A Million First Dates | Hacker News Reader

A Million First Dates

theatlantic.com

107 pointsAnon84144 comments

For a certain subset (perhaps minority) of the population, these sites are nothing but a bait-and-switch. And I think dating sites attract many of us (as I am indeed a member of this subset.)

I'm talking about people who lack the pre-requisites women require for mate selection which if not fulfilled, no other characteristics typically matter. Firstly - height - if you are significantly below the national average, you will find obtaining a partner extremely difficult. I am 2 sigma below the average in my country (5'5", UK). Oh dear. I think those who are not height-impaired find it hard to believe how much of a factor this is, but it really, really, really is.

If you lack a certain kind of (I venture to suggest, actually somewhat unpleasant, cocky) confidence, especially good looks or social standing, then your odds drop even more significantly.

From what I have read, the general experience of dating sites is that men get very few replies, and women are inundated, so the task for a man is to do anything to stand out, and the task for women is to filter. I think this exaggerates the already heavily filtering criteria listed above for those like myself.

However, dating sites give people like me hope, the idea that somehow we might get around this problem, somehow say the right thing or after enough messages sent we might find somebody. I wonder how many people like me fund these sites (OK Cupid have a blog with lots of stats, perhaps some data to work with there.)

I say 'from what I have read', as I have sent > ~150 messages with no reply whatsoever. After losing vast amounts of weight, optimising profile, following advice, etc.

Apologies for the rantishness/possibly OT-ness of this post, but obv. quite a personal issue for me.

UPDATE: Amusing news piece on short men dating - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LwRe6tyqY8

You're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You believe you lack pre-requisites women require. Truth is, there are loads of short guys, ugly guys or otherwise challenged guys that get what they want out of dating, whether it's lots of random sleeping around, or a committed relationship, and everything in between.

Please don't talk about giving up on relationships. Online dating might actually not be the best choice for you. It creates the illusion of control and comfort from your living room. As you saw, it's tough work and you don't really learn much from it, not as much as you could learn if you spent the same amount of time outside meeting women.

Try to meet women in your day-to-day activities. Join classes. Get active. Go to bars and parties. I don't know where you're coming from, but if you're shy and lack confidence, make a point to talk to other people, and that includes attractive women. Also, you need to have a mindset of abundance, not of scarcity. There are plenty of women that'd like to be with you, if you go out to meet them and show them your true self and get your act together.

You'll get vastly better over time. But it does take time, so don't give up after 1 week :-)

No, I'm not. Anybody who's tried in real life as well as online, knows what an impact these factors have, especially height, irritatingly given its arbitrariness in western society.

I spent months trying online, have tried in real life, parties, bars, you name it for years. I am actually pretty good socially. Believe me, this is not for want of trying.

I am not willing to join random clubs to try to meet women, as my prior probability is so low, based on previous experience, that it seems an enormous effort for a tiny probability of success.

What this comes down to is the 'spark' of attraction - women's genetic design means it incorporates certain factors, including those listed above, so if they like you + you don't fulfil the prerequisites you'll end up being their friend, they just 'won't see you that way', etc.

Allow me to tell you how wrong you are.

My roomate is 6'4, broad shoulders, athletic, good looking by any standard, and he is hella funny. People thought for the longest he had plenty girls, but believe me when I say he had his fair share of trouble.

Now, this will sound like a lie, but I have no way to prove this to you unless you decide to make a trip to the city of Atlanta at which point I will introduce you to my other friend. This guy is 5'5 (at the most), skinny, and by no means will you call him handsome. However from my 12 years in America, I have never met anyone who gets hotter girls, or more girls. I always ask him, and I mean always, "What do you do, really?" From my observation and what he tells me here is what works for him,1) talk to as many beautiful girls as you can (interestingly enough, you have more chance with beautiful women, I have no idea why), 2) don't be nice, 3) smell very very good (One Million or Chanel5 or Chrome Azzaro,...), 4) always dress one step above, always (my friend always looks preppy), 5) never depreciate yourself, never, ever, even as a joke, never.

Ugh, that guy sounds gross. I'm sure he's cool in person but if one were to simply follow this strict list of items they could very easily end up turning themselves into a douche bag. Do we have to become someone we hate to attract people we like?

More likely than not there is an element that trumps the others which your friend fails to mention: personally/charisma. Someone who has it just thinks they are "talking" and may not realize the power they have, so they won't mention it in the magic lists. But it seems to be what matters most and is by far the most difficult aspect of oneself to develop, if one doesn't already have a "good" personality naturally.

> "Do we have to become someone we hate to attract people we like?"

What part of the list above is worth hating? All of the qualities listed seem very morally benign. Well dressed, well spoken, to the point, confident, and smells nice.

Any baggage that comes with those descriptors are your own. Nobody is making you buy the jagerbombs and popped collars part.

> "What part of the list above is worth hating?"

On the surface, "don't be nice" appears pretty douchey.

I suppose it's possible the poster just poorly communicated, and there's a reasonable concept (like "don't be 'fake-nice', be genuinely kind") hiding behind that bad phraseology. If so, it's up to the prior poster to clarify.

> On the surface, "don't be nice" appears pretty douchey.

Very true, but I think the broader point is to avoid being the stereotypical "nice guy" towards women. For better or worse, being "overly nice" or eager to please is a low-confidence move, something that does not appear to be valued by many women.

Random thought: In dating terms, "nice guy" seems to equal "doesn't push for sex" and "bad boy" seems to be "is definitely looking for sex". I am wondering if what is intended by "don't be nice" is along the lines of "be up front about the fact that you are interested in sex".

Up front, but do not bother them with more attempts after getting a clear no. Put her into the friend-zone pro-actively, if you like her enough to hang out, or ignore her, if you are not actually interested in non-romantic activities. But move on.

He doesn't actually say "confident" or "well spoken." Those are things of substance, and he left them out.

> Nobody is making you buy the jagerbombs and popped collars part.

This is true. I guess I just cant help the correlation in my head, because it seems to be that prevalent.

Right, but especially given the OP, it does beg the question of if he is actually building committed relationships with any, or just taking various good looking women home.

