Malcolm and Simone discuss problems in modern dating caused by dating apps and cultural shifts. They explain how the "lazy 8 problem" leads to unrealistic expectations. Women compare current options to past partners out of their league. Men get overlooked. Simone suggests women try polyamory or kink to land a high-value male. Malcolm says men should lock down a partner by 22 and optimize for gratitude, not glamour. They mention niche religious communities and goal-oriented dating sites as options. Ultimately there are no easy solutions, so people must work hard and have realistic expectations when seeking a partner.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] we have this algorithm for relationship stability , the stability score is a person's individual value to a specific individual who there was divided by What they think they can get on an open market and this can be inaccurate and as long as that number is above one, the relationship will be stable when it falls below one, the relationship becomes unstable and many cultural things can augment this. The reason why celebrity relationships are so intrinsically unstable is because the value of a celebrity on an open market is almost always higher than their value to somebody who's gotten to know them as a human being.

Simone: hello, gorgeous.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be talking to you today, despite the seasonal affective disorder that both of us are feeling.

Simone: It's really unfair to us who are Fected by summer rather than winter, cause no one recognizes our plight.

Simone: But here's one thing we don't have to worry about that actually makes us [00:01:00] extremely smug and I think moderately intolerable, which is our relationship.

Simone: I feel like. Some kind of crazy wealthy person, in the midst of a sea of poverty that is systemic, that is deeply unfair. And people sometimes reach out to us and they're like, Hey, as a, single person with X, Y, and Z characteristics, what tips can you give me?

Simone: And obviously like we tried to give whatever advice we can possibly give. But I'm also like, oh, but like the system is so broken. I really don't know what you're going to do. And I think it's a, an interesting thing to discuss, especially in the context of demographic collapse, of pronatalism of mental health problems, societal decline, as some people like To talk about it.

Simone: So let's dig into it. Let's talk about broken relationship markets.

Malcolm: We are living in a world today where I feel like both men and women are really screwed in relationship markets, but in, in very different ways. And a lot of people feel rightly. [00:02:00] Somewhat helpless in trying to find a partner. And one of the things we're doing is trying to build new cultural solutions, but let's talk about why the existing system isn't working effectively.

Simone: Okay. So we call this the lazy eight problem. It is a problem that emerged with swipe based dating, where dating both became associated with very low switching costs, like switching from one partner to the next was.

Simone: Fairly easy and seamless. There wasn't a lot of social grief you got for breaking up with someone or ghosting them. But also with swipe based dating, it became very image heavy, very aesthetics focused. So whereas before, even on apps like, okay, Cupid, et cetera, you used to be able to compete or appeal to people based on a lot of different metrics.

Simone: Like on, okay, Cupid, my whole, game my churn was to answer their weird questions and end up in people's feeds and then catch their attention there. So it wasn't even images. It was like my funny answers and humor. Like that's just not an option anymore. So it's become like really honed in on.

Simone: Aesthetics driven characteristics.

Malcolm: So before you move further [00:03:00] for some of our listeners, they may not know the way internet dating used to work. So there were two systems that you used to be able to use for internet dating and Simone made effective use of both of them. And they are radically different from the swipe based systems you have access to today.

Malcolm: Essentially it was a directory. So I would go, I would create a long form profile that was much more focused on the text, like who I am, than what I look like. Which gave you an ability to compete on different metrics and not just on attractiveness. Then what you could do is go and search and say, okay, all, women interested in men within 25 miles that are slender.

Malcolm: that are atheists, that are Republicans, you could put a number of metrics in and you would just get a list of every woman who is using the app at that time who fit that criteria. And you could go through, you could sort the, those people and then outreach to them, knowing how valuable each one of them was to you while also knowing that once you exhausted a potential lead.

Malcolm: That lead was exhausted until new [00:04:00] women or men would come onto the app. Now, this is very different than the swipe based system where there is a perception that there are always more people out there instead of a, okay, I have a broad understanding of what everyone of sort of the things that I value most with that entire dating pool, is my area, which actually, it might not be good as the older monogamous systems in terms of relationship stability, because those had really high switching costs.

Malcolm: And I'm not saying good for quality of life. I'm just talking about relationship stability, but it was dramatically better than the current system because you had a perception that was accurate of what was really out on the market. Now, this created a problem when that perception was inaccurate, which often happened and that's the lazy eight problem.

Malcolm: So talk about that. Cause that was a problem both in the old system and the new system, I'd argue.

Simone: Yes, but I think it's become much worse now. So the lazy eight problem is this you'll see in online dating data that we'll just say 80, 20 ish. I don't know [00:05:00] exactly what the proportions are, but 20% of men are sleeping with 80% of women, meaning that most men really aren't getting partners.

