#142： The Science of Mating and Dating With Geoffrey Miller
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Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we talk with evolutionary psychologist Jeffery Miller about his new book, "Mating Grounds" and how he and Tucker maxx teamed up to write a book about the science of mating and dating.
Transcript
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we're at mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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so a big part of our lives are relationships particularly relationships in the context of
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dating and mating can really have a big influence on happiness and well-being
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but despite being such a big part of our lives no one ever really sits you down and says here's
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what you need to do to have a successful dating life or here's what you need to do to have a
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successful marriage once you found the one we're sort of expected to figure this stuff out on our
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own well my guest today on the podcast argues that's actually we're setting a lot of people up
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for unhappiness and failure by not giving them a bit of advice on how they can have a successful
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dating and relationship life his name is jeffrey miller he's an evolutionary psychologist he's
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written several books on the topic of of how evolutionary psychology influences our mating
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choices as well as consumer choices and he teamed up with tucker max you guys probably know tucker
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from books like i hope they serve beer in hell and all of that frat tire stuff but they teamed up to
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write a book called mate and it's all about the science of mating and dating and it's packed with
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research back tips on what guys can do to make themselves more attractive to women the traits they
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can develop authentic traits that'll make them attractive and the traits that will help them
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have a a happy long lasting relationship really interesting book it's fun to read and today on
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the podcast jeffrey miller and i talk about some of the research we talk about what you can do to
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become more confident we talk about the the traits that women look for in men we talk about what you
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should look for in a woman depending on your your relationship goals and we talk about how even the
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place you live right can affect your your dating chances and some things you can do to uh to change
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that uh so if you're a single guy a lot of great information for you even if you're married jeffrey
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and i talk about how the this research about the psychology of relationships can help you improve
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your marriage as well so without further ado jeffrey miller and mate jeffrey miller welcome to the show
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it's great to be here thanks brad so your book is is mate um it's about the science of dating and
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mating and relating and all that jazz you're you're evolutionary psychologist that's written several
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books published in leading journals but you ended up partnering partnering with uh tucker maxx on this
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book and i'm sure a lot of our listeners know him for his like i hope this year serve beer in hell
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how did that partnership happen granted it sounds like a bizarre um match at at first glance um but
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actually tucker's a really bright guy knows a lot of the science already what happened was i i read an
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interview with tucker um by a friend of mine um that had happened back in 2011 and tucker clearly
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um he explicitly mentioned my first book the mating mind by name and said it had had a big impact on him
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he clearly knew a lot about evolutionary psychology my field and about sexual selection and animal
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behavior and so i emailed him 2012 and uh just kind of expressed my interest and and you know how is a
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leading popular author of of fratire so knowledgeable about my field and we started corresponding we got
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together for dinner actually within two weeks in austin texas where tucker lives um hit it off had a lot
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of common interests and started kind of lamenting the the current state of dating advice to young men
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and that really dominated this first dinner conversation and and was the seed that launched
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the whole mate book yeah and you guys started off with a website uh before the the book which is
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jam-packed with great information there yeah we've been running this website called mating grounds for
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about the last uh 15 months and we have our own podcast series which includes mostly answering
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questions from guys and giving the best evidence-based advice that we can but also we've got
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interviews with experts and we've also got a case study of of a young guy that tucker knows
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joe where we've kind of been coaching him for 30 episodes through getting his life together and
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improving all his traits and proofs that are attractive to women and and kind of improving
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his whole dating life so there's a lot of content there yeah and so you mentioned that there's there's
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really not that much information out there about dating or if there is information out there it's
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it's not that great and which is sort of surprising because dating relationships mating like that's
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like a big part of life like what what freud said it's like that all there is in life is like work
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and love exactly and and it's sort of like personal finance right like no one ever really sits you down
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and talk about money even though like money's the thing that we all spend most of our time doing so
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why is that why don't we spend more time on something that's so important or teaching um skills or
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insights that are that's something about so important in our life that's a really good question and um
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tucker and i actually wrote thousands of words about this that didn't make it into the book
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just for reasons of space so there's a whole backstory about why has modern culture failed young men
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so um extremely and and profoundly i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that anything to do with
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sex and dating and mating and marriage is is very politically controversial and people have really
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different ideologies about it so like a public high school can't really teach a course on how to do dating
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and mating effectively because it would be seen as as biased or partisan or sort of inappropriate um
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also parents feel like they just don't understand the current mating situation the technology of mating
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is moving so fast like texting and online dating and the way that dates happen so
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grandparents and parents don't feel like their expertise is that relevant to young people
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even though a lot of it actually is because human nature doesn't change that much
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and then there's you know people seeking to make a bunch of money off of insecure young men
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um basically scammers and slightly sociopathic pickup artists trying to sell their their weekend programs
