The Art of Manliness - #142： The Science of Mating and Dating With Geoffrey Miller

00:00:00.000 we're at mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:18.920 so a big part of our lives are relationships particularly relationships in the context of

00:00:24.660 dating and mating can really have a big influence on happiness and well-being

00:00:28.860 but despite being such a big part of our lives no one ever really sits you down and says here's

00:00:34.000 what you need to do to have a successful dating life or here's what you need to do to have a

00:00:38.480 successful marriage once you found the one we're sort of expected to figure this stuff out on our

00:00:43.660 own well my guest today on the podcast argues that's actually we're setting a lot of people up

00:00:48.540 for unhappiness and failure by not giving them a bit of advice on how they can have a successful

00:00:53.040 dating and relationship life his name is jeffrey miller he's an evolutionary psychologist he's

00:00:58.580 written several books on the topic of of how evolutionary psychology influences our mating

00:01:03.240 choices as well as consumer choices and he teamed up with tucker max you guys probably know tucker

00:01:09.140 from books like i hope they serve beer in hell and all of that frat tire stuff but they teamed up to

00:01:14.700 write a book called mate and it's all about the science of mating and dating and it's packed with

00:01:20.700 research back tips on what guys can do to make themselves more attractive to women the traits they

00:01:26.520 can develop authentic traits that'll make them attractive and the traits that will help them

00:01:30.480 have a a happy long lasting relationship really interesting book it's fun to read and today on

00:01:37.540 the podcast jeffrey miller and i talk about some of the research we talk about what you can do to

00:01:40.740 become more confident we talk about the the traits that women look for in men we talk about what you

00:01:45.740 should look for in a woman depending on your your relationship goals and we talk about how even the

00:01:51.020 place you live right can affect your your dating chances and some things you can do to uh to change

00:01:58.020 that uh so if you're a single guy a lot of great information for you even if you're married jeffrey

00:02:03.360 and i talk about how the this research about the psychology of relationships can help you improve

00:02:09.320 your marriage as well so without further ado jeffrey miller and mate jeffrey miller welcome to the show

00:02:23.640 it's great to be here thanks brad so your book is is mate um it's about the science of dating and

00:02:30.820 mating and relating and all that jazz you're you're evolutionary psychologist that's written several

00:02:36.240 books published in leading journals but you ended up partnering partnering with uh tucker maxx on this

00:02:42.900 book and i'm sure a lot of our listeners know him for his like i hope this year serve beer in hell

00:02:47.000 how did that partnership happen granted it sounds like a bizarre um match at at first glance um but

00:02:56.640 actually tucker's a really bright guy knows a lot of the science already what happened was i i read an

00:03:02.060 interview with tucker um by a friend of mine um that had happened back in 2011 and tucker clearly

00:03:08.280 um he explicitly mentioned my first book the mating mind by name and said it had had a big impact on him

00:03:15.140 he clearly knew a lot about evolutionary psychology my field and about sexual selection and animal

00:03:21.040 behavior and so i emailed him 2012 and uh just kind of expressed my interest and and you know how is a

00:03:30.580 leading popular author of of fratire so knowledgeable about my field and we started corresponding we got

00:03:39.220 together for dinner actually within two weeks in austin texas where tucker lives um hit it off had a lot

00:03:45.120 of common interests and started kind of lamenting the the current state of dating advice to young men

00:03:51.140 and that really dominated this first dinner conversation and and was the seed that launched

00:03:56.700 the whole mate book yeah and you guys started off with a website uh before the the book which is

00:04:01.980 jam-packed with great information there yeah we've been running this website called mating grounds for

00:04:07.040 about the last uh 15 months and we have our own podcast series which includes mostly answering

00:04:12.800 questions from guys and giving the best evidence-based advice that we can but also we've got

00:04:17.820 interviews with experts and we've also got a case study of of a young guy that tucker knows

00:04:23.740 joe where we've kind of been coaching him for 30 episodes through getting his life together and

00:04:30.520 improving all his traits and proofs that are attractive to women and and kind of improving

00:04:34.960 his whole dating life so there's a lot of content there yeah and so you mentioned that there's there's

00:04:39.560 really not that much information out there about dating or if there is information out there it's

00:04:44.680 it's not that great and which is sort of surprising because dating relationships mating like that's

00:04:51.340 like a big part of life like what what freud said it's like that all there is in life is like work

00:04:55.600 and love exactly and and it's sort of like personal finance right like no one ever really sits you down

00:05:00.880 and talk about money even though like money's the thing that we all spend most of our time doing so

00:05:05.640 why is that why don't we spend more time on something that's so important or teaching um skills or

00:05:12.600 insights that are that's something about so important in our life that's a really good question and um

00:05:18.480 tucker and i actually wrote thousands of words about this that didn't make it into the book

00:05:23.380 just for reasons of space so there's a whole backstory about why has modern culture failed young men

00:05:29.240 so um extremely and and profoundly i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that anything to do with

00:05:37.800 sex and dating and mating and marriage is is very politically controversial and people have really