Simone: You see this in declining rates of reported sex among men. So that means that most women are dating. You could argue if we're ranking humans from, especially in terms of attractiveness, partner attractiveness from one to 10, they're dating eights, nines, and tens, even if they are a three, four, five, six.

Simone: Even if they're out, like certain, those men are out of their league. Why is this the case? Think about it this way. If you are an eight and you're lazy and you just want to have sex one night, you want to hook up with someone. It's really easy. To just reach out to a six or a five or a seven on Tinder, on OkCupid and have a one night stand with them and never get back to them.

Simone: The problem this creates is the fours, the five, the sixes, the sevens end up thinking that they are entitled to an eight, a nine or a [00:06:00] 10, that they could get an eight or a nine or a 10 as a marriage partner, as a long term partner.

Malcolm: I think entitled might even be the wrong word. I think that they're just genuinely confused.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah.

Simone: Yeah. I guess entitled is a little bit too harsh of a term to use, but they're certainly given the impression that

Malcolm: they could, why would they not be confused? It's a natural thing. This is who is reaching out to them on these apps. This is who is sleeping with them. So of course this is who they can get.

Simone: And with women, which of course they can't get

Malcolm: that. Yeah. And then with women who have the secondary problem, which is their perception of the quality of man, they can get can also be inflated through reflection on previous men they have slept with. So generally a woman's value was in a sexual or dating marketplace declines over time.

Malcolm: So let's talk about what we mean when we say people have a value on a dating marketplace. , people are like, you can't put a value on humans. That's what you do when you're [00:07:00] hiring people.

Malcolm: People are products all the time in the economy. what's unique about the dating marketplace. is that you're typically, now I'm not saying that money is never exchanged or a big part of it, but what you're typically doing is exchanging one product for another hopefully equivalent product.

Malcolm: That is the core of what you're doing. You are playing in what in, in business is called or in economics, it's called a two sided marketplace. This is assuming you're in a heterosexual dating pool. If you're in a bisexual dating pool or a gay dating pool, the dynamics are actually.

Malcolm: Pretty different and it can cause different sorts of problems in the dating marketplace but for now We're just going to talk about the heterosexual marketplace. Which is actually much more broken than the gay marketplace. Yes If a well because it's you have a sort of truer equality within the gay marketplace in which you really are Exchanging like for like we're in the heterosexual marketplace It's sometimes less obvious how the value of different partners on the open marketplace align.

Malcolm: Now, here's what's really important to remember. [00:08:00] Every person has two scores above their head. One score is their value on the open marketplace, and the other score is their value to a specific individual. Okay? So if I go into a grocery store, for example, the diabetes medication might have a uniquely really high value to me.

Malcolm: I might be willing to pay way more than market rate for it because I need it to survive. And this is true when looking for a partner as well. And we'll get into arbitrage plays and what this allows and everything like that. And it's also true for companies. So for a company, while a person might have the average salary, they might be able to earn on the open marketplace within certain industries or for certain companies, they might actually have astronomically higher value than they would have in the open marketplace, which causes a very interesting negotiation because the company knows.

Malcolm: They can't earn what they're paying for them on the open marketplace, but this person often knows their value to that company [00:09:00] specifically. And so we'll get to how that often plays out in dating as well. But the larger point that I was about to make here is that in a marketplace, a woman's value typically declines over time for a few reasons.

Malcolm: One is women generally prefer to date guys who are older than them, whereas men prefer to date women who are younger than them. And it's actually. A little bit more complicated than this and it changes. These people get older, but people dramatically underestimate how much this affects dating pools.

Malcolm: So an example that we give in our book where I do the math, but I'm just going to try to go from memory here is if I am a freshman girl in college, right? I can date freshman guys, I can date sophomore guys, I can date junior guys, and I can date senior guys. If I am a freshman guy in college, typically I realistically only have a shot with freshman girls.

Malcolm: And then I become a sophomore guy, I have a chance with sophomore girls and freshman girls, and then the sophomore girl has a chance with sophomore guys, junior guys, senior guys. What this means is that [00:10:00] how difficult it is to date for a Freshman a girl versus a senior girl, or conversely, a senior guy versus a freshman guy, it's literally 42 times harder, if I remember correctly, to secure a partner, which is wild when you think about the effects that has on somebody who doesn't expect this Really radical change in their value on the dating pool.

Malcolm: Now, obviously people can date outside of college and stuff like that. We're just using college as a constraint, as a constrained data set so that you can begin to think about how this works.

Simone: But if I may summarize this just to bring people all back to the basic points.

Simone: Let's say I'm a 30 year old woman, but I am thinking I'm comparing all partners that I'm looking at from this point on as a 30 year old woman to all the partners I used to have. We also have to keep in mind that men, regardless of age, seem to find like early twenties women, the most attractive. So like those women have the highest value and can get the best [00:11:00] men because they have the highest value.

