Avoid Long-Term Relationship Misery: Steer Clear of Misaligned Life Goals

Something few people discuss, because few people think long-term anymore, is the utter vitality of aligned life goals in selecting a long-term relationship partner.

(17th Century lovers were actually much better at this; you can find copious letters written by lovers discussing their hopes, dreams, and plans for their future together in detail)

Men online will talk about the importance of finding a ‘submissive’ woman. The implication superficially seems to be that you should look for a woman who will just go along with whatever you want. Of course, the question there is if she will go along with whatever YOU want, who’s to say she won’t go along with whatever anyone else wants too (including, for instance, the deliveryman or handyman who stops by while you’re at work and who’d very much like to cuckold you with her)?

The unspecified part of this whole “find a girl who’s submissive” advice – the part the men saying this intend but don’t usually know how to say – is that you want a woman who wants what YOU want, who finds your vision compelling, who is willing to submit to your leadership because she believes you will lead her where she wants to go.

The alternative to this – the uppity, rebellious woman whose life goals are in full opposition to yours – will provide you endless headaches, a far less stable relationship, and a greater chance of the relationship falling apart – or of you even getting pulled off your life goals.

Of course, if you do what a lot of folks do, and enter a relationship with whoever you like based on your initial compatibilities, it’s a roll of the dice whether you’ve chanced upon a woman with aligned life goals – or one with very, very DIFFERENT ones.

If you don’t want to be a gambler, and instead want to maximize the odds of a harmonious relationship without needless wars on life direction, then read on to know what to screen for – and how.

 

People Have Very, Very Different Life Goals

Here’s some advice:

Go get a vasectomy and have yourself sterilized right now.

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No, I’m just kidding.

Instead, what you should REALLY do is go pick up a gorgeous girl, THIS WEEK, the most gorgeous one you can find, rail her brains out while cheerfully raw dogging her, blast your seed in her, and knock that chick up just as quick as you can.

(then after Baby Numero Uno, you should just keep making that woman pregnant again and again until she hits menopause)

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How’d you feel about those two pieces of advice?

Perhaps you nodded your head to one of them and said, “Yeah, that’s the ticket!”

But I very much doubt you had the same reaction to the other.

If you’re like many men, you may have had a negative reaction to BOTH pieces of advice: both, after all, are extreme: one cuts off your line entirely, while the other sees you reproducing like a Catholic rabbit. Most men don’t want to see their lines end with them, but neither do most men want a couple dozen children.

Here’s another funny thing though: if you ask most men, “How many kids do you want?” they will not give you a clear answer. An unmarried man may tell you “one or two” or “two or three” or he may even say “I’m not sure if I want kids, but I’m not sure I don’t want kids either.”

Even if you talk to older divorced men whose children are in high school or college, if you ask them, “Do you want to have more kids?” they may tell you no, they are definitely done with children, but they may also say they don’t know, and that they might be open to it with the right girl (I’m sure there are even a few out there who’d say “Absolutely I want more” but I’ve yet to come across such a man myself).

Funnier still: you will see things like the older divorced dad who says he is done having kids, only to end up in a relationship with a young, hot girl who very much wants her own family. In the end, the older divorced dad marries the young, hot girl, and sires one or two more kids with her.

But what if the older divorced dad got a vasectomy after his last child, and his young, hot fiancée hopes for a family of her own? Or let’s reverse the sexes: what if the older divorced dad somewhat hopes to start a new family with his lady love, only to find out she had a tubal ligation and can’t have kids?

Suddenly, things get much stickier.

And this is just one example.

 

The Most Important Life Goals

Some of THE most important life decisions people can differ on (though not everyone will prioritize the same) include:

• How many children to have
• Schooling for any children
• Whether you will have pets
• How close with family to be
• Where to live in the world
• How much money to make
• What to spend money on
• Choice of career (ethic of it, visibility of it, exposure to singles in it)
• Who invests, in what, why, and how
• Whether to hire outside help (maids, cooks, nannies, tutors)
• Various freedoms for both partners
• Social life considerations
• Sex life considerations

READ MORE: High Strategy: The 7 Unresolvable Romantic Conflicts of Interest

Here, I’ll give you an example:

You meet a really pretty girl with a nice personality. The two of you get on well, you feel like there’s a connection, she laughs at your jokes, and after a courtship you end up in bed.

