Ask HN: How should I find a wife?
Hello HN, for those who are already married, I'm curious how you would go about finding a wife if you had to do it again - I'm an American man in my late 20s/early 30s in a large city but any advice or suggestions you have I'd be interested in regardless of context.
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He has a systematic approach that is very much like a sales funnel. The idea is to maximize the number of people you date once, and thus increase your probability of finding someone who will be mutually compatible with you.
It is better to explain what exactly you find objectionable about the parent's comment.
> He has a systematic approach that is very much like a sales funnel.
The original question seems fundamentally different, and the results could dangerously differ from the desired, to the point of dropping everything and starting from scratch, including unlearning the approach.
It is important to have exposure to the opportunities, but comparing it to sales is really counterproductive. In case of sales one has a clear criteria for success, while in searching a person the process could be much more important.
The similarity to sales is just in increasing leads. He says that's often the primary hurdle people need to get over -- to take the pressure off and keep expectations low when taking someone out on a first date, and to have lots of "first dates" with lots of people, keeping a very open mind about the types you'll consider dating once.
Dating for me always had heavy emotional overtones and expectations, to the point where I felt like I had to have a "good sense" that someone was a potential good match before asking them on a date.
His framework was helpful to me because it was enabled me to start using my brain and thinking rationally (instead of emotionally) about the problem, and to lower the pressure and my own expectations about dating.
That being said, it would have been super helpful for me if there had been a book geared towards folks on the Aspergers/Autism spectrum explaining the unique pitfalls relationships can encounter when one person is on the spectrum... though I didn't know I was on the spectrum at the time.
I don't mean anything like "being monogamous is difficult" what I mean is mentally there's a shift involved as you progress, and the relationship is as much a function of what you put into it as what the other person is providing you. If you're in "evaluating your partner mode" perpetually, you'll never get to the next stage.
Or something like that.
Unless you consider a wife as purely a business partner with concrete common goals in mind.
This sounds cheesy but its true nonetheless - don’t go from your mind (he is always looking for more and always unsatisfied), go from your heart.
On the technical side - i’d just expose myself more to various social contexts, would be more proactive in starting meaningful conversations, would take more responsibility for the interaction (not for control over other party’s reactions), would say no more often, would believe in myself more and trusted my intuition, would waste less time just trying to get laid.
1) Meet people doing hobbies/outside of work activities (You take art classes at the local community college, meet a nice girl, etc)
2) Meet people through dating sites (match.com, tinder, etc)
3) Meet people through friends (Your friend has game night at their house, invites a single girl, you two hit it off)
Good approach. In general, finding people like the original question suggests is a lot of work.
> 2) Meet people through dating sites (match.com, tinder, etc)
A great deal of work and patience - with no guarantees - but for some this could be preferable. Still, I'd hesitate recommending this.
> 3) Meet people through friends (Your friend has game night at their house, invites a single girl, you two hit it off)
Might bring good results, but you have to have good friends - both a lot of them, and those should have those required connections in society. Develop this even if it won't bring you to the main goal, the secondary goals are still worthy.
https://www.thesun.ie/fabulous/6112479/covid-sex-positions-l...
1. What is your long-term objective for marriage? If the answer does NOT include "successfully raise well-adjusted children in a 2-parent household", then don't even waste your time with a marriage. It's an unnecessary legal entanglement if you just want to bang someone and hang out with them for a few decades.
2. Before digging deeper into your wife search, maximize your own attractiveness. This requires a serious period of introspection and self-improvement to correct deficiencies both in character and in physical appearance. There's plenty of solid "manosphere" content on the subject. Try to avoid most of the PUA psychology stuff, except for: tips on overcoming "approach anxiety", "maintaining frame", "abundance mentality", and avoiding "pedestalization".
3. If you are decently attractive, decently charismatic, and in an above-average economic bracket (let's just say debt-free and ~$75k+ annual income), understand that in the GLOBAL dating pool, you are holding the cards. YOU are the commodity. You are the one screening an abundance of applicants for the job position of "spouse", looking to disqualify the bulk of them. So get the fuck out of the United States and date internationally. Especially outside of "the West". It's really not THAT hard to find a woman who is moderately cute, not annoying, with sufficient domestic skills to maintain a household, and a consistently-loving demeanor to take the lead on childrearing. Which leads to my next point:
4. What kind of women are you physically attracted to? The US is a nation of immigrants. It's best to "go to the source" to get the pure uncut product, so-to-speak. If you like blondes, move to Scandinavia to wife-hunt. You like Latin women? Move to Colombia or Chile. "Lightskin" Asians? I would say Japan, but this place is essentially locked down due to COVID..."Darkskin" Asians? Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam. Black women? Don't date an African-American woman (binge watch some Kevin Samuels videos on YT to see why), go get a proper African from Kenya or Tanzania. Etc, etc....
5. Once you are in your target market, leverage benign social circle activities. English-language meetups, coffee shops, local guy friends (don't have some? make some), religious institutions if you are into that. Do NOT wife-hunt on Tinder/Bumble unless you are extremely adept at sniffing out women trying to take advantage of you. Swipe dating is fine if you just need to get some exercise in the bedroom but I generally discourage treating any of those connections as serious long-term prospects.
6. I suppose some of this is dependent on YOUR character and what you like, but I'd screen women based on their family background (are her parents still happily married? ), psychological issues, alcohol/drug abuse, previous relationships (if any), etc... basically disqualify anyone who looks like they might be damaged goods, excessively emotional, unpredictable, etc... When things get serious, definitely get to know her parents if possible.
