In this episode, Simone and I talk about why our current relationship markets are broken, and how we can fix them. We also talk about how technology has changed dating since the days of swipe-based dating, and what it means for the future of online dating.
00:06:31.760Which, of course, they can't get that.
00:06:33.220Yeah, and then with women, you have the secondary problem, which is their perception of the quality of man they can get can also be inflated through reflection on previous men they have slept with.
00:06:44.200So, generally, a woman's value was in a sexual or dating marketplace declines over time.
00:06:50.700So, let's talk about what we mean when we say people have a value on a dating marketplace.
00:06:55.340People are like, you can't put a value on humans.
00:06:58.960That's what you do when you're hiring people.
00:07:00.960People are products all the time in the economy.
00:07:03.220What's unique about the dating marketplace is that you're typically-
00:07:07.300Now, I'm not saying that money is never exchanged or a big part of it, but what you're typically doing is exchanging one product for another, hopefully, equivalent product.
00:07:16.140That is the core of what you're doing.
00:07:17.880You are playing in what in business is called, or in economics, is called a two-sided marketplace.
00:07:23.080This is assuming you're in a heterosexual dating pool.
00:07:26.040If you're in a bisexual dating pool or a gay dating pool, the dynamics are actually pretty different.
00:07:31.700And it can cause different sorts of problems in the dating marketplace.
00:07:35.320But for now, we're just going to talk about the heterosexual marketplace, which is actually much more broken than the gay marketplace.
00:08:32.860So for a company, while a person might have the average salary they might be able to earn on the open marketplace,
00:08:39.320within certain industries or for certain companies, they might actually have astronomically higher value than they would have in the open marketplace.
00:08:47.360Which causes a very interesting negotiation because the company knows they can't earn what they're paying them on the open marketplace.
00:08:56.000But this person often knows their value to that company specifically.
00:08:59.940And so we'll get to how that often plays out in dating as well.
00:09:04.240But the larger point that I was about to make here is that in a marketplace, a woman's value typically declines over time for a few reasons.
00:09:13.860One is women generally prefer to date guys who are older than them, whereas men prefer to date women who are younger than them.
00:09:19.800And it's actually a little bit more complicated than this, and it changes this, people get older.
00:09:23.540But people dramatically underestimate how much this affects dating pools.
00:09:28.620So an example that we give in our book where I do the math, but I'm just going to try to go from memory here, is if I am a freshman girl in college, right?
00:09:37.860I can date freshman guys, I can date sophomore guys, I can date junior guys, and I can date senior guys.
00:09:43.240If I am a freshman guy in college, typically I realistically only have a shot with freshman girls.
00:09:49.300And then I become a sophomore guy, I have a chance with sophomore girls and freshman girls, and then the sophomore girl has a chance with sophomore guys, junior guys, senior guys.
00:09:56.680What this means is that how difficult it is to date for a freshman, a girl versus a senior girl, or conversely, a senior guy versus a freshman guy, it's literally 42 times harder, if I remember correctly, to secure a partner.
00:10:17.260Which is wild when you think about the effects that has on somebody who doesn't expect this really radical change in their value on the dating pool.
00:10:26.180Now obviously people can date outside of college and stuff like that, we're just using college as a constrained data set, so that you can begin to think about how this works.
00:10:35.520But if I may summarize this, just to bring people all back to the basic points.
00:10:39.440Let's say I'm a 30-year-old woman, but I am thinking, I'm comparing all partners that I'm looking at from this point on as a 30-year-old woman to all the partners I used to have.
00:10:49.960We also have to keep in mind that men, regardless of age, seem to find early 20s women the most attractive.
00:10:56.040So those women have the highest value and can get the best men because they have the highest value.
00:11:02.640So I'm comparing what I could get as a 22-year-old woman with what I can get as a 30-year-old woman, which is a false expectation because I can't get even the same guys I used to date earlier as this hypothetical woman, as I can get now, right?
00:11:18.000Yeah, there's two other factors at play here that are worth noting.
00:11:21.880One is typically the more sexual partners you have as a woman to the average guy on the marketplace.
00:11:28.040Now, not all guys care about this, but to the average guy on the marketplace, this is going to decrease the quality of guy you're going to match with.
