Writes Anna Louie Sussman, in "Why Aren’t More People Getting Married? Ask Women What Dating Is Like" (NYT).
November 11, 2023
"To be sure, many men are fantastic people and partners, and I’m sure many women are loathsome, creepy, or otherwise disrespectful...."
"But rather than chiding people (mostly women, mostly single moms) to get married 'for the children,' how about a little empathy that we’re living through a juncture where various forces at play have made meaningful companionship hard to find?... [W]e should listen to the experiences of women who are attempting to find partners. We should care about the interior lives, not just the educational attainment or the employment status, of the men who could be those partners.... It requires taking the stories of single women seriously, and not treating them as punchlines.... [S]imply advising people to marry is not only, frankly, obnoxious for the many women out there trying — it’s also just not going to work."
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Where is that link to the TikTok of the woman eating 4 plates of oysters on a first date…
NYT Johnny One-Note. The familiar pitch of that ax grinding.
I note authoress originally got noticed by writing about the challenge of finding the perfect prom dress.
Life is oh so tough.
OK. Now ask men what its like to date.
We should care about the interior lives, not just the educational attainment or the employment status, of the men who could be those partners.... It requires taking the stories of single women seriously, and not treating them as punchlines.
"But of course with the spread of literacy you now tend to get girls who have thought and feeling too, in some measure, and some of them will probably belong to the Royal Philological Society or something, or in any case have their own 'thing,' which must be respected, and catered to, and nattered about, just as if you gave a shit about all this blague. But of course we may be different, perhaps you do care about it. It's not unheard of."
Barthelme Snow White
Examining What do you have to offer? might help but that's not fun is it? Can't see but are these the women what took all the spots in college and the professional workforces but still looking for the men above their position?
Something's Gotta Give and it's probably you.
Men, women, and our Posterity are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus. #WarOfTheWorlds #HateLovesAbortion #Diversity
"[W]e should listen to the experiences of women"
[Rolls eyes]
I went on a blind date once. Someone set me up with a friend of theirs who was a nurse. As the dinner proceeded, she got got a few drinks in her and became very talkative. Finally, the date ended with her telling me how she wanted a nice house and she wanted to travel the world. (No mention of kids.) Then she looked at me and said, "I need someone to save me from my life and you're not that person." So I thanked her for the date, paid both our bills and went home. (She had picked a rather expensive restaurant to go to and I felt sorry for her. Even though, at the time, she probably made more money than me.)
Many people set their standards for marriage too high. They expect somebody with money, charisma and good looks...instead of someone like them.
Our culture has gone from wanting to marry the boy or girl next door to expecting to marry an Alpha male or female.
"Women get everthing they demand for 60+ years, including zero accountability for their poor decisions, are now unhappy. Women and their illegitimate children hardest hit." ---NYT
"We should care about the interior lives, not just the educational attainment or the employment status, of the men who could be those partners."
Besides thinking about the Roman Empire, men also think about what's in the relationship for them. Will the woman respect him? Where does she fall in the hot-crazy matrix? Is she prone to depression and anxiety? Will she shame or ridicule him on social media? If they have children, will she divorce him, and get custody and alimony? If she hurts him, or baselessly accuses him of something, will anyone believe him?
It always seems like the mating game for these women is to apply the same feminist arguments they use for sport/professional gain where it ultimately ends up in the courts. Has anyone tried to get the judge to force him to sign the marriage certificate? Wouldn't surprise me...
Make the lake toxic and then swim in it.
Six million more women than men have earned bachelors degrees. So women wanting a man with as high or higher credential is unrealistic.
In addition, the more educated a woman is, the more likely she is to divorce or separate. Of course, for men, divorce means losing half your assets, possibly alimony and maybe alienation from his children. Marriage is high risk for men and those risks only rise the longer the marriage continues
Given the large returns on earnings, education surprisingly does not increase women’s probability of never marrying, but it does increase the probability of divorce and separation.
--Returns to Education for Women in the Mid-20th Century: Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Laws
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/11/returns-to-education-for-women-in-the-mid-20th-century-evidence-from-compulsory-schooling-laws.html
McArdle's opinion piece is briefly mentioned, but not her central point: the first step in addressing a problem is identifying it and saying this is bad.
