You deserve better.
It might seem arrogant to deem someone as having low value, or low mate value. And, it’s not easy to be the ‘mean’ girl, sitting there, evaluating a man’s mate value.
By mate value, I mean the signs that show a man’s overall value as a romantic partner. It also refers to his potential reproductive success. For example, a strong, confident man would most likely have more reproductive success than an unhealthy, lazy, unconfident man.
I know it seems unfair. But without me even saying it, we all make many (not all) decisions to be romantically involved with, or even be friends with day to day, based on how much value that person presents. It happens everywhere around the world. And the best thing about it is that mate value can be influenced within ourselves. Our mate value can go up or down if we want it to, and so can a man’s. And women owe it to ourselves, to evolution, and to other women around her, watching her as an example, to choose good men.
No need to feel guilty about judging a man’s mate value…
Forget feeling guilty about it. Men evaluate women harshly too — and men understand naturally, that when they invest in a mate (ie: commitment), that she better be freaking good. This is not our choice. It’s what we naturally want when we date: High value for our investment. A good catch, basically. No man wants to willingly put his emotions, money, time, energy, resources into a woman who wants to show up low value. And, women don’t want to invest their time, energy, money, resources and emotions in a man who shows up low value.
The world isn’t always kind. And that’s okay. It’s okay to talk about mate value, and it’s okay to learn about what makes a human male or female, high mate value. And, especially when just dating, you are always evaluating a man for his value to you anyway — in the world of love, this is a harsh truth that we cannot escape. We don’t want someone with low mate value, only because it doesn’t serve us — and it doesn’t serve the future generation.
The author Joe Quirk says something about women, along the lines of: remember every time you choose a deadbeat you are influencing the future generation — not only in terms of your children, but you’re telling evolution that it’s okay to keep producing deadbeats because women will take them.
Men evolve traits because women like it that way. Take the penis for example. It evolved to become larger because women picked men with larger penises.
So while you come with inbuilt ‘low mate value receptors’, it also helps to gain knowledge and skills in the process of evaluating a man.
Now, every woman has different preferences. While one woman might want the leading males of the social group, others want a more submissive, softer male. Either is appealing to different women for different reasons.
What if you don’t feel deserving of the highest mate value men?
For some women, they don’t feel like they are deserving of the type of man they truly want, so they pretend they don’t want him.
This post is here to hopefully help you make an authentic decision about what your body truly wants in a man. It’s to say… hey, it’s okay to hold yourself as high value and not say: “I’ll take any man. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Don’t forget that I’m just one woman writing this, and it is influenced by my own worldview and my research even if I try my best to be objective, so always be open to thinking critically for yourself and your future.
Which man? The most important decision you’ll ever make…
Which man you choose is the most important decision you’ll ever make. And that is for the quality of your life! It will influence your future health and happiness, and consequently, the future health and happiness of all your family and friends.
Disclaimer: a man can exhibit one or two of these signs and still be a high-value mate. Sometimes, he has a bad day or a bad period in his life. However, if a man continually exhibits two or more of these signs, he doesn’t know how to be a good boyfriend.
At the end of the day, don’t force a relationship for the sake of it, when you know in your body that you don’t trust him. If you chronically don’t trust him, chances are, other women won’t either.
1: He can’t tolerate you saying ‘no.’
Now, to be clear: it requires a good woman, who is not in a fearful state, to interpret properly; whether he truly cannot tolerate your ‘no’.
What I mean is, sometimes, we mistake a man’s intentions — and this is the rule for all women, not the exception, because you think with your woman’s worldview, and you see the world differently, acting from a different place than your man would. This means that you unintentionally put your own meaning upon a man’s actions, and this is an entirely normal, human thing to do. And you could have been doing this throughout all your dating experiences, not realizing that there are consequences to grossly misinterpreting men’s intentions. Learn more about what men want from you here.
So how do you really know if he can tolerate your ‘no’ or not?
First of all, tell him ‘no’ whilst being totally connected to him. Don’t do it for the sake of seeming higher value.
As a woman, it’s easy to interpret a man’s response as not being able to tolerate her ‘no’, when we are, in that particular moment, fearful or afraid of truly connecting with him or even just judgemental. In effect, we think he can’t tolerate it, but we pulled away from him emotionally before we could even have a chance to truly feel whether he is willing to accept our ‘no’.
So, what I’m saying is this: provided you are totally present with a man, and he is totally present with you — and you haven’t pulled away from connection or eye contact, and he also hasn’t pulled away from connection in that moment with you — if you say ‘no’ to being touched or grabbed, or say no to anything else, and he just gets angry at you for not giving him what he wants, then you can be pretty sure he’s being low value.
If, in response to you exerting your boundaries, or saying ‘no’; he wants to bring you down for it, and can’t engage lovingly and playfully with you, or even laugh in enjoyment with you when you say ‘no’, then he might well have low mate value.