00:11:34.820In addition to that, there's the problem that the things that you can build up during that critical period between 22 and 32 as a girl matter a lot less on the marketplace than the things that a guy can build up during the same period.
00:11:49.320By that, what I mean is a guy's value on the marketplace is more positively augmented by things like a degree, a good job, a lot of income than a woman's is.
00:12:05.060I am not saying this is how things should be structured, but it is objectively true if you look at data and you look at what people say they want in the parter.
00:12:13.420And it's important to remember that you can find certain subpopulations where this isn't true, and that is what we call an arbitrage play.
00:12:22.060So an arbitrage play in business is, let's say, I buy some ore from an area where that ore is really common, and then I sell it in an area where that ore is really rare and it has higher value.
00:12:31.660And this is true for companies, right?
00:12:35.060If you have like a skill in astrophysics, in working with a company who needs somebody, it was a skill in astrophysics.
00:12:40.700You are going to have a higher value to all companies in the astrophysics category.
00:12:44.960If you are unusual in some way that either helps you with a specific demographic or lowers your value across the market more generally, you are going to struggle.
00:12:55.140An example of this would be a overweight woman.
00:12:57.600There is a specific demographic of guys where that actually positively augments their value on the dating market, but to the average guy that's going to lower their value on the dating market.
00:13:08.500One of the problems that we have in our society is people are like, you're fetishizing me, or you like me for the thing that makes me different.
00:13:18.100Right, like you just like me because of X, or like it's gross that you like me because of X.
00:13:22.740Whereas the more advantageous mindset to have is, oh, I have this one thing that people disproportionately value that would allow me to get men or women out of my league.
00:13:33.400I should lean into that, even if it's not necessarily what I'm into.
00:13:37.020Yes, I think that here's where the cognitive dissonance comes from there, is that part of them believes that they should be ashamed for that.
00:13:45.380And so if the relationship draws attention to that, then they feel like they might not have earned the partnership as much.
00:13:52.440And they may also feel the same way that like a really attractive girl in a relationship feels.
00:13:56.160Like you only value me for my body, or you disproportionately rate my body in the reasons that you value me.
00:14:04.180And this is an interesting thing that can also augment the value of a relationship.
00:14:10.920So why I value another person can augment how much they value me.
00:14:17.640So if I value them for their intelligence, for example, more than their body, they may value me more, all other things actually being equal.
00:14:24.860Which is a pretty wild dynamic when you're talking about like calculating marketplaces.
00:14:28.680I can't say I actually had a girl break up with me because she said I only valued her for her brains.
00:14:32.540Another interesting one, and I think this is another thing, like reasons why people have run into relationship problems with people.
00:14:38.840One woman was mad that I called her beautiful, but not sexy or hot.
00:14:44.460And that she knew she was beautiful, but her subconscious, like she said that her actual fear was that she wasn't hot.
00:14:52.220This was a very classically attractive person.
00:15:26.020Yeah, there's actually one more thing which you're missing, which is actually pretty important.
00:15:29.300Which is the more sexual partners you have, especially as a female, the less you're going to, we'll say, hormonally pair bond with your partners.
00:15:37.920So I've also had friends who have told me with new boyfriends that they have, as they're now at this point looking to get married, I'm just not feeling the same connection I felt with other people.
00:15:49.920And they take that as a sign of, oh, because I'm not feeling that, that's a sign that he is not the one, for example.
00:15:57.080Whereas really what's going on is because they've had more sexual partners, that bonding has actually just gone down.
00:16:05.020They're not going to feel that feeling anymore, but they don't know that they're not going to feel that feeling anymore.
00:16:10.120And as Diana Fleischman said on our podcast, this isn't necessarily a negative thing.
00:16:14.320Depending on your strategy, it can be a very positive thing.
00:16:16.380And being forced to form an emotional bond to someone just because you're in an intimate relationship with them can have really negative consequences.
00:16:25.440Yeah, it's a lot of things with the human body are use it or lose it.
00:16:29.060So if your body is very monogamous, it will use that.
00:16:33.040It will give you lots of pair bonding hormones and make you really dedicated to a partner and really connected.
