"Regarding personal beliefs, there is an interesting paradox here for men and women. Most women today are liberal, yet women are also more likely than men to desire committed relationships. Men who are liberal are, on average, far less interested in committed relationships than conservative men, who are more likely to be interested in marriage."
A lot of contemporary women's unhappiness must be because of the facts that liberal social progress and technological progress actually seem to be undermining their sexual/dating/relationship happiness. These 2 things are the pillars of liberalism's belief in a better tomorrow (e.g. "Diversity is our strength" and "I fucking love science") and they're very good at improving a lot of things. Liberal social progress means less homophobia and technological progress means more medical cures, for obvious examples.
But on the flip side, they appear to distinctly harm women's romantic happiness. Men's romantic happiness suffers as well, and most of the online gender wars is about which gender has it worse these days in this regard. But assuming the stats about greater male satisfaction with dating apps is true, then it has to be very discouraging for women to see that your personal romantic hopes are actually going to have to be sacrificed in the pursuit of your own political and societal ideals. And it's not as if you're going to become a Luddite or conservative because you do genuinely believe in the merits of liberal social and technological progress.
That's why we'll see more re-definitions of "social progress" to account for straight women's romantic preferences, in order to reconcile traditionally clashing notions of what was socially progressive and what women wanted in their dating lives. The stereotypical dichotomy of the Fundamentalist Christian prude vs. a free-love hippie will make way for the hippie prude. The empowered and liberated woman will prefer traditional dating norms not because she is oppressed, but because she is empowered and liberated, because what makes women happier (and more powerful) is by definition empowering and liberating for women. Some examples of this already happening are progressive aversion to straight sex scenes in movies, policing of age gap relationships involving two obvious adults (in which even women well into their 20s are infantilized by progressives), and progressive intolerance of racism in all areas of life except in women's dating lives.
The problem is that happiness is sometimes a zero-sum game, and orienting your ideology on a zero-sum premise is going to start a ton of fights.
I grew up in a communist country. Many times, in the stores you had only 1 choice or no choice at all. People nowadays have unlimited choice and report less satisfaction. Choosing between 10 ketchup flavors and having only 1 option made the 1 option more satisfying because the alternative was nothing. Talk of "yes, we didn't have much but at least stuff was real" is rampant nowadays in many places in Eastern Europe. Very disappointing but not unexplainable. Great article above. Keep it up Rob
“ In short, Dark Triad men mistreat women, who then mistreat ordinary men, who then mistreat ordinary women. Bad behavior drives out the good.” Yeah I have trouble believing that and there are several issues with that statement.
2. See if your claims withstand the big 5/ Hexaco analysis take the so called “good women” and “good men” who were mistreated and have now gone to mistreat you probably will find some traits proving they weren’t so good after all.
I know so many good-looking and apparently well-adjusted 25-35 year old single women who can't see that they are single become of a general and unspecific kind of chip on the shoulder resentful and what in the UK we'd call arsiness about how awful men are and how the world is configured deliberately to make life hard for women. I am 40 and got married when I was 27 so missed all this hell, but if I was on a date with a women no matter how attractive I'd run a mile at the first utterance of the word 'patriarchy' or other such phrase.
Dating apps did not appear out of nowhere. They were an answer to "I hate the bar scene." Movement of people destroys previous institutions and customs of finding a mate. Girls leaving the farm to go work in the New England mills even a few towns away in the 1800s and living in boarding houses experienced profound dislocations of how to find husbands. Going away to college, or relocating after a war profoundly affected young men in the 1900s. Graduate school usually means relocation for good now. But since 1970 the changes for both sexes have been profound, and customs and institutions are still throwing darts at the map trying to find something that works. Churches would love to help, but this is not what they are designed for.
Young women today are more liberal than ever, while young men have stayed the same politically. I wonder how this will affect the dating market, as young liberal women that want a liberal man end up having less options, and young conservative men also have less.
“ If you are a typical male in a relationship, don’t just do what comes naturally. Which is probably… or close to nothing. You have to battle your own nature and go out of your way to pretend to be a decent and caring human being.”
It’s shocking to me the so much old-fashioned, generally moral and sound advice needs to be explicitly said.
As my dad said of a in-law that recently cheated on a relative before filing for divorce,
“I understand the marriage was in shambles, but you just don’t treat people that way.”