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not all of them are bad some of them have good insights but um you know the economic model that they have
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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
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it's fairly cheap boom that's what we know other folks are more like how can we make
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thousands of dollars out of young men's insecurity before we give away useful information
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yeah was there a time in our our culture when we passed on this information about successful courtship
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and successful mating i think there have been cultures that had more effective initiation rights
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where once you hit puberty if you're a young boy or girl the elders will kind of take you off into the bush
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and and teach you stuff and normally that stuff was considered sacred and secret a lot of it had to do
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you know was kind of hunting and gathering not necessarily with mating but a lot of it was sexual wisdom
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we don't really know mostly what was taught in in those contexts but at least uh the elders of the tribe
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made an effort and they did have these ritualized uh settings and events that that tried to teach young men
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what what they needed to know gotcha so let's get into some of the meat of your book about uh research back
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tips that what men can do to improve their their their dating life their their love life
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uh so you start off talking about confidence which i thought was really interesting because a lot of
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success in dating is is based on confidence or i mean i guess you could say a lot of success in life is
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based on confidence but how do you build confidence for dating is it something that
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well if you get confident in one area of your life it carries over to dating or is confidence domain specific
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yeah we put a chapter on confidence right at the beginning of the book because it was
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the number one question that guys called in with to the podcast they wanted to know
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number one how do i get more confident number two conversation how do i talk to women
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i think you can build your confidence a lot of it is based on demonstrated performance i mean there's a few
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tricks there's a few life hacks you can use to kind of boost your confidence
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temporarily in a particular domain but in the mate book we're really about what are the sustainable
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long-term ways that you can increase your your confidence particularly around women and basically
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that means you have to go out and have experience and interactions and build up the traits that you
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know will be attractive to women it's very hard to feel confident if you don't understand what women
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really want and if you know you haven't cultivated the traits that they really want because then
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you get this imposter syndrome where you feel like okay maybe i can talk a good line maybe i've got a good
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approach but but it feels like a house of cards so i think you have to do some deep inner work and get
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the rest of your life together before you can really approach a woman with confidence and and most of the
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mate book is really about um doing all that work sort of ahead of time even before a date it's not
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that hard but it's something a lot of guys neglect to do yeah and you talk about um you know like what
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women find attractive like what your second chapter is about you need to understand what women what it's
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like to be a woman to have successful uh successful love life so i mean what is it that men need to
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understand about women that they might not understand about women yeah another really common
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theme and and the questions we got for the mating grounds podcast was guys would call in with a
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question that could be easily answered if they'd just taken a few minutes to kind of put themselves
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in women's shoes and ask what what is it like to be a woman why is she reacting this way and we go
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step by step through the things about female life and experience that a lot a lot of young guys don't
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understand so for example what are women's fears concerns and anxieties women have a lot more fear
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about their physical safety their sexual safety like fear of sexual harassment and rape most guys don't
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get that um women fear about their sexual reputation they're very worried about slut shaming even today
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and so they don't want to put themselves in situations where their sexual reputation is vulnerable
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to being you know mocked or or belittled or criticized by their female friends um so women are very safety
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conscious and a guy's number one task in approaching a woman or or presenting himself on a first date is not
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necessarily to impress the woman but simply to make her feel relaxed and safe in your presence and that
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sort of goes counter to what a lot of the dating advice you see online where it's you need to show
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dominance right away right um yeah and feel safe exactly if you read all the stuff about you got to be an alpha
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male and show dominance dominance is great for intimidating other men so you scare them away but when you
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show dominance up front to a woman and you don't really know how to use it in an attractive way it codes as
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danger in a woman's brain it activates her amygdala you know it it provokes anxiety the woman thinks what
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why is this guy acting belligerent and assertive and and even hostile to me i don't feel physically
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safe i don't feel sexually safe um there can be a little bit of an erotic thrill to that which is the
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basis of most romance novels but if you don't know what you're doing with dominance it can drive a lot
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of women away yeah so uh let's talk about what the research says about what women find attractive
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in men and what what sort of traits they should be working on uh to develop uh so what are the traits
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that women find attractive in men from an evolutionary perspective there's a lot of traits but we kind of
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boil them down to to just five um partly for the sake of simplicity and partly because these are the
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five that we know how to um improve based on the current evidence physical health mental health
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intelligence willpower and what we call the tender defender trait and then there's another four things
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that are sort of what are your proofs that you have those five traits um we think there's really
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good evidence that those five basic traits are attractive physical health plays out in terms of how
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your body looks how you move how healthy you seem how much energy you have and the big leverage points
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for improving physical health are basically get enough sleep which most young guys don't do and it
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really handicaps them eat right and by right we don't mean pay attention to the fda nutrition guidelines
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we basically mean um eat paleo and i can go into that if you want and exercise and know how to do
