Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?
researchgate.net
researchgate.net
Where I am considered attractive, I've gotten 80+ matches in one day and random women messaging me at 11PM telling me they're lonely and to come hang out. I've had more first dates that involved sex than first dates that didn't.
Where I am not considered attractive, I get literally no matches except for the occasional Onlyfans spammer. It was extremely depressing to go from one extreme to the other and I just don't bother with dating apps at all now.
Plus I've been in a few cities where, frankly, it just looks like the gene pool's exceptionally good.
[EDIT] Oh and stuff like serious hair-loss treatments and plugs and such, and skin blemish removal, short of full-on plastic surgery. I can just about guarantee those are more common in rich areas and richer cities than in poorer areas and poorer cities.
A small town 8(/10) can be an LA[0] 4 or 5. Then again a small town 10 can also be an LA 10. Samples can be biased in weird ways.
0. If you're fan of the LA aesthetic measures.
To be completely honest, I also incorrectly thought LA was America's plastic surgery capital - but it turns out to be Miami.
1. Who want to be in entertainment/acting, but being attractive is almost a prerequisite.
Attractive in his native country where his ethnicity isn't a factor and the average height is much lower.
Still contemplating why those apps are so terrible, but the are.
I'm glad that you formulated this as a question. The answer is no, I presented it value neutral, both by intent and expressed written form.
Now that GGP has a search term, he might soon find out more about the concept and also might admit it into his mind as real and true, as I once did.
Not exclusively. I would bet that many more people who are completely clueless about incelosphere hold that belief. After all, the belief is as old as the advent of mass communication.
> Are you positioning it as true
Yes, I already said that much; also I will consider it true until a preponderance of evidence comes along that blows the pile of current evidence away.
> a solvable problem
That phrase can be interpreted in two ways.
1. Can a person fake being white? I would say, if the goal is a convincing result, then it's difficult for most people because it would involve cosmetic surgery (expensive, non-negligible risk), and ISTR that the skin treatment to make it appear light in colour comes with nasty side effects that cannot be avoided. For a smaller group, suitable contact lenses might be sufficient. Broadly spoken, the trade-off cost/risk/reward seems bad, that's why we don't see much adoption of the practice, but I gauge that solely from canvassing in popular media. I would be very interested in what the sociologists are writing in their scientific journals.
2. Can society be changed to eliminate the JBW bonus? I don't see how, but since it is an entirely social construct, I admit that under the right circumstances, it could happen quickly. Also, as a white myself, I don't have a particular interest to make it happen.
How you you know there isn't a cultural difference where one group replies that you're attractive to be polite where as the other says the opposite because they feel you're being rude?
Did you find more people to have sex with in one group, and concluding you are more attractive to that group? Are you getting more matches from one group? Is the percentage of matches that leads to sex in one group higher? Non of those necessarily mean you were more attractive to one group.
I mean you could be extremely attractive to devout Muslim women and only averagely attractive to college girls. What do you think the stats would say about how many of each group you slept with after a first date?
https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit/submission/exploitive-....
> Users are assigned an attractiveness score based on how many people like them. The dating apps tends towards a pareto distribution where 20% of the users get 80% of the matches as seen in Figure 5. However, users are sorted based on their attractiveness score, and thus you’re shown users who are roughly in the same league as you. Furthermore, the average male user gets one match in 115 profiles [9]. With only 100 free swipes a day, 80% males who haven’t paid for premium service will average less than a single match a day.
Considering those figures, maybe I'm in the top 20% of the country where I do well (seems unlikely if the 80th percentile is getting less than a single match a day while I'm getting dozens) and I could be anywhere in the bottom 1%-80% in the country where I'm not doing well.
Here in Buenos Aires if there's something valued as much as looks, is spontaneity. So much, that we have the same words for "going on a date" and "hanging out". Because "a date" sounds like you are looking forwards to it and that's a turn off. You have to read the vibe to see if it's really a date or not.
So, as soon as he got some attention, he scared them away.
Sounds like something that would cause a lot of misunderstandings. How often is that a plot device in sitcoms?
Without calling it a date, you are expected to read the vibe. And yes, you can misread it. But, without making it clear, it's not so bad if you misread, because that's where you get the first "no".
I personally think that if one part is into the other, but not vice-versa, not only the relationships won't happen, but also that friendship likely won't happen either. Like relationships, friendships need to have both parties actually wanting it.
I keep hearing that hetero peeps often split the bill, woman can propose, etc, these days but that seems more like conjecture to me.
And I guess there is a tendency that more women don't like this style of dating than men. So the few women that are have a lot of choices. Why shouldn't they use that?
To me this is about hookups and nothing more. And some people aren't interested in that and I guess for several reasons they are also more successful in relationships.
This is why people meet in high school (4 years)/college(4 years)/at the office (40 years). With the move to remote work in many places we've cut off the office part - where people had the most time to find a partner. What replaces that? Nearly everyone I know who is married met in one of those 3 places. I met my wife in the office before remote work was common (today we are both 100% remote).
Literature clubs, language classes. Literally any hobbie that does not require you to stay focused on device that may cut off your fingers if you look away.
Ugh, last time I checked there's an awful lot of hobbies - a wide range - which requires you just that.
Computers aren't for doing some specific thing. They are for doing pretty much everything - through them.
Also it depends what you mean by flirting. If you join a class and immediately start trying to pull every person of the opposite sex (or same sex if that's your thing), that just gives the vibe of being there for the wrong reason. If on the other hand you meet someone doing a thing you wanted to do anyway, and a friendship blossoms, that seems to be the point at which you start flirting.
But hobbies are an opportunity for repeated exposure to strangers. Lots and lots and lots of people start casual friendships that can turn into romantic ones.
Using a hobby as a meat market: deeply uncool, and people will notice very quickly.
Using a hobby as a way to meet people, and having one of those relationships turn romantic: totally natural!
It’s a very fine line, yeah, but trust me, it is extremely obvious which one people are doing.
The hardest part in any relationship (at least if you are a shy person without much of experience) is to start talking. It's much easier to talk to someone if you already know each other. Work\clubs etc - provide a great ground for a first step(s)
Obviously people will turn away from you if you just came by to flirt.
>as ferociously as doing it at the office
People always flirt in the office thouth. In many cases they do this naturally and even without any thought about any kind of continuation. In many cases they are in a relationship even.
Flirtin is not only about sex, in fact it is more about sharing with other people "youtube pickup masters")
So the original question is how people find relationships IRL (outside dating apps). Some answer just get a hobby. But then the same problem remains as you can see.
The same thing can be applied for working in an office. People do get relationships in an office but you would be a turnoff if you said you're looking for a relationship when applying for a job.
So for people looking for relationships primarily, what should they do outside dating apps? Or should they just repress their desire and live their life? If they meet one in hobbies or offices, great! If not, c'est la vie.
So yes, get hobbies that you are genuinely interested in, but cultivate ones that can be pursued in a more social way and that have a decent representation of the demographic you're interested in. Then be open and friendly, but don't actively look for romance. Get the rest of your life in order in that manner and it'll happen as a side-effect.
The problem of course is that it is easier done in certain cultures and environments than others. E.g. probably much easier in some slower university town in continental Europe than in some busy car-centric US city. Also easier if you have a more relaxed working life than a busy career with only barely enough free time to eat and sleep. And if people are generally are more open and social and are not all holed in in their apartments online.
Arguably, in a lot of the developed world the culture and the environment has become very unconducive for such things, especially in the last 15 years. Watching older European movies from the 70s, you can really see how much things have changed.
What is left? Literally every other social activity one engages in?
This implies one has energy and resources for social activities. A big chunk of the US is broke and/or exhausted at the end of the week.
Obviously it's not a bar where you're looking for a one night stand or a casual hookup. But churches as a general rule encourage their congregations to get together in a myriad of social settings. So yeah, if you were looking to meet a person who shared similar beliefs and values to you, joining a church would be a pretty decent way to get frequent exposition to those people.
I don't attend a church now, but my parents were heavily involved in our local Catholic church when I was a kid. Not a week went by where I wasn't taken to some sort of social event - fish fries, Sunday 'socials' (i.e. donuts and coffee after mass), volunteering opportunities. Not to mention just general small talk after services.
If you didn't grow up religious, it's really hard to oversell just how much church events are part of your life, and how much the people you meet can become a community for your family. My dad loves to tell a story of how one year they gave a family friend a few hundred dollars around Christmas, because they knew the guy had just lost his job. A few years later, unprompted, they returned the favor, at a time that turned out to be really helpful for my family.
I don't take my family to church but I do really miss the communal aspects of the whole enterprise, and wish there was a good way to get a similar vibe without the aspects of religion I don't like. But I think there is something special about a group of people with a shared commitment to a set of beliefs that makes the upsides of church difficult to replicate in secular settings.
YMMV. Just my own experience and rambling.
Wrong assumption. I was attempting to be humourous. But yes I could see how you could find a life partner at church.
Maybe there's a Unitarian Universalist congregation near you?
I would contest this. Don't (EDIT: i m talking about social network apps) apps do exactly this, on a global scale? They bring people closer at all times, have regularity, and even have silly competitions, self-promotion , and all ways for people to 'hook up' with each other.
Of course, in any physical space there is only a limited amount of people so competition is lower and possibly that s why there are more compromises. in a global contest only the olympic athletes win.
And while remote work is certainly going to be a huge factor, things have changed a whole decade before remote work became mainstream
No. "Same place" means here "same people, repeatedly over prolonged periods of time". Dating apps are, AFAIK, not making same people to keep in contact "until the spark comes".
On the other hand, let's do the same analogy and replace partners with friends for the goals of apps. I think it would be obvious to many that these wouldn't be good platforms to build strong friendships on. If Tinder is the equivalent of asking someone out at a bar it is also similar to approaching someone at a bar and asking them to be your best friend. It might happen, but odds likely aren't in your favor, and especially not if you're not someone that likes to go bar hopping.
Reduction in inhibition is the main reason alcohol is so beloved in society. Otherwise, most people don't get laid...
There might be another factor here, that office relationships are far more taboo than they used to be. I'm not saying harass your office mates, but if two people click they click. Like you're saying, it isn't that the office is a place "to look" for a partner, but rather that it simply happens because you build emotional bonds with people you spend time with and have shared experiences with.
Yes, 100% this is correct. Proximity is everything. When people "bump" into each other frequently, they are more likely to start conversations, more likely to get to know each other, and naturally, hook up.
This is why the "third place" concept is so important. Home is the 1st, Office 2nd, but you generally need another place where people just hang out. This might be a community pool, garden, plaza etc. Somewhat more restricted 3rd places are coffeeshops, bars, art galleries, museums, libraries etc.
I believe that cities that want to attract people should invest heavily in creating these places. e.g. Austin built a First Class public library; I was extremely skeptical about that investment, but when the library opened, its a work of art!
Unfortunately people like me become helpless. You'll be alone because you _are_ alone: you don't have any social proof, any social skill, people your age don't "get together" to find a partner at the same rate as younger people, they have higher expectations regarding your experience and more.
The way I see it, once each man crosses a certain age without any or much sexual experience they will become stuck in that category the rest of their lives. Whether we have the tendency to lash out violently against others or ourselves more than the average, I don't know. I wonder if the solution by Western society will come in the way of some "Minority Report-like" way to identify us and pre-emptively lock us out.
That's why I wanted to comment here: I found most comments looking for "ways" to get these guys "dates". But some (and I bet it's most) of those who are sexually lonely (or romantically lonely) are past the social point-of-no-return. They are pestilent to others. Constantly exposing them to environments where they will face rejection at best, excoriation at worst is only going to drive them deeper into misantropy. And that may lead to violence.
Instead going to point out that you are not the only one. I know a female version of this for example. You might seek these folks out, it’s the age of micro communities, however unlikely.
Bluntly and ultimately a person needs to “get over themselves.” Our lives are filled with pain. We and everyone we love will be dead within a few decades. Refusing to live to avoid pain is on you, barring disease or dismemberment. Not to mention unrealistic.
Continuing your treatment sounds like a good idea. When you feel stable, one thing that blew my mind was skydiving. Cheapest quickest therapy ever. In a few seconds everything you thought was important ceases to exist. I literally kissed the ground after landing and said, “I’m alive!”
Many times when I can't get myself to do something directly, I trick/outsmart myself into doing it another way. Give myself no choice, for example. There's also perspective. Watch Les Miserables for that perhaps.
But, as you alluded these are appeals to the rational mind, which may not be available right now. Only the doctor/patient has an idea.
Like I commented elsewhere: exposing oneself to more scenarios of rejection can only drive one deeper into misery. Like wanting to cure an autistic child's sensitivity to noise by exposing him to a string of loud, crowdy concerts.
Thailand and Colombia are the two obvious choices to me. Quit work, and just get a $500 a month apartment and focus on working out every day and enjoying life. You WILL find people interested in dating you if you have reasonable expectations.
At one point in my life most/all of my socialization stemmed from going to garage and estate sales. This was during a time where I would have been homeless without my parents.
Otherwise, I’ve also gone the Forest Gump route in the past. Walking for an hour or longer has an amazing affect on inhibitions that’s much healthier than alcohol or medication.
I do reject that learning social skills is suddenly locked out at some age. But I definitely agree that it gets more difficult. Oddly, supposedly there’s a long low point until the 60s. People in their 60s have an uptick in happiness and life satisfaction that seems more about actually being 60 than about the life lived to that point.
You have two options in this very limited exchange. You can a, try something new, or b don't and keep doing things the way you have always done them.
Good luck with everything champ.
I was a "late bloomer" growing up; turns out I had low T, which is something my doctor-averse parents would have never had treated anyway.
My wife doesn't get it ... I often tell her that if both her and I signed up for a dating app, her inbox would be flooded with messages. Yet, if I were to message hundreds of women, I might get lucky and get a handful of responses. She thinks I'm exaggerating ...
Personally, I prefer the experience as a male. Instead of getting flooded with goofs, I can focus on a small amount of matches.
I'm going to get flamed for this but in general I think it's right to assume that the average woman in 2022 is less attractive than the average man, BMI / height stats support this.
This outcome generally signals to at-risk men (in terms of mental state) that women they would find attractive have all swiped left on them only leaving below average or physically unfit women. It's also entirely likely that they might just not be desire-able on dating apps and in fact, are only matched with people who don't have standards. That said, I think standards are important on both sides AND I've had men far more attractive than me also encounter a situation of only having a handful of matches even in NYC.
What's your definition of attractive height…?
For women? Maybe in the Netherlands.
Pro tip: You should probably agree to swipe right on everyone indiscriminately to avoid a potential argument.
Not so pro disclaimer: I'm single and not married, so your mileage may vary. Please report back for... research purposes. :)
OLD used to be a great way to meet people. However, helping people establish meaningful longterm connections and stop using the service isn't a sustainable business model.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patie...
If you observe the actual dating climate it’s nowhere near this bad and in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1.
Rather than a social problem this is an economic problem, and as dystopian as it sounds I personally think the solution here is a non-profit or even govt sponsored dating app. It would be stupidly easy to do this and also add a whole lot more trust (bad actors may face real consequences), which is one of the other huge reasons why dating apps struggle with getting women into their app.
Expanding user graphs for matches across multiple nodes isn’t just easy, it’s actually way more efficient too. Have nodes calculate match likelihood among their users and verify they’re using the same algorithm with a simple hash. Then you’ve reduced getting matches for user X from the entire population Y (calculating distance, applying filters, and then ordering by compatibility, all expensive tasks) to getting matches for user X from nodes N that are purposely geolocated nearby reducing the search space even more.
Basically not only could you do this open-source and decentralized, it would actually be more secure, safer, and way better both accuracy wise and cost wise at finding matches.
Well... kind of. Except that men also tend to all be looking at the same pool of younger women, while women tend to look for men closer to their own age, according to OKCupid's data.
https://www.businessinsider.com/dataclysm-shows-men-are-attr...
IIRC the OKCupid data showed that women rated most men poorly, but then still responded to their messages, so, like, it didn't matter.
The social dynamic exists independent of dating apps which monetize and exploit it.
The dynamic is the same in real life, for example at a nightclub where women drink for free, promoters who bring them get paid per girl, and lonely men pay $40 cover for a chance to shoot their shot
> The dynamic is the same in real life...