In a similar vein, Christine Emba said regarding JP and his basic advice,
“ As one therapist told me: “I have used Jordan Peterson to turn a boy into a man. I used him to turn this guy without a strong father figure into someone who, yes, makes his bed and stands up straight and now is successful.” The books, she said, “do provide a structure that was clearly missing.”
I’m curious if deteriorating traditional family structures and single parent homes yield men higher in Dark Triad characteristics.
Of course I’m missing data, but my intuition is many of my strongest rebukes from my dad were indirectly intended to limit these DT behaviors and apply the gold or at least silver rule:
Treat others as you’d like to be treated,
or, at a minimum, don’t do to others what you would not want done to you.
A very interesting but not particularly shocking or surprising article. It as always fascinated me that women have never talked to me, a gay man (or 100% homo which is the term I prefer) what it is like to be a guy. Not only am I guy, but I am sexually and emotionally interested in guys. The current heterosexual dating scene reminds me a lot of the gay sub-culture. Very oriented to casual sex, which makes it difficult to have a long-term relationship, especially if monogamy is important.
re:And some guys have told me about the bewilderment they have felt after being ghosted by women after what seemed like a pleasant date followed by sex. My guess (only a guess) is that some of these women have been mistreated in the past and have now adopted the same behaviors and patterns. Emotional coldness, ghosting, concealing signs of vulnerability or neediness, and so on.
One thing to consider is whether those bewildered guys also are a walking vortex of emotional neediness, but who keep that neediness hidden in the normal course of events. Because one common pattern is -- after sex, certain men suddenly feel that they can and should talk about their emotional needs, and boy do they have a lot of them. They get ghosted because the other party doesn't want that needy a person in a relationship. A little bit of mutual needing is expected, but too much need, and one-sided need is frightening. Somebody who genuinely is that needy cannot help but be selfish. 'Try before you buy' says 'don't buy this one'.
I am curious why the author (an obviously erudite and sensible person) would write "any man who calls themselves a moderate." Why not the logical and grammatical "who calls himself"? Political correctness seems to be ruining logical thought (like blurring single/plural "each person can have their opinion"). I am surprised to see it here. I guess it has just seeped into the atmosphere.
I think college-educated conservative men are wary when it comes to dating college-educated women. I think it depends on the major. Conservative men are more likely to want a feminine woman who may put family first in their list of priorities. This isn't something that is popular for women to say, so I think there are more choices than men know about because I believe women instinctively want to say this out loud, but won't. (I have no proof of this, I just live with and around conservative men.)
The one survey I had trouble believing was on assortive mating, that college educated women are fine pairing up with men without a degree.
I think my mental block may have more to do with elite/selective college degrees, which make up a relatively small minority of degrees. If it doesn't already exist, it would be an interesting study to see how many female graduates of the top 20 or 50 schools end up marrying men without a degree.
I have zero sympathy for women when they prioritize a tall man before looking at his character and how he treats her. And ditto for men who will only date "hot" girls. The height thing is especially stupid. Girls who talk like that embarrass me as a woman.
Linked to choice paralysis, stop looking around compulsively and work at making what you have good not because that makes you a good person but because you will in many cases be more fulfilled, secure and understood in all aspects. And also you learn more from these deeper relationships so the next one will benefit. Thinking back to teenage years, age definitely helps with this. But we are talking about adults here right?
I foresaw this trend when gay marriage was nomalized and women became more educated. I know a few married lesbians where one or both are not really gay, but resigned to that relationship because they are not appealing to the type of male they would be interested in.
As an "old man" reading this, makes me think more and more about the values we tried to instill in our son and whether they will help or hinder him during his dating life. Traditional conservative values, the kind that were normal before the 1970s, seem to still be valued by women. Be a guy that I can count on, take pride in your work regardless of what you're doing, treat people well, and aim at something better for the future seem like common sense to my generation. The cultural changes over the past 60 years certainly don't seem to be helping either sex, and almost punishing women.
"Regarding personal beliefs, there is an interesting paradox here for men and women. Most women today are liberal, yet women are also more likely than men to desire committed relationships. Men who are liberal are, on average, far less interested in committed relationships than conservative men, who are more likely to be interested in marriage."
