Why “Quality” Does Not Equal Happiness In Relationships
What I’m about to describe is the largest source of confusion among both men and women when it comes to selecting a long-term partner.
In a nutshell, the problem is people focus on the “quality” aspects of a person rather than happiness and harmony within the relationship. I shall explain.
Two Girls
Let’s hypothetically say you have two women, Girl A and Girl B. Both girls are of equal age and equal physical and sexual attractiveness to you. You personally consider both girls a 9 in looks, and it’s a complete toss-up as to which one is better looking. They’re identically hot.
Where they differ are in the non-physical aspects.
Girl A is extremely intelligent with a high I.Q. She is college educated, articulate, classy, and worldly. She has a high-paying, cerebral job, such as a nurse or accountant.
Girl B is, while not dumb, is about average in intelligence. She got decent grades in school but never went to college (or perhaps went for a while but didn’t finish). She can carry on a decent conversation but she cannot get into the deep topics that Girl A can, and isn’t nearly as knowledgeable about as many things. Girl B has a low-paying, labor-based job, such as a waitress or a nanny.
Those are the aspects of these two women. Now let’s talk about their behavioral manifestations. Again, I’m just being hypothetical here. I’m not making any generalizations about real people. Yet.
Girl A, because she’s smarter, more educated, more experienced, and more knowledgeable about life, is stronger, pickier, and more demanding than Girl B. She’s also much easier to upset and much more easily frustrated than Girl B. In a relationship, she has more rules and standards she will expect you, her husband or boyfriend, to follow. Because of this, she tends to be bitchier more often than Girl B. I’m not saying Girl A is a bitch, because she isn’t. I’m just saying she’s clearly bitchier than Girl B.
Girl B doesn’t have any of this overhead. While she’s still a woman and can still get bitchy and dramatic at times, she is much more flexible and easy-going than Girl A. Girl B really doesn’t care what you do with your life as long as you’re happy when you’re around her. She doesn’t issue demands or have the sometimes impossibly high standards of male behavior that Girl A has. This makes Girl B more relaxed and happy most of the time as compared to Girl A.
Now here’s the question:
If you knew everything above regarding both women, all the good and the bad, which of those two would you choose to make your serious girlfriend, OLTR, or wife, if those women were your only two options?
At least 85% of men out there, perhaps even 90%, especially those men under age 40, would instantly choose Girl A. They wouldn’t even have to think about it. A smart, classy, successful girl over a “dumb” girl? (Again, Girl B is not dumb, but that’s what these men would call her.) It’s no contest. Girl A wins by a landslide. (Traditional relationship advice would also strongly recommend Girl A over Girl B.)
I am the opposite. I would pick Girl B. Happily so.
But I wasn’t always like that…
The Objections
Before I continue, I have to pause and address the objections that I know people will have when they read the preceding paragraphs.
The knee-jerk reaction to what I just said, especially if a woman is reading this article, would be the Societal Programming response of: “Well, that’s because this Blackdragon guy is clearly an immature, shallow man who can’t handle a more intelligent, classy woman. He’s such an asshole that he can only be happy with a dumb, submissive girl.” If you’ve already read my stuff, you already know it’s actually the exact opposite. Very intelligent women, especially educated corporate types, hugely turn me on and I enjoy them very much. Not to mention the fact that I regularly date women over age 40 (and am right now).
I will further address that objection in a moment, but I want to get all the other objections out of the way first.
What you might be thinking as a man is: “Well….what I’m going to get someday is a girl like Girl A, but without any of the bitchiness or demands.”
That’s a nice thought, but you’re falling into the same trap women fall into when they spend years, if not decades, looking for the Perfect Man™. You know what I’m talking about. It’s when women spout off crap like “I want a strong, masculine, take-charge man who is powerful and makes a lot of money! But at the same time he’ll respect me as a woman and do exactly what I say and take out the trash whenever I tell him and never sleep around because he’s a ‘gentleman’!”