00:16:37.640If your body's given signs that you're not using monogamy, that you actually need to be a little bit more flexible, it's going to adapt to that.
00:17:12.380Some guys are born attractive to God, right?
00:17:15.360Sometimes people just have an odd biology.
00:17:17.480But for the average woman, you are not going to easily be able to recapture some of the feelings you had in your earliest intimate relationships in later relationships.
00:17:26.560So if we add all these things together, first, we have the lazy eight problem where many women who are middling, the average woman is going to be a five, right?
00:17:34.540So the average woman is going to be led to believe that she could marry or have a long-term relationship with an eight, nine, or ten, because those are the guys that are sleeping with everyone and probably engaging them.
00:17:48.420When ultimately those guys that they have slept with actually would never commit to them long-term.
00:17:53.480So that's the lazy eight problem, number one.
00:17:56.700Two, typically when women are ready to settle down, especially in modern society, because we're encouraged to settle down after we've gone to school, after we've set up our career, after we've done whatever it is that we want to do single, they are able to secure less high-value men than they were when they were in their early 20s.
00:18:15.180Because at any age range, men are going to prefer women in their early 20s.
00:18:21.080So they are now comparing their current partner options to previous partner options that they'd never be able to get again.
00:18:27.700And then third, they are often, to your point, not exploiting market asymmetries that they could be exploiting with themselves.
00:18:35.120So they're not willing to be a little bit flexible in terms of saying, okay, what do I offer?
00:18:40.140And how can I find someone out of my league who really wants that one thing?
00:18:43.880So they're not thinking strategically.
00:18:45.160And then fourth, they are really expecting to feel that early pair bonding experience, that sort of hormonal addictive surge that they get with new relationships.
00:18:55.400And they're just typically, on average, not feeling it.
00:18:58.220So all these factors are leading to one thing, which is women are just not really getting excited about marrying partners that are in their league.
00:19:23.640Maybe not like superstar, but moderately attractive.
00:19:26.420You are actually really screwed on dating markets, even if you want a long-term relationship.
00:19:31.880And this is because men, the high-value men who you would naturally match with in a totally monogamous society.
00:19:38.400So that what I mean is if everyone could only choose one partner, you typically get about everyone in a society being paired off with some problems, which we can talk about in other videos.
00:19:47.180But what happens in this scenario, the way our society is structured, if you are a top-value woman, you are competing with a guy who can go for a lot of women who are lower value than you, who he may value almost as much as a long-term partner.
00:20:03.340But these other women intrinsically are going to show often more gratitude for the relationship, which guys value a lot in a partner, a lot more than I think a lot of women think.
00:20:15.760So a woman who's a six or something and has a high level of gratitude for a relationship is typically going to be chosen over a woman who's like a nine.
00:20:53.540So we've talked about the problem at length.
00:20:56.000The solutions aren't great, so they're not going to take that much time.
00:20:58.740But one of the things that you can do, which we see working, we've seen a couple of anecdotal situations in which this has worked really well, especially for women, is that women consider entering polyamorous relationships with high value men.
00:21:13.740So the way the polygambit works is a woman who is not actually a high preference for a poly relationship offers to let the man sleep with other people.
00:21:24.540And this is where the no D's rule can come from in poly relationships.
00:21:28.660And what you actually have here is a polygynous relationship, just a classic polygynous relationship across societies where a high volume man basically has multiple partners.
00:21:36.140But because our society expects monogamy to some extent, once people start having kids, what the woman will do is she'll say, okay, I will be your primary.
00:21:44.320You can continue to sleep with other people.
00:21:45.800You just can't spend resources on them.
00:21:51.240And they make this gambit understanding that the guy's testosterone drops after he has kids and that his value also drops to other women after he has a primary partner who he's married to and who he has kids with, which lowers the quality of the partners he can get for intimate relationships to the extent where he may just not be interested in it anymore.
00:22:09.840So far, we know a number of people who have tried this and it has worked for every single one of them, but it is incredibly risky.
00:22:16.480Do you know anyone it hasn't worked for?
00:22:17.620I don't know anyone it hasn't worked for.
