"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 had personal experience with #1 several times over the years. We almost automatically think of men when we think "Dark Triad," and the illustrations are nearly always of males.
There is no shortage of covert narcissists in the world, and they are usually women.
Although Rob's simplified statement isnt entirely correct, there is some truth to it. There is an overall bad attotude toward online dating. Everyone is worried about protecting their ego, and avoiding sinking time into getting to know someone for a relationship that doesnt last. Its a Catch 22. Plus communicating via text with an avatar is a terrible way to communicate, especially with the goal of forming connections. Real life works much better for meeting people.
Anecdotal. Just my own experience, and I'm giving everyone the benefit of the doubt by choosing the phrase "protecting their own egos" rather than calling it narcissism. We do not do well with seemingly unlimited choices.
I'll add that online dating turned terrible in 2016. It was much better before the election.
The good news is that after a 6 month hiatus, I just "met" someone very smart, capable, and interesting.
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.
I think a lot of younger guys are basically clueless when it comes to dating. It's not that they are dumb, or uninterested, but generally ignorant of what to do... which stems from a father not doing his job with them to teach them. Most dads are very hands-off when it comes to passing along hard-earned wisdom to their sons in high school, never mind beyond that. Also, 90% of the time an 18 year old male wouldn't take advice from his dad on a relationship because he's already the smartest guy in the world, why would he listen to that old fart?
I appreciate both your points of view. I think putting it all of the dad is not the answer. Did your dad, Phil, sit you down and explain how to ask a girl on a date or how to do a date?
Mine didn’t really. He told me about the “birds and the bees” after guitar lessons one day and gave me advice for my first date and prom. But I discovered most of what I needed to know from unhealthy but useful books like “The Game” by Neil Strauss. I was driven to read and observe out of jealousy of the “jocks” in my high school who were “good with girls” and watching high drama shows (One Tree Hill).
Do I intend to sit down with my son and talk to him about it, I do. But… If he’s like me he’ll think I know nothing about dating.
This thread I’ll share below is the best one I’ve seen on conversations you should have anyway as a parent.
Dave Morris calls it the “awkward conversation fight”.
And Kathleen, regarding DT women, I think you can look no further than some of the women who argue with “Sneako” (I know he had some low moments). They charge a Chipotle burrito for dudes to buy lingerie photos and expect a guy to take them to a premium dinner and support their lifestyle with a 6-to-7 hl figure salary.
Eventually your sister will stumble upon someone not so oblivious… but sounds like she needs to look for someone older - who preferably reads Rob Henderson 😂 kidding but kind of not. My wife and I have a six year gap and my youngest sister and her husband have 10 years. They both seem pretty happy 😁
Although my dad never sat me down and told me how to ask a girl out, he did talk to me about enough things around the edges to make it clear. From, how to talk and treat my mother, to how to have conversations with adults (when I was pre-teen) to never sit in the car and honk the horn, but to go up to the door and ring the bell... and then actually talk to the parents (regardless of if it was a guy friend or a girl on a date). All that stuff helps I think. As with almost everything in life, we learn from the actions our mentors take much more than what they say.
I would also agree that "older" guys are less stupid. Lord knows I was a real "work in progress" at 25, but a few years later had straightened out a bit and was someone a woman might find interesting.
That's funny about your brother looking for someone so young. Is it because women his own age find him lacking? A 28 year old woman is much pickier than an 18 year old, that's for sure.
I would tell your sis to just keep dating and figure out what she doesn't want, which should be easy ;-)
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.
That's an interesting point Jonathan. Although I am not a woman, I would guess it would stem from the idea that gay men have different personality traits and are looking for different things in their relationships. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to offer insights into some woman's dating choices. I think any man sees through male BS better than the average woman.
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.
Much as I’d like to blame political correctness for this one, it’s probably some combination of my natural poor grammar due to bad early schooling and not doing a second pass before posting.
The switch to the plural in places of ambiguity goes back centuries in English and people only became sticky about being against it around 150 years ago. I was raised (1950s-60s) to be ultra-precise in my usage and would never do it formally. But depending on the audience, some days when writing I just don't want the headache of complaints and would use a more modern construction now. I'm not willing to die on every hill. Usage changes.
Yes, indeed things have changed since the 1950s-60s when you and I were growing up . . . but look how that has turned out. Little things matter. Maybe not dying on the hill matter . . . but perhaps at least being willing to endure the occasional headache. Discarding logic in grammar makes for sloppy thinking as well as writing. That way be dragons . . . and ebonics.
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.)
You are exactly right! I hadn't thought of the depressive nature of squelching hundreds of years of biological reality. Women are fighting so hard to "overcome" themselves.
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.
Most colleges in America are easy to get into. Women also work more managerial jobs that need an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree, while men go to trade school much more. So it’s easy to imagine a woman with a nursing degree dating a man with an electrician’s license.
Women who went to elite colleges, though, will not date men without a degree.
I had a similar thought. If we take the rather stuffy estimate that some people have, that only 15% of people should be attending college, my bet is that 15% is not considering non-college men.
In my comment I made a distinction between a degree from an elite school and all other degrees. I'd like to see a study of how many women from a set of elite, meaning highly selective, schools marry men without college degrees.
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.
Mary Harrington’s piece a few days ago on submissive BDSM relationships and “surrendered wives” is on point here...
"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 had personal experience with #1 several times over the years. We almost automatically think of men when we think "Dark Triad," and the illustrations are nearly always of males.
