Put her to work: women want to care for you

I'm Dr. Orion Terriban, and this is Psych Hacks, Better Living Through Psychology. And the topic of today's short talk is put her to work. Put her to work, gentlemen. This is going to be an important episode for you. Putting a woman to work is a very important precept, and it will help men have the kinds of relationships they tell me they're looking for with the women of today. So let's get to it. A lot of men complain to me that they can't find women who are looking to provide value in their relationships. They're finding takers, not givers. These men are looking to get their needs met in a relationship, and they often lament that the women they are meeting just seem interested in kind of being taken care of, as if they were adult dependents. And while there absolutely are women who just seem to want to be treated like princesses or spoiled like bratty children, I would say the majority of women aren't actually looking for this kind of dynamic. In my experience, most women are interested in helping, in supporting the men they really want to be in relationships with. The catch is they need to really want to be in a relationship with you in order for them to enthusiastically show up in this way. So men can't conflate the fact that apparently women aren't interested in providing value to them with the fact that women aren't interested in providing value to men in general. As I've said before, all men pay. But the more she likes you, the greater the discount. If a woman doesn't really like you, if she doesn't feel that just being with you is intrinsically valuable, the more she is going to demand either directly or indirectly the provision of value to compensate her for the opportunity cost associated with prioritizing a less attractive option, you. It is what it is. And when men invest in their own attractiveness and level up their fitness and fashion and status and wealth and game and humor and lifestyle, the more they will encounter women who are not only interested, but enthusiastic about giving them what they want. This isn't something that is discussed like at all in today's day and age. But most women actually want someone to care for. Why do you think so many single women have dogs or fur babies as they call them? Most women kind of need someone to worry about and fuss over and nurture. Otherwise they feel something is missing or they go a little off the rails. In fact, this is the best explanation I've ever heard for why women disproportionately suffer from anxiety disorders relative to men. Women are twice, twice as likely to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder than men are. Is it because their uterus or in Greek their hyster is wandering around their body causing trouble, which is the origin of the word hysterical? Or is it possibly due to the fact that women are alone in the 21st century in a way that women have never ever been alone in the history of humanity? Like in terms of human evolutionary history, the single independent woman is a newborn, less than one day old. For hundreds of thousands of years, women lived with their families and then lived with their husbands with whom they started their own families. If a woman were to lose her husband, she would move in with one of her children or the community would take care of her. A woman was like never alone. So the evolutionary explanation for high anxiety in women is basically that women have evolved to be anxious for two or three or five because the social role of women has been to bear and raise children who are often too stupid to know what to be afraid of. Like a kid will try to eat poisonous berries or walk into a river or do all kinds of stupid shit. So women have evolved like this heightened anxiety response because they have had to care for things too dumb to know what to fear. They needed excess anxiety. In any case, a lot of women have this instinct, this impulse to nurture and help and care. And when they don't have someone to do these things for, they can go a little nutty. The issue is that they don't wanna do these things for just anyone, which of course is perfectly understandable. They want to do them for the right men. If you appreciate the insights on this channel, I would highly encourage you to get your hands on a copy of my book, The Value of Others. Over the course of 432 pages, I delve deep into my economic model of relationships and explain the behavior of both men and women in the game of mating and dating. I also provide a lot of actionable advice on how to get and keep more of what you want in the sexual marketplace. Once you read The Value of Others, you'll never look at relationships the same way again. Now available in ebook, audio book, and paperback formats. The links are in the description. Now, modern courtship has completely lost sight of this reality. In general, women are considered the prize and value is assumed to proceed from the men to the women. Attractive women act more and more like little celebrities and men, despite their complaining, buy into it and compete with each other for the opportunity to buy them shit. And while this may be gratifying to some extent for the women to experience, it leaves this deeply ingrained impulse to care and nurture unfulfilled, which generally destabilizes the relationship. And it's frankly unsustainable from the men's perspective. This is because this is not the type of relationship that most men want. They just kind of think it's what they have to do to get the relationship they really want. This means that whether they're aware of it or not, most men are playing a game of bait and switch with women. They think that if they care for and nurture and invest in the women, okay, then at some point, the women will be motivated to reciprocate, which is much closer to the type of relationship they were looking for to begin with. The issue with this strategy, which I call the ferryboat captain, is that once you start ferrying a woman around, you can never stop ferrying a woman around. Like a ferryboat captain can't ever turn around and say to his passenger, hey, why don't you take me where I wanna go for a change? That passenger would get off the boat as quickly as possible because that's not what she signed up for. Even though that captain may have faithfully performed his duties for decades. Do you understand? As I discuss at length in my book, a man should put a woman in the role he would like her to play in his life as early in the courtship as possible. Like if you want a first mate, don't invite her onto your ship as a pampered passenger. This helps ensure not only that everyone more or less understands what they're signing up for, but that the woman in question is actually a good fit for the role you would like her to play. Consider hiring for a position in the professional arena. Self-surveys and structured interviews are notoriously bad at giving employers good information on their prospective employees. But do you know what does provide good information? Work samples. Like ask the employee to do the job you would hire them to do. It is very difficult to fake your way out of that one. And it completely bypasses a number of issues like demand characteristics and social desirability biases that plague these other approaches. This means men that if you want a woman who provides value in your life, you have to put her to work. Ask her to do the things you want a woman to do for you as early as possible. This will also allow you to quickly and reliably gauge her interest and her character. How? Because a woman of either poor character or low interest is going to bulk at your request. Good. This will help prevent you from misinvesting your necessarily limited resources in the wrong women. Consider it, once again, from a professional standpoint. If a manager were to approach an employee and tell her, hey, you know, I've been thinking of you as a potential lead for this new project. And the employee were to respond, that's outside my pay grade. If you want more from me, then you need to pay me more. You can conclude a number of things. Either she is not very committed to her job or she is very stupid. Like good luck getting a promotion with that attitude. And this is because clever workers who are invested in a particular career trajectory do not see this new responsibility as a chore. They see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to show their quality. To demonstrate that they have executive potential or whatever it is. Like how else do you expect to get the job if you never get the chance to show that you've got the chops for it? It's only the worker who isn't interested in the promotion who complains about doing more for less. And why the **** would you promote such a worker? A woman of good character who is actually interested in you will see your requests as opportunities. Why? As I've mentioned previously, women's best long-term strategy and their best defense against being used purely for sexual gratification is to insinuate themselves into the economy of the ship. And they do that by assuming responsibility. Women, I want you to listen to me very carefully. A man who just wants to use you for sex won't ever ask you to do anything else. This is because he wants to be able to walk away from you at any time and keep his hands clean. A man who asks nothing from you is trying to keep his escape route clear. This is because the more responsibility a woman takes on, that is the more she insinuates herself into his lifestyle, the harder and harder it becomes to extricate himself from that relationship without some measure of suffering or difficulty. Women, a man asking you to do things for him is one of the surest signs of his authentic interest in a long-term relationship. See these requests as opportunities to demonstrate your value and as a hedge against relational abandonment. And men, don't be afraid to ask women to do things for you. You will either get what you want or force her to show her true colors, which is a win either way. What do you think? Does this fit with your own experience? Let me know in the comments below. And please send this episode to someone who you think might benefit from its message as it's word of mouth referrals like this that really helped to make the channel grow. Anyone looking to join my free weekly newsletter or book a paid consultation can do so on my website. There's also my book, The Value of Others and my member community, The Captain's Quarters. The links to everything are in the description below. There's a lot of fantastic information in all of these resources. I hope you'll check them out. As always, I appreciate your support and thank you for listening.