- You can date a girl from the city, the suburbs or the countryside.
- You can date an uneducated person, a modestly educated person or an educated person.
If there was a quadrant that mixes these two variables and if you were to run a regression on this, I would speculate that country girls who are educated have give the highest marital happiness. Conversely city girls who are uneducated result in unions that yield the least life satisfaction. Granted these are only two variables, however, I think based on the logical arguments below you would see a correlation.
This is not just because I married an educated village girl, but observed in my life experience. I have seen more successful marriages from people who are not ‘street smart’, but rather embedded with the wisdom of the countryside.
Every generalization is a distortion of the truth
Rene Descartes
I would say ignore this advice if it does not apply to your current situation.
Universals when looking for a mate
Modern thinking is dominate by the idea that subjectivity is the only way:
- In economics, we see a subjectivity in value, Léon Walras, and Carl Menger and William Stanley Jevons.
- In Philosophy existentialists like Sartre emphasized a subjective phenomenology.
- Psychology is science with a post-enlightenment bias on the individual.
- In art, modern art, pop art and digital art with shock value has more notoriety en masse than the classics of then Raphael, Lippi, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Giorgione
- And in relationships it all depends on what you personally emphasis in your life.
That being said, consider the idea that there are some universals when looking for a mate and ideas that make a marriage happier. Subjective thinking where ‘up is down and down is up’, will lead you to unhappiness when choosing a life partner if you are not careful.
That is because there is something in the hard wiring of the human brain which came about through the process of evolution that influences our happiness when choosing a mate.
We evolved over a million years in the wild. For most of human existence people were hacking their way in the wilderness and burying their dead along the way.
- Now we live in some strange surreal fishbowl of metropolis what we can not unplug from.
As a side note, I acknowledge the paradox that most of us, including myself, go fishing in the fishbowl of the city rather than going for rustic wild caught beauties.
However, I think happiness is often connected with people who at least grew up in isolation from, rather than emerged in the mass of humanity. Granted you can find people who are isolated in the city and people who live in online metropolises like Facebook despite a rural location. However, my point is I think isolation is a positive thing when a person is developing their character during their youth, and this is connected to a demographic of growing up in a less populated area.
Values that work for me in marriage
The mirror of my own life are values connected to self sufficiency, e.g. Henry David Thoreau, Romanticism which is connected to rebellion ( I can count on my left hand the numbers of years I lived 9 to 5) but also nature and transcendence (for me religion), education which is connected to my appreciation of liberal arts and a classical education.
If you come from a different reality, perhaps you want to date street smart city slickers but at least consider my ideas here.
Values of the countryside
I naturally gravitate to people that are self-sufficient, romantic, unconventional and rustic. I married someone like this. The skills she posses are almost in her genes. You either grew up with an appreciation for them or you do not.
My wife Kasia:
- Cooks (in fact she is cooking now as I am writing, 100% from scratch, she bakes her own bread. I feel like I live like a king)
- Sews
- Frugal with money
- Gardens, organic. I can watch scores of videos and read books but somehow she knows more than me.
- Attends service weekly
- Tutors our daughter for hours a day
- Basically does everything we lived 100 years ago.
- We have all the modern convinces, yet there is some instinctual drive to be master primitive technology see end product to work done, rather than be a paper pusher.
- We do not feel like optimizing consumption is synonymous with optimizing life happiness.
These are the values that come from a small village. It would be hard to educate them into someone.
I want to qualify the terms here. When I mean someone from the countryside I do not mean currently living in the countryside. I mean someone who grew up in a particular demographic concentration. That is, someone who grew up in the countryside and lives in the city I would still consider them a country person, because, the first twenty years of life shape and mold your outlook.
I have experience and perspective: City versus Country
My experience is based on this:
- I was born in Philadelphia
- I grew up in New England
- I worked professionally in NYC and Boston
- I traveled reasonable part of the world
- I lived in a city in Eastern Europe
- My family is from a small village in Eastern Europe
- I live in a town in Florida which is being transformed overnight from a small town to a large, but I still have a hamlet here I call my own.
- I also teach college. I have exposure to countless college-age students and can see their behavior, work habits, attitudes, intellectual skill and even mortality.
Without doing a deep dive into the academic literature, and I may be proven wrong if I did, based on anecdotal life experience, people in the city tend to be more players as they have more options. People who at least grew up in the countryside, in a village or a town with limited options were protected from the corruption of society.
The world is changing but not to the end. If I were to go to the village of my family in Eastern Europe, the values are still different than Anytown, USA. Similarly, when I talk to girls from Kansas they are different when I talk to girls from Long Island. Where you grow up matters. Where your grows up matters for your personal happiness.
Avengers Villains from the village vs Human City dwellers
Let me tell you a story
I was standing in line at Walmart next to a couple that like they could have been in some Netflix originals cops and robbers show or some comic book movie like Vampirella or Shazam, as the villains. Yet, when I started to talk to them they were living in the county in the countryside and we started to exchanging gardening growing tips. They were calm, warm peaceful people. They were charming.
In contrast, I come across snow bird’s or corporate consulting types from metropolises up North, for example, Long Island. New Jersey, Cities in Ohio here on vacation in Florida. They consistently rub me the wrong way. Even if they are cloaked in the latest fashions I always feel discombobulated after a brief conversation and have to burn incense or something to get their energy off me.
