One silly article tried explain the success of hookup apps is that more desperate females are willing to put out in this environment.
Couple things come to mind. Throughout my time, I've seen that women have their fair share of not wanting to marry down either. You want to say generalizations generalizations. Sure, but I think the age old stereotypes do have a hint of truth to them and the Bloomberg page here also states, "High-earning women (doctors, lawyers) tend to pair up with their economic equals, while middle- and lower-tier women often marry up."
You say problem in quotation marks and I don't know why that is? If people are not finding their partners, that's a huge problem.
Here's the anecdotal: My sister and her friends are all pretty educated women. Unfortunately, their standards have really gone up since receiving said education. I'm not saying this to bash, it's simply my observation. These days, they're all still single and reaching/past 30 and no man can scratch their itch. The whole thing is problematic.
What do you mean by this exactly? PhDs? MDs?
> These days, they're all still single and reaching/past 30 and no man can scratch their itch.
Could you give examples of the occupations of the rejected suitors?
My problem is that I don't live quite in the DC area, I'm about an hour away from downtown DC. And what I'm finding is that the desirable single women all live right in downtown DC, and do not want to date a man who lives an hour away. Now, if there were a healthy market of compatible men, this attitude would be quite understandable. But we're talking about a bunch of women who are bitching that they can't find any decent men to date, but then I come along and I'm told, "you look great, but you're too far away!! Sorry, but give me a ring when you move closer."
So IMO, these women are extremely picky and unrealistic. If I find someone I really like and might want to marry, I would move to be closer to her, just like married couples routinely move long-distance because one of them got a new job. I've even stated this up-front, as I do not plan to stay in my current location long-term (I'm a software engineer like probably half the audience here, our jobs don't last that long and we move around a lot). So as far as I can tell, many of these women have done this to themselves by being way too picky and having overly high expectations. They think they're going to find a guy who looks like George Clooney or whatever, has a $250j/year career, and lives across the street from them.
From what I've seen, I don't think they actually expect to meet George Clooney. After living with their independence and high paying job, 100% of which they can spend on them-self, usually enabling tons of international travel. They don't actually want to settle down and put work into a relationship, but their friends and family constantly pester them to do so.
So they settle for appearing desperate to keep their friends and family happy, but keeping standards high so that either the sacrifices to have a relationship would be worth it to them or they don't get a relationship they didn't want anyway.
I disagree about them not wanting to actually be in a relationship, but I think what's happened is that they're so used to being single and free, and never having been in a serious relationship for that long, that they really have no idea how to do it, and it's probably a lost cause. They're now realizing they have to get started right now if they want to have natural kids, but they're not prepared to make the sacrifices you have to make in order to be in that kind of relationship.
As someone who was raised by a single mom, it's a horrible experience, and prepares you for a life of never being able to be successful in an adult relationship, because you've never seen such a relationship except maybe on TV (which we all know is not reflective of reality at all).
I do not see a good future here for our society. I'm not a social conservative in most ways (I'm a big believer in poly relationships for instance), but what I'm seeing with the 30-45 women makes me very worried for the future of our society. Maybe the Millenials and Gen-Zers will do a better job than us stupid Gen-Xers; they seem to be much more open-minded and willing to try out different relationship styles, rather than not having relationships at all.
But less anecdotally: for the first time in history, the percent of couples in which the woman has obtained a higher level of education than the man is higher than the other way around: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/12/record-share... Keep in mind that this is ALL couples, whether they were married last month, or 50 years ago, so the trend can be expected to lag behind current graduation trends. So both men and women seem to be figuring it out, your sister aside.
I'd be surprised if degree level was a major factor by itself. E.g. If the woman has a masters but the man has only a bachelors, she would discount the man as a potential mate. He may still be socioeconomically on par or better.
My wife has a PhD, and is a Senior Data Scientist (why not Chief, who knows), and belongs to a noble Swedish/Finnish family.