Simone: So I'm comparing what I could get as a 22 year old woman. With what I can get as a 30 year old woman, which is very, which is a false expectation because I can't get even the same guys I used to date earlier as this hypothetical woman as I, I can get now, right? Yeah, so there's

Malcolm: two other factors at play here that are worth noting.

Malcolm: One is, typically the more sexual partners you have as a woman, To the average guy on the marketplace. Now, not all guys care about this, but to the average guy on the marketplace, this is going to decrease the the quality of guy you're going to match with. In addition to that there's the problem that the things that you can build up during that critical period between 22 and 32 as a girl.

Malcolm: Matter a lot less on the marketplace than the things that a guy can build up during the same period by that. What I mean is a guy's value on the marketplace is more positively augmented by things like a degree, a good job, a lot of income than a [00:12:00] woman's. This is unfair. I am not saying this is fair. I am not saying this is how things should be structured.

Malcolm: But it is objectively true if you look at data and you look at what people say they want in a parter. And it's important to remember that you can find certain subpopulations where this isn't true. And that is what we call an arbitrage play. So an arbitrage play in business is Let's say I buy some ore from an area where that ore is really common, and then I sell it in an area where that ore is really rare and it has higher value.

Malcolm: And this is true for companies, right? You have an arbitrage play, if you have like a skill in astrophysics, in working with a company who needs somebody, it was a skill in astrophysics. You are going to have higher value to all companies in the astrophysics category. If you are unusual in some way that either helps you with a specific demographic, Or lowers your value across the market.

Malcolm: More generally, you are going to struggle. An example of this would be a overweight woman. There is a specific demographic of [00:13:00] guys where that actually positively augments their value on the dating market, but to the average guy, that's going to lower their value on the dating market. One of the problems that we have in our society is people are like you're fetishizing me.

Malcolm: Are you like me for the thing that makes me different? Like they, I don't understand. I guess I don't get it because

Simone: like you just like me because of X or like it's gross that you like me because of X, whereas the more advantageous mindset to have is, oh, I have this one thing that people disproportionately value that would allow me to get men or women out of my league.

Simone: I should lean into that. Even if it's not necessarily what I meant to.

Malcolm: Yeah. I think that here's where the cognitive dissonance comes from there is that part of them believes that they should be ashamed for that. And so if the relationship draws attention to that, then they feel like they might not have earned the partnership as much.

Malcolm: And they may also feel the same way that like a really attractive girl in a relationship feels. Like you only value me for my body or you [00:14:00] disproportionately rate my body in the reasons that you value me. And this is an interesting thing that can also augment the value of a relationship. What's really wild is why, so why I value another person can augment How much they value me.

Malcolm: So if I value them for their intelligence, for example, more than their body, they may value me more, all other things actually being equal, which is a pretty wild dynamic when you're talking about like calculating marketplaces. I can't say, I actually had a girl break up with me cause she said I only valued her for her brains.

Malcolm: Another interesting one. And I think this is another thing, like reasons why people I've run into relationship problems with this one. people. One woman was mad that I called her beautiful, but not sexy or hot. And that she knew she was beautiful, but her subconscious, like she said that her actual fear was that she wasn't hot.

Malcolm: This was a very classically attractive person.

Simone: High standards, man. But I was like,

Malcolm: wow, that's really picky. But I think it shows the way that [00:15:00] we use our partners to augment how we think about ourselves. Because these types of things like. Should really matter. But they do and they do change the nature of the relationship to some extent, somebody who values you because you are beautiful is going to engage different with you intimately and in a public context than somebody who values you because they think you're like an object of desire, right?

Malcolm: Like animalistic desire. So anyway back to the topic here.

Simone: Yeah, there's actually one more thing which you're missing which is actually pretty important, which is the more sexual partners you have especially as a female, the less you're going to, we'll say hormonally pair bond with your partners.

Simone: So I've also had friends who have. with new boyfriends that they have as they're now at this point, looking to get married Oh, I'm just not feeling the same connection I felt with other people. And they take that as a sign of Oh, because I'm not feeling that. That's a sign that he is not the one, for example, whereas really what's going on is because they've had [00:16:00] more sexual partners.

Simone: That bonding has actually just gone down. They're not going to feel that feeling anymore, but they don't know that they're not going to feel that feeling anymore. And as

Malcolm: Diana Fleischman said on our podcast, this isn't necessarily a negative thing, depending on your strategy, it can be a very positive thing.

