In the world of art and poetry, the price of sex is love. But seen through the lens of anthropology, sociology, and psychology, the price of sex has unseen cultural economic forces. In America today, an unprecedented rise of women has accidently created a high supply sexual economy where price of sex has dropped from the cost of three dates in the 1980’s to today’s barrel-bottom price of one well-worded text. One in five men obtain sex on a first date. That tells me that 80% of young women are smart enough not to expose their eggs and bloodstream to a guy they wouldn’t give the keys to their apartment to water their plants!

But obtaining sex may not be a man’s goal. One feature of a high-supply sexual economy is that it creates a narrow definition of male sexuality, that is, take-all-sex-at-any-cost, that is leaving the “good” guys confused and the “good” girls behaving in ways that wouldn’t otherwise.

Even when sex is in high supply and the price is low, there are smart women who understand female power and who control the supply side of sexual economics. These women close deals, trading sex for the highest market price of all — care and commitment. These savvy women carefully negotiate with men using specific modern courting rituals with anthropological underpinnings. They understand that human males have the widest range of paternal investment of any primate and use specific strategies to identify and negotiate with one who will invest in his offspring. You’ll see their wedding photos on Facebook soon after college graduation.