The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships: Ruthlessly Optimized Strategies for Dating, Sex, and Marriage

The Pragmatist’s Guide to Relationships presents a data-driven dissection of sex, dating, and marriage by taking a deep dive into academic literature and stress testing strategies advocated by “marriage gurus” and self-styled pick-up artists. Combining insights from these disparate fields, we construct novel models detailing how humans secure partners and make long-term relationships work while exploring how these systems can be exploited to one’s advantage in a world of broken dating markets and plummeting marriage rates.

This guide acts as an instruction manual for mate acquisition strategies of all stripes, providing the foundation needed to excel at any number of tricky tasks—be it getting laid, writing a marriage contract, training a spouse, determining whether a partner cheated, exploring the world of non-monogamy, or finding the perfect long-term partner.

As with all Pragmatist Foundation books, the proceeds from this book go to nonprofits. In line with the foundation's goals, the book attempts to explore the topic of human relationships without pushing the agenda of any particular ideological team.

Originally a neuroscientist focused on brain-computer interface and the evolution of human cognition (his work is on display at the Smithsonian), Malcolm Collins felt he could learn more about the way humans interact with the world and each other by pursuing an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. There he met Simone, his wife and co-author, who at the time was Director of Marketing at HubPages.com, managing a team of 20,000 freelancers. Together they co-founded the art commission marketplace ArtCorgi.com, after which Malcolm became Director of Strategy at South Korea's most desired source of early-stage capital and Simone earned her graduate degree from Cambridge while working in VC. The couple now runs a number of travel companies (with a focus on Travelmax), splitting their time between North American headquarters near Valley Forge, PA and South American offices in Lima, Peru.