An issue that will affect all men who ever marry is that your chances of marrying someone who turns out to have a toxic personality is quite high. If you doubt my claim that the majority of guys will get screwed, then look up divorce statistics and take into considerations that surely a non-trivial number of men who are married are unhappily married. The divorce rate is around 50%. To that, add whatever X you assume unhappily married men amount to, and you are at your (50 + X) %, which are, obviously, a majority.

My perception is that a lot of men are pragmatists. Let’s go through this briefly and talk about clothes, shelter, and work: why are many men not particularly concerned about fashion? The reason is simple: they view clothes as something that has to fulfill a practical purpose, namely keeping you warm (or not too warm, if you live closer to the equator). You do not wear clothes to compete with other fashion-conscious men. Heck, even if you are in a field in which you have to wear a suit to work, you probably have half a dozen at home and 20 dress shirts or so, and you cycle through them. However, you are not going to replace half your wardrobe every year as so many women do it. Also, you do not go shopping out of habit, but you buy clothes when you need them.

You may be surprised that the demand for luxury apartments largely comes from women. Of course, those tend to live well beyond their means, on average. As a guy, you can be perfectly fine with a studio apartment that ticks a few of your boxes. You spend most of your time at work or sleeping anyway, and the few waking hours at your place does not justify turning your place into your dream home. Most likely, you do not even have a conception of a dream home. Yet, that is not how women view this issue. In fact, I was surprised that even my otherwise rather rational girlfriend once stated her view that when you move into an apartment, you first “have to” spend a few ten thousand bucks on interior design work. To her, that was basically an axiom of adult life. In my opinion, she was just parroting what she heard from her friends and her mom. I probably made fun of her friends who make piss-poor fiscal decisions a few times too often because her current view just so happens to be my view on that matter.

Most men are also aware that there are no dream jobs. Instead, a job is a means to an end, i.e. paying your bills. You look at the total package: duties, work culture, growth potential, the location of the office, how much SJW bullshit you would have to endure, and so on. In the end, you take a job that is fine overall. If you kept looking for your dream job, chances are that you would never find it. Thus, you look at the pros and cons of the jobs you get offered and pick the one that looks the most appealing.

By exploring male approaches to covering some the basic necessities of life, the similarities become clear: a pragmatic approach means that you look at the good and the bad, and if you have a choice to make, you look at what you can realistically get. The same is true in dating. As a study by OK Cupid has shown, and which you nowadays have to look up on the Internet Archive because it is no longer seen acceptable to state facts that contradict egalitarian dogmas, women consider 80% of men to be below-average looking. Men, on the other hand, when assigning beauty ratings to female dating profiles, produce a more uniform distribution, meaning that there are very few truly ugly or truly beautiful women, and that the largest number of women centers around the average.

Men tend to have a realistic outlook on life. They do not worry too much about the negatives, if there are enough positives. Thus, if Joe wants to get married and he can only get a Seven with a poor attitude but who cooks a great steak every once in a while, he may be quite happy. After all, his apartment does not have much sun, but it’s a nice place overall which he is happy with. Nothing is ever perfect, so why should his wife be? That kind of reasoning would be perfectly valid if women would not change. Heck, it’s not as if they necessarily change so much. Instead, the mask just comes off at one point. Also, your idealization of her will change, which makes her realize her imperfections. At one point, you wake up in shock and wonder where your confirmation bias went, which made you overlook your partner’s egregious flaws.

A big problem is that men are way too naive when it comes to picking a woman as a long-term partner. A more critical assessment of marriage-age women would be that well over 80% are not marriage worthy. Period. It’s quite simple to get the numbers down: Does she have an IQ of at least around 100? Half of women don’t, so we throw out a good 50% of the population already. Does she have a positive net worth, and even if it is just a few thousand bucks? If not, tell her to move over because your side chick needs to get boned now. Is she overweight? If so, how the hell did you ever get involved with her? Let her jog back to her place and never meet her again! Any tattoos? Thanks for playing. Have a nice day. What’s her number of sexual partners? If it’s not well-below 10, get tested for STDs and kick her out because promiscuous women do not make good wives, according to science.

The number of women who is suitable for long-term relationships is shockingly low. Yet, if you happen to like a woman, you may not fully realize how flawed she is. What is worse, you may believe that her flaws will not get any worse, or that you can handle her. However, it does not matter how “alpha” you are, she will still make your life hell, and that is before we talk about the financial fallout of separation and divorce.

The bottom line is that even if your perception of yourself is that you are a rational person, you may fall victim to cognitive biases. The confirmation bias is a big one. If you think that your girlfriend is great and would make an excellent wife, you are likely to make excuses for her eccentric behavior, or whatever other flaws she might have. You may just shrug them off, telling yourself that they are not a big deal. Once you see clearly again, though, those flaws will become more readily apparent. On top, it is likely that the good behavior she displayed before tying you down will gradually get worse. That is a left-right combo you may take some time to recover from.

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