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exercise that's really efficient and effective you don't need to do cardio for an hour three times a
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week there's much more efficient ways to to do exercise and then for the other four traits we go
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through analogous interventions that you can do in life that are maximally efficient and effective
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and don't take that much time but that really bring results well do you i mean going back to like
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physical health like do you have to be super fit like brad pitt fight club six-pack abs or
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i mean what what exactly what's the uh the minimum require required fitness i think there's a
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perception out there that you have to be shredded in order to attract a woman yeah shredded is actually
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bad i mean if you're below 10 body fat that's actually not as healthy as having a little more
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fat in terms of how your immune system works fighting off colds and and infections and diseases and
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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
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um have massive muscles women like muscles and they um they appreciate them but if if you look at hunter
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gatherer guys the guys who are good at going out and hunting and killing game and dragging it back to camp
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they do not look like bodybuilders they look more like um mma fighters or olympic decathlon guys or
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just guys who are generally in good shape from doing you know a combination of some aerobic work and also
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some body weight exercises or kettlebells or stuff like that so you don't have to be in perfect shape
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women just don't want to be sexually repulsed by your body basically and there's a lot of young guys who
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are sexually repulsive in terms of what they look like they're not taking care of themselves
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and it's sad so and i thought it was interesting that you mentioned willpower we've written about
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that on the site but i didn't think that as something as a a trait a sexual trait that women
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would find attractive what is it about willpower that makes a man attractive to a woman yeah willpower
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is closely related to a personality trait called conscientiousness which has been really well studied
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um and it's basically your ability to take charge of your life have some priorities exercise self
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restraint avoid temptations pursue long-term goals and develop a kind of set of habits and a regime of
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of self-improvement that requires some effort but that demonstrates to women that you have ambition
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and that you care about making yourself the best guy that you can so women read even basic cues like
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do you have a decent haircut you know do you shave or if you have a beard do you take care of it
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um do you dress well these are all signals of willpower at a certain level so you don't think
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well willpower requires that i work 60 hours a week no it can just be ordinary uh life habits
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to demonstrate you're making an effort yeah and some women probably wouldn't want to be married to a
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guy who works 60 hours a week right yeah you can go too far in the conscientiousness direction which
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shades over into um obsessive compulsive disorder or or workaholism or other kinds of kind of
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behavioral addictions that that are real turn-offs to women yeah and so i love this thing also do you
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have this this tender defender because i think it it's a nice uh it's an alternative to like the
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alpha male dominance you know uh theory that's put out there on the website can you explain what
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the tender defender trait is yeah tender defender is the way that we talk about striking the right
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balance between agreeableness and warmth and and love and tenderness towards a woman and towards
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her friends and potential future kids you could have with them where you're really taking care of
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them and you show you have those those good boyfriend and good dad traits but the defender
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is if there's an external threat a challenge a predator a natural disaster a criminal um or or more
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abstract threat a social or financial threat that you can rise to the occasion and deal with it take
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care of it and protect the woman and her kids and women instinctively tune into who's going to be a
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good tender defender and have the right mix of traits women are turned off by psychopaths on the one
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hand because they're not tender enough but they're turned off by the wimpy mr nice guys because they're
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not good at being good defenders gotcha and i think i've read research where uh women are attracted to
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dominance but only whenever that dominance is uh displayed to i guess quotation marks enemies people
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that aren't part of the tribe so to speak yeah a you know a girlfriend doesn't want you to show
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dominance to her dominance to her mom right or her nieces or nephews or her her female friend she
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wants you to show dominance is there for male versus male competition right so if there's a threat
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from another male who's sexually harassing your girlfriend she wants you to stand up and be dominant and get
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get that guy out of her life um dominance can also be very useful in bed during sex right a lot of
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women want guys to take charge in bed but the rest of the time if there's not an immediate threat
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and if you're not actually doing foreplay or sex then dominance is just kind of a pain in the ass and
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it's not even relevant to a woman's interests gotcha so you mentioned signaling uh what is signaling
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theory uh in a nutshell signaling theory is the idea that animals including humans are motivated to
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display attractive traits to other animals including mates but also to rivals to intimidate them or
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towards predators to say you can't catch me don't even bother trying and the key thing in in the biology
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of signals is the signal has to be credible and reliable and hard to fake in order for the other animal or
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the other human to pay any attention to it so if you go around sending signals that are easy to fake no
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matter how good you are at doing something then the other animal has no incentive to pay any
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attention to that it's it's called cheap talk it's not a reliable signal so in the mating domain with
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humans what you want is to display all these attractive traits in a way that a less attractive guy
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couldn't do that's a reliable signal and that leads us from the traits that are attractive into these
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what we call proofs social proof material proof aesthetic proof um these are ways of of signaling
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that i've got these attractive traits uh in a reliable and unfakeable manner gotcha let's talk about
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material proof because a lot on the web you you often read about uh you know hypergamy right that
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women are only attracted to guys who have lots of money is that true it's true for some women no doubt
