How to crush a woman's dreams

Here is a maxim which some may regard as controversial, although it really isn't. Men who want a strong and lasting long-term relationship should crush a woman's dreams without hesitation, if those dreams are not entirely consistent with her primary role as a wife and mother.

There are four reasons for this. The first, and most important, is that in most cases, a woman's dreams are ephemeral and therefore irrelevant in the long term. They are seldom more serious than the child's dreams to become a wizard or a dinosaur. How can we know this is the case? Because what a woman wants - or rather, thinks she wants - changes on a regular basis. Never forget that women are extraordinarily dynamic beings. Every woman I knew in high school and college swore up and down that she didn't want to have children. Every single one. All of them that are married, as well as some who are not, have children now. The rest wish they did. Most of the married, but childless, working women I knew said that they wanted to continue working after they had children. Only about half of them returned to their jobs and most of those who still work wish they didn't need to do so. Women don't have dreams the way that men have goals and objectives, they tend to be more akin to daydreams or romantic fantasies.

Second, most women's dreams are entirely incompatible with what society actually needs them to do. The West will survive without more female scientists, engineers, social workers, and bureaucrats. It will not survive without more wives and mothers. There is literally nothing that a woman can do that is more important than having and raising children, since everything else men can do, and in most cases can do better.

Third, if one looks beneath the surface description of female dreams, ninety percent of what women say they dream about doing involves little more than putting them in a position where they can expect to have the opportunity of sex with a certain type of alpha. That's not to say they don't genuinely enjoy the comedy skits, the ear-tagging, or the big city life, but at the end of the day, it is sex with the dominant men in those environments that harbors the deeper appeal for them. The woman who dreams of being an archeologist probably has a genuine interest in archeology, but she is usually less interested in archeology qua digging up ancient artifacts than she is in the requisite affair with the handsome, world-famous archeologist in an exotic locale. We saw this in the martial arts all the time. Put a woman in a dojo and she'll be having sex with one of the black belts within weeks. The same thing holds true with tennis instructors, workout trainers, divemasters, golf instructors and so forth, which is why it's considered one of the important perks of the job in those otherwise poorly compensated professions.

Fourth, women tend to like the idea much better than the reality. Like the pretentious guys who hang out in coffee shops and put ten times the effort into telling you about the book they are writing than they do into actually writing anything, it is the feeling of the journey that is the point rather than the arrival at the destination. And this leads us to how a man can completely crush a woman's dreams while still managing to come off as the good guy.

I once read a book review of Hillary Clinton's book, Living History, in which the reviewer made use of what he admitted to be the sadistically cruel tactic of quoting the author literally and in full. I mention this because the best way to convince a woman to abandon her dream is not to argue with her, to attempt to reason her out of it, or even to oppose it in any way, but rather to back her dream to the hilt with manic enthusiasm. Think Janice helping Chandler go to Yemen on Friends. If a woman speaks yearningly of her desire to vaccinate poor children in Mozambique, contact an aid foundation, offer to help her fill out the application, make an appointment for all the vaccinations, and tell her it's a great idea for her to spend the entire summer in Africa since you're going to be watching the World Cup anyhow. If she talks about wanting to attend comedy school, sign her up for a local stand-up show and make handouts to give to all her friends and family. If she says she wants to be a writer, buy her a thesaurus and offer to hold her accountable to a daily word count.

In short, call her dream with cheerful and over-the-top abandon. In most cases, she'll begin to hate the idea within a few weeks, quietly drop it, and get angry with you if you so much as mention it to her again. Don't rub it in, just let her drop it and be careful not to get caught up in Male Objective Syndrome and actually put her on the plane to Yemen; remind yourself that she doesn't really want to go. And on the off-chance that she's serious about wanting to devote her fertile years to studying ear mites that are only found in a certain species of fruit bat in Madagascar, the sooner you find that out and move on to someone else who actually wants to spend her life with you and bear your children, the better.