Please don't buy into the evolutionary psychology BS. Human relationships are mostly defined by cultural norms, not genetics, or else short people would have been selected out millions of years ago. Women incorporate the same things that all of us do, our culture: imaginary (and largely delusional) hollywood fantasies about ideal romances. The truth is both men and women are equally lost in the dating game when individualistic happiness is held to be the highest ideal.

> Human relationships are mostly defined by cultural norms, not genetics, or else short people would have been selected out millions of years ago.

I think that humans are taller than we were millions of years ago. So yes, in some sense short people are getting selected out. (Though I don't have data. I'm actually more confident that we're taller than we were thousands of years ago, than that we're taller we were pre-agriculture.)

2.5% of people will always be 2σ below the norm.

Sure, and males are taller and stronger than women. But one doesn't have to be the strongest and the tallest. In fact if we observe the variation in today's population the minimum viable height and strength bar seems to be quite low, and since the distribution is approximately normal, it doesn't seem like evolution favors tall people more than short.

Curiously, sexual dimorphism may have something to do with our mating habits

  The sexes differ more in human beings than in monogamous mammals, 
  but much less than in extremely polygamous mammals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism

> In fact if we observe the variation in today's population the minimum viable height and strength bar seems to be quite low, and since the distribution is approximately normal, it doesn't seem like evolution favors tall people more than short.

I don't follow. If a trait is sexually advantageous, that doesn't mean the trait won't be normally distributed at any given time. It just means the trait will tend to increase with time. And I claim that this does in fact happen with height.

I also predict that if you did cross-cultural studies, you would find: in almost every culture, when people are free to choose their mates, taller males have more dating/marriage success, on average, than shorter males.

Of course you don't have to be the tallest and the strongest, but it helps.

Apparently height hasn't changed much since the dawn of man, but it has increased significantly (about 10cm!) in the past 150 years, due to better nutrition, but it's levelling off. It may thus be said that height is not seen as a genetic advantage in itself , but as a signal of better nutrition (although a few centuries is a short time for such a preference to be genetically selected for)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-are-we-...

That's interesting and surprising, thank you. I'm going to need to consider this further.

Humans are taller because of better nutrition, not due to genetics.

I'm not so sure, a woman desiring a strong man to protect them sounds pretty evolutionary. Isn't the whole pick up artist thing based on exploiting such?

Question: how often do you actually ask women on dates? I mean unequivocally ask them on a "date"?

Empirically, I would say you are simply wrong. I know a fair number of short men who are successful with women. It's probably something else you are doing: dress, hygiene, posture/eye contact, lack of confidence (and not in a "you have to change who you are/act cocky" type of way.) I'm not asserting anything specific because I don't know you. Being short can hurt ones chances in the dating world, obviously, but do you really think all short guys just go dateless their whole lives? It's a ridiculous assertion.

Obviously online, I have frequently attempted contact, before reaching a stage where I could ask that, but that was the purpose.

In real life, I have usually not got so far as to ask for a date, as I have been rejected out of hand before getting that far. And the friends who I wanted to go out with, I have asked out and been rejected.

I don't think it's that ridiculous, for one we're talking 2 sigma out of the norm, on the short side, so that's 2.5% of the male population, and of course there are endless ways to compromise. So that leads to another point, I do want to have a relationship with somebody I find attractive, even if marginally so (I really am not all that picky), if I was to remove that restriction then I could probably do quantitively better. Perhaps many of my fellow short cohorts do that.

Additionally, there are other factors, I know some short people who have done well too - good looks, a certain kind of confidence and social standing/success principally.

I am very open to considering whether I'm screwing up elsewhere, however my experience, and that of many other people has been similar, and I also have tall friends who don't dress especially well, poor posture, etc. who have had endless relationships. It's a huge, huge factor.

First, returns on online dating are typically abysmally low, for everyone. Online dating shouldn't be thought of as anything other than a novelty. I think I heard somewhere that being short counts against you online more than in real life because of how easy it is to dismiss someone just based on that number.

Second, as I suspected, you haven't actually asked many girls out (is the number around 2-4?) This is most of the reason you haven't had success.

Yes, being at a height disadvantage means that overall it will be harder to get dates that you find appealing. This fact is what you are noticing, not that you can't. You said it yourself, there are short men who can get dates they like. Good looks help, but not a requirement. What are they actually doing you're not? Do you actually have to be highly successful to appear so? No. Just looking highly presentable, fit, well dressed in ones style, and yes, confident (in your own way, not a particular type of cockiness), is enough. Even those things aren't really necessary, but they help. Then it's just a matter of actually asking women you are attracted to on dates, enough women until one says 'yes', which will happen eventually. The only real impediment is that you haven't committed yourself to dating and figuring out what works, which is a typical problem with various excuses.

Sure, the numbers are always v. low in online dating, but 0/150 is way below even that low average, and I had a friend do it at the same time and score more like ~ 1/15. That has to say something no?

Well you're inferring that number, the real number is probably closer to 12 over the past year or two, which I guess you could argue is still pretty low. Mostly they have rejected even speaking to me out of turn to the extent I couldn't ask for a date even if I wanted.

I wish I could believe you on the numbers count, but yet again my experience has been wholesale rejection. And there is a cost for each rejection, after being made to feel worthless + unloveable for the 20th time, you begin to wonder is this worth it?

Additionally I feel like this all requires me to be somebody I'm not - try to act confident, because I am a skeptic and humble in what I do, I don't ever feel like I'm special or able to speak out confidently. I feel like faking that would be betraying myself in a way that I'm not willing to do just for a relationship. So perhaps this is partly a choice, I am not willing to sell myself to score dates.

The short people I know who do better are either v. good looking (nothing I can do about that) or especially confident in a cocky way.

If I'd had a hint of iterative success in anything I'd try I'd be willing to go along with this, but I've not, nothing. There has to be a point where constant 100% failure causes you to think 'is it worthwhile spending my limited years of life pursuing this?'

I see where you are coming from but there's only so much confidence/boldness can make up for physical attributes.

You say there are loads of short/ugly/challenged guys who get what they want and yet, what I see on my Facebook/streets of SF/NY are totally different. I've only seen a handful of shorter guys get taller women. Most women prefer taller guys and guys of certain races (interracial stats and surveys definitely show Caucasian guys have a significant advantage over say Asian guys). It's nice to say you can make up for shortcomings but the reality is that it's extremely rare to meet a woman who looks past certain physical attributes that are glamorized in culture.