But the indigo blob sees nothing wrong with single-parent families. McArdle notes that "only 30 percent of college-educated liberals agree that it’s important for children to have two married parents."
Again I'll recommend the Netflix show "Indian Matchmaking". Most of the people, men and women, using the matchmaker are so picky they can't be matched. The ones who eventually start a relationship will credit the matchmaker for forcing them to consider their flaws and ideals of perfection. It's fascinating to see an attractive person choose so horribly for themselves while not listening to the matchmaker.
Isn't there something about what to do when you find yourself at the bottom of a hole? A really deep, dark, dank, disastrous hole? I think it involves a shovel.
If young professional women are having a hard time finding a suitable companion maybe they should rethink driving men from the colleges.
"it’s also just not going to work."
Oh, I dunno. It seems to be working out pretty well for the Amish.
"Many people set their standards for marriage too high. They expect somebody with money, charisma and good looks...instead of someone like them."
This reminds me of the time I was thinking of starting a business and I got a book on the subject that had a chapter titled "Would You Hire Yourself?" That got an easy "no."
That's how I feel about your idea. You're essentially asking "Would You Marry Yourself?"
This video explains it using logic and funny cartoons.
"Would You Marry Yourself?"
Maybe. I have a lot to offer. But it wouldn't be a walk in the park.
There seems a lack of introspection from the author and from the women that the article seems to put forward as victims.
Mz. Sussman’s friend who is positioned as a great find for a man is described as "beautiful and successful, and not, as far as I can tell, overly 'picky.' She has had long-term relationships in the past, and cherishes the intimacy and stability they provide.”
As far as Mz Sussman can tell this woman is not too picky. But “When she [the great find of a woman] asks her male friends to set her up with their friends, they consistently tell her that no one they know would be good enough for her.”
Might that be a sign that she IS too picky, and that her friends know this?
Oh! That same great find of a woman is also committed to going on at least a hundred dates with someone new. And she has a system for doing so, which she likens to an SAT form.
Who wouldn’t want to be involved with that person???
Might someone reasonably find that “creepy” (a word used by Mz. Sussman in the following paragraph)?
The woman who got knocked up by her drug user boyfriend, whom she was with for two years and wanted to stay with, said she was skeptical of advice to get married (tied to references to overall benefits to children’s well being)… she ended up living with her parents (plural).
Mz. Sussman cites to Yale anthropologist Marcia Inhorn, who compiled a sort of taxonomy of cads, such as the “Alpha males” who “want to be challenged by work, not by their partners”
Are they “cads”?
Is it unreasonable or caddish for men to “want to be challenged by work, not by their partners”?
Of course, "challenge" can have different meanings, but it does not seem odd to not look favorably toward a challenging person or relationship. It is an element of relationships that will exist without seeking out more of it.
If the meaning of marriage is not clear our minds were apt to screw it up. If you think marriage is about what you get from or out of the other person, you’re set to fail from the very start. The truth that has been obscured by decades of nonsense, is that marriage is two people committing to each other, and nothing more. It is also those to same people committing to the children that they create. The hidden truth is that the commitment per se is what produces the security and the satisfaction and the love and the joy. And the joy is amplified by the realization that you had a choice to not commit, but you chose to commit.
And by chance I am writing this on my 41st wedding anniversary. My wife and I have been through all the peaks and valleys in those 41 years though admittedly not any conflagrations. I’m a better person because I chose to change when I needed to, rather than leave. I had to get rid of the clever sounding but baseless notion of “I shouldn’t have to….” It’s one thing to say you’re committed to people and relationships. It’s another thing to actually do it. I know not everyone is as lucky as I am, but it’s an amazing thing to sit across the table at breakfast from a woman who you realize has committed to me these years regardless of how stupid I am or can be.
"... men also think about what's in the relationship for them."
Well. I have fucked plenty of women I had absolutely no intention of marrying. And it was pretty obvious what was in those relationships for me. For them, too, I suppose. I wonder ...
