I would opt out if I was a poor young man today, and focus on enjoying the small pleasures (drinking with my buddies, playing PS5). The hill they are expected to climb is ludicrous, and I am not surprised they respond by walking away.
What are the rising standards though? Not beating your wife?
Have you not noticed how much more we expect from men as partners?
NB I’m not saying we shouldn’t expect more from them. I’m saying many are seeing the list of demands, and opting out of even trying
I...honestly cannot tell if this is meant ironically. Those things seem like table stakes for being an adult. It's not "expecting more of them" to simply expect people to...grow up, and help care for the other people in their lives. You write "participating in chores" as if that's one of a list of demands!
That's not a demand; that's just...life.
Emotions and social games are a lot trickier to navigate for men, who didn't have umpteen years of evolution to practice.
In a lot of ways, we're expecting men to be more like women, and women more like men, while hating each other for it. Divide and conquer, the oldest game in the book.
Can you provide some specifics?
The sad part is that most men "need" feminine energy to complement their own, and vice versa.
Not to mention there is no indication from women that they will tolerate the few things you need to learn about and improve.
This is why more just give up prematurely.
My dad taught me boys do the opposite. My schoolmates told me that emotions were not for boys. I'm pretty sure I'm not a unique snowflake.
> participating in chores
Dad said that boys don't do domestic chores. If a couple lives inside an apartment, all chores are domestic.
> providing a comfortable lifestyle while not working all the time
Jesus, this is not exactly trivial for most of us.
> being reasonably well-read
Very few of my friends, family and acquaintances are well-read. I'm pretty sure they don't even know what table stakes are. But it's not a hard requirement, they have kids anyway.
> good conversationalist
Not a trivial thing either. Incidentally, being well-read doesn't help if your partner is not, or if your partner is onto serious books and you like to read horny gay romps.
I appreciate the fact that people like this exist, everywhere, in large quantities. But that means that the dating market, in some places, have decided there is no product market fit. Very HN statement.
Now, the options are - rebrand, or move to new market, or government regulation to provide ‘protectionist’ tariffs and trade barriers to promote ‘homegrown industries’.
I prefer the free market, but I can understand why the West Virginia coal miners want the government to bail them out. I’m not sure what to do about this state of events at all.
For, it is table stakes to be generally decent at having a work ethic at all, and to also value family time (within the reasonable constraints of work), and thus to do your reasonable best within your means even if that means a pretty meager, but passable material lifestyle, and/or there's an attempt to consistently make time for family regularly every week, even if it's a little limited by work schedule.
It only takes 10 minutes to tuck your child in and chat with them a little and if that's all you have most days because you're busy buying food and rent for them, that's OK. You have to eat and they have to eat, so it takes no extra time to eat together, even if it's a McDonald's or a can of beans and a loaf of bread, even if it doesn't work out every day.
But it's generally seen as not very good to go too extreme in one direction or the other (borderline homeless / broken home due to not working at all or habitually quitting jobs rashly without better lined up isn't OK, and "working rich" dad who never sees the kids ever and seems disinterested the one time he has an hour once week also isn't OK)
A similar example of values being more important than execution, is that nothing stops a very uneducated parent from highly valuing education (and in America, this is a lot more common in Hispanic, Jewish[1], and Asian cultures, for example) and pushing their child to exceed their own meager achievement. The fact that the parent may never be able to cogently discuss the things the kid is learning once they get past elementary school doesn't really stop a darned thing. The palpable incredible pride says it all.
Contrast this to the cultures where kids who try to achieve are seen as traitors and getting too big for their britches. I was very sad to know some young men in Arkansas when I went to college there who struggled with these mixed expectations, coming from a community where they felt that they would be borderline ostracized for rising "so much higher" than they started. This was one of the things in Hillbilly Elegy, which I recently read, that really rang true, even if some others seemed questionable or played up for bestseller appeal (the violent criminal uncle tall tales come to mind -- nugget of truth in them or not, they were obviously selected from the available universe of lore to paint a certain engaging picture-story)
Values matter, even when they can't be realized. Rules matter, even when you're getting away with breaking them. Hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug, contrary to popular belief. Even an ill-observed rule imposes clear costs on its avoidance, etc.
[1] Who can forget the line in Fiddler on the Roof, where the poor working father protagonist is fantasizing about being rich, but after singing about big houses and fancy clothes, settles on time to get educated as the greatest luxury he pines for?
> "If I were rich, I'd have the time that I lack
> To sit in the synagogue and pray
> Maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall
> And I'd discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day
> That would be the sweetest thing of all"
Let's just break this down to be clear as to what you think the 'perfect adult' is:
- Being emotionally available
- participating in chores
- providing a comfortable lifestyle while not working all the time
- being reasonably well-read
- good conversationalist
I said "ideal middle class man." And it is. Every reasonable woman wants that, every man wants to be at least that, yet most men don't check every one of those boxes, particularly being able to provide a comfortable lifestyle without working all the time, that one is maybe 10% of men. A good starting goal? Sure. Table stakes? Good luck.