00:05:43.640 different ideologies about it so like a public high school can't really teach a course on how to do dating

00:05:51.460 and mating effectively because it would be seen as as biased or partisan or sort of inappropriate um

00:05:59.500 also parents feel like they just don't understand the current mating situation the technology of mating

00:06:05.640 is moving so fast like texting and online dating and the way that dates happen so

00:06:11.260 grandparents and parents don't feel like their expertise is that relevant to young people

00:06:16.420 even though a lot of it actually is because human nature doesn't change that much

00:06:20.400 and then there's you know people seeking to make a bunch of money off of insecure young men

00:06:28.280 um basically scammers and slightly sociopathic pickup artists trying to sell their their weekend programs

00:06:37.020 not all of them are bad some of them have good insights but um you know the economic model that they have

00:06:43.960 is is very different from what we're doing in mate we're just like we're going to stick it all in one book

00:06:48.900 it's fairly cheap boom that's what we know other folks are more like how can we make

00:06:54.440 thousands of dollars out of young men's insecurity before we give away useful information

00:07:00.020 yeah was there a time in our our culture when we passed on this information about successful courtship

00:07:07.240 and successful mating i think there have been cultures that had more effective initiation rights

00:07:14.100 where once you hit puberty if you're a young boy or girl the elders will kind of take you off into the bush

00:07:21.200 and and teach you stuff and normally that stuff was considered sacred and secret a lot of it had to do

00:07:28.320 you know was kind of hunting and gathering not necessarily with mating but a lot of it was sexual wisdom

00:07:34.540 we don't really know mostly what was taught in in those contexts but at least uh the elders of the tribe

00:07:43.060 made an effort and they did have these ritualized uh settings and events that that tried to teach young men

00:07:50.940 what what they needed to know gotcha so let's get into some of the meat of your book about uh research back

00:07:56.760 tips that what men can do to improve their their their dating life their their love life

00:08:02.300 uh so you start off talking about confidence which i thought was really interesting because a lot of

00:08:06.420 success in dating is is based on confidence or i mean i guess you could say a lot of success in life is

00:08:11.340 based on confidence but how do you build confidence for dating is it something that

00:08:16.520 well if you get confident in one area of your life it carries over to dating or is confidence domain specific

00:08:23.500 yeah we put a chapter on confidence right at the beginning of the book because it was

00:08:28.380 the number one question that guys called in with to the podcast they wanted to know

00:08:32.840 number one how do i get more confident number two conversation how do i talk to women 1.00

00:08:37.520 i think you can build your confidence a lot of it is based on demonstrated performance i mean there's a few

00:08:44.740 tricks there's a few life hacks you can use to kind of boost your confidence

00:08:49.300 temporarily in a particular domain but in the mate book we're really about what are the sustainable

00:08:55.940 long-term ways that you can increase your your confidence particularly around women and basically

00:09:02.680 that means you have to go out and have experience and interactions and build up the traits that you

00:09:11.900 know will be attractive to women it's very hard to feel confident if you don't understand what women

00:09:18.340 really want and if you know you haven't cultivated the traits that they really want because then

00:09:25.160 you get this imposter syndrome where you feel like okay maybe i can talk a good line maybe i've got a good

00:09:31.380 approach but but it feels like a house of cards so i think you have to do some deep inner work and get

00:09:37.880 the rest of your life together before you can really approach a woman with confidence and and most of the 0.53

00:09:43.700 mate book is really about um doing all that work sort of ahead of time even before a date it's not

00:09:50.580 that hard but it's something a lot of guys neglect to do yeah and you talk about um you know like what

00:09:56.540 women find attractive like what your second chapter is about you need to understand what women what it's 1.00

00:10:03.380 like to be a woman to have successful uh successful love life so i mean what is it that men need to

00:10:08.740 understand about women that they might not understand about women yeah another really common

00:10:14.460 theme and and the questions we got for the mating grounds podcast was guys would call in with a

00:10:20.380 question that could be easily answered if they'd just taken a few minutes to kind of put themselves

00:10:26.360 in women's shoes and ask what what is it like to be a woman why is she reacting this way and we go 1.00

00:10:33.240 step by step through the things about female life and experience that a lot a lot of young guys don't

00:10:39.320 understand so for example what are women's fears concerns and anxieties women have a lot more fear

00:10:46.040 about their physical safety their sexual safety like fear of sexual harassment and rape most guys don't

00:10:52.980 get that um women fear about their sexual reputation they're very worried about slut shaming even today

00:11:00.260 and so they don't want to put themselves in situations where their sexual reputation is vulnerable

00:11:05.620 to being you know mocked or or belittled or criticized by their female friends um so women are very safety 1.00

00:11:14.900 conscious and a guy's number one task in approaching a woman or or presenting himself on a first date is not

00:11:22.640 necessarily to impress the woman but simply to make her feel relaxed and safe in your presence and that

00:11:28.560 sort of goes counter to what a lot of the dating advice you see online where it's you need to show

