Ugly Girls Don’t Exist

Every once in a while I get e-mails from girls who have clearly resigned themselves to a life of lovelessness because they think they are ugly. This post is for them.

I used to feel sorry for ugly girls. When you're a young guy who still feels completely in awe of beautiful women, it's easy to fall into thinking that the girls who don’t have a visual effect on you are incapable of enjoying the dating world. Female good looks were overwhelming to me at the time, so the girls without them mustn't have been able to get guys – or so my 22-year-old logic went, anyway.

This reasoning sustained some damage when I finally went out with some hot girls. Doing so made me realize that what my mom had been telling me for years was actually true: a girl's looks aren't everything. But this actually wasn't what put an end to my pity. That didn’t happen until I realized that, when you frame the situation correctly, there actually isn’t anyone to pity. Let me explain...

It's common knowledge that physical beauty in women consists mainly of signs of health, youth, and fertility. Wide hips are attractive because they are conducive to childbearing. Long, full, smooth hair is sexy because it shows that a woman has all the nutrients she needs to grow it. Big breasts are attractive because they emphasize a woman’s ability to feed her child. Tight skin and big eyes are attractive because they make a woman look young and therefore more capable of bearing healthy children.

This state of affairs isn’t a coincidence. It exists because, throughout human history, the men who happened to be attracted to signs of health, youth, and fertility were more likely to fuck healthy, young, and fertile women, and they were therefore more likely to pass on their fertility-attracted genetics to future generations. The dudes who happened to be attracted to some other set of traits in females ended up having sex with less-fertile women, and their genetics were never passed on – or at least, they were passed on less and less until they died out completely. Likewise, the infertile women (in other words, the unattractive women) – or the women attracted to impotent men – also failed to reproduce, and their genes were similarly drained from the gene pool.

Most of you have probably heard all of this before. What is interesting here isn’t so much the evolutionary narrative, it’s the corresponding implication: because the weakest and least-attractive genes died out long ago, and the strongest, healthiest, most attractive ones have persisted, the human race is getting perpetually more attractive.

Of course, you don't need the spiel on natural selection to realize this; just look at what we used to look like:

A Neanderthal Woman and Modern Woman
(Image from National Geographic)

Yes, that’s right, I am comparing you to cave women. But it is a legitimate comparison because it makes an important point: if you exist on the earth today, it is only because men, collectively, throughout human history, wanted to fuck you. The ones who didn’t died off millions of years ago, along with all of the “ugly” genes in both sexes. Everyone left is sexy.

It’s like the whole human race has been using Tinder for millions of years, and now we’re living in a world populated only by our matches. Except it’s even better because our matches didn’t just swipe us right because they were bored on the way to work; they actually voted for us by banging our ancestors – there’s no ambiguity about what they wanted. And sure, maybe you like some of your matches more than the others, and maybe some of your matches like others more than you; but there is no getting around the fact that your sexual attractiveness (or potential for it) was a prerequisite for your existence in the gene pool.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you are attractive just the way you are. It may well be that you need to lose some serious weight and learn how to dress well in order to make men realize that they want to bang you. But that is a good thing, because it means that you can lose some serious weight and learn how to dress well and men will realize that they want to bang you.

And of course, there will always be “least hot,” “hotter” and “hottest.” Our minds have evolved to care about that, but the interesting thing is that men’s penises have not. I’ve talked about this with many guy friends many times, and we all agree that, when we are horny, we are willing to fuck about 50 % of women under the age of 60. And this considers even the women who don’t make an effort – imagine how high that number would be if everyone did.

Neither am I saying that every woman has an inherent capability to lock down a top-shelf dude. There are a lot of things other than looks that matter in dating and relationships, and there is a lot more to life than getting sexual attention from men. But what I am saying is that every woman who thinks she’s “just ugly” or somehow “unfuckable” is flat-out wrong. You are on this earth today because you have the ability to give men a boner. End of story.

