The Scientific Reason Why It's Normal For Men To Be Overprotective Of The Women They Love
It's only natural.
getty Every time you’re around your man and you text your friend, mom or other family member, do you frequently find him hovering over your shoulder? We all know this as the jealous type, but it turns out that this behavior may be more normal than you think.
Simply put, it could very much be in his nature to act like a jealous guy all the time. Specifically, his high testosterone. It has absolutely nothing to do with you, so don’t take it personally just yet.
Because according to a study published in Physiology and Behavior, a man’s testosterone levels play a big role in how protective he is of his woman.
In this study, two things were measured: the correlation between testosterone and the effort a man puts in to keep his woman around, and the correlation between testosterone and the effort a man puts into finding a woman to mate with.
Believe it or not, there’s been extensive research done on the latter, but not so much the former. That’s why researchers performed this study in the first place.
Saliva samples were collected from 108 male undergraduates (to measure their testosterone levels) and they had to complete surveys on mate retention and intra-sexual competition. The results showed that there is a correlation between testosterone and mate retention, but only indirectly.
Results revealed that high testosterone levels make it more likely for men to be competitive when other males are around our woman. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of mate retention.
So ladies, in layman’s terms, that means that the jealous type turns you on, because you’re more likely to stay around if your man acts territorial when he’s around you and a potential threat (of his same sex). Now, with great power comes great responsibilities, so don’t forget that.
All jokes aside, don’t go creating situations where your man feels like he has to be territorial over you all the time. I say that for two reasons.
Firstly, because that brings another factor into the equation: anger. You may know your man doesn’t have anger issues, but his “threat” at the time may. Therefore, you don’t want to see him get his rear end kicked right in front of you because I doubt you’d find that attractive.
Secondly, if you constantly make him feel like he has to fight over you, eventually he’s going to adopt the mentality of “I’ll fight for you but not over you. If you’re entertaining some other guy, he can have you.” Although it may be within his nature to be territorial, he probably will get tired of doing that on a regular basis.
Now, if you’re in the majority of people who don’t like the jealous type, you may want get out of dodge before it’s too late because there are certainly some downsides to men being this way.
One downside? Your man trying to control your social life so that there’s very little time for you to spend out and about without him. This way, he feel as though you can’t even be in a setting where you’d associate with another male.
This is the type of thing you really want to watch out for, because if you feel as though he can’t trust you, is the relationship even worth it at that point?