I am P.O.C. trash, from a (mostly) poor town in S Tacoma, WA.
I hit the jackpot.
> Unfortunately, their standards have really gone up since receiving said education. I'm not saying this to bash, it's simply my observation.
I suspect that part of it has to do with the circles you hang out in. If you are a non-professional man, you are less likely to interact with professional women. If you do, you will have more chance to pair-wise bond. Anecdotally, a guy I train Krav Maga with, works at the maintenance crew at a local hotel. His wife has a degree in Aerospace Engineering. They met at a gym.
Also it's a small world when an HN reader that attended college in the small town I grew up in, would find my comment and correctly guess that small town.
https://www.google.com/search?q=beauty+is+in+the+eye+of+the+...
Also it took me a good solid year of my A-game to win her over.
Money for men is like looks for women. Men want a wife with good looks and women want a successful man.
Intelligence for men is like likability for women. I think there are a lot of parallels.
No no no no no. Height for men is like age for women. A woman can lose weight if she wants a particular man, but, just like men cannot make themselves taller, women cannot make themselves younger.
Also, some men like a BBW. I suspect this is much more common than women who actively prefer short men. (I have been a BBW. Some men really, really like that.)
Turn offs: taller then me, under average looks, older then me, personal life more complicated than mine.
Edited -- male point of view for a potential wife
Maybe that's true for a certain type of man suffering from insecurity.
In general I find that men love to find a woman who is smart and practical. After all, this is about your life partner.
I think you might be valuing people rather strangely, don't you think?
I personally think having slightly divergent competencies is more stable than closwrr matches since it'd be less competitive or directly comparable.
Learning is also fun, and it can drive some pretty cool conversations.
Guess I'm just insecure.
First time I've heard that spending more of your time posting comments to the internet raises your dating potential. Karma comes from comments. More comments, more karma.
I would put most marry up/down on those who have frequent non professional outside activities. Whether its religious, a particular hobby, or simply a circle of friends whose careers all diverged.
Where this is all going to blow up in society is the fact that women are now better-educated, and will soon make more money than their male counterparts, who are slowly getting more discriminated against (see Yahoo lawsuit) and less engaged in the proverbial rat race.
A case in point is looking at highly successful black females. They have a rough time in the dating scene, and this is extremely well-documented. Over the course of the next generation, I see this spreading to other females as well.
What effectively is going to happen is that you'll see more men dropping out of the marriage pool, the pareto principle in dating will become stronger than ever, and reliance upon the nanny state to help single mothers raise their children will likely go up too.
Hate it all you want, but these are three extremely well-established trends and I don't see them getting any better. Tinder is the canary in the coalmine. This is where we're heading.
A country needs strong, highly-engaged men who act as leaders. America is losing that more each and every day, and it saddens me.
The way you phrase this, the more probable cause would be that women don't want to marry down, hence men are motivated to be better (and they know that by being "just another brick in the wall" won't get them the partner they want").
This agrees with my observations of the world. Men don't care about accomplishments, they (we) just want a woman that is beautiful; whereas women care much more about a man's social status (warning: this is a very broad generalisation and of course doesn't hold for everybody).
At least in North America, Black females, like Asian men, have a harder time in the dating scene partially due to their gender/ethnicity combination. Both sets endure media representation and stereotypes that play against their sexual desirability. I'm sure people here will profess that they are immune to any images cultivated by the media and I'm not going to discount their experience. However, I think it's naive to believe that images we consume on a daily basis, such as the gender/ethnicity makeup of desirable lead characters or negative representations in the news don't unconsciously affect us. Anecdotally, I have met more black men who said they would never date a black women and Asian women who said they'd never date Asian men compared to white people who say they'd never date a white person. Online dating stats from eHarmony, okCupid, and coffeemeetsbagel reinforce that observation.
On top of that, people generally have a statistical preference for those within their own race. And if black men have a higher tendency to be imprisoned than other men, that puts black women at an additional disadvantage to finding a partner.