A man is an Alpha or a beta. He cannot be both. Yet modern-day women waste a huge amount of their youth and middle age looking for the “submissive Alpha”…a man who literally does not exist in nature.
When you as a man start looking around for a “Sweet, drama-free Girl A who lets me do whatever I want”, you start falling into the same trap…seeking a female personality type that does not exist. A woman is either dominant, submissive, or independent, she’s not all three. And whatever she is, you’ll have to accept the negative aspects that come with it.
Granted, I’m sure you could come somewhat close to that, i.e. a Girl A who is not quite as demanding and bitchy as other Girl A’s, but you get my point. If we agree that there is no such thing as a “powerful, successful, masculine Alpha who’s a good little boy and always does what he’s told”, then the female equivalent must also true.
That means that generally speaking, and yes god dammit, I know there are always bizarre rare exceptions to every rule, but generally speaking, a highly intelligent, classy woman is going to be more demanding and bitchy, and generally speaking a nicer, sweeter, happier woman is going to be less intelligent or at least have a less dynamic, interesting personality. That’s just the way this works, folks. You can’t have everything. To think otherwise is Guy-Disney.
To address the third and last objection, one I know I’m going to probably see in the comments: This does not mean that you must date stupid or low-quality women in order to have a harmonious or low-drama relationship. No…I am not saying that at all.
If a woman is actually a complete dumbass, or a drug addict, or self-destructive, or whatever, of course you wouldn’t get serious with her. I harp on guys for getting serious with low-quality women all the friggin’ time. Stay away from women like that, or if you can control yourself emotionally (and many men can’t), keep her as a distant FB-only.
I’m going to repeat that Girl B is not “stupid” or “low quality”. She’s just not as high “quality” (as defined by Societal Programming) as Girl A. I’m also not saying the only choice is between bitchy high quality and nice low quality.
Quality Aspects Over Happiness
Let’s get back to our two girls. Why will most men choose Girl A in a heartbeat, knowing that over the long haul, she’s going to give him more grief than Girl B?
Because of Societal Programming, inexperience, lack of self-awareness, lack of relationship experience (not sexual, seduction, or dating experience, but relationship experience), and a few other reasons, that guy is focusing on her positive qualities rather than his own long-term happiness.
He sees Girl A, sees how smart and successful she is (comparatively speaking), and his analysis is instantly over. Her positive qualities is all he sees.Hell, more than that, he thinks he’s hit the fucking jackpot. She’s hot and smart! The Perfect Woman™!
If he’s a beta, he instantly leaps into oneitis, starts kissing her ass, and makes all kinds of commitments to her.
If he’s an Alpha, he lectures his buddies about how She’s Not Like The Rest™ and how he Knows What He’s Doing™ because he’s Fucked Lots Of Girls™ and how Blackdragon Is An Asshole And Doesn’t Understand™. Then he slowly, ever so slowly, starts transforming into a very different man under the weight of betaization.
In both cases, a few weeks or months down the road these men deal with drama, demands, arguments, and bullshit from their new “quality” Girl A girlfriend, OLTR, or wife. Maybe they put up with it and think that it’s “worth it”. Maybe they don’t and suffer a breakup. Either way, they’ve suffered.
I’m different. I don’t like to suffer. At all. I don’t like to feel negative emotions. At all. Instead, I like to fill my life with nothing but 100% positive emotions. (As much as is possible of course, since you’ll never live a 100% positive life no matter how good you are.)
So when a high “quality” but demanding woman comes along, I might enjoy sex with her under the context of an FB or low-end MLTR, but I don’t get into any super serious relationships with her. I don’t want to deal with her drama or demands down the road. That will disrupt my happiness, and no one is allowed to disrupt my long-term happiness. No one has that right.
You Can Have Both
Of course if you live the Alpha 2.0 lifestyle that this blog is all about, it’s never a choice between Girl A or Girl B. You can have both. And I often do.