00:22:23.840I don't think it is as risky as one imagines because what you're really doing is just taking a lot of stuff that happens anyway and you're being really upfront and honest about it.
00:22:36.560So even if you marry someone and say, I want to have kids with you and I want to be monogamous, they may still be interested in other people.
00:23:03.580It was actually a really interesting statistic I saw at one point.
00:23:05.740And I have to pull this up because it sounds not true to me now that I'm saying it, but I remember seeing it when we were writing our sexuality book, that people in long-term monogamous relationships actually have about the same number of extramarital partners as people in long-term polyamorous relationships.
00:23:20.960Yeah. See, that's where I'm like, I just don't see where the risk is much higher because at least in this case, you're being honest about it.
00:23:26.820You're not cheating because rather than obligating your partner to lie to you about extramarital partners, you're just being open about it and probably safer about it.
00:23:36.240And the understanding is that here are the terms, don't spend money on this other person.
00:23:41.260And again, like you say, the caliber of someone that a man especially can beg after he has kids, after he's in a committed relationship is just so much lower that the odds that he finds someone who he would want to make a new primary partner are pretty low.
00:23:58.340And in fact, I would almost argue that it would be easier.
00:24:02.460Let's say that I'm the other woman and I want to steal your husband from you or your partner from you.
00:24:08.120It's going to be harder for me to do it if you're in a poly relationship than a monogamous relationship, because in a monogamous relationship, I'm just going to be pushing for a divorce.
00:24:16.020I'm going to be pushing for you to, I'm going to be like trying to supplant you.
00:24:19.380Whereas in a poly relationship, like I probably know you, it's going to be a lot harder for me to undermine you.
00:24:24.620You can deliver other partners, which is something I have seen people pull in these relationships, which, which has safe relationships that would have fallen apart in a monogamous relationship.
00:24:33.680They know that their partner is becoming too attached to one person.
00:24:36.140And it's quite something different to say, stop cheating on me because then the person's breaking the rules anyway.
00:24:40.880Like they have no reason to listen to you than to say this one person who you're seeing, I have a problem with them.
00:24:45.520You can see anyone else, you can see this one person.
00:24:49.060That's a much harder thing for somebody to logic themselves out of, to logic themselves into saying, I'm being the reasonable person and continuing to see this person.
00:25:00.820The other strategy that you discussed more in the private guide to sexuality or relationships, I can't remember which, that really was your top of mind one before we discovered more people doing this poly strategy was just entering like kink communities.
00:25:16.440Because there are many, especially high value single men who are, let's say divorced, who are just like enjoying their sexual rumspringa, who are in these communities and who are like super willing to explore and have fun.
00:25:37.900I think what's important to remember within kink communities, within this, what you're really doing with this poly gambit is you are using an aspect of the contract of your relationship.
00:25:48.040So in the same way, an apartment where like I allow a dog, that aspect of the contract might increase the value of the apartment to an individual.
00:25:55.580So this aspect of my relationship contract, my expectations for the relationship, increase the value of the relationship to my potential partner.
00:26:04.080Especially if it's I won't sleep with other people, but you can sleep with other people.
00:26:07.800That can increase the value of a relationship to somebody pretty dramatically.
00:26:12.400And it can be somewhat difficult for other people to compete with that, depending on what the person is interested in.
00:26:17.640But then in addition to that, in BDSM communities, there are a ton of room for arbitrage.
00:26:23.360If somebody is within, not necessarily BDSM, but kink communities more broadly, it typically means they have a specific interest that not a lot of people can provide.
00:26:32.380Or a lot of people providing these interests, even if they're not really that into it themselves, can get them such a higher quality partner that it becomes worth it.
00:26:42.500And I have seen that work multiple times.
00:26:48.300So like many of these people who do the polygambit, many of these people who do this, and this isn't everyone in the poly community.
00:26:53.760There are some people who are just like genuinely polygamorous.
00:26:55.800I'm just talking about one strategy I've seen some people use.
00:26:58.500But within the kink community, we've seen this as well.
00:27:01.360They often tell people, I'm not really that into it, but I'm doing it because I don't know how else I'm with my partner.
00:27:06.540The way it's all framed is, look, I'm a successful woman in New York, or I'm a successful woman in San Francisco.
