That the women I date have a too high opinion of themselves

Everyone of them wants to nest, it seems: three out of the four last ones got pregnant within three months of breaking up with me.

Of course they all strenuously deny that they want to be married; and perhaps believe their denials, too, having been fed on the women’s-lib nonsense that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, that marriage is an instrument of male dominance, etc.; which only shows that what we think we believe and what we really believe (as shown by the way we act) have really nothing at all in common; because, their words aside, they want an exclusive union, whatever its name; they want to be the most important thing in my life – certainly more important I am willing to allow them to be; they want to be the only one; they want me to think about them ceaselessly when we are apart; and notice no other woman when we are together, etc. and don’t want me to have any life of my own. A woman needs a man like a fish needs bicycle, it seems, unless that man is me.

Whence comes this ambition? Can't they see it cannot happen?

I have been intentionally dating ugly, poor girls hoping that they might see the light: that I am too much of a good catch for them to have the remotest hope of any such silly thing; but that the good times I give them they have no hope of having with anyone else (who else will take them for a week of sin to Paris? Who else will entertain them with learned discourse on art and literature and philosophy on the meaning of life? Who else will treat them gently and respectfully and chivalrously in the way in which I do? And who else will do all that while being not bad looking and not the worst in bed?) Can't they see that with all this, they are best off aiming lower; accepting that they can't have exclusive union; and settle down for less -- which is a lot more than what they have now, or ever will.

But it isn’t working. They can’t seem to recognize the good thing they have. They want to nest.

Logical thought and careful planning have nothing to do with it. The strategy is inborn and unconscious: find a guy you like and then go for it. Ducks are like that too: they naturally head for water (and chickens for trees). All that schooling and education, all that wit and those foreign languages have no effect at all; they do not feed into life strategy.