I know. I often fear a nightmarish reality in which women spend minutes or even hours per day carefully disguising natural facial features, odors, and hair--or even exercising at a gym--just so they can manipulate men into wanting to be with them. I pity the guys who get suckered into preferring women who engage in such behaviors. It's almost as bad as men altering their behavior to be more attractive to women.

Empirically, prior girlfriends have been unimpressed with my slavish devotion to their every-moment's well-being. My current girlfriend is much more devoted, and much more enthusiastic.

I am fairly overt about this. I told her to read The Red Queen after our first date. And I don't lie about this. But when I'm asking myself what's better for the relationship, and what's going to make the person I'm with happier, I have to take into account that my behavior affects her happiness indirectly, too. You'd have to be a real jerk to make her date a nebbish.