I am thinking, that maybe for men, marriage is ALWAYS a settling for less than what you know you really want. We are more or less resigned to that. Which makes it easier to live with. Yeah, you definitely would rather be having sex with Wanda. But you also know that if you were having sex with Wanda, you would be wanting someone else. You want them all, or at least a fairly large fraction of them, and you can't have them. If you aren't happy with your lot, it's because happiness with your lot is not in your nature.
"Would You Hire Yourself?" That got an easy "no."
Interesting. And yet, you have hired yourself, to run this blog. And I can't think of anyone else who could conceivably do it as well. My advice is to ask for a raise.
Keep women affordable, available, reusable, and profitable, and the "burden" of evidence aborted (for social progress), cannibalized (for clinical progress) , and sequestered (for climate progress). #SIC
But rather than chiding people (mostly women, mostly single moms) to get married 'for the children
Now that's funny because most of the chiding I see about not marrying is aimed at men.
Men know that in 10-20 years they will no longer have sex with whomever they marry. So might as well, skip the whole damn thing and keep trading up.
Yes, I would marry myself.
Fortunately, I found a woman who married me instead, and we've been together for the last 43 years. She set her expectations low, and I managed somehow to achieve them.
That's how I feel about your idea. You're essentially asking "Would You Marry Yourself?"
The problem is that they aren't honest about themselves to begin with. If you ask them, "would you marry yourself?" they'd answer, "Of course! I'm a great catch!"
People used to say marriage was hard, singles dating was easy. Now they both seem hard. But which one leads somewhere?
Where is the person doing for young disaffected women what Jordan Peterson does for young disaffected men - urging then to take a hard looking at themselves and realize that they are not doing their best?
Blogger Kate said...
Again I'll recommend the Netflix show "Indian Matchmaking". Most of the people, men and women, using the matchmaker are so picky they can't be matched. The ones who eventually start a relationship will credit the matchmaker for forcing them to consider their flaws and ideals of perfection. It's fascinating to see an attractive person choose so horribly for themselves while not listening to the matchmaker.
One of my Indian medical students, who was in a biological engineering program and was the smartest student I think I ever had, told me her mother chose her father on an Indian dating site because he was the only one who had posted a color photo.
She was also beautiful.
Ann Althouse said...
"Many people set their standards for marriage too high. They expect somebody with money, charisma and good looks...instead of someone like them."
This reminds me of the time I was thinking of starting a business and I got a book on the subject that had a chapter titled "Would You Hire Yourself?" That got an easy "no."
That's how I feel about your idea. You're essentially asking "Would You Marry Yourself?"
Holy carp! That's what you got from that? I think I see the problem...
American middle- and upper-middle-class women: The freest, richest, best-educated women in human history, yet also somehow the unhappiest.
This opens with a description of someone who the "just get married" advice generally wouldn't be aimed at. That advice would have been aimed at her when she was living with the guy, before they had a kid. But it would have come after the advice: "Don't date a drug addict." The get married advice is usually deployed as a means of avoiding this woman's situation.
I would, if I met someone who shared my values.
But I'm not competing with the world for a goddamn thing - including her.
This topic is one in which just about all of us have no systematic data ---we merely have our own anecdotes based upon the experiences we've had, and those we've been told about. My anecdotes tell me that it's gotten tougher for people to find happiness in their romantic and personal lives. It helps to be lucky, it helps to be sane, and it helps if you've won the genetic and socioeconomic lotteries.
BTW - I was answering the question "Would You Marry Yourself?"
"Would You Marry Yourself?" No, but I've had some fun dates IYKWIM.
That is rather misplaced, to be seeking emotional support and availability in a male partner. Practical help, sure, men can be good at that, but emotional support will have to come from your girlfriends. If you can get fidelity, continuous gainful employment, and staying out of jail, that should be enough.
What was Gahrie's perfect summary line?
No woman anywhere should be made to feel responsible for any action or decision, at any time.
?? Missing something? (Besides Gahrie.)
This reminds me of the time I was thinking of starting a business and I got a book on the subject that had a chapter titled "Would You Hire Yourself?" That got an easy "no."
That received a laugh out loud.
In the end, it is the woman who choses. I can only assume the current situation is exactly what they wanted.
I've learned a lot about marriage by listening to the divorced. There are a lot divorced among military men and women, and you get to hear a lot about it. I also learned a lot by listening to this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5z8-9Op2nM&t=3100s
Great interview.