While I agree it isn't unique to OLD, it's vastly different to real life. In real life you can strike up a conversation with someone, become friends, develop feelings, and end up in a relationship weeks/months/years down the line.
In some ways this is great because you don't waste your time, or their's, if there's a serious incompatibility. But I think it can also be used negatively when people are too picky. Sure, there are people who are too picky in real life, but those snap judgements are based just on what you can see. The absence of other information can make someone go, "Ok, I'll give them a shot even if they're average looking because maybe they're interesting/mysterious/etc".
I'm willing to bet that I could reliably predict 80%+ of whatever profile attributes you fill out online, with a 2 minute conversation and good look at you.
Hahaha—I have a pretty good track record at the game, "spot the software industry dude" on hiking trails. We have a certain look and demeanor. Our preference for conspicuously-expensive outdoor gear from the right brands (not "hick" or "red" brands) does make it relatively easy as such games go, though.
Tinder would be more comparable to a swinger club in this regard. Swinger clubs will charge single dudes well over 100$ for that same chance, and those guys will have to try to get lucky with predominantly older couples. Usually these dudes will find that their success levels go up if they are bisexual too. (The reasons for that are left as an exercise for the reader)
I don't know the stats but on places like Blind there's a lot of anecdotes about the dating scene favoring men in NYC and favoring women in SF, due to the gender balances.
If you are a straight man, the NYC dating scene is heavily in your favor. Opposite in SF
But a gov-sponsored app? No way. It's bad enough they have your whole financial/employment history (IRS), but to add your health (medicare/aid) and now dating/sexual histories too? What's left that you can keep private? Sorry, bad idea there.
(And I would like to see government job boards, also, for basically the same reasons.)
But again the IRS, which deals with everyone most directly (more than say intel documents) is notoriously bad and behind the times at it’s computer systems.
MatchGroup might sell your data to a company for ads and the like, but it’s opt in, and one of several. When’s the last time government did something opt-in?
Who knows, the ads might be useful sometimes. Giving politicians and bureaucrats access to more information about you in another centralized db somewhere is a recipe for disaster, and even if they are angels, it’ll be a huge target for others!
Ultimately you decide who you want to date, but in scenarios where most people meet through apps, those apps have a lot of influence over who meets who. Nobody knows how the matching algorithms work, all we see is the effects and a mountain of anecdotal evidence that some men are having a difficult time finding partners.
I've talked about it on other threads but where and how you earn your money matters. 300K per year as a lawyer = sexy and powerful. Even "don draper" vibes. 300K as a SWE? The moment you mention this at a bar the girl knows you went to university courses that averaged 9 men to 1 woman. They know you're likely on the ASD spectrum. The know "the odds are good but the goods are odd".
This is why blind is filled with posts by high earning folks who can't ever get a single date. It's hard out there and thinking that you can beta-bux your way out of it in a west coast city isn't going to work out for you.
It is not hard to get a date on the west coast on $300k as a tech person, as long as you have more to offer than just that.
There's endless science that supports why this happens though. In order to understand why this exists we have to go back in history. For every single man that reproduced, theres 10 other women that reproduced [1]. That means that a significant percent of the male population died without having any offspring, unlike the female population which could always find a partner. On the other hand, polyginy has always been practiced throughout the world universally pretty much everywhere in most cultures, especially by men of influence and power, unlike polyandry which is quite rare [2]
The theory goes that evolutionary speaking, women try to find the best mating partner (most well-off, most influencing, most powerful etc) in order to secure the best future for their offspring to grow up healthy, without any regard whether that man already has other offspring or partners. This is also supported by the fact that women 100% know that the offspring is in fact theirs since they gave birth to them, unlike men which have zero assurance that the kid is in fact theirs. And this is why for most of recorded history premarital sex for women in civilized societies was a big no no up until like the 1950s that started to change in the western world.
So dating apps create this perfect environment where choice is abundant, so men take their shot on everybody, and girls only choose the most handsomest, most well-off guys on there. Its similar to a big high school environment, where most of the popular pretty girls from all years and generations would date a dozen guys in the sports teams and just swap around every few months. In high school and college I was in a similar situation, and girls were in fact excited that I was so experienced and that I was seeing other girls at the same time.
On dating apps most men get somewhere like 0-4 matches a week and most women get somewhere like 100-1000. That’s a 25x difference best-case scenario and often it’s over 100x. Which is kind of insane considering there are about 50/50 men to women ratio in real life.
People say “the 20% top men get 80% of matches” but it’s worse than that. The 20% top men may get something reasonable like 3-4 matches a day, but your average women is getting something crazy like 1 match every 15 minutes.
Because a lot of men like to swipe right on nearly everyone and buy passes which get them unlimited swipes. And most women get extremely choosy and swipe right on only the super handsome nearly-perfect men, but you can’t even blame them when they have literally 1,000 matches.
So dating apps are a waste of time, much better to go out and talk to girls in real life and get yourself out of the synthetic environment apps like Tinder create. You'll have much easier time.
[1] https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy
Given your self-description, you're probably not understanding the problem from the men side. The problem is - how, specifically, to go out and talk to girls in real life.
As Elon Musk says, let this sink in. We're talking here about modern times, where people have less opportunity to contact each other - and the problem existed way before, now it only became harder. The main chunk of the problem is that it's unclear how to arrange for a lot - enough - opportunities to talk to girls in real life so that the results would be sufficient.
But the fact is, there are thousands of ways to talk to girls, and millions of resources and guides and books on how to do it, yet people do it less and less thinking dating apps will produce results.
We should not forget that building a social circle, joining clubs or groups, and participating in activities that align with your interests are all great ways to meet new people. Additionally, working on building social skills and confidence can also help in real-life interactions. And not all dating apps are created equal, and some may have a higher success rate for men than others. Some apps or websites are geared towards specific interests or demographics, and targeting these may increase your chances of success.
tl;dr dating apps can be a useful tool, but they should not be the only way to meet potential partners. It's important to actively seek out opportunities to meet new people in real life and to put in the effort to build genuine connections.
It feels like 90% of women on there are chasing the top 10% of dudes and not settling for anything else.
It feels that way because it is that way (stats from OKCupid, but I suspect the effect generalizes):
everyone can perceive that this acts as just gatekeeping for unattractive people
yes, newsflash people would rather not have advances from ugly people, but to masquerade that as trying to vilify advances at all is pure fiction
I doubt it's that much. Is the very-best movie from last year, uncovered by ten or fifteen minutes of targeted searching and reading, likely to be better than whatever I'd have picked up at the video store based on gut feeling and what a few friends had told me? Oh, god yes, of course it is. Am I happier this way, though? I'm less certain about that. Probably a little? But I don't think it's a large effect.
Ditto having "the world's knowledge at your fingertips" (well, ignore that it's far from all of it and that you're probably still better off hitting the books for a lot of things, but it's good at the trivial stuff anyway). Can I answer most silly little "I wonder..." questions in five to ten seconds? Yep. Am I happier this way? I'm not so sure, since before the Internet was available nearly everywhere nearly all the time I rarely even became consciously aware of such trivial thoughts and they were very easy to dismiss when I did.
I used Tinder for close to a year and had an experience close to what you're describing. I only managed to go on two dates that both went nowhere. At the suggestion of someone on one of the dating subreddits, I switched to Hinge, saw the difference in the amount of attention I was getting, and never looked back. Eventually, I met my girlfriend on there.
Sure, and 90% dudes are chasing the top 10% women.
Of course, what really helps is to be on the favorable end of the gender mismatch if you're somewhere like SF or NYC. It's not nearly as bad as online people say it is though. You only need to find one person!
I've read somewhere, maybe multiple times, that most men are emotionally and sexually deprived. That sounds correct given the data I have.
I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years.
We don't talk too much about this but it's clear to me that it hurts them a lot, because it's not only about feeling desired, self-steem, or they can't fullfill their sexual desires.
It's that they don't have those moments of intimacy that you have with members of the oposite sex, when you're naked or just cuddling.
The only advice I've told them is to get out of any online stuff and hit bars. But they're in their 30s, their self-steem is already pretty low, and when I bring em somewhere it's pretty difficult to get it running. The times we've been around women, they get tired after a while and just want to grab me and go somewhere else.
The've had GFs and hookups from time to time (meaning maybe about 2 years), and from my POV the've been treated pretty badly.
IDK what to say, but I try to not think about it too much because it makes me sad.
I'm not there in those interactions but I wonder how much of it is a mismatch between what you desire in a relationship and who you are attracted to in a person.
This is simply the other side of the coin, "online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers"
What is happening is that in the same way most women get more attention than most men, the few men who do get attention get to pick and choose because all of the women are going for them.
They get less desirable as time goes by so when they decide to ‘get serious’ at 35 it is already getting late
My take is that "age gap" relationships are difficult, even somebody who is 50 today grew up in a very different world than someone who is 27 on top of all the other issues about not outliving your partner too much, etc.
There's two metrics here though which influence and confuse one another. Women get plenty of attention on the attractiveness side, but just because you can get laid doesn't mean you can get a relationship. It makes sense that if a lot of people are acting as suitors that you would then down select from this group. The problem is that on the woman's side you don't know if the suitor is looking for a relationship or just to get laid. Without a good metric for that, you can't properly down select and might just end up with a pool of only people that want to get laid. Especially if the primary initial selecting criteria is simply attractiveness (i.e. you're using an app). This is probably unsurprising considering in the digital world we often convince ourselves that we have stronger relationships because of tools like these (e.g. keeping up with friends more because Facebook) but in reality we don't because we are sacrificing the only meaningful tool to build and maintain relationships: physical time together.
For modern society, this return to acting out the ancestral environment makes everything unstable. I predict in my lifetime for depression and suicide to be overtaken in number by extreme bouts of violence and riots.
What the head wants and what the heart wants ...
I am not sure, if this is a new thing, but there quite some social norms and expectations, that are impossible to fullfill (for both sides), creating unfulfillment and then drama.
I cannot say, that I know many happy couples. I met some and trying to work on my relationship, but it is really, really hard. Much harder, than I thought it is supposed to be.
Okcupids data showed this in nice clear charts.
The numbers invert as you get closer to 40. Single women at 40 are desperate, single men at 40 have a jaded, and quite accurate, view of the majority of women.
Then they meet someone, it's hard to drop everything if there's still more matches you haven't met yet.
Online dating is the death of our species.
What about that majority of cases when a woman doesn't want a commit? People grow to sexual age in 18 and can be not committed until much later, so in between they can/should/want to have less consequential encounters, right? So what about that majority of cases, do women still struggle when they are in the same situation - when they would have sex but unwilling to commit?
Sorry for going off on a tangent, but I think this needs correction. By that age, puberty is already over. For girls, onset of puberty is 10, reproductive maturity is 14.
It could be that you mean something else, namely a related social/legal construct, but that does not seem likely to me because of the word "grow".
While I think that globally the sentiment about this is true (market is driven by women), I also had many average-looking, intellectually stimulating male friends that said "that girl is too ugly".
That however doesn't mean that male friends would rule out going with said girl.
There's the "wisdom" which summarizes the idea that there are no ugly women. It's in other words the same idea as above - for vast majority of women men would still go with them.
I have a friends like this. One solution a couple of them have found is dating internationally. Not via "mail-order" services though. It was sort of a situation where they had a domestic friend who had friends or relatives abroad who were looking for a US marriage. So there was some trust there, and it was set up sort of like an arranged marriage. A lot of people hate on arraigned marriages, but the older I get, the more they make sense.
Also, is it really long term solution to loneliness? If only motivation for marriage was to get the attractive citezenship, what will hold the marriage after it's done? Anecdotally, internet is full of stories of "mail-brides", who divorce the men and take a sweet part of his assets with it.
As I said, this isn't through a mail order service. This is via friends of friends. The marriage would not just be for citizenship. Just like the arranged marriages I mentioned, there would be an element of matchmaking via the intermediary (the mutual friend in this case, or the two families in a traditional arrangement) that has a true belief that the two people would get along well together and share similar values. Then you would have visits and such to see how you liked the other person.
But yes, I see how that can create problems in specific locales. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how the problem can be solved universally.
Judges can override prenups. I just did a little Google research, and just under 50% of prenups are invalidated during divorce.
The problem is no one thinks they're in the bottom 90% of anything.
As an example, I've had fat/obese friends say they wouldn't date a fat girl... Or friends that expect the man to pay for everything like it's 1950 and make grand gestures like in the movies.. what do they expect then?
Re: paying for everything. A lot of women want to step outside of their own traditional gender role but have a man firmly inside his.
It could be hard to figure out what would be better - this kind of initiation with associated large risk of getting emotionally attached to the paid person, or staying virgin for years and years, having no comparative to peers experience and somewhat falling more behind, so having to dig out from deeper and deeper pit. So I wouldn't with certainty recommend looking for paid services to get initial experience, even though that could - not always - simplify subsequent interactions. Even though such an approach could be sufficiently different for men vs. women.
Existed, sure. Whether they “work” or not is... well, for most of history no one was gathering data, but arranged marriage still exists now, and there is evidence linking it to higher rates of suicide, for women particularly.
Note that this is *not* to say that international relationships can't work--I've seen some that do (including my own) but I do not know of one that didn't involve one person being in the other's country already (although I would not rule out both people being in a third country, I just don't know any such.)
even if it's just for short term flings.
a lot of average guys tend to get overlooked with online dating, and don't have the cojones to approach their local women.
whereas if it's international - you become interesting - just by being someone a woman doesn't interact with on a daily basis i.e you not the local loser. so chances of her fucking you for the "wow" factor are higher than if you were a local.
of course don't go there trying to find love
So, I promise I'm not just picking on the phrasing (though yeah, the phrasing is pretty bad).
I find it amazing that you went through that whole discussion about the perspective of your seemingly-hetero-male-only social environment without once recognizing that intimacy is a two-way transaction and that the other party needs to get something in return. Everyone, including women, wants a satisfying relationship. And most people aren't getting one at any given moment.
And it doesn't seem like any part of your calculus is how to square those perspectives? Your whole comment is about women in some sense, but the only time their perspective even enters the discussion is in one sentence where you talk about compelling them to like you out of physical desire?
And you don't think this might be part of the reason your negotiations are failing? Sales people don't try to close a deal without getting to know the customer first. Why do you think it should work any different here?
The imbalance since the onset of online dating is huge and it and its dismissal with implied equivalence on each side is a real problem for society.
This is overstating the case. This can all be measured. Statistics like median number of partners, age at marriage, etc... are indeed all trending downward and growing more asymmetric between men and women. The linked article cites a few studies like this. But it's not a "huge" effect.
This is a meme, created largely by feedback communities like the incel folks. Note, FWIW, the Betteridge question mark in the title of the linked paper. Contra everyone's assumptions here, it does not seem to be presenting solid evidence for a "public health problem".
I fail to understand your arguments leading to such outcome, unfortunately.
In the simple model where people pair up 1-1 exactly once, a 2% imbalance means 2% of people can’t pair up no matter what they do.
I wonder how this plays out in places like India and China that practice sex selective abortion.
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bare-branches-secur...
> What happens to a society that has too many men? In this provocative book, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer argue that, historically, high male-to-female ratios often trigger domestic and international violence. Most violent crime is committed by young unmarried males who lack stable social bonds. Although there is not always a direct cause-and-effect relationship, these surplus men often play a crucial role in making violence prevalent within society. Governments sometimes respond to this problem by enlisting young surplus males in military campaigns and high-risk public works projects. Countries with high male-to-female ratios also tend to develop authoritarian political systems.
https://theconversation.com/pity-chinas-bare-branches-unmarr...
> Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, is a highlight in Chinese society. But for many young people, the joy of vacation and family reunion is mixed with questions from parents and relatives about their achievements in the past year, including about their relationships.
> This is a particularly stressful occasion for single men who – unless they choose to rent a fake partner or have a stroke of luck at the local marriage “market” - are forced to face the miserable fate of singlehood.
> These involuntary bachelors, who fail to add fruit to their family tree are often referred to as “bare branches”, or guanggun. And the Chinese state has recently started to worry about the dire demographic trend posed by the growing number of bare branches.
> The 2010 national census data suggests that 24.7% Chinese men above the age of 15 have never been married, while 18.5% of women in the same age group remain unwed.
'Bare Branches' and Danger in Asia - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/07/04/b...