This is a pretty important point – important enough that I made it in one of my earliest posts a few years ago. I drew the conclusion then that no girl needs to be below a 5 on the 10-point scale. And I stand by that. To borrow from what I said there:

...the time and effort you put into your appearance will produce results. Do not worry if your gut tells you otherwise; your gut is informed by beauty pageants and "100 Hottest Women" lists, and a thousand other influences that both reinforce and reflect the notion that beauty is a matter of winning the genetic gene pool - i.e. a matter of 'haves' vs. 'have-nots.' This notion is bullshit...no girl needs to be less than a five on the ten scale...If you present yourself well and get in great shape, you will be above average. And for those of you that are naturally about average, the sky's your limit.

I realize this message probably doesn’t apply to most of my readers. If you are reading websites like this, you haven’t given up hope. You know or at least suspect that there are things you can do to improve the quality and quantity of attention you get from men. So this message isn’t necessarily for you. But you probably know other girls who have given up. Maybe you have a friend who thinks she’s inherently unattractive or that she’s destined to be single her whole life because men don't want to fuck her.

The next time that conversation comes up with her (or even if it doesn’t), remind her of what I've said here. Remind her that hope should never be lost. Better yet, remind her that hope should never be necessary. You don't need hope when you're a winner in the genetic Olympics; you just need motivation. And a damn good way for her to get motivated is to recognize the truth: that with a little effort, being sexually attractive is well within her reach.


Related Posts
1. Feminine Beauty Is Highly Controllable
2. You Can Control How Attractive You Are
3. Should You Focus on Your Looks or Personality More?

The Economics of Sex

A reader recently posted a link to a video that captures, in extremely clear terms, a phenomenon that has been implicit (and at times, explicit) in everything I write on this blog. It is a video that discusses sexual economics, and more importantly, their implications for dating and relationships. Here it is:

I cannot recommend this video highly enough. Especially for anyone encountering this blog or its ideas for the first time, it gives an important insight into one of the biggest differences between men and women in dating and relationships (I believe bigger ones exist, but this is a great starting point for discovering them). Even regular readers can benefit by watching this video, because it articulates clearly and concisely ideas that are well-worth solidifying in your mind; and hearing them in such clear and concise terms will do exactly that.

With that said, I do want to point out two minor disagreements I have with the video, though I only feel the need to do so because I agree so completely with the rest:

(a) I think the video focuses too much on the pill as the source of the disparity between supply and demand, rather than on certain philosophical undercurrents in Western society, or mans' access to pornography - both of which are at least as responsible (if not more so) for the phenomena the video describes.

(b) It suggests that "affirming desirability" is a sexual motivation for women, but not for men (1:28). This is simply untrue. Yes, men bang women because an orgasm feels better in a vagina than in their hand; but a big part of that "better feeling" is actually pride: it is either the satisfaction of the woman's affirmation, or the affirmation from their guy friends upon sharing the story with them. I do, however, agree with their point that women tend to be motivated by the intimacy of sex more than men; and as I've suggested before, I also think that feeling desired is a greater sexual motivation for women than it is for men.* So I don't think this criticism detracts from the video's larger point that men and women have different motivations for sex.

To give credit where credit is due, the video was made by the Austin Institute for The Study of Family and Culture. I don't know anything more about their organization than what they have written on their "About Us" page, but I also don't care. I am just glad someone made the video.

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* I don't think this is because women are more emotionally needy than men (as one might infer). I am convinced that it is because men are more desirous of carnal sexual pleasure. So as a woman, there is simply more sexual desire to be received.


Related Posts
1. The Analogy Between Sex and Commitment
2. Women Get to Play Out of Their League
3. Men and Sexual Variety
4. 5 Ways Men Misunderstand Women

Stop Having Sex to Prove He Likes You

I've dated several women who knew that I'd lost interest in a relationship with them long before we stopped having sex. In fact, a couple of times they knew it even before I realized it myself. In retrospect, I see that these girls continued having sex with me for one reason and one reason only: to continue feeling my sexual desire.

Some girls might have done this because they mistakenly believed that male sexual desire is something important or hard to come by; but the girls I am referring to were mostly old enough or smart enough to know better. They wanted to experience my sexual desire because they needed the minimal affirmation it offered in order to feel good about themselves - or at least, in order to avoid feeling bad about themselves after realizing that the end was in sight.