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i mean some women are are gold diggers and they're financially ambitious and and that's fine that's
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a valid life decision as long as they're up front about it um but the thing to remember about what we
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call material proof is that money didn't really exist until the last few thousand years so during the
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whole course of prehistory when women were evolving their mate preferences and what they they find
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attractive in men um there wasn't money there weren't bank accounts there there weren't regular
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paychecks so the women would pay attention to things like who's a good hunter um who's got high status
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and prestige in my clan or my tribe but you couldn't stockpile resources even the best hunters would
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sometimes come home empty-handed and and have to kind of beg vegetables from their girlfriends
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so the idea that women evolved this this fetish for wealth just can't be accurate in terms of the
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anthropology um instead we think wealth is really attractive to women mostly because it indicates
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deeper underlying traits that tend to lead to wealth in modern societies things like intelligence
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and willpower social skills you know passion dedication ambition all that stuff
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so i think when women see a financially attractive guy most of them find that interesting because
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they know he had to do a whole bunch of stuff to succeed in his career whatever it was and it's
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the ability to do all that stuff rather than the money itself that's that's primarily attractive
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but if so if you're in the position like you're a broke college student it's not that you don't have
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money that women are it's you should develop the traits that women will find attractive and say well he has
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the i don't know the capability of acquiring resources in a future date yeah i mean for 25 years in
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evolutionary psychology we know that young men actually value your your kind of future earning potential
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more than your current you know wealth level so women are very good at projecting into the future what is
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this guy's likely path is he doing well in organic chemistry and he's he's pre-med and he's going to
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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
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no major no ambition bad grades even if he's cute and charming they'll kind of project forward
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financially and go he doesn't have all the traits that are that are going to be required to succeed in
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you know modern america yeah if if having money was like a record you know something required to get
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married like i would not have been i got married when i was 22 um and so like i had piles of debt
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um but you know my wife still found me attractive for some reason i'm guessing she saw that my pluck
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that i i might have had yeah and the sad thing is most guys spend so much more time and energy chasing
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the money rather than educating themselves about how to become a more attractive guy
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and that is such a a roundabout an indirect way to achieve your mating goals gotcha let's talk about
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another social uh social proof and one of those just like it's sociability right that you have lots of
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friends why is why is displaying or signaling that you have friends or a large social network attractive
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to women showing that you've got a lot of friends um is a great form of social proof because it shows
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you've got the social intelligence and the emotional intelligence to sustain long-term relationships a lot of
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the same traits and skills that it takes for a guy to keep his male friends around are going to be relevant
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to entertaining and pleasing a girlfriend it doesn't really matter which sex your relationships are
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those those skills transfer also bear in mind that back in prehistory women often transferred from
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their home tribe where they grew up to another tribe where some attractive guy was who they wanted to
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have a relationship with now if there's a lone guy just out in the forest with no friends no clan
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no woman's going to leave a safe home tribe to go out with that solo guy they're going to be you know
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tiger meet pretty soon they're not that's not a sustainable situation a guy's got to be surrounded
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by friends and relatives for a woman to feel um safe at a fundamental level so if you don't have
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that social proof it's really important to get it to get out there try to make friends join clubs
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things like that yeah um meetup groups happen in every city in america um a lot of guys lose touch
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with friends from high school and college they don't need to there's a video skype um and guys
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don't invest the effort in in their friendships they get really lazy about it and that's stupid
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because friends can provide an enormous amount of um vicarious attractiveness they can vouch for you
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they can reveal to a a woman things about you that you wouldn't feel comfortable bragging about
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yourself so they can kind of do a lot of the courtship on your behalf and what i thought was
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interesting throughout this book was yes it's about um you do these things so you can attract
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women but in the process like you're becoming a better person like even if you don't get a date
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right away like your your happiness will probably increase significantly if you just do some of these
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things that you guys lay out in your book yeah i think that's right i mean at one level
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the book is you know framed and sold as dating advice but tucker and i also had a kind of um
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covert mission almost a trojan horse that we just wanted young guys to get their lives in general
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together better and we knew that sex was a huge motivator so if you just start lecturing guys about
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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
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shape then guys will go yeah okay i'll get in shape and then they get all the benefits of that
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and the rest of their social life their careers um we also know being in shape improves your mental
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health and your mood and your happiness level so yeah there's a kind of um hidden agenda that we want
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guys to to create excellence in their lives more generally and because they're so focused on mating
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that's a kind of um uh a path forward that that can tap into that motivation pretty pretty easily
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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
00:29:30.560
of money then you can attract a young attractive woman doesn't matter your looks and then guys just
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
00:42:37.400
mindset that i want to improve my skills rather than i absolutely must have sex with this woman
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
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
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
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