Presumably what spaniard89277 means is "I have talked to long-term-single men and this is what I think their aggregate perspective is, I don't know many long-term-single women so I don't really know their perspective"
After all, if he knew a lot of single people of both genders, presumably he'd point them at one another.
Understanding could be required, but sufficiently not sufficient condition. That understanding should have a chance to be demonstrated - and the choice of actions, given highly unpredictable short-term decision making, could easily make or break the transaction.
I say "could be", even though I seen cases where that was completely bypassed - only the form was in place, and one side of the transaction remained under wrong assumptions long after the initial actions had place.
And to repeat: that same logic is identical to sales, which is another area most incels are extremely bad at.
Of course intimacy is a two-way transaction. It's also a thing where the chain of events and actions happen, and there are many possible breaking points, which at beast move the interaction to square one. So to summarize in short words, "make women like me" means passing this chain of events - from men's point of view - so that there's a passable chance to actually complete the transaction. Note that the situation is hardly symmetrical for men vs. women - I'd argue men are much more forgiving and willing to continue the chain of actions should something go sufficiently unexpected, in the wrong enough way.
I would guess you don't see the attempt to square the perspectives because it could be too obvious to talk about. Like, when we talk about programming we usually assume ability to handle basic addition of numbers under a hundred, which comes handy - and similarly when we talk about relationships we assume the two-wayness just the same, there's no need to talk about it.
> Sales people don't try to close a deal without getting to know the customer first.
This could vary widely. One can study somebody else for long time - see e.g. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070735/ The Sting, where the conspirators take time to study the ways their counterparts behave. Or in other case one could fly by the seat of your pants on a dance floor, when he sees a woman partner for some minutes at best. There could be little opportunities to get to know the other side better though - Tinder illustrates that when you make a split-second decision having barely even studied the image on the screen, not saying anything about the person themselves.
> Why do you think it should work any different here?
I guess because the analogy doesn't quite holds.
They need your wife to bring her single friends to the bar.
If they have a hard time reaching out to women hitting bars without friends won't help them much.
maybe people are just waiting until you're down on their level
When I learned to play poker, one of the key insights was that beyond the point of basic competence, literally the most important factor is table selection, and second most important is seat selection. It doesn't matter how good of a player you are if you're in a game with an even better player on your left. Similarly, you don't have to be very good to make a lot of money if you can find a terrible player and sit to their left.
I think this applies to dating and social skills more generally. While it's great to occasionally get out of your comfort zone, you're more likely to have success socially and romantically in settings where you feel in your element. The more comfortable you are and the more you're authentically enjoying yourself, the more attractive you'll appear to others. So unless you really like bars and clubs, don't go to them--or at least look for places with a vibe that suits you, not places where you feel like a loser. The best bet is to somehow find the overlap in the venn diagram of 'places/activities you authentically enjoy' and 'places where single women are present'.
They aren't always easy to find and it might take some work to arrange these types of settings if you don't have access to any that already exist, but at the same time, anyone can host a game night or book club or running group etc. and start promoting and networking to get people involved.
Bars are a fairly decent place for low stakes socialization, at the very least.
In person dynamics are just different - I met my husband in a bar. At the time neither of us were looking to date anyone for various reasons but we happened to get chatting and our chemistry was immediately apparent. If he were exactly the same person but I first "met" him as a dating profile on the screen I almost certainly would have passed.
In night clubs? Better hope you've hit the gym for the last month...
There's a strong winner-takes-all effect online
There's a whole industry around it peddling advice that ranges from effective (yet impossible to implement for a broken person) to counter-productive and evil.
It's really very simple, but people just have massive amounts of negative programming that radiates out from them like a reverse pheromone.
Those who are hungry do not eat. You can't fake it, but letting go of fear and just talking to strangers in public flirting spaces (bar, club, maybe target, NOT WORK OR FRIENDS) over and over again while making no effort to hide one's sexual interest will eventually give one the appearance of non-attachment to sexual outcomes. Having a conversation with any kind of sexual implications while maintaining a stance of non-attachment to sexual outcomes is my definition of flirting.
The mindset (feel free to actually say this. it works): "I think we should do sexy stuff together because it would be fun for both of us, and I'm happy to tell you that because even if you say no, I hope I've flattered you and spoken my truth and that feels good."
Edit:
-Therapy
-Dance classes (not for flirting, just having positive touch experiences)
Dance classes could be still a downlifting experience but yes, could still be beneficial, even though not by much. Some numbing could be achieved, when after downfall one reaches a plato where for some range of input conditions the output doesn't worsen.
Cheaper options would be trauma or addiction groups if those fit.
A lot of people have just horrible “truths” they absorbed from their upbringing that need to be deprogrammed. Framing this as a parental trauma and working through it in a group setting could be useful.
Some people have had success with MDMA or psilocybin
1. The same strategy applies to public speaking, or product demos, or chairing a meeting, or systems design for people who feel they are not good at it. The human mind is incredibly adaptable and has great capacity for learning when exposed to new environments. The only exception is if the person has some kind of trauma or psychological wall and exposure harms them - in that case, I recommend talking to a professional first.
Don't talk lightly about such things. Rejections are a known cause for suicides.
> The only exception is if the person has some kind of trauma or psychological wall and exposure harms them - in that case, I recommend talking to a professional first.
It's likely everybody had a rejection at least once. It's also likely a large percent didn't particularly enjoy the outcome. I don't think that so many people should seek professional help though - or it should be something very different from what we assume now.
If being rejected by a potential employer or potential sexual partner results in suicide ideation - I strongly recommend talking to a professional expeditiously.
A person in a healthy state of mind can be disappointed by rejection, but ought to realize that a self-fulfilling fear response while interacting with the potential employer/partner is unhelpful and take steps to mitigate future occurrences.
Hmm...
> A person in a healthy state of mind can be disappointed by rejection, but ought to realize that a self-fulfilling fear response while interacting with the potential employer/partner is unhelpful and take steps to mitigate future occurrences.
Imagine you need to fly over a river to save your life, because you're being chased by a maniac with an axe. Would you fly?
No, because you can't. Person in a healthy etc. can realize that thing about fear response, but be unable to control that said response. Somewhat, but not quite, similar to being unable to hold breath voluntarily, for arbitrarily long time.
You might be right about the need talking to professional expeditiously. However many don't, and are ok, even though they pass through quite - to the point of those thoughts - dark area in their life. We know about some unfortunate outcomes of such situations; that doesn't mean all the rest have it easy.
No, I would not - but if I survive the encounter, I would learn to swim under highly controlled circumstances (i.e. while not being chased by a maniac), and swim an increasing number of laps to help my endurance. That way I may have confidence to swim across raging river, if my life involved having to borrow axes from strangers near rivers.
By "club" do you mean hobby type things? It's perennial advice but it has the serious flaw that to a large degree you encounter the same people over and over, most of whom are too young/too old/not available.
I'm married so I'm not looking but as a game I have paid attention to the suitability of those I get to know--and the number of relationship prospects approximates zero.
Edit: I still need to emphasize the public element. Don’t let your co-workers and friends know you’re into them (at least don’t blame me if you do)
It is possible to not drink alcohol at a bar and still have fun, but I also never liked bars to meet people.
And "clubs", no he did not meant a "hobby thing", but a place where you can dance and enjoy music.
Dancing is a very old way of hooking up.
Back in time it was the village dance, where the young people got close. And this still works, either in formal settings like a dance studio - or free style on a dance floor.
Dancing is body language and you can signal to other people, whether you are interested, or not. And then you get close, or apart.
This is tricky, but key. If you hide your interest, you will most likely act weird.
And yes, rejection is part of the game and no problem. Unless of course - like you say - one is already broken. Then a simple rejection can be devastating of the remaining confidence.
Flirting is a game, but some never learned how to play. I also learned it quite late and remember the awkward teenage years and feel sorry for those who never got the chance. And nowdays it even seems harder.
That would mean it's not very natural, which could be doubtful. However the quality of play could vary, with corresponding outcomes.
And relations are not always about sex, the most stable relations are based upon understanding and care friendship. Sure sex is something but after the kids do people still want to live like rabbits, well there much more in life than sex. The media might make you think peole have sex every day or so, thats bullshit some relations are not based on sex at all but are by all means perfect relastions. (some people dont enjoy sex, or because of medical reasons).
If you want a happy life enjoy other peoples smile, go to places where people smile, enjoy your life yourself visit places. There is no perfect face or figure. And stay away from people who build their life on consumables as drugs or alcoholics a its reciepe for disaster.
Dont try to search for it, not online either, accidents just happen ;)
I would definitely recommend a more active approach. Time goes by, and can come to an end unfortunately.
How much time do these friends spend in social situations with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend?
I don't know your friends, but have known people in similar situations. In all those cases, their were others in our social circles who looked worse "on paper" but had no real difficulties here - it wasn't really about attractiveness or intelligence, but about behavior and/or expectations.
Sometimes it's all available time. Which could be really small or none at all.
Behavior could be significantly affected by proximity with women, when you're in certain age and experience. It's described in the literature, for here it could be said a social - social - situation with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend - and where such goal doesn't quickly appear and supersedes whatever other goals there were - could be rare to find.
> Imagine that whenever a man is in proximity of women it's like a loud signal which doesn't go away,
This is not normal, and may point to deeper problems.
It took me a while to understand, that "bars" here do not correspond to "outdoor exercise equipment".
> that most men are emotionally and sexually deprived.
Recently I saw Mozart's "The Magic Flute" for the first time. Papageno character heavily resonates with this observation. So, the problem is not new.
I have not read the paper yet so I don't know if this idea was captured but I agree the issue is not only about the sex, it's also (maybe even moreso) about intimacy and connection.
I wonder to what degree this is an issue brought on by a higher level of education and awareness. I mean there are plenty of loveless marriages and I expect the further in the past you go the more common this was. I can not imagine that at the time when marriages were usually arranged, mostly for economic reasons, there was much love unless they were lucky. There was also just so much inequality contributing to this. I can believe many people were not aware better was possible.
Have people become aware that relationships can be more and now find it impossible to settle for less?
Edit, just to make it clear, is not necessarily a bad thing. Changing the expectation about what a relationship should be towards one where more things are valued is a good thing. It does however mean we are suffering the consequences of being in the transition period between two value systems.
Unfortunately, women that frequent bars are very likely to be alcoholics.
The only person who should "make women like me" is a female lesbian Doctor Frankenstein.
Anyone else has to make themselves likable to women.
The only person you should make do or be or like things is yourself.
You can't force other people to like you, just because you feel like it.
I just never saw a lot of the awful behavior that women get on the regular. E.g., the guys who will go from "u r hot" to "fuck you bitch" in a series of DMs over 12 hours with absolutely no response from women. It honestly amazes me that so many of them stay in the dating market at all.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect#Gender_differences
You can have a stable/growing population with only 1 male per n>1 females. So, the evolutionarily optimal strategy is to crank up trait variance in males and have females select only the top 1/n males (hand-wavily speaking). Most modern human cultures suppressed this dynamic via socially enforced pair bonding. When you lose that social adaptation, you revert back to more atavistic matching dynamics.
The sad truth is most men are disposable (from an evolutionary point of view), much like the vast quantities of sperm they produce.
Plain false. Humans are very unique compared to other animals as I wrote in another response. See prof. Sapolsky's lectures on the topic. He's an outstanding anthropologist.
We don't change our instincts just because there are laws. Look at how many people are in prison for drug possession. The law is much weaker than brain chemicals being expressed. (Also, not every law is based on wide agreement of human emotion. Sometimes lawmakers simply do whatever. I'm mostly talking about the ones that have been around since the dawn of humanity.)
Gender roles (and sexism) are primarily cultural. If you look through history there has been matriarchal and patriarchal societies. Monogamous and polygamous and so on in many combinations.
Humans sexuality is very unique compared to other animals and, respectfully, we should try not to play armchair Darwin.
There are very good lectures from prof. Sapolsky on youtube on the topic. Humans are complex and very weird.
I think, slut shaming might have a biological component: you can't be shure the kid is yours.
Besides, as long as you get those few responses, that will be enough for all but the most active and adventurous daters. There are only so many hours in the day.
I guess some things have to be experienced for real understanding. No, this is surely not a burden by any measure, it is a huge privilege.
In tech, fending recruiters off with a stick is far less of a burden and stress than being unemployed or permanently underemployed or underpaid in a different field. It's annoying, sure, but it's not going to cause you depression to have so many people showing interest in you, it validates some amount of self-worth. Recruiters also take an approach to recruitment very similarly to men in online dating, treating it as a numbers game and where they don't care about candidate quality before first contact. Blast out interest and feelers indiscriminately to anyone and then evaluate the quality of those who respond and be happy to settle for any commission in the end. Both are broken processes of course, but the power dynamics seem similar.
They might actually be related... "Human resources" people are overly female. Maybe they just apply their normal behavior and experience to work?
You could actually test your hypothesis,make yourself deliberately less desirable, then check the reactions and what that does to your self esteem.
Some anecdotal evidence from a female who wrote a book about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Made_Man_(book)
The #1 cause of men not being datable is the advice they get from other men. Try listening to women instead.
In workplace settings, men tend to speak up whether or not they have something wise to contribute. This communications style carries over into the way men use dating apps.
Also, you can't sell the libertarian techbro thing as attractive. It isn't. Your prerogative to be that way. It doesn't bother me in a workplace setting. But it is a massive turn off. You are lowering your odds. You can find counterexamples, such as that when I was an undergrad, women ran the Objectivist newspaper. But outliers be outlying.
(Similarly, richer people/political donors are usually liberals and the richer/more they donate the more liberal they are. It's all thanks to education polarization.)
Probably best to keep it that way.
The ratio is so badly skewed that the apps end up working for no one. Neither men nor women.
When it comes to dating apps, everyone I know falls into one of two categories:
The first group invests time into generating a good profile. They put the effort into getting get photos of themselves and presenting the photos properly. They write a good bio, avoiding the tired tropes ("love food and travel"), and they iterate on their bio based on responses. They go out on dates with an open mind and are willing to give people a chance.
The second group grabs random, unflattering pictures of themselves and throw them into the app without much consideration. They do things like use group photos where it's hard to even tell whose profile you're viewing. They grab a lot of silly or exaggerated pictures that make them look immature or present an image that doesn't match their personality. They write a short bio with useless tropes copied from other profiles. They make up their minds about people before even going on the first date.
The first group isn't finding their soulmate in the first month, but they do well. I've attended a double-digit number of weddings from people in this group. The second group is just relentlessly cynical and disappointed. I know a group of people, some of whom are classically attractive women, who have been doing online dating for years while complaining about the lack of good matches.
Online dating is a tool. Like any other tool, people get out of it what they put into it. You don't have to be in the top 10% of most attractive and successful people to match with others, but you do have to get over the cynicism and put in some effort.
I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?
It’s more that not doing those things can be problematic for attractive people who would otherwise get matches.
(Most women who don't do basic things are depressed to the point they aren't on dating apps, so you wouldn't have an opportunity to swipe on them.)
One reason I'm glad I'm gay is that so many men just reek or don't perform basic hygiene.
The OkCupid data confirmed this is false. Top 20% of men receive the vast majority of female attention.
The inverse of that is that the majority of women think that 80% of men are mostly unattractive or at least unattractive to them. This is about as far as you can get from just trying to sweep the stats aside with a "highly individual" comment.
The data shows men might rate women's attractiveness charitably, but they only messaged the most attractive 5s.
But whom women messaged tells a different story. Women messaged more average-looking men and were less likely to message the most attractive men.
Examining messages is largely moot, because by the time two people have matched we've already filtered out a huge portion of potential partners.
So for men, the biggest improvement they can make is take more photos of yourself in hope for some good ones and maybe get some professional photos taken. What constitutes a good photo? In descending order of importance: 1) they want to be flattering. You'd think this would be obvious, but far too many profiles have photos that actively highlight negative features of their subject. If your hairline is failing, have photos with hats on. If you've got a beer belly, don't have side-facing photos. Etc. 2) They should suggest that you do fun things, and are thus likely to bring a potential date to such fun things. Nature shot, beach shot, interesting place shot. If you have some interesting hobby, maybe an action shot of you woodcutting/flying a model plane/intricately painting plastic figures. 3) Since this is a forum for tech workers, you probably have more discretionary income than average. *Subtly* demonstrate that.