I think it's a matter of prerequisites. Women will look at you as a friend instead of a potential partner if you don't fit them. That's when all the nice-guy stuff of kindness, etc. that many women claim to be what they're looking for (and they are being truthful, only missing a rather vital predicate) is unimportant if you can't fulfil the pre-reqs.

My experience on the street is exactly the same. I've basically never seen contradictions, after years living in London, a city of 7M people.

I think people wish these things to be true. But they're not.

That being said, a small percentage of guys I know have occasionally bucked the trend.

One guy is crazy fun, short (5'5 - 5'6), Asian, and yet hasn't had trouble attracting women in NYC (arguably one of the harder places to find someone due to the number of good looking and stylish people).

Another guy I know had the exact same traits (except maybe one inch taller) and attracted extremely beautiful taller women. In his case though, he's never attracted to Caucasian women so even though he could've bucked the trend he chose not to.

I believe they had two advantages: one is a extroverted fun personality that makes women comfortable with approaching them, and the second is going out often as to have an incredibly large social circle to choose from.

London, wow. I always pictured the UK and European females as being more cultured/advanced when it came to dealing with men than their American counterparts. Is there the same typical meathead/jock worship in high school as well over there by females?

Great post. Being a short yet confident man is way much more appealing to a woman than to be the 6' average joe.

Citation required? Women might say this, but in my experience it's simply not true. Like the whole 'love yourself so others can love you' line. Which is just B.S. in my experience.

Having said that, I agree confidence makes a huge difference. However, the kind of confidence women like is in my opinion an unpleasant cocky kind. And should I attempt to completely change who I am, become somebody I dislike just to fulfil that? Would that lead to a relationship that would work? I don't even think it's feasible to be honest.

If you're sure that women will not like you on a sexual way, they won't. As sure as if you don't belive your startup to succeed, it won't. You've made a bad image of yourself that think he can't attract women and you find lame excuses in order to not try to change. Because trying to change and to be a better version of yourself is admitting that until now you were wrong and it is exposing yourself to failure. Do you realy think that your true self is the one that believe he can't atract woman ? If true, that's fine, but I don't think it's really your true self.

Sure, and the fact that many, MANY people have experienced this height-bias, and women openly admit to preferring it is entirely my imagination.

I think this 'think positively and it will be' stuff is more than a little wishful thinking.

It reminds me of the 'love yourself and then they will love you' bullshit. I know somebody who has a great job, is good looking and tall, but utterly depressed so clearly doesn't love himself, yet he constantly pulls a stream of model-quality beautiful women. Shall we neglect that case?

I am happy to admit I'm wrong. But are you? I especially recommend this video:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LwRe6tyqY8

Don't tell me, they were finding excuses not to change into the better version of themselves? Give me a break.

Nobody has denied the height bias. We all admit it exists. The difference is that we treat it as a handicap, and not even a particularly game-ending one. You're the one falling upon absolutes.

In reality being short is like having 9 fingers. You will never out-type a 10-fingered person, but you can type plenty fast.

I read the grandparent as suggesting that it was attitude rather than a real factor. I suggest that he was denying the bias, or at least the severity of it.

My experience has been that it's a huge factor. What frustrates me about this kind of response is that I have worked very hard, lost > 55lb in weight, asked women out in real life, ~150 online, etc. with a positive attitude and got nothing in return, and yet suggestions like that suggest it's all my fault and I'm simply afraid of admitting failure.

I wish I could believe there were things I could do to overcome this, but I don't. I have friends who are short yet a little bit taller than me who are perfectly positive yet experience exactly the same thing. It doesn't bode well - at what point do you think 'this handicap is just too much'?

I work for a startup by the way, so this is not an attitude I take to everything in life :-) however, if all evidence points one way, wouldn't it be mad to somehow have faith that the fact isn't so?

But the fact is that it really is not as severe as you seem to think.

Let me put it this way: I'm willing to bet that, whatever deficiencies you have, I have worse. I'm an overweight, short-ish, East Asian, culturally western, engineer, dating in NYC. The only way to get it worse than me is to be all of the above, except Black or Latino. According to popular perception of my demographic I am a creepy, misogynistic, effeminate loser whose redeeming quality is mathematics.

My demographic is among the least replied-to on OKCupid, according to OKTrends.

But yet I do ok for myself. I've gone on dates with about a dozen people in the last year, all of which originated online.

This isn't about which one of us has it worse. It's about the fact that all handicaps in the dating arena are correctable to a large degree. You may never be a Brad Pitt, but you sure as hell can have a good time.

No doubt you've tried to improve your situation. If you aren't having luck with it, may I suggest that it's because you're not doing the right things, rather than you being a hopelessly lost cause? It is after all not about working hard, and all about working smart.

BTW, if you are in a place where you have serious self esteem problems re:dating, dont't go online. Online dating is an extremely low yield, spammy game where everyone (both female and male) are 10x pickier than they are IRL. Until you're in a place where you can take hundreds of rejections in a row without hitting your ego, keep it IRL.

You are dating in NYC - that's an advantage for a man. Bay Area would be significantly worse.

Of course crippled person would be in even worse position.

I agree with your overall point though.

I lived in SF until a few months ago. My dating performance there was only marginally worse than NYC.

NYC has more females than males, but I'm also not in finance, nor do I ascribe to the young professional set. The typical NYC "scene" does me no favors.

But yes, a severely handicapped person would probably have it much worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Strauss

Height is a relative thing though. I used to club with a good friend of mine, about 6'8". I'm 6'2". Females used to flock to him when we hit clubs; all he had to do was walk in. I had to put up a lot of effort just to get a "hello". I grew bitter and mentally bashed females for a long time for being so shallow; that mentality reinforces itself and destroys dating prospects. I missed out on a lot of opportunities because of that. On the dating front, optimism always trumps pessimism. Do the math, there statistically has to be someone who would want you in a city of 7m.

