Self-Selection: Abusees Wanted

I have a theory about guys who are rude right from the very first email/chat/date. You know, the types who swear at women, criticize their figures, command them to obey them, etc. They might not be as dumb a signal-giver as one might think. In fact, maybe they want to scare the good ones away and quickly identify the ones who are willing to take their crap. If she takes it, then it’s a deal!

Think about it. If a guy is an abusive asshole with nothing to offer but harsh words and a pair of fists, he will be looking for women with low self-esteem who won’t leave him when he treats her poorly. He’s in the market for a punching bag, and a woman with high confidence just won’t cut it. His rudeness right from the start is an attempt to make the potential abusees self-select themselves. So next time a man started testing out the water by being rude, there’s no need to be nice and civilized - just run!

Set-up Cost: The Bold Girl and the Shy Boy

Have you even seen a bold girl sucking up to a shy boy and wondered why? This can be explained with set-up cost.

It is a common marketing technique for businesses to get people to get hooked in to their products using free samples (beauty creams), cheaper initial costs (low rates for the first three months / zero down payment), attractive freebies (“Free phone upon the signing of contract”), and the lack of hassle (“We’ll tell your old phone company for you.”). What they’re doing is effectively lowering the set-up cost of their potential customers. It might be a sweet deal in the beginning, but they’ll get you later - once you’re nice and settled in.

Now imagine if a not-so-nice-girl is looking for a sucker to mooch off of. She is looking for someone financially successful enough to mooch off, but who lacks the social skills to pursue a girl on his own. In other words, the shy, nerdy, faint-at-the-sight-of-girls type. Now, since he’s shy, all she had to do is to be aggressive and actively pursue him.

Usually, such a guy would have to get over his painful shyness and pluck up the courage to ask a girl out. That is a high set-up cost indeed. But in this case, the not-so-nice-girl is making it easy for him by lowering his set-up cost. The shy guy can not believe his incredible luck. So he enters into the arrangement because it is easy, then stays because he is afraid of incurring new set-up cost in the quest for a genuine girl. Through his lack of experience, he might even think that’s all there is out there.

And here lies the sad double-whammy of being shy: missing out on the nice girls, and attracting the wrong type who wants free dinners.

Assertiveness coaching, anyone?

Entry Deterrence: Might It Be High for the Not-Meant-To-Be’s Part 3 of 3

Continuing...

Example 2: This one is for the guys. On some dating sites, the males have to pay to join, but it’s free for females (those are also the same sites that take no time to set up an account, but get tons of players). For the guys who are looking for a long-term relationship, they should go for the sites where both genders have to pay. If a girl chooses to pay when she didn’t have to, then it’s more likely she’s looking for someone serious. The willingness to pay the cost of entry deterrence sends a strong signal to the market.

A friend of mine went on a date with a woman who asked him for money to fix her car after just two dates. Upon close examination, he noticed that her profile was very hastily put together and her requirements were generalized to the bare bone (“I’m into men aged nineteen to ninety five, from underweight to overweight...”). She probably had a whole bunch of profiles opened up, ready to snare unsuspecting men. So beware!

Example 3: As money and time-saving a Las Vegas drive-thru wedding is, there are real solid reasons why planning for a traditional one could be beneficial. Wedding preparation is an extremely stressful process, and it serves as the perfect entry deterrence for those who really shouldn’t get married to each other at all.

Putting a wedding together requires a lot of team effort (“You stop me from strangling the cake decorator, and I’ll prevent you from hitting the limo driver over the head with a frying pan”) and compromises (“Fine, no exotic flowers for desserts, but no Imperial March for the grand entrance either”). It’s also a time when the cracks on a person’s facade really show (“I had no idea she could go this crazy when she doesn’t get her way 100%/ OMG he’s such an attention whore that he requires his own make-up assistants to follow him around!”)

