Mate selection for long-term relationships is complex. Despite may potential mates, the odds of success are reduced by distance, language, availability and sexual preference. Additionally, those who do not acknowledge their origin, genetic drivers or sexuality, do not distinguish between the two realities, or understand the pattern-response basis of the brain will be even more likely to fail in their endeavor to find and secure a mate.

People are like onions. Their core is genetic. Fundamental biological drives cannot be changed. They can only be frustrated or temporarily redirected.

Some gene expression can be changed, but only a little with changes in diet, exercise and weight. With education, mates can alter the physiology of their partners to make them more physically attractive and able. That may in turn improve their self-image, attitude and personality.

The remaining layers are comprised of pattern-responses. Some reinforce bad behaviors like over-eating and drug use (alcohol, prescription and illicit). Even when they are recognized as self-destructive, the dopamine reward response to a consumption, inhalation or injection pattern can be very difficult to resist. Substituting a healthy dopamine generation activity like orgasms may be more effective than denial, and less expensive than third-party intervention or alternative drug treatments. Similarly, orgasm addiction may be placated with chocolate.

Some nonsense pattern responses are reinforced to the extent that they become an irrational phobia.

Altering undesirable behaviors requires understanding and altering pattern responses, which may be driven by underlying pattern responses. Peeling away all the layers to find and change the source problematic response to a pattern, or provide an alternate pattern response may not be worth the effort. Males will normally recognize the futility before females, because the nurturing propensity of females makes them more inclined to believe they can "fix" faulty males.

The older people become, the more layers of pattern responses they cumulate. They "get set in their ways." Change is not an option in their remaining lifetime. Only acceptance and accommodation by one or both mates will allow a relationship to persist.

Confounding the logical and irrational pattern response layers are illogical cultural, traditional and religious pattern responses. When objectively evaluated, many make no sense in terms of facilitating the acquisition of sustenance, shelter and security for gene projection. The story of sisters cutting the traditional celebration ham into pieces before cooking it in one or more pots after their mother died illuminates the situation. After many years of this practice, one sister finally asks an aunt why their mother partitioned the ham before cooking it. The aunt replies that she did not have a pot big enough for the ham.

Not eating pork made sense before proper preparation made consumption safe. Friday fish consumption, which kept fisherman employed or reduced the demand for other protein sources was a relatively benign practice. Sexual mutilation, Berkas, whipping girls for their rape and killing girls who marry contrary to family wishes are examples of more ridiculous practices that are in fact counterproductive to gene projection. Nearly all cultural, traditional and religious practices have more to do with sustaining an oligarchy than any human or social benefit.

One exception is the culturally imposed responsibility for offspring. The primitive propensity of males to limit their attention to the most desirable female, because additional females could not be sufficiently sustained to be monopolized, or because they innately recognized that gene projection success required dedication to one female was compromised with the forced subsidy by others of pregnant females and single mothers known as "social welfare." This encouraged some males to indulge their propensity to fornicate with every ovulating female they encounter. To counter this tendency the culture made males aware of their responsibility for any resulting child should their sexual intercourse be successful. Consequently, males avoid copulation, conception or commitment to avoid that responsibility until they encounter a female who satisfies many criteria besides biological interest.

Another is limiting mates to one and mating to one at a time. Reliable contraception enabled males and females to enjoy the pleasure of fornication largely without fear of producing children. The more a female enjoys fornication, the less sustenance, shelter or security she demands in exchange, but the trade persists at some level, limiting the number of females a male can afford to enjoy. Females are not similarly limited, but proving to a desirable previous male that her child is his rather than that of a less desirable subsequent male may be difficult, and parallel mating is culturally discouraged. Males capable of providing sustenance, shelter and security to more than one female and their progeny would be naturally inclined to have multiple females were it not for cultural, traditional or religious restrictions expressed as law or otherwise.

What is one to do?
Someone seeking a mate is encumbered with their own unique set of pattern responses. Their potential mates are similarly encumbered. The disjoint set of pattern responses of the pair is problematic.

Remove unnecessary layers of your onion. Recognize irrational pattern responses, and eliminate them. Recognize illogical cultural, traditional and religious pattern responses, and eliminate them. Recognize superfluous logical pattern responses, and eliminate them. In other words, minimize your baggage.

Objectively evaluate potential mates. Avoid the self-delusion inherent with subjective reality.

Unexpressed expectations are deadly to relationships. Despite the inclination to hide or disguise expectations to avoid rejection, expectations should be delineated and shared, so each individual can determine the degree of pattern-response incongruity and the cost to reduce the incongruity of those pattern responses relative to the benefit of mating. If either person is unwilling to accommodate the expectations of the other, admit failure and look elsewhere. If both agree mating is practical, convert the expectations into a marriage contract. Regularly review the contract to remind and assure both that the contract is being satisfied, or mutually agree to modify it.