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Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

Yeah when I read all these comments about how hard dating is for men now, how impossible it is and think about the professional women I know and their dating experiences....

They have very reasonable standards in how they expect men to treat them, and the men they date are overwhelmingly not willing to rise to those standards. These standards are maybe much higher than they would have been even a generation ago but for the most part they are still very reasonable! And I am not even talking about money here.

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This seems backwards.

If your friends can't find men that meet their standards by definition their standards aren't reasonable since they aren't being met.

Were they reasonable they would be met.

Let's not pretend that social media hasn't had a much worse impact on women than on men.

This is implicitly assuming men's expectations are valid and correct, but not women's.

The standards I'm talking about here are things like "will not mock or belittle me" and "will consider me an equal participant in the relationship and value my desires accordingly."

They haven't misunderstood the situation or made a mistake. Their BATNA is to not have a spouse and they are taking it. Where a generation or two they might have settled for someone who treated them dismissively, but not abusively.

>The standards I'm talking about here are things like "will not mock or belittle me" and "will consider me an equal participant in the relationship and value my desires accordingly."

What you're describing there is a woman's expectation of a man.

A man's expectations of a woman have nothing to do with the above.

>Their BATNA is to not have a spouse and they are taking it.

Interesting claim, let's revisit it when they are in their 50s.

> A man's expectations of a woman have nothing to do with the above.

Wut?

/u/giraffe_lady pretty much stated a baseline minimum for what you should expect from a partner. Are you honestly stating that you believe (most) men don't expect that from women? Because I certainly do and I have ended relationships with women because I didn't get that baseline standard of treatment.

I'm in my 60s so most of my close acquaintances are in their 40s, 50s and 60s as well actually! The lifelong unmarried women have some what-if type feelings re: children of course but not the misery you're hoping for.

None of the rest regret leaving their shitty husbands, or are willing to accept another weak marriage.

>children of course but not the misery you're hoping for.

It's rather sad that someone as old as you has such a martyrdom complex.

The well adjusted of us don't want people to suffer because we disagree with them.

I think both genders' standards have drastically increased, at least since the last time I was dating decades ago. And both genders are now more willing to take the BATNA and not compromise. Society is helping by being more accepting of single people making their own way. It's not an easy life though, for either gender, but we are probably mostly better off.

I disagree completely. Simply because you can't find someone who lives up to your expectations does not mean that they are unrealistic. Yes, they might be, but for most reasonable people, it's more likely that they're looking in the wrong place or at the wrong time.

Your assertion is basically "lower your standards to what you see around you."

>Your assertion is basically "lower your standards to what you see around you."

Yes, that's the definition of reasonable expectations.

I don't often say this lest it be taken as judgmental, but that is terribly sad. I could not imagine living like that.

The net result of telling people to live their dreams for 60 years is that today people are worse off than their grandparents were.

It's time to tell them that they will not be special and the best they can hope for is comfortable mediocrity.

Lower your expectations and you won't be living on the street when you're in your 60s.

The problem isn't that women have too high standards for how men treat them. Those standards aren't high enough. The problem is women's standards for everything else are too high: looks, height, money, etc. And women are lowering their other standards for those men.

Women tend to want the single best man they can find. Many men seem to enjoy pursing as many women as they can get and are willing to have casual relationships with women that are less attractive and who they would never commit to. Combine that with online dating where women get to choose from a huge number of men. All the women are pursuing the few most attractive men. Those men have lots of options. Many women are sharing the same top men.

Anecdote: as a bisexual guy (now married to a woman), dating women was much, much harder than dating men. This extends beyond sexual encounters to actual relationships: for every relationship opportunity with a woman, I'd guesstimate I had five opportunities with men. And I essentially never had the opportunity to date a woman with over half my income (at least until I met my wife), while I regularly dated men making substantially more than me.

I think the mismatch is largely due to implicit standards on the part of women (must be a certain race, must be at least average height, must be gender conventional) that are so ubiquitous that they don't even consider them standards.

the average woman simply does not respect men who make less money than them. you can come back with all sorts of anecdotes and every women claiming that isnt the case, but the data on this is very clear.

The average woman doesn't make more than the average man so maybe that's not the demographic we're discussing here.

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