I had a very similar attitude to yours about 6 years ago. I sympathize with your frustration. Although I am not denying that it may be harder for you to find someone, I think your current attitude/self-perspective is not helpful to you.

I highly recommend this book, in absolute seriousness:

<http://www.amazon.com/Self-Esteem-Cognitive-Techniques-Asses...;

It was a real revelation to me. Don't dismiss it as psychobabble-nonsense just yet, buy it for a friday night when you are dateless, then honestly consider what it has to say. If nothing else, it will make you happier while you continue to have limited success dating. Also, when you find a woman who will look past the height thing, you want to be in a healthy place to actually make the relationship work from there.

For what its worth, I married to a truly wonderful, brilliant and amazing woman a few years ago. The person I was before reading that book would not have gotten past the first date with her, and certainly wouldn't have been a good partner in a relationship.

Thanks, appreciate your candour + glad to hear things worked out for you. I'm always open to different perspectives on things. I will check out the book.

The first rule of online dating: Nobody owes you anything.

If you forget that, you're destined to wind up on that niceguysofokc site.

I don't think anybody owes me anything, sure, of course. Personally, I took the attitude of optimising profile, contact endless women using advice from those successful on the site to elicit replies, play the numbers game.

My point is that there are a subset of us who have such low odds of response that it'd be better not to be on there at all.

I wonder how many of us fund these sites... I have heard of seedier sites in the past using false profiles to reply to people, perhaps keeping those such as myself strung along...

I've done all that stuff too. It sucks for me because the pool is pretty modest hereabouts. I haven't sent ~150 unanswered messages, for example, because there aren't 150 women I'd message in Perth.

When I stopped taking it seriously, my results improved. Periodically I get bored and close my account for a few months. When I come back I rewrite my profile. It's fun. Very liberating. Try it.

(There's also the time-honoured tactic of spawn camping -- on OKC you can sort profiles by newness).

Yeah, the thing is, after that many messages sent, done thick-skinnedly, in a big pool, with a friend who also is short, though slightly taller (5'7"), with him doing significantly better, and after lots of previous attempts AND lots of attempts in real life, I am at the end of my tether with the inevitable emotional pain involved.

There has to come a time when you think the cost of an activity exceeds any possible benefit, and the EV of this is starting to look pretty bad.

The thing is that the emotional cost is something you are creating. It is you who are generating the emotion of dismay, not the other parties. And only you can fix that.

"I have heard of seedier sites in the past using false profiles to reply to people, perhaps keep those such as myself strung along."

Yes, seedier sites like Match.com and Yahoo Personals: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-11-18-matchmak...

"From what I have read, the general experience of dating sites is that men get very few replies, and women are inundated, so the task for a man is to do anything to stand out, and the task for women is to filter."

How is this different from regular/non-online dating?

It's not, just exaggerated, as facing 100 emails in your inbox vs. some guy face-to-face is a different proposition I think.

Perhaps a distillation of my point is - 'do dating sites give false hope to undateable people?'

I'd love to see the data on people who get few/no replies, and what % of income they produce. It'll differ between ad-supported + paid I expect too.

You should really try a pay site, OKC in my experience has just been for hookups. People are way more judgemental there. Also I would think a dating site where you could search for shorter girls would be helpful than real life, no?

>You should really try a pay site, OKC in my experience has just been for hookups.

I guess it would be that way if you just looked at people's profile pics and didn't bother with answering match questions, comparing scores, and reading profiles (which is how a frightening number of people seem to use it). If you actually use the tools it provides, you may find you have better luck.

That said, I guess I don't have much of sample size to work with since I've only dated one person I met on OKC. Still, that's because we're getting married, so take that for what it's worth.

I know more people in my age/location cohort who got married due to OKC (far and away #1) or Craigslist (#2) or IRC (dear god) or Erowid than Match.com+eHarm+etc. combined. I've never even met a Plenty of Fish user.

I disagree utterly. There's a significant number of people looking for real relationships on OKC -- you just need to find out whether the other person is on the same page as you ASAP (profile, messages, first few dates).

Thanks to OKC I went on several first dates, which led to two exclusive relationships (at different times, of course!), one of which resulted in my marriage. I also found that OKC gives greater flexibility in self-expression and how you discover others.

Online dating is a bit of a numbers game, so I feel that it's poor advice to steer someone away from a dating pool. Maybe adding a pay site to one's online dating efforts (at least for a trial period) would be a better strategy.

May I ask how tall you are? I am not trying to be facetious, just curious.

I agree that it's a numbers game, assuming you are at least vaguely viable.

Just under 5'9", which I suppose is a fairly average height. Re: vaguely viable, I'd say my main prima facie drawback is very thin hair on top.

There's no doubt in my mind that shorter men have a tougher time, but I don't think it's limited to online dating. One thing I've (anecdotally) seen help shorter men is a muscular physique, but I agree that a short man will likely have a higher ratio of first dates to relationships. It's not like a successful relationship is out of the question, but the process of attaining it can be longer and more emotionally taxing.

Have tried many, paid/non-paid, with same outcome. And shorter women hilariously still generally prefer >= av. height men. It seems to be a major genetic thing.

I shouldn't gonzo myself into this too much, as I've decided to give up on relationships altogether, so this isn't about me finding some site that'll work (not feasible IMHO, since real life is equally impossible), but rather whether people like me are being baited-and-switched much by these sites...

Remember that dating works much like a market. There is supply and demand, and since there are about as many men as women, the supply and demand is roughly equal. But in some places this ratio is not equal. I'm not sure about dating sites, but that could be such a place. Simplifying a lot: if there are 1000 women and 2000 men then the women will date the 1000 most attractive men, and the rest have basically no chance. You need to find a place where the numbers are reversed.

The good thing about dating being a market is that you can find somebody. The thing is that you have to place your standards around your level of attractiveness or lower. Contrary to the popular romantic image of a non attractive male dating a very attractive female, almost all relationships happen between people of very similar attractiveness. You may be less popular height wise, so you might need to compromise on an attribute that makes a woman less popular (e.g. weight or age). Perhaps you have decided that the compromises you would have to make are too great, and you'll rather stay single instead. That's fine too, but it's a choice.

