Why the rate of single men in the US looking for dates has declined
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These "sweet feminine woman" you speak of really don't take any shit either. I think the US has a picture of submissives under the patriarchy when they look at Eastern woman, for example. Let me tell you, that can not be further from the truth.
I've dated, middle Eastern and Asian woman, and they had more _actual_ independence than any European woman I've seen -- and good on them!
That's a bit unclear. Would you be ok to expand on that? :)
A big trend right now in Latin America is 'quiero toxico/a'(I want a toxic(person)) , they paste it all over their vehicles, clothing and whatnot.
You will see women wearing shirts that say 'soy toxica'(I'm toxic).
They literally want someone who hits them, gets jealous, all the bad stereotypes.
Having lived that myself, I firmly believe it's because they have never actually been with someone like that.
They think they want it till their car ends up destroyed, clothes on fire, or one/both in jail.
I just cannot fathom willing that stuff into your life, but some people are what's known as 'addicted to chaos'.
Wonder what's led to that, and how that'll work out over time...? :)
I've known many men who like "crazy" women too. She stabbed him with a butcher knife? Forever in love.
Have you ever entertained the idea that _that_ US mindset might be part of the problem?
Hence not so comitted into a relationship.
Frankly I worry for my own young children. I almost wish there was a place to live where there was little to no social media, no chronic cell phone addiction, people out in nature, together, socializing, cooperating.
If the dating game is already like this now, it’s scary thinking about how it’ll be 18 years from now
I am missing something here... why? If the rate of single men in the US looking for a date has dropped, wouldn't a similar number (assuming majority straight relationships and monogamous pairings) of women be also single?
It’s not by choice
Isn't the result the same? More people are single? Or are we saying that more men have polyamorous relationships?
Seems to be this one.
The older men they are dating are not only dating younger women, or just one younger woman
I can see that continuing
That's a natural result of only selecting for the 20% who know they can play the field. The "I deserve a tall handsome prince with a high income" types are all in competition with each other for a limited resource. Men aren't to blame for that.
Date many and often with no inhibitions, "have fun", don't get "tied down", delay marriage and family or abstain altogether, date men with little in common, date women, prioritise career, kids are disgusting and expensive, kids threaten your Instagram physique, pointless travelling > family, make easy money on OnlyFans, there's the psychological impact (distortion of standards) of having easy access to sex with very high quality men who would never "settle" for them in marriage, and do all of this with reckless abandon because if anyone is not enthusiastically supportive then the issue is with them not you and your sordid past.
It's little wonder so many women wake up one day, they're 38, single, childless, and depressed. The antidepressant usage among Western women is shocking.
I would argue that a very large contributing factor in our young men's disillusionment with dating is a product of the damage being done to our young women.
Can you please elaborate more on this conclusion? I agree with everything you said until that statement.
Of all things you said, i agree only with the "distortion of standards" thing. Again, it's global, has nothing to do with the U.S. or "West" in general, happens everywhere - even more so in more vertical, traditional Asian cultures (with corresponding decline of birthrates). Yet, it's a problem i can see no solution for unless single parenthood is completely normalised (which might require elimination of religion).
I urge you to do more research
How? Would the government pay for surrogates for single men?
Unless by "single parenthood" you actually just mean "single motherhood", which hardly seems like the way to run a gender equal society.
It's already harder to raise kids with a nuclear family than the extended families of the past, atomizing further into single parents seems like another step backwards.
> I see lots of happy 35-45 woman doing brunches in mall.
You have a few misconceptions on this topic. I will argue on user JesusLovesEwe's behalf because to me it is apparent that he and I concur and want to steer into the same direction, just for a (on the surface level) different motivation.¹ I hope he does not mind and I hope his and my courses of thought are as similar in reality as I assume they are.
You say we are "scared" by a non-traditional woman. That's wrong, the correct word is concerned. We indulge in our protector instinct and simply want women not come to harm.
You say we think women are "gullible and sheepish". That's wrong, the correct word is uninformed. What is happening in reality is that women simply do not know how destructive to themselves and society at large their behaviour is because they were never told what the real consequences are. They hence cannot learn from the bad example and avoid making the mistakes that damage themselves and others. A cultural narrative was created that even portrays the destructive behaviour in good light, I wish you were not complicit in propagating this.
