Imagine a chance meeting with someone and you are instantly attracted to them. Maybe he is tall, dark, handsome with a great smile. He is well dressed, confident, and playfully funny with an ora of intrigue with BDE (Big Dick Energy) and sparks fly. She is gorgeous with a great figure and has a sense of humor and confidence in herself. Her eyes light up when she smiles and sparks fly. Within a few hours of whirlwind drinks, dancing, and laughs you end up in bed and those sparks turn into fire and a hot steamy night of fornication that is the best either of you has ever had. Both parties do not want it to stop and the hot first date turns into a relationship based on that first night of fun and attraction. Maybe it lasts for a few months, maybe it lasts a year or two, who knows? For me that, what should have been a one-night stand, turned into a 30-year marriage of hell. Like me, you slowly start to see signs of seriously messed up behavior from your new partner, but dismiss it as still being worth it because the heat and sparks still outweigh the problems until one day they don’t and it is too late to turn back. With the divorce rate being around 50% I cannot be the only one this has happened to. That first night your new mysterious partner was like the brand-new BMW photo below, but by the end it is the piece of crap car on fire featured next to the BMW. Just like me, you have confused SMV with RMV and paid a serious price for that mistake.
The sparks and butterflies seem to cloud our judgement because looking back you probably realize right now, as I do, that the car was always on fire and you just didn’t see it. There is a saying about men thinking with their little heads and this usually gets men in trouble because the little head is always blind to car fires when lady-bits are involved. What is not common knowledge is that women also think with their little brains (the little man in the boat aka lady-bits) and their little brain is even smaller than the man’s. We end up months or years down the road in a burning heap of junk and usually get extremely bad burn scars as a permanent reminder of our blunder in the shape of emotional baggage for the rest of our lives. For the complex discussion on emotional baggage, please read my book Alternate Reality – The Mostly True Story of How I Became a Sociopath or a Comical Look at My Messed Up Life.
This could have been avoided if we simply understood the difference between Sexual Market Value (SMV) and Relationship Market Value (RMV). These value systems typically rated with the 1-10 point range are both simple and complex. The short version is - we see an attractive person and want to have sex with them. This is SMV in a nutshell. RMV is what we are looking for in a long-term relationship. Kindness, stability, honesty, integrity, maturity, responsibility, safety, and security are typically what are needed to have a successful long-term relationship. Of course, you still want to be attracted to your partner physically, but the heat of the car on fire is not required for that. Someone who is a 9 in RMV may only be a 7 in SMV giving them an overall score of a solid 8. One of the beginning steps is a very good assessment of yourself. You may have been a 8, 9, or even a 10 SMV back in your prime, but where are you now? A few sizes larger, some unwanted scars or stretch marks, receding hairline, some wrinkles make a huge difference in SMV. A 35-year-old man who is still working a minimum wage job or no job at all may have a SMV of 9 but is pretty much a 1 RMV. A woman with a blown out vag from 4 kids from 3 different baby daddy’s might still be very attractive and have a high SMV but scores about the same as that jobless dude in RMV. They both may be a 9 on the SMV scale and good for having fun, but relationship wise they are 2 cars on fire trying to make a relationship work. I used to be built like an NFL linebacker with a six pack.
Above photos: Me in my prime.
Now, I can only say I am in shape because round is a shape. I am so damaged from car fire relationships that if they were to make me into an action figure I would be “Burn Victim Ken”, Barbie sold separately. Sure, I have a lot of great qualities as well, but I know where I stand in SMV and RMV and know what I am looking for where future encounters lie. Take a good count of what your rankings would be and know what positive value you would bring to a relationship before going any further. Once you have done that – figure out which qualities you are looking for in a long-term relationship (a six pack is not a RMV quality). Those things I mentioned in paragraph 3 are qualities. Look for someone who has good qualities and the same outlook on life that you have. Look for someone who you have a lot of things in common with. Look for someone who scores around the same as you on the RMV scale. If you are Burn Victim Ken or Burn Victim Barbie or maybe you are the car fire and you may not match well with a partner who has a high RMV. Fix yourself to raise your RMV and you can match with a higher quality long-term partner. Get a better job, work your way out of debt, see a therapist about your emotional baggage, and/or get a hobby that doesn’t involve banging sexy car fires are among many things you can do to improve your RMV. Above all else, remember that everyone has scars from past relationships so kindness and forgiving will always be required in a long-term relationship. Good luck, you are going to need it.
Written by Steve Ross
Well said, I liked the way you are calculating with SMV and RMV combined. I've never thought about it this way. Differenciating this are cruical...