When she asks her male friends to set her up with their friends, they consistently tell her that no one they know would be good enough for her.
They're trying to be nice about it. What they're really thinking is, "Why would I set up one of my friends with this picky, insufferable b*tch...?"
"That's how I feel about your idea. You're essentially asking "Would You Marry Yourself?"
This isn't Lake Wobegon- lots and lots of people have to settle, in the old terminology. As it stands today, men are operating in a buyer's market, women are operating in a seller's market, but the latter apparently don't understand their situation- at all.
Look, I don't give a flying fuck if women want to have children without fathers involved- but don't going crying to the government for the money to feed and educate them- own your decisions.
Marriage is advised, not compelled, grow up... and stop publishing handmade tales to encourage bad choices.
I decided to read the writers bio. It reads like an academic trying to understand practical experience when it comes to commitment in long term relationships and raising children. Does she have children? Does she date men? Don’t know. She doesn’t tell. She just asks others. Apparently she did look for a prom dress.
My marriage was the best thing that ever happened to me (I don't ask the wife about her views though), and I swung for the fences there and hit a home run. Lord knows where I'd be now as a bachelor. We've two successful adult children, a nice house in the suburbs, two paid off cars. I don't mean to brag, I'm sure many on here have a similar experience. I firmly believe that a stable 2 parent household is the ideal for a nice middle class life. I even won't quibble on the sex of either spouse, that ship has sailed, 2 parents are the answer.
Marriage is interesting. Getting married to the right person is more a matter of dumb luck than anything else. But I got lucky in the game in college in the mid 1960s and am still married to my first wife. I say first wife because many of my fraternity brothers and other acquaintances got divorced along the way--some of them are now working on their third or even fifth wife. I think it was Satchel Paige who advised young baseball players to "avoid the social ramble--it ain't restful ". And the thought of being married multiple times makes me weary.
There are both positive and negative warning signs along the way if you can figure out how to read them. As the father of two daughters I had some fairly rigid views about what the positive signs were. Of course the daughters paid lip service, if they paid any attention at all to their father's views. That said, the two chose well and are still happily married as each approaches her 20th wedding anniversary.
Guess I was lucky - I met my lovely bride when I was a computer tech in the early '90s, trying to find the right one but ending up with a lot of the wrong ones. We met at, of all things, an ice cream social.
She needed help with the computer she was doing her Master's thesis on - her WordPerfect had crashed and I had a bootleg copy of it I could install for her, (I figure the statute of limitations has run out on that one, lol) and I asked her to dinner afterwards.
She was... different than the type I usually went for. She was open, honest, caring, and didn't seem to have any ulterior motive. We talked a lot, and one thing led to another and we ended up marrying about a year later.
She knew she made twice as much as I did - but that wasn't important. She was interested in me for me, and it was a case of "Let's just see where it all goes."
I never did make what she made - but that's been fine. We've helped each other as needed, respected each other, and seem to have avoided a lot of the garbage that others have gone through. I think it's been about mutual respect - if you don't respect each other as people, you start looking at them as things, and treating them as things - and that's not healthy at all for any relationship.
This reminds me of Christopher Guest's mockumentary Best in Show, particularly the Norwich terrier couple, Gerry and Cookie Fleck (SCTV veterans Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara). Gerry is the ultimate incel with two left feet (literally) and buck teeth. Cookie is the ultimate woman with a history, having hundreds (literally) of ex-lovers and one-night stands salted seemly everywhere she goes. Gerry is grateful for anyone willing to be his loyal wife, and Cookie is grateful for not being yet another notch on yet another man's "shootin' iron".
Here are the cruel facts feminists have rejected for the last 60-odd (very odd) years. Men don't want women with a history. Arranged marriages are the norm in every non-Western and traditional culture, and have been as far back as records exist. An arranged marriage is a bargain, a deal in Trumpian terms -- no history in exchange for security. Feminism damns this exchange as unfair, dehumanizing the bride in their overheated argot. Sometimes it was, but is dating a better way? The ever-increasing unhappiness of American womanhood refutes the feminist claims more strongly than any argument. Did Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem intend this ruination of their sisters, or were they just stupid?