There is no shortage of covert narcissists in the world, and they are usually women.
Although Rob's simplified statement isnt entirely correct, there is some truth to it. There is an overall bad attotude toward online dating. Everyone is worried about protecting their ego, and avoiding sinking time into getting to know someone for a relationship that doesnt last. Its a Catch 22. Plus communicating via text with an avatar is a terrible way to communicate, especially with the goal of forming connections. Real life works much better for meeting people.
You got any data to back up your claims, there have been studies on dating app usage , dark triad traits, sociosexuality a lot of which are genetic.
Anecdotal. Just my own experience, and I'm giving everyone the benefit of the doubt by choosing the phrase "protecting their own egos" rather than calling it narcissism. We do not do well with seemingly unlimited choices.
I'll add that online dating turned terrible in 2016. It was much better before the election.
The good news is that after a 6 month hiatus, I just "met" someone very smart, capable, and interesting.
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.
I think a lot of younger guys are basically clueless when it comes to dating. It's not that they are dumb, or uninterested, but generally ignorant of what to do... which stems from a father not doing his job with them to teach them. Most dads are very hands-off when it comes to passing along hard-earned wisdom to their sons in high school, never mind beyond that. Also, 90% of the time an 18 year old male wouldn't take advice from his dad on a relationship because he's already the smartest guy in the world, why would he listen to that old fart?
Long response (sorry in advance).
I appreciate both your points of view. I think putting it all of the dad is not the answer. Did your dad, Phil, sit you down and explain how to ask a girl on a date or how to do a date?
Mine didn’t really. He told me about the “birds and the bees” after guitar lessons one day and gave me advice for my first date and prom. But I discovered most of what I needed to know from unhealthy but useful books like “The Game” by Neil Strauss. I was driven to read and observe out of jealousy of the “jocks” in my high school who were “good with girls” and watching high drama shows (One Tree Hill).
Do I intend to sit down with my son and talk to him about it, I do. But… If he’s like me he’ll think I know nothing about dating.
This thread I’ll share below is the best one I’ve seen on conversations you should have anyway as a parent.
Dave Morris calls it the “awkward conversation fight”.
https://twitter.com/wdmorrisjr/status/1510605658441326606?s=20
And Kathleen, regarding DT women, I think you can look no further than some of the women who argue with “Sneako” (I know he had some low moments). They charge a Chipotle burrito for dudes to buy lingerie photos and expect a guy to take them to a premium dinner and support their lifestyle with a 6-to-7 hl figure salary.
Eventually your sister will stumble upon someone not so oblivious… but sounds like she needs to look for someone older - who preferably reads Rob Henderson 😂 kidding but kind of not. My wife and I have a six year gap and my youngest sister and her husband have 10 years. They both seem pretty happy 😁
Although my dad never sat me down and told me how to ask a girl out, he did talk to me about enough things around the edges to make it clear. From, how to talk and treat my mother, to how to have conversations with adults (when I was pre-teen) to never sit in the car and honk the horn, but to go up to the door and ring the bell... and then actually talk to the parents (regardless of if it was a guy friend or a girl on a date). All that stuff helps I think. As with almost everything in life, we learn from the actions our mentors take much more than what they say.
I would also agree that "older" guys are less stupid. Lord knows I was a real "work in progress" at 25, but a few years later had straightened out a bit and was someone a woman might find interesting.
That's funny about your brother looking for someone so young. Is it because women his own age find him lacking? A 28 year old woman is much pickier than an 18 year old, that's for sure.
I would tell your sis to just keep dating and figure out what she doesn't want, which should be easy ;-)
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.
That's an interesting point Jonathan. Although I am not a woman, I would guess it would stem from the idea that gay men have different personality traits and are looking for different things in their relationships. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to offer insights into some woman's dating choices. I think any man sees through male BS better than the average woman.
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.
Much as I’d like to blame political correctness for this one, it’s probably some combination of my natural poor grammar due to bad early schooling and not doing a second pass before posting.
Thanks for the response. I am much happier with grammatical incompetence and sloth than political correctness as an explanation.
The switch to the plural in places of ambiguity goes back centuries in English and people only became sticky about being against it around 150 years ago. I was raised (1950s-60s) to be ultra-precise in my usage and would never do it formally. But depending on the audience, some days when writing I just don't want the headache of complaints and would use a more modern construction now. I'm not willing to die on every hill. Usage changes.
Yes, indeed things have changed since the 1950s-60s when you and I were growing up . . . but look how that has turned out. Little things matter. Maybe not dying on the hill matter . . . but perhaps at least being willing to endure the occasional headache. Discarding logic in grammar makes for sloppy thinking as well as writing. That way be dragons . . . and ebonics.
I recommend the writing of the linguist John McWhorter on the matter, and on your beliefs about language in general.
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.)
You are exactly right! I hadn't thought of the depressive nature of squelching hundreds of years of biological reality. Women are fighting so hard to "overcome" themselves.
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.
Most colleges in America are easy to get into. Women also work more managerial jobs that need an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree, while men go to trade school much more. So it’s easy to imagine a woman with a nursing degree dating a man with an electrician’s license.
Women who went to elite colleges, though, will not date men without a degree.
I had a similar thought. If we take the rather stuffy estimate that some people have, that only 15% of people should be attending college, my bet is that 15% is not considering non-college men.
In my comment I made a distinction between a degree from an elite school and all other degrees. I'd like to see a study of how many women from a set of elite, meaning highly selective, schools marry men without college degrees.
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.