A self-contained, great man will enjoy women saying no to him. It’s fun. It’s push-and-pull. It’s a feeling of like ‘finally, a woman who can push back!’ A man who feels like this is his last chance on earth ever to get some a girl might be more likely to get all upset or angry at you for saying no. Or, even call you names like ‘frigid’ for saying no.
2: He puts you down.
It’s not only silly people like me who say this — scientists say it too. Putting a woman down is an insecure, low-value man’s way of trying to keep her chained to him; reducing her self-esteem; making her feel like her ‘other options’ in men out there are limited.
The smaller a woman feels, the better for a man acting small. The more a man can make a woman doubt herself, the more likely a small man can make his woman small and close to home, too. And boom! He’s secured his reproductive future. As I said, it’s not just me, some of the world’s most powerful researchers have discovered this by studying humans in the dating market.
Women can get stuck in this situation because (in general, there are exceptions), we tend towards feeling guilty more than men do — and some men sense this about women and can play on it.
They keep you hooked into a relationship with them by inducing guilt in you. Don’t play that game. Instead, poke him in the eye and run.
I’m kidding. Just run.
What’s bad about this trait of low value in men is not necessarily that the man has this trait — it’s the fact that many women tolerate it. You get what you tolerate; so be an inspiration, don’t tolerate being treated like a piece of shit on his shoe.
3: He is very concerned about his image.
Everything is for show. I have trouble trusting men like this; as he’s not self-contained and of substance, even if he has the potential to be. And every man has the potential to be.
How can you trust a man who spends more energy painting an image than he spends in his actual business? How can you trust a man who spends more energy defending himself than he does revealing himself?
To be clear: it’s not a strict THING men do that makes them image focused. It’s not, say, driving a Ferrari. Some men drive a Ferrari for the novelty of it. Some men go into huge debt or scam people to get the Ferrari for the image. So it’s the place a man comes from.
Often, a man who is image-focused, can’t stay connected, because he’s too afraid and feels too unworthy to connect. He’s focused on image because he thinks that will make him worthy of connection. Men who spend money they don’t have on nice cars, men who start businesses and never commit to it. A surprising number of men do this.
It’s harder for any of us, man or woman, to actually care about, and carefully build a business that adds value to its customers.
And just be warned. For some men; the business thing? It’s for show, to try to seem high status and get more sex and more women; but they end up in jail, or old and single.
I’ll be honest. I know of 3 men who have done this. Personally and professionally. One of them I never liked after meeting him at a Tony Robbins event, but he somehow kept showing up in my life — eventually, I had an argument with him and now he’s in jail. Not in that order though.
The other I know of is being investigated by police.
And the other is building a ‘charity’ but is actually on the dole, and when you hear him speak about it and you watch the way he talks about women, which I have many times over, it is so obvious…the ‘charity’ was a way to lure unthinking women in because it gives them this image of not only ‘authority’ (owner of a business), but owner of a charity! Don’t we all love a benevolent man?
This is not being negative. This is being aware: We are mammals and have survival and sex driving us. Some of us are more driven by these things than others.
Don’t fall for the image. Some men will risk almost anything, for sex and for the appearance of status; and status is still for sex and power.
Look, 90% of male elephant seals die virgins. This is to say, hey, males want to get it in there. For a male who produces sperm and not eggs (like you and I), the feeling is not “there’s plenty of sex everywhere”, the default lizard brain (unevolved brain) feeling is that sex isn’t that plentiful. And the men who don’t feel they have a lot of options will approach sex and women as if it’s the last time they’ll ever get it. Ie: Milk the unsuspecting women (who don’t see through their BS) of as much as they can, and then run.
I know none of this sounds very nice, but it is important that you are aware. With knowledge, you become powerful. As a woman, you naturally hold a lot of power when it comes to relationships, men and sex. Add to that knowledge of men, and you’ve got more power than is fair, really.
Many male animals pursue a quantity strategy in mating: inseminate as many females as they can, and leave. Human males don’t always do that (especially when they fall in love), but many also do do this. They have this tendency written deeply into their limbic system. I don’t find this a bad thing; it’s just a fact. And because I understand all men have this written in their limbic system; I appreciate that it’s there for a reason.
The good thing is, a lot of men also don’t do things this way; there are lots of men out there who are deeply into commitment, and partnership. Just because it’s in the limbic system doesn’t mean all men actually operate this way day to day.
But the men who spend most of their resources and energy on their image? You can see it in the men I just described. For them, it doesn’t really matter if they end up in jail ONE day, because they’ll get away with doing what they do for as long as they can; and even if they are jailed, at least having the ‘image’ of high value, high status opened up sexual opportunities for them. Opportunities which they took, of course.
4: He always chooses friends who are bottom of the crop.
Sometimes, out of fear, he will chronically choose less than average friends. That is to say that he hangs with friends who are at the same level or below him. Sometimes it is because he feels mediocre, and because of that, his ego feels afraid at the thought of associating with people who are ‘ahead’ of him.