Ultimately, what it boils down to is that everyone knows your profile pictures are going to be your absolute best photos of yourself, carefully crafted to make you look your best, overselling reality substantially. If you put bad pictures in your profile, people will STILL ASSUME THAT, and thus assume you look even worse.
(For instance, it's easy to "change" if you're a burn victim. If you're going to be scientific, be specific.)
So what? This correction changes nothing, the discussion is about control.
A man who wants to improve his attractiveness in terms of body height, skin colour or sensitivity of the scalp against 5α-DHT expressing follicle miniaturisation can't achieve shit by changing his environment.
If your hair is thinning that's less of a problem than you think. It looks bad if you look like you're intentionally ignoring it, but lean into it and you're fine.
My first marriage ended with my wife divorcing me. We have 3 kids. On my Tinder profile I made it very clear I'm a dad. I'm not tall and not that handsome.
I'm a developer, so I don't meet that many single women in real life. Tinder was excellent. I met my current wife on Tinder, and still happily married years after our first Tinder date.
My wife is a relationship coach, and has great success with women. But the men are just uncoachable. They are not able to find a relationship, and still know better when an actual women tries to tell them what women want. Crazy.
Pretty grand generalization. Sometimes it feels like a coach advices you impossible, mutually contradictory or equivalent of jumping off a cliff. I guess it could be hard to find a matching coach.
Pornography by and for gay men, is as popular if not more so, with gay men as pornography is with straight men. The market for such material aimed at women, gay or straight, is rather marginal by comparison.
Similarly, a very large % of gay men who are partnered romantically, are in open relationships. And by large % I mean around half. At least with American gay women, open relationships are a very minor thing, similar to the rates with heterosexuals.
The sexual behaviour of homosexual men and women is very different at a population/statistical level. Whether it's nature or nurture can of course be debated, but it seems like a very strong indicator that women's and men's sexuality are of a slightly different nature.
I would love to know the actual number here, as someone in the gay male open relationship category.
I remember discussing this with a friend of mine, who is also in an open relationship. He came out with a fascinating statement that he had never seen a long term monogamous gay relationship where both parties were perfectly happy. After he said it, my first thought was that was ridiculous and then tried to think of friends who were the exception... I couldn't name a single one either. Every monogamous gay couple I've met going for longer than >1 year had at least one person in the relationship air that they were sexually frustrated to me in private and wanted more. Most were jealous of our relationship, but worried about the consequences of opening their relationship.
I am sure the monogamous gay couple who are happy is out there somewhere, but I've yet to meet them.
> When analyzing the whole sample, approximately 2% of heterosexual participants, 32% of gay participants, 5% of lesbian participants, 22% of bisexual participants, and 14% of those who described their sexualities as “other” reported being in open relationships;
-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958351/
Similar ratio from studies done in 2005 and 2015 in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jul/22/gay-dat...
As another gay man, I used to be radically skeptical of monogamy. Like in my 20s I was spouting the line that it's a heterosexual construct falsely imposed on us for moralistic reasons. But both personal experience, and a widened social group, has led me to believe that, for a significant number of gay men a monogamous relationship is ideal. They're happiest in them, and seem to be able to make them work. Perhaps with some compromises and perhaps not entirely happy, but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.
Funnily enough I am precisely the opposite. I spent my 20s trying to hunt for "the one" and had a series of short, failed relationships. Now I'm in my 30s I am in a 9 year long successful (I think?) open/polyamorous relationship.
Really I think gay men (and men in general) struggle with communication skills and emotional maturity. Gaining those skills are key to maintaining long, healthy relationships. Non-monogamy is an avenue towards working towards achieving those skills because maintaining a healthy, open relationship means a lot of communication is required. In my opinion, it is a high risk, high reward strategy to a maintaining a relationship.
> but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.
I think we have to distinguish minor annoyances from major communication issues due to sex. Like it or not, sex is a big part of being human and sex drive is something can be wildly different between people. Non-monogamy can be an outlet for this.
This is the ultimate source of much of the struggles for men.
Women generally don't like sharing their partner with competition. (Neither do most men. Threesomes men pursue are almost always MFF, not MMF.)
None of this is surprising.
Yeah this is a unstable feedback loop.
Women want men to message first. So they don't message first. So a lot of men spray all the women with generic messages first (because spending even any amount of effort on a single woman is most likely going to get ignored, so men just assume 1 in 100 people respond and don't put much effort until there is at least one response from her). Women then get inboxes flooded. Women then increasingly don't message first because they get complacent with the hundreds of messages in their inbox.
The dating culture needs to change, women need to stop expecting men to lead, take some control, and pick and message people they'd like to get to know. If men start getting some nonzero amount of inbound from people who like them, they are less likely to need to "spray" the entire female population with generic messages.
* It's easier to find a partner when you already have one
* There are much higher standards in getting dates (akin to interviewing) than once in a relationship
* Theres a power imbalance due to cultural expectations that men are the pursuers
I've been told by a male friend who (quite successfully) uses several of these apps that even on that one that makes women initiate contact (is it Bumble?) the first message is just "hi" like 99% of the time. Meanwhile, that's a guaranteed way for a dude to get ghosted, on any platform where guys can initiate contact, as is responding with a reciprocal "hi" on that one. In either case the clear expectation is that the guy needs to present something interesting right out of the gate, very first message, and generally drive the discussion. (this guy attributes his success largely to his A+ chat game, so I'm inclined to believe his take on this)
There is also a power imbalance due to men being physical more powerful than women, which is a concern for most, if not all women.
Her inbox might be flooded with messages, but most of those messages are spam. Most of the guys didn't even look at her profile, and instead swiped right on everyone and copy-pasted the same message to all of their matches. If she replies, most of them will not respond. Few will put in the effort to have a substantial conversation, and fewer will actually try to go out on a date with her.
If she goes on a date, she would end up in the same situation. She will probably carry the conversation and will be more interested in them than they are in her. Many will agree to have sex with her for the sake of their own pleasure, but few would attempt to give her pleasure. If she gets into a relationship, chances are the guy won't pull his weight (because he's not really interested) and she will end up doing all the work. He will regularly flake on her to hang out with his friends and play videogames, and will try to hide the fact that he doesn't actually like her as a person or enjoy being around her.
On the other hand, if you get a handful of responses, that means a handful of women are interested in you. They actually want to talk to YOU, to the extent that you are accurately represented by your profile. The chance that one of those people are a good match for you, and that they are willing to give you a fair chance is high. And if they end up not actually liking who you are, they will do you the favor of ending it instead of wasting your time.
As for guys who don't get matches or messages at all: it's because your profile sucks. Take better pictures. No, those pictures suck too, try again.
My experience on dating apps, and in real life dating (including with my current partner) is that it's the man's burden to entertain the date. The overwhelming majority of date time was spent with me asking questions to try to coax the girl into actually talking, and talking about themselves (which people like to do).
Hell, most of the time that girls ghost guys on dating apps is because they're "boring". Dick pics are not sent out by more than half of all men who are rejected, but at least half of those rejctees we're "boring".
One way to try to fight this is to jestermax or goofmax. I refuse. I shouldn't have to become a damn comedian to prove that I've got "game".
In practice, the proportion of good matches are similar for men and women. The issue is that men get many fewer of them in total, which means many fewer good, invested matches.
No amount of picture taking changes the fact that being short or ugly or bald or old or non-white firmly entrenches the profile in the "never match" category.
You also have to have some hooks --things that are part of your personality that can instigate some interest. Could be climbing, playing an instrument, working on a farm, etc. But also don't make things up. Looks matter, but after that initial attraction, other things matter, are they organized, are they too compulsive... You know their habits and so on. You want someone normal but also not someone boring, for the most part.
The difference in experiences starts early in life. For boys, girls showing interest in them is often an exciting and empowering experience. For girls, often as not, the first sign of sexual interest is a creepy older man making uncomfortable comments at them when they're 11 years old. IIRC this shows up in mental health statistics -- boys who start puberty earlier tend to do better; girls who start puberty earlier tend to do worse. And of course there are different social standards applied to men's and women's sexuality.
Women also have much bigger safety concerns than men do, and have a harder time getting anything done about attacks afterwards.
I think all of this does make it harder for women to understand the destructive loneliness that a lot of men (particularly young men) face. I've been there, and I remember that trying to talk about with my female friends was a frustrating experience. But over time I've come to see that women don't really have it any better than we do. We're wandering through a desert looking for an oasis; they're swimming through a lake of garbage looking for an intact water bottle.
Hence, if you're going to try and show interest in a woman, do it in a way that's clearly going to be interesting, exciting and empowering to her, even if she doesn't seem to reciprocate sexually. (Which in practice means you'll need to show genuine social interest and friendship to her, combined with a modicum of sexual interest that's demonstrably connoted as non-threatening. Mostly by showing yourself off as sexually attractive and attainable, and leaving it at that. Yes, it's very unintuitive from a male POV - many males will reject this approach as weak. But a neutral assessment of strategy says it will work, and give women what they're mostly looking for.)
I wonder what examples would you have in mind?
It's easy to say "just be great".
I know for sure that a lot of men, significant percent of my single friends, actually tried that for years, with little to no effect. Seems like when a woman needs the man to be interesting and exciting, she wants some non-trivial specifics which are actually hard to either understand or achieve.
> So the bar is not that high.
Would you think that this whole situation the article describing happens while the bar is not that high? Do you think the problem is illusory? Or the society as a whole just doesn't know some rather simple to make and simple to understand actions?
Yes, society as a whole does not care in the least about giving people viable social "scripts" by which they might get to know each other and pursue intimacy in safe, healthy and effective ways.
(Of course, the consequences of this lack become all the more apparent when ludicrous excuses are put forth to minimize or justify serious coercive and predatory behavior. Teach people to relate to each other in better ways, and you'll also deprive dangerous predators of the excuses they like to fall back on.)
The question effectively was, do you know a smart thing the majority of the rest of people doesn't know - and that is for a problem which is older than all of us here. Seems like you believe you do but can't explain :( .
I think it's more like, we're both in a corner store and while many men can't afford something to eat, though it's right in front of them; women won't stop looking before they find Caviar and a bottle of Champaign.
I wouldn't be surprised if some men were already doing this.
For men it's like finding fresh water in a desert.
For women it's like finding fresh water in a swamp.
I'm a man, 40 years, polyamorous, yet I have zero problems finding people to date. On average, I have more partners than the women I often date. I agree that Tinder and such are highly skewed, but it doesn't make it useful for any gender. In-person (events, social groups, etc), I find there are a large number of people who actively want to date me and spend time with me.
I don't see a clear gender divide in dating opportunities in my personal experience. I haven't been able to figure out what is unique about my experience vs the majority of men. I am not a "10" in any way; I just have a lot of hobbies.
> I haven't been able to figure out what is unique about my experience vs the majority of men.
You are attractive. That's all there is to it. Hobbies are a red herring.
You might not be a 10, but "just" an 8, but that still means you are two orders of magnitude more successful than a normie.
I responded to one profile by noting the lake in the background of one of her pics and asking where it was. She about fell off her chair and said I might be the only guy on there who actually reads profiles.
Up your f'ing game guys, it doesn't take much apparently.
I got out of my shell by having dinner at the bar and talking to strangers of both genders. Now I'm a known regular and sometime people buy me a shot. This took years, so get started today.
Year | 2002 | 2012
---------------------------------
Top 20% # Partners | 12 | 15
---------------------------------
Top 5% # Partners | 38 | 50
Wow - so what does 2022 look like?
Hasn't been reported yet, but some simple extrapolation would expect top 20% to drop to 8 lifetime partners and top 5% to increase to 80 lifetime partners.
I have freckles, speak with an accent, and not at all athletic (though not what one might call fat either). I drive a ford truck. Just your average software engineer.
One word of advice I can offer - is that women (and same goes for men) often become a lot more attractive when you see them in person, get to know them, learn what they are like, see them smile and experience emotions. All the things you can never understand by looking at a pic in an app. And as you interact with them - they too will see you in a new light.
> seeing Athens full of young men, with both an instinctual compulsion, and a habit of straying in an inappropriate direction, bought women and established them in various places, equipped and common to all.
Of course in those days, it was expected that if you were a decent-ish member of society you were basically guaranteed a wife (which you might have not even met) and a family that would perpetuate the same kind of society. Sexual competition is feral and fundamentally anti-society.
But that is the choice that people make, deliberately. we are increasingly individualists and have chosen to live that way , especially in western societies. Seeing this as a "problem" implies that there is a solution somewhere and that it is fundamentally a bad thing. But it seems that it is just the future. And there will be consequences as large percentages of mainly men feel increasing disconnected and having nothing to bind them in a society. As these men grow up, approach retirement or financial independence they will increasingly move to places where they can live with less strings attached. Not necessarily to a sexual paradise, but just to a place that demands less taxes, is more tolerant to single men (western culture isn't), that shames them less, etc etc. We are already having the trend of record numbers of households being single-person homes. The next logical step is to move that household to whatever place treats the individual best.
If anyone doesn't believe this, make a fake dating profile using photos from someone of the opposite sex that you think is about as attractive as you are and observe what happens when you try to reach out to people. Actually, this might be a great exercise for the guys in particular to see all the low-effort crap that gets thrown their way (and the occasional unsolicited dick pic), but it would also be a great exercise for women to see how much effort it takes simply to get interest returned (in which case you might get so fatigued by the number of sincere requests you send out unanswered, that you resort to sending many more low-effort inquiries instead... See how that works?)
I predict this thread will get modlocked later today since every conversation that brings in sexual concerns related to gender/orientation ends up becoming dynamite.
I have friends who are short and not particularly attractive and successful IRL score 60 girls a year because they put some effort into their photos and have a good attitude.
I'm not saying to ditch dating apps. Rather, supplement by getting out and getting to know the people around you.
Crafted socializing tends to take more energy and resources, two things that are scarce for many in our modern economy.
I would predict that being able to afford a nice apartment in a good area close to date locations will easily 10x your sex chances.
There have been other studies about young men struggling to find jobs that pay well enough for them to become financially independent, and there's been a lot of discussions about Hikkomori and the Japanese Grasseaters movement, which is basically older guys that refuse to move out of their parent's home.
My overall impression is that a bad economy and bad job market makes it difficult for young men to become independent and that makes it extremely difficult for them to become sexually active. Because despite all progress with regards to gender equality, the overwhelming majority of girls prefers to date a guy who can afford a nice shirt and a nice appartment.
So the underlying problem is that industrial revolution and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
The funny thing is, the very same office was filled with nice, young, smart, good looking men. Just not rich enough.
This is just an anecdote, I am not saying all women go for rich dudes, neither am I stereotyping. But yeah, being able to afford nice things in life is a significant advantage in dating. I suppose being rich is advantageous in everything
OP's comment was talking about the difference between guys who can afford a nice apartment vs guys who still need to live in their parents' home. It was a practical thing, where anyone would want a private space for dating.
Your comment took it to a different level, where you're talking about people in your office vs wall street rich people. In this scenario, there are people like those two female colleagues of yours (that you described as young and very good looking, which was unnecessary), who will have a preference for rich guys, but there are other women who would prefer your coworkers in the office. It's a preference thing rather than a practical thing, like OP's observation in their comment.
There's ample evidence that women prefer wealthy and higher status men. Income attraction is a widely studied pattern: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01672...
I dont know if you can solve this popularity contest, because 'geek chic' has been tried and failed. But maybe if the guys who are lower in the sexual pecking order stopped worshipping and making the guys at the top even more famous, it would help them.
This matches my experience. But overall, location is extremely important. I used to date quite a lot, and depending on the place, I could find dates extremely easily, or it could be virtually impossible.
But one thing I understood after I turned 40. The number one criteria is age! It gets exponentially harder as years pass.
I've heard a lot of women around my age suffering from the opposite trend.
25-35 range is vastly different from the 50-60 range, for quite obvious reasons.
What's so special about their age to you?
I don't think I have a sample size large enough to confidently discriminate among particular age groups' attraction to me. I'm not, like, a celebrity or something. Even if I did, I don't see how such a sample could avoid being far too biased to draw any useful conclusions from.
This is very very very important to women. It's a big red flag when a guy is as they might put it, "clueless." Meanwhile it's a frustrating experience not understanding what's going on for the guy.
Dating aside, an empathetic listener who reads body language will usually be someone more engaging and engaged to interact with.