My point being, even in a cordial conversation with someone it can be seen that how and where they grew up makes a difference. Therefore, forget who you are standing in line next to at the , who do you want to live with for the next fifty plus years? A wrong choice, and a small, subtle difference extrapolated out over time could pull you to the dark side. You can not deny that there is a different vibe from metros than from the farmer’s daughter.
More Positive generalizations about the Farmer’s daughter
Perhaps this does not play as strong as a role in the current era as technology has broken down a lot of boundaries. However, there are more variables than just exposure to the Internet.
- Girls in the countryside attend church more
- Girls in the countryside have their immediate family and extended family in close proximity to watch over deviant behavior
- Girls in the village have a calmness because of the fresh oxygen content and low noise pollution and traffic. Life seems to move at a slower pace. Try going hiking in the mountains all day and see if you are as irritable as when you come home from your commute. Extrapolate that out over time and a habit is formed.
Try this experiment yourself, to test women in the city versus county
Women from the countryside greet you with a smile while the city slickers often meet you with cynicism. You do not have to fly across the globe to test this.
- Go to a store like Tractor Supply or your local feed store and chat with some people.
- Next, go to the nearest large metro area near you and see the vibes you get. It does not even have to be a posh store like Anne Talyor where moneyed girls hang out, rather, any store will do.
- Take a reasonable sample of women or people.
- Analysis your results and draw your own conclusions.
College students show the same patterns
Even with students, you get some co-ed from small-town Georgia whose daddy is a corn farmer, and they are universality syrupy in a positive way. In contrast, the city girls seem to know it all. I may be wrong but this is the way I see it.
If you are looking for college-age girls, consider where they grew up.
If you talking about a girl from another country I would use a coefficient when analyzing this and some logarithmic adjustments. That is, if you date a Ukrainian girl from Lviv, this would be equivalent to a home schooled girl in Nebraska.
I really need to create a formula for this dating equation. – Mark Biernat
Let me know in the comments if you think that would be a good idea.
Marry a Renaissances Peasant
The value of education was articulated in a previous post. Education and Marriage Success
However, one thing I want to convey, is being with an unrefined mind can be boring as their ability to navigate and analysis complex issues will depress you. So yes country is good, but not country music type country, rather renaissance peasant type country. Someone who would have an organic garden but can speak another language and will listen to classical music or read classic literature or speculate as you look at the night sky.
You want to find a normal inquisitive girl like this:
Or a intellectual living in romantic isolation like this:
See the best combination is countryside, romantic beauty with intelligence. I am not condemning people because they live or lived in a city, but really consider their values.
Why an educated girl?
Education is a humiliating experience unless you are going into a specialized trade like medicine, law or accounting, in which case it can have the opposite, ego boasting effect.
My wife has a Master’s degree in Political Science and went to a medical college. Do you think I care? I do not, just it is wonderful to spend countless hours talking about the world around us and how we could help or change the world to make it a better place if given the opportunity. We analysis and read (books) on all subject and can discuss. It seems like trivial point, but intellectual stimulation is a non-consumptive higher level human activity that you can derive pleasure from without the need of money or dopamine rushes. You just feel different when your brain operates on a high level and life is a mystery to be explored with the intellectual curiosity of a child. Do you not want this?
Coefficient of Money
Few of us can insulate ourselves from health or money problems after the age of 18. But what you can do is choose a partner who gives you joy regardless.
You want someone who transcends money.
You want someone who is sweet and syrupy but has the intellectual sharpness of a blitz chess player and the refinement of a proper lady.
You want to marry a proper lady. More often than not in my experience that is a countryside girl who has been sheltered and is almost naive or innocent. You want a lamb. Not a wolf or a player.
Post apocalyptic girl
Someone to spend time with in a Post apocalyptic grid down situation or world. Someone so stimulating you do not mind being without your conveniences and stimulating enough you do not have to check your phone or the Internet.
Someone so cordial you do not mind helping repopulating the world with if surviving scientist deemed you and that girl as one of the worlds last hopes.
Are you up for it?
Enjoyable read and some interesting observations worthy of exploration. Needs to brush up on the English though, but then I used to be a teacher of English and just can’t help noticing.
Thank you, I want to be positive because it is so easy to be cynical. However, cynicism turns you into Stanley in the TV show ‘The Office’. You do not want to be like that. You want to be Micheal Scott or Jim Halpert or Dwight Schrute. A little bit off, but they find true love. Are we not all a little bit off?
I know about the errors, and I have never been a grammarian, couple this with I have so little time, if you see something obvious let me know.
However, the underlying premises hold. Granted this is one person’s perspective, but I have been happily married for years.
To take it from another perspective, I should run some regressions and see objectively how the ideas on this whole site fit into a model. It would be an interesting task.
Guys and girls consider my point. You want someone who has some values of romantic idealism. For example, I know three women that lived in NYC and Tampa. All dated heavily for that time and they never got married. They were perpetual daters. They were pros and experienced life dating. Now at 40 something they are moving in with their mom. In contrast, I know girls from the village who never dated and just want to get married.