Over the next few weeks of dating, you learn the following about her:

• She wants to have a child – but only one child; no more and no less.

• It’s important to her to live close to her family. She lives nearby them now and will not leave.

• She keeps many birds and would like to have more birds.

• She does not want to live anywhere in the world but where you met her.

• She expects to be a housewife, and for her future husband to be a breadwinner capable of providing her and their child a reasonably comfortable life: a nice home, nice car, good school, etc.

• She dislikes spending on unnecessary things. She is not a fan of sports or video games, and considers these wastes of time and money. She tells you her boyfriend before you spent lots of time and money on games and this was one of the reasons she left him.

• She wants to have a full staff at home: cook, maid, nanny for the child, and a tutor once he’s older.

• She attended public school and thinks public school is fine. She is adamant that your one child do the same. Private schools, charter schools, and homeschooling are completely unacceptable to her.

• She’s okay with your current career for now but she has some reservations about it too and would be happier if you’d change to something else.

• She thinks it’s important that both partners trust each other. She has her friends and her social life and expects him to have his own. If they can’t trust each other to have busy lives without betraying each other, what’s the point of a relationship?

• She considers sex not very important. She’s not a prude, but a few times a week is enough for her, and from her prior relationship she can say that once every week or two is more the norm for her as the relationship goes on. There’s more to life than sex, says she!

Now: how closely aligned would you say this girl’s life goals are from yours?

Are you fairly close on some of them, but apart on others?

Are you far away from her on ALL of them (or NEARLY all)?

How much do you not care about much, vs. how many do you REALLY care about?

The farther your life goals are from her life goals, the more tension-filled and less satisfactory a relationship you will have!

 

Life Goal Prioritization

As important as the nature of the life goals is the prioritization of them.

Perhaps she’s not actually rigid about “only one kid.” She definitely wants A kid, but she might – maybe – be okay with more than one.

Perhaps she’d be okay moving to the next town over, so long as it’s still close enough to visit family regularly.

If your goals and her goals clash, the level of importance you each put on them matters.

For instance, a lot of men probably don’t have a strong opinion on “where should we live.” So a girl who much prefers to remain in the town he met her, to a guy like this, is not a problem.

A lot of men don’t have a drive for lots of children. A woman telling them, “I want one kid, and only one,” is not a problem for these guys. They’re fine with one kid.

Now, what if you don’t want to be the breadwinner? What if you expect your wife to work – if you want to tell her it’s just not practical for you to put her up in the lifestyle she expects with only you working? That’s a life goals clash. She wants to not work + have a nice house + full home staff. You want her to work if she wants to have that house + staff. Problems ahead.

What about if sex once every one or two weeks is not nearly enough for you? What if you need it at least three times per week? That’s another impending clash. Either she’s going to have to put out when she’s not horny, or you’re going to let your desires often go untended. That, or you’ll end up having mistresses on the side.

READ MORE: Sex Drive Compatibility, Drive Collapses, & Relationship Sex Issues

The higher a woman prioritizes a life goal, the bigger a problem you will have if she’s unable to meet it with you OR if she ends up dragging you off-path from your OWN life goals.

The challenge is that not everyone is equally self-aware and expressive about his or her life goals. Some people are VERY clear on what they want; others are much less clear. Some people will state OUTRIGHT what they want; others tend to keep that to themselves.

If your and her life goals are misaligned, you WILL run into problems, whether you figure out the misalignment early or don’t figure it out until many years down the road.

If your aim is to give yourself the most streamlined possible future relationship, you need to DIG: into what her life goals are, and how highly she prioritizes each.

 

How to Check for Life Goal Alignment

The tricky part is that you never want to seem like you’re chasing after the relationship. You must AVOID seeming overeager for relationship progress!

Remember the Iron Law of the Sexes: men chase sex; women chase relationships.

If it seems like you are more interested in the long-term relationship than she is, big problem!

So how do you screen for life goal alignment without seeming like you’re after (or offering too soon) commitment? For that, you must use a combination of passive screening + some active screening.

First, though, you need to know what your OWN life goals are!

 

Understanding Your Own Life Goals

The younger you are, the more of a challenge this will be for you. I suppose the good news is that if you’re young and reading Girls Chase, you’re probably not going to be getting hitched for a while. You have some time to figure things out.

