The average marriage lasts for 100,000 hours. If used well, you can use this time to improve the lives of hundreds of people.

A lot of people will tell you simply to “marry whoever you’re passionate about.” At 100,000 Hours, we think you can do a lot better. Research shows that passion before marriage is actually a poor predictor of how happy you’ll be in your marriage. Better ways to ensure happiness are dating lots of people before marriage to get an idea of your compatibility along different dimensions, marrying someone with whom you share similar interests and values, and taking an IAT to check if you have positive associations with your future spouse.

Everyone wants a happy marriage, but if you’re reading this it’s probably because you want more from your marriage than just happiness for your and your spouse–you want to help the world. Luckily, these two goals don’t have to conflict. For one thing, an unhappy marriage will make you less productive, helping no one. For another, making a marital decision that makes the world a better place is one of the best ways to find personal fulfillment in your marriage. Below is a quick introduction to our social impact marriage advice.

Question 1: EA or non?

This is probably the biggest issue. It really depends on how committed of an EA you are. If you’re very committed, the best course of action is to marry someone who is on the margin of being an EA, but is unlikely to stick with it without your influence. If you’re on the less committed end of the EA spectrum (do you sneak dairy products when no one’s looking? fantasize about owning a yacht?), try marrying someone particularly moral. Ideally just thinking about their reaction should be enough to stop you doing anything wrong.

Question 2: What should I consider before I marry a non?

If you’re a woman marrying a man, be careful–unfortunately men adopting the ideologies of their wives is frequently seen as low-status. In any case, make sure your spouse is someone who gets along with EAs socially and is not firmly anti-EA–these are good indicators of EA potential. And your spouse’s potential to contribute to the EA movement–by getting a high-paying job or doing valuable direct work–is an important consideration as well.

Question 3: What about children?

Whether or not to have children is an important and contentious issue we won’t get into at the moment. If you’ve decided not to reproduce, marry someone who is firmly in agreement with you. If you want to be really safe, we recommend marrying a man–men are less likely to decide later in life that they want children after all.

If you do want to have children, remember that shared environment never explains any variance in anything, so by far the biggest parenting decision you’ll make is whose genetic material you want to combine yours with. An EA spouse will make your kids more likely to be EA (obviously the most important thing) and beyond that look for high intelligence, conscientiousness, charisma, attractiveness, and anything else that’s a predictor of career success.

Question 4: What about MtG?

It’s a common misconception that we recommend all EAs “marry to give,” or marry a high-net-worth individual with the intent of redirecting much of their wealth to effective causes. In retrospect, we emphasized this idea too much in our early days, and as the most controversial of our suggestions it attracted a lot of press. In fact, we recommend that only a small fraction of EAs pursue MtG. MtG is probably best suited to attractive people, those with good social skills, those who fit in well in high-status and wealthy circles, and women looking to marry men–hardly a large percentage of the EA community. And if you do think that MtG is a good fit for you, we recommend that you still marry someone you like. Marrying someone you dislike is likely to lead to burnout and unhappiness, which will make you less effective in your other goals.

Question 5: Okay, I have a good idea of what I’m looking for in a spouse now. How I do find one?

If you’re looking for an EA spouse, try looking in EA communities, either online or IRL. Otherwise, try your school or workplace or asking around among friends. And of course, there’s EACupid, where you can fill out a short quiz and our recommendation engine will find the optimal spouse for you!