You also have some control over your attractiveness. You have some control over physical attractiveness with clothes, sport and grooming. Fortunately for you, for men physical attractiveness and age are not of overriding importance they pretty much are for women. As you note, confidence and social status are also very important (see Berlusconi for an extreme example). These are things you can work on! Intelligence is important too, and you're probably already doing quite well on that front.

Thanks, very thoughtful post, indeed I think it is a market.

My point is that there are attributes of mine which rule out women who I find at least vaguely attractive (and I'm not being picky, honestly), so perhaps I'm simply not able to compete in this market.

I wish the physical factors such as height weren't such a big factor, as that is obviously impossible to change. If I believed I could eliminate it, I'd gladly start hitting the gym hard right now. But I am so convinced that it's such a huge thing that I find it very hard to believe that'll make all that much difference.

I can assure you that a fit small body is more attractive than an unfit large one to a sizable amount of people (for what it's worth, Tom Cruise is not tall either). From what I've heard the importance given to height may be a US phenomenon. It's still a plus elsewhere, but less so. Are you in the US? Height also varies a lot between countries: you would would be tall in Indonesia (average 5'2), but here in the Netherlands you would be quite small (average 6'1). My father and brother are also small (perhaps even smaller than you relative to the population average), but they are doing fine relationship wise. Not all is lost!

I wish I could believe that, but that hasn't been my experience, nor that of others. I would gladly lose weight and hit the gym hard if I believed that (and I have done in the past, only for all + any health/fitness improvements to make no difference.)

I'm in the UK, average is around 5'10" here. I am in bottom 2.5% of male population height-wise.

Tom Cruise is considered to be rather good looking + confident is he not? He's a good example of the factors which can counteract short height. Note he's a couple inches taller than me also :-)

That's true in both online and offline dating. My suggestion if you want a far easier time hooking up is to simply get into very good shape. Height, weight, completion, and dress are all vary important in first impressions. But surprisingly weight / fitness is by far the most important.

I would be more than willing to do that, if I believed it was as much of a factor as height/looks/cocky confidence.

I actually experimented with this, lost > 55lb in weight, worked really hard, and it made no difference. None.

As you can imagine, motivation to do these things is not great these days.

If losing that much weight made no difference your either still significantly over weight, gained no mussel mass, aiming rather high, or something else is wrong.

My honest suggestion is to remove you expectations. Spend a month responding to every profile until you start getting responses you don't have to keep going after that but you need a little signal to start. Then do some A/B testing to see what helps vs. hurts your response rate.

PS: Think of your profile like a resume you get ~5 seconds to catch someones interest.

I looked a lot better, but there was definitely still flab.

You exclude the possibility that other factors outweighed (no pun intended) the weight issue? We're talking > 55lb, so it obviously had a major visual impact. I don't believe it should have had no impact. Maybe minor, but for it to make no difference says something about other factors I think. when I was young I wasn't overweight at all, and had exactly the same experience.

I agree that the profile is like that. You have very little time to catch somebody's attention.

Do not underestimate the confidence and well-being you can get from getting into shape. And it doesn't take a long time - perhaps 2 or 3 hours a week at the gym or at home, exercising and eating right. That alone can distinguish you from a lot of other people who are either unfit, or fit but lacking your other qualities (I am assuming: intelligence, a good job, etc....)

Getting yourself into shape is sort of like a magic bullet. To do it you either need to be, or will become: driven, motivated, strong-willed and with the capacity to see things through to the end. The improvement acts as a positive feedback loop. I can't recommend it enough.

The thing is... even short girls want tall guys... =)

I remember seeing this thing on TV where people with disabilities attempted to find dates, and a ~ 3' woman who featured on it said she preferred men >= 6'. QED.

Found your photo on your Twitter profile. You're a decent looking guy! I have no advice to give, as I'm currently single too. I'm an overweight fellow in San Francisco but have had modest success in meeting women in the last few years. Haven't met anyone that threw a spark though. I mainly use okcupid when looking around.

Point is mainly about confidence I think. When I'm exuding confidence (feeling like a million bucks) I notice women in the street actually smile at me sometimes. When I'm down on myself (more often) that never happens.

Good luck to you.

Thanks, that's kind! I am overweight right now too, that photo was when I was lighter (recently) - I lost loads, then gained again partly due to anti-depressants, partly due to feeling there was no point in keeping it off.

I think confidence is a big part, but height is huge. And I don't think I could exude the kind of cockiness that might lead to success, as I am naturally a skeptical person, and a depressive as well which makes that hard anyway.

My advice is to just be the absolute maximum you. No one else in the universe has your unique blend of qualities. Be confident being who you are, because your good at that, aren't you?

Confidence is pretty much the only factor.

If you don't have it, nothing else matters. If you do, everything else is just an icing on the cake. Took me a while to realize this, but that's an ultimate truth :)

"Confidence is pretty much the only factor."

Not really.

It's not like a woman is going to throw out all her requirements (e.g. has to be equal height or taller) just because the guy is confident.

Assuming you're >= av. height, and of reasonable relative social standing...

For a tall person height isn't a factor at all. They could say that as height isn't a problem for them.

I can sympathize. I dated online for a time, and the stated-height-requirement thing used to drive me either totally, totally nuts or into extended moments of depression, depending on the day. I am not very short, but I am under average, and I was really blown away by the sheer number of women whose stated requirements ruled me out on the basis of height alone. I think the percentage of women who actually write that kind of thing down might really surprise folks who haven't seen it themselves. This stuff can you depressed real fast (the classic lyric "pretty women out walkin' with gorillas down my street" comes to mind), and not just with respect to dating or women. For instance, wall street or other "money" types are very frequently quite tall, and very seldom short. Not saying that there aren't exceptions, but when you are sitting around thinking about your height it sure can be annoying! :)

(Then again, I bet the fact that sooo many men overtly state that they are looking for someone up to but no older than their own age probably amazes/dumbfounds/exasperates the ladies just as much.)

At the time, I eventually realized that the main thing that the women were saying was that they wanted a man taller than their own height--not necessarily taller than other men. (There were a lot of descriptions in their profiles like "must be taller than I am in heels", which always seemed like a clever way to make the "requirement" sound sexy btw.) Anyway, the point is that there are plenty of short girls around, and I went out of dates with a number of very attractive ladies who were shorter than I. Nothing in particular came of it, but I generally had a good time and never felt like I had wasted an evening.

