Courtship explained. SCIENCE, BITCH.

The simplest version of the domestic-bliss strategy is this. The female looks the males over, and tries to spot signs of infidelity and domesticity in advance. There is bound to be a variation in the population of males in their predisposition to be faithful husbands. If females could recognize such qualities in advance, they could benefit themselves by choosing males possessing them.

"In my estimate, this man is only capable of fidelity until around 2 years.
Recommendation pending."

One way for a female to do this is to play hard to get for a long time, to be coy. Any male who isn’t patient enough to wait until the female eventually consents to copulate is not likely to be a good bet as a faithful husband. By insisting on a long engagement period, a female weeds out casual suitors and only finally copulates with a male who has proved his qualities of fidelity and perseverance in advance. Feminine coyness is in fact very common among animals, and so are prolonged courtship or engagement periods.

"Hey Lisa that dude is really hot. You should hit that."
"IKR? But I'm gonna wait on that whole engagement thing.
I mean, he got me red flowers. I asked for yellow. Not persevering enough."

Courtship rituals often include considerable pre-copulation investment by the male. The female may refuse to copulate until the male has built her a nest. Or the male may have to feed her quite substantial amounts of food.

Food. Quite substantial amounts of food. Mainly chocolate. But food.

This, of course, is very good from the female's point of view, but it also suggests another possible version of the domestic-bliss strategy. Could females force males to invest so heavily in their offspring before they allow copulation that it would no longer pay the males to desert after copulation? The idea is appealing.

A male who waits for a coy female eventually to copulate with him is paying a cost: he is forgoing the chance to copulate with other females, and he is spending a lot of time and energy in courting her. By the time he is finally allowed to copulate with a particular female, he will inevitably be heavily 'committed' to her. There will be little temptation for him to desert her, if he knows that any future female he approaches will also procrastinate in the same manner before she will get down to business.

"3 months of courtship and still nothing with this girl. But I can't back out now, I've come so far!"

An excerpt from Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (Chapter 9: Battle of the Sexes)

(I don't mean to disrespect the article, the pictures are there to de-saturate the texty feel. Haha.