You say we think of depriving women of agency. That's wrong, we want to educate, lay out the conclusions, and let them modify their behaviour by themselves. Persuasion, not force. An adult's agency must be informed by accurate information, so the cultural narrative of falsehoods mentioned before must be countered first, and I think that science is a great tool in that fight. If women knew what they will do their future selves, most of them would refrain from living out the destructive behaviour.
As an aside, the vast majority of people are not educated in psychology, and thus do not know why they behave the way they behave. The "some force" when it comes to intersexual dynamics is actually mostly instinct, a good deal of learned behaviour, and a little bit of rational thought. IMO the basics of this should be taught to everyone in school.
¹ With a username like that, I must assume he argues from a religiously informed moral angle, which in a sense I see as a shortcut of thought. If we go back in time and see how that doctrine was established, we would find society experimenting, recording, comparing and eventually propagating what works best (or perhaps a local maximum), optimising for stability/overall happiness. I, too, want people to be happy, or at least not fall into the trap of easily avoidable suffering.
Human values seem to have completely gone down the drain. Bravery, courage, chivalry and respect of elders. That marriage is a commitment and not to be taken lightly, and not to abandon your wife and kids.
Almost every day a new Twitter video comes out of dysfunctional children beating up on an elder for taking their toys away while cowardly students sit back and just watch.
Meanwhile women are being told that wanting to have kids and be a mother is just not enough or not desirable anymore. How can we think we are a modern society when women are the ones left raising children on their own when their partners leave them, or are the ones forced to “abort” children when they are put in a difficult position.
Maybe it is time to look at becoming Amish..
So things were better when brave men were happy to march into battle because their feudal lord ordered them to, and they fought to the death with other peasants over some pointless dispute between two warlords?
A man can be hooking up with many girls but he can only marry one at a time. Which means, it's a double-edged sword: Tinder raised standards of what an acceptable male looks like, making it equally harder for men to get laid as for women to get married.
Poor people have kids early and have more, while rich people delay and have few or none.
The more I read history, the more I realize most of the problems we have today are not new problems.
For example, in 1778, it was expected that you had to have 4 children to have one live to 18 (with medical science being what it was). We saw a 40% increase in all deaths in actuarial data during the pandemic which could align with degradation of services during that time.
In 1778, wages could never be lower than what it cost to feed and raise yourself and your children.
With the introduction of personal household debt and fiat currency, the guardrails were removed.
Business stopped having an incentive to pay fair wages when they were allowed to concentrate, and make more money through influential connections and shoddy financial engineering backed by a printing press.
As these women enter their 30s I really dont know what is going to happen. Society will be an odd place in twenty years. The social dynamics between men and women have never existed like this.
Men tend to be looking for sex. Women tend to be looking for long-term relationships. Another similar observation: Men give love to get sex, women give sex to get love.
I've seen multiple comments here by men who seem surprised or something that women often don't care that they are seeing others. And I'm trying to say "It's really not that surprising and if you think about it for a minute, it's a well-known and long-standing pattern, really."
Having sex as a male basically has no consequences. Having sex as a woman can have huge consequences. Therefore, biologically the parent poster is correct.
Women rationally know that contraception pills exist and are effective, meaning the choice of getting pregnant is in their hands; (promiscuous) sex apparently has no consequences. This informs their actions.
Women will almost always express their desire to ride the carousel obscured with virtue signal wording such as "finding myself", "enjoying my freedom/the party scene", and the like.
A man gives commitment to get sex.
A woman gives sex to attain being provided for and protected.
People who are on the Internet a lot, and people who look good on dating apps are really invested in social media, and that means finding a partner who works well with that.
Dating apps are also heavily paywalled. Communication is not facilitated at all by dating apps... It's a pretty grim future for meaningful matching to be honest. I get dates as well, but hate the feeling of meeting through an app because it feels like a revolving door of Internet faces, not like a great way to make trustworthy partners.