A friend of mine has done lots of research in an academic capacity in this area (using source data from dating sites, speed dating services, etc), and one thing that has been proven rather definitively as far as he is concerned is that ladies behave differently when they are in a "competitive" mating situation such as a speed dating event, bar/club, etc. All the things they say they want in a man (stable, nice, smart, funny) go out the window and they just go for whoever is "hottest". Dating sites appear to trigger many of the same behaviors. But if you look at who they end up with long-term, it's a whole different set of factors that matter (again, not necessarily what they say to themselves or others). I can't provide any source links for this research, and I am massively paraphrasing from memory, but these are, I think, legit gists of some pretty legit findings unless my memory is doing me a terrible disservice today.

As the risk of offending USA-born females who might be reading, I would suggest perhaps trying to focus on ladies from other lands, as from my (all caveats about small sample size noted but notwithstanding) personal experience, the literal-minded "list of requirements" is somewhat of an American-girl-next-door phenomenon. My girl is from one of the lands down under and is the find of the century (and physically well out of what I had perceived to be my league). We are delightfully married in a "soul-mate" style and couldn't be happier. I spend many a moment disbelieving my own luck. FWIW, she is just about the exact same height as I am.

[Edit: I missed that you're from the UK so the USA-biased part of my post here is questionable at best. Sorry!]

I mention my wonderful wife not to brag, hopefully, but just to point out there are so many exceptions to whatever evolutionary/social programming we have (so much noise amongst the signals) that the rules only matter in the aggregate, not to the individual. At least that's my experience, one shortish geek to another. :)

My armchair analysis of my friend's papers, my own experience, and other reading is that both men and women have an elaborate system of truths and deceptions in our heads about what we are looking for in a mate. Many women have this annoying height thing and a bunch of stuff about income (sometimes masked, sometimes not). Many men have similar stuff about age, measurements, etc. Both are, I believe, about trading up genetically--so that our imagined offspring will have a genetic advantage in successive generations. But those are "10,000 foot view" ways of initially identifying potential mates when faced with a big group of them (like "all the guys on this site" or "all the chicks in this city"). On a one-on-one level though, it's a whole different story--a whole different set of things can trigger that "my genese might be able to trade up here" response. And meanwhile, our conscious brains are doing their own thing--getting intrigued, falling in love, etc--which are using a much more sophisticated type of modeling than the crude ">= meanHeight" gating that we think it might be from looking at the "hard" evidence.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to post a response here was to respond that:

1)Yes, yes, a thousand times yes the "height thing" is a real thing. It feels and appears to be a glass ceiling. 2) It is really frustrating, so frustrating that it's tempting to write the whole enterprise off as the realm of the tanned and shallow. 3) But, as demonstrable as the rules appear to be--the evidence right in front of you--they are illusory and don't actually apply. That's my experience anyway.

> there are so many exceptions to whatever evolutionary/social programming we have

There's a school of thought that foreigners are automatically "sexy" because of the genetic dissimilarity heuristic.

I am about your height, and did not find it too hard to find dates in Britain.

(Oh, and after moving to Singapore, I can tell you it's now actually harder to avoid the attention of women than to get them.)

Depends on your race.

White Males have no trouble everywhere.

Asian males on the other hand...

> White Males have no trouble everywhere.

They do where white males are abundant.

It's kind of frightening how fiercely modern (western) humans seek to turn their pairing ritual to a rigid, darwinian free market. Dating sites want to become the equivalent of online trading for the dating market, but they fail miserably due to the heavy assymetries in dating culture (traditional male-hunter role, competition among males etc.) - cultural norms that are very old and yet being upheld even after decades of feminism).

It's also odd how people tend to link their dating success to their personal worth.

I hesitate to post this because I am not interested in being hit on and I am not interested in adding to the pile on of people criticizing you. But I spent all this time writing the damn thing. Sigh. So here it is, fwiw:

You know, I have gotten a crapload of rejection and hostility in recent years, not in a dating context but in another social context. So I am very familiar with how hard it is to remain open and do the zen thing and say "Those 5000 other catastrophes don't matter. This is a new person and what they think has nothing to do with what all those other people thought." But it sounds to me like that's a big part of your problem. In fact, you remind me of another man I used to know.

He was average height (slightly taller than me even) and he was convinced that "being too short" was part of why he had such a hard time getting a girlfriend. I had the worst crush on him (and my ex husband was shorter than me and he knew it) but he would not give me the time of day. He was toxic and mysogynistic and harped incessantly on how badly women had treated him. He did so in a manner that was incredibly ugly and blaming, like "all women are bitches" type attitude. To me personally, he was rude, hurtful, and talked incessantly in front of me about what he found attractive in a woman and did so in a manner that just screamed "Gee, Michele, you are such a fat ugly cow you ought to just have your vagina removed since it will never see action again".

I really liked him and I understood why he was so bitter, so I tried to get him to talk to me anyway. At some point he got irritable with me and basically told me I was wasting his time and that he would be willing to talk to me if he thought it might go somewhere. For me, that was the final straw. I gave up. I still had the worst crush on him but concluded that if he was the last man on earth, I would get a girlfriend.

You can't change your height. Yes, for many women, your height is a dealbreaker upfront -- just like for many men, a woman's age, weight or bra size is a dealbreaker upfront. Both genders can be equally shallow and asinine. The trick is to find some way to set aside your hurt and anger from previous interactions and not hang that crap on every new person you meet.

As for dating sites, I don't use them. But then I jokingly say "dating is against my utter lack of religion" generally, whether online or off. It is not my cup of tea. I don't have a particularly high opinion of the dating paradigm to begin with. It strikes me as a meat market approach. I think it is an especially poor fit for folks who won't "measure up" to whatever arbitrary norms most people are sorting by. I know I don't fit that mold either. And I won't accept being treated shabbily because of it. Men who think I am too old or too fat or too flat chested aren't the sort of men I want standing next to my fire anyway. Frankly, they aren't worthy.

Don't worry, I'm used to being criticised on this topic. People don't like the idea that there might be factors rendering pursuit of this as not worthwhile, I find.

