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By Root 384 0

that. Researchers can literally chart on a graph the values that people place on various qualities, and despite our complexities as individuals, most of dating can be boiled down to a stunningly simple list of attributes. In broad terms, a woman’s market value is dependent on her fecundity and attractiveness, while men are judged based on their earning potential and their commitment. It may seem entirely too simplistic to reduce dating to these criteria. After all, each of us has many more individual preferences. In general, though, these few variables are the key determinants of market value. In one study of lonely hearts ads in four major newspapers, the ads offered a perfect confirmation of this market-based approach. The older the women were, the less demanding they became in their advertisements. The higher a woman rated herself in terms of attractiveness, the higher the demands she made in her ad. Men who claimed to have greater resources were also more demanding, while men with fewer resources offered more commitment. I don’t think we go around with well-defined market values in our head as we search for a mate. But I do think that, over time, our dating experiences gives us a sense of our worth, and we naturally gravitate to people of similar market value. In other words, I’m not saying that we fall in love with someone just because we think we are getting fair value for our own appeal; rather, our sense of our own appeal predisposes us to fall in love with someone of similar market value.

Although most people I interviewed were understandably hesitant to confess to such crass calculations, almost everyone admitted that marketlike thinking shaped his or her own approach to dating whether that was by listening to a friend arguing “that you could do better” or not approaching someone because he or she was “out of my league.” One woman even confessed that she made a regular assessment of the “breakup value” of the relationship after it ended. She would inventory all the gifts she had received, tote up their value, and decide if the compensation “had made it worth the effort or not.”

Despite the stigma associated with a market-oriented approach, one woman was an exuberant practitioner of market-style negotiations when it came to dating. As an MBA student, she was given a certain number of points each semester to bid for a place in popular classes. One semester, she blew her entire allotment to get into a class on negotiation, which was either a sign of her passion for the subject or a recognition of an abject lack of negotiating skills. The next semester, she immediately used what she learned in her dating. She was taught to analyze what the best alternative was to what she was offering and then work to weaken that alternative at the same time that she strengthened her position. In her own case, she found herself interested in a man who already had a girlfriend. So, she set about pointing out all the ways that his current girlfriend fell short. To increase her own appeal, she engaged in a variety of tactics to make herself seem more desirable. She flirted with other men in front of him and talked to him about their interest in her. She also downplayed her own career ambitions, which she feared would be a stumbling block. Finally, after softening him up, she brought him to the table and negotiated explicitly with him, noting all the reasons a relationship with her would benefit him and putting the squeeze on him by saying that she was going to move on if he was not ready to commit. Romantic? No. Effective? Yes. They are currently dating. Regardless of whether or not they stay together, I think it is safe to say that she is a woman who will go far. I’m not suggesting that everyone should start treating dating like haggling for a used car, but I do hope you find it reasonably convincing that the principles of the market can be applied to the world of dating.

If you accept that the logic of the market also rules the dating world to some extent, you can map out all of your moves according to one simple guideline.