Most young men are single. Most young women are not
thehill.com
thehill.com
I found dating so hopelessly difficult in America, that I decided to literally learn another language and relocate to another country. I felt like I had no future in America because of that. The difference where I am now is night and day. I have had to decline more dates and advances, which never happened before. Which I feel confirms my belief in the toxicity of dating in America.
In America, I had many women who were my close friends. They would regularly initiate conversations, share personal details of their life, and even stay at my home some days. In fact most of my friends were women. Although I have introspected on this greatly, and certainly have grown, I believe this is additional evidence that, perhaps, the problem is not me but the environment.
In what region?
Then you go abroad and you think the women are different, but they aren't. I have lived in three countries. You just have a higher value as an American man abroad. Ironically, this might result in you partnering up with a more superficial woman.
Basically we think that we are advanced apes, but in practice we're really very fancy peacocks with brains :) Note that social status/leadership quality is actually more important than income (there's lots of anecdotal data that women would prefer a doctor over an engineer making the same income, because of social connotations).
Point stands regardless of sex.
Some of the things have nothing to do with you whatsoever; this advice is merely about increasing the probabilities (i.e. card-counting in blackjack, if you prefer). A man living in NYC will have a better chance of finding love than a man in San Francisco purely based on the city that they live in - both could be very genuine people. The only thing different between the two is the ratio of men to women in the city.
We must remember not to attach emotional judgements to statistics.
[citation needed]
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-male-female-ratio-in-San-F...
Ratio of men to women (age 25-45) to save you a click:
Seattle: 1.5
San Francisco: 1.2
New York: 1.0
Chicago: 1.0
--------
How those statistics correspond to anecdotal stories:
"First off, to say that this is not an apple to big apple comparison is an understatement - it's comparing an apple to a bushel of apples. Add in the east bay, and NYC is only about 8 times larger then SF.
So, even without the gender skew, there are just a lot more women in NYC, and a lot more types of women. NYC is far far far more diverse on every axis / scale. There are also a lot more men, but since the population is way less self selected and homogeneous then SF, being a tech guy who makes good money is a big plus, not just average."
https://www.quora.com/Do-straight-men-find-dating-easier-in-...
Thank you for bringing something, even if quora.
Specifically, as a partner, you have to ask yourself what you are bringing to the table in a given relationship; if the answer to that is income/stability, it would make sense that a struggling artist will appreciate that more than a solid well to do professional with their own income. If the answer is crazy parties (or whatever other flavor of fun), you might have an easier time trying to find a partner who has stability and wants excitement in their life.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11231284/does-san-jose-deserve-the...
In "Man Jose" there are 134 men for every 100 women.
Look, anyone can close their eyes and believe in fairytales. The advice I gave doesn't guarantee anything - it merely increases your chances of a favorable outcome.
If you have issues with the phrasing, read it as "make yourself into a more attractive partner" or however it is politically-correct to phrase the above statement.
Framing the dating world as "increas[ing] your chances of a favorable outcome" (i.e. sex) is only going to lead to disappointment.
Also your first sentence and your third sentence are pretty much contradictory.
That's true at the scale of a city, and it's also true in small cliques. Just like in poker (the analogy I keep coming back to), the table and position you sit at (and who you're playing against) matters much more than your absolute skill at the game. And you might still lose - chance is still a part of it, no matter how hard you try.
"A ratio of three college-educated men to every four college-educated women may not seem dramatically skewed, but Jon Birger insists that, in reality, it is. He uses a musical chairs analogy to explain how a 4:3 ratio can create such a large imbalance. Birger explains that after people start to marry off, that ratio quickly drops to 2:1, then 3:1."
"For his first book, “Date-onomics,” Birger studied this phenomenon in the perfect control setting: college campuses. He found that when there are more women than men on campus, students’ dating behavior is oriented more towards hookup culture and less towards monogamous relationships. (When men are in oversupply, the culture is more monogamous.)"
"Pop culture programs, such as “Sex and the City,” tend to paint New York City as a haven for singles — a place where single women can surely find a match. But if you look at the numbers, this is far from reality, Birger points out. In fact, if you live in the 10001 zip code in Chelsea, Manhattan, 78% percent of 20 year olds are females (according to the 2010 census). Birger advises that college educated women may have better luck in areas where the ratio is reversed, such as Silicon Valley or Denver— dubbed “Menver.”"
https://www.wgbh.org/news/lifestyle/2021/09/24/when-romance-...
As a non-American, what strikes me about young American females in particular is how talkative and expressive they are. I've never talked with them in person, but I've observed young tourist groups in Europe. They can be talking trivialities about their experiences in a self-assertive way non-stop, constantly littered with "I was like", "it was like", "he was like".
And did you explain anything about why it is toxic, just a reflexive "it's bad mmmmmkay" and that you left -- but you didn't say what you went looking for, or what you found, and why it's better.
Furthermore there is the "[probably rich] guy in a foreign country" thing, which may skew things further.
Nor did you explain why, despite having a ton of female friends who stayed at your house, you weren't able to turn those into romantic options.
How is he supposed to answer that? The only way to get a definitive answer for your question is to find all the female friends, then arrest them and interrogate them for a week or so (to ensure they give honest answers). Assuming OP was actually interested in some of these women, it's very likely he doesn't know why they weren't interested, and normally people don't give honest answers about why they're not interested in being more than friends with someone, to avoid hurt feelings.
What really galls me about these comments is that many people here, including you, seem to completely not understand that different countries have different cultures, and what things are considered attractive traits in romantic partners differ greatly from place to place. People are NOT the same in different parts of the world.
I think you've done many of the right things - perhaps it was just bad luck. Depending on where you live - that could be another factor. Who is your competition? Who are women comparing you against? The other thing to note is - did the things you do for self-improvement actually improve your status, as the women would see it. Status is frequently linked to power (and not necessarily income), but not always.