I'm sorry to hear that you have experienced rejection + hostility, and of course I've not exactly had fun with this, but I can't rule out what I've seen in terms of my own rejection, and having read about many others' experiences re: height.

Of course all of this is just what happens on average. There are always exceptions to the rule, and in fact I have had girlfriends before, so even for me.

To be honest, that guy sounds quite unpleasant, it's not something I do or would do, though I am very frustrated by the situation.

What's frustrating about height is that it seems to be such a universal requirement for women. It's not just some who are 'shallow', though I wouldn't say it was shallow, rather that it's criteria for feeling physical attraction. I'd say the closest thing for men is weight (though I am emphatically not saying men are innocent, of course we aren't), but that can be changed, even if it's incredibly difficult to do so.

Dating sites are definitely a numbers game/meat market type of thing, but to get absolutely no response whatsoever after so many messages, not even being told to go away, says something I think. If it was fewer, or I'd had even 1 response I'd think differently.

Thanks for commenting, I appreciate your input.

I think the closest thing for women is not weight but age. Older women tend to do really poorly on dating sites. That has been discussed on hn before. As a 47 year old woman who has been alone by choice for some time, this year I finally seem to be getting the hang of deflecting male attention. It makes me wonder if I am merely getting "too old". So I am facing the possibility that if/when I again want a relationship, I might have trouble finding one. However that sort of irony seems to be the norm for my life. The universe seems to have a sense of humor and seems to like making me the butt of the joke. Still, the age discrimination that women face only gets worse over time and then gets compounded by the fact that women tend to live longer than men. So being a lonely old woman, no matter how in demand she once was, is a very real possibility for all women.

Have an upvote and best of luck, whatever you decide.

Thanks, I appreciate your comments, especially good to get a female perspective.

You're right I think age would probably be the equivalent comparison, and equally frustrating + galling.

I wish you well in the future also, should you decide to pursue a relationship later on :-)

Oh, another thing. Women not replying doesn't mean they said "hmm, too short". It means that women get absolutely hammered with messages on dating websites. Thousands and thousands of messages. Lots of women just delete stuff more or less at random.

Incidentally, this is an argument for periodically re-messaging people.

I didn't get the vibe in singular's comment that he was hurt or bitter. He seemed very matter-of-fact about it.

A more neutral, briefer version might be "Don't say no for them". Bitter or not, he indicates he is giving up and planning to be alone because it is too much trouble for no pay off. I also may well spend the rest of my life alone, for complex reasons which aren't relevant here. But I am clear that I am not closed to a relationship. His various remarks indicate he is fed up and no longer wants to try.

I will add that the man I knew was someone in a male dominated online forum. Men on hn often make the kind of mistake he made of talking like there are no women around, what they say here doesn't count because no woman will ever see it, etc. I am not interested in hanging my crap on singular. But I do see quite a lot of parallels between his posts here and the behavior of the generally nice, educated, intelligent professional man that I ultimately became so fed up with.

I hope that is clearer for you. And have an upvote.

Thanks for the lil' shot of dopamine :)

Do you write like this in messages to women?

What, in a somewhat geeky analytical way? No, I don't :-)

Have you ever tried to go for foreign girls? I don't speak from personal experience here, but i have read that girls overseas don't have that big checklist of requirements and still go for provider types. I would try in Eastern Europe or Latin America.

FWIW, the Portland regulars on /r/OkCupid complain that it's an inversion of the classic pattern everywhere else. Men are apparently in the position of scarcity.

NYC OKCers talk about the scourge of "trade ups".

Still, living as I do in Perth, this all seems like hearing about the problems of people living on Planet Donuts. Oh, you can't settle down because there are just sooo many choices? No no, please continue, I'll be over here stewing in my own bile.

Interesting you say that: I was very surprised by the lack of internet usage in Australia (well, Melbourne anyway). It wasn't that the tech or connectivity wasn't there... but cafes never had wifis, and people didn't use the internet in the same as they do here. They didn't look up reviews online, for example... I worked for an italian restaurant and the phone number was wrong on the website... the boss didn't even seem to care!

It was a nice breath of fresh air: that old-fashioned "men are men" and "women are women" mentality in tech-usage form. On the other hand it's clearly coming, just a matter of time!

Weird, from what I've seen male friends who were fairly attractive (over 6 feet tall, blonde) would consistently land with girls that were one to three notches below what they would get "offline."

I've attempted to use dating sites on and off several times over the years and barely could get the attention of ugly women. In the end I found it amusing considering the girls I date tend to be models that have appeared in magazines starting with the letter P.

  | the girls I date tend to be models that have appeared
  | in magazines starting with the letter P

Like Pyramid[1]? Did you paint the models before you dated them? Did any of them leave you for a Space Marine? </sarcasm>

Please leave this chest-beating off of HN.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_(magazine)

Let's pretend I wasn't happily married and the women I dated tended to be models.

Somehow I can't see myself using dating sites on and off several times over the years, trying to get the attention of women I thought were ugly.

Ah, thank god brother! I 'm so snowed under catching up with letters A-O here, i don't think i have time for P now.

Popular Mechanics?

Pug Talk Magazine?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofIJhUMhqvE#t=2m02s

physorg is in print now?

This article is a good read, but this following excerpt is an angle I would love to see a more expanded look into:

Indeed, the profit models of many online-dating sites are at cross-purposes with clients who are trying to develop long-term commitments. A permanently paired-off dater, after all, means a lost revenue stream. Explaining the mentality of a typical dating-site executive, Justin Parfitt, a dating entrepreneur based in San Francisco, puts the matter bluntly: “They’re thinking, Let’s keep this fucker coming back to the site as often as we can.” For instance, long after their accounts become inactive on Match.com and some other sites, lapsed users receive notifications informing them that wonderful people are browsing their profiles and are eager to chat. “Most of our users are return customers,” says Match.com’s Blatt.

OK Cupid's OK Trends blog had an article titled "Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating", but they removed it after they were acquired by match.com, a paid dating site. You can Google around and find a few copies of the article.

Yes I remember that, and that's a good example...

