Five unpopular truths about mate selection

1. You don't need to have shared interests

If you're a man seeking marriage, understand that no woman is ever going to love talking about your interests. You say you’re looking for a “smart” woman, but you might be looking for a woman who does not exist. The smartest woman in the world is still a woman, and women are simply different.

Women do not care about anything like you care about your ideas, values, and goals. That's one reason they want to marry men (at least the ones who still do). A good wife will tolerate you enthusiastically expounding on your interests for an unreasonable number of minutes, perhaps twice per week. If you think that true love is when a woman stays up late with you debating the Weimar Republic or the feasibility of high-speed rail in the United States — I’m sorry but you’re almost certainly going to be disappointed. Even in the best of marriages!

Single men who think they’re struggling to find a sufficiently smart woman are really suffering from a male friendship problem.

2. IQ is overrated

More unmarried men should consider marrying a beautiful, lower-IQ girl from a rural church. Even an intelligent man does not need or want from a woman impressive opinions about foreign films. "A little simple, but I love 'em" are words spoken by many happy husbands (and many happy wives no less).

My wife is smart, and I suspect we’re close in IQ, but we spend most of our little time together talking about the kid, finances, what’s for dinner — maybe some light chat about current affairs and internet debates. It goes without saying that you want someone in your ballpark of IQ, but I meet many successful, unmarried men who have utterly unrealistic requirements around things like “intellectual conversation.” Objectively speaking, highfalutin, g-loaded conversation is just a very small fraction of what the married life entails.

3. Too much 'mating strategy' can work against you

Ironically, the “manosphere” has nurtured many single men into an overly intellectualized attitude toward women. Many men are now so well studied in the science of mating that the fairer sex is now incomprehensible to them. They sought the truth about women, and they received it in such a strong dose that they now hope to find a type of woman who doesn’t exist.

4. A woman can't make up for your lack of satisfying male friendships

Throughout the entire history of mankind, any man who prizes intellectual intensity has no other choice but to go find it among other men. There are many reasons for this; not one is misogynistic. Thus I suspect that single men who think they’re struggling to find a sufficiently smart woman are really suffering from a male friendship problem. They need to stop evaluating women so aggressively on uber-male traits such as “intellectual intensity” and rather go find more intense male friends.

5. You might be overestimating your need for intellectual stimulation

If a man struggles to find satisfying intellectual intensity, there is one long-standing and always available solution. It’s the classical solution and perhaps the only solution, ultimately. The solution is to think, speak, and write more intensely in public, which usually means more courageously.

If a man is not immediately turning other men into intense sparring partners, all he needs to do is increase his own intensity until the desired effect. If a man is not up to this challenge, he doesn’t really lust after intellectual intensity. He lusts after a gentle, predictable interlocutor who will sweetly celebrate his mind and pull his ideas out for him.

Such a man flatters himself by calling that intelligence and intellectual intensity. If any woman naturally enjoyed such things, they would have no need to marry a man! Any man who really values intellectual intensity should go get it immediately. It’s free and on tap, everywhere. Perhaps it is only then they will find the woman they’re looking for.