The other counterintuitive thing is that you want to be capable of evil, but choose to do good. I think a lot of people who are good people miss this point. It is crucial. If you have no capacity to commit evil, then by doing good you are showing no virtue - you are just acting by default. Develop your own dark side, learn to be selfish and then choose not to be (but don't go overboard).
(lots of parallels here in popular stories - Harry Potter / Voldemort, Vampires, Werewolves, etc etc)
Therein lies your 'problem'.
I assume your parent comment meant he doesn't respect them exclusively for being women and having fleshiness, but as a recognition of their qualities as human beings, if they're worth respecting.
At least, that's what any sensible adult should do. You can admire someone for being a good leader, honest, brave, smart, etc., regardless of their sex.
Having read the article, I felt like the writing severely lacked in clarity & posed the problem as ultimately men's fault. The numerous quotes appealing to what I can only read as "hot takes" produced by some kind of authority only reinforce this:
> Younger men are largely responsible for rising rates of mass shootings, a trend some researchers link to their growing social isolation.
Why bring up this random correlation if not to assign blame by association? Already very hard to give this piece benefit of the doubt it probably deserves.
> “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”
Casually throwing "horrible date" there; from my experience men are just as likely to prefer a friendly occasion to a "horrible date." In this context, what's really implied is that young men are seen by young women as horrible so the detachment effects is men's, if anybody's fault; quite an over-reaching argument.
> “Today in America, women expect more from men,” Levant said, “and unfortunately, so many men don’t have more to give.”
What is the point, again?
> “Men are less naturally relational than women,” said Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
Poorly worded and what's the point, anyway? Natural presupposition wouldn't happen to explain the observed effects now would it?
> “Women form friendships with each other that are emotionally intimate, whereas men do not,” Levant said
Perhaps when asked men wouldn't describe their relationships as "emotionally intimate" and I wouldn't expect my friends to be crying and exposing themselves in a outwards way by default but it doesn't mean that the relationships we have do not lend to the emotional component, reward emotional support and sincerity.
These days it's almost inevitable to see issues as black or white, but however boring, middle gray is usually the most fair position.
Love, for example, has been popularized to be a romantic movie-cliché where handsome guy spends his daytime on a picnic during middle of the day (middle of the week). In contract my bubble - all men I know show affection through dedication and work, which isn't perceived as very romantic.
Men are less social. There are reasons, but life right now allows us to be less social. ~50 years ago you either cooked for yourself or you went out to restaurant if you wanted to eat. Meeting people was inevitable. ~20 years ago you could call for a pizza, but that still involved human contact.
Today? I have an app for that. I also have an app for taxi, laundry, groceries, clearning etc. Remote work is getting increasingly common. I can manage my whole life not even leaving my flat without any need to talk to anyone. Some of my male colleagues actually live like that.
And social skills is not something one can get from podcast. They need to be trained and sustained, especially for those who aren't naturally talented and charismatic. And without them - good luck finding partner. There's also slippery slope involved, that some other commenters mention. It can't be I who is at fault, right? It must be THEM.
The only way out is to actually get more social, but that's something that men also don't do. There's this stigma that it must've been something wrong with man if they try to find friends.
So it's somewhat bleak future, but not grim nor unchangeable. It's just (some) men got behind and it'd be nice if there'd be help for them to catch up.
So civil war buddies? We could share a trench, you will be the sniper, i will be the spotter?
This is largely driven by the isolation brought by modern technologies but also changes in society, as women became more empowered they also rose their standards which once were to merely be able to provide for the family.
Among the complains of my female friends mental health of their male partners is probably the most common issue, followed by an overall lack of maturity which is nowadays surprisingly common even among older (50/60 yo) men.
Many things made young men progressively more insecure and surrogates such as porn or internet do not even push them enough to find a way out of loneliness.
Don't be confused though, it has nothing to do with sexual orientations and there's perfectly happy heterosexual couples where the energies are inverted: males are more emotional, nurturing and females are more detached, analytical and less emotional or nurturing. We're all on a spectrum of that, it's not black and white.
That being said our brains have not evolved with society and genrally we still lean differently on the two sides of the spectrum.
Men are still attracted biologically to what will give them the most chances to procreate: young, healthy women; and women are still attracted biologically to what will give them the most chances to procreate: a strong man, the clan leader, as the role of the man is really most of the protector.
Now my thesis is that as society evolved the more masculine side of the spectrum is increasingly lacking in young men: less ambition, less purpose in life, less indipendence, increasingly abundant feminine traits like emotional neediness and such.
Thus, most women which are also empowered and basically do not need men anymore as a provider find it increasingly hard to find men that project the qualities of the clan leader.
Speak for yourself. I'm gay as hell, and comfortable with the fact my bloodline ends with me.
Large scale analyses of Tinder or OkCupid or any other dataset of female-male interactions will tend to show these patterns.
Actually it's interesting you brought it up because as a member of the gay community I wonder whether you would agree or not that the different polarities are any less or more or equally evident in gay couples.
Women tend to dream of a masculine man with feminine interests, same as men dream of feminine women with masculine interests. If you think that is a contradictory statement, no it isn't, pop culture is full of them. Angelina Jolie in Transformers is a good example, she is a mechanic who loves to work with cars, but still very feminine. Take that, and replace cars with some hobby popular among women and make him very masculine in all other aspects, and you basically have a dream guy.
Article about Angelina Jolie from Transformers if you haven't seen it:
https://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/1134670/wome...
I’ve met so many young men who say they don’t particularly care if the woman they date are feminine while exclusively pursuing relationships with women who are petite, have long hair, shave all their body hair, dress in almost exclusively feminine clothes like mini skirts, wears a ton of makeup and has very feminine mannerisms. I’ve also met a lot of you women who would say the same about not caring about masculinity in the men they date and then exclusively date tall, muscular, hyper masculine jock types or the bad boy, rebel without a cause artsy types. You’re absolutely right that they’ve changed the definition of masculine and feminine, but they haven’t changed their preferences to match.
I think a big part of the gender disconnect in modern dating is that many men and women have divested themselves from their traditional gender roles while seeking out partners that largely still conform to their traditional gender roles.