00:11:34.100 dominance right away right um yeah and feel safe exactly if you read all the stuff about you got to be an alpha

00:11:41.380 male and show dominance dominance is great for intimidating other men so you scare them away but when you

00:11:48.800 show dominance up front to a woman and you don't really know how to use it in an attractive way it codes as 0.92

00:11:56.640 danger in a woman's brain it activates her amygdala you know it it provokes anxiety the woman thinks what 0.57

00:12:04.880 why is this guy acting belligerent and assertive and and even hostile to me i don't feel physically

00:12:10.540 safe i don't feel sexually safe um there can be a little bit of an erotic thrill to that which is the

00:12:18.280 basis of most romance novels but if you don't know what you're doing with dominance it can drive a lot

00:12:24.000 of women away yeah so uh let's talk about what the research says about what women find attractive

00:12:29.980 in men and what what sort of traits they should be working on uh to develop uh so what are the traits

00:12:35.840 that women find attractive in men from an evolutionary perspective there's a lot of traits but we kind of

00:12:42.120 boil them down to to just five um partly for the sake of simplicity and partly because these are the

00:12:48.420 five that we know how to um improve based on the current evidence physical health mental health

00:12:55.880 intelligence willpower and what we call the tender defender trait and then there's another four things

00:13:03.020 that are sort of what are your proofs that you have those five traits um we think there's really

00:13:09.560 good evidence that those five basic traits are attractive physical health plays out in terms of how

00:13:15.040 your body looks how you move how healthy you seem how much energy you have and the big leverage points

00:13:21.720 for improving physical health are basically get enough sleep which most young guys don't do and it

00:13:28.100 really handicaps them eat right and by right we don't mean pay attention to the fda nutrition guidelines 1.00

00:13:35.160 we basically mean um eat paleo and i can go into that if you want and exercise and know how to do

00:13:41.740 exercise that's really efficient and effective you don't need to do cardio for an hour three times a

00:13:48.260 week there's much more efficient ways to to do exercise and then for the other four traits we go

00:13:53.360 through analogous interventions that you can do in life that are maximally efficient and effective

00:13:59.760 and don't take that much time but that really bring results well do you i mean going back to like

00:14:04.480 physical health like do you have to be super fit like brad pitt fight club six-pack abs or

00:14:09.240 i mean what what exactly what's the uh the minimum require required fitness i think there's a

00:14:14.660 perception out there that you have to be shredded in order to attract a woman yeah shredded is actually

00:14:20.920 bad i mean if you're below 10 body fat that's actually not as healthy as having a little more

00:14:26.300 fat in terms of how your immune system works fighting off colds and and infections and diseases and

00:14:32.840 and all of that so it's it's fine to have a little bit of fat you don't need to be super bulked up and

00:14:39.740 um have massive muscles women like muscles and they um they appreciate them but if if you look at hunter 0.99

00:14:47.480 gatherer guys the guys who are good at going out and hunting and killing game and dragging it back to camp 0.99

00:14:53.920 they do not look like bodybuilders they look more like um mma fighters or olympic decathlon guys or

00:15:03.680 just guys who are generally in good shape from doing you know a combination of some aerobic work and also

00:15:10.480 some body weight exercises or kettlebells or stuff like that so you don't have to be in perfect shape

00:15:17.120 women just don't want to be sexually repulsed by your body basically and there's a lot of young guys who

00:15:23.180 are sexually repulsive in terms of what they look like they're not taking care of themselves 0.52

00:15:27.240 and it's sad so and i thought it was interesting that you mentioned willpower we've written about 0.59

00:15:31.400 that on the site but i didn't think that as something as a a trait a sexual trait that women 1.00

00:15:36.120 would find attractive what is it about willpower that makes a man attractive to a woman yeah willpower

00:15:43.120 is closely related to a personality trait called conscientiousness which has been really well studied

00:15:49.860 um and it's basically your ability to take charge of your life have some priorities exercise self

00:15:57.720 restraint avoid temptations pursue long-term goals and develop a kind of set of habits and a regime of

00:16:06.180 of self-improvement that requires some effort but that demonstrates to women that you have ambition

00:16:13.760 and that you care about making yourself the best guy that you can so women read even basic cues like

00:16:20.920 do you have a decent haircut you know do you shave or if you have a beard do you take care of it

00:16:26.180 um do you dress well these are all signals of willpower at a certain level so you don't think

00:16:32.520 well willpower requires that i work 60 hours a week no it can just be ordinary uh life habits

00:16:39.540 to demonstrate you're making an effort yeah and some women probably wouldn't want to be married to a 1.00

00:16:43.860 guy who works 60 hours a week right yeah you can go too far in the conscientiousness direction which

00:16:49.620 shades over into um obsessive compulsive disorder or or workaholism or other kinds of kind of

00:16:56.900 behavioral addictions that that are real turn-offs to women yeah and so i love this thing also do you

00:17:02.760 have this this tender defender because i think it it's a nice uh it's an alternative to like the