00:27:13.500Do I really have the option to only date monogamous men?
00:27:16.660That's really what's often said, because it's true.
00:27:19.520Men in these environments are often so inundated with potential partners if they're really high value that there's almost no reason for them to consider monogamous relationships outside of cultural reasons, which is that they culturally value that.
00:27:34.000But if they don't have some sort of strong cultural connection to the concept, or they don't see some sort of like systemic problem or some systemic value problem with it, they'll usually say, hey, I can get it.
00:27:47.680Now, the next thing that we need to talk about is how these low switching costs induced by these environments make relationships less stable once they form.
00:27:55.300So we have this algorithm for relationship stability, and it goes your sort of value to your partner.
00:28:03.720You know how we mentioned you have an individual like market price to a partner or value to a partner, and then you have your market price.
00:28:08.720The quality of the average person you think you could get on the open market, or not the average person you could get, but the person you could reasonably get on the open market, which is similar to how food is priced.
00:28:16.360Like food isn't priced at the price that the average person who walks into a store would buy it at.
00:28:22.740That's going to be actually really low.
00:28:24.340It's priced at the average price of the person who would buy it at.
00:28:26.780But anyway, so that's what people mean when they say market value, which is actually quite different than what the average person would rate you.
00:28:32.100But we don't need to get into the economics of all this.
00:28:34.680And this is actually an economic problem, and a lot of economic theory has gone into this.
00:28:38.720It's really interesting if you want to go into it.
00:28:40.260But anyway, the stability score is a person's individual value to a specific individual who there is, divided by what they think they can get on an open market.
00:28:53.300And as long as that number is above one, the relationship will be stable.
00:28:58.680When the number falls below one, the relationship becomes unstable.
00:29:03.120And many cultural things can augment this.
00:29:05.580So suppose like a variety or Catholic culture where divorcing somebody is really frowned upon.
00:29:11.640That's intrinsically going to make my relationship more stable because I know my market value is hurt more than it would usually be hurt by leaving my partner.
00:29:21.740The problem is that now we live in a society where I can leave this culture.
00:29:25.800And if I'm open to leaving this cultural group, then I typically don't really get my score on the open market hurt quite as much by leaving somebody, which is one of the reasons why you see shaming coming from these communities of people from other cultural groups, even when it may not make sense why they would shame people from other cultural groups, because they do hurt the relationship dynamics in these groups.
00:29:44.120Now, I don't think they should, I think people should be allowed to leave their group, but it's just true that it does undermine all relationships in the market when people know that it's not going to hurt them that much because they left a partner.
00:29:56.100And when you're talking about like small tribes or small, let's say an English settlement in like the 1600s or something, it was really hard if you left a partner to find a new partner.
00:30:05.760That was incredibly difficult because of the social stigma around that.
00:30:09.040So what that created was an environment where your value to your partner, now for cultural reasons, not necessarily because you actually valued them, was higher than it would otherwise be, or your value on the open market, expected value on the open market, was dramatically lower than it might otherwise be.
00:30:23.280But there's other things that can augment with this, like the longer I'm with somebody, I may form more emotional connections to them.
00:30:28.260I may become more financially entangled with them, or I may learn things about them that I didn't know before that begin to grate on me, or the new relationship energy or the new feels might wear off.
00:30:37.680So this can get augmented over time for a number of reasons.
00:30:41.840Where this becomes really important is when people believe that they can, one, easily secure new people in the market, and two, when that assumption is wrong.
00:30:54.160So if you are a woman or a man and you are out in the open market trying to find somebody after a divorce, your ability to secure partners is almost always going to be dramatically lower than it was before the divorce.
00:31:05.640And I think that this is something that the MGTOW and Red Pill community, to some extent, gets really wrong in their assessments to how screwed women get after a divorce.
00:31:15.960So they often look at things, and the truth is, our courts are really harsh on men after a divorce.
00:31:23.820That said, a woman, especially one who hasn't invested in her career and has been a homemaker, but even if she has invested in her career and she's had a couple of kids with you and she's no longer in her 20s, now she's in like her mid-40s, and then she's reentering the dating market, her value has been hurt much more than your value has been hurt over the same period.