And this will continue at least until mass gene editing is commercially available :)
Did Megan Fox change her name to Angelina Jolie recently?
TLDR: It's not that men are not women, it's that they are not boys.
Manliness is a social marker and is defined by a male's peers, "honor" societies, gangs, etc.
How that is seen is via the 3 P's, which are: Provider, Protector, Procreater.
With very few and rare exceptions, all cultures have these three things as markers of a man. You can have 2 of them in spades and still be seen as a man, but you can't just have 1.
Again, I'm trying to summarize a whole book here in a comment on HN, so if you're interested in discussing and learning more, I'd buy it and read it.
The other opportunities for masculinity: war, times of conflict, times when people are afraid, etc. The more that people feel "safe", the more the male identity as a protector is diminished.
As the article points out, the rise of sexual gratification without relationships, coinciding with women's reshaping of the financial stability side of relationships, has mostly just resulted in a lopsided winner takes all market around biological attraction.
But sexual gratification is .. just ... that. Ephemeral, weakly bonding, "childish." You don't need another person for it, you definitely don't need a member of the opposite sex, even if you want someone from the opposite sex, you can pay for it, even with a more committed relationship it's more or less transactional.
The real question is was there ever any value in long term monogamous relationships? I say this as someone in a long term monogamous relationship who is super happy, but the divorce rates and gender imbalance in domestic violence tells a different story.
Instead, we should work on ensuring everyone having access to paid, consensual sex workers, and bring "dating apps" back from the hookup apps they largely are into something more like eHarmony or OKCupid were - a niche app for those looking for long term relationships.
People demanding other people choose sexual partners based on long term relationship dynamics that are completely irrelevant in this day and age is a weird hill to die on.
> ever any value in long term monogamous relationships
rhetorical question ? I wonder if a large group of young people just do not know what true 'contentment' feels like. To truly be at peace. To feel like everything is just right. To be relieved of all insecurities in that one moment, and just take in something for all that is.
None of my most cherished memories are ones of peak happiness or gratification. They are all moments of gratitude. Something that let me understand how content I felt. I didn't need, I didn't want, I had no desires. Everything was simple, and everything was there for that moment. The moments were, like all others : ephemeral. But the memories and the nostalgic feeling of security that it left behind sticks around for a long long time.
That to me separates sexual gratification from being in a long term monogamous relationship. The contentment that comes with time. To know that there is someone who accepts you in your entirety. Not because you were born soul-mates, but because each person has expressed an explicit intention to do so by committing the most important currency of them all : Time. And as you invest more time, the belief in the commitment strengthens, as does the contentment it produces.
What if that's being alone modulo sexual satisfaction from porn or hookups? :sunglasses: :gigachad:
A tax on the romantically challenged :)
Again, I say this as a proud and happy husband of 19 years!
Yeah, you basically won the lottery. For every one of you, there's a bunch of people who lost the relationship lottery: divorce, abuse, etc. The odds really aren't in one's favor.
Me and my 4 close friends are reasonably successful in terms of societal standards; we all hit the gym religiously, earn over 100K in a big European city, speak multiple languages and we are all in our early to mid 30s. Dating wise, we each have our funnel of dates from dating apps, nights out where we collect numbers and one night stands. We regularly get around 20 new leeds (numbers) a week, which transform into 5 dates and in turn, 2 or 3 new one night stands. On average, every week adds one more friend with benefits to our "rooster". I place on the bottom of my friends ranking because I am very pick and prefer to date no more than 5 girls (ages 20 to 25 tops) at the same time. The friend that's most dedicated keeps a harem of 20-25 friends with benefits... He tends to service them every other week or so, sometimes double or even triple booking them on the same day. As you can imagine, this takes the same effort as a second job, keeping up with all the new dates and maintaining casual relationships. As you can imagine, my friend is in top 0.1% of guys in terms of dating success, with over 100 new sexual partners every year. I've asked girls their opinion of him and they all report that he's the kind of guy who just gets it, he's a gentleman, funny, charismatic, considerate and sexy. They seem oblivious to the fact that his skills are acquired from experience and not from mother nature. All of these girls don't mind that he's seeing other girls, they are in it for the same reason: casual fun.
All in all, we 5 men are dating around 50 girls and some are exclusive on their end, knowing the details of our lifestyle. As everything in society gets more and more polarized there's more lonely men and consequently more Dan Bulzarians running around. I find the statistics even a bit tame, the average guy is so afraid of rejection that he does 5 approaches a year. My friends do 5 approaches in an hour going to a bar.
Young girls live in a different reality than young guys. My advice is to not bother with dating until you reach certain status in life, earn good money, have good physique, have friends in high places and most importantly, provide fun. On the flip side, once you'll be at the top of the mountain you'll never want to find a good wife and settle down, mostly because a) there are almost no good girls in westernized society, b) why have 1 when you can have 10?
Here we go again..
The online catalog of a dating app isn't reflective of the majority of the female population of the collective West. This sort of talk always sounds like incelism, even if you purport not to be one.
There's plenty of good women out there, the majority in fact. (some) men today are quick to point out women becoming more demanding or lower quality, but fail to see the same thing in the modern man.
Modern men seem to suffer a crisis of confidence, adolescent hobbies (I'm very sorry, but most women don't find video games attractive, you can think the same about TV shows, but it's the way it is), sedentary lifestyle, while also fostering high expectations from porn and sex-focused media.
porn is something to turn to when you get turned down
> My advice is to not bother with dating until you reach certain status in life, earn good money, have good physique, have friends in high places and most importantly, provide fun.
Horrible advice.
Only the last one is really important, and even then, fun looks different to everybody—one person’s idea of boring is another persons idea of fun (board games, for example).
Yes, status is important to humans (although again, it comes in many form, lots of people couldn’t care less about jacked physiques and hefty paychecks). But people are making meaningful connections from an early age and without much of a career underway.