> Being the perfect adult is table stakes? This description is the ideal middle class man. If that's table stakes to you, either you've got one hell of a catch or you've got a few more years left before you settle. Most adults, full grown adults, men and women, don't meet all those requirements. I do, most don't.
So let's do something. What is the perfect adult? how does the perfect adult, not billionaire level or something like that but perfect middle class man, differ from your table stakes? I can guess tall and incredibly handsome, but beyond that, how is he better than your bare minimum requirements?
You won't accept less. That's great, I won't either. But it's not table stakes, youre demanding someone above average, it took me a decade of wandering through the desert and real inner work and self betterment to become and then find an above average partner, and I'm lucky. I have no problem with your standards, you should have them, but calling them table stakes is unreasonable, you should understand that what you want, and I don't know you so it may be warranted, is absolutely above average and not the base model man. I wish they were bare minimum qualities of most people, the world would be a much better place.
Our great crisis is the growing number of bum men. And rather than work on being not bums, they sit around and complain online and stew.
I don’t think being well read is a demand for most of America.
What, basically what we've expected of women for many years?
I think we have to backtrack a bit here, what planet?
To give a specific example: Solving discrimination against Maronites by instituting a system of power sharing which discriminated against Shiites and Druze set Lebanon up for failure. Can you think of an instance where reactionary counter-discrimination solved an issue long-term? Why be skeptical of the assertion of "two wrongs don't make a right"? It's generally observable in all cases that retributive "justice" simply creates resentment, deepens issues and erodes belief and trust in social institutions.
If you're on a dating app, that's one impression of the dating pool, so it's no wonder some dudes take the 6'0"+, $100k+, abs or gtfo lists seriously
And if you are wondering why they are being heavily influenced by that, gestures to article
I think we should subsidize weight-loss medications.
Unironically yes. It is much easier for women to leave their marriage than it has historically been. This has lead to rising standards for how husbands need to behave.
Yes, and I'm tired of pretending it isn't. I'm sorry I'm a human, not some higher being that exists above natural constraints of biological brain that spent millions of years evolving around the concepts of "be a member of a tribe" and "have a family".
My tribe will fire me the second I stop being useful to them by the way, so yeah.
We've been telling people for years already that them being lonely is their personal failure, not some systematic problem, yet people, on average, keep getting even more lonely. What makes you think that continuing to present loneliness as a personal failure will eventually solve the problem?
Your logic here seems to be that, over time, telling people it's a personal failure (which I don't agree has been the rhetoric, but for the sake of conversation...) will lead them to fix that failure - which isn't at all my experience. There's plenty of issues one can point to that, just because we've been informing people of for many years, doesn't mean any progress has been made.
> Ah yes. Whenever someone asks me what can we do about poverty I'll just reply "I know plenty of people with lucrative jobs, get off the internet and touch grass".
If someone said, "I'm in a wheelchair, so having a job is unreachable" then I might respond in a similar way as GP (though perhaps a bit nicer)... because you can have a job while in a wheelchair, and have a relationship while gay and autistic.
I discovered it for myself after like 6 months of therapy. Give it a shot if you can. Trust me, being smug about it to people online is so worth it.
It's gonna be cringe. it's gonna be awkward. it'll be fine, you'll survive.
Poverty is a wholly different problem, with different solutions, and comparing poverty to loneliness isn't doing you any favors. If we're gonna play that game, how about comparing it to obesity? society bears some responsibility for McDonald's, and for not giving good education on nutrition, but the reality there is that there are some wonderful new drugs to help with that problem. even with the new drugs and before them, at the end of the day, it still is a personal decision on whether or not to do something about the problem.
so the government isn't going to come in and start forcing people to attend friendship-making ceremonies. the solution to your loneliness is pushing yourself to go out and find people. don't go off trying to fix the systemic societal level problem for everybody, just solve for one. fortunately you don't have to wait around for a magic anti-lonliness drug to be research and formulated and then undergo trials before approval by the FDA. the drug for loneliness is alcohol. go do a lubricating amount of it around other people.
Yeah, I suppose the only reason to point out that a problem is systemic and therefore requires a systemic solution is if you're part of a group or movement that is proposing a systemic solution. Otherwise, there's no point, because the only other solution is to solve the problem for yourself at the individual level anyway.
It is not. Plenty of gay men in the world. About one in ten, last time I checked the statistics. But I'll admit it's real tough for most of us out there, not because we are few, but due to all the other reasons. You don't need no goals given by society; make some of your own.