I guess my overall point is issues black women face are very different and unique to what Hispanic/White/Asian women face.
data to back this up: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-attraction-2009-2014/
I'm an educated black man (MS Degree) with a good job (Fortune 500 company) and my female relatives, many of whom are also educated and successful have difficulty with establishing and maintaining relationships.
Obviously not all, but many black women have unrealistic expectations. As other have already pointed out, women are adverse to marrying "down" so when a woman reaches a certain level of education/career advancement, it's extremely difficult to find a mate that meets her criteria. Lists of things, like Over 6 feet tall, lots of muscles, Bachelor's degree or higher, Churchgoing Christian, no children, good relationship with his mother, not domineering but not too passive, earning at least 6 figures and other wish-list type stuff. There are women who won't give a man the time of day unless he meets all of them. They, as you can well imagine, are lonely.
There are cultural taboos against black women becoming romantically involved with non black or hispanic men. I have only personally known one black woman who was involved with an asian man(his family came here from Vietnam and he grew up in "the 'hood") and only a few who are involved with white men.
I have never been in a relationship with a black woman. A date here and there. A fling here and there but never a relationship. Where I live, a video game playing, Dungeons and Dragons fan, comic book collecting, politically active guy doesn't tend to get much romantic interest from black women. Then, there's also the phenomenon of the black women who don't want anything to do with you getting upset because you're dating outside of the race.
I have also noticed that as we approach and pass 40 years of age, these women with their stratospheric standards are forced to carry on alone and bitter or drop their standards. Some of them get rid of them entirely just to get a man. I have even heard a fair bit of professional women getting involved with street dudes.
I guess my overall point is issues black women face are very different and unique to what Hispanic/White/Asian women face.
Agreed. Some of the issues are cultural, some are societal and some are of their own making.
I should have said that many of my female relatives have these problems.
In retrospect, it looked like I was saying all of them.
Anecdote: a second-gen-immigrant Italian friend of mine said her mother declared that my friend was not allowed to marry an Italian man, the reasoning being "I didn't raise my daughters to be mothers to their husbands". My friend said that from what her mother saw, Italian-culture men behaved like other men when married to a non-Italian woman, but when married to an Italian, there was a cultural expectation similar to mothering involved.
data size n=1, anecdata, all that stuff.
Literally every president in US history has been a man, 80.6% of Congress are men, 95.5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are men, and you're sad that it's getting marginally harder for men and that the country is lacking in strong male leaders?
I'd tend to agree with GP that while existing as a white male today is still "easy mode" in many ways when you do push yourself, there's definitely this feeling that society is celebrating everyone else while you're sort of left on your own without much encouragement.
> I've seen that women have their fair share of not wanting to marry down either
"Males generally don't marry up" and "Females generally don't marry down" are exactly the same claim.
I'm pretty sure that there are much fewer women in the high status category than men, so these men make the only rational decision (if they don't want to stay alone) - they marry down.
Once you reach a certain level in earnings you will have a very hard time finding someone that earns approximately the same amount.
I'm sure that this is currently even harder for men.
In this situation you really only have the choice to either marry down or never have a family of your own and stay alone for the rest of your life.
The thing is, you don't really "marry down". Usually people in the US/EU don't have to fear that they will have to face starvation or anything like that if they marry the wrong women/man so what is marrying down even about?
If one partner already has a lot of resources, why would he/she then require the other partner to be his/her equal in this regard?
When you remove economic resources from the equation you'll find that there are many perfectly fine potential partners out there with all the attributes that one could hope for.
It's the politically correct way of saying women don't marry down.
Cf. the works of the great poet of our times, K. West.
I was on a date last Thursday and this girl (29 yrs old) was constantly trying to figure out how she was better than me....IN EVERY FACET OF LIFE.