00:17:07.920 alpha male dominance you know uh theory that's put out there on the website can you explain what

00:17:12.760 the tender defender trait is yeah tender defender is the way that we talk about striking the right

00:17:18.560 balance between agreeableness and warmth and and love and tenderness towards a woman and towards

00:17:26.720 her friends and potential future kids you could have with them where you're really taking care of

00:17:31.500 them and you show you have those those good boyfriend and good dad traits but the defender

00:17:37.100 is if there's an external threat a challenge a predator a natural disaster a criminal um or or more

00:17:45.820 abstract threat a social or financial threat that you can rise to the occasion and deal with it take

00:17:51.940 care of it and protect the woman and her kids and women instinctively tune into who's going to be a 1.00

00:17:59.220 good tender defender and have the right mix of traits women are turned off by psychopaths on the one 1.00

00:18:05.620 hand because they're not tender enough but they're turned off by the wimpy mr nice guys because they're

00:18:10.880 not good at being good defenders gotcha and i think i've read research where uh women are attracted to 1.00

00:18:17.680 dominance but only whenever that dominance is uh displayed to i guess quotation marks enemies people

00:18:25.320 that aren't part of the tribe so to speak yeah a you know a girlfriend doesn't want you to show

00:18:31.360 dominance to her dominance to her mom right or her nieces or nephews or her her female friend she 0.95

00:18:37.480 wants you to show dominance is there for male versus male competition right so if there's a threat

00:18:43.600 from another male who's sexually harassing your girlfriend she wants you to stand up and be dominant and get 1.00

00:18:49.040 get that guy out of her life um dominance can also be very useful in bed during sex right a lot of 1.00

00:18:56.860 women want guys to take charge in bed but the rest of the time if there's not an immediate threat 1.00

00:19:04.000 and if you're not actually doing foreplay or sex then dominance is just kind of a pain in the ass and 0.99

00:19:10.560 it's not even relevant to a woman's interests gotcha so you mentioned signaling uh what is signaling 0.99

00:19:16.960 theory uh in a nutshell signaling theory is the idea that animals including humans are motivated to

00:19:25.860 display attractive traits to other animals including mates but also to rivals to intimidate them or

00:19:32.760 towards predators to say you can't catch me don't even bother trying and the key thing in in the biology

00:19:40.080 of signals is the signal has to be credible and reliable and hard to fake in order for the other animal or

00:19:47.480 the other human to pay any attention to it so if you go around sending signals that are easy to fake no

00:19:55.040 matter how good you are at doing something then the other animal has no incentive to pay any

00:20:00.940 attention to that it's it's called cheap talk it's not a reliable signal so in the mating domain with 0.80

00:20:08.780 humans what you want is to display all these attractive traits in a way that a less attractive guy

00:20:15.000 couldn't do that's a reliable signal and that leads us from the traits that are attractive into these

00:20:21.960 what we call proofs social proof material proof aesthetic proof um these are ways of of signaling

00:20:30.880 that i've got these attractive traits uh in a reliable and unfakeable manner gotcha let's talk about

00:20:37.820 material proof because a lot on the web you you often read about uh you know hypergamy right that

00:20:43.700 women are only attracted to guys who have lots of money is that true it's true for some women no doubt 1.00

00:20:51.880 i mean some women are are gold diggers and they're financially ambitious and and that's fine that's 1.00

00:20:57.740 a valid life decision as long as they're up front about it um but the thing to remember about what we

00:21:04.100 call material proof is that money didn't really exist until the last few thousand years so during the

00:21:10.960 whole course of prehistory when women were evolving their mate preferences and what they they find 0.92

00:21:17.040 attractive in men um there wasn't money there weren't bank accounts there there weren't regular

00:21:22.600 paychecks so the women would pay attention to things like who's a good hunter um who's got high status 1.00

00:21:30.740 and prestige in my clan or my tribe but you couldn't stockpile resources even the best hunters would

00:21:38.080 sometimes come home empty-handed and and have to kind of beg vegetables from their girlfriends

00:21:42.800 so the idea that women evolved this this fetish for wealth just can't be accurate in terms of the 0.89

00:21:52.200 anthropology um instead we think wealth is really attractive to women mostly because it indicates 0.87

00:21:58.220 deeper underlying traits that tend to lead to wealth in modern societies things like intelligence

00:22:05.200 and willpower social skills you know passion dedication ambition all that stuff

00:22:12.120 so i think when women see a financially attractive guy most of them find that interesting because

00:22:18.580 they know he had to do a whole bunch of stuff to succeed in his career whatever it was and it's

00:22:26.280 the ability to do all that stuff rather than the money itself that's that's primarily attractive

00:22:32.260 but if so if you're in the position like you're a broke college student it's not that you don't have

00:22:36.540 money that women are it's you should develop the traits that women will find attractive and say well he has 0.53

00:22:41.460 the i don't know the capability of acquiring resources in a future date yeah i mean for 25 years in

00:22:49.420 evolutionary psychology we know that young men actually value your your kind of future earning potential