I would call this situation pitiable, but ultimately pity is a wasted emotion, because it doesn't give enough credit to the agency of its object. So if you are still sleeping with a man who isn't as serious about you as you want him to be, I am not going to pity you, and I am not going to blame him. You and only you have the ability to change the situation.

You will only change the situation by demanding more in your relationships, and you will only demand more in your relationships if you believe that you deserve more in your relationships. And by a convenient loophole in human psychology, you will actually start believing that you deserve more in your relationships if you start acting like you deserve more in your relationships. So suck up the rejection and walk away.


Related Posts
1. Self-Improvement Takes Time
2. You Are Responsible for Your Own Romantic Happiness
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The Analogy Between Sexual and Emotional Support

Note: I've removed this post, for reasons that are philosophically similar to those described on the placeholder for the removed posts Never Say No to Sex. 

In general I don't think the analogy between sexual and emotional support is a perfect one. While there is an element of truth to the comparison, the focus on it masks the more important fact, which is that if you are in a relationship which you feel routinely reluctant to give yourself to your husband or boyfriend sexually, the solution is much more complicated - and much more effective - than both of you simply enduring perpetual misery for the other's sake (hint: it has a lot to do with you both coming to terms with yourselves).

This post allowed the reader to wander too far along a path of reasoning that led to the conclusion that real happiness in relationships is a sum-zero game. In fact, this is only true in troubled relationships. If you both reach a point of self-satisfaction in your personal lives and live vulnerably, the opposite is true.

The original text of the post (annotated) is here: The Analogy Between Sexual and Emotional Support

Related Posts
1. Never Say No To Sex
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Men and Sexual Variety

I recently met up with a friend for a couple drinks at a local bar. Part of our conversation went something like this:

Me: Good to see you again man, you haven't been out in forever.

Friend: I know, my girlfriend is away for the next couple weeks, and I was getting bored of being home alone.

Me: Oh yeah, how are things going with her?

Friend: It's good man, I just don't know... it's been a year and I'm starting to get kinda itchy.

Me: Yikes, you should probably go get that checked out.

Friend: HA! No, no, not itchy as in herpes, itchy as in restless. My eyes keep wandering. I keep wondering if I should end it and look for someone else.

Me: Oh OK, gotcha... but wait, really? From what Greg [his roommate, a mutual friend of ours] tells me, she treats you like a king.

Friend: Dude, no, it's true - she is awesome. She does everything I can possibly want. She never says no to sex, she cleans my apartment, she cooks food for me, she is fun to be around - everything.

Me: Sounds like a keeper. So what's the problem?

Friend: I want to fuck other girls.

Me: Ha! of course you do, you are a man; you're always going to feel like that.

Friend: Arghh, man, I KNOW. But it is really bothering me. I mean, she does everything I want. She wakes up before me in the morning to cook me breakfast, she cleans my room for me - she even cleans Greg's room sometimes. I tell her to give me a blowjob, she gives me an amazing blowjob. I tell her I am going to put it in her butt, she just asks me to use extra lube. She picked me up from the airport recently wearing a thong and an overcoat, then we fucked the second we walked in the house.

Me: Damn, that is awesome... I've never really had a girl like that.

Friend: I know man, but even with all of that, I still want to fuck other girls. Like, I would even fuck a girl less hot than her, just for the variety.

Me: Yeah... I know exactly what you mean, sometimes you just want something new. Even a smoking hot girl gets old after... well, not even after very long, you know?

Friend: Yeah man, seriously! You always have those illusions of 'the perfect girl'  - the one who you'd always be happy with and attracted to, but the fact is that the illusions wouldn't last; eventually you'd get used to her too.

Me: It's that animal instinct, man. When the hunt is over the thought of a new body starts to creep into the back of your mind - a new body with new curves, new hair and new lips... we are wired to feel that way. If men didn't want to fuck as much as we do, humans wouldn't have evolved anywhere near as quickly as we have. It's just our genetics trying to propagate the species.

Friend: Exactly. Gotta spread that seed! Hahaha, I'm just thinking about doing what mother nature wants me to do. All natural, baby.

Me: Hahah yeah but I mean, the thing is, cheating on your girl isn't going to fix the problem, it is just going to postpone it. You'd get a new girl and start to feel the same restlessness with her too.