> a) there are almost no good girls in westernized society
That’s like, uhm, misogynist! And funny, because you still seem to spend an awful lot of time and energy on these no good Western girls :)
If someone thinks you’re physically unattractive - you’re not going to seduce them in such a short fashion. It takes a long time to build a rapport where most women will sleep with you if she doesn’t find you physically attractive.
Clothes and whatever obviously help but turd polishing doesn’t go as far as people often believe.
When it comes to marriage, you need to realize that a wedding is not a capstone, but a corner stone. You don't crown your life with a wife, you build up one with a partner.
Fewer people are marrying, at later and later ages, and divorce rates are still very high. Every rich country, it seems, is below replacement rate when it comes to having kids.
I can see how social media might bias perception though. I guess pre-internet era you just had to compete against people in your local community when you were looking for a partner. Way harder now to standout in the world of Instagram / Tiktok where the trendiest people are likely in the top 10% of attractiveness (be it money, appearance, personality, etc).
It reminds my of a super old survey done by okcupid where women rated 80% of men as below average: https://archive.is/2017.01.21-154729/https://blog.okcupid.co...
It's too easy to stay at home alone all day jacking off and playing games. It shouldn't be like that, we are not equipped to deal with this kind of situations.
"Once upon a time, 4,000 to 8,000 years after humanity invented agriculture, something very strange happened to human reproduction. Across the globe, for every 17 women who were reproducing, passing on genes that are still around today—only one man did the same."
"Another member of the research team, a biological anthropologist, hypothesizes that somehow, only a few men accumulated lots of wealth and power, leaving nothing for others. These men could then pass their wealth on to their sons, perpetuating this pattern of elitist reproductive success. Then, as more thousands of years passed, the numbers of men reproducing, compared to women, rose again. "Maybe more and more people started being successful," Wilson Sayres says. In more recent history, as a global average, about four or five women reproduced for every one man."
A few friends of my wife REALLY complain about men playing video games (dating prospects and current partners). It's a double standard, because they themselves use social media or consume media, but that's just the way it is.
It's the age old: men are told that they should do better, women that they deserve better (for whatever reason)
It's sad to live during such tumultuous times. The lives of most people for the majority of time has been similar to the lives of their parents, and grandparents. Imagine the feeling of safety that this could bring. Now of course there were myriad other issues, but maybe a thousand years from now we manage to reach some kind of steadier state in a post industrial society. But right now we are cursed to live in maelstrom.
As for men doing better, that's pretty easy considering how many men don't even bother to try.
As others have pointed out in this discussion, we exactly know that in pre-modern times the average man died childless.
So it is a win-win-win strategy.
And do not take the word 'weakling' too narrow. Weak mind, weak immune system,... have of course its influence on survival probability.
"Once upon a time, 4,000 to 8,000 years after humanity invented agriculture, something very strange happened to human reproduction. Across the globe, for every 17 women who were reproducing, passing on genes that are still around today—only one man did the same."
The boomer generation was an anomaly because in the 1940's "everyone" (not literally) was having kids independent of ideology. Part of this was because of a vast flattening of status (the depression and shared misery of war probably had a lot to do with it).
Historically (averaging over 1000s of years) - that is abnormal; normally people are a lot more "choosy" for lack of a better word - which is what the anthropological article implies. We're moving back into a world of inequality and more intense status competition in mating - the effects of the Great Depression + World War II have worn off.
https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/an...
Plus, very frequently women get ahead of themselves imagining that they are in relationship while their men sees it as merely a sequence of gradually more and more effortless hookups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK4y6C1Uuhw
it's simply inequality. all those women are hooking up with the small number of high quality men (of any age), leaving the rest alone.
only fix to this i can see is normalisation of single parenthood so those women can have kids at the same rate as married women.
Dating apps don’t make their data available to scientists, that would be nice though!
For sure life is more easy for hot people, off or on dating apps. It’s true in bars and clubs too. In settings where people have more of a time to get to know each other it probably matters less, even if it always plays a role. It’s just that, as long as society’s concept of a relationship is still two people together, and not one person with a harem, these attractive people at the top of the pyramid will end up being picky too.
If that is the case, attractiveness has actually become a better proxy for social status/success than it used to be. I don't have data to back this up - intuitively it makes sense to me, but I hope someone out there is studying the effect.
Actually OKCupid did do that at some point, well, it was their own employees but they did extensive and very honest data analysis. After the company was sold those blog posts were erased, of course.
To use an analogy, hiring managers are allowed to offer you a job even if you already have a job. They're not obligated to wait until you're unemployed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_...
If you read the article to the end, it specifically mentions the former and also strongly implies the latter.
The 60% / 30% figure doesn't pass the sniff test to me.
Edit: Noticed the comment about this data focusing on "young" women and men and the possibility that more women are dating men outside that range than men are doing the same. That's also a good explanation. This was mentioned in the article too; I was just initially underestimating its significance.
This is why status is a universally attractive quality. No matter what the circumstances, if someone dates someone of a high status, it elevates the dater's status as well. Basically, someone wants to go to their friends, mention who they are dating, and wants the friends to be jealous (not really, but hypothetically).
Lots of people are frustrated because earning a good income used to bequeath status; however, with earnings gaps shrinking, income is no longer a good proxy for status as it once was. Also, status and income correlate, but are not the same. An artist working for Cirque du Soleil, for example, might have higher status than a Software Engineer at Google even though the latter might make significantly more money. One way to get an intuitive sense of status is the "wow" factor when you tell someone about your job (and another is the power you hold as part of that job, and how many people look up to you). Similarly, influencers have a lot of status independent of how much money they make via social validation.
And what makes a man "high status" varies greatly by culture. In American culture, being an engineer is just above being a janitor as far as women are concerned, and being a SWE is a little above that only because it's become common knowledge how well they're paid. Meanwhile, being a doctor or lawyer has FAR higher status, as does being an "influencer".
In Asian cultures, this is entirely different.
Not surprising. Friendships take time to form, and many people have to deal with extreme working hours - a point I detailed yesterday in another thread.
