One of the more toxic ideas in our culture is the idea of “the one”. This concept is the foundation for women’s sacred path to marriage; once a woman finds “the one”, everything will be right and honoring her marriage vows will be easy. This is closely linked with the nonsense idea that sex is moral so long as there is (non committed) commitment, and/or love. If her promiscuity involves love or (non committed) commitment, then she isn’t being a common tramp, she is searching for “the one”.

We know given the explosion in single mothers that this idea is toxic to children and fathers. What isn’t often discussed is how toxic this idea is to the woman herself. Part of the problem when we evaluate the concept of the one is it sounds like something different, not unlike “no sex before monogamy” or “no sex before commitment”. If you weren’t paying close attention, you could easily mistake these for a belief in marriage. In fact, I would wager that nearly everyone makes this mistake.

It isn’t just others whom women are fooling when they think this way; they are also fooling themselves. Looking for the one to marry and remain faithful to is actually feral female behavior dressed up as self discipline and morality. They have perverted the lifetime marriage concept of “my one and only” by substituting in the Lifetime idea of the perfect man. Due to their solipsism what they can’t see is this perfect man is essentially the same perfect man all of the other women seeking “the one” are looking for. In fact, the fact that other women are also looking for him is one of their requirements. If they understood this the folly of their never ending search would become immediately evident.

Core to this foolishness is the assumption that attraction is unique for every man and woman. While the woman is lying to herself about her own nearly universal set of preferences in the perfect man, she is also lying to herself about those of men. While she wants a man with a specific combination of social dominance, worldly success and prowess, intelligence, physical strength, attractiveness, loyalty, and kindness, so does every other woman out there. While the more minor details as to the perfect mix might vary slightly from woman to woman, the basic set of ideal men is incredibly small. This is true for men as well. The basic attraction factors of youth, beauty, femininity, and loyalty/chastity are the same for all men, and only a small percentage of women fit in the “most attractive” category. Thus, it isn’t the case that there are two people out there who would be most attracted to only each other, while others might not find them very attractive.

Making this worse for women is the more they hop from man to man (even if they avoid sex), the less attractive they tend to become while their threshold for feeling attracted to a man goes up. They end up with more and more expensive tastes and less to bargain with. This is especially true for sluts, as well as for women who have children (initially in or out of wedlock).

Looking for the one is a prescription for misery. No matter how many Lifetime movies she watches, the never married/divorced single mother isn’t going to attract a better class of man now that she is older, has the baggage of another man’s children, and has a proven track record of not being able to pick a man she could stay with. The concept of the divorcée or never married single mother trading up to a better man is as laughable as the expectation of turning in your 10 year old Buick for a brand new top of the line Cadillac.

This is why the “true life” divorce fantasies sold to women all end up being so absurd when you examine them just a little bit closer. Match.com’s claimed “true life” story of the middle-age-with-kids divorcée receiving a sudden declaration of lifetime commitment from Ethan the secret multimillionaire hunky handyman might be proof that this kind of story really does happen. But when you look just a bit closer you find out it was written by a woman who specializes in writing just this kind of tale as fiction. Likewise Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love memoir of how she divorced her way to a better man is breathtaking to feral women across the globe. However, when you look a bit closer it turns out that her new man is nearly 20 years older than her, mostly bald, and appears to be shorter than her as well. Even with this step down she explains in the follow on book that he married her to get a visa and come live in her house in the US. Yet another celebrated tale of divorcing up is How Stella Got Her Groove Back. In the movie Stella’s new man was handsome and manly. In real life, he was visibly gay, and (what are the odds?) married her for a US visa.

Contrast this with a prescription for a woman to find happiness. She looks for the best man she can marry while she is young and hasn’t lessened her ability to bond and fall head over heels in love, and decides that he is her one and only, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for life.