(This is work in progress, you lucky bastards are the first to see it. Observations are welcome. Skip this article if you don't care about evopsych).

Since a baby carries half of the genes of the father and half of the mother, most theories around reproduction and gender dynamics suppose that cooperation between man and woman for the rearing of offspring is the default. Conflict is considered to be a "problem", or perhaps a necessary by-product of cooperation (E.g. "Since we have a common house, if you take out the garbage instead of me, I win").

Mainstream Psychology is much more susceptible to such a warped interpretation of gender dynamics than Evolutionary Psychology.

But what exactly is it that makes benevolent cooperation between the sexes virtually impossible?

It's female nature.

Why is that?

Incest is, I believe, an overlooked and a defining factor in shaping female sexual psychology. Consider a hunter-gatherer band of hominids. Men and women, most of them connected by blood. They don't quite grasp that sex leads to recreation, and they certainly know nothing about genes. As far as the males are concerned, the females of the band, for whom they provide food and protection, are an easy source of sex. That is, an easy source of reproduction, even if it is incestuous and thus not prime quality. Sperm is cheap, after all, why not give 0.01$ to gain, if not millions, at least some hundred bucks? Although males would seek out premium reproductive vehicles, i.e. foreign females, they would hardly pass on the opportunity to an easy lay. To put it in more established terms, incest avoidance is a thing in both males and females, but much more so in females, because males have pressure from their greater sex drive.

For the females, now, reproduction is, of course, a very different matter. They expect to have four births in their lifetime, around two of which will survive to reproductive age. Not "simply" the quality of the father, but that he is of a different blood line (not a relative) is critical.

Here's where things start to get really interesting.

Familiar males do contribute food and protection, but wouldn't it be sweet if the female could get those for free, and still let her instincts select the best match for her genes, i.e. a good-looking stranger?

You can begin to discern the origins of the Beta-Alpha dichotomy in the female psyche. And, I hope, you can discern that the female strategy, in that setting, is 1) defensive, and 2) even beneficial for the species, since it avoids incest and thus promotes offspring quality.

Stop here a bit and consider the predicament of a female: imagine having in your guts for 9 months an abomination. Imagine a foreign body, a worm, inside you. There is no wonder, then, that nature piggy-backed on the feeling of disgust to steer women away from incest, i.e. away from relatives, i.e. away from familiars, i.e. away from those that provide for her. The lump of nerves and tissue that is colloquially known as "woman" has been hard-wired to be disgusted of familiar providers.

And not only that. It is hard-wired to take advantage of them, too. Because, if they can potentially submit her to that ultimate insult, i.e. impregnate her with a monster, what behavior can be so unfair as to match that insult? Oh, she'd better get everything she can, while she can, out of him, to make up for the possible damage - and to gain, if possible.

The whole of the female existence, body and soul, is defined by those, ...well, existential issues. While estrus and heat is reserved for the good-genes strangers during her hidden ovulation, (Alpha sex), she can reluctantly consent to infertile, Beta sex for the familiars while she benefits from their resources.

You can see how the average, i.e. in-band, relative, male, has a potential to operate as a parasite on the woman's reproductive capacity, i.e. a biological parasite.

And you can see how that possibility is counterbalanced by the woman operating as a social parasite, having the tendency to consume the male's resources while having no desire to fuck him.

There are practical take-aways from all this, specifically that you shouldn't let yourself become too familiar with a woman.

But what's more important, imo, is the realization that the female sexual strategy is obsolete. We are no longer living in bands of relatives, and social norms have been established to avert incest, with men having logically agreed (because men have a logical capacity). Nevertheless, women still follow their pre-programmed script which has today led to havoc to long-term relationships and society at large. While men's role as biological parasites has eclipsed, women are still little more than social parasites.