What I’ll do is date Girl A and Girl B at the same time as either an MLTR or FB (my choice, depending on the woman). Over time, one or both of them will float away, and then come back. I’ve described this before. I get the benefit of both. Occasionally, I will come across a Girl A who is not quite as demanding, or a Girl B who is a little smarter, and she’ll be upgraded to serious MLTR or OLTR candidate.
What I never do is make all kinds of commitments to a woman just because she’s super smart, educated, successful, or whatever. Likely she’ll be a Girl A, and most Girl A’s will not make an Alpha Male very happy in the long-term (short-term yes, long-term no).
When You Finally Choose
Over the long-term, it usually inevitable, especially as you age, that you’ll have to pick one special girl, even if it’s in a nonmonogamous / open relationship or marriage. Then indeed you’ll have to make a choice between a woman who’s more like Girl A or one who’s more like Girl B.
Again, you cannot have perfection. You cannot have sweet, ever-happy, submissive Girl A. Not possible. Stop with the Guy-Disney! You’re going to have to choose between a little bitchier and more demanding, or a little nicer and flexible, knowing the negative downsides of either choice.
When in the mode for looking for a serious, long-term woman like an OLTR (which by the way, I am right now), I will typically lean in the direction of a Girl B. My long-term happiness is far more important than a list of positive qualities a woman could have.
When I was younger (in my early twenties), less experienced, and more needy, I was the exact opposite. I was constantly looking for and screening women for a Girl A. I wanted a “smart, quality” girl. If she was a little bitchy or demanding or “strong”, hey, that’s cool. That means she’s smart. If she screamed at me later, eh, who cares? We’ll deal with that later. Plus, she’ll never do that. She’s Not Like The Rest™.
Sound familiar?
Aaaaannnnndd of course I suffered all the usual drama and relationship problems in my early 20s that all other men suffer…those who choose a list of positive qualities over their own long-term happiness, while conveniently ignoring or downplaying a woman’s negatives.
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Guys would choose Girl A because that gives him a better chance for him to have Kids with better quality – than by choosing Girl B.
That’s not societal programming.
You would choose Girl B cause you have had kids.
That again is not societal programming.
Girl B – not even close.
For a hot girl a higher education is in fact a DRAWBACK.
A good, high-paying job is also a DRAWBACK not an advantage as it would be for a man.
If she is hot AND has a 100K/y job AND a PHD what will she expect from her partner?
A blue collar job with 30K/y and high-shool?
Right, that wont do.
Her pool of potential candidates is rather small, not to say tiny. If due to her education and career she is now past 35 and no longer THAT hot…
On the other hand if she didnt spend her prime years in education and work she may go for a hubby and kids much sooner in her life.
She may also more likely be willing to become a SAHM and devote all her time and energy to the family (thats a good thing, dont let the goverment and media blind you – both parents working is only optimizing the tax revenue, not that family happyness!).
That plumber with his own company who makes a decent living may just be perfect for her. As would the PDH prof, or the stock broker – she can choose from a very large pool of men.
For a hot young woman this is what i consider the smart move.
From men’s point of view it is also the better choice. Saves you a lot of trouble.
Good stuff BD. BTW, lately I’m reading your old archives, really enjoying it. Saving up to buy one of your books.
Maybe it was mentioned and I missed it, but some guys want Girl A for social reasons; she’d be an asset to his career ambitions; impress everyone at career/social gatherings, help him get promoted, etc. Ick.
We are trained to give higher education more respect than it deserves (IMO). I see lots of degrees earned by jumping through hoops, memorizing & regurgitating, ‘received wisdom’, etc.
But so many ‘degreed’ individuals have no independent thinking/comprehension, no autonomous perceptions, no originality, etc. [This syndrome is prevalent in martial arts “experts” too.]