7. Never repatriate your new spouse back to the United States. Removing them from the family and culture that turned them into such a quality wife undermines all of your efforts. The culture AND the legal framework in the US are toxic and destructive. Keep in mind that ~50% of marriages end in divorce, ~70% of those divorces are initiated by the female, and divorce court will absolutely demolish you with alimony and/or child support payments. NEVER give the US legal system, combined with a woman's whims, the opportunity to fuck your life up.
Good luck/happy hunting! Enjoy the process!
dons flamesuit (IME no-BS dating advice for men on HN is rarely well-received)
> If the answer does NOT include "successfully raise well-adjusted children in a 2-parent household", then don't even waste your time with a marriage.
A good counter argument could be - what if your plans could change? Should you keep this change of plans possible?
> You are the one screening an abundance of applicants for the job position of "spouse", looking to disqualify the bulk of them.
Don't forget the rather plausibly-looking model when the better you are, the higher bar you have to satisfy you, so of course you'll have to disqualify the discouraging bulk and be left with the pool smaller and harder the more achieving you are.
> Never repatriate your new spouse back to the United States.
If you're planning to live in US, this advice may cost you dearly. A woman disconnected from her roots and struggling to find her new place in society is something I wouldn't recommend to be near as the cause of issues.
A multi-year dating period is advisable. Definitely don't RUSH into popping out babies, but don't wait too long either. That's a difficult needle to thread. But I would think figuring out whether to propagate your genes in an supportive social construct, or not, is something a man has figured out by his early 30's.
>>>Don't forget the rather plausibly-looking model when the better you are, the higher bar you have to satisfy you
Hence why knowing YOURSELF is so important in mate-hunting. A high-flying extrovert might require a dime-piece social butterfly "trophy wife" as essential for impressing his peers, and needs that external validation. YMMV. But IME men "date down" to an adequate woman far far more than women do, so guys insisting on ONLY the absolutely cream of the cream for a spouse are an outlier, and unlikely to be seriously getting advice on HN for that search.
>>>A woman disconnected from her roots and struggling to find her new place in society is something I wouldn't recommend to be near as the cause of issues.
Exactly. Actually a former fling of mine was in just such a situation. Spent years in the Atlanta suburbs a bored housewife. She couldn't work because they didn't have a second car. She felt so isolated and useless that she divorced her husband and moved back to Japan. Now she's 40 and wondering why nobody here wants a serious relationship. shrug
I mean, when you say stuff like
> don't date African-American women
> find a wife outside The West with good domestic skills
> don't repatriate your spouse
It's hard to take your overall advice seriously, even if some of it (like not needing to get legally married). It seems more like you're looking for a servant than a partner, and it's very "trad-wife" esque.
>>> like you're looking for a servant than a partner
Who is more the servant, the adult who has the option to spend an entire day inside a physically-secure domicile, or the adult who risks death stepping outside the home 5 days per week (men make up 90% of workplace fatalities, and simply commuting to work on US roadways is a high risk activity)?
We recognize that labor specialization and comparative advantage are some of the most basic and powerful amplifiers of efficiency in an economy. Why would we not apply the same principles to our own household?
Or we can keep doing what we are doing, listening to the advice of charlatans [1]. That has led to women on anti-depressants [2], women unhappy [3][4], single parent (overwhelmingly single mother) homes [5] producing higher rates of maladjusted children [6], and a slew of other issues. Who paid for Cosmo to publish trash for decades? Qui bono? Maybe the same people who leveraged Edward Bernays to get men to buy diamonds? Why would we blindly embracing nerfing the efficiency of the economic and social construct that directly benefits us the most (the family unit)? Meanwhile the richest ~500 FAMILIES in the US are basically robbing the rest of us blind.
>>>it's very "trad-wife" esque
Sure, and it may be strange to those living in the West, but outside the West, "trad-wife" is rather popular with women. Hence why I would overwhelming encourage American men to abandon the US dating market and find what they are looking for elsewhere.
[1] https://www.suzannevenker.com/the-suzanne-suzanne-venker-sho...
[2] https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/09/04/Antidepressant-us...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-...
[4] https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel...
[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-childre...
[6] https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/the-real-c...
While I'm not sure that I agree with you in general, you are absolutely right about this. My Russian (girl)friends won't stop going on about how sorry they feel for the poor career oriented western women wasting their lives at the office working for someone else, when they could instead be working on their family.
It's not like these girls are lazy either, many of them work full time to look beautiful. A fair bargain for many husbands.
But I guess westerners are likely to view this either as abusive or transactional, not a healthy relationship. They'd be wrong though.
Edit: However we were friends for a long time after that and ended up just giving it a shot. We were not dating for long (3 months) when she became pregnant and we married.
I just went about with my life and a wife suddenly appeared. (To be fair, first she was just a girl, then a friend, then a girlfriend and then a wife).
You can increase the probability that a wife appears in much the same way catch new pokemon, by moving around, even if you're just moving between the same two tiles.
So, to repeat what everyone else said, don't be hunting, and don't worry about it, enjoy your life and be social in situations where you feel comfortable.
It doesn't always turn out easily for people, though. I had been wanting to marry for several years before I finally met the woman I married.
I agree, though, that meeting people in low-pressure social contexts is the best way forward.