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When choosing a mate, which is more important. What your heart tells you or what your head tells you.
Discuss.

You need both. To much of one or the other is bad for different reasons. If they are in serious conflict that is typically a red flag.

I do what my c*ck tells me.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:I do what my c*ck tells me.

Win.

I'd say both really.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:I do what my c*ck tells me.

Sounds like it's head for MGS then.

daedalus wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:I do what my c*ck tells me.

Sounds like it's head for MGS then.

By "mate" do you mean someone to enjoy an evening or two with? If so, go with your head. Your head is much better at deciding whether or not those nether regions (male or female) are a place you actually want to go.

But, if by "mate" you mean someone to settle down with and spend your days with for the long haul, then you absolutely need both. Deciding you would make a good match with logic but without the feelings leads to a bitter, nasty, drawn-out end to the relationship as you lack the motivation to outlast the rough patches (and there are ALWAYS rough patches). Deciding you would make a good match with feelings but knowing logically it won't work well will end with constant bickering that eats away the feelings until a huge explosive argument ends things permanently.

If you're trying to decide between two possible mates, one who has your heart and one who you think would be better, choose neither. You're debating about settling on two different partners, neither one of which is truly right for you.

Neither, use your 'gut'

The heart wants what it wants. The head's job is to work out how.

The head stops the heart from breaking.

My heart is a bastard. Or not there. So it's a no brainer for me to go with my head.

As with all decisions of this nature i would have to agree with some of the above posters that there is no real easy win here. If you go soley with your heart you will most likely run into trouble when the heart runs out. Though i may be mistaken i believe that the duration of heart is somewhere on the order of two years before the hormones run out. Then a realistic foundation for the relationship, namely; similar interests, similar goals and a genuine freindship take the helm.
Arranged marraiges like those that take place in India have been shown to result in much greater long term love than those here in the west where we go more with heart than anything. It has been suggested that the fact that the union is selected by the parents who know their child and are able to make a better choice for their child than the child itself can make has something to do with this. The fact that the couple is joined by common goals beyond the heart leads them to eventually share greater love together than a western style union.

Head, easily. As aforementioned, the heart expires. Some days you'll wake up and not feel attracted to the person next to you and it becomes a conscious choice to stay. If anyone feels otherwise, consider this experiment. You see a girl you feel attracted to. You chit chat and there's chemistry. You could see something happening here and can tell she's interested. Imagine yourself there. Now, her friend walks in. You think she's gorgeous and feel a stronger connection with her. See what happened there? Girl A seemed ideal, but there's always Girl B, and Girl C, and Girl D... It's up to your head to keep you with someone if that's what you want. Ultimately you should go with what your gut tells you you need though, otherwise you'll end up being in a situation that makes you unhappy. Everyone will likely want long-term companionship at some point, so live life while you're young or else you'll just end up cheating on whoever you're with or having to beat the crap out of yourself to stop it from happening.

What her booty is telling me.

Honestly though, I never though through my dates that much, yet I've had a 2 year relationship, and the one I'm in now is 2+ years and going awesome

Both of course! That is how you find the right one.

Women are all heartless bitches, so go with the head.

-- Someone who may or may not be recently separated/divorced

Thanks to numerous failures in this field, I no longer trust my head, my heart or any other part of my body with making decisions when it comes to this crap.

Easily both. I feel that way about my wife. I love her with my heart, and I stay with her because I know in my head, how horrible it would be without her.

From PA Dutch country:

Kissin wears out. Cookin dont.

A bit of both. If her friends are all f'd in the head, then my head tells me to run away as she is probably f'd in the head too.

When my wife, then girlfriend, said one Christmas morning after I had about 4 beers and a weed cigar in me, 'you smell like zoo. Melly Chlistmas!" and gave me the Led Zeppelin boxset it was my heart and head telling me it was her.

Maybe it was the booze and smoke...

Arranged marriages work very well in countries which have a strong social bias against divorce.

'When choosing a mate'? What the feth am I? A fething Zebra on the African plains?



You crazy.


Also, this:

Khornholio wrote:
When my wife, then girlfriend, said one Christmas morning after I had about 4 beers and a weed cigar in me, 'you smell like zoo. Melly Chlistmas!" and gave me the Led Zeppelin boxset it was my heart and head telling me it was her.

...wins everything. Seriously a contender for greatest Dakka post ever. I just love that you did the accent! So unnecessary, yet so funny.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Head, easily. As aforementioned, the heart expires. Some days you'll wake up and not feel attracted to the person next to you and it becomes a conscious choice to stay. If anyone feels otherwise, consider this experiment. You see a girl you feel attracted to. You chit chat and there's chemistry. You could see something happening here and can tell she's interested. Imagine yourself there. Now, her friend walks in. You think she's gorgeous and feel a stronger connection with her. See what happened there? Girl A seemed ideal, but there's always Girl B, and Girl C, and Girl D... It's up to your head to keep you with someone if that's what you want. Ultimately you should go with what your gut tells you you need though, otherwise you'll end up being in a situation that makes you unhappy. Everyone will likely want long-term companionship at some point, so live life while you're young or else you'll just end up cheating on whoever you're with or having to beat the crap out of yourself to stop it from happening.

Now, it may just be me here, but I like the idea of never being arbitrarily tied down to any one person. Honestly, a guiltless relationship where one could enter or leave at one's volition would be ideal for me. But then again, I never was a fan of commitment.

Albatross wrote:'When choosing a mate'? What the feth am I? A fething Zebra on the African plains?

No, you're an Albatross

Well played.