I even heard of a case about a couple who disagreed over the pre-nup so much that they decided not to get married (“I had no idea that cheating was acceptable in his mind and he didn’t want it to be used as a breach of contract”). These kinds of discoveries are exactly the type that people should make before the wedding. The ensuing fights help weed out the ill-matched couples who are doomed before they even started. So let them fight away! Better now than after the “I do”s!

Entry Deterrence: Might It Be High for the Not-Meant-To-Be’s Part 2 of 3

In my last post I talked about examples of when it might be just as well that the couples didn’t end up together. Those freak accidents served as very good tests to determine the couples’ chances of survival in a long-term relationship. In another word, everything worked out exactly as it was meant to. Or not meant to.

In economics, these obstacles are called Entry Deterrence. Basically, it’s a cost barrier to entering a market. For certain large corporations, it could be a license fee set up by the government, or buying an expensive piece of equipment, or the financial ability to stomach a predatory price war. For small businesses, it could be the little guy’s ability to pay a good lawyer, or the initial investment of the time and effort to set things up.

This entry deterrence is generally a one-time deal, with smooth sailing thereafter. But the deterrence is high enough to scare many dreamers away. That’s why the world is full of people who are all about the “coulda, woulda, shoulda.” They can dream, they can see the smooth sailing part of those who succeeded and say “I’ve coulda done that”, but it’s the entry deterrence that they’re either unable or unwilling to pay that stopped them.

I’m proposing here that entry deterrence, as long as it’s not overly harsh, is actually good in a dating market. Here’s why.

Example 1: On some dating sites, it takes five seconds to set up a profile. On other sites, you have to fill out a long questionnaire that asks you tons of details about yourself. It could take a person hours to answer everything, from your relationship with family members, to long term career aspirations.

Now, which site would a player go on, if all he wants to say is: “Lookin 2 play 2nite, r u interested?” And which site should someone who’s looking for a long term relationship go on? In this case, the long questionnaire serves as entry deterrence and helps to eliminate the non-serious applicants. In this age of twitter pickups in less than 140 characters, who would spend hours setting up a profile for quickies?

(continued in my next post...)

Entry Deterrence: Might It Be High for the Not-Meant-To-Be’s Part 1 of 3

As a teenage girl I’d read a lot of love stories about couples who ended up not being together because of some form of freak miscommunication. Like, they promised to meet up at Times Square but a car accident made him late, and they missed each other by a hair (he ran there in rags and on crutches as fast as he could). Or, his letter to her got lost during the war and she thought he’d dumped her and so she married someone else. Or, he was really into her but too shy to speak up, and his best friend got there first...

I know, I know, running to Times Square in rags and on crutches, cliché much? Hey, I was a dramatic teenager entitled to a healthy dose of angst. What, you think past generations of teenagers didn’t have angst before Bella? I was going through a tragic romance phase, I think.

When I was reading those stories, I always felt so bad for the main protagonists. But now that I’m older, I’m not as sympathetic to them as I once was. If he won’t get over his nervousness and go ask the girl to dance, he shouldn’t go blame anyone else if she gets spoken for. If a guy promises you the moon then misses one date, shouldn’t you at least give him a call to check if he’s dead in a ditch somewhere before writing him off? If it’s war time and he knows that the postal service is not exactly reliable (you know, air raids and all), shouldn’t he write another letter if he got no response? Shouldn’t she?

Real-life relationships take patience, work, persistence, nurturing, and a go-getter attitude

(that applies to everything in life, really). Even if by some luck the fictional couples get married, their flaws would’ve crept up later on in life anyways. For example:

-A person who gives up too easily might do the same when it comes to setting boundaries for their children, or fighting to keep their house from foreclosure.

-A person who’s poor with communication might also neglect to tell you about his prescription drugs addiction / credit card debt / expired car insurance.

-A person who misplaces his trust in the postal service might also be hiring the wrong plumber, or worse, the wrong financial adviser.

-And if he’s too nervous to talk to the girl in question, he might also be too scared to make a career leap, or say no to his mother.

(continued in my next post...)