The other day, I was discussing with a friend how I instantly organize the wives and girlfriends of friends and relatives into a “sexually unavailable”-slot in my mind, much like the wives and girlfriends would be my own sisters.
At first I put it down to ethics, pure and simple. However, after reflecting over the issue, it dawned on me that it might be my cultural heritage, passed down through generations: You see, I am originally from Sweden – a land from which Vikings roamed once upon a time.
And back in the days when the Vikings where living in closely knit tribes along the waters, my guess is that there was pretty limited utility in trying to steal another mans woman: It doesn’t seem like the most brilliant of ideas to make a person angry if he is an axe-wielding, largish man with a short fuse whose job-description stated “killing, raping and pillaging villages of various sizes”..
Even if you yourself where an axe-wielding man with a similar job-description, the odds probably weren’t too favourable, considering it is highly unlikely that the other axe-wielding men of your tribe would side with you.
The fact that people like the French seem to have fewer inhibitions in pursuing the women of close friends and relatives only strengthens my thesis, as they tend to have a history of being cheese-eating surrender monkeys, rather than fierce warriors, and thus have not historically had the same immediate threat of bodily harm under the circumstances.