The Female's Internal Conflict

It is built into our very nature as human beings to have to endure the conflict imposed by the combination of our biology and rationality, our bodies and our minds. For reasons that are beyond our abilities to completely understand, our minds work in such a way that we are driven by pride, while our bodies operate according to their inclinations to reproduce and (presumably) perpetuate the species. These two drives often push us towards opposite goals, resulting in a conflict that is reflected - perhaps at its strongest - in the dating world.

As a woman, your pride wants a man who values you above all other women, one who would do anything for you out of an overwhelming compulsion of feeling. You (like every person) need to know you are valuable and important, which is largely evidenced by feeling wanted.

Your biology, on the other hand, aches for a man who is strong and powerful, unfettered by his feelings, who can protect you and impregnate you with healthy children - children who in turn will survive and reproduce successfully.

But the fact is that men also have biologies that drive them, almost uncontrollably. They desire the most beautiful and healthiest women - those most capable of bearing their children. This means that the men who best fulfill the needs of your pride are those who are farthest below your league, and therefore want you most. But at the same time, almost by definition, the men who best fulfill the needs of your biology are those who are farthest above your league, and therefore want you least.

The reality is that - eventually, after all efforts at self-improvement - you have to choose a man who represents a balance between those two extremes. If you want a man who values you immeasurably, he isn't going to be the heroic hunk you desire sexually. If you want a man who can provide you with perfect babies, he isn't going to want you above all other women - because he probably can have all other women (at least all those at "your level").

Two factors mitigate the apparently unfortunate nature of this situation:

1. Men are faced with a similar conflict, and they too have to compromise, meaning that the object of your biological desires has fewer women to choose from if he wants a girl that also loves him as a person. Perhaps more important than the needs of his pride is the fact that he cannot have a woman that doesn't want him. Your best possible partner will be one who recognizes this, values your love for him, and is willing to curb his desire for other women because of it. Still, the fewer options he has to forego, the easier (and more likely) this commitment will be for him to make and maintain.
2. All men and women have different tastes when it comes to the opposite sex, so a single woman sits very differently on various men's scales. This is why I've placed "your level" in quotation marks above; is relative to each man's personal taste.

Admonitions not to "settle" are actually admonitions against settling too much - against choosing a man that doesn't fulfill one of these two needs sufficiently. In reality, we all settle in the sense that we settle for a man or woman that fulfills both of these needs, but fulfills them both only partially. No single person can fulfill both completely because the two sets of character traits that do so are (with the above caveats) mutually exclusive.

Self-Improvement Takes Time

I've been getting a lot of e-mails from girls asking for urgent advice about how to act around a particular guy, or how to interpret his behavior. Others express concern about the difficulty inherent in striking a balance between extremes (for example, between "hard to get" and needy, or prudish and slutty). And while I do usually have suggestions relevant to the specific situation, more often than not these kinds of questions are an indication that the girl is missing the big picture - that she is splitting hairs, and placing too much importance on one particular thing, when the truth is that no single thing matters completely.

If you find yourself worried about the wording of a particular text, or fretting over which earrings to wear, or generally wondering how you should behave towards a particular guy in a particular situation, take a big step back and realize two things:

1. If he is really into you, you will have to make significant mistakes to make him change his mind. While there are always ways to make him like you more, your baseline should be to simply continue doing what you are doing and making gradual improvements. By "significant mistakes" I mean things like revealing that you are actually addicted to coke or gaining 30 pounds.

2. If he isn't that into you, no single small change you make is really going to attract him. A new set of clothes or "hard to get" attitude will not make the difference. You will need to revolutionize yourself to really hook him, and it is impossible to do this overnight. Instead, admit that he is a lost cause, and spend the energy that you would have spent on him on improving your appearance and personality. Then, by the next time a guy of that caliber comes along, hopefully you will have improved enough to make him stick around.

I am not saying that little things don't matter - they do; collectively, they matter a lot. But no single one will make or break a guy's attraction to you, and improvements to each one take time to implement and become natural to you. You need to be patient. But if you continue to make a steady effort, there is no question that the quality of guys you attract will improve.

The Upper Hand In Relationships

In a previous post, I made the point that before getting married, women usually get to have sex and relationships with guys that are "out of their league." This is due to the fact that men are more motivated by sexual desire and therefore lower their standards, at least until they decide to settle down.