Some life goals men don’t really settle on until their 30s or 40s. I’ve had friends who were ambivalent about children until they hit their mid-30s to mid-40s, then all of a sudden decided they wanted kids, or decided they increasingly did not want kids. Sometimes you feel like you aren’t sure what kind of work you want to do for the longest time, then at some point decades in you hit upon your life’s calling.

My philosophy is that it’s best if you try to understand your own intrinsic motivations as best you can:

1. What do you care most about? Or try this: what insults cause the most painful introspection for you? Whatever sends you into introspection points you toward what you also care about most.

2. What do you fantasize about doing? That won’t necessarily be your life goal, but it will point you toward the kind of emotions a life goal of yours should evoke.

3. What would cause you to have a midlife crisis if you weren’t able to do it? What would you regret never achieving? Try to imagine future you, house, wife, kids, job, having a midlife crisis because you cannot or were never able to X. What is X?

4. What bothers you the most if you are unable to do it? What would very much bother you if others in your life were doing it?

Let’s say you care about helping people, and any time someone accuses you of selfishness it triggers painful introspection: “I’m not selfish! Am I? Am I a selfish person?” That tells you that whatever you do, it’s important that your life have some kind of altruistic or charitable purpose built into it, so you are able to fulfill that need you have to be of use (and not feel selfish).

If you need to be able to help people, would you be compatible with a girl who is always pushing you to care about no one but the two of you, and to use other people any chance you get?

Here’s a different example. I had a girlfriend who when she got dramatic would just belt out whatever insults came to mind (then later when she calmed down would be sincerely apologetic). I experimented with various ways to respond to this behavior from her, so sometimes when she’d be launching her salvo of insults I’d send some return fire just to see if she could take it as well as she dished it out. Nothing ever affected her, until one day I called her ‘lazy.’ THAT got under her skin. She broke down sobbing about how hard she worked for everyone in her life, demanded I take it back, and asked me if I really thought she was lazy (really, she was a very hard working girl). For a girl like her, whatever life goal she might have, being able to work HARD on it would obviously be an important part.

Do you think that girlfriend of mine would be compatible dating a guy who just wanted to chill out all the time, hang around, kick back, and loll his way through life?

The approaches I shared of investigating your emotional drivers will help point you toward core life goals: things you need to be doing or engaged in to feel satisfied.

I also recommend you read my article on purpose.

READ MORE: The Purpose of Life from a Practical Point of View

I suggest being aware of the general life stages people pass through. From there, it is sensible to assume that it is most likely you will pass through the same life stages (i.e., assume that you are not special and, like other humans, your life is likely to unfold in relatively predictable ways).

(you COULD be an exception. You could be the guy who never gets serious about his career/calling; who never decides he wants kids; who never feels like he’s done enough and is ready to retire; but you should ASSUME it is likely you will pass through these phases, because nearly every man DOES and it is more likely you will fall among the averages than the outliers)

All this gives you something of a basis through which to screen women for compatibility.

 

Passive Screening for Compatibility

I’ve written about passive screening on Girls Chase in the past. In fact, it was the first article on Girls Chase about vetting women for the long-term! The gist of passive screening is that you simply keep an eye on women’s behavior as the relationship unfolds – especially during the early stages of the relationship, before you are ‘in too deep’ where getting out becomes increasingly difficult – so you can figure out the truth about a girl without even needing to ask her.

For example, how does she react toward other women spending money (when talking about her friends; when observing people at a mall or market; or when watching shows or movies)? Does she:

1. React in disgust at how much they’re spending – that shows she does not agree with it (“Geez, she spends EVERYTHING!”)

2. Make some middle-of-the-road throwaway comment that doesn't tell you anything (“Must be nice to have that kind of cash”)

3. Or give a full-throated endorsement of the spending (“She totally deserves it” “See? He loves her a lot. Look how much he lets her spend”)

Same deal with family closeness – you can watch how she reacts to others, or even see how she remarks on your relationship with your own family:

• If she jokes that you’re a bit of a mama’s boy, she wants some distance from family

• If she says she loves your family and how close you are, she probably prefers strong family ties

Same deal with kids, although this one is a bit less clear. Even still:

• If she goes gaga over googoos (i.e., she loves babies), she wants to be a mom.

• If she thinks babies are disgusting, she may not want any kids of her own.

• If she thinks big families are so amazing and she’s jealous, she might want a big one.

• If she thinks big families are chaotic, noisy, and stressful, she likely doesn’t want a big one.