Older men. The article even notes that's a trend that's been increasing in the past 100 years. There's also been a rise in women who aren't attracted to men. It's likely always been the case that a not insignificant number of women were lesbian but needed a man to not be impoverished. Now that those impediments have been removed and women no longer need men for economic security they can more freely be lesbians. And they are.
As a result, young men don't really have a dating pool. Once they hit 30, as long as they're not total wasters, women will take more interest.
https://news.iu.edu/live/news/28109-study-reveals-average-ag...
the average age that humans had children throughout the past 250,000 years is 26.9. Furthermore, fathers were consistently older, at 30.7 years on average, than mothers, at 23.2 years on average, but the age gap has shrunk in the past 5,000 years, with the study’s most recent estimates of maternal age averaging 26.4 years. The shrinking gap seems to largely be due to mothers having children at older ages.Also, men will date down, women typically don’t. So these higher earning, ambitious women are unable to find a partner that meets their expectations. Men are happy to (or if not happy to, can make do) exit the dating marketplace when this expectation mismatch occurs. There just aren’t enough women who want a low status low earning male partner.
(edit: corrected below)
Less handwaving, more cites[1].
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/b.htm#agefb
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/15/for-most-hi....
Similar breakdown in red states vs blue states. Blue states have much older age of first child, on average (because of correlation with educational attainment).
In fact the gap we should talk about is the gap between college-educated women and the rest (which stands at ~8 years)
the original cdc numbers cited are perhaps not best way to look at the matter, because they include women who were giving birth in 80s and 90s.
It's been shown long ago that most men rate most women as above average (in attractiveness), whereas most women rate most men as below average.
Is that's from the OkCupid data? While interesting you definitely can't claim that 'it has been shown' if that data is the foundation.
The best we're going to get is data from dating apps. And even that's now hard to find, since Match.com removed that blog post after purchasing OKCupid.
This seems mathematically impossible to me. The average age gap in a relationship with a woman for a given man should be the same as the average age gap in a relationship with a man for a given woman.
What's the next headline ? "Tide comes in twice a day" ?
Very few 22 year old men will go for a 40 year old women, but the reverse isn't true.
Women and men have completely different attractiveness trajectories and „what's at risk” when having sex.
The article correctly argues that societal changes made it a lot more difficult for young men to find a romantic partner:
- No pressure to marry early in your twenties as a woman. Instead, it's even expected to „have some fun“ and marry later.
- Dating apps and a more individualistic society make it easy for women to find a mate outside of their social cirle.
Unless they've been doing exceptionally well (e.g. are physically fit, have a good status in their peer group, a well-rounded personality and make some money), men in their early twenties don't have a lot to offer to women of their age. On the other hand, women are usually in their peak attractiveness in early/mid twenties and can easily select an older partner.
Anecdotal experience also confirms that. I'm in my late 20s, my GF in her early twenties. She had no serious interest in anyone from her school year. We met on a dating app. Quite a few of my similar-aged friends who had very litte luck with women found a romantic partner once they've finished their degree and earned some money.
So the ideal same-age relationship is between two adolescents of 14, and a successful 40 year old male would, all things considered, prefer pairing with a 27 year old female.
This matches my observations.
I'd also take into account in a lot of early relationships if you asked the guy they might say they're not in a relationship and the women might say they are.
Attracting young women today is an entirely different ballgame than in the past and it’s incredibly challenging for average men. I do think social media has warped our perceptions of what an “average man” is. The classic “dad bod” quip is an example. A lot of women have mentioned desiring a “dad bod” and then will point out someone like Jason Mamoa when he’s either off-cycle or not completely shredded. A body that is very much not a “dad bod” at all to most men - this body is already incredibly difficult to attain and required steroids to get to to start with.
The decline of third spaces and ways to interact more in person and without it being transactional has also likely made it really hard. When you need to sell yourself through images - it turns out really only a couple body types are appealing to women when it comes to images alone. Yes, you can be more attractive when interacting in person and they see your full personality but we don’t have the spaces for that anymore. Most young women I meet are incredibly full of stranger danger as well. So many stories of violent rape hit national headlines and most people are taught men are a threat before you even say hello. So, yeah, it’s no wonder you can’t really make a good first impression as an average young man. There’s nowhere to hang out with other young women in person where it’s not transactional and they already assume you’re a threat to begin with… so you’re in bad footing before you even started. The only way I’ve seen to get past this is to be incredibly charming (very rare and person specific) or genetically gifted looking to where people’s defenses are lowered (also rare).
Overall - I blame capitalism. I think its desire for atomicizing everyone and making everything a transaction is the source of all these issues.
It's no wonder most single men in FAANG are incels (only ones I found to not be single usually met their spouse in college or got arranged marriages). They're all ivy league educated, work hard, and do a lot of crazy shit for hobbies but ultimately look like a nerd and that's an incredibly oversaturated market.
In the greatest generation, silent generation, boomers and gen X, the rates of obesity in teens and 20-somethings was a rounding error. People varied in attractiveness, but almost everyone would have been "dateable". Today, 20-30% of the young population is obese, which is going to severely restrict the dating prospects as well as throw off some of the youthful lust-based pairings that grow into relationships.
The overall statistics and various causes are interesting, but I wish the article had further broken down how each factor impacted things, eg, how much does income, education, bmi, male-friends, etc skew the statistics on romantic relationships.
Endocrine disruptor chemicals such as pthalates also seem to be part of the problem.
https://theintercept.com/2021/01/24/toxic-chemicals-human-se...
I've tried Replika and some of these other AI friends (who are more and more pivoting to being AI girlfriends), and they seem so far from state of the art. My guess is we're a few months away from gpt3-level (or better) chatbots aimed less and productivity and information and more at romance/sex/friendship and its going to change the world as we know it.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3py9j/ai-companion-replika-...
Looks like they might be swinging the pendulum back the other way again.
