Hug Hefner

I'm a 32-year-old guy, and my girlfriend has been complaining that the only time I'm cuddly or affectionate is when I want to have sex. I don't really see the problem. It's my way of initiating versus...I don't know, asking her...which would be weird.

--Confused

Aw...how sweet...cuddling that comes with a trap door to the sex dungeon! From a woman's point of view, it's nice to have your boyfriend, say, grab your hand, and not just because he'd like you to put it on his penis. This isn't just some mysterious form of sexual etiquette. It comes out of how women evolved to be "commitment skeptics," as evolutionary psychologist Martie Haselton puts it. Erring on the side of underestimating a man's level of commitment was how ancestral women kept themselves from ending up single mothers with a bunch of cave-lings to feed. Economist Robert Frank calls love "a solution to the commitment problem." As he explains it, being emotionally bonded keeps you from making a coldly rational calculation about who's got more to offer, your girlfriend or the new neighbor with boobs so big that each should be sending a delegate to the U.N. So, because women are on the lookout for signs that you love them, a hug is a hug is a hug needs to be the deal much of the time. Otherwise, whenever you're affectionate, it'll just seem like the boyfriend version of a wino telling a woman she's beautiful -- because it would be really beautiful if she'd give him the last dollar he needs to get drunk on cheapo aftershave.