Women Settle for Jerks for One Simple Reason

I’ll never forget the time I fell for a neg. It was almost fatal. If you don’t know, neg is pick-up slang for a backhanded compliment.

The guy strolled up to me at the end of a conference and started critiquing my presentation. I started to shut down when he told me how much potential I had, if I could “just work on some things.” Walking off, he turned around and said sarcastically, “Good luck landing a job.”

I didn’t take it very well.

It had been a long day filled with micro-aggresions, like people interrupting my conversations and asking me to throw away their trash.

He sent me an apology later, through a mutual friend. He admitted being attracted to me — and intimidated. He admitted wanting to take me down a peg, then ask me out. Then he asked me out.

I said yes. We wound up dating for a year.

Stupid, I know.

Society tears women (and men) down all the time.

So many guys scratch their heads and wonder why women always date such jerks. The answer is simple:

Women fall for jerks because they have low self-esteem. They think they don’t deserve better.

Take any attractive, sophisticated woman. You don’t see it, but she navigates judgment every single day. She deals with a hundred little paper cuts to her self-esteem and sense of intrinsic worth.

So do a lot of men.

They’re constantly reminded of how they don’t fit the alpha male profile. If you’ve ever spotted a girl with a guy who seems way out of her league, that’s part of the equation. She’s working him into little frenzies of self-doubt. He doesn’t show it because men are supposed to act ultra confident. Deep inside, he also thinks he can’t do any better.

Every day, ads and entertainment tell us we’re not smart enough, thin enough, or perky enough to have what we want. Women get a double helping of this noise. Whatever she earns, she works twice as hard for. She doesn’t complain about any of this, because she knows it makes people uncomfortable. She knows it backfires.

Most women make conscious decisions about what to speak up about, and what to let slide. If they pointed out every single instance of sexism, some dude would accuse them of talking too much.

Jerks prey on women’s insecurities.

There’s a special brand of predator out there. You know him as the jerk. Women know him by lots of different names. He sniffs a woman to find her carefully-concealed insecurities.

He preys on her.

He chisels away at her confidence. He becomes the dad she could never please, or the brother she was always taking care of. Meanwhile, he drives away any guy who might be good for her. He questions her choice in friends and refuses to socialize with them.

He blows up at the slightest provocation. He has meltdowns. He makes himself the new center of her world. His behavior compounds her insecurities. She becomes addicted to trying to make him happy.

She fails.

It takes a while to see what’s happening.

My friends were relieved when I finally dumped my jerk. For a year, he micro-cheated on me while accusing me of infidelity. He stirred up drama with my social circles. He fished for compliments constantly. He corrected me on topics he knew nothing about.

He called my career cute.

He referred to me as an amateur in front of his friends. One day he flat out announced that he was smarter than me.

Looking back, I can honestly say I stayed with him so long because I thought he was the best I could do.

Then one day I found out I could do better. A guy I found incredibly attractive starting flirting with me — no negs.

He asked me out.

I said yes. The next day, I dumped my jerk.

I felt like I’d broken a spell.

Women have to develop super confidence.

When we talk about confidence, we don’t really talk about the extra layer women have to develop.

We’re talking about the kind of confidence that can handle stalkers, incels, death threats, and constant demeaning. We’re talking about entire podcasts dedicated to shredding outspoken women down to their last atom. We’re talking about men who can’t just disagree with a woman. They have to destroy her. On top of that, every inch of pop culture constantly whispers to women, you’re not enough.

Jerks just love this.

Social media does half their job for them.

Women who don’t develop an extra layer of confidence become victims. They wind up falling for jerks and losers — like I did.

If you don’t want women to date jerks, build up their confidence.

Men in successful relationships know what I’m talking about. They don’t pile on their wives and girlfriends. They compliment their personality and their intelligence, not just their looks.

They share an actual life together, not just sex.

Everyone knows that one guy who says he just wants a smart, attractive girlfriend with a sense of humor.

You know what he really means. He wants a babe who listens to his bro philosophy, reads every book he recommends, and laughs at his jokes. He can’t handle women with real confidence.

He needs to learn how.

Men don’t have to be the best at everything.

Guys in successful relationships know this.

But some guys still think they need to be superior to their partner. They have to be the smart one, the funny one.

Years ago, I read a story by a woman who landed her dream job as a screenwriter in New York. She made enough money to buy a $400 pair of shoes. She wore the shoes on a date.

The guy was not pleased. Somehow he was able to sense the cost of her entire outfit, including the shoes. He tried to top her by ordering incredibly expensive wine and dessert.

They wound up back at her apartment, kissing. They were moving toward sex, but then he stopped.

He couldn’t stop staring at her shoes.

Finally, he picked one up and started groping it. He turned and asked her, “How much did you spend on these shoes?”

She told him.

Instead of shrugging it off, he fell back on the couch and starting talking about how he couldn’t afford her. She was too high-maintenance for him. She was out of his league. He sighed.

And just like that, the mood was roadkill. And it was his fault, for being so insecure and standoffish around a smart, talented woman who could’ve made a fantastic partner for him.

We need to build up men’s confidence, too.

Part of the problem is that many men feel that if they can’t be the smart one, the funny one, or the one with all the money, then they don’t have anything to offer a woman. That’s not true.

This is another set of lies society dumps on us, that makes it harder for us to have meaningful relationships.

Once a woman has her confidence, she needs to start building up the confidence of her partner.

We assume men just have confidence.

A lot of them don’t. Their confidence is often based on extrinsic qualities like how much they paid for their watch.

Some guys have even confessed to me that they find it difficult to date women who disagree with them, hold advanced degrees, or make them second guess their own intelligence.

Some men even find it difficult to have female friends or colleagues who are attractive, but also more successful than them. They’ll mention it, and then say it doesn’t bother them. I always wonder. If it didn’t bother them, why are they even bringing it up?

Self-esteem makes for good dating material.

A lot of men aren’t sexist. They’re just insecure. Society leads them to believe they have to be Elon Musk, Clint Eastwood, and Brad Pitt wrapped up in one deluxe bundle. They go almost as nuts as women do trying to live up to ridiculous expectations.

They think if they’re not cut from the cloth of a Nicholas Sparks novel, then they have to settle. Or they think they have to knock women down a peg and berate them to stand a chance.

Let’s all stop feeding off each other’s self-esteem issues.

Let’s all stop trying to compensate for not living up to expectations based on fictional characters, and celebrities who can’t even live up to their own image.

Let’s build up our partners instead of tearing them down.

That would be a great start.