Dating across boundaries can be exotic when you have some latitude of choice, but also insulting when it’s because you can’t date. Ah, psychology…
People at FAANG would be rolling in sex partners instead of being incels.
Money is not significant enough. It’s nice but it will not change outcomes for people who are unattractive otherwise.
Obviously, it also hit my self-esteem, so I sort of shelled up and did not even want to socialize with friends. I also had a high-achieving family, where i was one of the youngest children, and I was constantly gas-lit by my parents, older sibling, aunts, uncles, etc. That was the worst.
I would say my early 20s were the worst time of my life.
Alot of people in these situations have let the broader zeitgeist tell them they are entitled to something. If you’re a 40-year old divorcee, the market for supermodels or professional athletes is limited.
Even when my apartment has looked like something out of Hoarders I think it's cost me, at most, one nascent sexual relationship, and I think that was actually because she didn't enjoy our sex, not because of the apartment. (I'll probably never know.) By the time a new lover has decided to come home with me, they generally already have a strong interest in making love with me. So I think worrying about whether your apartment is nice enough might be analogous to worrying about whether your penis is big enough: it's a factor, but it usually comes into play too late to make a big difference, and in only a small minority of cases is it so bad as to actually matter.
As for financial independence, here in Buenos Aires you can always go to a telo. If you do that twice a month you are spending, say, $10000 a month (US$26) which is not an insignificant expenditure but is tiny compared to renting your own apartment. Other Latin American countries call them "motels", and in Japan they're "rabu hoteru".
Nice shirt? You can get an all-cotton button-down dress shirt for like US$40 if women won't look twice at you because you're wearing a T-shirt. This is not a significant issue for Japanese hikikomori. Also, though, the vast majority of women aren't that picky, if you're attractive in other ways.
Bad economy? Japan and Switzerland have much better economies than Brazil, Nigeria, and Haiti, but the better economies aren't the ones where people are more easily finding sex partners.
I do agree that location is important, though. Burning Man is not the same as Cairo at all.
I'm male, for what it's worth; 46 years old; and so far all my partners have been women. I think I'm way out on the right tail of the distribution when it comes to a variety of traits, including ⓐ height, ⓑ tendency to initiate conversations with strangers, ⓒ willingness to touch and be touched by new people, and ⓓ interest in and enjoyment of sex. So my experience is probably not typical.
I think the point of an "expensive" place (really just a big one that isn't disgusting) is that you can host people, throw parties, etc.
Being able to host is a massive boost to people being willing to go out of their way to spend time of you, and (good) hosts get a +4 bonus to sexiness also
But you don't really need a big place to host someone from CouchSurfing or WarmShowers or Hospitality Club or whatever the current one is. Just having two bedrooms with doors that close is enough. Or one bedroom, if you yourself sleep in the living room in pajamas, or something.
Here in Buenos Aires the apartments are mostly small, so the usual way for people here to throw parties is to either rent an event space for the night, propose an event to a cultural center, or just arrange to all meet up in a bar.
That's probably an effect of small apartments and lots of restaurants.
It's pretty culturally specific though, so I'd just check what everyone else is doing with whatever the local versions of Meetup/Foursquare/Google Maps are.
I think Houellebecq's quote from 1994 is what popularized the sexual marketplace
> “It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
I wish he wrote another future-looking book about the next decade
> a bad economy and bad job market makes it difficult for young men to become independent and that makes it extremely difficult for them to become sexually active
I m not sure about that because a lot of the frustrated guys are nerds with lucrative jobs (hence why they hang out in reddit). They make great uncles but are not considered boyfriend material.
It's certainly an interesting perspective. Here's another:
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/06/comparing-income-sex-...
1) I was raised into believing that sex implies serious relationship and vice versa. As in "if we are having sex that means we are in serious relatioinship".
As it turned out - this does not work like this for most (many?) people. Turns out yuo can just have a good time and some sex without worrying about 1001 things before you do so.
2) I simply do not like dating. Like at all. For me a perfect date is the one that I can attend during my lunch time or maybe after studies\work. Definatelly not on weekend. Definetely not longer that 2 hours (well 3-4 if we are really into each other and both have the same kind of thinking about how to spent free time). May be just bad luck but many girls I've met wanted those stupid 6 hours walks around the city talking about all things you can imagine. (don't you have things to do?)
3) I failed to realise I can suggest any type of activity during our date and not just try and adjust to her preferences. As a result a bunch of dates were just me doing shit I didn't like
UPD: fixed a few obvious typos.
As it turned out - this does not work like this for most (many?) people. Turns out yuo can just have a good time and some sex without worrying about 1001 things before you do so.
This seems to contradict some view on women's POV here. As in, for women the sexual transaction is big serious deal.
If that truly were the case, you wouldn't see 5% of these hypersexual men monopolizing 50% of sex (as the paper says). Or maybe many women like intentionally putting themselves in harem-like situation, if in exchange they get to have sex with "hot men". Overall, it's a deplorable state of affairs.
What's deplorable and what would you prefer to occur?
I'd prefer monogamy that's state-enforced[1] socially-promoted culturally-inculcated. That would go a long way in fixing the inequality (both not in countries like China and India which a separate sex ratio issue to deal with).
Even with a positive sex ratio with more women than men, in North America, if it is indeed true that top 5% end up monopolizing 50% of sex (as the linked research paper), that's a staggeringly bad and deplorable state of affairs.
[1] Enforced by fully utilizing the state's monopoly on violence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence), e.g. with both long prison sentences, and torture or severe corporal punishment – to completely and utterly suppress and root out any violations of hypothetical future sexual morality laws.
We could probably co-opt existing antitrust laws to reach this result. Probably different against the men and women as different anticompetitive practices are put into play. Funny concept, antitrust on unincorporated businesses that trade in paid meals (dinner dates), federal jurisdiction could be extended with evidence of the interstate usage of the internet communications, that fits the interstate commerce jurisdiction, with evidence being number of matches in combination with meetups per month or some other interval. I could see it working, especially if there was a whistleblower bounty.
My experince:
1) First time I was almost forces into sex by a girl one year younger than me whom I invited to my apartment. While I obviously hoped for something romantic to happen - this was us meeting for the third time maybe and we knew each other (I mean irl, not online forum bullshit) for like 4 hours.
I "opted out" of it while she was sitting on me alread half naked. There were several reasons for this actually but the one about "if I do this now - I will be using her" was the main one I guess. After this I was told (by her) I shouldn't be "a log" (sorry, not sure about the best way to translate the idiom into english).
2) The second time the girl, seeing me being not as straightforward as she hoped for, simple asked if I ever had a girlfriend before. I was honest, saying that while I had a couple, it never went as far as sex - and she simple saying she fine with doing it with me (while inviting me to go to her apartment). Again maybe I'm more of a girl in this regard but for me this was a turn off again. Wtf do you mean you are okay? Do you want it? More importantly - do you want me?
.... some years with no sex later ....
My girlfriend (now wife) descibes her experiences. As it turns out she had more than a few partners by the time she was 20 (we met when she was around 26). Most of them - just your regular fellow student\coworker etc. She needed sex, was not interested in longterm relationship etc.
If you go to twitter these days - people (most of whom women) are also quite open to the thought of going all the way without too much worries. (as long the guys seems nice of course, I don't mean sex with the first stranger here)
Also by her experience and some other stories from a few women I know close enough - even losing their virginity was more of a technicality. Literally "well, I had to go to a cdifferent city for university and I didn't want to lose it in some dorms, so I just hooked up with a guy with a good reputation (known to be able to do the job without any mess or future problems)"
Guys do now have this kind of option aside from visiting a prostitute.
And other women learn how to decrease the cost.
Women that are fine with hormonal birth control with partners that test for STDs frequently are fine. There is a lot of consequence free sex happening.
It doesn't matter that it contradicts a view, your mistake is elevating them as representatives of the entire sex. They aren't, even if they masquerade as so, they are just individuals.
We probably should improve descriptions, so we wouldn't rely on ones somewhere and then rely on the opposites elsewhere.
The way I would rephrase your observation is "have non-sedentary collaborative interests".
I'm having a good time. I'd like to have a better time with even less energy involved, but reading this paper suggests I have it very good and it probably doesn't really get better for me. I don't keep count but I would guess I'm in top 8-15%.
Regular sex is important, but regularly switching sex partners isn't really how I want to live my life. I don't want 50 lifetime partners, 38, 15, or even 12. I wanted one. That I have more than one is a sign of failure of a relationship each time, which is not a success.
If I had my choice, I'd:
1. go back to a 1930-style relationship, were I would have married early and stayed together.
2. We'd have clear roles, although not the sexist, dated ones from 1930. I'm very flexible, so I don't much care what they are. I just don't want conflict over who does what, re-negotiation of everything, and clear roles eliminate a lot of room for conflict. With some permanent, clear division of responsibility, we both know what's required of a good partner, and if each of us focuses on that, things work out.
3. As a cultural norm, divorce would only happen for fault (abuse, infidelity, etc.). Both sides would try to be good spouses.
4. Extended families would live together and support each other (which also keeps an eye on things not going south).
I'm not trying to impose that on anyone else, except for a research methodology to account for people like me.
I'm now happily married, and I hope to remain so for life. But the difference between the 1930s and now is that not only am I aware that if I'm a bad partner, she can leave me, but I accept that as a reasonable recourse.
Long-term marriage is absolutely possible today, but people who want that have to work for it. It's not automatic anymore because people are less scared of being branded for leaving a bad situation.
"Roles" is a very loaded term, but I think there's a definite place for understanding who is handling what. The key thing is understanding roles change, and in a good marriage, both partners will take whatever role serves the family unit. They shouldn't be attached to the gender of the partner, and can move as needs change.
And I think a lot of the hostility that does come from divorce starts with the belief it shouldn't happen or "isn't fair". If I accept that my wife has the right to divorce me if I'm a bad partner, if she does, the first thing I have to acknowledge is that I failed as a husband at meeting her needs (or perhaps that we are incompatible in a way that I never could do so). That would be absolutely crushing, but I wouldn't blame her for it, and if I blame myself, I am probably not going to end up communicating in that procedure in a way the court would feel I am not safe to share custody with.
Accepting that both parties have the right to exit, and that a relationship is a process of continual consent changes the entire dynamic.
Also: Child support, or even alimony, is a recognition that in a marriage, the income may be produced by a single party, even if the overall roles and responsibilities were divided equally. If someone is a stay-at-home-partner, they may not be bringing in the cash income, but they are still 50% of the effort of operating that family unit as they tend to take on more responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning and child rearing which all need to be done by someone. When a marriage ends, the low-income partner cannot necessarily immediately shift into self-sufficient career mode, and obviously the child should be seeing the necessary financial support they would have, so the income of the two parents needs to be compared with where the child spends most of their time (and hence, incurs the most expenses).
This varies wildly by jurisdiction, but the burden of proof can be pretty slim and the judges in some jurisdiction have been on the record saying they grant them out of fear if something goes wrong when they haven't that they'll be held responsible.
[0] http://www.ejfi.org/PDF/Nestler_Letterman_TRO.pdf
>Also: Child support, or even alimony, is a recognition that in a marriage, the income may be produced by a single party, even if the overall roles and responsibilities were divided equally. If someone is a stay-at-home-partner, they may not be bringing in the cash income, but they are still 50% of the effort of operating that family unit as they tend to take on more responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning and child rearing which all need to be done by someone. When a marriage ends, the low-income partner cannot necessarily immediately shift into self-sufficient career mode, and obviously the child should be seeing the necessary financial support they would have, so the income of the two parents needs to be compared with where the child spends most of their time (and hence, incurs the most expenses).
This is an interesting monologue but we all know the reasoning by child support. I'm merely pointing out it's a real specter. When I'm married if I lose my job there's no court process and if I have to take a shitty one and spend way less money on the kid then we will adapt; but after a divorce you have an "imputed income" which is what the judge expects you could make. The judge also expects you're spending 20% of that imputed income towards the kid even though if when you were married it could be just 5% and the kid was fine. If I have to take up trucking and the judge says I really could be an engineer and I'm slacking then I could end up in jail. Granted most people making an effort probably aren't going to end up in jail but merely the fact you have potential debtor's prison hanging over your head at all times is a very real concern even in the event it is justified.
To point out the absurdity of child support debtor's prison as currently run, see the story of the guy arrested because he was held hostage in Iraq while working the contract job he needed to work to pay his child support... [1]. The reasoning? He did not mail the support while the captors were pointing a gun to his head. IMO any system where you can be jailed because you didn't make payments because you were taken hostage while trying to earn support for your children is just utterly fucked.
[1] https://greensboro.com/ex-hostage-jailed-in-child-support-ca...
Child support is not bad in theory. It's bad in practice, because divorce is an adversarial process with lawyers, rather than social workers, and designed to inflame conflict. The whole divorce industry is corrupt and rancid.
As a footnote: Expenses with joint custody tend to be pretty equal. If you have a child 3 nights a week, and your spouse has them 4 nights, do you think it makes a real difference to expenses? However, child support in some jurisdictions and income brackets will be about 1/3 of your income. The parent with four nights will have double the income.
That's not designed to support kids. You should consider what that's designed for.
I don't mind alimony per se, but we use a radically wrong standard. It should not be the standard to which they are accustomed, but where they likely would have been had they not taken the years out of the labor force.
It's a difference in values. There are both men and women on both sides of the cultural divide. If anything, my experience is that there are more women on my side. The stereotype that women value commitment might be exaggerated, but there seems to be at least a kernel of truth there.
Either way, my experience is completely opposite. I can't recall a single woman I know who, that when meeting someone prescribing any of these points, would not use them as a proxy for their willingness to engage in a relationship and their subsequent happiness in such a relationship. Maybe we just live in separate bubbles, or maybe one of us does and one doesn't, or maybe they are geographic bubbles or context dependent in some other way that introduces nuance in a way that ends with "it depends." We probably won't know unless doing some sort of statistical survey.
I don't know you, but I would speculate that you mostly interact with people from white, progressive, Western, middle-upper-class, educated, American culture, and that would be the experience there.
There are 8 billion people in the world, though. I'm an immigrant and mostly interact with immigrants. The signalling is different. Divorce is bad for kids, and a lot of people in the world would like a spouse who is committed. A lot of women want someone who will commit to one relationship and work on it.
I view marriage the same way as I do having a child, a parent, or any other family member; thick or thin, it not something you just opt out of unless something extreme happens. I do have one family member most of us disowned, but that was due to something rather extreme.
- That the ending of a relationship is necessarily a failure.
- That two very young people are in a place to understand the implications of choosing a life partner.
- That extended families are necessary to "keep things from going south". (What does that mean? Helping mediate conflict, or to bury persistent issues in the name of stability?)
There's others here, but I'll stick with the three. But overall, while it may be good for some ("you do you"), I find a lot here to raise an eyebrow at and much too discomforting to simply scroll past. So much of this seems to reinforce unhealthy and oppressive norms that, in my strong opinion, lead eventually to so many destructing relationships in the long run.
For additional reading, I'd greatly recommend "The Way We Never Were" by Stephanie Coontz as to why this mid-century style relationship was highly unusual in the historical context. https://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Never-Were-Nostalgia/dp/046509...
Edit: Formatting
I've lived in several countries. I've found that things function better, and people seem healthier, in more collectivist societies where there are real, permanent families and communities.
To the point of the book, the way things actually were is that we evolved as tribal creatures. We didn't pick our communities, didn't have much choice of mate, and we did need to rely on our tribes and families. My belief is that's the way we're wired. We're social creatures. That's not the US in the fifties, but rather a statement on the nature of humanity for tens of thousands of years.
Now, we're wealthy enough each of us can be 100% independent. I don't see that as a pathway to happiness, though. The connections I see between people in the US seem so shallow compared to those I've seen in other cultures.
Yes, that does mean I need to repress a lot of "self" to fit in, and bury many issues, but I'm okay with that. The US has a loneliness and a mental health pandemic. The whole place is so incredibly isolating.
And yes, ending a relationship is a failure *for me*. I'm not saying it needs to be for other people. However, I want someone to grow together and to grow old with. I want more people around me too, whom I know well.
