A Short Man’s Take on the 80/20 Rule

80/20

The Netflix miniseries Adolescence put a concrete number to the futility of my dating life.

“80/20” is shorthand for the idea that 80 percent of women are attracted to 20 percent of men—a kind of Pareto Principle of dating, and a central plot point in the series.

Adolescence is now the third most-watched series in Netflix history. Its popularity is well earned: Adolescence is a brilliant, unsettling, thought-provoking exploration of toxic masculinity and manosphere ideologies and their impact in a British secondary school.

80/20 wasn’t on my radar until I watched the series and started discussing it among my circles.

So is it true? I AI-deep-researched it. The answer seems to be not really, with a dose of it’s complicated. Tinder is almost purpose-built to elicit 80/20 swiping patterns, but real-world relationship and marriage statistics tell a different story.

But the belief that it’s true is widespread. I’m surprised at how often I’ve heard men echoing Adolescence’s lead character, 13-year-old Jamie. He resents being labeled an incel and finds the red pill material he’s encountered distasteful… but 80/20? “I do think they’re right about that, though,” he says.

It’s one of those ideas that, I think, can reflect men’s experience in the dating world, but can also deeply affect their experience in the dating world.

As someone whose dating life didn’t benefit from being tall, athletic, good-looking, wealthy, outgoing, charming, or confident, I could pull convincing evidence for or against 80/20 with equal ease.

But I can imagine how different my life would have turned out if the 80/20 rule had been indoctrinated into me at a young age.

. . .

My Vantage Point

When I say I’m short, we’re talking five foot zero.

As friends have told me, hearing that stat does not prepare one for the visceral experience of meeting me in person. So for perspective: put me in a room with seven hundred and forty other men and I’m statistically likely to be the shortest.

Nine inches shorter than the average adult male, seven inches taller than Tyrion Lannister.

It’s not something I give much thought to, it’s the water I swim in. I’ve been small since forever: when I was in second grade, kids thought I was in kindergarten, and so on.

I’m also happily married to the love of my life. (You’re probably curious, so… Ana is five inches taller. And I’ve dated women up to 14 inches taller.)

I’m also in my 25th year as a full-time professional relationship coach.

So you’ll not be surprised to hear I have some opinions about the 80/20 rule.

. . .

My Experience

As a kid, my size was more of a cute curiosity than a serious problem. For every schoolyard bully who saw me as an easy target, there would be one or two kids who stuck up for me.

Mom worked in a bookstore and raised us alone. We were broke most of the time, the roof leaked, and our home wasn’t exactly the kind of place you’d be proud to bring guests. But give a latchkey kid a subway ticket, a crew to hang with, and a 6 PM curfew, and the SF Bay Area is his oyster.

Then adolescence hit.

My teen years were rough. Everything that had been ok before was now excruciating. Girls flat out told me I was too short. My stature put me at a disadvantage in sports. I envied the popularity of the jocks and cool kids. I was not the boy the girls whispered to each other about.

My dad had never been around anyway, but when I was 14 he passed. My teen years were when his absence made the biggest difference. I was shy around girls and had no one to show me the ropes or give me pointers. Over time I became progressively more self-conscious and awkward.

Bored in high school, I tested out and got into college at 16. But I didn’t date or connect with women there. I was a quiet bookworm.

Remember that list I gave before? Tall, athletic, good-looking, wealthy, outgoing, charming, or confident. TAGLWOCC — that’s everything I lacked. By these measures, I was at the bottom of the dating pile.

. . .

The Duration of a First Impression

At twenty I got my first job, as a software engineer at Apple. The work environment felt different. Not since I was a kid had my physicality felt this irrelevant. It was a breath of fresh air.

I could still detect a reaction when people first met me, even if they tried to hide it, but very quickly it would fade and become a non-issue.

Apple was a fun place to work back then. I had a new crew to hang with, work I enjoyed, and some spending cash. The work vibe was casual and creative.

But my romantic life was still rough. I didn’t go on dates. In my decade at Apple I had one girlfriend, the ex of one of my best friends. It lasted about a year and ended badly.

If I was shy, awkward, and maybe a bit creepy as a single man, as a boyfriend I was whiny, needy, codependent, depressed, inept at going out or having a good time as a couple, and bad in bed. I had Nice Guy Syndrome and unconscious misogyny at the same time.