For example, she went on and on about how she is a badass since she went to the Amazon forests to a nice touristy shack with a guide and a bar. She told stories of hammocks, mosquito nets, snakes, insects and other wild stuff.
After a long time, she finally asked, "Tell me something about yourself...what adventures have you done? Or do you just do some programming stuff" (stereotyping of software engineers is rampant)
I simply smiled at her and said, "I backpacked through the forests in India without tour guides and ate wood-fried insects for lunch" (all true)
She was surprised....and all of a sudden, the average me piqued her interest. She couldn't believe that I had done better than her in pretty much everything.
Now she wanted me....but I didn't...not anymore.
I'm 27. I want practical, non-judgemental girls...not massive egos.
Unfortunately, I can't remain humble when my date starts a brag-fest like high school kids.
Humility is sometimes taken as cowardice or shyness.
She didn't have an ego, you did. If you didn't, you guys could have talked all about the particulars of the stories she was telling, interspersing with similar tales from your adventures.
But no, you wanted to prove that you were better than her. So you let her talk thinking not of having an actual conversation with her, but wanting to go on your spiel.
It's entirely possible you're right, but all you know about the situation is what he's written here. Without any other information, I'm inclined to believe what he's saying.
But it's not hard to have an engaging conversation with someone, even someone you are not interested in as a romantic partner. Especially when you have things in common to talk about.
He pointedly stated that he didn't want to do this, citing a problem he had with her attitude. To me, it doesn't matter what tone she used, what non-verbal cues she put out there. You're sitting there with someone doing nothing else but talking for an hour or so. If you can't make the most of it, and you blame the other person for that, then it's you that has the ego problem.
A conversation, particularly in a date context, is a delicate dance of perceptions, temptation, discovery, and yes, ego. It's fun whether or not you plan on doing anything else with them or even whether you like them.
1) Virtually every single time I've heard my guy friends talking about (and drawing conclusions from) a bad date, it's almost always (in my judgment) psychobabble BS - there are a million reasons for having a bad experience. Now that I think about it, this applies to women talking about their dates too.
2) Why would you talk about a bad date on an internet forum? I have a strong prior belief that any personal interpretation of the opposite side in a romantic situation on an internet forum, is probably wrong.
Why do you defend her?
She was clearly being stereotypical of computer programmers; in her own words - "Tell me something about yourself...what adventures have you done? Or do you just do some programming stuff" (the keyword here is "just" ... as if computer programming is not an adventure).
I'm sorry, but I'm way more inclined to think that it was him that was lacking in social adroitness than that she was so unbelievably insulting that he couldn't even talk to her.
I don't want to analyze it too much, in the end it's just a bad date. But I get asked stuff like that all the time, and it doesn't piss me off. Some coders really aren't very adventurous. If I was one of those coders, I wouldn't get mad either. I'd just realize she's not my type, enjoy the conversation as much as I could and move on.
Why be so quick to take offense?
It means that for a man who wants "practical, non-judgemental girls," the decision to call it quits is much easier in regards to a girl possessing an ego that is stereotypically judgemental of his identity in such a demonstrable fashion of her "trying to figure out how she was better than [him]....IN EVERY FACET OF LIFE".
I do not have such need to believe, as I take what the other person says at face value. Specifically NTDF9 gave a report of his date (a real-life event), and it is hardly a random internet opinion; he was the one who was there in flesh and blood body and only he could have assessed it better than anyone here (with their random internet opinions/ judgements). Not imposing my own opinions and biases on the other person -- and generally taking what they say at face value -- makes life much easier when it comes to interacting with people.
Also, as random internet opinions don't spring out of nowhere -- they are reflective of the people who write them -- I wouldn't downplay it using the attribute "just." I started this whole thread after being bewildered by someone (vinceguidry) defending a girl who was just reported to be stereotypically judgemental of her date. He wasn't just expressing a random internet opinion, especially as I am familiar of this attitude among (some) men in the real-world.
What people talk on the internet is reflective of what happens in the real-world.