These women are unrealistic. As they get older their requirements for a man go up instead of going down. They think a man with wealth and options is going to choose them instead of a younger woman. It is pretty sad really.
Bingo. That's the sad reality unfortunately. Everyone wants a prince charming but at the end of the day men are busy and would rather live alone than be involved in drama
There are a lot of confounding factors, from the lack of actual role models, subversive propaganda, poor parenting, and the effects of education, to the debt saddled on you at a time in your life where you are especially vulnerable as you become independent.
There was an interesting set of statistics out of Scandinavia, I think it was, that seemed to suggest that women with high levels of education rarely selected mates who were not at least as educated as they were. Women generally as a cohort don't date down.
Some common things that often get ignored are:
If women don't have babies by 35, risk of complications and death go up drastically.
If men or women aren't debt free with a down payment for a house by 30, they often won't get married (because of the debt), or if they do, they won't have children.
The issue is a societal one where commonplace norms weren't propagated for the most part by the boomer generation and the survivors who have been tied down in red tape unable to move are the people left to pick up the pieces.
That of course assumes someone at the top chooses not to end everything in a glorious final confrontation by escalating existential threats. Not good times.
So yes, again, that’s a far cry from what you get, but I have about one epic romantic encounter per three months and could have sex once per month by women I’d find attractive. So 33% of my bed partners are experienced as epic.
So yea, this is what happens when you don’t accept your fate and rebel against it: a dating life that I am happy with.
Conventional attractive guys have it way easier than I do, I am forced to build character by taking charge of my dating life and hacking it. That’s a fine trade-off by me. It’s also a forced trade-off, c’est la vie.
The real tough part was age 17 to 21. It took 4 years of active social skills improvement and self-improvement to lose my virginity to a woman that I would find attractive. For the first 3 years I wasn’t even able to kiss a girl. I was in the category: get laid or die trying (dramatizing here: I mean find a GF that I am happy with and she with me, the die trying part is accurate). I should have been an incel, really. But I refused and after 3 years enough clicked to make the topic of dating workable. It was very hard, but I came from the difficulty level called: it’s impossible. So very hard mode was an easy mode for me by that time
Anyone feeling stuck, feel free to email (in my profile). I don’t check it often but I know the pain and if I can help, I will
If I’m supposed to be a somewhat attractive guy, I can imagine the vast majority of men must be getting no interest at all.
E.g. they have finely tuned tinder game. That doesn't in any way support the idea that women are only attracted to a small subset of men. That's an idea taken literally from the incel crowd.
Well, to be fair, that’s not exactly what I was saying. Despite replying to that poster, I was half echoing Scott Galloway’s comment that on dating apps the top 20% of attractive men get 60% of the interest. I didn’t check his sources, but it doesn’t seem like an unrealistic assertion to me, or a belief that only someone with a twisted world view might have, as you seem to be implying.
Female or male friends?
By sheer statistical chance alone, you are a normie (middle of the bell curve, where most people are) and overrate yourself.
> I’ve had several friends vet my profile
Seek out an unbiased attractiveness rating done by people who actually know the science, for example ratebywaffles. I bet that your friends received no training or sought to read the relevant sociology and psychology papers, so can't have more than a gut feeling and are basically clueless/misinformed about what the actual criteria are.
I hadn’t heard of ratebywaffles. I might try it out. I’m sure it will be a hit to the self esteem, but it seems like it would ultimately be a good thing if it means developing a more accurate picture of myself.
Eventually I realized I was just trying to get laid, or seem appealing/attractive. When I looked at what I was doing, what I was changing about myself, just to get laid, I realized that wasn't the authentic me.
So I changed my profile and put the authentic me, and just a couple random pictures I'd taken recently. Or sometimes just a joke profile that I find funny. Now I get maybe one match a month. When we do match I'm not interested. And that's fine. I'm older now, and have zero interest in sex with someone who I don't like as a person first. And it turns out I'm a picky bastard, and kind of weird, and there's just not a lot of people who find that attractive.
..... on Tinder, anyway. If I go to meatspace and socialize, in the right places, I find the people I really like, and that like me. It turns out that I'm not actually awful; Tinder is.