Most of my younger American coworkers get to their 20s barely having kissed a couple of girls in their lives, the difference is astonishing. Have in mind I'm not particularly attractive, tall or fit, I have an average build and I'd say I disappear in the crowd but I know how to communicate with a woman and respectfully "court" them, even if it's for a one night stand. This is skill learned in my teens through trial and a LOT of error. I can't explain, maybe today our sanitized and risk-averse schools repress men's learning of the "courtship language".
You growing up in a culture where courting women is encouraged makes a huge difference, you can't really practice if it isn't socially acceptable to court women badly.
I’ve found many men also severely underrate how physically attractive they are. I’ve had male models tell me they’re average looking, guys who are 6ft+ say they’re average height, and guys who literally have girls asking them out saying they’re nothing special.
You might think you know how to talk to women but it might just be a halo effect. It’s more often that than anything else. I’ve seen many men go through the exact same dialogue and have wildly different results because one guy is physically attractive and the other isn’t.
There’s a good example of someone I see in person regularly. Guy is a bit of a doofus but he’s tall as hell and has a jawline. Women are constantly asking for his number and interacting with him all the time. Yet, the women who have talked to him for more than ten minutes are like, “yeah he’s terrible. So awkward, unfunny, and the dancing - holy cow is it bad!” Literally he sells so well on his physicality but then he can’t deliver with personality. Women give him more chances than they’ll ever give any of his shorter peers.
I was pretty blown away when he told me about how he gets endless matches and dates from online because - again - dude is a total doofus. You couldn’t get a much worse person socially and yet he’s swimming in options.
Personality is overrated these days, imo.
Well, I'm not saying I'm unattractive, just that I won't stand out in a crowd. I'm the average guy. I'm healthy, not overweight, I shave regularly and wear Tommy Hilfiger instead of Target (although they might sell TH at Target, haha).
Here's how I know it: it's the amount of effort I have to put in getting a mate. I said I learned how to do it with a lot of trial and error, but that's not the case for a few of my friends. Women come to them with minimal effort (I've witnessed it many times). Not the case with me, I have to initiate it and conquer every inch of territory, so to speak.
I also had a hard time on dating websites when I used to do that. Few responses, almost zero girls reaching out organically, but a high success rate when getting a response (however that is to be expected, I suppose).
For a math analogy, I don't get the A because I'm a genius and finished the test in 10 minutes without studying. I'm the guy who studies a lot to get the A, so not a "natural", just someone with enough potential alongside learning to write the right things down.
This is where I think you're undervaluing what's going on with what I said.
Often getting a response is all you ever need. The same is true when going out to a bar or whatever. If a woman finds you physically attractive - you really just need to not shoot yourself in the foot when interacting and it's mostly smooth sailing.
What I'm trying to say to you is: you might think you're not attractive because you're not a celebrity ("I don't stand out") but you're probably quite physically attractive to a certain amount of women. You discredit that because you don't succeed with every woman and you don't think you have incredibly high status or whatever.
You're also in your 40s now but I'm talking about when you were single and younger and how you're using your life experience then as justification as to why men aren't doing well. How you look now is not a reflection of how you looked then.
You are right that I'm physically attractive to a number of women. I just don't think this number is very big, haha... at least compared to most of my friends, but maybe my friends are way more attractive than average for some odd reason? A bunch of CS/Engineer geeks...
I just don't understand why you are - it seems - almost dismissing the possibility of this being a skill, something you learn. Why wouldn't it be? My life story gives me a lot of evidence that this is the case, it would be tedious to write about it in detail, maybe one day I'll write a book!
One thing that is easy to talk about is how my partners would often say that I'm "confident", "funny" and "charming" rather than "good looking". Not even my wife calls me good looking :)
I’m not denying the skills. I literally talked about the doofus with good looks. He could improve his personality and skills and then he’d be a gigachad… I am saying that improving your skills is hardly sufficient for today’s market. We live in a different time and it’s wildly superficial.
Sure, being "charming" probably won't help too much in getting people to reach out to you on Tinder, but it will help you once you get a few hits, and it will also help you in parties, night clubs, work environment etc. We are in a different time, but people still meet in person. If you meet absolutely no single women ever in your day to day, I can see this is a problem but even that can be improved with local sports events, church, Meetups etc. Opportunities are EVERYWHERE.
I went out on a date with a girl who called my phone accidentally - she mistyped the number she wanted to call. I had never met her before, we were absolute strangers until I answered her saying "Sorry, I dialed the wrong number" with "Nope, I don't accept your apology, you are not getting out of it that easily, not with that sweet voice you aren't". She gave me her number, a few phone calls later, we went out. You can do it too, man :).
You need to learn... this is the most important part. This is where men struggle. Men aren't struggling because they have a bunch of hits and need to just follow up. That is hardly the issue these days. Men have endless advice about how to act, respond, message, flirt, etc. There's endless services out there for that these days. The issue is that most men can't get a single match. Go look up the stats on this - most men never even get matches on dating services. Point blank. The same is true for going out to bars, clubs, etc. Almost all the men I know who have slept with dozens of women in the recent years say the same thing: Bars, clubs, etc. are absolute garbage for meeting women because it requires immense physical attraction for the women to want to spend any amount of time with you. The same is true of dating apps. And, guess what, most men aren't that physically attractive and never will be. This is where things like "warm approach" and building absolfuckingutely huge social networks is what most men are spending their time doing these days. (That and going to the gym, dermatologists, and cosmetic surgeons obsessively)
I think this might be more reflective of the time and place you grew up. It's certainly not the same now. I can't imagine any of my friends who are women going on a date with a random guy they haven't seen even a photo of yet. I mean - that's also a very old timey story, tbh. These days you put in the wrong phone number and you don't know where that call is going as cellphones put you anywhere in the world.
> I can see this is a problem but even that can be improved with local sports events, church, Meetups etc. Opportunities are EVERYWHERE.
Ooph. My man, you have been out of the game for a long time. Sports events with single women? lol - what are you on? Meetups!? Have you ever been to one in the last five years? It's a complete sausage fest for any activity. Church is mostly full of old and married people.
