategies.. Hoggamus higgamus, men are polygamous; higgamus hoggamus, women monoga71Jous.-Attributed to various authors, including William James William James is reputed to have jotted down this aphorism in a dreamy midnight state, awaking with a feeling of satisfaction when he found it the next morning. The aphorism captures a widely accepted.fact about differences between women and men: Relative to women, men more strongly value casual sex (Baumeister, Catanese, & Vohs,
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