The key: Look for whether he’s open to opportunities to befriend high value, high-status men. The key is his level of openness to befriend other (more successful) men than him.
Just because he has deadbeat friends doesn’t 100% mean he is being low value. He could be in transition, from certain friends to new friends, or he could be trying to influence his friends to become better.
There are men out there who purposefully never make friends with men who are better than him; as he doesn’t feel good enough, and wants to hide from the reality and the challenge of making something of his life.
The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with doing nothing with your life. As long as you own that choice. If a man’s direction in life right now is to do nothing, then that’s at least showing substance. He’s willing to sit with ‘nothing’ for now. I think the problem is when you do nothing with your life, yet think that’s wrong or bad; and pretend you are doing lots.
A man who feels infinite inside yet does so-called ‘nothing’ is still ok. Because a man who feels infinite will naturally add value to the world. A person who deliberately chooses to stay small for their own entertainment (eg: stay small and comfortable, but make everyone else out to be the bad guy), is a worry.
Now if you’ve got a really great man, it’s inevitable that at some stage, some of his friends might not be as accomplished or as genuine as he is and that’s normal; but I’m talking about a man’s active desire to befriend people who are at a level below him. I’m talking about him actively avoiding getting close to, or having conversations with any man who he might perceive as “better” than him.
5: He is quick to criticize other men AND women.
When we feel like we’re not enough; and we’re happy to settle for that exact feeling in our lives; never striving for more, we want to put others down. And we put others down because we need to; to maintain our place of comfort. To maintain our familiarity with the feeling that “I am not enough”. If instead, we brought others up, we’d have to acknowledge that the place we’re at is not ideal… and sometimes, that’s too painful.
So, criticism, putting others down is the tool of a man who feels scared, who doesn’t want change, who likes to stay small, and who sees the world from a place of scarcity. Other people’s success is at odds with his own.
I believe a truly successful man (or woman) is willing to learn from others; and knows that if someone else does well, it is an indication of what is possible for him, too.
6: He is stingy, not just to you, but to other people as well.
You don’t want a man who is so out of touch that he, not being attuned to your feelings, pours out all his money and lavishes you with gifts — without really knowing you; but attempting to buy your love.
You also don’t want a man who is so un-attuned to you that he seems to withhold everything of value: connection, attention, and money for example.
Ideally, you would have the gift of feeling a man gradually becoming more generous with you. And he’d gradually open up to feeling safe enough to share his resources. But, sometimes we unknowingly get involved with a man who is stingy in general.
This really isn’t about money. I know it seems like it is about money. But think about it. If a man is not generous to any degree, what is this a reflection of? It’s a reflection of how he feels about the world, the resources available in the world, and it’s a sign that he doesn’t feel confident taking charge and being resourceful.
Of course, we can forgive a younger man for this trait, because sometimes it takes time to learn not to be stingy. Unfortunately, some men do hold on to their stinginess. It sticks with them.
A man who doesn’t feel very capable will be more stingy. A man who isn’t generous keeps himself small. If he is stingy, he may not be a very resourceful man, as well. There are exceptions, of course, and it is contextual. So if a man was once stingy, it doesn’t mean he will always be stingy.
Of course, there are degrees/levels of generosity. He doesn’t have to pour out his money, attention, time or intellectual thoughts like water out of a tap. It’s about his openness to sharing a piece of himself or what he has.
It’s up to you to gauge what level of generosity you’re comfortable with. A woman who is okay with a man being stingy is letting him stay small, and it will also influence you — if you spend enough time with him, you will also stay small and think small.
You want a man so resourceful that he inspires you to become infinite also. This is the thing I’m most grateful for in my man. I was way stingier than him. He taught me otherwise. I’m blessed and humbled by him every day (insert 1,000 love heart emojis here).
7: More than once, you feel physically ill at the thought of sleeping with him.
Your body doesn’t lie. And I don’t mean because he has food in his teeth or bad breath. No need to stay with a man because your logical thoughts think you should be more ‘open’ to the idea of giving more men a chance. No need to be too nice.
Remember, every time you let a man in, that’s a ‘vote’ for what traits will be continued in evolution. Your body knows.
If all else about him is A-grade, but you can’t sleep with him without feeling sick, then all you’re really doing is trading sex for his resources.
Nothing wrong with that, many women have made it work like that in the past, and then dumped the man. Just remember though, that mate value for a man includes three umbrella factors: Genetic value, provider value, and spiritual value. Now, genetic value includes health, and provider value includes things like social value, generosity.
Either way, a man can have great spiritual value and provider value, and be of below average looks and a woman wouldn’t mind. But if he is a 10/10 in provider value and spiritual value, but your body is closed off to him because your eggs are screaming ‘no!’ to his sperm, then you’re just being dishonest to everybody.
By Renee Wade for YourTango