I'm sorry man, you're just living in the days of old. It's very boomer-esque. Looks are paramount for most men to have any success like you had today. You might not feel great looking but you were probably above avergage but more importantly - you lived in a time where your looks weren't as important.
I won't be offended by your "Boomer-esque" comment as I'm Gen X, but let me just say, Millenial son, one can go through life telling themselves that others have/had it better, only if life was fair to them...
What kind of meetup? I haven’t seen any with any good amount of women.
Something I’ve noticed is that American parents of the boomer generation have pretty much abdicated their role in getting younger people paired up. Young people don’t know what they need in a partner (how could they, they don’t have the experience) and aren’t good at estimating their own market value. As an immigrant I mocked the idea of arranged marriage when I was young, but most of my cousins had marriages that were facilitated to some degree and most ended up with good matches. If my boys aren’t hitched up by 30 I’m going to seriously consider the option.
Two times, a friend of mine fixed a meeting with a girl (different girl each time) where he told the girl that "his friend liked her" (I was his friend) and also told me that "her friend liked me". At parties, we got to meet (each with the assumption that the other person liked us) and both times we became boyfriend/girlfriends.
Both times we were very young to get into a long term relationship (I was 15 at the time), but in hindsight, I am impressed how simple it was. Just a matter of "breaking" that illusory barrier of fear of rejection.
> More than 60 percent of young men are single, nearly twice the rate of unattached young women
> “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,” said Greg Matos
So women don't need to be in a long-term relationship, and yet they are at a much higher rate?
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for those among us who fit in the above, many men fail on one or more of these points. The trueoffmychest and TwoXChromosomes subreddits are full of horror stories about unkempt or disrespectful men.
Thanks for proving OP's point.
Congratulations, you've just described 95% of men who are gainfully employed in fairly technical white collar sectors of the economy.
You're getting down-voted because they are probably the single biggest demographic on HN and their experience doesn't match what your alleging it to be.
Women (on average, obviously individuals are different) are attracted to status vastly more than anything else. All the other "requirements" are basically seen as proxies for status (job, income, character, etc).
IT is still seen societally as medium to low status, so people in the industry are going to struggle. I think the best thing you as an individual can do is get a higher-status hobby (i.e. not video gaming, but something like acting or guitar, etc).
I also find that America is completely in denial about the status game, where as other countries are more honest about it (i.e. people will actually tell you)
I've found that IT has much higher status in other countries than it does in America. American women want men who are lawyers (or politicians), doctors, or business executives, not engineers or IT people. In other countries, women don't all have an automatic stigma against IT, because they know it pays well.
I do go out on weekends and approach women. Respectfully. While having basic hygiene and grooming and tasteful clothing. And I'm financially autonomous. And I work out regularly. And have a social circle. I'm perfectly average looking.
All that gets me is friends. Loads of friends. Women who I share a conversation with and have a laugh with. Never any attraction or meeting up at a later date.
Don't speak confidently about subjects you know nothing about.
Are you signalling that you’re looking for friends or partners?
IME women don’t react well to crudeness or excessive directness but with a silver tongue you can flower up “hi I’d like to escalate” and as long as you are clear (by ‘clear’ I mean with an amount of sexy deniability) then that will act as a quick filter.
Plus it takes cojones, which women also enjoy (IME YMMV IANAW)
The tasteful clothing can be even left out and I find your comment largely naive, but your point kind of stays true: if you're "normal" there's armies of women out there looking for relationships.
A suprising amount of 30+ year olds I know would spend most of their free time gaming or conducting isolated and unappealing lives.
And the biggest complain I hear from women is lack of maturity, masculinity and most of all mental health among men.
Most men have literally nothing interesting to offer for a relationship. When you look at their situation from an objective point of view it's so obvious why they remain single and yet most are unable to see it. They either have no hobbies, hobbies that are almost exclusively shared by other men and often show no interest in their potential partners' hobbies. A lot of them also spend most of their time in online communities that are almost completely absent from women. They end up having discussion subjects and interests so far away from their dating partners that it turns into an awkward date.
Oh, a picture him riding an ATV with the boys. Ah, here's one of him fishing with the boys. There he is, happily posing with a normally dangerous but sedated wild animal. Hmm.
You get the idea.
>You get the idea.
I don't get the idea.
Half the comments here are about men lacking healthy masculinity. Now you just described someone who loves going out in the nature. Fishing and hunting are fun hobbies and it's not for men only (literally my local angling club is like ~40% women)
So all the best ones.
Programming, GNU/Linux, complex bideo gamez...
>and often show no interest in their potential partners' hobbies
So all the braindead ones for people who for some reason are too cognitively limited or environmentally discouraged to be into the ones above.
Sex, drugs, travel, shopping...
This stark sexual partitioning is either a joint failure of society and feminism in not encouraging women to do better or some redpill biological thing, but, either way, it sucks and the answer is the same: posthumanity. Let's go bb :clap:
And dumb "life/advice" subreddits are all "creative writing" at best, and just straight trolling/karma farming more often. Nothing posted there is true. Taking reddit as evidence for anything is a terrible idea.
They're full of horror stories of unkempt or disrespectful men who are nevertheless in a relationship—so maybe it's not even as hard as all that ;-)
If the population is roughly 50/50 how does that add up? Are there lots of men in two relationships at once? Or are younger women primarily dating older men?
yes and each other
"Some of them are dating each other."
and
"Young women are also dating and marrying slightly older men"
Jokes aside, your view of feminism, it's history and results is very reductive. Are you talking about beauvoir, judith butler, the cyborg manifesto or more about the pop feminism that gets represented in talk shows, lifestyle and outrage yt-videos?
I'm happy that my sisters don't have to put up with people that dont treat them well just because their women. Take this with a grain of salt, I've noticed that young men generally seem not to be as emotionally mature as their female counterpart.
And the younger the woman the better, isn't that an obvious?
What about friendship between men, this is your personal choice. I have more than one really close friend and I can not see myself without that kind of relationship.
