The One Thing Men in Unequal Relationships Do More Of (No, Really)

This article was originally published in French at Le Point on 19.04.2026

It’s not the most civil of thoughts—and certainly very rude when spoken aloud—but I suspect we all make the same mental observation upon noticing, well, let’s call it an “aesthetic imbalance” in a couple. Essentially, this is the equivalent of asking oneself how did he get her? It can go in the opposite direction, too, but there seem far fewer hot studs on the arms of homely women than stunningly beautiful women on those of average-looking men.

Popular culture present and past abounds with such visual shockers, from the severely inbred Habsburg King Charles II of Spain with the jaw-dropping (sorry) Marie Louise of Orléans, to that beanpole crooner with a pompadour, Lyle Lovett, tying the knot with Julia Roberts at her Pretty Woman peak, to—dare I say it—the cartoonish gulf between Donald and Melania. Obviously, looks aren’t everything, and with these types of “mate value discrepancies,” as evolutionary psychologists refer to them, the other party typically compensates by, say, having more money than God or by dripping with talent.

King Charles II of Spain with his first wife, Marie Louise of Orléans

What is mate value? It’s the overall assessment of a person’s desirability as a romantic or sexual partner. To some extent this is subjective (“beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and so on), and perception may not always match reality (we all know delusional people who overestimate how much of a catch they really are, as well as those with low self-esteem who sadly sell themselves short). But there are also objective markers of attractiveness, resources, intelligence, desirable personality attributes, and so on. And when there’s an imbalance in the relationship—that is, mate value discrepancy (or “MVD”)—the risk of straying increases.

I hesitate to use the term “high-value female,” as such language just feels coarse, but when the woman has the upper hand in this way, she may be tempted to leave in search of a man who is more “in her league.” Even if she stays, surreptitious hookups with other men who exhibit higher-quality genes pose a big evolutionary problem, in the form of unknowingly raising another man’s offspring. Anyway, such reasons are why most people seek—even prefer—romantic partners with a similar mate value to themselves, avoiding rejection and fostering commitment in potential long-term relationships.

But MVD is still a real thing, and it’s not fixed: it can creep into a relationship at any point, even if it didn’t exist at the start. If your spouse goes on Ozempic and starts toning up at the gym, makes senior partner at the law firm, or gets some dramatic cosmetic surgery, you may suddenly feel a need to reset the balance. Or try to. The question therefore becomes, what countermeasures can you, the disadvantaged party in this MVD scenario, adopt to retain the affections—and more importantly, the sexual fidelity—of your partner?

Well, if you’re a man, you can start going down more on your wife or girlfriend. I know that sounds like some dumb life hack you might read on a “looksmaxxing” forum in a post written by a twenty-year-old virgin explaining how to keep your “Stacy” while you’re still “ascending” from “normie” to full “Chad” mode—I suddenly feel like a grandpa trying to speak TikTok—but there may actually be something to this cunnilingus trick.

In a recent study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, Polish psychologist Natalia Frankowska and her colleagues examined whether men who judge themselves as having a lower mate value than their partners perform more oral sex than those without such an MVD. If so, then much like buying jewelry or showering her with compliments, frequent oral sex may also be designed for female mate retention. If you’ve ever heard that quip “he must be good in the sack” in accounting for such mismatched relationships, you can see how such intimate negotiations are baked into our everyday understanding of how MVD works.

Previous research, the authors note, had already shown that men who are more worried about their female partners cheating on them also spend more time performing oral sex on them. As I’ve written previously, some scholars assert—and not without salacious controversy—that this is literally done to detect the presence of other men’s semen, kind of like a dog sniffing a fire hydrant. Frankowska and her colleagues’ approach isn’t at odds with that interpretation, per se, but their logic was more, er, palatable. “We predicted that the greater the mate value discrepancy in favor of the female partner,” the authors write, “the higher the man’s motivation to sexually satisfy her, which would, in turn, translate into a higher frequency of performing oral sex.” Women who first receive the cunnilingus treatment, after all, are more likely to orgasm at intercourse. Unsurprisingly, frequency of this sex act is associated with higher female ratings of perceived relationship quality.

To test their hypothesis that cunnilingus is used mostly as compensatory pleasure-giving by men with lower mate value than their partners, the authors surveyed 540 men, all of whom were presently in a committed relationship with a woman for at least the past three months. The average age was 29, and most had been in a relationship for three or more years.

The first thing assessed was MVD—or at least, perceived MVD. Here’s what these men read:

Many people pay attention to specific traits when choosing a potential romantic partner. Some commonly desired traits include: being socially engaging, age, physical attractiveness, having a sense of humor, being kind and understanding, having high financial/professional status, high intelligence, good health, and whether or not one likes children. Those who possess these traits to a high degree are highly sought after by the opposite sex and are said to have a high mate value. With this in mind, we would like you to try to assess both your own mate value and separately the mate value of your romantic partner.

The participants then answered a series of blunt questions, such as: “Overall, how would members of the opposite sex rate your level of desirability as a partner?” and “Overall, how good of a catch is your partner?” and so on. By subtracting the mate value of the participant from that of his partner, a mate value discrepancy could be calculated. And in comparing these MVD values with each man’s self-reported frequency of giving oral sex to his wife or girlfriend in the couple’s ten most recent sexual encounters, the researchers’ key hypothesis was supported: the greater the perceived MVD, the more cunnilingus was being served.

Importantly, however, these participants were also the most into sexually satisfying their partners. That is to say, MVD wasn’t directly “causing” these men to perform oral sex, but indirectly affecting their motivation to please their female partners, which translated into [cunnilingus] frequency. They weren’t exactly turning their noses up at the act either. For most, it was the opposite of a task. “The higher discrepancy between a man’s mate value in favor of a woman,” explained Frankowska and her coauthors, “the more likely he was to enjoy performing cunnilingus.” Still, for men who said that they really disliked performing oral sex—perhaps due to individual differences in disgust sensitivity or pathogen avoidance—no amount of mate discrepancy could bring them to indulge in the act.

As a correlational study based on perceived rather than veridical MVD, not to mention self-reported sexual behaviors that may or may not reflect people’s actual bedroom habits, we can only put so much stock into these findings. From an evolutionary perspective, they also can’t tell us whether such stealthy clitoral tongue tactics work for these men as an adaptive mate-retention strategy. Are their wives and girlfriends less likely to leave them?

Still, the data are certainly—my sincere apologies—something to munch on.