A lot of contemporary women's unhappiness must be because of the facts that liberal social progress and technological progress actually seem to be undermining their sexual/dating/relationship happiness. These 2 things are the pillars of liberalism's belief in a better tomorrow (e.g. "Diversity is our strength" and "I fucking love science") and they're very good at improving a lot of things. Liberal social progress means less homophobia and technological progress means more medical cures, for obvious examples.
But on the flip side, they appear to distinctly harm women's romantic happiness. Men's romantic happiness suffers as well, and most of the online gender wars is about which gender has it worse these days in this regard. But assuming the stats about greater male satisfaction with dating apps is true, then it has to be very discouraging for women to see that your personal romantic hopes are actually going to have to be sacrificed in the pursuit of your own political and societal ideals. And it's not as if you're going to become a Luddite or conservative because you do genuinely believe in the merits of liberal social and technological progress.
That's why we'll see more re-definitions of "social progress" to account for straight women's romantic preferences, in order to reconcile traditionally clashing notions of what was socially progressive and what women wanted in their dating lives. The stereotypical dichotomy of the Fundamentalist Christian prude vs. a free-love hippie will make way for the hippie prude. The empowered and liberated woman will prefer traditional dating norms not because she is oppressed, but because she is empowered and liberated, because what makes women happier (and more powerful) is by definition empowering and liberating for women. Some examples of this already happening are progressive aversion to straight sex scenes in movies, policing of age gap relationships involving two obvious adults (in which even women well into their 20s are infantilized by progressives), and progressive intolerance of racism in all areas of life except in women's dating lives.
The problem is that happiness is sometimes a zero-sum game, and orienting your ideology on a zero-sum premise is going to start a ton of fights.
"Today, relationships among young people commonly begin with sex, then turn into. . ."
Oy. If you can't keep sexual tension in the background while getting to know a person, then good luck to you finding a really satisfying relationship.
I grew up in a communist country. Many times, in the stores you had only 1 choice or no choice at all. People nowadays have unlimited choice and report less satisfaction. Choosing between 10 ketchup flavors and having only 1 option made the 1 option more satisfying because the alternative was nothing. Talk of "yes, we didn't have much but at least stuff was real" is rampant nowadays in many places in Eastern Europe. Very disappointing but not unexplainable. Great article above. Keep it up Rob
“ In short, Dark Triad men mistreat women, who then mistreat ordinary men, who then mistreat ordinary women. Bad behavior drives out the good.” Yeah I have trouble believing that and there are several issues with that statement.
1. The number of dark triad women is grossly understated and there is significant bias as women are generally perceived as more agreeable however that isn’t always the case , if you need a citation here it is: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/27991/chapter-abstract/211695302?redirectedFrom=fulltext#:~:text=Researchers%20repeatedly%20report%20that%20although,et%20al.%2C%202013).
2. See if your claims withstand the big 5/ Hexaco analysis take the so called “good women” and “good men” who were mistreated and have now gone to mistreat you probably will find some traits proving they weren’t so good after all.
I know so many good-looking and apparently well-adjusted 25-35 year old single women who can't see that they are single become of a general and unspecific kind of chip on the shoulder resentful and what in the UK we'd call arsiness about how awful men are and how the world is configured deliberately to make life hard for women. I am 40 and got married when I was 27 so missed all this hell, but if I was on a date with a women no matter how attractive I'd run a mile at the first utterance of the word 'patriarchy' or other such phrase.
Dating apps did not appear out of nowhere. They were an answer to "I hate the bar scene." Movement of people destroys previous institutions and customs of finding a mate. Girls leaving the farm to go work in the New England mills even a few towns away in the 1800s and living in boarding houses experienced profound dislocations of how to find husbands. Going away to college, or relocating after a war profoundly affected young men in the 1900s. Graduate school usually means relocation for good now. But since 1970 the changes for both sexes have been profound, and customs and institutions are still throwing darts at the map trying to find something that works. Churches would love to help, but this is not what they are designed for.
Young women today are more liberal than ever, while young men have stayed the same politically. I wonder how this will affect the dating market, as young liberal women that want a liberal man end up having less options, and young conservative men also have less.
“ If you are a typical male in a relationship, don’t just do what comes naturally. Which is probably… or close to nothing. You have to battle your own nature and go out of your way to pretend to be a decent and caring human being.”