Malcolm: Force being forced to form a, an emotional bond to someone just because you're in an intimate relationship with them can have really negative consequences. Yeah,

Simone: It's a lot of things with the human body. Or use it or lose it. So it's if your body is very monogamous, it will use that. It will give you lots of pair bonding hormones and make you really dedicated to a partner and really connected.

Simone: If your body's given signs that you're not using monogamy, that you actually need to be a little bit more flexible. It's not. It's going to adapt to that. And that's a good thing. Like you and Diana point out. But so add all these things together. Wait, we should be clear.

Malcolm: It doesn't mean you are incapable of loving or forming a bond with your partner.

Malcolm: It just means you won't involuntarily form one just because you're [00:17:00] intimate with them anymore.

Simone: You're not going to it's, there's less of that. We'll almost say like drug induced

Malcolm: connection. It doesn't mean that there is a component of earlier relationships that are. Depending now, people are different, some guys are born attractive to God.

Malcolm: It's right. Different. Sometimes people just have an odd biology, but for the average woman, you are not going to easily be able to recapture some of the feelings you had in your earliest intimate relationships in later relationships,

Simone: right? So if we add all these things together, first, we have the lazy eight problem where many women who are Middling.

Simone: The average woman is going to be a five, right? So the average woman is going to be led to believe that she could marry or have a long term relationship with a, an eight, nine, or 10, because those are the guys that are sleeping with everyone and probably engaging them. When ultimately those guys that they have slept with actually would never commit to them long term.

Simone: So that's the lazy problem number one. So unreasonable expectations to typically when women are ready to settle [00:18:00] down, especially in modern society, because we're encouraged to settle down after we've gone to school, after we've set up our career, after we've done whatever it is that we want to do single they are able to secure less high value men than they were when they were in their early twenties, because at any age range.

Simone: men are going to prefer women in their early twenties. So they are now comparing their current partner options to previous partner options that they'd never be able to get again. And then third they are often to your point, not exploiting. market asymmetries that they could be exploiting with themselves.

Simone: So they're not willing to be a little bit flexible in terms of saying, okay, what do I offer? And how can I find someone out of my league who really wants that one thing? So they're not thinking strategically. And then fourth they are really expecting to feel that. Early pair bonding experience that sort of hormonal addictive surge that they get with new relationships, and they're just typically on average not feeling it.

Simone: So all these factors are leading [00:19:00] to one thing, which is women are just not really getting excited about marrying partners that are in their league.

Malcolm: But there's a secondary problem here. Yeah, which we need to talk about, which is if you are a high value woman, so suppose you're like a top 10% woman in our society today, especially in regards to social status.

Malcolm: So you're highly educated, you have a good degree, you are moderately attractive, maybe not like superstar, but moderately attractive. You are actually really screwed on dating markets, even if you want a long term relationship. And this is because men the high value men who you would naturally match with in a totally monogamous society.

Malcolm: So that what I mean is that if everyone could only choose one partner, you typically get about everyone in a society being paired off with some problems, which we can talk about in other videos . But what happens in, in this scenario, the way our society is structured, if you are a top value woman you are competing with a guy who can go for a lot of women who are lower value than you, [00:20:00] who he may value almost as much as a long term partner, but these other women.

Malcolm: Intrinsically are going to show often more gratitude for the relationship which guys value a lot in a partner, a lot more than I think a lot of women think. So a woman who's a six or something and is, has a high level of gratitude for a relationship is typically going to be chosen over a woman who's like a nine.

Malcolm: And it's not the nine's fault. She genuinely shouldn't feel as much gratitude. This guy might be below her in social status, in income, in attractiveness. And yet, she will have a hard time locking him down. And

Malcolm: It creates a really negative environment for women that is incredibly difficult to navigate. And we've talked about... We'll probably do a video on how... No, we'll talk about it later in this video, I think, how to secure a partner. There's the the poly gambit that we've talked about.

Malcolm: Do you want to go into that?

Simone: Yeah. So we've talked about the problem at length. The solutions aren't great, so they're not going to take that much time. But one of the things that [00:21:00] you can do which we see working we've seen a couple of anecdotal situations in which this has worked really well, especially for women.

Simone: Is it women? consider entering polyamorous relationships with high value men.

Malcolm: So the way the poly gambit works is a woman who is not actually a high preference for a poly relationship offers to let the man sleep with other people. And this is where the. No D's rule can come from in poly relationships and what you actually have here is a polygynous relationship.

Malcolm: Just a classic polygynous relationship across societies where a high volume man basically has multiple partners. But because our society expects monogamy to some extent once people start having kids what the woman will do is she'll say, Okay I will be your primary. You can continue to sleep with other people.

Malcolm: You just can't spend resources on them and you, you will have kids with me. You want to have kids, right? So this is what we're going to do. And they make this gambit understanding that the guy's testosterone drops after he has kids and that his value also drops to other women after he has [00:22:00] a primary partner.

