The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships

by Malcolm Collins

Allowing young adults to figure this stuff out on their own or copy techniques not appropriate for their age range is likely to lead to tragic results.

Pretending that people in late high school and college are not sexual beings leads to much higher rates of teen pregnancy, higher transmission of STDs, and lower psychological wellbeing.

teaching young men about consent without teaching them how to get what they want while still respecting consent will lead a portion of the population to disregard consent entirely.

is great to teach young women to demand their partners wear condoms, but should they not understand the market dynamics for men and women their age and lack crucial communication tools, many first-timers will cave when their boyfriends say they don’t like using them.

What makes the sexual strategies appropriate for people at the start of their journey so different from those who are further along?

Someone in their mid-thirties attempting to seduce their preferred gender is largely playing a game of arousal. Their goal is to get someone aroused enough that this emotion overcomes their better judgment.

When both partners are still sexually inexperienced, getting someone to the point at which they are willing to sexually experiment is a game of inspiring vulnerability through the creation of a personal co...

Sexually engaging with someone who may not be ready is just not worth the risk.

This does not mean that next week the prospective partner who you wrote off because you thought they were not ready won’t make a terrible decision to move ahead with someone else before they are ready in an act of poor judgment (e.g., they were drunk and a popular classmate was hitting on them), but even if they do, that type of sexual experience is not the type with which you want to be associated. The not-quite-ready person will likely regret the experience. We can’t emphasize how much you won’t want to be a part of that terrible memory.

Sexually inexperienced people often suck at saying no and have a horrendous track record when it comes to speaking up the moment a boundary has been crossed. Any sexual strategy you implement needs to account for that.

Should you have at least moderate social intelligence and cover your bases on the hygiene front, you will be in a strong strategic position, regardless of any extra hotness or popularity you may bring to the table.

The first ten people who turn you down won’t be turning you down for sex; they will be turning you down for a conversation because you either failed in your engagement strategy or at your “chat.”

Your goal in perfecting this skill is to get to a point at which you can walk up to a random stranger, engage them in conversation, and have that introduction and resulting conversation be smooth and compelling enough that 10% of the time this stranger is asking for your number (not the other way around).

While sex is a good motivation to learn this skill when you are young and horny, there are far greater reasons to perfect your ability to walk up to a stranger and engage them in pleasant, interesting conversation that compels them to want to engage with you further. Perfecting this skill will make earning lots of money and advancing your career significantly easier when you grow up.

If someone “misreads” a proposal to escalate a relationship as a joke, they are turning you down in a socially nice way.

By pretending to misread your proposal, your partner is attempting to do you a favor and maintain a platonic friendship with you. Do not sabotage this kindness.

Rejection stings much less online, but it still stings enough to help you acclimate to the feeling and not fear it.

discrete,

Discreet

Learning how to respond to rejection with dignity is a critical skill that does not come naturally.

Learning how to successfully ask for something is a breeze once you learn how to not worry about rejection in the first place.

Develop a classy response to rejection that does not make things awkward—one that gives up on the hope of future sexual interaction with the other party for at least a year and does not lead you to bear ill will towards the party that rejected you.

While younger men statistically value the women they end up marrying based on virtue, talent, or accomplishments, 62% of men who got married over the age of 40 cited “niceness” (congeniality, agreeableness, a relaxed, and low-maintenance attitude) as the primary trait that attracted them.

Only seven out of 2,000 men report their wife was in a sexy outfit when they first met.

The type of person who can see a changing world as an opportunity to discover and develop even more efficient strategies will consistently outperform those who classify turbulent world conditions as an excuse to indulge in procrastination.

If you find yourself thinking: “But whatever I do, no one wants me,” the problem is you.

or

Of?

The ability to alter your relationship contract to increase your value to your partner should not be underestimated as a tool to increase relationship stability even if society rarely flags it as an option.

the male partners they succeed in securing will be of lower aggregate value once they filter out people using them for sex. Moreover, a male being filtered out by this method will not just quietly walk away; he will likely argue with you or insult you in one final gambit.

asking yourself: “Would a stranger think this person is well out of my league, and if so, do I know specifically what they value so much in me?”

New relationship energy leads people to make even dumber decisions than love does.

both men and women are more likely to have affairs when their age ends in the number nine; however, this effect is much more pronounced in men.

To men, dead bedrooms are largely not about the sex, but rather a man's self-assessment of his own virility and sexual desirability.

important for women with male partners to know that both the sexual interest they express in their partners, plus their overall desirability to the general population, will likely play a huge role in the average male partner’s validation, and that validation will have a profound effect on his happiness.

“used for sex” by someone when said sex fails to grant the validation sought from the interaction—often because of a post-sex realization that the sexual partner had very little desire for them specifically or that they did not respect this sexual partner.

The science is unambiguous on this point: In human males, being in love with someone lowers testosterone production and tanks their sex drive.

stop putting so much effort into exercise, outfits, foreplay, and grooming, and generally work less hard to be charming, confident, engaging, and considerate.

between the Coolidge effect (a decrease in attraction to individuals with whom you have had sex before) and the decrease in testosterone-driven sex drive when someone is in love, the amount of effort required to keep the level of sex constant in a long-term relationship is dramatically higher than the effort required in a short term relationship.

The real answer to maintaining a partner's desire is to improve physical (and societal) appearance over time and work hard to increase your partner’s admiration for you.

female will experience an unusually high release oxytocin with her first partner.

A partner demonstrating a willingness to hurt you in an attempt to keep you with them is an early and easy sign that much worse things are to come and that your feelings fundamentally do not matter to this person.

we encourage anyone who has been with their present partner for less than three months to expect there are at least two significant individual-desirability-modulating personal details that this person is intentionally occluding.

While “semi-unintentional” situations are still potentially remediable through contract renegotiation, they build significantly more resentment than totally unintentional changes. This is because they demonstrate to your partner your willingness to act in bad faith, something they now have to expect during contract renegotiation.

Should you exercise emotional control and do not blow up (either with anger or sadness) when a partner fesses up to mistakes and personal shortcomings, you will not train them to withhold such confessions out of fear there will be an emotional explosion.

Should you have access to them, you might also interview a partner's exes. We frankly do not understand why this practice is not more common. This is an entirely logical way to determine how a person will act in a relationship. Besides, the practice is common in the professional world, in which prospective employers ask for references all the time so they might evaluate the potential value of relationships with far lower stakes.

feeling validated and achieving emotional actualization is important to you, focus on easy-to-secure sources of validation that yield a large and lasting emotional impact. Organize your life and relationships in such a way that you receive validating stimuli regularly. Identify a vein of emotional validation, then harvest that source as sustainably as possible.

If your partner is relying on interactions with you as a source of personal validation, grant them the validation they so desperately desire when they come to you looking to harvest that resource.

Like most humans, we feel an innate desire to comfort someone when they express vulnerability. That said, we understand that taking the emotionally indulgent path is not in anyone's long-term best interest. By not rewarding pleas for validation and moments of anxiety, we

I hope this does not include parenting

this approach does not involve partners emotionally shutting each other down and preventing each other from expressing vulnerability. Quite to the contrary, this approach requires greater vulnerability and emotional honesty