There are less babies born on this day than any day in history, and that will be true for the rest of our entire species' existence, barring major technological "Brave New World" style test tube baby advances (which are indeed extremely likely given this fact.)
Of courses, compared to gas giants, Earth is small, but that's like comparing apples and whales.
Where does your percieved need to produce less children come from?
One could also argue that older people who are more settled in life make better parents.
The article also points out a decline in male friendships. Having a relationship doesnt automatically exclude friendships and vice versa.
Personally I think that choice has a similar influence on both. Approaching people you meet only as potential and exchangeable players for your DnD setting or as partners for your bedroom will turn them away the same way.
Too stupid all the pro-children agitation. For example, why to produce less children and allow aborts? To stop human-caused crisises like global warming, plastic pollution, pollution of air. But why to produce more children and forbid aborts? To keep your nation rising, to keep traditional lifestyle, and to pay more taxes.
Any decent arguments lost in pro-children vs anti-children question?
I mean yes, there are sensible arguments on either side. But it sounded like we are getting pressured to have more/less children. And that we was what I tried to get at. It sounds egoistic, but on very personal matters I don't like to listen to the ominous blob of internet opinions we all contribute to. And you should too..
I have seen some of my own comments and would be very ashamed if someone took it as literal advice/imperative.
You are saying that in such a way like we may just grow gazillions of C. Elegans and fill the gap.
(this is an organism with the smallest brain known, very popular guest in neuro studies).
I'm a man now in my mid-30s, and I cannot god damn wait until I'm old enough to be out of the "marriage market" so everyone stops fucking pestering me about marriage.
I find absolutely no appeal in the concept. The legal and social risks of associating with women beyond friendships are simply not worth it. I also consider the idea of affecting and being affected by someone to such a deep extent to be a violation of individual freedoms.
Last but not least: I consider it a cardinal sin to create kids and then tell them with a straight face that life is, on average, fucking horrible. You know what it's like to see your parents pass away? To witness their finals days? It's shit. Absolute shit. I refuse to make any kids, my hypothetical kids, suffer that. I'm not even getting into the other nasty aspects of life. Fuck all that.
So marriage can pound sand.
Everyone else can do as they please, of course. I don't care so long as you don't pester me to get married.
But it's because of love that grief has meaning.
That is it seems you are just venting or virtue signaling (that is still OK).
Recently my life has acquired some properties that many might class as "hell on Earth". It doesn't bother me though, I will always be grateful to be breathing as I am a human being.
I mean if you lived in the days of our prehistoric hunter gatherer ancestors and didnt know if you would starve to death next Winter would you be so antilife?
By the way I am single and dont have kids which is what I selfishly prefer. But I dont think that should be encouraged for healthy males as we have a responsibility to society.
Were I given a choice in the matter with the ability to make an informed decision, I would choose not to.
That's not what happens, of course. So I'll just enjoy my time here and respect the decisions my parents made. My parents made theirs, and I will make mine.
>I mean if you lived I'm the days of our prehistoric hunter gatherer ancestors and didnt know if you would starve to death next Winter would you be so anti life?
Absolutely. Given the willpower to overcome natural instincts and desires, I would choose to not have kids because why would I intentionally want them to experience even the possibility of starving to death in the Winter?
It's fortunate that the world has become a much better place since then, but at least for me the bar is still not low enough to convince me.
>we have a responsibility to society.
I couldn't care less whether humanity thrives, survives, or goes extinct. Not like anything I do would make a difference anyway, of course. My only duty to society is to not overtly bother or violate anyone, that's it.
Without pragmatic grounding what are we ever even talking about, our untested ideals? Action in the present moment is the important bottleneck to consider in my opinion.
Your comments reminds me how recently I sort of made a triadic taxonomy of "types of values" (value in general, like a replicating bias). I think it was (1) parasitic values, (2) self-sacrificial values, and (3) circular (stable) values.
But again using the principle of thinking of things not through any singularity sort the frame but allowing extension and similar concepts we can seem some interesting properties about this dynamic.
Let think of things as a stratified hierarchy of values having tendency that higher up strata mean a larger spatiotemporal perspective (I guess once space and time are completely abstracted then the hierarchy is more about scaling in semantic space in general.)
Parasitic values are biased toward limiting or even eliminating the replication of other lower level values. I guess this is analogous to a neuronal group acting as an inhibitory module.
In the example of antinatalism the specific value of antinatalism is oriented toward limited or stopping what we could call the self-preservation or Darwinian value (a biological value, aka instinct). Of course it depends if one wants humanity totally extinct or just down to a small number. I would agree that a degree of this inhibition is good (maybe "parasitic" is too negatively connoted a term to use)
This is interesting because the value is stratified on top of the self-preservation value and so if it succeeds in any large degree in becomes self-undermining. This is like human's killing off their ecosystem on which they are stratified.
This is really the extent of my thought on this (you probably can complete the analogy with (2) and (3)). Also it will be interesting to think through the implications of feedback from the higher strata to the lower.
You're leaving out all of the joy, the triumph, the beauty, and the awe of having a brief moment of consciousness on this planet, in this universe.
I'm plenty happy living my life as I see fit, and I don't see marriage as a potential addition to that happiness. It's as simple as that.
Then why would you imagine parents tell their kids that life is "fucking horrible", instead of telling them that life is "plenty happy"? Like, everything you describe, you have or will go through as well, and apparently you don't find it to be "shit. Absolute shit".
One lap around the course is plenty. If others want to bring more horses in, they're welcome to; as for me I'm not interested.
When did I ever say that? I don't care about others' lives, it's none of my business.
I find life, as far as I experience it, to be overall horrible. I'm plenty happy regardless, but it's nonetheless not something I'm interested in foisting onto my hypothetical kids.
Nor is anyone asking you to. Just, don't go around assuming that parents tell their kids that "life is, on average, fucking horrible"—instead, they show their kids how to be happy, like you are.
Possibly related anecdote: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/zxsgcq/and...
Seriously? this is some extreme opinion and approach, really out of touch with reality.
This sub is no different from the people described in this post, just the other side of extrema.