The modern idea of dating, i.e. social contact between strangers that leads promptly to intercourse probably had its genesis during the Second World War -- millions of young men at the peak of their sexual capacity in transit or in training coming into social contact with millions of young women working in war production who often lived in shared apartments far from the supervision of their parents. It's hard to imagine a more fertile garden for casual sex between virtual strangers. The 18-year-old Hugh Hefner had a brief taste of that Eden when he served as a writer for a United States Army magazine from 1944 to 1946. Undoubtedly he hoped to regain that paradise when he founded the Playboy enterprise in 1953.
While it is unfair to characterize Hefner as a sexual predator, that's a category inhabited by monsters, it is also unfair to include him among the admirable members of American manhood. He was married three times and divorced twice. Between the wives, Hefner had eight acknowledged mistresses and an uncountable number of "dates"; five of the kept women overlapped Wife Number 2. What Kimberley Conrad Hefner thought of her husband's doings isn't recorded (being a Kimberley suggests that wasn't a choice). However, one supposes she was thoroughly modern about everything. By the official narrative, Hefner sired four offspring, two lawful and two acknowledged bastards. The body of his innominate issue and aborted fetuses could probably flesh out a tinpot dictator's ceremonial guard.
To conclude I reiterate, that American women are increasingly miserable and two of the foundation stones of the American Left are to blame -- Hefner-esque hedonism and its able assistant, academic feminism. Any questions?
My younger son spelled out a number of reasons why marriage was a bad bargain for Millennial men. That lasted until he met the woman who is now my daughter-in-law.
I'll let Jordan mansplain it for you:
Peterson says:
Human females engage in hypergamy. Women mate across and up dominance hierarchies, men mate across and down. (If one goes up, the other has to go down). The socio-economic status of a woman determines almost zero her attractiveness to a man where as the socio-economic status of a man is a major determinant of his attractiveness to a woman. And it isn’t his wealth. It’s his capacity to generate and be productive and to share.
Because women engaged in hypergamy, we diverged quite rapidly because the selection pressure that women placed on men developed the entire species. The men competed for competence. The male hierarchy is a mechanism that pushes the best man to the top. The effect of that is multiplied by the fact women who are hypergamous peel from the top and so that the males who are the most competent are much more likely to leave offspring. That seems to be what drove our cortical expansion. That happened very very rapidly over the course of evolutionary time.
Today’s woman wants to marry someone better than herself in every way.
And then demand equality.
"What was Gahrie's perfect summary line?
No woman anywhere should be made to feel responsible for any action or decision, at any time."
I think he got that from Steve Sailer.
Anyway, I married a Silent Gen guy. Boomers and younger are whack, men and women both.
My advice to girls is go to school and join College Republicans and meet a nice man there. He'll love you just for coming out as an R.
When I was in the computer racket I worked with a bunch of South Asians who were in arranged marriages, and seemed quite happy with the arrangement. This was pooh-poohed by a few of the divorced women in the department. But when these arrangements are made the arrangers have more in mind than, say, sexual attraction.
"It requires taking the stories of single women seriously, and not treating them as punchlines — something for which there is little historical precedent,"
What, she missed all books and manifestos and consciousness-raising sessions of second wave feminism? Some gal said the more they got together and talked, the angrier everyone got. I'm not sure it did much good.
Meanwhile men got their sexual revolution. What a deal.
One problem is this, what does marriage have to offer for men? If someone wants sex, you can pay for it. And assuming you need a housekeeper/cook, you can hire that too. i think most men want a family and a companion for life, and they don't want a shrew or someone with "issues" although a sizable number seem to like the "crazy" type.
I see too many slightly better then average women who have a far too high opinon of themselves. Maybe that's a good thing. And I assume they'll probably realize that, eventually. If not...
You can settle for being someone's mistress and try to work that into being the 2nd wife. Women have gone that route.
Blogger RMc said...
When she asks her male friends to set her up with their friends, they consistently tell her that no one they know would be good enough for her.
They're trying to be nice about it. What they're really thinking is, "Why would I set up one of my friends with this picky, insufferable b*tch...?"