00:22:55.540 more than your current you know wealth level so women are very good at projecting into the future what is 1.00

00:23:03.440 this guy's likely path is he doing well in organic chemistry and he's he's pre-med and he's going to

00:23:09.980 become a doctor at a at a high likelihood or is he a sophomore who's got no idea what he's going to do

00:23:16.720 no major no ambition bad grades even if he's cute and charming they'll kind of project forward

00:23:25.400 financially and go he doesn't have all the traits that are that are going to be required to succeed in

00:23:30.720 you know modern america yeah if if having money was like a record you know something required to get

00:23:36.860 married like i would not have been i got married when i was 22 um and so like i had piles of debt

00:23:43.060 um but you know my wife still found me attractive for some reason i'm guessing she saw that my pluck 0.98

00:23:49.520 that i i might have had yeah and the sad thing is most guys spend so much more time and energy chasing

00:23:55.940 the money rather than educating themselves about how to become a more attractive guy

00:24:00.660 and that is such a a roundabout an indirect way to achieve your mating goals gotcha let's talk about

00:24:06.640 another social uh social proof and one of those just like it's sociability right that you have lots of

00:24:11.820 friends why is why is displaying or signaling that you have friends or a large social network attractive

00:24:19.260 to women showing that you've got a lot of friends um is a great form of social proof because it shows

00:24:26.480 you've got the social intelligence and the emotional intelligence to sustain long-term relationships a lot of

00:24:32.580 the same traits and skills that it takes for a guy to keep his male friends around are going to be relevant

00:24:40.200 to entertaining and pleasing a girlfriend it doesn't really matter which sex your relationships are

00:24:46.340 those those skills transfer also bear in mind that back in prehistory women often transferred from 0.99

00:24:53.420 their home tribe where they grew up to another tribe where some attractive guy was who they wanted to

00:24:59.400 have a relationship with now if there's a lone guy just out in the forest with no friends no clan

00:25:06.980 no woman's going to leave a safe home tribe to go out with that solo guy they're going to be you know 1.00

00:25:14.460 tiger meet pretty soon they're not that's not a sustainable situation a guy's got to be surrounded

00:25:19.940 by friends and relatives for a woman to feel um safe at a fundamental level so if you don't have

00:25:27.880 that social proof it's really important to get it to get out there try to make friends join clubs

00:25:33.600 things like that yeah um meetup groups happen in every city in america um a lot of guys lose touch

00:25:41.400 with friends from high school and college they don't need to there's a video skype um and guys 0.99

00:25:48.100 don't invest the effort in in their friendships they get really lazy about it and that's stupid

00:25:53.820 because friends can provide an enormous amount of um vicarious attractiveness they can vouch for you 0.96

00:26:02.340 they can reveal to a a woman things about you that you wouldn't feel comfortable bragging about

00:26:08.200 yourself so they can kind of do a lot of the courtship on your behalf and what i thought was

00:26:13.340 interesting throughout this book was yes it's about um you do these things so you can attract

00:26:18.300 women but in the process like you're becoming a better person like even if you don't get a date 1.00

00:26:23.700 right away like your your happiness will probably increase significantly if you just do some of these

00:26:29.440 things that you guys lay out in your book yeah i think that's right i mean at one level

00:26:34.280 the book is you know framed and sold as dating advice but tucker and i also had a kind of um

00:26:41.040 covert mission almost a trojan horse that we just wanted young guys to get their lives in general

00:26:46.280 together better and we knew that sex was a huge motivator so if you just start lecturing guys about 0.83

00:26:52.940 you need to get in shape they'll go yeah yeah someday if you go women will have sex with you if you get in 1.00

00:27:00.280 shape then guys will go yeah okay i'll get in shape and then they get all the benefits of that

00:27:06.080 and the rest of their social life their careers um we also know being in shape improves your mental

00:27:12.280 health and your mood and your happiness level so yeah there's a kind of um hidden agenda that we want

00:27:19.960 guys to to create excellence in their lives more generally and because they're so focused on mating

00:27:27.380 that's a kind of um uh a path forward that that can tap into that motivation pretty pretty easily

00:27:36.720 it's pretty sneaky of you guys there yeah so one thing you mentioned in your book too um was this

00:27:43.360 idea of a sort of mating how does understanding a sort of mating help men in the dating world

00:27:50.720 assortative mating is just the concept that like attracts like that

00:27:56.120 men with a certain set of traits tend to attract women who have similar traits

00:28:01.080 um the idea that opposites attract is complete nonsense we've had 50 years of research in

00:28:08.020 psychology showing that hardly ever works i mean men tend to attract women but beyond that

00:28:13.600 people tend to pair up based on their overall mate value overall how attractive are they

00:28:20.300 and this isn't just like the zero to ten scale of physical attractiveness this is are they physically

00:28:27.460 attractive socially attractive intelligent socially successful add up all of that that's your mate

00:28:33.040 value and people tend to assortatively mate for overall mate value but also at a more micro level

00:28:40.080 people tend to match on specific traits like um married couples correlate pretty highly for