40-40-20
Head, Heart, Gut

Fafnir wrote:

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Head, easily. As aforementioned, the heart expires. Some days you'll wake up and not feel attracted to the person next to you and it becomes a conscious choice to stay. If anyone feels otherwise, consider this experiment. You see a girl you feel attracted to. You chit chat and there's chemistry. You could see something happening here and can tell she's interested. Imagine yourself there. Now, her friend walks in. You think she's gorgeous and feel a stronger connection with her. See what happened there? Girl A seemed ideal, but there's always Girl B, and Girl C, and Girl D... It's up to your head to keep you with someone if that's what you want. Ultimately you should go with what your gut tells you you need though, otherwise you'll end up being in a situation that makes you unhappy. Everyone will likely want long-term companionship at some point, so live life while you're young or else you'll just end up cheating on whoever you're with or having to beat the crap out of yourself to stop it from happening.

Now, it may just be me here, but I like the idea of never being arbitrarily tied down to any one person. Honestly, a guiltless relationship where one could enter or leave at one's volition would be ideal for me. But then again, I never was a fan of commitment.

Personal experience speaking, it has it's pitfalls. IMO, are they anywhere near the pitfalls of being in a traditional relationship? Heeeeellllllll no! People fall for me quite a bit and it's annoying having to reexplain that I'm not "really" with them. I've crushed deeply on one or two people I've been with but it wasn't a massive deal because I can practically be Spock when I want to (even though the emotions are a little hurdle to wait out). There's also the element of having to worry about really knowing someone you haven't been with/around that long. My gut has only failed me once majorly in this regard, but it was enough to make it stick and gift me with a nice case of paranoia for about a month. One last thing: if you're ever tripping on anything, prepare to remember random details from encounters with people and to develop a sudden nostalgia. At it's worst, when I was liquored up, high and rolling I kept thinking how I wanted one person's lips, another's understanding personality, one's intelligence, etc. and forming this really weird composite person in my head that didn't exist and just made everyone around me seem really unappealing. People who know me really well say I'm basically living a polyamorous lifestyle, but I don't consider myself that by any stretch, I just like really like both genders so it's really, really hard to pick one person who can satisfy both needs The benefits are fairly obvious, though a favorite fringe one of mine is that your spank bank will never be empty

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:

Fafnir wrote:

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Head, easily. As aforementioned, the heart expires. Some days you'll wake up and not feel attracted to the person next to you and it becomes a conscious choice to stay. If anyone feels otherwise, consider this experiment. You see a girl you feel attracted to. You chit chat and there's chemistry. You could see something happening here and can tell she's interested. Imagine yourself there. Now, her friend walks in. You think she's gorgeous and feel a stronger connection with her. See what happened there? Girl A seemed ideal, but there's always Girl B, and Girl C, and Girl D... It's up to your head to keep you with someone if that's what you want. Ultimately you should go with what your gut tells you you need though, otherwise you'll end up being in a situation that makes you unhappy. Everyone will likely want long-term companionship at some point, so live life while you're young or else you'll just end up cheating on whoever you're with or having to beat the crap out of yourself to stop it from happening.

Now, it may just be me here, but I like the idea of never being arbitrarily tied down to any one person. Honestly, a guiltless relationship where one could enter or leave at one's volition would be ideal for me. But then again, I never was a fan of commitment.

Personal experience speaking, it has it's pitfalls. IMO, are they anywhere near the pitfalls of being in a traditional relationship? Heeeeellllllll no! People fall for me quite a bit and it's annoying having to reexplain that I'm not "really" with them. I've crushed deeply on one or two people I've been with but it wasn't a massive deal because I can practically be Spock when I want to (even though the emotions are a little hurdle to wait out). There's also the element of having to worry about really knowing someone you haven't been with/around that long. My gut has only failed me once majorly in this regard, but it was enough to make it stick and gift me with a nice case of paranoia for about a month. One last thing: if you're ever tripping on anything, prepare to remember random details from encounters with people and to develop a sudden nostalgia. At it's worst, when I was liquored up, high and rolling I kept thinking how I wanted one person's lips, another's understanding personality, one's intelligence, etc. and forming this really weird composite person in my head that didn't exist and just made everyone around me seem really unappealing. People who know me really well say I'm basically living a polyamorous lifestyle, but I don't consider myself that by any stretch, I just like really like both genders so it's really, really hard to pick one person who can satisfy both needs The benefits are fairly obvious, though a favorite fringe one of mine is that your spank bank will never be empty

All bow to the sexmod's advise!

Seriously though it depends on the context; if I like a girl then it will be for emotional reasons not because I theoretically see them as an ideal mate for the greater Darwinian good however I will most deffinately evaluate the situation, if say a friend likes the same girl or other such problems, with my head.

If I turned into a zombie and had to eat a loved one's organ, I'd go for the heart:

I was once in the unfortunate position to have become emotionally attatched to two different women. Its important to detail that both girsl new what was going on. there was no playing or crappy male behaviore going on. I simply dated both women, looking toward a commited relationship.
One woman was very athletic, loved the outdoors, was fearless and studied science, all very important to me.
The other girl was very nice, level headed and easy to get along with. She and i had dated longer than the first girl and I had.
I would never wish the connundrum of the heart on anyone. Being attatched to do different people nearly drove me mad thinking and trying to wiegh out whic girl to select. Having learned my lesson i now never engage in pursuit of more than one girl at a time. I started this thread for a friend of mine (girl) who is faceing the heart vrs head problem. Any pointers for her.