00:31:45.300One is it may cause relationship instability that shouldn't be in a relationship because the woman thinks she can do better out of a relationship than she really can.
00:31:52.360But two, it means that women who are cognizant of what's really going to happen to them when they really leave the relationship, it's a really bad situation for relationships to be able to break up like that.
00:32:02.960So there is actually something to be said for long-term monogamy in terms of the emotional health of both partners.
00:32:08.940Now, another place where this stability score really becomes relevant is with celebrities.
00:32:12.900The reason why celebrity relationships are so intrinsically unstable is because the value of a celebrity on an open market is actually almost always higher than their value to somebody who's gotten to know them as a human being.
00:32:24.880So intrinsically, it's almost always going to be under one, and it's almost always going to cause relationship problems until they reach this level where they begin to realize that pattern, and they're like, okay, now I know I need to stay with somebody long-term.
00:32:38.140Do you want to talk about problems for guys now, Simone, really quickly?
00:32:42.820Yeah, yeah, the problems facing guys, the big problem is that the vast majority of guys are being completely passed over by women because of the unreasonable expectations they've been led to have.
00:32:56.020So they just, no one's giving them the time of day, even though they quite deserve it.
00:33:04.100Yeah, and I love where women, you'll see on these feminist groups, they're like, maybe these guys don't deserve women.
00:33:08.600And if there's women of equal quality to these guys who may not deserve guys, who may have like emotional whatever thing, like when you're talking about somebody who's in like the bottom 30% of the dating pool, there's likely reasons for that on both sides of the dating spectrum.
00:33:23.160And it used to be that they would just get in relationships, and these relationships would be bad.
00:33:27.080But I would imagine that historically, when you had these monogamous relationships where two people would enter a relationship with somebody who is at this lower end of the spectrum, abuse would likely be pretty common in these relationships.
00:33:36.400Who knows, it might be a good thing that these people aren't partnering.
00:33:38.140But then you need the higher value people to have just way more kids.
00:33:43.000So if I were a guy who has a 7 or below, because we're assuming it's the 8s, 9s, and 10s that are getting all the women on open dating markets, like the broad open market.
00:33:52.500I think what I would do, honestly, is turn to religious communities that are more small and niche.
00:33:59.280Like I would, I might join the LDS church.
00:34:02.380I would look at what my local religious communities are.
00:34:05.040Depending on my age, let's assuming I'm a young man.
00:35:03.840And because of that, the cohorts of older ages are always going to be smaller than the cohorts of younger ages.
00:35:11.740Meaning that there is almost always an oversupply of women looking for partners in these groups, as opposed to men looking for partners in these groups.
00:35:19.060And it can cause crises within these communities when a lot of people know that they're doing everything right and they still can't get it harder.
00:35:28.240One is that these communities often are much more okay with women converting into the community than men converting into the community and marrying a devout woman.
00:35:38.300Which can also be another factor of a guy in one of these communities, one of these strict communities might marry somebody of even a different religion so long as she converts.
00:35:45.820Whereas it can be a little harder culturally speaking when a guy does that, depending on whether it's a Muslim conservative community or Jewish conservative community.
00:35:54.360It depends on what culture you're talking about.
00:35:57.060There is the ethical issue where I think you do genuinely need to be okay with buying into a life in that religious structure.
00:36:05.000Like it would be really freaking evil to like lie to a woman who is-
00:36:09.920Well, these communities typically have good policing standards.
00:36:12.800Yeah, but that's what I would turn to.
00:36:14.600I'd be like, hey, which religion can I be morally super cool with living with?
00:36:23.440So I'm just saying what's out there now.
00:36:24.460And we'll talk about them in future videos and stuff like that, like better types of dating markets that have higher switching costs, but they're not there yet.
00:36:34.180There's one other option that I would pursue, which is to go to a dating website like Keeper.ai, which is more focused on ending up with a partner.
00:36:46.580And also, which if you like put up an upfront, like if you're willing basically to pay more, they're going to invest more in helping you match with someone.
00:36:54.100And then even sites like Match.com, where it's just more clear that you are willing to commit.
