My Wife Respects Me Less Because I Improved Her Life (The Challenge of Helping Women)

In this episode, we delve into the dynamics of relationships and how raising the status of one partner can create unforeseen challenges. We explore concepts of fairness using the famous Capuchin monkey experiment, discuss historical and modern relationship structures, and compare these situations to international aid scenarios. We offer advice on how to navigate these dynamics successfully and share personal reflections on our journey together. Whether you're in a traditional or modern relationship, discover insights on managing status differences, the impact of shared goals, and strategies to ensure long-term harmony.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] This morning. We had a conversation that reminded me how unfair life is as a man. We were noting that early in our relationship.

There was a very big because I told you I was like, I really wasn't that nice to you early in our relationship. I was not like as good of a partner as conscientious as a partner as I am now

Simone Collins: and I pointed out that like it didn't really matter because. You were way out of my league and there was a huge power distance and I gave him some examples.

Of other very powerful men who have women who are great and very happy to be mistreated by him just because he's that high end status.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. So then she, she pointed out, but she goes, Oh, but don't worry. Like you've elevated my status since then. So I actually require more of you. And I was Thinking about this, right?

Like she's not wrong. When I first met her, she was a social media manager, was a degree from GW, you know, now she's got a graduate degree from Cambridge and everything like that. And it's [00:01:00] done all this big stuff. But back then she basically ran a Facebook account and had a degree from a mid tier university.

And I was getting a Stanford MBA, right? And I ran more than

Simone Collins: a Facebook account, but yeah, I mean, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I was working in brain computer interface, stuff like that. I can see the difference there. And this is a problem that a lot of guys face is they raise the status of the woman that they are dating.

And they expect her. To show a degree of appreciation in the same way that maybe we expected Zelensky to show some degree of appreciation for all the money that we've been funneling him. Exactly,

Simone Collins: that there should be

Malcolm Collins: some gratitude, some sense of indebtedness. And, and this is exactly, interestingly, not just a problem with women, but with like USAID and stuff like that is people don't really build like enduring gratitude.

for shoveling the money or doing them favors unless your fates are somehow intermingled. So, you know, whether it's with like USAID, this idea that we're actually building gratitude in these [00:02:00] countries, that's just not the case.

Simone Collins: And it brings me back mentally to Those capuchin monkeys that there was that famous experiment where there's video of a capuchin monkey being given some kind of treat and in return for doing a task and he's super cool with it.

It's all great. And then he sees his compatriot given a much nicer treat.

Malcolm Collins: He's being given cucumbers and the compatriots being given grapes. Oh, the nerve! The nerve!

Speaker: Getting grape and you will see what happens. So she gives a rock to us. That's the task. And we give her a piece of cucumber and she eats it. The other one needs to give a rock to us, and that's what she does. And she gets a grape and she eats it. The other one sees that she gives a rock to us, now gets again cucumber[00:03:00]

She tests the rock now against the wall. She needs to give it to us and she gets cucumber again. Oh my god.

Malcolm Collins: And he

Simone Collins: loses his mind. And this is a really great example and illustration of how fairness isn't some kind of higher moral good. It is a, a, an instinct that we have evolved , is species that deal and group .

Dynamics and small group environments, but I think that this shows how this concept of fairness, which is also showing up here, right? That you invested in bettering me. And then I just expect you to treat me better once I'm at a higher social [00:04:00] strata and that we give aid to other countries and that we expect them to be nice to us is just us expecting like that capuchin monkey that we're going to be paid in grapes in return, right?

Like, where's my grape? And then we freak out when, no, that's once you leave a small troop of monkeys or a tiny clan based village. It's over. You don't get that dynamic anymore. Fairness is not going to happen.

Malcolm Collins: And, and here I note that you do get it when you're in small groups. So historically, suppose we were in a small medieval town and she like attempted to trade up or something like that.

It would significantly hurt her reputation to the extent that it wouldn't be worth it. from her perspective. And this is why relationships used to be basically on a much easier difficulty mode. If you're talking about earlier in history. So what we wanted to lay out in this video is one how you can correct for and control for this inevitable change.

How you can spot this change, where it becomes a [00:05:00] problem for different types of relationships, where people are expecting different things from each other that even the oh, so moral Simone is subject to you know, you think, oh, she's not. No, she's totally subject to it. And Finally, we're going to talk about well, I guess how you can make relationships work in the modern age.

Yeah. So first, why don't you detail how this works for you and how you justify it within yourself?

Simone Collins: Yeah, and this is interesting for me to realize that this happened because I want to point out that I'm a pretty mercenary person. Like if someone compliments me, I feel the need to immediately compliment them in return.

Because otherwise in my mind, there's this pending debt on my ledger to them. And I really don't like that. So when anyone does me a favor, I get deeply uncomfortable because I have to find a way to return it. Otherwise there's a debt that is outstanding. And I can't, I can't work

Malcolm Collins: for your long term partner though.

So explain,

Simone Collins: I know. So yeah, what's going on there? I feel like there may be some kind of subconscious. Social status [00:06:00] or value. I bring to the table meter within people that overrides their sense of indebtedness and maybe when you feel like you bring more to the table. That offsets some of the debt, like maybe again, I'm just reasoning here.

And when people are asked to reason why they intuit certain things, they're just making it up. There's no, I don't actually know what's going on. I

Malcolm Collins: can, I can see what you're saying being true. But I don't know if that's it. I think it's that it's a slow, like you, we were looking at pictures early in our relationship and we were like, wow, we were like kids when we started.

When we started dating over 10 years ago at this point, 12, yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, we met in 2025

Malcolm Collins: so, so a long time ago, so anyway when we started dating and I say, I was not nice to her. I was, yeah, I just I won't say I remember thinking actually really explicitly. I was like, yeah, [00:07:00] Wow. This woman like literally would do anything I tell her to.

This is an enormous asset to have around. Now there, I think you