The phenomenon of say the elderly being disconnected from the younger I theorize is in part due to the fact they extract their social security through violence of the state in taxation rather than through family bonds. The lack of mutual familial reliance destroys the unspoken quid-pro-quo arrangements that held families together. The end effect also is children are a pure cost driver as the support they provide as adults to seniors is equally distributed amongst society rather than mostly directed towards the benefit of the parent who invested in their upbringing. This brings a massive free-rider problem where everyone is incentivized for the other guy to have kids but not for you personally to have one.
I theorize this also has destroyed to some extent inner city poor families. Non-familial nation state social payments to single mothers can actually work against marriage in poor families, as the single mother may be financially penalized for getting married. The resulting lack of father figure inspires more poverty and crime and recycling of the issues.
When my partner and I were first expecting we honestly were not sure whether to get married or not, as a lot of possible government benefits vaporized when you took my partner from "single poor mom" to "married middle of the road family."
take away social security and state pensions and see the birth rate shoot up.
since the benefit and cost is localized. people will be encouraged to have more children i.e spread the risk of getting taken care of in the future by their progeny.
some gvt social programs are necessary - but social security is not one of them. it's one big ponzi
I think that's only true if those roles line up with practical realities. The bulk of the problem with the 'old' roles is that become obsolete due to technological and cultural changes. The two biggest changes were household electricity, which enabled the mechanization of most houeshold chores; and refrigeration/modern fertilizer production, which made household gardens impractical for many people.
> As a cultural norm, divorce would only happen for fault ... Both sides would try to be good spouses.
+1. I grew up amoung pretty conservative Americans, and while they had some pretty toxic views around sex, the attitudes around cultivating healthy relationships has been one one of the most important things in giving me a happy life.
For me, it drastically reduces stress levels.
I do a lot of US genealogy and this scenario wasn't as prevalent in the US as we've been led to believe.
For 1920-1950, what I've personally observed are 1) nuclear families tending to live together as adults and 2) a large percentage of adults not starting families until their 30s.
> As a cultural norm, divorce would only happen for fault (abuse, infidelity, etc.). Both sides would try to be good spouses.
As far as divorce goes, this really depended on where one lived. Divorce was routine in certain regions (north Mid-West, FL) and in many communities (typically depending on culture).
> Extended families would live together and support each other (which also keeps an eye on things not going south).
This faded as industrialization took hold. By the time we get to 1920-1950, most aging parents lived alone or in a boarding house or with an adult child who didn't marry.
There were a non-insignificant number of parents who lived in a 3+ generation household but that was usually a transient arrangement. Their final living arrangement tended to be one of the 3 above.
A guy who is 5/10 has to do insane antics just to get a shot, including learn to be a standup comedian, be in great shape, have a good job, read tons of dating books, etc.
I’m not sure it’s the fault of OLD, but something is messed up. It’s frankly depressing to date as a guy these days.
Maybe 30 y.o. single women are so for a reason.
But they are not, as the article says women do have sexual partners while men increasingly don't. Men are hugely unmatched in loneliness in the young age groups
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads...
Now, relationship loneliness may well be a different matter. But it can only be addressed by the individual.
Another reminder to delete your dating profiles and then delete the dating apps! Don't let anyone gaslight you into suggesting your selection of photos are the problem, the jury has returned and the verdict is out.
You might think that just keeping those feelers out there will benefit you in a wider network, but inactive use of a dating app will decrease the visibility of your profile at all, and undiscerning use of a dating app trying to match with other unattractive/unpopular people will also decrease the visibility of your profile to only the people in your same level of unpopularity. The hot people are never evaluating your profile because the app won't even let them see you, its way worse than just imagining their inbox is inundated as that's just the next hurdle.
Delete it, you'll have to modify your lifestyle and schedule to do things that are social and interesting just like in the before times.
Giving everyone access to sex will not solve sexual loneliness. And, solving (a lot of) sexual loneliness can be achieved without giving everyone access to sex.
Anecdotally, I spent several years as part of the 5% mentioned in this article (lots of regular sex with several different women, most of whom I had very little in common with). After that, I spent several years having very little sex because my wife and I were living on opposite coasts. My experience of sexual loneliness during those two periods of my life were inversely correlated with the amount of sex I was actually having.
Intimacy and relationship matters. Proposals like prostitution or nonmonogamy fundamentally misunderstand the problem.
Sometimes I see pictures of cats cuddling and just wonder why humans are so bad at engaging in simple, consensual comforts like that.
Though a fair bit closer than dogs, who are in heat around a twenty fifth of the time.
I feel like traditional culture is the only thing that says "you shouldn't do that", which seems equally ridiculous to me.
But that underlying motive could be mutual, it could not, the key is consensuality, at any point one party isn't on the same page they can and should say no, this applies to same-sex and opposite-sex configurations, no?
> and it presents danger for one of the parties due to them being physically weaker
That's also true of same-sex configurations, though.
Hence the purpose of flirting to ensure both are on the same page and accepting of the risks. Consensual-ity and motive may not be easy to objectively establish in the moment, so I am guessing this is one area where societies have evolved to play it safe.
> That's also true of same-sex configurations, though.
The low probability of this, as well as the relative strength differences between an average man and the weakest man versus an average man and an average woman make it not worth worrying about, evidently.
For me having an emotional connection with someone (e.g. long term friends who have gone through struggles together, or people I haven't known for long but we've done something out of compassion for each other) is a prerequisite for touch to be desirable. I'm averse to being touched by a bunch of strangers and people I don't know well, especially in a group setting where I know everyone to different levels. I have a more cat-like personality than a dog-like personality in that regard.
(I think a lot of people take MDMA in order to be able to enjoy being touched by a bunch of strangers if they normally wouldn't, and it seems to be effective, but I haven't tried it myself, and although the risks are relatively low, they're far from insignificant.)
Why isn't it something that friends engage in, like animal counterparts? I mean, it seems like an artificial cultural norm we've set upon ourselves -- The idea of no extended touching unless with a sexual partner is one that exists only in my mind, but it's certainly not what my body wants.
Hormonal cycles are very different in women, and are affected by age, factors like weight and inflammation and stress. Doctors tend to look at acute problems and miss the more holistic or secondary affects.
My wife and I have a pretty awesome relationship, but we went through hard patches that were ultimately caused by medical conditions that neither of us knew existed.
I think people pursue “other options” sometimes because they don’t know how to cope with things. As a male, these things are simpler.
This.
Does the following meme resonate?
I'm a lesbian and I've been out for 22 years and I still have to be careful giving men compliments because they think 'I like your shirt' means 'I want to suck your dick'.
Like, if you said 'I like your shirt bro', and you put just a little bit of tude to the bro - would that decrease the risk of unintended signals?
My understanding is once you're like...55 or 60 you can start complimenting men under 40. Then men put you into 'nice grandma' instead of 'she wants to nail me'.
That's exactly what "comorbidity" means in my original post.
If you're in a monogamous relationship with someone with a permanent major sexual incompatibility with you, your options are to stay together (likely creating sexual loneliness for yourself and possibly both of you) or to break up and try to find a different partner (creating sexual loneliness for your ex-partner which may, depending on circumstances, last a long time). Non-monogamous relationships are a lot more flexible with this kind of thing: you can have sex with a different partner without blowing up the relationship that contains the sexual incompatibility.
By "major sexual incompatibilities" I mean to include things like impotence, vaginismus, vulvodynia, fetishes that are a turnoff to the other partner, same-gender couples where one partner is nearly heterosexual, opposite-gender couples where one partner is nearly homosexual, extreme mismatches in preferences of frequency of intercourse, serious illnesses interfering with sex, and some constellations of asexuality.
Of course some people have vulvodynia, or frustrated fetishes, or whatever, and both they and their monogamous partner have a satisfying sex life anyway. But, as you can easily imagine, these situations often do lead to big problems with sex, and I think monogamy tends to amplify that into big problems with intimacy and relationships. (But if you're in a monogamous relationship that's struggling with this, and you try to solve a problem like this by going non-monogamous, you're probably going to have an extremely hard time with it.)
My point was not to criticize non-monogamy per se or to suggest that it should be completely avoided. To wit: the human experience is infinitely varied and consenting adults should be free to address the special circumstances of their own lives in whichever way works for them.
However, non-monogamy isn't a reasonable solution to the epidemic of sexual loneliness characterized in the article. With respect to the issues you raised this is nearly tautologically true because the epidemic is amount single people rather than sexually incompatible couples.
Further, the hypothesis that non-monogamy (or prostitution) can solve the epidemic of sexual loneliness merely by virtue of increasing the supply of sexually compatible partners is misguided.
Totally agreed. I'd even go so far as to assert that, for people who use this language and are sexually lonely, the very best thing they can do to end that loneliness is to stop thinking of other people as economic goods.
Most people crave intimacy and are repelled by objectification.
My hypothesis is that the bandwidth required to present oneself and assess another person is larger than what fits in the self_awareness -> profile_creation -> dating_app_algorithm -> profile_selection -> personality_model_creation -> model_evaluation pipeline.
We already know that a lot of communication happens non verbally. There are other signals we care about: do this person’s friends like them, etc. There are questions about compatible value systems and one’s relationship to risk, money, independence etc.
If there is a technology solution here, I doubt that it looks like a collection of profiles.
Anecdotally, online gaming and niche reddit communities have a somewhat high success rate at creating friendships. One possible way to use this model is a dating app that lets you solve puzzles with another person real time instead of swiping on profile pictures?
I don’t know. I’m throwing ideas here to get a conversation started.
Perhaps a dating app that only allows photos taken with the app, that ensures no filters or edits were done to the image probably increases the bandwidth. But then, that’s an antifeature - I doubt people would want to use such an app.
[....]
[Socrates:] And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the “threshold of old age” —Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?
[....]
[Cephalus, after listing the ways others claim getting old sucks:] But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles —are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them.
— Plato, The Republic, Book I
(It's worth noting that some readings of this are that Socrates is giving Cephalus a little friendly ribbing by prompting him to talk about this, Socrates [the character, or the man, either way] actually being around the same age as Cephalus in this dialog and still plainly being far more vigorous and eagerly engaging with life)
------------
I don't need a lover, no, no, no
The wretched beast is tame
I don't need a lover
So blow out the flame
— Leonard Cohen, "Leaving the Table", from his final album.
Escitalopram or most other SSRIs will do the trick.
Damn, when you put it like that...
/S
We've become more connected than ever, but we're more singular and selfish than ever. This is worse with generations that have had an internet-connected computer in from of them their whole life, especially in the social media era (studies show). I expect people to be getting more and more neurotic and weird.
I think also that the effects of internet porn really can't be underestimated. There's something emasculating about one of humanity's ultimate drives being sated with a couple of mouse clicks. Then look at what is delivered: it's not sex, it's not even a depiction of sex, it's a depiction of a simulacra of sex. Generally speaking, porn divorces us from our own sexuality. Instead of exploring and developing our own sexuality with others, we're served the depiction of others performing for the camera and we get that in our heads. If you think that doesn't impact your sex life or sexuality I don't know what to say.
What is the big deal about sex anyway? Why do some guys go crazy if they can't have sexual intimacy? A lot of time and effort for what, ten minutes of pleasure? But a deep (non-sexual) friendship can last all your life.
I don't think we should restructure society and become more traditional and conservative (whether de jure or de facto) just to cater to the very few who may become violent when they can't get laid. I think the not getting laid part is just an excuse. Prior to the sexual revolution, when people married young and divorce was rare, violence inside marriages was very common.
Overall I think I'm lucky that I'm asexual. There is a whole class of problems that I have never had to think about. I have no desire to exercise power over others or to allow them to exercise power over me.
Sensitivity to status exists in all primates - not just humans. It's one of the most basic instincts of an animal.
We are just vessels for the reproduction of our genetic code (although we believe in our own free will). Status is directly linked to the probability of the genes reproducing, ergo short of some weird chemical drugs, we will never be able to ignore it.
The reason libido is referred to as a 'biological drive' (definition: "an innate motivational state produced by depletion or deprivation of a needed substance (e.g., water, oxygen) in order to impel behavior that will restore physiological equilibrium.) is that it's a biological "need". Quotes because while you obviously don't need it to survive, the brain feels the same way for some people that it does when you "need" food.
"Quotes because while you obviously don't need it to survive, the brain feels the same way for some people that it does when you "need" food."
They don't . There are scores of men who are lonely. You only hear about a tiny few vocal cases which are not even statistically significant. Men are much more likely to commit violence in general regardless of sexual frustration. But it's easy for psychopaths to attribute their violent behavior to anything
For a long time the response of men in suffering has been to be quiet, turn anger inward and suffer from suicide, heart disease, drug addiction and other deadly forms of despair.
I'd agree that inceldom is toxic (one of my son's friends fell under the spell of an incel Youtuber and dumped my son as a friend because my son is taller than him and could possibly "heightmog" him.) but the average man has never had a social movement that cares about his plight.
Reading early feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and such I get the impression that their basic rhetorical strategy is to compare the top 0.1% man to the median woman but then implicitly comparing the agency of the average woman to a man who might not have a lot (there is a war on... time to go to war and die)
This conflation of power and gender is structural to discussions of "sexual harassment" which seems to almost always be up and down power hierarchies. Hypothetically it could so sideways and sometimes it must, but you hear about it so little that I think there is some mechanism that suppresses it from being talked about. In this old book
https://www.amazon.com/Affair-Morton-Hunt/dp/B001KNWKK4
nearly every case study involves a woman having an affair with a man who is above her in some power hierarchy but this goes unmentioned by the author.
Third wave feminism prominently addresses the origins and dangers of certain aspects of masculinity, diagnoses how they harm men, and proposes well thought out mitigations and alternatives. Bell hooks for example wrote several entire books on exactly this subject, and she's not the only one.
It is one reason why I reject How to be an anti-racist because it is not for white people to take a leadership role in solving black people’s problems, in particular blacks “own the problem” and get to decide what is an acceptable solution or not.
The sexual liberation of women is a major theme of feminism. Does that imply even so called "incels" will get some of that? No. On the contrary, they're even more marginalized now.
People are pretty self-centered and prone to sensationalism so I think most people didn't hear the contraction "incel" until there were some high-profile killings a few years ago.
That article tells a story very similar to what some incels tell, which is that men who are at the top of desirability have more access to a range of partners than they ever did while men who are average and below frequently get nothing. People blame dating sites like Tinder for this as women now get to be choosier in the short term, but in the long term they find they can't get men to commit to them because the men that they choose on Tinder don't have any reason to commit to them, a situation written up in
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/03/22/why-love-hurts-eva...
(I would love to get Eva Illouz in a conversation with a blackpiller like Wheat Waffles as the situations they describe look like two sides of the same coin to me.)
In general people make policy based on looking in the rear view mirror and nowhere is this more pernicious than in gender issues where the fact that boys are dropping out of education and men dropping out of work are only barely starting to get attention after having been worsening trends for 30 years. The "standard model" of intersectionality really gets things wrong because the assumptions that "Men do better than women" and "Whites do better than blacks" don't compose to make black women particularly wretched, instead you find black women don't do nearly as bad as black men because it is black men who seem to be on a conveyor belt from the cradle to prison.
Sex is not necessary for health. That's weird. This is just an ingrained behavior to ensure reproduction via neurotransmitter feedback (dopamine).
One should be able to trivially control that consciously, no big deal.
It also seems that men who have a lot of sex have a lot of STDs. I would like to see the statistics
In a theory that, like many 101-level econonic theories, assumes no-cost perfect information, rather than the real costs of information gathering on the alternatives and the real incentives to game this (making it worse for everyone else) by misrepresentation.
I would in fact argue that a major cause of the modern issue is belief in the theory that dating apps offer this, and the divide between that theory and the reality. Even pre-dating apps, the dating methods that did the most to divorce dating from general social intercourse contributed to this, but dating apps take that to a whole new level.
Man: hey baby, want some of this? (Pointing to his crotch)
Woman: why would I want some of that when I can get all I want whenever I want with this? (Pointing to her crotch)
-- It obviously doesn't apply to all women, but that's really what we're talking about here.
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/06/comparing-income-sex-...
Also a good quote:
“It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
Because that's how it works IRL
It seems the world has moved on in many ways and traditional roles/barriers are being broken down, but unfortunately not so much for this topic. I look at hetero friends of mine and it still seems to be the same old rat-race for them.