00:28:47.380 iq general intelligence they correlate very strongly for political and religious values

00:28:54.280 they correlate pretty strongly for personality traits um and a lot of online dating sites like ok cupid

00:29:02.440 with their match percentage kind of recognize this you know your match percentage is basically

00:29:07.420 saying if you want to be happy do assorted of mating we've asked these thousands of questions you can answer

00:29:14.620 on ok cupid specifically so you can do assortative mating and and that tends to lead to happier dates

00:29:21.520 yeah i thought that was really interesting because there's a lot you know there's sort of trope online

00:29:25.480 where yeah the women are only attracted to rich guys and you can be old and you know if you have lots 1.00

00:29:30.560 of money then you can attract a young attractive woman doesn't matter your looks and then guys just 1.00

00:29:35.740 go for looks and women but whenever i i'm out and about like i'm at target or i'm at panera brett and i look

00:29:41.560 around at the couples like like these people do look pretty much the same right like kind of overweight 0.83

00:29:46.960 people are sort of with the overweight people attractive people are with attractive people

00:29:50.440 medium looking people are with medium looking people it seems like everyone sort of knows

00:29:55.080 where they stand as you said in the the mate market yeah absolutely and then if you get to talking to

00:30:02.340 those couples and one is conspicuously a lot smarter than the other there's a kind of

00:30:07.840 like jarring sensation like wait what how are they together and you kind of worry this this isn't

00:30:15.100 going to last because you know the intelligent one's going to get bored and frustrated and and leave or

00:30:21.600 if people are really mismatched on things like fundamental religious or political values and they're always

00:30:27.980 arguing about you know bernie and trump and obama and and or whatever or you know which religion

00:30:37.860 should we raise our our kids in you know that's not going to last very long yeah so we've talked

00:30:43.600 about what women uh find attractive in men but in order to have a successful dating life like you need

00:30:49.560 to think about the type of woman you want to date and relate with in order to have a successful

00:30:55.280 dating life so what should men look for in a woman depending on their dating goals 1.00

00:31:00.700 i mean all guys are kind of instinctively pretty good at paying attention to a woman's physical

00:31:07.160 attractiveness and that tends to drive a lot of decisions about you know who do you swipe right on

00:31:12.780 on tinder for and you know who do you message on match.com or whatever uh we don't really need to

00:31:19.600 worry about guys paying attention to that so it's mostly about what are a woman's mental and moral 0.57

00:31:25.400 and personality traits that are worth paying attention to um if it's a short-term hookup you

00:31:32.220 know one night stand casual sex the main mental and moral traits to worry about are the kind of red flags

00:31:41.760 that could create a lot of trouble so if a woman shows conspicuous signs of personality disorders 1.00

00:31:50.440 like borderline personality disorder and narcissism or or psychopathy those can be bad because you can

00:31:58.380 end up in a situation of lies and deception and danger and stalking and recriminations and and disasters

00:32:06.980 so it's important to learn about those traits we talk about some of them in mate even if you plan

00:32:13.440 to only spend three hours with a woman she might not be planning to spend only three hours with you

00:32:18.960 um if there's any longer term relationship potential like girlfriend or even wife then all of the same

00:32:27.620 traits that women pay attention to and you should become relevant for you selecting women and for a lot

00:32:35.660 of the same reasons um you know intelligence plays out in all kinds of ways that are hard to anticipate

00:32:42.700 when you're young in terms of career success and money management and managing and social relationships

00:32:50.080 resolving conflict all of that stuff so um getting the brightest woman you can attract is important

00:32:58.040 getting the most emotionally stable woman you can attract the most agreeable and kind woman

00:33:03.800 um a lot of guys learn this stuff through bitter experience with girlfriends who don't have these

00:33:10.760 desirable traits and uh in the mate book we we try to give guys a sort of preview of here's how things

00:33:19.800 will play out if you don't pay attention to these these traits other than just physical beauty yeah i thought

00:33:26.320 it was interesting too um how you know i guess bus has done those cross-cultural studies about what

00:33:33.160 men and women find attractive and people tend to focus on the differences right men put a premium on

00:33:38.980 physical attractiveness and women put a premium on uh resources and wealth and things like that 1.00

00:33:44.680 but what they fail often these websites who report on this often fail to report is that above those traits

00:33:51.440 right things like kindness respect like that's what both men and women put a premium on in a partner

00:33:58.740 exactly yeah that was one of the most striking things from that uh boss study back in 1989 and it's been

00:34:05.700 replicated even in even more cultures since then more than 50 cultures you know typically the top two

00:34:12.360 most desired traits are intelligence and kindness and then you often get things like um exciting

00:34:19.620 personality or a sense of humor or creativity or um resourcefulness adaptability you know all of that

00:34:28.700 stuff um in a crisis would this person be a useful ally or a handicap and no matter whether it's

00:34:37.500 contemporary america or you know rural um uganda those same traits can be super useful for both sexes

00:34:48.840 so you talk about something uh that i've just learned about recently and you're hearing more