That probably sounds misogynistic to women but, on the ground, accords with everything I’ve ever seen. A couple times in the last week, as a matter of fact.
Yancey states it more concisely above but, yeah, if your culture is constantly enabling you, you have no idea of the actual state of play. How could you? No Free Lunch is another one of those Iron Laws of History.
[W]e should listen to the experiences of women who are attempting to find partners.
We have a choice in the matter?
Rather than look at the individual two-person relationships (as so many comments here do) I want to reflect on the aggregate or social atmosphere. Men want sex. Generations ago, they married to get sex (and companionship and social and economic help, yes I know). These days, if they want sex, they go online and say "hey babe" and then they have sex. Even if only 25% of women will respond to this casual kind of sex, that's enough to service all the men. So if a man is already figured out how to get enough sex, why would he want to marry? We can thank the pill and the sexual revolution and feminism for this.
Irreconcilable narcissism, his, hers, his and hers. Civil unions... incorporation for all consenting adults. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #NoBinaryBigotry, right?
Rent a woman... womb, deposit your sperm, while you got them, right? One step forward, two steps backward.
We can thank the pill and the sexual revolution and feminism for this.
I've been saying.
Thank you, sexual revolution, for taking away women's major currency in relationships and making them have to dress like "sex workers,) give in to cheap non-relationships, and perform sexual acts they don't like, just to get dates.
Am I glad that women's sexuality has been moved into the light? Yes... but "women's sexuality" is not the same as "men's sexuality" no matter what we're all supposed to believe.
Kevin very succinctly presented Jordan Peterson's whole evolutionary theory on how females select mates.
H: that's absolute bollocks. 80% of the women are choosing 20% of the men in the age of online dating and social media profile selection process. The next 30% of the men get the rest of the women and then 50% of men get nothing.
Natural selection is a wicked bitch.
Some people fall in love and get married. Apparently not as many as back in the day.
Wonder if internet is involved in current difficulties.
You're essentially asking "Would You Marry Yourself?"
Well, people tell me to go f**k myself all the time. I might as well have the benefit of clergy.
Marriage is a Christian tradition where a man supports a family while his wife builds him up and loves their children. So the problem is the man’s income level and stability. Attacking that middle class income key has nearly eliminated the functional marriage. Women now get paid money for being women and get romance from the women in their income status. The children are never birthed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/04/trump-cameras-courtroom-indictment/
About three dozen House Democrats, led by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), are calling for televising the federal trials of former president Donald Trump on charges related to the 2020 election and the retention of classified documents.
In a letter to Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, who oversees the administration of federal courts, the lawmakers argued that the move would bolster public acceptance of the outcome.
“Given the historic nature of the charges brought forth in these cases, it is hard to imagine a more powerful circumstance for televised proceedings,” said the letter, dated Thursday. “If the public is to fully accept the outcome, it will be vitally important for it to witness, as directly as possible, how the trials are conducted, the strength of the evidence adduced and the credibility of witnesses.”
By the way, I didn’t marry myself; I married the best friend I’ve ever had. As of tonight we’re 2 months short of our 49th anniversary. And I still think she’s gorgeous.
Online dating has created women with inflated egos chasing the same Chads.
H has an antiquated take.
Peterson does as well.
...how about a little empathy that we’re living through a juncture where various forces at play have made meaningful companionship hard to find?
Well, yeah. But that's just Trump Derangement Syndrome!
Didn't bother with the article. From the comments here the article is the usual feminist whining and delusion. Men basically have three basic criteria for being in a relationship with a woman: 1-what is called presently a situationship a/k/a friends with benefits. 2-girlfriend, a woman he wants to sleep with and love and loved by and exclusively. 3-wife or as the current expression goes wifeup. That is the girlfriend who not only loves the guy but accepts him the way he is and he in turn accepts her as she is. What men generally want rules out single mothers, what for? First she made one or more bad choices otherwise she wouldn't be a single mother ( excluding widows). They also don't want woman with a high body count. At best it means to him that you went through X number of men in your youth and now decided you can't do better than him so you are settling for less. These women expect that they can change reality and get bitter when they finally can't. It never occurs to them that the man they demand has choices and more often than not, he has more choices than those woman. Young men today have to accept that the pretty woman have choices for men that are better looking and make more money. Then around thirty they start to worry they aren't going to settle down for a life with a husband and kids with the men they want and often find that guy settled for a woman younger than her and the guys she friend-zoned in her twenties are now married or finally dating the woman they couldn't get in their early twenties. However it may be unfair, reality can't be ultimately denied. Fantasy is for children, reality is for adults. Live in reality.