(still: you will get voluntarily childless women who love children, work as schoolteachers, etc.; likewise, you will get women who hate children in general but still want some of their own. Which is why I say this one’s fuzzier, passive screening-wise)

And so on and so forth down other long-term considerations: career choice, how much the man works vs. how much time the couple spends together, how often and where to travel, what sorts of social lives to lead, how much freedom / time apart the couple has, and more; a lot of these values will leech through as you spend time with her and she reveals her preferences on things.

You just need to listen.

 

Active Screening for Compatibility

Of course, not all will be passively revealed; and not all women are so passively revealing.

While some girls wear their opinions and values on their shirtsleeves, some girls seem to live by the code of “Mum’s the word.”

The problem: just because she isn’t voicing her opinions doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them!

Every girl has thoughts and feelings about how she wants her life to go. Many women keep those things to themselves until push comes to shove; but by then you may be deep into a relationship with them, and if your goals do not align, you’ll have problems.

For these girls, you will simply have to ask. You will also have to ask for the even the outspoken girls IF there’s a goal or value you want to check up on that she has not revealed.

There’s no perfectly indirect way to do this, I’m afraid, so she WILL know you’re screening her, and she will know it’s for long-term. The secret is to just not do it too often, and certainly not all at once. Generally speaking, I think you can get away with one active screen on a long-term goal every one or two weeks.

That looks like this:

[while watching some movie together where the man and woman both have active single lives without each other]

YOU: What do you think about that, these two people in a relationship together, having these active social lives apart?

HER: I think it seems like they’re not really in a relationship at all! [laughs]

(this answer says she does not support the partners having active social lives apart from each other)

or

HER: I think it’s very healthy to maintain their own social lives. But maybe not that much!

(this answer is the middle-of-the-road answer, suggesting she doesn’t have a strong view on the issue / it is not a high priority item for her; or, alternately, that she knows you’re screening her and wants to be careful about revealing her views)

Or

HER: That’s the way it should be!

(this answer is very supportive of couples maintaining active separate social lives, which suggests she wants that for her own relationship)

From there, you can then probe a little further to see how strong her opinion is:

YOU: What do you think about that, these two people in a relationship together, having these active social lives apart?

HER: I think it seems like they’re not really in a relationship at all! [laughs]

YOU: What would you say they are, more like friends with benefits?

HER: More like they’re not even friends, just people who have sex then go hang out with their own friends, separately!

^ an answer like this solidifies that she is deeply opposed to this relationship, since she is insulting it as “not even really a relationship.” For her, a romantic relationship is one where the partners spend their time together socially as well as romantically, and do not lead separate social lives. This is a very high priority issue for her and will be a source of major tension if you have a strong, high priority belief opposite hers.

However, it’s also possible she may reveal that it’s not as enormous of a deal to her:

YOU: What do you think about that, these two people in a relationship together, having these active social lives apart?

HER: I think it seems like they’re not really in a relationship at all! [laughs]

YOU: What would you say they are, more like friends with benefits?

HER: No, it’s a relationship. But they should try to spend more time together. Maybe they can introduce their friends to each other!

^ an answer like this is multifaceted. She does not endorse the notion that they’re merely friends with benefits; she says they are indeed in a relationship. However, she still suggests that the couple look for ways to merge their socializing to make it a stronger relationship. For this girl, not having separate social lives is still a sign of a strong relationship, but it’s only of moderate-to-high priority, not ‘very high’ like the prior example.

Now you see how in just two questions you can figure out what a woman’s opinion is on an important issue, what her likely life goals are around it, and how high a priority it is to her.

The active screening process is:

1. Spot an example that ties into a life goal/value you want to screen her on

2. Ask her what she thinks of that example (make sure you make it CLEAR so she knows what you are asking. e.g., big family with lots of kids – if you ask “What do you think about that family?” she might think you’re asking what you think about their daily breakfast ritual if that’s what they’re doing right then; so, to be CLEAR, you say “What do you think about that family, having a lot of kids like that?”)

3. Optionally, drill down further to get extra clear on how highly she prioritizes the value/goal

And you’re all set.

 

No Strong Position

The last thing I will say is to be careful with the ‘no strong position’ reaction. That is, if a woman appears to have no real preference about:

• How much money her man makes
• How close to family they live
• How many children they have
• If they have children at all or not
• Whether they’ll get married or not
• What kind of social lives they lead
• What their sex lives look like

… and so on and so forth. What I have seen happen time and again is a man screens a woman’s position, finds she has no strong opinion, and decides, “Great! That means we can just do whatever I want,” and plans the rest of his life around that assumption.