00:34:53.760 about it uh i think there's a book that just came out about this it's a dating markets um can you

00:35:00.280 explain dating markets and sort of the general gist of it and how they work and how they'll affect your

00:35:05.200 dating life yeah mating markets is a a concept i got really excited about when i i spent four years in

00:35:11.480 an economics department in london that did a lot of game theory and game theory is about strategic

00:35:16.640 interactions between players like in a particular market um and it analyzes things like what's your

00:35:23.560 bargaining power in terms of how many people desire things from you versus you desiring things from

00:35:29.740 them and in mating markets that plays out very heavily in terms of what's the sex ratio the proportion 0.97

00:35:36.880 of women to men but it also plays out in terms of things like what's the distribution of ages

00:35:42.080 in the mating market or the distribution of physical attractiveness or intelligence

00:35:48.420 or what are the the social norms and expectations about dating you know if you're trying to date in

00:35:56.320 salt lake city utah where there's a bunch of mormons seeking husbands and wives that's really

00:36:01.020 different from san francisco where there's a lot of polyamory and open relationships

00:36:05.520 so most guys don't really think about what mating market they're in and whether they should move to

00:36:15.080 a better one which is crazy because young guys are willing to move to college hundreds of thousands

00:36:21.460 of miles away they're willing to move for a job but they're not willing to move to a different

00:36:25.800 mating market that might make it 10 times easier to find the women that they want so what are some

00:36:31.060 where are some places where it's sort of it's tough for a guy as i'm guessing it's places like new

00:36:34.940 york city where there are a lot more i don't know how would you say this like uh driven women who 1.00

00:36:40.460 have high paying jobs uh would that be a tough dating market new york is actually awesome for men

00:36:46.440 okay i spent eight months there in 2013 and it's it's terrific because the ratio of college educated

00:36:52.860 women in manhattan to college educated men um it's about one and a half or some some places even two 0.70

00:37:00.560 to one so the women are desperate and there's a real shortage of good guys by good guys they don't 1.00

00:37:06.840 mean wall street bankers they just mean guys who can dress and talk and at least buy them a coffee

00:37:13.940 so the sex ratio in new york is hugely advantageous to guys um the really bad mating market is actually

00:37:21.720 san jose california near silicon valley where there's a lot more guys than women and the women who are

00:37:30.160 there are in huge demand and they have their pick of entrepreneurs and tech millionaires and and a lot

00:37:39.260 of the guys end up just becoming workaholics because they they that's all there is to do they can't find

00:37:45.720 a woman all right so when there's more men uh women can get pickier yeah when there's more women 1.00

00:37:52.700 men can get pickier and this also applies to colleges i mean any college you're thinking about

00:37:58.640 applying to if you're a high school guy go to wikipedia wikipedia lists sex ratio for almost

00:38:04.340 every university in america and have a look if that sex ratio is less than 60 percent woman women 1.00

00:38:10.500 you're going to have trouble um if you want a higher sex ratio sarah lawrence college is 70 percent women 1.00

00:38:17.600 30 percent men and the guys who have the good sense to realize that oh sarah lawrence college accepts men

00:38:23.380 now has done for 20 years um women fall all over them and it's really easy yeah but here's the 1.00

00:38:30.980 question i have so i can see that being great right like you go to a place where it's flush with women 1.00

00:38:34.700 you don't really they'll be falling all over themselves for you but i feel like from a man's

00:38:40.500 perspective say you want to settle down right having that many choices could i could see it causing like

00:38:47.840 you to try to maximize like to the utmost to the point where you don't even make a choice because

00:38:53.460 you're like always putting out well maybe there's someone better out there yeah this is something

00:38:59.200 that does happen to highly attractive guys on tinder and in manhattan is is they're so spoiled for

00:39:05.520 choice that um they they treat women really badly and they know i can always find somebody for a 0.63

00:39:13.020 for a hookup tomorrow and so they never develop a long-term relationship and um that can bring its

00:39:19.940 own emotional and social problems but for most guys in most mating markets um if you're if you're

00:39:28.800 overwhelmed and spoiled with the amount of casual sex you're having uh you will eventually get tired

00:39:34.520 of that and you probably will want a longer-term girlfriend this is something we realized in the

00:39:39.960 mating grounds podcasts most young men don't just want a bunch of casual sex they want a girlfriend

00:39:45.780 um and even if you're in a mating market where you could have a lot of casual sex you can always opt

00:39:54.500 to sort of um make it last longer and and you know settle down with with a good woman as you point out the

00:40:05.100 key thing is don't keep second guessing yourself and going oh i could find another woman who's like 1.00

00:40:10.560 three percent prettier and two percent higher iq um your life satisfaction in the relationship is

00:40:19.580 mostly going to be at that point how you manage the relationship and not you know are you actually

00:40:25.280 maximizing the every single trait that the woman has yeah so let's get you we've talked about you know 0.95

00:40:31.260 you're selecting someone um let's get to the dating part is it still really up to the guy i mean