00:37:00.900Because on mainstream dating sites, a lot of women that are on them kind of just want to pretend that anyone that they're dating with might commit to them.
00:37:09.760It's understood that's not the agreement on those sites.
00:37:13.160Whereas if you go to Match.com, it is because you want to marry.
00:37:16.920And people often who meet on Match.com, regardless of age, and I know like people who did this like in their early 40s, people who did this in their 20s, like all over the place, are there to get it done.
00:37:26.940They get, they meet on the platform, they get engaged, they get married, just done.
00:37:46.940I don't know if it will, but it's an interesting idea.
00:37:49.300The final thing I would say that if you are a guy who does find yourself at the top of a marketplace, and I think guys who find themselves at the top of marketplaces, one thing they often don't realize, okay, is they often feel like I was a nerdy guy who moved up and now I'm just doing my thing because I can do it now, right?
00:38:07.780And that's generally usually a wrong perception.
00:38:10.660It's just that when you're younger, it's typically harder to secure a long-term relationship.
00:38:15.820And the longer you play on these marketplaces, the more I think it kind of messes with your psychology and it makes it harder and harder to really find a long-term relationship.
00:38:26.700And you're losing good years because sperm inequality does decline a lot more than the guys think they have forever to find a partner, which just isn't true.
00:38:36.420If you as a guy are like over 43 when you start looking for a partner, the reality, both because of the age of the person you'll probably realistically end up settling with and because of decreased fertility in both her and your sperm health, you're not going to have that many kids.
00:38:50.300In truth, you probably won't even breed above replacement, right?
00:38:53.660And it is not a good strategy as a guy to just say, I'll do it later.
00:38:56.920I think as a guy, if you want a lot of kids, you really need to start seriously looking for a partner around the age of 22.
00:39:05.820And as girls, I'd say around the age of 21.
00:39:09.260But it doesn't matter how old you are, like the same year you start now, the better.
00:39:22.860I'd go to San Francisco and I had multiple dates booked there that day.
00:39:25.740And Simone and I both met each other on a day where we had both booked multiple dates that day.
00:39:31.540We were both going really high throughput.
00:39:34.520And I think that's one of the biggest things that people miss in terms of often people who do find relationships is they are powering through.
00:39:42.280And they are not wasting time dating people who they know they're not going to marry.
00:39:46.100The moment it was clear that any relationship wasn't going to close in a marriage, I would leave it.
00:39:52.040And I think that you can waste so much time on a bad lead.
00:40:14.960And the thing we've mentioned in other videos, which I'll mention here again, the single most important trait you should be optimizing for is not looks.
00:40:25.400The amount of gratitude a partner is showing.
00:40:26.840I mentioned this was a good thing, but it's actually really important.
00:40:28.740Because what gratitude really is, it's a measure of how much of a deal they think they have got with you.
00:40:35.920It's a measure of how much higher the score they have for you is than the score they think they can get on the market.
00:40:42.920That's really what gratitude is a measure of.
00:40:45.120And it makes relationships so much easier, especially when both partners feel like they got an absolute steal because you both fit some arbitrage need that the other one that makes them really weird.
00:41:56.600And I'm excited for our chicken coop, which is being refurbished today.
00:41:59.160So we're going to get to do that, that trad cosplay lifestyle.
00:42:02.900You know, it's dire out there and there's no denying it.
00:42:06.120I think anyone who's telling you that they have a surefire way to fix this problem is lying to you.
00:42:10.280That it's really bad and that honestly, the only way that I think you're going to make it through the situation if you're trying to find a partner is one, to work your ass off, but two, to also set realistic expectations.
00:42:24.580And like Malcolm said, look for gratitude and not glamour because the glamour is where you're going to get caught.
00:42:29.400I think glamour is where most people are getting caught, especially women, because of the unrealistic expectations that they're setting for themselves.
00:42:35.220I think glamour, what I would say glamour is, is the level to which this person augments your status within social communities.
00:42:41.140Because a lot of times people, I think they're selecting for attractiveness, but I think a lot of people actually select for how much is this going to increase my status within the communities that I'm engaging with.
00:42:51.600And that is like the single dumbest metric you can search for.