So my experience is that someone with a masters or PhD expects others to be automatically more impressed than I am by their achievement. This discrepancy in how highly they & I rate their status can create a problem between us. Smug mediocrities who over-rate themselves (encouraged to do so by superficial external reinforcement) resent it when you are not as impressed with them as they are with themselves. Faking it to accommodate their inflated ego makes me feel ill.
Increasingly I notice women mistakenly expecting men to be attracted by traits which women find attractive in men, such as her degrees, high status career, exotic travels, etc. Um … no.
I’m so thankful that great blogs like this one have opened my eyes to be more perceptive about women and how men can deal with them.
“A man is an Alpha or a beta. He cannot be both. Yet modern-day women waste a huge amount of their youth and middle age looking for the “submissive Alpha”… a man who literally does not exist in nature.”
This is so true and I’ve seen it many times with the women in my social circle. I’ve tried to tell them that their good-looking, successful ‘Prince Charming’ type does not exist as the types of guys they go after will never commit/submit to them. By the time they realise they are often in their early 30’s having squandered their youth on cock-carouseling. Of course they suddenly find me very attractive but I am no longer sexually interested in them. What a waste 🙁
If a man’s goal was to be unhappy or divorced with slightly smarter children, then okay.
Is that extra 15 IQ points in your kids worth all the unhappiness for you? Or them?
Agree. True for many men.
Haha! I’ve experienced the same.
Spot fucking on BD. The higher she is in achievement the more she will be demanding and inflexible. My wife makes a lot of money, which is great and all. But it took me years to train her how to be submissive. She now likes the contrast between submissive at home and achiever at work. I share my experience not to refute what you have laid out. Rather I am stating that you can train a woman if you are persistent and willing. I certainly do enjoy the money my wife brings in and wouldn’t trade it away.
Everything in life is a tradeoff. I could find happiness with hundreds of thousands of different women. There is no perfect one. There are only degrees of compatibility. Further,Relationships are only what you make of them. No woman ever is going to be the “perfect” woman. It is up to you to train those around you to treat you the way you want to be treated. This goes for your men friends as well as the women in your life. Demand respect and you will get it. Demand low drama and you will get it. Let others treat you like shit and they will.
I don’t quite see how you map dominant / submissive / independent to Girl A / Girl B. Can’t a girl who’s “smarter, more educated, more experienced, and more knowledgeable about life” be submissive or independent?
What I ascertained is that BD is commenting on behavioral qualities “generally speaking”. He acknowledged that, “yes god dammit, [he] know[s] there are always bizarre rare exceptions to every rule, but generally speaking, a highly intelligent, classy woman is going to be more demanding and bitchy, and generally speaking a nicer, sweeter, happier woman is going to be less intelligent or at least have a less dynamic, interesting personality.”
Being familiar with my gender, I do agree (generally speaking).
A good read- thank you.
While I suppose anything is statistically possible, Girl A is very, very unlikely to be a Submissive. The overwhelming majority will be Dominants.
She could be an Independent, yes. Even given that, there are downsides, as I described in the Three Types of Women article. (For example, Independents are not as loyal as Submissives, tend to be more masculine, etc.) The point there is there are serious negatives with any choice.
High intelligence isn’t invariably a problem in my experience, even if it doesn’t correlate terribly well with femininity. But ambition and success are hopeless. Forget it. FB at most.
Intelligence and ambition aren’t the same trait. I know too many exceptions — both ways. In fact many (very much not all!) of the most ambitious people I’ve known were bores, unimaginative second-standard-deviation types.
Obvious guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are profoundly smart, don’t misread me. But ambition and moderate intelligence can carry dull people pretty far in the corporate world.
Ned: Very, very good point; the difference between intelligence and ambition. You may have slightly changed my mind on this.
BD,
Thanks. Overall, of course, I think we’re both placing fairly similar bets…
I knew where this post was leading as soon as I started reading it, and I immediately said “Girl B! I’ll take Girl B.” Absolutely. A sweet, pleasant disposition instantly trumps smart/hot/sexy/temperamental any time.