Malcolm: who he's married to and who he has kids with, which lowers the quality of the partners he can get for intimate relationships to the extent where he may just not be interested in anymore. So far, we know a number of people who have tried this and it has worked for every single one of them, but it is incredibly risky.

Malcolm: Do you know anyone who hasn't worked for

Simone: it? I don't know anyone it hasn't worked for. I guess the risky part, I don't know. I don't think it is as risky as one imagines. Because what you're really doing is just taking a lot of stuff that happens anyway. And you're being really upfront and honest about it.

Simone: So even if you marry someone and say, I want to have kids with you and I want to be monogamous, they may still be interested in other people. You can't stop that. We can't control how people feel or lust or love that just happens. And so maybe they may cheat on you. Cheating is more prevalent than I would have thought.

Simone: When you look at surveys And they may ultimately break up with you, you might get divorced. So there's no promise that [00:23:00] you aren't going to end up as a single parent at some point. I think when

Malcolm: you actually really interesting statistic I saw at one point, and I have to pull this up because it sounds not true to me now as I'm saying it, but I remember seeing it when we were writing our sexuality book that people in.

Malcolm: Long term monogamous relationships actually have about the same number of extramarital partners as people in long term polyamorous relationships.

Simone: Yeah, see that's where I'm like, I just don't see where the risk is much higher because at least in this case, you're being honest about it. There's, you're not cheating because rather than obligating your partner to lie to you about extramarital partners, you're just.

Simone: And the understanding is that here are the terms don't spend money on this other person. And again, like you say, the caliber of someone that that a man, especially can bed after he has kids after he's in a committed relationship is just so much lower that the odds that he finds someone who he would want to make a new primary partner are pretty low.

Simone: And in fact, I would almost [00:24:00] argue that. It would be easier. Let's say that I'm the other woman and I want to steal your husband from you or your partner from you, it's going to be harder for me to do it. If you're in a poly relationship than a monogamous relationship, because in a monogamous relationship, I'm just going to be pushing for a divorce.

Simone: I'm going to be pushing for you to I'm going to be like trying to supplant you. Whereas in a poly relationship, like I probably know you it's going to be a lot harder

Malcolm: for You can deliver other partners, which is something I have seen people pull in these relationships, which, which has relationships that would have fallen apart in a monogamous relationship, but they know that their partner is becoming too attached to one person.

Malcolm: And it's quite something different to say, stop cheating on me. Because then the person's breaking the rules anyway. Like they have no reason to listen to you than to say this one person who you're seeing, I have a problem with them. You can see anyone else, this one person. That's a much harder thing for somebody to.

Malcolm: Logic themselves out of to logic themselves into saying I'm being the reasonable person and continuing to

Simone: see this person, right? So there's [00:25:00] the poly strategy. The other strategy that you discussed more in the private guide to sexuality or relationships. I can't remember which that really was your top of mind.

Simone: One before we discovered more people doing this poly strategy was just entering like. Kink communities, because there are many especially high value single men who are, let's say, divorced, who are just like enjoying their sexual rumspringa who are in these communities and who are like super willing to explore and have fun.

Simone: And you might find them that way. Like it just seems to be a good place to find high value men. And

Malcolm: there's often more arbitrage plays you can make. Yeah. So I think what's important to remember within kink communities, within this, what you're really doing with this polygambit is you are using an aspect of the contract of your relationship.

Malcolm: So in the same way, an apartment where like I allow a dog, that aspect of the contract might increase the value of the apartment to an individual. This aspect of my relationship contract, my expectations for the [00:26:00] relationship increase the value of the relationship to my potential partner.

Malcolm: Thank you. Especially if it's I won't sleep with other people, but you can sleep with other people that can increase the value of a relationship to somebody pretty dramatically, and it can be somewhat difficult for other people to compete with that, depending on what the person is interested in. But then, in addition to that,

Malcolm: In BDSM communities, there are a ton of room for arbitrage. In not necessarily BDSM, but kink communities more probably, it typically means they have a specific interest that not a lot of people can provide, or a lot of people providing these interests can, even if they're not really that into it.

Malcolm: themselves can get them such a higher quality partner that it becomes worth it. And I have seen that work multiple times and it's often not a dishonest thing. So like many of these people who do the poly gambit, many of these people who do this, and this isn't everyone in the poly community.

Malcolm: There are some people who are just like genuinely polyamorous. I'm just talking about one strategy I've seen some people that use. But in, within the key [00:27:00] community, we've seen this as well. They often tell people, I'm not really that into it, but I'm doing it because it, I don't know how else I'm going to find a partner.