Or...she could be a normal person and try to understand what I've been doing my whole life until now, just like I was listening to her about her own stories. Because in normal world, people have diverse lives.
If I say I only want a programmer woman (since I'm a programmer), but who is even better than me. What would you say about that? Am I being picky? Big ego? If I am, then why isn't she called picky?
Yes. You rejected her.
> why isn't she called picky
Because she did not reject you.
A date is not a normal situation. Just like job interviews, there are all kinds of objectives people can have that influence their behavior that don't really involve you that you're not going to know about going in.
She may have been on a bunch of dates with guys where there were these long, boring discussions on stuff that the guy found interesting but she didn't. That happens a lot from what I've been told. So she forms a strategy for making her dates better.
> I was listening to her about her own stories.
You weren't just listening, you were listening and forming judgments. You need to be aware that these judgments you are forming aren't necessarily correct and that you should allow her to correct them before you let them take control of your date.
You need to participate in the telling of the stories, not just sit there like a cold fish.
> If I say I only want a programmer woman (since I'm a programmer), but who is even better than me.
I would say you're being needlessly and destructively dismissive of potential mates. You don't pick the woman you want, you pick among the women you have available to you.
If you really want a programmer, then you should be taking positive steps to meet more of them. Same with any of these criteria. If that's really what you want, yet you're limiting yourself to just what comes along, than your desires are just wishful thinking. It's like marketing, you need to have a way to target your audience.
> I'm 27
Besides you can afford to keep dating for another 5-10 years, she has to settle soon due to fertility window. Pickiness is the bane of latest generations...
Is there anything wrong with that? I like people who claim to be better ... assuming they can support these claims. She was positive and interested in you - why would that be a problem?
As a woman who defies two really common stereotypes here, I will suggest that most women are as bad about wanting men who are tall and moneyed as men are typically bad about wanting someone younger and hot looking. And, hey, those two types go well together. They don't make for the kind of relationship I want, but women aren't all saints who marry for "love" with zero conditions or whatever the hell. Most women are just as biased about who they date as men are, they just have different biases than men have.
Agreed, although there seems to be a big difference in the social acceptability of admitting it.
Women will quite openly say they want a tall man, without being criticised. Whereas a man who says "I won't date anyone who weighs more than xxx lbs" or "I'll only date women at least 5 years younger than me" will often be seen as a shallow asshole.
This is only based on my experience of discussing it with (male and female) friends. YMMV
I think the reason for that is because men have so much more economic and political power than women and there is a lot of expectation that heterosexual women will get financial support for their male lover. So a woman who is not "picky" is "a whore, just selling it" and a man who is too picky about things like looks is "just treating women like sex objects." The sex for money deal is only socially acceptable when they love each other and marry for love and then the defacto situation that he probably brings more money to the table is somehow OK.
I think there are legitimate concerns there, but I don't agree with the way we resolve those issues. I do what little I can to try to change the conversation about such things.
Huh? It's females that generally insist on marrying up, ergo insist on not marrying down. Males are much less picky in this regard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy
Or just go to any dating site that allows visible income preferences.
1. Sexuality - particularly with women, in my experience - is variable: hetro women can and do consider other women as viable sexual partners, even if they don't consider them long term partners;
2. The implication of a "surplus of hetero females" is flawed given that bi and homo females do, in fact, exist and aren't properly accounted for. Not every single female in that surplus is available to you. In fact, some of them are available exclusively to "themselves" if you were.
also, not every single female in the surplus needs to be 'available', since it's a statistical implication. a surplus of hetero females correlates with a surplus of 'available' hetero females.
I don't think she's in any way suggesting you're wrong, (and neither am I) she just wants you to remember that she exists as well and benefits from this too. I can't speak for her but I also see it as a slightly humorous addendum to your point.
Could have just stated its good for lesbians too (and included like me), and been done with it, and come off as less hostile.
No... no, they're not.