And here’s the answer to the “smart, attractive woman is an asset to my social/career goals” – baloney! If your gal is charming and pleasant and sociable, she’s going to reflect well on you in a social setting AND nobody’s gonna give a shit about whether she has a PhD. Field tested.
For years and YEARS I was a sucker for the “Girl A’s better than Girl B” societal programming, and ended up wasting a big chunk of my adult life pursuing the unattainable gal of Guy Disney fantasy. The irony is that the smart Girl A’s I cultivated may have had high(ish) IQs, but they weren’t all that interesting.
I’ve learned that the intellectual side of my life and the woman side of my life are, for the most part, separate. My mates, my family, other guys on forums like this one – those are the people with whom I discuss the weighty, or intellectually intriguing issues. MLTRs and FBs are for something else. They can’t be dumb as a post, sure, but if they can’t follow me into an analysis of the relative merits of the Nowak vs. Haas Editions of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner, that’s fine. We can still have good times together.
But then, the older I get, the bigger my aversion to negative emotion and the people who propagate it. Nothin’ worse than being in a good mood and having your girlfriend/FB/MLTR/whatever bring you down. Or being depressed and having her make it worse. Even small amounts of drama are just unacceptable. And the “smart” gal is going to give you more of it every time.
I am with Ned.
My wife is very intelligent, but not very ambitious.
There is always a negative. For my wife, lack of ambition also means lack of desire to exercise. But in my mind that is a much smaller character flaw than a shrewish personality.
Another thing people often forget about exceptions is that they
seek each other out or stop being exceptional. A bright, kind, educated, emotionally stable woman is going to disappear from the market very quickly. As will a man who’s successful, strong and directed around men but gentle and monogamous for a woman. And there are two options when these people end up in a relationship:
1: If two exceptions pair up together, they’re gone from the market forever, often four or five years before they even hit their prime.
2: If an exception pairs up with a normal person, their outlook on life is permanently altered, as is their behaviour. A Girl A who’s also kind and submissive may become colder and more jaded or start playing dumb from dating just one man who’s less intelligent than her. An Alpha who’s gentlemanly can become a complete Beta or cynic after a few months in the hands of a dominant woman.
In other words, unless you yourself have an exceptional personality, are before your prime and not yet jaded, good luck finding another exceptional person who wants to spend their lives with you.
And there it is! There’s exactly the myth and trap that women fall into that I described in the blog post. Forever seeking (or thinking they’ve found) the mythical “submissive Alpha”.
Literally, I married girl A. She is an Ivy graduate, has the looks, two masters from prestigious learning institutions, multi-lingual, well-travelled, and is a physician. OMG! She is bitchy, her standards are off the charts and is controlling in the physical as in, I have a surprise for you I will let you touch me. When it comes to sex forget it, no I don’t want your tongue in my mouth, while prior to marriage tongue kissing all day, now a peck on the check, penetration move to the left over to the right, no I don’t want to change positions. I am an intelligent man, I have a terminal masters and pursing a PhD. At present, after five years, we are under the care of a number of therapist because girl A feels that her views and opinions should not be questioned. Self-righteous is one descriptive, but I would like to keep the other descriptive at bay. The appeal of girl A can be overwhelming as in everyman’s desire; however, I suggest guy’s go with girl B for your long-term sanity.
Vaquero357, you make some valid points. Good post, I am living what you have hypothesized.
Great post. I hypothesize that a lot of this (at least, in the US) is a result of our heavily consumer-oriented society. We think of everything as products for us to acquire, and we evaluate and judge products in terms of the perceived benefits.
So Girl A is smart, with top credentials in education and career, widely considered a 9 in looks, is cultured and well-traveled? Well then she must be a “catch”, right? I mean, look at all those product features!
