Many people say “men have a hard time finding a relationship, women have a hard time keeping it.” Such a statement is untrue. There is the implicit assumption that women are “worth more” in a relationship: that they are more loyal, more willing to stick with someone’s faults, more worth committing to. In my experience, I have not found this to be true. I have found that they are more often in relationships with men more “desirable” than they are, and are willing to stick out the shit in the relationship in order to preserve it. For a woman who finds herself on equal footing with her male parter, she is not any more inclined to suffer for the sake of the relationship.

Personality is so important for a committed relationship. Women with great personalities see their own desirability increase at such an outsized rate, it’s insane. Men know how rare women with great personalities are. I’m sorry ladies—but it’s true. Perhaps the converse is as well, I don’t know. Personality is as if not more important than physical attraction for a man in a committed relationship. From what I’ve seen with women, the most important thing for a committed relationship is how “desirable” the man is.

Many women know this. Women with great personalities know what a catch they are. Women with dull personalities do not know this, and so it does not result in a decrease of their perceived value. This drastically increases the difficulty of dating women with good personalities, because they have all the expectations of a (modern western) woman, along with the increased pickiness of being a rare and desirable “catch.”

Women, you do not know how much your personality matters. Maybe some of the more mature ones do. It matters far more than your physical appearance. The only reason why a man would prefer a woman of high physical value but low personable value is for the respect that “earning” such a woman earns him from society at large. We are still catching with the end of patriarchy, and the value that men assign their fellows’ partners is also lagging. Men respect each other for doing the most difficult shit. I truly believe that men will respect each other more for partnering with quality women as opposed to attractive ones as time goes on. You can see something like this in S8E8 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where the inventor of the “car periscope” receives accolades from the star of the show for having a somewhat homely wife.

All of this is somewhat predicated on the theory that female attractiveness doesn’t really exist on a decile scale for men, but a trinary one: would not bang, would bang but not brag, and would bang and brag. There is a wide gradient of “who is prettier than whom” in the third category (as well as mitigating circumstances for the second), but I firmly believe this is the scale that most men looking for a monogamous relationship are using.

If you’re a homely gal with a good personality, my heart goes out to you. You are more desirable than you know. You don’t have to settle for a guy who treats you poorly (unless you want that lol). That being said, attractive guys will hold out for an attractive girl with a good personality.

If you’re a guy who wants a (pretty) girl with a good personality, I have no advice because I’m in a similar boat. I’m on the spectrum and all I can find are women who want me for sex. A woman who wants a guy for the human “being” aspects of his nature as opposed to human “doing” is a much more desirable option than a woman who wants a male checklist, and finds her desirability and pickiness in a partner that much more increased. A paradox, but I’ve seen it happen time and time again—especially in the religious circles that I’ve run in. If you want a historical example of the kind of woman praised for her personality, look at Cleopatra, a household name over 2000 years later. In fact, most of the women from history of olde are known for their personality over looks: Lucretia, Theodora, Queen Elizabeth, Joan of Arc, Jane Austen.