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In our first article of the series about intelligence and mating, we explored the incredible connection that exists between intelligence and whom we decide to date, marry and retain in our life. If you have not read it yet, we recommend that you do it. It introduces you to important concepts that will make this article easier to understand and specially to apply.
That scientific knowledge need not sit idle in the drawer. We can use it to our advantage to create a much more successful dating and romantic life. So through this article we will explore five different concrete strategies that you can use to achieve the level of success and happiness in your romantic life that you have desired for a long time. Even if some focus of the article will be put on high IQ persons, the truth is that the strategies apply to all and everyone can benefit from the read. So let’s start with the first strategy.
Strategy #1 Understanding our mate value
Gauging correctly our value in the dating market is of enormous importance to be successful. As Psychologist Maryanne Fisher from the University of Saint Mary in Canada and their colleagues explain in recent research, a good perception of our value allows us to identify correctly the type of persons we should ideally have as partners. Everyone wants, even if unconsciously, to be with a partner of similar value as it multiplies the chances of success. If one party in the relationship feels there is an imbalance, there is a high risk that the higher value partner will sooner or later break up to find someone of higher value.
The first step to understand our perceived mate value is to go through each dimension of the famous Buss Partner Preference Scale and score ourselves in each one of them. Download below a spreadsheet worksheet in english with a canvas that you can use for the exercise as well as the list of dimensions.
You have to rate how much you think that you offer in each dimension from 0 (very little) to 10 (very much). After completing the rating, reflect on what you just wrote about how you perceive yourself. The list is:
- Attractiveness
- Emotional intelligence
- Being kind and a good person
- Cognitive intelligence
- Healthy
- Creative
- Easygoing
- Wants children
- Good education
- Good income
- Good genes
- Good housekeeping
- Religion, Spirituality and Life views
Once we have discovered our perceived value in each dimension, the second step is to ask one or more people you trust to rank you in those traits too, on their own without seeing your own previous scoring, or you can also write how you think that they view you. With both scores you can start comparing how you perceive yourself in the market and how others perceive you. If there is a great match, perfect. But maybe there are disconnections in some dimensions between how you perceive yourself and how others perceive you that are worth considering.
You can even take this exercise a little further by adding more options. A very interesting possibility is to score how you think current, past or even desired partners perceived you and how you perceived them. This can allow you to identify mismatches in past relationships that could have been the trigger for a breakup. Also, rating an ideal partner (not a perfect one) is very practical to gain awareness of where you want a desired partner to be strong and in which aspects you are willing to trade off a little bit more.
If you have performed the task, you have probably gained a clearer picture of how you value yourself and others. Sometimes just being more aware is valuable in itself and can help unblocking many issues, but in any case we will use the gained insights in the next strategies.
Strategy #2 Managing your perceived value
Dating and romance is a game of perceptions. We need to understand that although real mate value is important, the reality is that everyone has its own perception and evaluation. People are found attractive by some and not by others precisely because of their different perceptions.
So the second strategy consists of learning to control how others perceive your mate value in order to achieve the success you want in each situation. In general you should strive for matching the potential partner in the most important specific traits. If for example you think your partner is super intelligent and you are too, then you can display your capacities without fear. But if you think the person could feel intimidated, then level the field by being more careful and giving honest compliments to the strengths of the other person. If on the contrary you think the other person is more intelligent, then try to highlight or make visible other strengths of yours or show more aspects of your intelligence that the other person could value.
As we saw in the previous article of this series, studies have found that people have prejudices against super intelligent people, even if they are not true. And it does not only happen with IQ, it also happens with emotional intelligence. One study from the University of Western Australia found that the #1 reason against having a partner with an extremely high emotional IQ is that “I am not extremely emotionally intelligent” myself.
Use your strengths in your favor. Display them wisely, because not always more is better. Try to find someone with similar value across most traits and when you feel there is a small imbalance in a specific trait that you don’t think is too important, then take care of making the other person feel that secure and accepted. If you have a very high IQ or EQ, chances are that you will have to settle a little bit and be demanding with other traits. And if the difference is too big for your taste, then move on and search for a new person more equal.
Strategy #3 Raising your own real and self-perceived value
Once you have ranked yourself in each dimension of the mate preference scale, you should have acquired a better and more objective understanding of how you perceive yourself, how other people perceive you, and how you perceived former mates. The third strategy consists in raising the value, both the real value and the perceived value, you offer in any of the ranked dimensions that you would like to improve.
The first step is to take a look at the assessment and reflect on which dimensions are worth dedicating time and effort to improve. If you are in a committed relationship you could consider in which areas you do not think you are up to your partner as much as you would like. And if you are single, you could think about which improvements would be more valued by the opposite sex if you were to improve them.
The second step is to rank those dimensions you would like to improve by importance and also by the margin of improval that you think exists, as we cannot always realistically improve everything. The third and last step is to brainstorm and research through which activities you could improve the two or maximum three most critical-to-improve dimensions.