Malcolm: The way it's often framed is, look I'm a successful woman in New York, or I'm a successful woman in San Francisco. Do I really have the option to only date monogamous men? That's really what's often said because it's true men in these environments are often so inundated with potential partners if they're really high value that there's almost no reason for them to consider monogamous relationships outside of cultural reasons which is that they culturally value that but if they don't have some sort of strong cultural connection to the concept or they don't see some sort of like systemic problem or some systemic A value problem with it, they'll usually say, Hey, I can get it.

Malcolm: So why aren't I, why aren't I taking it? Now the next thing that we need to talk about is how these low switching costs induced by these environments make relationships less stable once they form. So we have this algorithm for relationship [00:28:00] stability and it goes your sort of value to your partner, you know how we mentioned you have an individual like market price to a partner or value to a partner and then you have your market price the quality of the average person you think you could get on the open market or not the average person you could get, but The person you could reasonably get on the open market which is similar to how food is priced like food isn't priced at the price that the average person who walks into a store would buy it at, that's going to be actually really low, it's priced at the average price that the person who would buy it at.

Malcolm: But anyway So that's what people mean when they say market value, which is actually quite different than what the average person would rate you. But we don't need to get into the economics of all this. And this is actually an economic problem. And you can look a lot of economic theory has gone into this.

Malcolm: It's really interesting if you want to go into it. But anyway, the stability score is a person's individual value to a specific individual who there was divided by What they think they can get on an open market and this can be inaccurate and as long as that number is above one, the relationship will be stable when it falls [00:29:00] below one, the relationship becomes unstable and many cultural things can augment this.

Malcolm: So suppose, like a variety or Catholic culture where divorcing somebody is really frowned upon. That's intrinsically going to make my relationship more stable because I know my market value is hurt more than it would usually be hurt by leaving my partner. The problem is that now we live in a society where I can leave this culture.

Malcolm: I can leave this cultural group. And if I'm open to leaving this cultural group, then I typically don't really get my score on the open market hurt quite as much by leaving somebody, which is one of the reasons why you see shaming coming from these communities and people from other cultural groups, even when it may not make sense why they would shame people from other cultural groups, because they do hurt the relationship dynamics in these groups.

Malcolm: No, I don't think they should, I think people should be allowed to leave their group, but it's just true that it does undermine. All relationships in the market when people know that it's not going to hurt them that much because they left a partner. And we're talking about like small tribes or small, let's say an English settlement in [00:30:00] like the 1600s or something.

Malcolm: It was really hard if you left a partner to find a new partner. That was incredibly difficult because of the social stigma around that. So what that created was an environment where your value to your partner, now for cultural reasons, not necessarily because you actually valued them, was higher than it would otherwise be, or your value on the open market, expected value on the open market.

Malcolm: Was dramatically lower than it might otherwise be. But there's other things that can augment this. Like the longer I'm with somebody I may form more emotional connections to them. I may become more financially entangled with them. Or I may learn things about them that I didn't know before that begin to grate on me.

Malcolm: Or, the new relationship energy or the new feels might wear off. So this can get augmented over time for a number of reasons. Where this becomes really important. Is when people believe that they can one easily secure new people in the market and two, when that assumption is wrong. So if you are a woman or a man, and you are out in the open market trying to find somebody after a divorce, [00:31:00] your ability to secure partners is almost always going to be dramatically lower than it was before the divorce.

Malcolm: Yeah. And I think that this is something that the. Migtow and Red Pill community, to some extent, gets really wrong in their assessments to how screwed women get after a divorce. So they often look at things and the truth is our courts are really harsh on men after a divorce. Incredibly. Incredibly harsh.

Malcolm: It's very unfair. That said a woman Especially one who hasn't invested in her career and has been a homemaker, but even if she has invested in her career, she's had a couple of kids with you and she's no longer in her twenties. Now she's in like her mid forties and then she's reentering the dating market.

Malcolm: Her value has been hurt much more than your value has been hurt over the same period. This has two effects. One is it may cause relationship instability that shouldn't be in a relationship because the woman thinks she can do better out of the relationship than she really can. But two, it means that women who are cognizant of what's really going to happen to them when they really.

Malcolm: Leave the relationship. It's a really bad [00:32:00] situation for relationships to be able to break up like that. So there, there is actually something to be said for long term monogamy in terms of the emotional health of both partners. No, another place where this stability score really becomes relevant is with celebrities.

Malcolm: The reason why celebrity relationships are so intrinsically unstable is because the value of a celebrity on an open market is actually almost always higher than their value to somebody who's gotten to know them as a human being. Totally. So intrinsically it's almost always going to be under one and it's almost always going to cause relationship problems until they reach this level where they begin to realize that pattern and they're like, okay, now I know I need to stay with somebody long term.