My biggest tip: read up on assorted mating theory and ask yourself what your biggest personality traits are. Communicate those traits.
In my case: imagination and curiosity. I communicate my imagination immediately by going off imaginary tangents. Most people can’t handle it when a horde of take over the conversation and teach calculus to you. Who wouldn’t want to learn calculus from a a capable puppy? :D Some say “haha” to that but magic happens when she chimes in and says “and it’s so cute when they involuntarily bark during their lecture”
Anyway, that’s an example of a tangent and how a positive response to it looks like. I screen hard and make sure I get insane amounts of volume.
If you think my level of thinking is intense, it’s only the tip of the iceberg :)
But my point is: it’s possible, while being yourself, albeit in a strategic way
I got tons of matches on Tinder, quite a lot of dates and hook ups, and relationships. I'm passably attractive but nothing much, just above average. I wrote something a little funny in my bio, put up pictures that aren't: in the gym, fishing, driving a car, smiling while standing at some random place, hiking. What I had was pictures of me having fun, not "expected fun" but where I really enjoyed myself, some extremely silly. And a portrait so people could know exactly what I looked like.
I found two long-time partners and a lot of very fun and interesting dates.
I think it worked because I was just genuine and honestly meeting people who I had a conversation that clicked. Don't think I could ever overthink this that much...
I can relate. I changed myself to become more conventionally attractive, got a lot of attention, got into a relationship with a beatiful woman who, once she found out who I was, didn’t like it all that much. Made me realise how important it is to be very evident about your personality and not try to be someone likeable.
Highly relevant: /u/avocados44 recalls the college sex life of Jimmy Garoppolo, current 49ers QB https://np.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/dpz1mh/highlight_jimmy_...>
Be a bro and refer a couple to a less attractive friend? Tell her it'll make you happy as an incentive.
What's funny to me though is how different the IRL dating scene is. I got 1-2 matches a week (very few where I would get a response back) when I was on the apps, but through meeting friends-of-friends, casually going to a bar, meeting people at church, or other normal events, I can consistently get dates that would be out of my league on the apps just by introducing myself. I don't have stats for "epic bed partners" since that's not something I'm interested in, but I'm sure it would translate for those that are.
I find that people in my age group (early 20s) are moving from app dating to irl because apps can seem hopeless unless you really optimize which seems unauthentic. I think there's going to be a generation who will have trouble finding partners, like you said, but I feel like my generation and the folks younger than me will be alright.
Edit: I also want to point out that it's pretty bad in tech where people are constantly moving (I know a guy who moved once a year between SF, Seattle, Denver, NY, and Charlotte) to new cities all the time and can't create good, deep friendships. First, if you're dating irl, it's tough meeting people who can introduce you to single women. Second, it's hard to be a good date if you don't have friends. I don't even want to explain that, but it should be obvious.
I think the focus is on men due to the concern of the collateral damage of incel violence and it ignores the individual plights of the men and women. If women were similarly violent maybe more people would notice their problems too. Instead they just get some cats and quietly disappear.
Not so, polygyny actually is the natural dynamic for the animal genus homo. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34538418
The age of enforced monogamy, which now has come to an end, lasted only a few thousand years, which is nothing compared to for how long we have already existed. What you think of normal is actually the anomaly.
I agree with the gist of the video that deliberate effort is required to engineer society in a direction where most men have a stake worth living for, not just the top 20%.
Good luck with that in places like this...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34895267
Note though that this video adds some rare (for mainstream media due to its controversial nature) perspective on the long-known causes of the problem, raised by some in that and earlier discussions.
Reminds me of a joke from somewhere: Every happy man is single and every happy woman is married.
Especially given that it's not broadly reasonable for a single partner to go out and earn enough money at one job to support both people (let alone a family), it's no longer acceptable for men to not contribute around the house equally.
Of course this is an average, so it's possible in some families women are working more, and in other families men are working more.
But modern political sensibilities filter those stories so that you'll only hear those confirming a certain bias (men bad), which distorts the overall picture, which is on average equal work.