It’s the same reason incompetent people get hired for important jobs. We look at the bullet points (which university they attended, what their GPA was, and other misc. credentials) and make decisions primarily based on those factors.
The problem is the same in both scenarios. Looking at a list of credentials tells you jack shit about what it’s actually like to interact with a person on a regular basis. Yet we all keep doing it, because it’s the only way we know how to live.
The scariest part of all this comes when you finally break free, and start looking for “happiness” instead of “quality features”. That’s when all the friends and family become “concerned” that you are “wasting your time” with these “low-quality girls”. They all wonder why I broke up with my “perfect” girlfriend to date 18 and 19 year-old girls still in college/high school. At no point during any of these conversations do my friends and family ask me if I’m happier now.
It’s another sad data point for the society we live in.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that the statistics contradict this. People with more education are less likely to divorce after longer periods of time (even if they might be just sticking it out “for the kids,” I don’t know how happy their marriages are). In fact the education level of the woman seems to produce the most stark difference (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/04/education-and-marriage/).
In addition, IQ and educational attainment of children positively correlates with having parents that stay married as well as the educational level of the parents. So the ideal situation is to have intelligent, wealthy parents who stay together. I know from personal experience having been raised by separated parents who lived hours away from each other that it causes a shitload of problems.
Here are the issues that I run into with the Girl A vs Girl B dilemma, maybe you can explain how to get around them? At 26 I’m not immediately concerned, but at 36 it will be a different story:
1. Having gone to an “elite” university and being around upper-middle class yuppies all the time, I don’t have access to Girl Bs that often. (Even though I probably would relate to them better having grown up lower-middle class).
2. Even if I did find a Girl B, she would not in actuality be less likely to divorce me and fuck up my kids’ lives, and it seems to actually be the opposite: a more educated girl would stay longer.
So it seems the real problem for men that want kids in the future is:
Girl A is best for their kids because she stays around longer and raises the kids better, but bad for the man because she gives more drama for a longer period of time, and
Girl B is best for the man in the short-term because she’s more chill, but bad for the kids long-term because she is more likely to divorce earlier. The divorce might reduce the drama in the relationship but fuck over the kids.
Given these circumstances, I’m currently leaning towards a 20 year marriage with 1-10 years of drama towards the end with successful, happy kids, than a 10-15 year marriage with only 1-5 years of drama, but angsty, less successful kids raised by separated parents. I think 5 extra years of unhappiness is worth the extra benefit for the kids.
Go online. Or to a mall. Or to a club.
You have access to hundreds of thousands of women. No excuses.
But a more educated girl will still divorce you.
As I’ve said many times here at this blog, what is the difference between getting divorced at 7 years or getting divorced at 12 years? Divorced is divorced. This is why traditional monogamous marriage should not be your objective at all, regardless of Girl A or B.
Correct. There are no good options for having children anymore. Refer to this.
You’re assuming your Girl A wife will stay with you for 20 years. The odds of this are very unlikely (and become more unlikely every year) even if you do everything right as a husband. Refer to this.
this is gold thank you caleb
Perhaps one of my favorite posts by you – because it’s top of mind for me these days as I reflect back on past relationships. (why some worked, and others didn’t). For LTRs, Girl B all day please!
And we didn’t even factor in a Girl A has Loans to pay off too! You can bet that can tacked on a traditionally married families bills. I’ve dealt with Girl A’s. Most end up being Dominants by extension. There are some who submissive who aren’t as bad.. Women like this view themselves as a “Catch” and you should be “Lucky” to even have a shot or land them because they’re suchhhh bad bitches..
Girl B’s somehow get a bad rap.. but honestly if she’s feminine, cute, sweet.. than fuck it.
A possible exception would be the BDSM/Kink community.. for many of those chicks love being submissive if you land an S-type. So you can catch a Girl A and not have as much issues maybe if you land one there. Given their Open Mindedness and Social Programming changes this very much. I’d even argue that many women can find their fabled Submissive Alphas there..