Malcolm: Do you want to talk about problems for guys now, Simone, really quickly? Because I think it's obvious.

Simone: Yeah. I, yeah the problems facing guys. The big problem is that the vast majority of guys are being completely passed over by women because of the unreasonable expectations they've been led to have.

Simone: So they just, no one's giving them the time of day, even though they [00:33:00] quite deserve it. Statistically true. Statistically true. Yes. Yeah. And

Malcolm: I love where women you'll see on these feminist groups are like maybe these guys don't deserve women. And it's there's women of equal quality to these guys who may not deserve guys who may have like emotional, whatever thing.

Malcolm: Like when you're talking about somebody who's in like the bottom 30% of the dating pool, there's likely reasons for that on both sides of the dating spectrum. And it used to be that they would just get in relationships and these relationships would be bad. And I would imagine that historically, when you had these monogamous relationships where two people would.

Malcolm: Would enter a relationship with somebody who is at this lower end of the spectrum. Abuse would likely be pretty common in these relationships. Who knows, it might be a good thing that these people aren't partnering. But then you need the higher value people to have just way more kids.

Simone: So if I were a guy and who has a seven or below, because we're assuming it's the eights, nines and tens that are getting all the women on open dating markets, like the broad open market.

Simone: I think what I would do honestly is turn to religious communities. that are more small and niche. Like I would[00:34:00] I might join the LDS church. I would look at what my local religious communities are. Depending on my age, let's assuming I'm a young man. I might join the LDS church.

Simone: I might join a singles ward. Because those are smaller dating markets where both men and women have fewer choices. And assuming I'm willing to commit and find a partner and commit to that lifestyle, which I think is pretty wholesome and high value. And I also don't think that. a huge portion, especially outside of the extreme,

Malcolm: Another factor at play here is there, there's often fewer guys in these communities.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm: Know, let's talk about the math of why there's fewer guys in these communities. So there's a lot of people misses. So if you're talking about You could go to as she mentioned, LDS, if you're Jewish, you could go into a stricter Haredi community or something like that.

Malcolm: So the reason why there's fewer guys is actually because of the same phenomenon that we mentioned earlier. That people typically like to date people older than them. And these communities are often the one really high fertility [00:35:00] place in our society. Now this isn't as true for LDS anymore, but that's what's true when they...

Malcolm: groups are high fertility. And because of that the cohorts of older ages are always going to be smaller than the cohorts of younger ages. Meaning that there is almost always an oversupply of women looking for partners in these groups as opposed to men looking for partners in these groups. And it can cause crises within these communities when a lot of people know that, they're doing everything right and they still can't get a partner.

Malcolm: And it's very unfair, but also there's other reasons. One is these communities often are much more okay with women converting into the community than men converting into the community and marrying a devout woman which can also. It'd be another factor of, a guy in one of these communities, one of these strict communities might marry somebody of even a different religion so long as she converts, whereas it can be a little harder culturally speaking when a guy does that, depending on, whether it's a Muslim, conservative community or Jewish conservative community or it depends.

Malcolm: on what culture you're talking about.

Simone: There is the ethical issue where I think, you do [00:36:00] genuinely need to be okay with buying into a life in that religious structure. Like it would be really frickin evil to like, lie to a woman

Malcolm: who is standards.

Simone: Yeah. But that's what I would turn to.

Simone: I'd be like, Hey which religion can I be morally super cool with living with? And I don't know if that's

Malcolm: the only, we're trying to build alternate cultural solutions.

Simone: That's, but they don't exist yet. So I'm

Malcolm: just saying, and we'll talk about them in future videos and stuff like that, like better types of dating markets that have higher switching costs.

Malcolm: But they're not there yet. I don't know. It's just really hard as a guy.

Simone: There's one other option that I would pursue. Yeah. Which is to go to a dating website. Like keeper.

Simone: ai, which is more focused on ending up with a partner and also, which, if you like put up an upfront, like if you're willing, basically to pay more, they're going to invest more in helping you match with someone. And then even sites like match. com where it's just more clear. That you are willing to [00:37:00] commit because on mainstream dating sites, a lot of women that are on them kind of just want to pretend that anyone that they're dating with might, might commit to them.

Simone: It's understood that's not the agreement on those sites. Whereas if you go to match. com, it is because you want to marry, you want to lock it down. And people often who meet on match. com regardless of age. And I know like people who did this like in the early forties, people who did this in their twenties, like all over the place are there to get it done.

Simone: They get they meet on the platform, they get engaged, they get married, just done, they're not messing around. So I would go to platforms like that, that are very oriented around generating marriages. And keeper. ai is partnered with prenatalist. org our prenatalist foundation.