There's a side to most men that is predicated on the memory of getting your ass kicked, or the real prospect of it. The experience (even if it doesn't come to pass) engenders a capability of cold-blooded, bloody-minded, determined resolve. And these sentiments can sometimes come into play in the male - female dynamic under the right circumstances.
Women seem to have been trained by modern society to believe that 'grrrl-power' can do anything ! Be anything, ladies! ... (well, maybe anything except a female athlete, these days ) which of course is balderdash that adults normally grow out of when the first couple of disappointments roll by. But seemingly, in modern culture, women are encouraged to believe that they can have it all, and if they don't have it all, on schedule, then it's someone else's fault and it better get fixed, pronto. This is where the conflicts arise with males I think (see above).
A commitment to the principles of commitment seems to be what is most missing these days. I see plenty of successful and happy couples, and families. Thankfully, my daughter is one of them, like my wife and I, for which I give frequent thanks. I hate to point it out, but the Bible has a few pretty good thoughts on this that apply to both sexes.
"Would You Marry Yourself?"
Get the online ordination first. Then you can marry yourself yourself.
It is certainly only a single data point but, I think ,indicative of the pertinent reason. Look at the abhorrent antisemitic demonstrations recently. Look at the huge number of women in those crowds. Why would anyone want a long term relationship with someone like that, with those values ? What are the parents of someone like that like, their values ? The answers to those questions explains a lot.
“H: that's absolute bollocks. 80% of the women are choosing 20% of the men in the age of online dating and social media profile selection process. The next 30% of the men get the rest of the women and then 50% of men get nothing.”
“Natural selection is a wicked bitch.”
As Cuban Bob pointed out, women have a sale by date, and men’s is much later. The problem for so many of these women, by the time that they have a place in their lives for marriage, they are competing with women 10 years younger, and thus more fecund. If you ever want to see a bunch of desperate 30 and 40 something year old women on Friday night in Scottsdale, AZ. It’s a numbers game, and women are on the wrong side of it. If they don’t put out, the next one will. But if they do it too much, they are seen as essentially sluts, and that’s not what higher quality males want.
It starts in college though, when half the guys are not really datable. It wasn't too bad, when I was in college, a half century ago, and the sex ratio was 60/40 M/F. But more recently, it’s flipped, which means more women competing for even fewer men. I think that I would have liked it - I probably would have been close to that 20%, based on my successes in the much tougher competition back then. My daughter got lucky. She didn’t date much in college, concentrating on scholastics. Then, second semester her senior year, Magna Cum Laude guaranteed (she pulled a last minute Summa), and now 21, she started going out on the weekends. She met a nice guy, who was in a similar position - he was done with football now, and had mostly completed a onerous major, and had dated even less than she. Married and been together for over a decade now. I was a bit worried back then, before this, because, for many women, college is the last good place to meet guys. She probably would have been ok, since she is in a heavily male dominated field…
Something else about the 20% Chads. Recently read an article about male sex drive. Using mice, the males’ recovery is much quicker with a different female. There is a recovery period for males before they can be re-excited, and that is much shorter with a different female (smelling of estrus). And that parallels my experience - which is why my partner calls me a male whore (I respond that that was 50 years ago). And, of course, it makes evolutionary sense - maximizing sex partners maximizes probable offspring. Marriage and pair bonding is to give females (almost) exclusive access to a male’s resources and help in child rearing (needed since we have such a long childhood). But where is the incentive if the women may decide not to have kids, or if they do, are happy for the state to help support them?
I think more people would get married if people just honored and obeyed their marriage vows. It's worked in my marriage.
Just reading the start of this blog post put Cry me a River into my head.
I'm heartless.
A good thread on twitter about dating apps and the pressures on the modern dating market.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1723477458760953872.html
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