One of the most common complaints in romantic life is how the other gender is so “shallow”. Women think all men care about is big tits and a skinny body. Men think all women care about is is a chiseled jaw and a fat wallet. There’s good reason why this idea is so pervasive in both genders, but what I would like to make clear is that it just is not so, and if you are willing to abandon this false impression, a whole world of possibilities will open up to you in terms of love, romance, partnership, and happiness.

First, let’s talk about where this pernicious illusion comes from.

It starts, as so much pain and trouble does, in our adolescence. The first notions we get about love, sex, attraction, and the other gender are formed in our teen years, and around other teens.

This is perfectly natural, but also terribly wrong, because in the hormonal miasma that is adolescence, we are at our most confused, least mature, least stable, and yes, at our most shallow. All the angles of human sexual response are not only brand new to teens, they are turned up all the way to the maximum they will ever bed, and hence the teen is caught completely unprepared and, for a while at least, it’s the hormones that lead them around, dragging them, often only semi-willingly, in directions they don’t understand, into places with which they are not familiar. The child they were and the adult they will be are in a terrible tug-of-war, and their sexual responses tend to be, to put it mildly, primitive.

So yes, the guys all go pop-eyed for the early blooming girls with the big boobs and the tight ass. And yes, the girls all melt at the sight of the testosterone-laden jocks with the hard bodies and the cool cars their fathers got for them. This is understandable when you realize their hormones are in charge and everyone is thinking with their gametes. The most crude, obvious, and exaggerated sexual signals will be the ones that get people’s attention the most, and this gives people a completely false initial impression that the other gender is completely shallow and only cares about these superficial things.

Even in the teen years, that’s not true. It’s what gets people’s attention, sure, but for most of us, the really sexy people are like another race, nice to look at, but they have nothing to do with us.

And as we look upon those who, through no effort of their own, happen to end up in a body that sends these kinds of strong sexual signals, we begin to see another of the causes of this false belief in the shallowness of the other gender : pretty people themselves tend to be shallow.

It’s not entirely their fault. When you have the looks that we humans are programmed to respond to when we are young, you live in a different world than regular folks. Everyone around you wants to please you. Nobody can stand to see you upset or in difficulty. People smooth the way for you in everything without you even having to ask. This is as true for men as it is for women.

And so you are never forced to develop your mind, your tastes, or your personality. Things come to you easily, and the easiest thing in the world is to just assume you must deserve them just for being you. And because you are one of the pretty people, you can have your opposite number without even trying all that hard, and so you don’t need to get over the shallow phase of attraction…. not yet, anyhow.

As a result, a lot of people have memories of approaching one of these attractive people and being cruelly rebuffed. And from this, they generalize to the entire gender of which the attractive person is merely the most obvious manifestation.

But if you simply wipe the fairy dust from your eyes and look around you, it will because increasingly evident that the entire gender can’t be shallow, or only the pretty people would ever hook up, form relationships, and get married. And nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is that most people do find someone. Most people do marry at least once in their life, most people do date and end up at least in medium-term relationships, most people do not die lonely.

When you realize this, it becomes clear that this notion of the other gender’s (or your own gender’s, for us homosexuals) supposed unbreakable shallowness is not a true observation based on reality, but rather, a convenient excuse to not bother trying.

No massive generalization of a large slice of humanity can possible be true in the face of the vast scope of human diversity, and that goes double at least when you are talking about fully one half of the entire human race on Earth.

Sure, some ladies and some gentlemen are very shallow. Generally, they are the pretty ones, who have never had to be anything but shallow, or the highly immature ones who are still trapped in the moth’s death spiral, eternally attracted to the pretty flames that will only burn them again and again.

Don’t be like them. Ignore the shallow pretty ones. Their gifts are no prize in the long run, when they begin to grow old and lose their looks and realize people didn’t really love them for who they are after all, and they have no idea what do with their life now anyhow.

Strike them from your mind, and instead, look for the one thing that really matters in love : finding a person you like to spend time with. Because beauty fades in time, not just in life but in the mind’s eye, and no mater how beautiful they are, after a while it will become ordinary to you, and you will be stuck with whether or not they make you happy, and vice versa.

Stay out of the shallow end of their gene pool, and stop thinking you know what your perfect lover will look like, or even be like.

Just find someone who makes you happy. Nothing else matters at all.