Simone: We fully endorse them and we like what they're doing. Yeah,

Malcolm: yeah, they could work. I don't know if it will, but it's an interesting idea. The final thing I would say that if you are a guy who does find yourself at the top of And I think guys who find themselves at the top of marketplaces, one thing they often don't [00:38:00] realize, okay, is they often feel like I was a nerdy guy who moved up and now I'm just doing my thing because I can do it now, right?

Malcolm: And that's generally usually a wrong perception. It's just that when you're younger, it's typically harder to, to. to secure a long term relationship. And the longer you play on these marketplaces, the more I think it kind of messes with your psychology. And it makes it harder and harder, to really find a long term relationship and you're losing good years.

Malcolm: Because sperm to quality does decline a lot more than the guys think they have forever to find a partner, which just isn't true. If you as a guy are like over 43, when you start looking for a partner the reality, both because of the age of the person you'll probably realistically end up settling with, and because of decreased fertility in both her and your sperm health, you're not going to have that many kids.

Malcolm: In truth, you probably won't even breed above replacement right now. And it is not a good strategy as a guy to just say I'll do it later. I think as a guy, if you want a lot of [00:39:00] kids, you really need to start seriously looking for a partner around the age of 22. And as girls, I'd say around the age of 21.

Malcolm: But,

Simone: It doesn't matter how old you are, like, the sooner you start now, the better. Don't wait. It doesn't matter if you

Malcolm: . So when I say serious, I really mean serious. So for me, that was five dates a week, at least for years on end. Just hitting it out.

Malcolm: I'd go to San Francisco and I have multiple dates booked there that day. And Simone and I both met each other on a day where we had both booked multiple dates that day. We were both going really high throughput. And I think that's one of the biggest things that people miss in terms of often people who do find relationships is they are powering through and they are not wasting time dating people who they know they're not gonna marry the mo.

Malcolm: It was clear that any relationship wasn't going to close in a marriage. I would leave it. And I think that you can waste so much time on a bad lead, and then sales, this is the same thing, you've got your sales funnel, you've got your pipeline and the biggest thing you could [00:40:00] do is waste money on a lead, is that.

Simone: Yeah. But I would say a lot of people watching this are probably not 22 and that doesn't mean you should give up. It just means that you should not waste any more time.

Malcolm: And the thing we've mentioned in other videos, which I'll mention here again. The single most important trait you should be optimizing for is not looks, it is gratitude.

Malcolm: The amount of gratitude partner showing, I mentioned this was a good thing, but it's actually really important because what gratitude really is, it's a measure of how much of a deal they think they have got with you. It's a measure of how much higher the score they have for you is than the score they think they can get on the market.

Malcolm: That's really what gratitude is a measure of. And it makes relationships. It's so much easier, especially when both partners feel like they got an absolute steal because you both fit some arbitrage need that the other one that makes them really weird. So consider Simone and me, right? [00:41:00] I am in another room recording podcasts instead of in the same room as her because it weirds her out to have a guy in the same room.

Malcolm: That might seem like a small thing, but it's something that I think most guys wouldn't respect. They'd be like, get over this. Let's work through this. It's weird. And if you know someone with autism or who's on the spectrum, and you get a feel of what their vulnerabilities are, honestly, just respecting them and being like, this isn't something we need to fix, but it's something we can work around, that can dramatically raise your value to them.

Malcolm: Much more than any sane person would think. I cannot

Simone: even begin to tell you. Yeah. Huge. Yeah, I think knowing your value makes such a big difference, and Malcolm, like you, you were just able to think in ways that I can't, you're able to do things that I can't. And I just don't know what.

Simone: I would do without you. You are my, my, my happiness, my spark. I need you so bad. This was fun. I would say. I love you too, by the way.

Malcolm: Oh, and I'm excited for our chicken coop, which is being refurbished today. So we're going to get to [00:42:00] do that, that trad

Simone: cosplay lifestyle. You know it. It's dire out there and there's no denying it.

Simone: I think anyone who's telling you that they have a surefire way to fix this problem is lying to you that it's really bad. And that honestly, the only way that I think you're going to, make it through the situation. If you're trying to find a partner is one to work your ass off, but two to also set realistic expectations.

Simone: And like Malcolm says, look for gratitude and not glamour because the glamour is where you're going to get caught. I think glamour is where most people are getting caught, especially women because of the unrealistic expectations that they're

Malcolm: setting for themselves. to which this person augments your status within social communities.

Malcolm: Cause a lot of times people, I think they're selecting for attractiveness, but I think a lot of people actually select for how much is this going to increase my status within the communities that I'm engaging with. And that is like the single dumbest metric you can search for.

Simone: Yeah. I want to take a gander at the chicken coop.

Simone: Very excited. [00:43:00] Okay. Let's do it.

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