Men have to work to improve the quality of the woman they can attract, while women need to work to maintain the quality of the man they can attract. Men are constantly trying to attract the best of the opposite sex, while women are constantly trying to stay with the best of the opposite sex. For a man, this means improving his character and appearance so that he is as attractive as possible to the women that wouldn't consider him otherwise. For women, this means improving her appearance and character so that she is as attractive as possible to the men who already want to sleep with her, but as of yet do not consider her for a relationship or marriage.

So while women usually date men that are better than the one they will end up with, men usually date women that are not as good as the one they will end up with. By "good" and "better" I am referring to the overall value of the person, which is a combination of many factors (good looks, personality, physical strength, fame, money, humor, intelligence, etc.). This rule is not absolute and is manifested in various degrees, but on the whole it is true. And more to the point here, it is the reason why women often feel that men have "the upper hand" in relationships. That feeling doesn't exist because men are dominant over women or have some kind of real advantage; it is just because men are strongly motivated by sex, and therefore get into relationships with girls they don't really care about - or at least, they get into relationships with girls who care more about them than they do about the girls, even if only by a small amount. In other words, men only have the upper hand because they have this tendency to play below their league.

"The upper hand" is usually touted as an advantage that men have over women, and in one sense this is accurate. Because men care less, they can afford to be more cavalier, knowing that the girl is more invested in the relationship and therefore more willing to tolerate behavior from him that she dislikes. But while the advantage is real in this respect, there are two important things women should know about it.

1. The man's "advantage" is one over which a woman has direct control. By not initiating, or giving it up easily, a woman can filter out the men that just want sex, and avoid investing too much emotional energy in dead-end relationships. This energy can instead be spent improving herself, and therefore her "league" or dating options. In fact, by the very act of acknowledging her own (current) limitations and not wishfully giving in to a man just because he is hot or rich or famous, a girl instantly and significantly increases her attractiveness. I've met a number of girls that I can tell would like to date me, but are also smart and confident enough to recognize and admit to themselves that I am not (currently) interested in dating them. These girls do not play into my attempts to have sex with them. I have a lot of respect for these girls, and respect matters when it comes time to choose a girl to get serious with.

2. The man's "advantage" isn't as great as it seems. A man's hyper-sexual mindset is not without its faults, but a couple of those faults are perhaps less obvious than the others. The first is that, while the desire for sex leads to the upper hand in relationships, and while the upper hand does bring with it a certain power, this power only exists because the man is playing below his league. A decent analogy is an 17-year-old acing the 5th grade. Sure, he gets straight A's and can dominate the little 10-year-olds in gym class, but his successes are hollow because he always knows he should be in the 12th grade. His victories serve more as a reminder that he is not reaching his potential than as a reflection of his true abilities. In other words, the upper hand - the man's supposed advantage - is necessarily accompanied by a state of perpetual dissatisfaction and a reminder of his underachievement in what is (for most men) the most important arena of his life. You can be sure he is both aware and unhappy about this, just as much as the woman is aware and unhappy of the fact that she has "the lower hand." It is a bad situation for both parties. The second negative aspect of the phenomenon is that getting a girl in your own league is a hell of a lot harder for a guy than you would think, because all of the girls in his league are busy fucking the men in the league above them, or yielding the upper hand in relationships to them.

As I said at the beginning, these are generalizations. There are obviously instances of women having the upper hand in relationships, and in these cases, since the roles are reversed, so are the effects. And as I also mentioned at the start, the phenomenon occurs in various degrees. In these cases, the effects described above occur in proportion to the discrepancy between the value or "league" of the man and woman.

(SWFJREPS9YNK)

Women Get to Play Out of Their League

You won’t find many girls that have had sexual partners uglier than themselves, but you’ll find an endless list of guys that have – in fact, there is a contingent of men that have sex with girls less attractive than themselves almost as a rule. Because men can have sex without worrying about pregnancy, social stigma, rape, less about STDs, etc., they attempt to have sex more often. This is so obvious that it might not be worth stating, but ultimately, it means there is a deficit of women for promiscuous sexual relationships. The relatively high demand for females means that women have more and better sexual options.

Men will usually sleep with women that are between 1 and 3 points lower than themselves on a 10-point scale, which means that women are usually sleeping with men that are 1 to 3 points higher than themselves. Men may get laid more often, or at least, have sex with a larger number of partners; but women get to sleep with men of higher quality, in other words, men that are "out of their league."

I often wonder how much this affects girls’ self-perception. Do women know this, and high-five each other after sleeping with guys far more attractive than themselves, realizing all the while that they will someday end up marrying a guy that is much less attractive than what they've experienced until he came along? Or are they unaware of the above-described phenomenon, and conclude that their sexual exploits accurately reflect their options for a spouse, only to be disappointed later in life?