I married a single mother, I don't mop the floor or cook everyday. My duties are stuff she cannot do like taking care of the house or repairing cars/bike. I definitely do less than my wife for the household on a daily basis but I bring the money and a shelter. She is a 1000 times happier than being alone.
But there are absolutely cases out there where the women work as much as the men they're with, bring in as much money and shelter, and then are expected to do the housework, child-rearing, emotional labour, etc as well. I have heard from them and I have known them. And I absolutely believe them.
That is very different than stating that "For a lot of women, especially mothers, being a single mother is a whole lot easier than being a married mother, since there is one less person in the house they have to take care of". Having seen all the work involved for a single mother, I really doubt that it is "a whole lot easier". It is a 24/7 job where you cannot stop a minute.
You are naive if you think all prostitutes are willing participants that chose this as a career. Across the world forced prostitution/sex work is fuelled by human trafficking of women and minors.
In an ideal world human beings should be free to make their own choices based on their context and society free to judge them based on it's context. One can't have it both ways. One cannot have absolute individual freedom within a social substrate and be an accepted member of said society without adhering to the norms of the social contract, what ever that might be.
How about: "In some countries, sex work seems to be illegal and problematic. But in other countries, it's regulated and successful.".
>"In some countries, sex work seems to be illegal and problematic. But in other countries, it's regulated and successful."
My take is similar to yours, I'm just communicating to the original commentor that the societies where sex work is legitimate, regulated and safe is a minority compared to the societies where it isn't.
Thinking about it, that's a good point. "Unforced" (eg voluntary or better term) prostitution seems like it wouldn't have anything to do with "human trafficking", as they'd be kind of anathema to each other.
Now, it is “some countries”?
Morally, it's up to you but the human trafficking numbers are larely exaggerated and most participants are willing.
This is just plainly false unless you consider all the red regions in the map to be "US"
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
Yes, I can see the argument for replacing the casual dating scene with a prostitute but not dating in general. Seeing a bunch of “women want love, men want sex!” comments in this thread and man are they off base. Of course men want love, belonging, family, etc etc… it’s a tired joke that they have to be tricked into commitment.
But many women, specially in their early 20s, have completely unrealistic and entitled mentality. They don’t offer love and support, but only drama e constant criticism. Going to a prostitute is simpler while you can’t find a real partner.
I live in a decently big city, I make very good money - close to 200k which is far above what most people here pull in. Lead teams of people. Am in mid 30s, well over 6ft. White. My (few) sexual partners couldn’t get enough. I work out with a generous physique, get compliments that I can’t even accept these days.
I’m extremely jaded. I stopped talking/interacting and even making eye contact with women despite working in an industry essentially dominated by them. I’m not sure what to do because the idea that a few men are getting all the women does not sit well with me at all. Even if I could be one of them, to me it’s a society-ruining move and I can’t in good faith participate.
So I feel disgust and this disgust is turning me into a misogynist.
I’d like to hear some thoughts as to how to get out of this rut and interact with women again without feeling like I’m being used, and that the average man out there can only dream of being in my position as he faces insurmountable rejection and will also be used in a far worse way than me. It just sounds like a kick in the balls.
Then you won’t be part of the society ruining.
1. Very beautiful women sometimes set up dating profiles with no photos or take other measures to attract men for reasons other than how photogenic they are.
2. Hobbies are a good way to meet people you have things in common with and can present the opportunity to get to know someone socially before you get jiggy.
3. Sometimes introductions via friends can work out. If you are genuinely friends with someone and they know someone that they have sized up and concluded they are not a nutter, etc, sometimes that works surprisingly well.
1. I haven’t done online dating at all. What I’ve seen in real life is hit and miss. I know too much of the corporate world. Marital affairs, sleeping for promotions, sex parties with upper management/C-levels, you name it.
2. I have hobbies in the arts where I excel, am recognized, and there are lots of women.
3. My closest friends are hardcore players which doesn’t help.
While your list would be good for someone looking for a date and/or a way to stand out, in my case it doesn’t help. Rebuilding trust when I’m surrounded by what I equate to vipers isn’t a matter of finding someone good. Even if I did, I wouldn’t trust them based on past experiences and things I see day to day.