Apple Girlfriend wasn’t the first friend’s ex who rebounded to me. This had happened once before. I think interacting in social groups regularly over many months, with no thought of anything romantic on either side, gave a woman a chance to get to know me beyond the superficials, and gave me a chance to not be weird around her.

I tended to stumble through the whole experience, not sure why anyone would be into me, how we miraculously got together, why she eventually soured on me, or why we broke up.

The point is, if first impressions with work colleagues took a few minutes to fade, with potential intimate partners, it took months.

It was never going to be in the cards for me to go on dates and hit it off, or to do well on the dating apps, or to meet someone at a party or a speed dating event.

. . .

Leaning In

In my 30s, the shy-and-lonely thing didn’t just feel painful, it felt incongruous, compared to the rest of my life.

I no longer perceived myself as hopelessly unattractive, just profoundly behind and underdeveloped in this one arena.

I went into therapy for depression. I took workshops about relationships, communication, intimacy. I worked with mentors and coaches, read all the books. I attended Ashkenazi singles events and partner dances. I worked with a sex surrogate to help me overcome my shame around ineptitude in the bedroom. I went on antidepressants for a time. I fell in love, broke up, fell in love again. I even tried living in a 1970s-style sex commune for several years.

Please don’t take any of these doings as prescriptive. Everyone’s journey of self-discovery is unique. Some of it was life-changing, some of was a dead end, but all of it helped me know myself better. The point is that I leaned in.

As a result, I started to see and understand the depth of my ingrained misogyny and toxic beliefs about women. (I will continue to unearth and dismantle more layers for the rest of my life.)

I found my own path to self-worth and confidence, in life and in relationships.

I became more comfortable in my own skin and came to understand the value of honesty and authenticity, even when it isn’t fun.

All of these internal changes (and more) made a huge difference. All of my relationships with women improved, not just romantic interests. My friendships deepened; my work relationships improved.

Romantic involvement no longer felt mysterious or unattainable. It felt natural, enjoyable, easeful.

Sex was pleasurable, intimate, connecting.

Even a breakup no longer landed as a condemnation, a crushing failure, or a devastating loss; just a realization that we wanted different things.

I had the emotional surplus to put my attention on making sure I left my partner better off than when we met. To this day, I have exes who occasionally reach out for dating advice.

Where I used to feel unlovable, I now felt like I could be with whoever I wanted.

Friends and friends of friends started asking me for advice. Someone told me I was being selfish in not sharing what I’d learned with others. I had already been helping people for years, so I went all in. It’s been my life’s work ever since, and I’ve never looked back.

Nearly all my business comes from referrals.

. . .

My Perspective

80/20 isn’t a true or false statement. It’s a mindset. A defeatist, disempowering one.

My equivalent was TAGLWOCC. TAGLWOCC didn’t hold me back, my belief that TAGLWOCC was holding me back, held me back.

But to me, 80/20 thinking is worse. It just states with numeric authority, they’re not into you. It doesn’t even grant the hope that comes with being at a disadvantage; there simply isn’t enough to go around. All the goods are just factually going to someone else.

So the following is what I’ve found to be both more true and accurate, and more helpful as a mindset. It’s what I wish someone had told me.

People tend to feel about me the way I feel about myself.

I am constantly broadcasting to the world how to relate to me. When I like myself, people tend to like me. When I don’t, they tend not to.

I spent the first part of my life attempting to reverse this equation: trying to conjure a positive self-image from others’ approval. Wanting love and sex to counteract my negative self-worth.

This was doomed to fail — not because I lacked TAGLWOCC, but because it turns out I can receive love, approval, and sex, and still hate myself.

Who I am, my identity, flows from me to others much more powerfully than from others to me.

Self-esteem can’t be delegated, it’s an inside job. Once I started liking and respecting myself, others followed suit.

There have always been women who were interested in me.

When I look back, there were girls and women who were dropping hints of their attraction to me, in junior high, high school, and adult life.

Don’t get me wrong, everything I said above is true, and I recounted it the way I experienced it. It’s just incomplete, just as the story I told myself at the time was incomplete.

My self-assessment was the barrier, not my income, looks, or physique. It was I who had been holding them at arms length. I didn’t just believe my unattractiveness, I fiercely defended that belief, I fought for it.

And while it wasn’t till my 30s that this shifted, I don’t think there was anything magical about my 30s that ushered in change, other than the fact that that’s when I opened to the possibility that I was actively creating the situation I didn’t like.

Other men are not a factor in whether a woman likes me or not.

