What's better for a relationship: for a woman to be more "in love" than her man, or vice versa?

When I posed this question to a young lady I met last night, her answer was swift and certain: "The man should be more in love."

She used her current relationship to back her argument, explaining that her new boyfriend loves her with far more intensity than she feels toward him - and that makes her feel comfortable.

I don't think her new man lasts until Christmas.

Why not? My argument was simple:

1. Women don’t prioritize comfort. It's an overrated feeling and a poor indicator of a promising relationship.

2. Women prioritize choosing a PrimeMate, even if being with that person causes discomfort.

3. A woman feels most assured about her choice in a man when her feelings outweigh his.

The same logic doesn't apply to men because we are less choosy. Instead, we compete against each other to get chosen.

I learned this from evolutionary psychologist David Buss, who argues that women evolved as the choosier sex because they have greater stakes in the mating game. Unlike her male counterpart, a one-night stand could obligate a woman to nine months of pregnancy plus many years of nursing and childcare. Women have a greater incentive to filter out suitors with commitment issues, poor genetic material, or other red flags.

Men are not wired this way. Our reproductive biologies don't require us to be choosy. We maximize our chances of being selected by our PrimeMate by making ourselves maximally competitive and appealing.

The woman I met last night could be with an extremely competitive and appealing cat. But he is violating her evolutionary programming. By allowing his feelings to overpower his woman's, he is signaling to her that she's chosen beneath her league - someone grateful for access rather than someone who earned it. Eventually her "comfort" will turn into resentment, and she'll seek the deep feminine satisfaction of loving a man more than he is capable of loving her. The type of satisfaction that only comes from securing a PrimeMate.

About the author:

My name is Jack Money. I live in NYC. My philosophy is simple. In addition to our primordial drive to procreate, human beings are also driven by the desire the to help others procreate. Matchmaking is in our blood. And it's in our evolutionary best interest to do it at scale.