You know, super shitty angle, bad lighting, maybe shitty camera blur, etc?
If that gets too many matches, kill the profile, fuck up the pic(s) even more, and try again?
Try and get the match threshold down to low numbers, and maybe you'll be finding people more to your liking?
So stop surrounding yourself with vipers. The C-suite isn't "real life", it's one very narrow and very highly selected slice of it. If you want to avoid ruthless social climbers, almost any other environment would be a better bet.
Where is your goodwill? Are you just sleeping around with women or do you want to find a partner, settle down and start a family? Most women want that. So why would you question the goodwill of women when you don't have it yourself? Sounds a lot like projecting your own issues onto others.
> My (few) sexual partners couldn’t get enough
Enough of what? Did they want a serious relationship and you didn't? Well there you go then.
I don't know you, so there is of course a chance that I'm wrong. But it sounds you don't want to have a serious relationship and start a family. And then you project this onto "the goodwill of women".
I'm pretty much where you are... as I've gotten older and more successful I've become a more attractive package, but I've learned more and more that women aren't into 'me' at all... just what I have. Over time this has hurt me and I now have major trust issues with women.
I recently took several years off from dating. Told myself I'd meet people organically in and around town. I wasn't looking to date, wasn't looking for hookups, just looking to get to know someone and do activities with them and see if we could act as friends. Asking myself: can I even be friends with a women? I should add I live on a lake, so there's a lot of "lake life" around here, lots of people to meet and have fun with, especially in the summer.
I've pretty much learned that just being friends with women and not sleeping with them doesn't change much of the equation. Women can still "smell" the success on me, and stick close largely because they are either 1) using me to have fun with my money/toys or 2) biding their time looking for an eventual in, or some combination of the two.
Overall I don't feel the majority of these women were good friends, or treated 'me' particularly well. I was a means to an end for them.
You think point #2 above (biding time) would be ok, but the reality is that these women got jealous etc even though there was no relationship between us (no sex, no affection etc). They acted as if they deserved some sort of claim on me, which of course was ridiculous as I wasn't taking anything from them other than their time. In some ways I think "just friends" messes with a woman's mind.
Long story short, because I wasn't seeking sex or anything it left me strangely feeling more used overall, as there was nothing I was taking in return for giving them access to my life/money/etc. I was giving the same, but getting less. They were still playing the game and trying to get things out of me, everything but getting to know or invest in the real 'me'.
I've come to the conclusion that men and women really can't be friends at all (at least, not when you're trying to find and build a real relationship).
Since that experiment, I started dating again, and can honestly say the gold diggers have gotten more numerous and more brazen. So what I do now to protect myself
- make a quick decision as to whether or not I see any long term potential in the person, the sooner the better. Drop them the moment your gut says no long term here. I don't want my time wasted, or theirs.
- I'm no longer sleeping with women until I've made a decision that there might be potential in the relationship (some ability to build trust). Easier to gauge long term potential without sex in the way (sex seemingly fast-forwards intimacy, but in a fake way).
I can say it's been successful. I met a woman who comes from a similar place in life (successful, but with trust issues) and so neither of us needs anything from each other except the ability to build a trusting relationship.
The word caliber comes to mind. If you're successful, you need to find women that match your caliber. Some form of success (doesn't have to be career or monetary) indicating they can meet you where you are.
Lastly, I miss the ability to trust. I often miss the love I had for my unhealthy first wife, because even though she was terrible for me, she loved me when I didn't have two cents to rub together. I never doubted she loved 'me' as a person, not what I had. Hoping to get this back someday.
Good luck to you
Lol, I think #1 is universal to all sexes.
You have a "value"/status, and it's there whether it can be tapped for tangible benefits or not, and male friends do price it in to "how much do I value my friendship with this guy?"
I encourage you to stop homogenizing 50% of the population because of some general statistical shift. Even if on average what you say is true (I’m not convinced but just taking it as a given for the sake of argument), it’s not true for every individual you meet. You don’t need to blindly trust every woman you meet, but give them a chance to show you whether they’re a “viper” or not without pre-judgement.