For example, let’s say that you ranked yourself low in creativity. Creativity is actually an important trait. Darwin discovered that music and rhythm play a role in attraction, not just in humans, but in many species like birds. What could you do to offer a partner more in that sense? There are many options. Perhaps you could join a dancing class or you could learn standup comedy and become funnier, perform theater to improve your social skills and emotional intelligence skills, learn how to play a musical instrument, or maybe just sing, write or draw. Try to find activities that you would enjoy and at the same time make you more appealing.
I promise you that if you work on the aspects that give you more value as a mate, you will increase your chances of finding an interesting partner, maybe even through the activities themselves. Also let us not forget that if you believe you have a higher value, you will probably be more proactive, less introverted and more open to new people.
Strategy #4 Reconsider which traits are important
The fourth strategy is reconsidering which traits are important and to what extent. Oftentimes we become fixated on a prototype or an ideal version of a partner that we wish to find, and therefore fail to give an option to persons that could actually have been a good fit. If you have completed the evaluation of past, present and ideal future partners in the dimensions of mate value, we can more easily start working on this.
Review the scores for each dimension given to your ideal partner. Now make yourself these questions. In which of them could you accept a lower score than the one you introduced first? Which are more tradable with other characteristics? Some of these features will be more deal-breakers for you than others, but at what level?
These reflections will make your tastes more flexible, especially in the beginning, and open yourself to more possibilities. Try to be specific in your scoring with examples of your reasoning. Let’s say for example that you are giving a lot of value to dressing style and you reject potential partners because of that, would it be wise to exchange it for creativity if an opportunity for that arose? Every person has their own taste, so you have to configure your own mix.
Lastly, take into account that it is easy to misjudge people in the beginning. Some things need time to become clearer. Like in the case of emotional intelligence, or the kindness of a person. These are not characteristics that are always obvious right away, so you should be both careful to not misjudge them too soon and be open to situations where their attractive power can play out. For example, when you arrive at a party, the only thing you know about new people is how attractive you find them at first sight, but after talking with them other characteristics will start also playing out like their personality.
Strategy #5 Rethinking your search strategy
When a person looking for a new relationship doesn’t find an interesting partner, it mainly has three search tactics at its disposal to achieve success according to a recent international study led by professor Peter Jonason from the italian University of Padua.
The first tactic, perhaps obvious, is lowering standards. Any person looking for a partner for a long time has been suggested this a thousand times: you are too picky! But it is usually not the best option, as studies have found that you are rejecting someone because you do not see balance, attraction or fit in the relationship. Lowering standards can very easily lead to dissatisfaction.
The second tactic is even more obvious, which is waiting. It may not seem like a tactic at all, but what if I were to tell you that waiting actually is one of the most important tactics to end up finding the person you really need? Rejecting and staying alone until you find someone worth it requires a great deal of courage and self-esteem, especially when everyone around you is pairing.
And what if I even tell you that people who value themselves highly have a stronger tendency to wait more for the right person? Well, that is exactly what the study from Prof. Jonason found: that higher self-perceived value persons do have a stronger tendency to wait more instead of compromising.
Maybe some of your friends were truly in love and were lucky to find their right partner soon, maybe some of them compromised more than you are aware. Of course, waiting carries a certain degree of risk, more important for women, which is that we all age, and our fertility after a certain age starts deteriorating. So what we recommend is combining the second tactic with the next third tactic.
The third tactic is one that is very well documented in animals, which is searching farther, in other places. In our opinion this is a great option if you do not want to stay just in a passive waiting mode -and it is the most preferred option by people when they have to choose between each option, according to the study- Are you in the right city where you can find the type of partner you are looking for? The right country? And do not interpret this tactic only geographically. Given your ideal partner scoring, in which places and activities could you more easily find someone like that? Think it through.
Before we finish
There is one last thing that it is important to add to the mix of strategies and knowledge that we have covered. You need to be aware that the way you perceive yourself and others will never be completely static. One day you will see yourself in a better light, another in a worse one. And that happens because our mate value self-perception is pretty dynamic. Researchers have indeed discovered that our mate value perception depends on the situations, places and people we are with.
If you go to a model contest, it will be normal to feel low in attractiveness by comparison, whereas in a group of friends that are not very attractive you will feel that you rank higher. Comparing ourselves is adaptive as it helps us assess our mate value in the specific moment, but it is highly important that an important part of your valuation derives from your own internal judgement and that you always have a good degree of self-appreciation.
Be aware of how the changing feelings and thoughts of how you evaluate yourself affect you. Recognize them when they arise and reassert to yourself your value independent of external circumstances. Also, think about your other traits and how they can help you be a desirable partner in the situation. And since what you definitely control the most is your behavior, being aware of your temporary feelings will help you to focus on your strengths on the situation, overcome the lows of that moment and have a chat with that cute journalist that sits behind you!
Now we have reached the end of the series about the relationship between intelligence and romantic life. We hope that it was a fun read and that you learned interesting stuff that can help you be more successful in your romantic life. And if you liked our article series, share it with any friend or family member that could like it and we recommend you to check our other articles about intelligence.
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