But particularly with younger women, a great deal of the time they are still figuring things out. They are not fully self-aware yet; they do not understand their own emotional drivers. Many of these scenarios can seem far off to them, which leads to them not thinking about them much. Once they actually draw near to the issue, and have to make a decision on it for real, and it becomes a much larger thing actually impacting their lives, strong positions they did not seem to have previously can emerge ‘seemingly out of nowhere’.

(such strong positions the man was not previously aware of do not actually emerge ‘out of nowhere’. They are emerging out of the woman’s underlying personality and emotional drivers, once her reality enters into too much conflict with what she wants/needs; some of these drivers and personality aspects she may have acquired as life went along, but many of them in my experience are simply inherited. You will have a hard time dissuading a woman from wanting something that is genetically preprogrammed into her)

Keep in mind that a lot of women maintain compliant outer veneers and will go along with what they think their man wants until they hit a hard limit where they absolutely cannot go along with it any longer. A lot of men will do a thing where they assume no strong pushback now means no strong pushback is coming ever and that their woman is on-board with whatever they want or at least won’t object. But once it becomes REAL to her, her true feelings bubble up to the fore.

Here is my advice: if there is something that is a high priority for you, and she doesn’t appear to have an opinion one way or another, that is an area where you must be particularly sensitive, investigate it from numerous angles, keeping it OPEN and NOT being pushy (i.e., you are investigating HER feelings… not trying to ‘shape’ her feelings with your investigation or plant your ideas in her, which will not work long-term for anything that is the product of a deeply held value of hers). I also suggest you always assume that any area where a woman does not seem to have a firm opinion may well be one in which she does have an opinion, but it is the opposite of yours, and she is trying to maintain the peace for now (it may not; she may genuinely not care; BUT the safter, smarter play is to assume trouble, and plan and investigate from there).

I recommend especial caution to men who tend to be less sensitive to these things: ADHD men and autistic men in particular. Often women let their true feelings be known through subtle signals first that these men do not pick up on, and only explode out into drama when too long has gone on with the man seemingly ignoring what she has been trying to hint to her.

 

Conclusion

What do you do if you screen a girl and discover your and her life goals are out of alignment?

Well, it depends HOW out of alignment they are, and how highly each of you prioritizes each goal/value. Do not let love blind you: if something is important, it will come up later on in ways that can throw a real monkey wrench into the relationship.

For instance, if you discover that staying in her hometown is important to her, yet for you relocating to somewhere else is important, and this is high-ish priority for both of you, but when you discuss it she tells you, “Let’s not worry about that for now; that’s so far off!” you will probably want to agree with that because why make a mountain out of a molehill?

But fast forward three years, you’re married, she’s pregnant, and now it’s time for you two (soon three) to move – but oh, wait, she’s raising hell because she does not want to move away. Now, suddenly, it is a giant crisis – a preventable one; a foreseeable one; but one that both of you put off until this day, and now you’re both paying for it.

That said, I will also say this: relationships where you have some life goals that are significantly opposed can still work, they just have a lot more tension in them until a resolution is achieved (or sometimes just ongoing tension whenever the issue comes up, forever). Always, one of the couple is forced to give up what he or she wants, or even both may be (many ‘compromise’ solutions being unsatisfactory to both the man and the woman).

I recommend that any life goals you’re too far apart on, that are high in priority for both of you, you aim to hash out before you ever let it progress to a truly serious relationship.

As soon as she starts pushing for it to be more serious, you need to sit down with her and try to figure out if it’s possible to come to accords on your life goal differences or if it isn’t. Because let me tell you right now: when high priority opposing life goals clash in a relationship where both parties are deeply entangled in the relationship, it can get very, very messy.

That’s what ‘irreconcilable differences’ is in a divorce: it’s two people who simply could not see eye-to-eye on some important life goal or matter and ultimately split apart over it.

You can save yourself a lot of stress, hassle, and heartache by tearing a page out of 17th Century lovers and sorting out the biggest possible stumbling blocks early on. That way, you can address them before they have the chance to hobble you… or get out before you get too deep in if it turns out the two of you are just too far apart!

Chase