Men get treated as disposable resources when it comes to dating/relationships. Sure, not all men; if you're pretty or wealthy or otherwise "useful" you'll do fine. But it seems very one-sided in that women do not need to do all that much in order to be desirable to someone (though perhaps not desirable to the type of people they want to meet specifically).
It really just makes me so glad to be gay, and so sad to see men treated like they have no worth; you do have worth, every man, every woman, and every person in between.
It's also incredibly unfortunate that many of the traits exhibited by "men who work in technology" are generally not seen as desirable by many women. I count myself as incredibly fortunate that I can easily meet other men who are into the same things; the only downside is obviously that: * there are fewer gay men available compared to the hetero pool * some (a large number really) of hetero guys will get aggressive to the point of violence if you flirt with them, so it's still very important to sound it out/gaydar someone.
If porn were outlawed, contraception was free, and abortion was legal everywhere, I think you would see a lot more young people getting out there and having a good time.
Porn is ubiquitous which reduces the number of people looking for real-life hookups to satisfy their immediate urges
Porn access as a causal explanation also helps explain why we see the same problem happening even in Nordic countries where access to abortion/contraception is not a problem and parental leave benefits are far superior to the US.
sexual loneliness as a problem
It's why I'm more likely to flop down on the couch to watch Netflix than drive across town to watch a movie at the cinema
The cinema and the rock concert are probably better experiences, but streaming makes everything so easy and cheap I don't often seek out those experiences.
Basically the urges we all have, even if they can obviously lead to some awful things, are also the process of aeons of evolution. And they've shown themselves to be remarkably effective at keeping our species alive and healthy even when we knew nothing at all about our world beyond what we might randomly intuit. Having a 'shot' that can pleasantly "fix" those urges is not necessarily a good thing.
Basically the urges we all have, even if they can obviously lead to some awful things, are also the process of aeons of evolution. And they've shown themselves to be remarkably effective at keeping our species alive
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/study-wom...
Personally that is one of my personal favourite, perhaps not conspiracy theories, but a "wacko" theories that can explain a lot of our modern world.
> Target participants were 170 male-female couples (aged between 18 and 73, mean = 35.8, SD = 11.3). All couples reported to be heterosexual. We collected data and images from 333 couples who were visitors to a science exhibition centre and who responded positively to a face-to-face invitation to participate.
"Although this general idea and the research looking into it is still in its infancy, the data that do exist suggest that the pill might influence who you’re attracted to, the dynamics of your relationships, the quality of your sex life, how jealous you are, how you respond to your partner’s face, how sexy you are to others, and your likelihood of getting a divorce."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23528282/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21993500/
https://www.smr.jsexmed.org/article/S2050-0521(16)30022-1/pd...
https://www.scraigroberts.com/uploads/1/5/0/4/15042548/2010_...
https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/11/5/767/1753384
"This" is the result of max level sexual competition. If anything, if it were hormonal it would affect disproportionally more the high-partner-count males compared to low-partner, which would flatten the distribution
Generally all it lead to so far was the whole ABC of STDs and even more loneliness. Sex is incredibly overrated and I probably have more experience with it than the vast majority of all humans so I can say that with confidence. The only part of me that would miss it is are my uncontrollable lower animal brain areas and my misaligned pleasure/reward circuits.
Let me repeat: Having lots of great sexual encounters with people you consider very attractive changes nothing in your life. Building and finding friendships, "true connections" and love does, but those generally do not need sex.
At least a few of my (sex) dates turned into lasting friendships.
Don't hate me for saying this, but if you are one of those guys who can't get laid with the girl they want: broaden your scope. Try to date the girl who would be your number 3 choice, or your boss' wife, or try an intimate friend of your same sex. Also, stop watching Netflix and Hollywood movies, that's not how life works.
--- [^1] I'm basing this on some reading of "Sex at Dawn". Call that work disreputable if you may, but it's written by scientists.
I'm kind of ignorant to the subject of what is the cause of 'sexual loneliness' but I believe the world's oldest profession shouldn't be pushed into the shadows as that causes more problems than it prevents.
9 countries have legalized prostitution: Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, and Turkey.[0]
Human trafficking, in order of severity, is most linked to: Netherlands, UK, Romania, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Hungry, Portugal.
From this list alone (these tend to follow power laws) there's a higher correlation with being a Bloc State than legalized prostitution. Unsurprising to see UK and Germany here considering they are not only the most wealthy countries, but also the most populous. Netherlands... well I got no answer there but this is just a quick look.
Just given this quick look, I'd be shocked to learn that legalization of prostitution was a major causal factor in human trafficking.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Europe
[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/4947/the-eus-hotspots-for-peo...
This isn't the same as saying that prostitution is legal because the transaction is still illegal. It also doesn't resolve the issue of the correlation, which is the main point.
And, no, women who move around a lot and live on-site isn't proof of trafficking--because that's also a way to make it much harder for the cops to investigate and thus a sensible safety strategy for them. I'm sure trafficking exists but I don't believe the claimed numbers at all.
Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity in a good read on this topic.
I started out married thinking of it as a nebulous thing. My marriage improved when I realized it was all an exchange and I need to make sure I'm always providing my bit rather than just working towards some nebulous idea of love.
Getting a long term badly limiting disability in anything but old age is a recipe for divorce. Eventually the loving spouse gets caretaker fatigue and is overloaded from carrying the weight without relief. I fully expect and will not hold it against my spouse if I'm seriously disabled for over a year and the marriage ends. Any high moral ground about love and honor or whatever falls apart when you're grinding in poverty and going to be sucked under yourself with no light at the end of the tunnel.
I never left her side or stopped supporting her. I didn't get fatigued, I got motivated and we found one of the best Neurologists in the world. It took a several years and surgeries for her to get better. She can walk, drive, and work today. I couldn't imagine throwing away my marriage over some ass. Also what kind of father would I be if I left their mother when she needed me the most?
If your entire marriage is built on sex and money transactions, your marriage will eventually fall apart no matter what.
Not all marriages involve people with the money to continue supporting the children when both rather than just one parent is bankrupted by medical debt, and not all disabilities end with being able to drive and walk. Usually don't involve people privileged enough to get "best in the world" Neurologists either.
There are people out there that may have to divorce precisely because they can't look their kids in the eyes with the marriage as it stands due to the disability, knowing a divorce will separate the finances and possible allow them to find more support for their child. Every human is susceptible to caretaker fatigue and you yourself can't possibly know you would never get fatigued if the disability never ended. Some people can go a 1 year without cracking, others a decade, others 100 years and until it happens you probably won't know your breaking point.
The fact of the matter is I get to see the people that deal with hundreds of seriously chronically disabled people. My dataset to work with is that it's a bad bet to expect that the counterparty will sacrifice themselves indefinitely for the sake of the marriage.
First you had family that worked in healthcare "I have family in healthcare so I hear the stories.". Now you're able to draw parallels because you get to see the people that deal with others? It doesn't even make sense. I have people that work in the healthcare industry including doctors too. Your evidence is andetoal at best, hearsay at worst. You don't have a dataset, you have stories. So which is it? Talk about a bad faith discussion...
The reality is there are plenty of people that would love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
You have even less than an anecdote, and then when you asked me for a response which uses actual anecdotes where it doesn't get better, you suddenly get upset about it.
>You walked right into it, that's not my fault. LOL.
This is just straight up sociopathy. You knew you had an unusual outcome, so you asked for the expected outcome with the trap that yours was a heartwarming but unexpected one. It was never coming from a place of curiosity.
>The reality is there are plenty of people that would love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
Marrying someone for this is also transactional if you expect this also of your partner as a condition of getting married. In this case it's like a transaction with an insurance policy built in as par of the transaction. You're just bragging about your particular transaction and terms for insurance.
To anyone else considering this, here's a test if you believe this applies to your situation. Ask your partner if they believe they would "love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." If they say yes, tell them you think that's all bullshit and you don't reciprocate the agreement. You'll find out fast whether a transaction happened.
Do you not understand the premise of the most common wedding vow ever to be spoken? "for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." That's just a fancy way of saying I'll love you for who you are because I'm not transactional.
Honestly, your marriage sounds like a sociopaths dream. How many points and transactions can I earn so my partner thinks I actually care. You also lied about your data for some silly reason. Anyway, I'm gonna take my upvotes and move on. You have a great day.
Nobody says it like that. Usually it gets to the point where the end-stage symptoms resulting in their leaving is something like suicidal depression and the kids are badly suffering. The impetus is the disability but you're downplaying how it gets there.
It really shows gross ignorance to think you can extrapolate the yes UNUSUAL case that after getting world's best neurologist we did what the doctors said couldn't be done. And then extrapolate all the people other than you that faced disabilities that resulted in dissolved marriage must have started with weaker marriages.
Honestly someone that belittles the plight and hard marital choices of the disabled as much as you have, would be worthy of much worse name calling than anything I've seen here, and it's especially harmful to the disabled who have actually initiated the divorce out of LOVE for their partner.
>I don't think sticking with your partner through thick and thin is abnormal, ad
Yeah investigate a bit people going through the serious disease of chronic addiction. When the husband uses the entire paycheck to keep from getting dope-sick and passes out while the toddler is crawling around after the second, at best third rehab the wife dumps them like a hot potato. Honestly it is rare to find a chronic addict that is still with their family. When push comes to shove when the kids are suffering the wife will drop your ass, even if you're trying your best to overcome the disease and act in love. All that shit about sticking around no matter what goes through the window, and these aint people in hospice care or even acting purposefully with malice against their family. Usually they genuinely and badly want to fulfill their responsibilities.
>"for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."
Again this is just smugness that you like your particular transaction more than others. I seriously doubt you would have entered this without the counterparty also agreeing to same terms as their bit of the transaction. Very few people making these vows are gonna go through with it if the spouse isn't vowing to offer the same in trade.
Imagine removing antibiotics, vaccines, screening tools, and any other medical treatment.
Anyone who was around for the AIDs epidemic will understand how quickly a large segment of the population can start dying off.
The early portion, it was literally a mystery disease that was killing off anyone that engaged in risky lifestyle.
If we have solved the public health problems, does it make Monogamy an empty construct? Or there are other social/economical/biological factors that hold it in place?
Most other sexually-transmitted diseases that existed in most of the world were unpleasant, but not life threatening, even before antibiotics. And it's also worth noting that most primates (and many mammals of all kinds) are not monogamous, and yet they are not plagued by STIs to any significant extent.
Instead, monogamy was much more important for managing babies, especially given how much hare human babies need, and for how long, compared to virtually any other animal.
As far as primates not having STIs, you might want to read up on the animal origins of HIV a bit. The only reason we have HIV is because SIV can proliferate indefinitely in another species and crossed into humans.
However, with a slow disease like syphilis there's also the issue of how well it was identified in old times. Identifying the primary form as sexual is very different than identifying the tertiary form as a continuation of the primary. It was 1965 before we realized shingles is tertiary chicken pox and the 1980s before they realized that cervical cancer is mostly tertiary HPV. Other virus/cancer links have been identified (I recently read that IIRC 5% of cancer is known to be of viral origin) and personally I think the actual number is even higher as determining a link between an asymptomatic virus and later cancer would be very hard. (Again and again I see news reports of clusters of unusual cancer where no cause is found but the pattern looks contagious. It's very hard for cancer itself to be contagious but the same effect would be observed if the cancer was due to an asymptomatic virus. I also find the notion that random mutations could cause consistent behavior of the cancer strange--but quite sensible if it's viral damage.)
As for SIV, I am aware of it, but it is not a serious problem for most simians (though apparently Chimpanzees are being killed by SAIDS in serious numbers) - which is my point. STIs have not been so serious a threat to animals as HIV+AIDS has been to humans in the initial pandemic.
Maybe because you don't need or want to?
If you're the type of person that wants to have sex with someone, and you're willing to pay for it, and you have the option - you're probably going to.
If not, you're either expecting too much for too little compensation or regulation is preventing the market from being efficient.
> If you're the type of person that wants to have sex with someone, and you're willing to pay for it, and you have the option - you're probably going to.
I am the kind of person that wants to have sex with someone. I'd be willing to pay for it, i have the option. But I'd rather not have sex than be involved in such things. It's an ethical decision no matter how lonely I get.
Consuming the benefits of having a woman sexually interested in you is a very different skill from creating that interest in the first place. So they would just pay to skip all the steps that they are bad at, thereby never learning them.
If you're paying someone to live out those fantasies, you're probably not going to experience "normal" sexual relationships.
This is a poor analogy because apples and apple juice don't involve social dynamics. I can easily see a man who is experienced having sex with women through prostitution being more confident flirting/being intimate with real-life women. And confidence is a large part of "creating that interest."
Plus you'd be (temporarily) alleviating the pain and frustration of loneliness, which is a huge boost in morale and will bring hope. That being said I've never tried a prostitute, although I've considered it in times of loneliness for the same reasons above.
While there's a perception that incels are ugly, socially awkward nerds, the one's I've interreacted with online (and off) tend to be angry, misogynistic douchebags.
The nerdiest guys I know (IRL) all have significant others. The bitter guys I know (two) IRL are older, have let themselves go and have nothing "going for them". They are both very active online however. This is my personal experience, anecdotal of course.
It's an appealing message for a group who sees their intrinsic or essential power impotent in a changing world. It means that radical self-growth, a long and difficult process, doesn't have to happen, painful self-truths don't have to be addressed, and basic skills like empathy don't have to be cultivated. In short, issues can be externalized.
that is, they fell ill with depression because of lack of relationships, entering a loop of ever-furthering isolation and depression, which made them bitter and undesirable.
Some "ugly, socially awkward nerds" somehow find meaningful relationships and get saved. Others don't, and go down the nasty road.
A little bit of empathy wouldn't hurt.
My teens and twenties predated the term "incel," but I was horny, lonely, and unhappy about it, and I could identify with a lot of the online whining from men who felt the same way. I did some venting in the "woe is me" vein on Reddit. But in my real life, at least when I wasn't in a depressive episode, I was always trying to improve my situation by bettering myself and buffing my social skills. I was always thinking of ways to crack the problem. When I felt defeated and discouraged, I'd complain anonymously online, because I knew nobody in my real life wanted to hear it, and then I'd get back to work figuring out my life.
I have no evidence, but I would bet that the perception of the incel phenomenon is warped by a small number of angry people who managed to inflate their importance by expressing the frustration and humiliation of a much larger group of men who are like I was, who go online to express temporary (though possibly recurring) feelings of hopelessness. As an identity, being an incel doesn't have much to offer. It's about a desire for sex, but it doesn't offer any path to sex. I think the vast majority of horny, frustrated young men who have applied the label to themselves at one time or another probably spend much more time thinking about how to be more likable to women than they spend thinking about incel ideology. And if they get any reward at all from trying to improve themselves and their empathy towards women, that will be a better deal than they get from the incel camp.
I present to you, some pretty good data: the time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:
https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...
Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.
They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power")
There's also no convincing evidence (just cherrypicked data that is either pro- or con-) that legalizing prostitution results in more sex trafficking.
> Sex workers may individually choose to tolerate that or may not
Funny thing about you saying that, they can't choose anything if it's illegal- if it's legal, they can not only choose, they can bring legal charges against anyone who mistreats them.
Zero. It's not about the sex. It's about value and self-worth. It's about being selected. It's about being chosen by the person who could have chosen anyone. When people are rejected by other human beings, they are literally being told they are worthless. Wouldn't you turn violent if you were told you were worthless your entire life?
Prostitution is an incredibly dismissive and superficial solution to the so called "incels" and it's going to fail for the exact same reasons as sex bots solution that's often proposed: it's not genuine human acceptance.
Here we go: The time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:
https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...
Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.
They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power", i.e., it IS "about sex", at least sometimes)
Sometimes, you don't need "genuine human acceptance." Sometimes, the only thing that will clear your head is that you just need to fuck. At least for some portion of men (and possibly, just to be inclusive here, women).
The time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:
https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...
Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.
They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power")
The fact that women have chosen this way of interacting with men on a paid basis should tell you it's not because they are prudes about sex work. They don't feel safe, and for very good reasons.
This is yet another example of how men need to stop "solving" this problem with their own clever ideas. Stop and listen. You will hear answers.
Maybe if the prostitutes were more like escorts, you go out on a date, they give you honest feedback about how you're presenting yourself and so on. But that feels far outside the typical work of a prostitute.