It’s shocking to me the so much old-fashioned, generally moral and sound advice needs to be explicitly said.
As my dad said of a in-law that recently cheated on a relative before filing for divorce,
“I understand the marriage was in shambles, but you just don’t treat people that way.”
In a similar vein, Christine Emba said regarding JP and his basic advice,
“ As one therapist told me: “I have used Jordan Peterson to turn a boy into a man. I used him to turn this guy without a strong father figure into someone who, yes, makes his bed and stands up straight and now is successful.” The books, she said, “do provide a structure that was clearly missing.”
I’m curious if deteriorating traditional family structures and single parent homes yield men higher in Dark Triad characteristics.
Of course I’m missing data, but my intuition is many of my strongest rebukes from my dad were indirectly intended to limit these DT behaviors and apply the gold or at least silver rule:
Treat others as you’d like to be treated,
or, at a minimum, don’t do to others what you would not want done to you.
A very interesting but not particularly shocking or surprising article. It as always fascinated me that women have never talked to me, a gay man (or 100% homo which is the term I prefer) what it is like to be a guy. Not only am I guy, but I am sexually and emotionally interested in guys. The current heterosexual dating scene reminds me a lot of the gay sub-culture. Very oriented to casual sex, which makes it difficult to have a long-term relationship, especially if monogamy is important.
re:And some guys have told me about the bewilderment they have felt after being ghosted by women after what seemed like a pleasant date followed by sex. My guess (only a guess) is that some of these women have been mistreated in the past and have now adopted the same behaviors and patterns. Emotional coldness, ghosting, concealing signs of vulnerability or neediness, and so on.
One thing to consider is whether those bewildered guys also are a walking vortex of emotional neediness, but who keep that neediness hidden in the normal course of events. Because one common pattern is -- after sex, certain men suddenly feel that they can and should talk about their emotional needs, and boy do they have a lot of them. They get ghosted because the other party doesn't want that needy a person in a relationship. A little bit of mutual needing is expected, but too much need, and one-sided need is frightening. Somebody who genuinely is that needy cannot help but be selfish. 'Try before you buy' says 'don't buy this one'.
I am curious why the author (an obviously erudite and sensible person) would write "any man who calls themselves a moderate." Why not the logical and grammatical "who calls himself"? Political correctness seems to be ruining logical thought (like blurring single/plural "each person can have their opinion"). I am surprised to see it here. I guess it has just seeped into the atmosphere.
I think college-educated conservative men are wary when it comes to dating college-educated women. I think it depends on the major. Conservative men are more likely to want a feminine woman who may put family first in their list of priorities. This isn't something that is popular for women to say, so I think there are more choices than men know about because I believe women instinctively want to say this out loud, but won't. (I have no proof of this, I just live with and around conservative men.)
Really informative post.
The one survey I had trouble believing was on assortive mating, that college educated women are fine pairing up with men without a degree.
I think my mental block may have more to do with elite/selective college degrees, which make up a relatively small minority of degrees. If it doesn't already exist, it would be an interesting study to see how many female graduates of the top 20 or 50 schools end up marrying men without a degree.
I have zero sympathy for women when they prioritize a tall man before looking at his character and how he treats her. And ditto for men who will only date "hot" girls. The height thing is especially stupid. Girls who talk like that embarrass me as a woman.
Linked to choice paralysis, stop looking around compulsively and work at making what you have good not because that makes you a good person but because you will in many cases be more fulfilled, secure and understood in all aspects. And also you learn more from these deeper relationships so the next one will benefit. Thinking back to teenage years, age definitely helps with this. But we are talking about adults here right?
"About 6 in 10 young men (18-29) are single.
Among young women, less than half are single."
I foresaw this trend when gay marriage was nomalized and women became more educated. I know a few married lesbians where one or both are not really gay, but resigned to that relationship because they are not appealing to the type of male they would be interested in.
As an "old man" reading this, makes me think more and more about the values we tried to instill in our son and whether they will help or hinder him during his dating life. Traditional conservative values, the kind that were normal before the 1970s, seem to still be valued by women. Be a guy that I can count on, take pride in your work regardless of what you're doing, treat people well, and aim at something better for the future seem like common sense to my generation. The cultural changes over the past 60 years certainly don't seem to be helping either sex, and almost punishing women.