00:40:37.820 what does the research say is it still up to the guy to make the first move when it comes to dating

00:40:41.640 yeah it really is um it's up to the guy to make the first move and ask the woman out and it's also

00:40:48.120 up to the guy to pay for it um the research on both of those is very clear now women will give signals 1.00

00:40:54.440 of interest most of which are too subtle and young guys don't pick up on and ignore so the woman can 0.99

00:41:01.840 often feel like she's the one making the first move but really it's up to the guy um either when he's

00:41:09.320 approaching a woman in real life or when they're messaging through an online dating app it's up to

00:41:16.140 the guy to step up and go okay i'd like to meet you you know here's my suggestion about where and

00:41:24.520 when is that okay with you and the woman will either go yep great looking forward to it or she'll 1.00

00:41:31.460 suggest an alternative or she'll say nope don't want to meet and then you know where you stand yeah

00:41:38.300 and but how do you i'm sure you guys get this question a lot too on the podcast but

00:41:42.460 how do how should guys handle rejection because i know for a lot of guys being rejected by

00:41:47.280 women is really really hard and it causes a lot of like anguish and anger uh what can they do to 1.00

00:41:54.300 just i don't know handle that better i think there's there's two things to do to kind of step back from

00:42:03.220 the focus on am i getting the date am i getting sex step back from that and go am i learning how to

00:42:10.860 interact with women and if you have that learning mindset that hey we've talked or we've messaged and

00:42:18.640 i've been practicing my conversational skills or my my verbal fluency i've been practicing my

00:42:24.700 storytelling and my sense of humor then even if a woman says no i don't want to meet i don't want to 0.65

00:42:30.600 date it's still a win because you're still getting experience and courtship and if you go in with the 0.70

00:42:37.400 mindset that i want to improve my skills rather than i absolutely must have sex with this woman 0.99

00:42:44.660 then you don't have to take the rejection that hard um

00:42:50.260 and secondly you know in terms of rejection framing it as a matter of fit rather than quality

00:42:59.000 most women reject guys not because the guy is fundamentally inadequate and could never attract

00:43:05.160 any woman it's just that particular woman given her mate choice criteria her preferences 1.00

00:43:12.100 what she's looking for what her mating goals are they don't align with yours and and that's okay

00:43:20.560 you don't have to take it as a rejection of your whole being it's just we don't happen to fit it's

00:43:26.660 like going for a job interview you know and the company or you realizing we're not a good fit in

00:43:32.180 terms of employer employee good i like that i like that analogy so i'm curious uh jeffrey if i'm married

00:43:40.220 i've been married for 10 years and i know a lot of guys who are listening are married too can some of

00:43:45.060 these principles help married men in their long-term relationship with their wife absolutely i think a

00:43:51.860 huge mistake that a lot of husbands make is thinking that well courtship and attracting my wife is

00:43:58.640 something i did before marriage and now we're in some safe zone where i don't have to make any mating

00:44:05.560 effort anymore that's not how wives think about it um wives expect continued mating effort and 1.00

00:44:13.380 continued courtship and conversation and affection and attention throughout a marriage and also the same

00:44:21.220 traits that attract women to men initially keep women interested in men sexually and emotionally

00:44:30.240 within a marriage so i think even married guys will get a lot out of the mate book in terms of

00:44:35.660 realizing oh man i've been neglecting like three out of the five fundamental traits that my wife wanted

00:44:43.440 me to keep cultivating or i've been neglecting my male friends or i've been neglecting my aesthetic

00:44:49.760 proof which is how i dress and how you know we keep our home together or i've been neglecting my

00:44:56.120 romantic proof which is how much attention i pay to my wife in terms of investing specifically in her 0.94

00:45:03.380 and our relationship so all the same lessons i think still apply in marriage because there's really

00:45:10.460 no finish line in terms of human sexuality awesome well jeffrey this has been a fascinating

00:45:15.960 conversation where can people learn more about your work probably the best place to go is just

00:45:21.820 matinggrounds.com the mating grounds website uh it's got a whole lot of materials all of my academic papers

00:45:28.920 all 1700 references and suggested readings for the mate book um all 200 plus podcasts episodes

00:45:38.180 and we're going to keep adding material to uh to mating grounds in the future as well awesome jeffrey

00:45:44.220 miller thanks so much for your time it's been a pleasure yeah likewise take care brad my guest

00:45:48.800 there was jeffrey miller he's the co-author of the book mate and you can find that on amazon.com

00:45:53.560 and bookstores everywhere also check out jeffrey and tucker's website mating grounds that's thematinggrounds.com

00:45:59.760 you got to put the th in front of it full of just awesome free information about the research that

00:46:05.320 went into this book so go check it out also they have a podcast you can check out as well

00:46:09.080 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:46:16.480 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com

00:46:19.520 and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:46:23.360 you

00:46:40.920 you

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00:46:44.820 Transcription by CastingWords

The Art of Manliness - September 29, 2015

#142： The Science of Mating and Dating With Geoffrey Miller

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