I’m some women’s cup of tea, others not so much. (And it generally works out: women who aren’t attracted to me are usually women I’m not that drawn to, either. The spark seems to co-arise.)

Even women who were “into tall guys” were surprised, and sometimes a bit annoyed, to find themselves falling for the shortest guy they’ve ever met.

But first I had to stop comparing myself to other men, and find other ways and reasons to like myself.

There’s no such thing as the “friend zone.”

I misunderstood what it means to be friends with a woman. I discounted women and their friendship. This doomed all of my relationships with women, sexual or platonic.

But in the decades since then I’ve had as many true friends, best friends, who were female as male.

My friendships with women played a huge role in my evolution as someone capable of a relationship. I learned how to relate with a woman in a healthy, mature, connected, intimate way that’s necessary for both platonic and romantic relationships.

My male and female friends are extremely valuable to me. We’ve kept each other sane when we felt unsure in a relationship, or got our feelings hurt, or felt jealous or resentful. That way, our partners weren’t burdened with the weight of responsibility for our emotional state and maturation process.

The truth is, a person only ever feels friend-zoned by someone they themselves have fuck-zoned. And women have told me that being fuck-zoned by a guy feels awful.

The best intimate relationships, the ones that blossom into thriving, fulfilling, loving, long-term partnerships, are crafted from the basic components of good friendship. From there, all the other experiences one wants to have with a romantic partner become available.

Dating and relationships are different skillsets.

I wouldn’t have done well on the dating scene. But I’ve done well in my relationships with women. Likewise, I’m an effective relationship coach, but would make a terrible dating coach. Dating is not my area of expertise.

My best advice to singles looking for love is to be aware of the difference between dating skills and relationship skills. Too many people fall into the trap of becoming masterful at the dating scene, while remaining single and lonely. Relationships are a different skillset.

TAGLWOCC is overrated.

I wouldn’t trade relationships with any TAGLWOCC man I know.

TAGLWOCC is like pretty wrapping paper. It’s good advertising. It tells you nothing about the product. This is equally true of women and men. Otherwise, attractive couples would have an uncommonly good track record for great relationships. As a relationship coach I see no correlation. In any case, I don’t see anyone whose relationship I envy.

Most of us were never taught relationship skills, or had them modeled for us. TAGLWOCC would have boosted my ego and given me plenty more opportunities to fail. That’s it. I’d have clung tightly to the false belief that I had the goods, and blamed my partner through miserable relationships and painful breakups. How long would it have taken for me to consider a different approach?

As it is, I now coach couples as my day job, including TAGLWOCC men and their wives or girlfriends. You could call it ironic, but the truth is it’s just harder to solve a problem from inside the problem.

The 360° on 80/20

If we’re going to make generalizations, then here you go.

80/20 is real in the sense that it’s a contextually observable pattern.
Its causes are rectifiable by men. I speak from personal experience.
Women are making clear communications about what they want in a partner, that’s different from what men believe.
Men don’t listen.
Instead they echo-chamber with each other about what women want.
Men’s perception of women leaves them powerless.
80/20 thinking stokes this vicious cycle.

So for example, in my personal and professional life I just don’t ever hear women asking, Where are all the buff rich guys? What I do hear them ask, again and again like a broken record, is, Where are all the emotionally mature men? Where are all the good men?

We men are the ones who think hierarchically and competitively, and then we project that onto women. We relate to each other in pecking-order, 80/20 terms. And we encourage women to think that way — or project it onto them — drowning out their voice in the matter. We know what they want, and we dutifully line ourselves up in order, and then in unison we point toward the front of the queue, head down, saying, Go ahead and go.

(I’m not making this up, it’s been studied. Men compete with each other based on their own criteria—“intra-male competition” — then literally tell women they’re wrong about their own preferences if they conflict with what men assume.)

It’s we who create, agree to, uphold, and enforce 80/20.

Meanwhile this five foot zero, socially awkward man has managed to have plenty of intimacy, connection, love, and sex, not to mention a career, by rewriting my beliefs about my own inadequacy and listening to the real, flesh and blood women in my life rather than men’s stories about what women are attracted to.

. . .

Are you one to five years into a promising relationship, but still feeling unsure or hesitant about true life partnership? I help couples get the clarity they need to commit enthusiastically or break up amicably, without fear of regret. Contact me at http://kenblackman.com.

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This post was previously published on The Craft Of Intimate Coupledom.

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