Friend: Yeah man. I guess you are right, it just kinda sucks.

Me: Well, yeah it sucks, and at this point in my life I avoid that problem mostly by avoiding relationships in general. But I like to think that there is a girl out there that I'll like enough that I will be willing to suppress those instincts for - at least enough to get over that initial difficulty. I haven't found her yet, but it's conceivable someone like that exists. I think you just need to decide if your girl now is "that girl" for you.

Friend: Yeah maybe that's true. We'll see what happens.
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I am sure some women would try to attribute my friends' restlessness to his girlfriend being too easy or boring - and there might even be some truth to either or both of those suggestions. However, the fact remains that men will always want to have sex with multiple women. Most men successfully hide this from their wives or girlfriends (out of respect for them), and a good number of men will never act on those impulses, either because they don't know how to, are afraid of what will happen if they do, or because they realize that their sexual impulses are never going to go away, so they learn to live with and control them. But all of us feel that drive.

Related Posts
1. The Male Sex Drive Always Recharges
2. Don't Let Pornography Become Your Substitute
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4. The Female's Internal Conflict

The Male Sex Drive Always Recharges

The male sex drive is 100% rechargeable. No matter how man times he fucks, or fucks the same girl, or masturbates, a man cannot deplete his capacity for sexual arousal, at least in the short term. While a man can, through excessive sexual activity or boredom, increase the amount of time required for his arousal to peak again after being satisfied, it will always return to its previous levels. For example, a full day of constant sex will wear most men out, and it might be another day before they want to fuck again. Might. But this kind of delay is not permanent. Before long a guy will be hornier than ever. And while a man might grow tired or accustomed to his spouse, he can only go so long before he wants to fuck her again. In many ways, sexual appetite is like hunger for food and drink: it can be stayed but not destroyed, and it always eventually comes back, regardless of how many times it is satiated. Imagine sex like a food that you initially love but overindulge and eventually tire of. It is true that you will be less inclined to eat it, but before long hunger will make you want to eat anything, and its attractiveness will supersede your desire for novelty.

Even in the long term, I am skeptical that the male sex drive wanes much (and if does, it is age- or health-related, not a product of over-activity). I have met too many horny old men to believe that after middle age, a man's desire to impregnate females is diminished in any significant way. I am almost entirely sure that this idea was conjured up because the thought of grandpa eye-fucking his granddaughter's friends was too unsettling to be stomached by the general public.

A man can significantly reduce his sex drive by abstaining from sexual activity for about three weeks. I know this because I have done the infamous "thirty-day challenge" twice now, and have experienced it first hand. There is also a good deal of empirical evidence that suggests twenty-one days as the time it takes for the human brain to adjust to just about any routine (i.e. to make or break a habit). Much like the appetite for food in a person who fasts for a long time, a man's sexual appetite will shift into starvation mode after being continually denied. Although his initial desire for an orgasm will not fade much, he will be abnormally disinterested in sex once it is satisfied the first time after the three-week abstinence. This reduced libido will last until he slowly gets back into the swing of things by having orgasms more and more frequently. But even in an extreme case like this, the rebound does eventually occur, and before too long the man in question will be back wanting to fuck everything and anything.

So if your husband or long-term boyfriend gradually stops wanting to have sex with you, it does not mean he isn't horny any more or that his sex drive is starting to diminish; it means he is getting off in some other manner. Probably he is just masturbating to pornography, but the amount of self-discipline it would take for him to abstain from sexual pleasure altogether is just too great for it to be even a remote possibility without some hugely powerful force motivating him - like pride, intense shame or extreme religious conviction.
 
The plus side, which is the point I want to make here, is that all you need to do to keep your man sexually interested in you is to remain his one and only outlet for sexual activity; the sheer power of his sex drive and its persistent regenerative qualities will make him always want to fuck you, even if (eventually) the frequently slows slightly. How you remain his "sole source" is the topic for another post. Right now I just want to make the point that as long as you hold that role, you do not need to worry about his sex drive slowly tapering off any more than you need to worry about his hunger for food gradually disappearing. These things simply do not happen.