EDIT: now I think of it I doubt it would work on sexual loneliness either. I can't imagine that loneliness is solved simply by the act of sex, there's feeling wanted, feeling desired, all those things. I have no experience (I swear, officer!) but I can't imagine getting those things out of something I know is a financial transaction for my partner.
Maslow would suggest otherwise.
Incels don't like prostitutes, they despise them. Incels believe that they are _owed_ sex, they don't want to pay for sex. You fundamentally misunderstand what Incel claim being.
Prostitution is legal in Germany, guess what country in the EU comes first when it comes to the number of self declared incels
https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-10/ran_i...
Prostitution advocate often claim that legalizing prostitution will lower violence against females, there is absolutely not a single proof that true. All we know is that legalizing prostitution increase the demand for legal and illegal (minors, trafficked women) prostitution.
https://journalistsresource.org/economics/legalized-prostitu...
Nobody is owed sex. Not a single person on the planet, with anybody.
Prostitution is legal in my country. One can literally go to a clearnet website and get a menu full of humans to choose from. So called "incels" still exist.
That the 'oldest profession' is essentially paid rape says a lot really.
Better to criminalise only those who seek to use prostitutes, and provide help and support for those who wish to exit the sex trade.
Incels are a hate group only vaguely related to celibate. And legalizing prostitution (something I am for) will probably do as good to that group as language lessons would do against antisemitism as we know it today.
The answer is not "tinder" and it's not about "sexual loneliness".
Pair bonding weakens as people age and accumulate more sexual partners. We actively encourage people to delay pair bonding - mainly by discouraging "high school sweethearts" from marrying, and instead promoting college and pursuing careers over building families. This leads to atomized, lonely individuals who realize later in life what they missed out on, but now with the odds of age stacked against them. Even if you do find your partner in college, you now have families in vastly different geographic areas with different histories and values, which weakens the support structure around that union. In the majority of cases this is not a positive thing for the couple.
Pornography is also a problem, as it misdirects individuals' sex drive away from finding suitable partners.
The pendulum needs to swing back towards more traditional values from when our societies were healthier and growing. Those values exist for a reason!
I'm not advocating for slavery or child labor. I'm advocating for prioritizing healthy pair bonding and acknowledging that this is more likely to happen earlier in life. The "population crisis" in Japan and other countries in the West is self inflicted. We actively promote decisions that do not lead to healthy families for the majority of people. It's lead to a reproductive rate well below replacement levels and far, far too many single parent households. It's not a mystery.
On the Japan note, I actually did an internship in Japan over the summer a few years back and the work-life balance I saw there was actually depressing. Lots has been written about Japanese work culture (and I've heard Korean work culture is similar), but thankfully, I don't see the US quite getting to that point. If anything, we're pushing firmly in the opposite direction. Most people I personally know (in software engineering) hold a healthy work-life balance and are all the happier for it.
Japan's issues with reproduction seem to mostly stem from that, but the source of the problem in the US to me seems to be either overly-high expectations or over-correcting cynicism, both influenced by pop culture. On one hand, we have groups who believe fervently that "perfection" as seen in movies is realistic and are disappointed constantly by reality. On the other hand, people who have grown disillusioned with the world see everything as a chance for disappointment and avoid commitment to anything, leading to self-sabotage.
The overwhelming majority of people do not differentiate video entertainment from reality in this regard. They "know" video entertainment is fiction, but subconsciously they still strive to attain what is presented to them as successful within video media. Every marketing person knows this, but it's far more insidious than convincing you to buy a salad spinner with free shipping.
Flood the market with supply then complain about surplus? It's like watching a dog chase its own tail.
Also, the implication that the men who complain about surplus are responsible for flooding the market with supply is plain wrong. Literally no man chose to be born into this world.
Careful, did you notice yourself shifting the goalpost? The article and accompanying discussion was about intimacy+sex, you just reduced this to casual sex.
> are not a need.
Factually wrong. This should prompt you to find out what the word need means, it's likely you have the wrong idea about it.
People asked for sexual liberation - this is the result.
For convenience, let me describe this in the hetero-normative sense. Obviously this isn't th eonly dynamic at play and is not universal but there are some useful trends that (IMHO) can be extrapolated.
1. Men fear being rejected. Women fear being SAed, abducted, trafficked, beaten and/or killed. You cannot overstate how important this is. As such, women tend to be wary and will try and find signs and create rules to quickly filter people out;
2. (IMHO) Women aren't actually that good at filtering. Specifically, there is a significant correlation between traditional physical attractiveness and "trustworthiness" [1]. This extends to serial killers too [2].
3. Online dating rewards a set of skills that don't have all that much to do with relationships. People who master those skills tend to do very well. If their potential partners aren't looking for that and don't recognize it, they will be dissatisfied;
4. Men (in the hetero-normative sense) put in very little effort and somehow still have high expectations. Going to the gym by itself could put you ahead of the pack;
5. There are people who use dating apps as entertainment (eg they have no intention of meeting). If that's not what you want, you need to learn to filter that out ASAP;
6. As noted, women get a lot of messages and attention. Men, generally, get far less (each). This is exacerbated by men dominating dating apps in general.
My general advice for anyone to avoid falling down the Andrew Tate rookie hole is to, if you're a man:
1. Pay for premium and simply swipe right on everybody. Don't even look. Do this for half an hour once a week. Actually looking at a profile before deciding how to swipe is a poor use of time because each swipe is low probability no matter who you are. Only look at profiles for matches. You can always unmatch if you're not interested;
2. Your goal is to get to a meeting ASAP. It should be low investment too. Coffee, a walk (somewhere public), a museum, etc. There's no need and no point to spend a lot of money on first dates. Time management matters so do 3-4 1 hour blocks in a night, for example.
3. Don't take rejection personally. Just say "nice meeting you" and move on. This is part of the point of arranging a number of dates so you don't get over-invested too early in any particular prospective partner. Realize that even those you consider the most attractive still get rejected;
4. Don't tie your value in a relationship to your external status (eg job, car, how much money you spend, clothes, accessories). At best, you're probably attracting the wrong kind of partner (unless, you know, you want a sugar baby, which is all fine if consensual).
5. Put in some effort. You'll be surprised how far the bare minimum will get you regarding appearing groomed, clothed appropriately and even moderately fit and healthy. Go to the gym. Lift weights.
6. Avoid "yes or no" questions. Listen to the answers. Don't view it as a problem to be solved eg if someone is having problems with someone at work they're almost certainly not ask you to solve it for them.
7. Understand that women deal with a lot of shit (and, don't forget, actual danger). Be cognisant of that. Your idea of pushing and persistence may actually legitimiately scare someone and may rise to the level of a crime. You're not owed any explanation either. On the other side, realize women too can have toxic traits or simply traits you're not interested in. The term "femcel" exists for a reason. If and when that happens, it's because of that individual, not an indictment on an entire gender.
8. Whatever you do, don't get red-pilled.
[1]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/146144481667544...
[2]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-01/ted-bundy-why-the-ser...
So if the content of AITA is any guide, we could solve a lot of these problems just by training the bottom quartile of men in the basics. Hygiene. Being a good roommate. Being a good friend. Being a good economic partner. Etc, etc. There appear to be a lot of guys out there who want to go from having mommy do everything while they play video games to having a bang maid [1] who does the same. It's no wonder they're having a harder and harder time getting any.
[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bang%20maid
But in some sense, that doesn't matter, because even popular fiction serves as an important mirror for popular concerns. I hear enough verifiable real-world stories of entitled, lazy male partners to know that it's not all fiction. I think the extent to which things get upvoted on AITA is a pretty good indicator of popular concern. And a lot of replies clearly come from people who, whatever the truth of the original post, have lived through similar things.
I always thought schools should teach children "how to date". I went through sex-ed in Delaware public schools in the mid 1990s, and it was all the clinical physical aspects of sex, and the dangers of HIV. There was nothing about intimacy or consent.
I did have a separate class in 7th grade called Conflict Resolution. It felt like a low effort attempt to teach basic social skills that should have been a regular part of schooling since kindergarten.
Well into adulthood I came across a book, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It is the single most astute thing I have ever read. It's written by somebody who was a therapist for men in court-ordered programs. He spent years listening to their BS and at some point had enough and broke it all down.
I truly believe that if everybody spent 2 weeks on the topic at circa 16 years old, the world could be radically different. It wouldn't take that much longer to educate them on other relationships basics. Just the kind of minimum stuff and basic techniques that you see from, say, the Gottman Institute.
But I expect that will never happen because there are quite a lot of powerful people who benefit from and/or positively enjoy power differentials and exploitable ignorance. Harvey Weinstein comes to mind here.
I'll just say:
> being a disagreeable or even abusive partner is positively correlated with sexual success
Citation needed. That blog post does not provide anything resembling evidence of your claim.
For your sake, I hope you're not basing your views on sites like that.
The post is horribly misguided and confused. Yet despite being so horrible you can't bother to explain what's bad about it? It always amuses me something is evidently so horrible as to warrant this language, but apparently not quite horrible enough to actually explain why.
Ultimately, i'm not really looking to make an empirical claim here. Just read this sentence a few times and maybe the contradiction will make sense:
> the sheer number of terrible boyfriends/husbands is jaw-dropping.
If someone is a boyfriend or a husband, they are by definition not single.
You seem to be using AITA as evidence that some huge percentage of women want to date/marry asshole/abusive men. It does not provide evidence of that.
You and the article you linked are suggesting a correlation between being an abusive/asshole man and having a large number of women want to have sex with you. But there is no such correlation. It's false.
I just want you and anyone else who ever comes across this part of the thread to not believe in such garbage.
I will just end by saying, you are the one making claims which require evidence to back them up. Especially on a site like HN, it is a good idea to provide evidence for broad, sweeping claims. Or else dial those claims back.
Again, my contact is in my profile. Whether or not we continue to talk, I wish you all the best.
So back to where we left off: I shared a blob post by a psychiatrist, which you disagreed with and called "horribly misguided and confused" yet neglected to explain any particular explanation why. Furthermore, you insisted that I post additional sources to back up the article I shared, yet you've shared none to support your criticisms. Do you think this is an effective way to argue your point?
For anybody who wants to actually understand the dynamic, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" is a great resource. Recently discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34497066
Well government likes equal outcomes. Perhaps a new department to ensure everyone is getting the same results regardless of gender, attractiveness, hygiene, etc.
I've been with my wife for 23 years now, more than half my life. 100% monogamous on both sides. It works for us and if either one of us was to cheat then that would be the end of the relationship. Relationships are managed by rules accepted by both sides. If a relationship does not want to have monogamy in its rule set and all parties agree then more power to them.
In the modern dating / hookup culture young men and older women are the clear losers. Men are figuring this out and largely either going full anti-women "red pill rage" into "$!tches aint shit" using women when they're older or opting out all together. Women party it up when young, and are then shocked only when the "good times" start to end as younger ladies supplant them.
The age old solution throughout the ages, has been to control female sexuality with shame (often enforced by other women). This is now considered unthinkable, despite the surge in single parent homes, massive decline in birth rates, increased loneliness and decreased happiness by all. So instead sex bots, prostitution, more welfare, and artificial wombs are promoted as the only politically tenable out. I think the future shall be inherited by the Amish, Mormons, and other such groups that have managed to find ways to maintain family units in opposition to modern culture. They're certainly the only ones breeding at above replacement levels.
TLDR: in practice based religion beats out free love in providing more sex, without all the messy fatherlessness and STD problems to boot.
So often when people have problems that are hard to solve the answer is just "talk to the hand" at best.
What I would like to do is disallow use of the concept of "entitlement" particularly "you are not entitled to..." in conversation.
There are many other arguments people could make, they don't need that one.
There is a theme in psychology going back to the Freudian days that female desire has a self-destructive aspect (e.g. "masochism"), we all know the woman who dates one bad boyfriend and then finds another bad boyfriend and another bad boyfriend. It's a subject that has been suppressed in serious discussion though because it is perceived to be antifeminist. I think it's going to come back.
Roughly it seems that many men are unhappy with their relationship prospects at age 20 but by age 40 many women have been going out with the men that they desire and found that none of them want to commit to the long-term relationship because... they all want the same few guys!
It could be if women had a more realistic understanding of their life course and prospects they'd realize what a dead end it is to be dating the guys they want and learn to want some guy that is not so exciting but that has the potential to be loyal... A solution looks something like that, not having state-endorsed prostitution or anything.
Why do you think the phrase shouldn't be allowed in this particular conversation?
Nostalgia is what people like Jordan Peterson are selling. Go back to the "good" (but very bad for most people) old days and things will be fine. It won't work.
I do know a lot of guys who struggle with the fact that the woman they're attracted to aren't to them. I definitely know a few women for whom that's true too, but it's mostly men, and generally younger ones.
And so they quote that same 80/20 rule from Peterson, which has no data behind it beside one bad survey, and insist its society's fault.
Meanwhile their Tinder profiles are just lists of all they things they demand from a partner – generally things they themselves won't provide.
Which isn't to say the problem isn't real – it definitely is – but it seems like any "solution" is going to have start at either commercial ideas (sex work) or a cultural shift.
This of course has precedence in the natural world. Not every male is always having sex. Most often, a smaller number of males that are considered the most desirable sire more children. It's a Darwin thing: you mate with the most successful of your species to carry the best genes and adapt to your environment better to survive longer.
But it doesn't have to be that way. More males could simply become more attractive partners. Or more females could lower their standards (but honestly I think their standards have been low enough... I mean, have you seen my gender, next to its opposite?).
Rather than treat sexual loneliness as some kind of unfortunate but normal condition, let's encourage these people to make themselves more attractive. And by attractive I mean the general concept of desirability, which encompasses the entire spectrum of the human condition, not just the body or some societal trope of gender norms.
This is an incredibly sexist point of view. Cultural expectations for the role of women in society have been continuously expanded while nothing remotely similar has been done for men.
That's some victim blaming if I've ever seen one. No, dude, the problem is not that men have changed, but societal circumstances have, and women just act according to the new environment they have been afforded.
Increasing one's market value (desirability) works, but that's doctoring the symptoms instead of healing the root cause. It ceases working if everyone hears about the idea and does it.
It's also possible that men have changed, and are increasingly becoming hikikomori due to increased adoption of introverted online social pursuits, or increased pornography or toxic male cultures, or whatever reason you choose.
But regardless of whether they have changed or haven't, they are simply less valuable today, and they need to adapt if they want to have sex more. Hence the onus is on them to improve themselves. It's not victim-blaming, it's fact-stating.
The alternative would be to revert the culture. Jordan Petersen's fans would love it if women would just shut up and go back to the kitchen and do what they're told, I don't think women really like that idea.
> [men] are simply less valuable today, and they need to adapt […] The alternative would be to revert the culture.
False dichotomy alert.
In reality, there are many more things we can do. The feminist forebears a hundred years ago fought for rights and equality; they would fall faint with shame if they could see how women in our times betray the ideals and can act so childish, selfish, entitled, cruel and dishonourable. We could start by putting responsibility on the shoulders of women. Here are some ideas how that could look concretely:
1. Teach women that treating 80% of men as not worthy of interacting with is unreasonable and has grave, society-wide first-order and second-order effects. Just as men need to control their instincts (immense sex drive) for a well functioning social environment, women need to control theirs (hypergamy).
2. End the sexist practice of giving women preferential treatment based on the women-are-wonderful effect, particularly where it matters most, namely in court. Men can help with that and learn to keep their paternal protection instinct in check which expresses in the practice of white-knighting.
3. Threat of violence is an effective means to curb excesses of bad behaviour, this should be familiar to people who grew up in e.g. Islam. I understand the thought comes across as revolting to HN readers who are mostly liberal-minded westerners unless one is generations older, holds an orthodox-conservative world-view for some other reason or has been reading a lot of Heinlein. Just as men must align their life with this concept in mind, women should too (once again).
I'm doing my part to diminish the suffering; often I think this generation is lost, but I can still exert influence over the next one to some degree. Children can't become $APPROPRIATE_COLOUR-pilled early enough.
> women would just shut up and go back to the kitchen and do what they're told, I don't think women really like that idea.
It's very clear that women hate being pressured to spend a life long relationship with a man they do not really love or want; it's similar to slavery. I do not wish that upon any of my fellow human beings. If there really are JP fans who think that way, then I condemn that; that's not a good interpretation of what JP said. I want them to reconsider and think hard to come up with better solutions.