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Comment by ryanobjc | Hacker News Reader

Psychology today covered this: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-state-our-unions...

"Dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing as relationship standards rise."

"Men need to address skills deficits to meet healthier relationship expectations."

The expectation out of young men is a lot higher. The presumption of a wife because you're employed and generally clean is gone.

There is a dark edge to this whinging which ends up in the "the government should enforce wifes for men" area whic his really messed up.

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Its kind of interesting though. I'm not sure if this issue is present at-large in other countries outside the US. But its really a hard problem if you think about it. If the average guy is too poor/ugly/unhygenic/aggressive/boring/not-interested-in-a-relationship for the standards of the average girl, then there's pretty much nothing the US government can do in the future encourage birth rates when population starts to fall. Efforts put in place to encourage families like those in Japan or Finland won't help if coupling doesn't happen in the first place!

Fascinating, and pretty dark stuff for most guys I'm afraid.

Surely two thirds, and rising, of young men being socially disenfranchised is a societal problem that should be addressed above the individual level, no? In the 2000's there was a lot of public outreach about men's unrealistic standards for women, but we never had the same discussion about women's unrealistic standards for men.

If young men are lacking in skills (whether social skills, style or hygiene), teach them. We're already holding them in jail-like conditions at unhealthy schedules for 8 hours a day in what we call "school", surely we can find time to teach them those skills.

If it's a physical "ugliness" issue, double-down on existing efforts to reduce obesity and unhealthy lifestyles, and for everything else, easier (subsidized?) access to plastic surgery will definitely help. Of course, talking about plastic surgery is premature when the country can't even guarantee affordable access to life-critical healthcare, so that has to be solved too.

Poverty is also a major problem that should be addressed (for many other reasons beyond young men's dating prospects) and would make all the other problems easier to solve.

The policy solution to men's unrealistic standards for women was to educate them about realistic standards, not to mold women into TV supermodels. With that in mind, is it reasonable to expect the entire population of young men to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to gain several additional inches of height, a high status job, and the magnetic personality of a late night talk show host?

At this point the heterosexual relationships discussion has become so poisoned that I don't think further activism of any kind is likely to help. In terms of constructive solutions, I think what we need are people pioneering new "curated dating spaces" with explicit norms, events for underserved singles with enforced rules that represent some sort of negotiated compromise between what single men want and what single women want. Don't compete with dating apps, that's low-margin and has entrenched incumbents. Partner with nightlife establishments to run events, singles night with a theme of some kind and a reputation system for attendees, perhaps powered by matchmaking software. That's my take.

Agreed, but curious what your ideas would be to solve it?

It would be pretty difficult I think without some mandatory "relationships" education being implemented or something, which is a little too totalitarian for modern democracy I'd think.

Start building trade schools. Lots of the guys who are young and having problems with women are the guys who don't go to college. We're short lots of trades people.. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians are in desperately short supply, and the kids who are 19 and don't want to do college would be much better suited for those jobs. Once you increase their income and give them a career, they're no longer the "guy playing video games all the time" and their desirability goes up, and a lot of parity is gained.

Like I said above, there was a lot of very successful outreach targeting men about their body standards for women. This was meant to address systemic problems with eating disorders, depression, and suicide in the opposite sex. We would simply implement the same outreach aimed at women, with the intent of addressing similar social problems that men are currently facing. If we can have fat acceptance for women, then I'm sure we can manage something along the lines of "short acceptance" for men.

I don't think the issues in modern relationships are isolated to only one sex, it's both that have some soul searching to do if they wish to "have the kind of relationship their parents had."

There's data to argue the opposite in fact.

Look up "80/20 girl/guy dating preferences"

> if they wish to "have the kind of relationship their parents had."

Ah yes the average boomer relationship, where two barely compatible people married when they were like 16 because they lived on the same street and then spent their entire life quietly resenting each other (but not quite enough to divorce and/or because they're financially co-dependent) and proceeded to take their problems out on their kids through emotional abuse. Kids who now, surprise surprise, are having all kinds of problems.

I don't think the Boomer generation led Millennials to turn out too poorly, short of perhaps failing to teach them parenting skills (which we see in some of the problems Zoomers are now having).

Many of the Boomers are still together, despite the social stigma of divorce being gone.

I would agree it is a different world, but I also think the stigmas of divorce back when forced many of the Boomers to work together to overcome their differences, similar to how arranged marriages work out.

Right, so you see a bunch of couples that stay together while quietly resenting each other, just as the OP said. I don't see how that's better than divorce. It's better to be single than miserably married.

> There is a dark edge to this whinging which ends up in the “the government should enforce wifes for men” area which his really messed up.

There’s another fairly obvious authoritarian government solution to the social disruption of men who can’t find life partners, that doesn’t impose on the freedom of women.

>There is a dark edge to this whinging which ends up in the "the government should enforce wifes for men" area whic his really messed up.

Arranged marriage is a cultural approximate and almost all of my co-workers' marriages were born of this method; they don't seem unhappy and miserable.

I'm not saying "Western culture should bring back arranged marriage", which, when it did exist, was largely an aristocratic thing, however I am wondering whether successful marriage is as conditioned on a checklist of expectations (which is undefined here, so who knows what that means) as it seems, and I am wondering whether its really the case the vast majority of males are toxic man-children; I don't think anyone's done the work to actually prove that.

Certainly not this article being cited which is simply relaying a state of affairs then presuming the causes where the study it cites strictly suggests there's something wrong with individualistic societies in toto

Arranged marriages actually tend to work out quite well in India. People might be quick to say it's because they're forced into it, but studies have actually said otherwise. It forces a couple to actually learn to work together, rather than being immediately blinded by love, then the flame quickly dying.

Yes, my South Indian co-workers report their satisfaction as I was greatly curious. They are also nicer people, more in control of their emotions, less anxious, than the Americans I've worked with, so perhaps the study being cited in great-grandparent's Psychology Today article is onto something when it suggests that there's something wrong with individualistic societies like American's rather than the more partisan take in the article.

Indian culture is vastly different from American. I actually kind of envy it, as it seems to have much of what America is lacking. A friendship with Indians has a strength it's almost hard to comprehend as an American. Once you are welcomed into their community you truly become a part of it. For me a big bonus is they always want to make sure you're well fed.

Maybe marriages work exactly as much as people make them work regardless of how it starts?

Does it force a couple to work together, or the woman to adjust?

If women had financial independence, would it show the same results?

There's still a long way and many social norms to change before gender equality, or anything mostly like it at any rate, can exist.

In some places there are double standards, in others outright biases. For and against various demographics.

Parental leave, leave for courtship rituals, equal pay and career paths that work with a human life outside of work.

> There is a dark edge to this whinging which ends up in the "the government should enforce wifes for men" area whic his really messed up.

I dont see it coming, governments typically care for men the least. If anything, they'll go the Brave New World way before doing anything to help men

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