I'm sorry to burst the bubble of any Disney fans out there, but Prince Charming almost certainly lived more happily ever after than Snow White did.

I'm saying this horrible thing because a famous mathematical puzzle known as the Stable Marriage Problem shows that a person who pursues a mate is almost always more satisfied with their spouse than a person who is pursued.

This is a particularly important fact for women who adhere to The Rules, because physics and math suggest that rule number 6 of the top ten rules for women appears to be very, very wrong.

Skip to the Tip in this week's post.

The first analysis of the Stable Marriage Problem was described in a 1962 paper by mathematician David Gale and economist Lloyd Shapley. They were attempting to determine if a set of 100 men and 100 women could pair up in marriages in a way that no one could find a better mate in the bunch who would have them.

They way they set up the problem goes like this . . .

Each man ranks all 100 women from their first choice of potential partner to their last. The women all do the same for the men. Because the reasons one person finds...