Don't Let Pornography Become Your Substitute

The use of pornography is the most addictive habit most men will ever encounter. Every man masturbates frequently when he isn't getting laid, and many do even when they are. Virtually every man uses pornography to enhance this experience - which it does, significantly. Masturbating with and without pornography is like eating steak with and without salt, or partying with and without alcohol. It makes a big difference. Porn adds enough to the experience of masturbation that it frequently can make or break a man's decision to engage in the act. A lot of people won't go out to bars or nightclubs unless they can drink, and it isn't a stretch to extend the analogy to masturbation and pornography.

While I am not completely convinced that pornography affects a man's ability to get aroused for real sex (though I suspect this is true), it has potential to do something far worse: pornography can become a substitute for real sex. Especially as video quality and accessibility continue to increase, pornography is enhancing the experience of masturbation more and more, making it increasingly possible that a man will retreat to a world of pornography-aided auto-eroticism and cease fucking his wife or girlfriend entirely. I know of at least one instance of this happening and leading to divorce. I have seen signs of it elsewhere, and given the power of the male sex drive, it makes intuitive sense. Of course, no man desires this situation; but faced with a boring sex life, or a partner that has let herself go, or some other "push" factor, a man is increasingly prone to resign himself to a life of jerking off to an endless stream of high-definition internet whores.

While the higher quality of pornography contributes to this phenomenon, it is the accessibility and safety that makes it so prevalent, and dangerous to relationships. Pornography doesn't qualify as cheating (by most definitions of the term), so it is easily justified or excused in most men's minds. More importantly, it can be accessed anonymously, used almost instantly, and covered up completely with a few clicks of the mouse. And now with high-definition video on phones, it is also portable. The sheer volume and variety of free internet pornography is so large that even the horniest man with all the time in the world would have difficulty exhausting the supply. And anyway, by the time this happens (we are talking years or decades, if it happens at all), there is likely to be some new form of pornography or auto-eroticism available to serve as an outlet for his sexual energy.

In a sense, the high availability of pornography could be painted in a good light, since it probably reduces the number of men hiring prostitutes or having affairs. After all, why take that kind of chance when you can just go on the internet for something almost as good and a hell of a lot less risky? But whether your man is knocking one out to a video on his phone in the bathroom at work, or fucking your son's 3rd grade teacher, he still isn't getting it at home anymore, so what can be done?

The obvious ways of preventing this situation are important and should be used: stay in shape for your man, surprise him with new moves in bed, communicate in the relationship, etc. But all of these take huge efforts if the predisposing conditions do not exist. A woman will not try new moves in bed, for example, if she is not comfortable with them. With this in mind, I think the largest efforts towards avoiding or diminishing the effects of pornography need to be made before or at the earliest stages of a relationship:

1. Choose a man with whom you are sexually compatible. This does not just mean a man that you bend over for and let do whatever he wants to you - unless that is what you enjoy. Choose a guy that you feel comfortable with in bed. You shouldn't feel awkward doing the things he asks after the first couple times you try them.
2. Choose a man that acknowledges the effects of pornography. Some people will find this topic awkward to discuss, but the earlier in a relationship you bring it up, the easier it will be. The conversation can be no more than a few casual comments, but a girl should make sure she has a clear picture of her partner's opinion on the matter, and his opinion should be that porn is bad for a sexual relationship. Because it is, at least in excess, and any honest guy knows this.
3. Choose a man that takes concrete actions to improve himself. A guy that works out regularly, or manages a strict diet, or makes efforts to read difficult books, etc. will be far more likely to break or resist developing a pornography habit.
4. Make sure you and your partner are having pig sex, at least occasionally. Pig sex is unemotional fucking: dirty, sweaty, pleasure-only sex. It is a sign of a healthy sex life, and a healthy attitude towards sex in general. It should happen naturally if you get number one on this list right. If sex is too contingent on an emotional connection, you won't be able to have it, or at least enjoy it, after the initial "magic" dies, which happens in every relationship not conjured up by Hollywood.

The good news is that no self-respecting man will allow his sex life to go down without a fight. Jerking off is lame; all men know this and will be eager to participate in efforts to prevent it becoming necessary.