E-dating has been going on for what seems like forever in the Internet age, but its near-ubiquity is still a relatively new phenomenon. In the short-term and medium-term, it's probably good for dating services to have relationships break up in a timely manner. But successful couples (5+ years and more) are valuable too, because they pass along by word of mouth how happy they are because of their experience with [whateverservice]...and are likely to disparage it (justifiably or not) when the relationship goes sour.

For a dating service to have the cynical goal of creating high turnover seems to me to be a race to the bottom that may end up having negative returns in the long run. Just as Apple clearly can make more money this decade from a customer who has to buy a new computer to replace their 2-year-old unupgradeable one -- compared to a customer whose Mac lasts them through high school and college -- I would say that Apple's current cachet (speaking as a long-time PC user) was highly dependent on the latter situation.

The irony is that their profit model is based on advertising which has the same incentive to not get you into a long term relationship.

OK Cupid has (had?) both ads and an ad-free A-list subscription package. However, I doubt either of those were their primary sources of income. OKC has an extremely robust survey platform baked into their question and answer system. I suspect that the demographic and market analysis data is extremely valuable and that selling it to advertisers, consumer packaged goods companies, etc. would be very lucrative.

  “Societal values always lose out,” says Noel Biderman, the founder of Ashley Madison, which calls itself 
  “the world’s leading married dating service for discreet encounters”—that is, cheating. “Premarital sex 
  used to be taboo,” explains Biderman. “So women would become miserable in marriages, because they 
  wouldn’t know any better. But today, more people have had failed relationships, recovered, moved on, and 
  found happiness. They realize that that happiness, in many ways, depends on having had the failures. As 
  we become more secure and confident in our ability to find someone else, usually someone better, monogamy 
  and the old thinking about commitment will be challenged very harshly.”

Oh man. Societal values will always lose out? Women (just women, mind you! Not men, or women and men?) were miserable in marriages because premarital sex was taboo? The lack of premarital sex directly leads to unhappy marriages? Some of these quotes border on the ridiculous. Personally, I'm glad the societal value of "Murder is wrong" hasn't lost out to these dating websites. I'm going to pile on real quick and also point out that commitment is hard. It's a disturbing trend that people can now just not deal with commitment (an important societal need, not just in relationships but in business as well) since sites like these offer them an easy way out.

I'm far from the evangelical Christian right, but there is no denying family values play a part in a functional society. Stable homes and good role models are invaluable to children growing up. Good marriages can demonstrate valuable social skills, such as compromise, respect and as corny as it sounds, love. Such things should never "lose out".

Let's not forget that, as the article mentions, most of these people's goal is to generate repeat users, not create healthy relationships. I'm not denying that online dating can be a great tool, but let's take some of these opinions with a grain of salt.

Note the quote comes from the founder of AshleyMadison. For his clientele, at least, and for the duration of their patronage, the traditional values lose out. (He's 'talking his book'.)

My personal experience doesn't match some of the ideas presented in that article

>> At the selection stage, researchers have seen that as the range of options grows larger, mate-seekers are liable to become “cognitively overwhelmed,” and deal with the overload by adopting lazy comparison strategies and examining fewer cues

I find exactly the opposite. People that I would be happy to talk to if I met them in person with no knowledge about them I easily reject because some minor thing in their profile suggests some incompatibility even if it might not be in actuality.

>> Easy

For whatever reason it's not been easy for me. I'm on several sites. The issue above means I don't write that many people. Of those I write they rarely respond. Through online dating I've not managed to meet more than 1 person a year, probably less.

I could go on. Maybe it's that unlike Jacob I actually am looking for "the one" so it makes me more picky.

I have a different philosophy about online dating that prevents the "wasted week" you speak about. In the year and a half since my divorce I've gone on about 30 first dates with people I've met online. What I do is exchange 2 emails, tops, before asking for a coffee or happy hour date (short time commitment if it doesn't work out) and then we meet and nip it in the bud. I've done the week of texting thing and it always turns out bad. The key is not to get overly invested or your hopes up for a couple weeks before meeting. Not that the dates are all bad, but compared to your imagination they will seem worse than they are, better to meet the real thing.

For me this meant having 3-4 first dates every other week (mostly scheduled when I didn't have my kids) and I found about ever 6 or so I would find a keeper, date that person for around 2 months and then find some reason it wouldn't work for longer and move on in my search. I think it's given me a great balance of "just for fun" and "real" relationships. I'm 3 months into a real one right now.

I'm curious about your physical stats because I have this theory that guys of a certain race and height have a significantly easier time getting dates than others.

Confidence is everything. I look ok in the face but I'm 260 and 5' 10"... So obese and overweight by any measure. I've never been single before 30, as I had married my high school sweetheart (don't) and I'm surprised how easy it is.

Beside confidence I think I have my shit together, home, car, money, I own my own business.... This goes a long way. I ask every girl I date about some of the gems they meet and you wouldn't believe how many single dudes are a mess.

Don't get me wrong I'm surprised how well this is going. I'm very picky about looks and don't want to settle so I have not been with a girl that was bigger than a 6. I swear I'm not vane but I was married to someone who let themselves go and it just ruined our quality of life (so says the fat guy!).

> because some minor thing in their profile suggests some incompatibility even if it might not be in actuality.

That is a lazy comparison strategy compared to actually getting to know someone to find out whether or not it reflects an actual incompatibility.

We see the same in many other settings, like shopping: Give people more choice beyond a relatively small number, and they on average become less likely to find a choice they see as satisfactory. If your choice is ketchup or mustard, it's relatively easy. If you're faced with five of each, you might decide what you really want is mustard from a specific village, hand picked by virgins.

"Lazy comparison strategy" seems like a poor name for that strategy as meeting people in person is far lazier "take what comes along" (ie: no comparison) vs "reading 1000 profiles" (lots of comparison).

You're doing it wrong, skim a bunch of profiles and copy and paste short messages with very slight variations. Investing time in a first message, hell even reading a whole profile on an online dating site is a huge waste of time. Also, stop being so picky.

You're right, but I wish you weren't. It's a classic case of tragedy of the commons. Spamming is individually optimal, but highly detrimental to overall outcome as the signal to noise ratio drops through the floor.

The worse the signal to noise ratio the more people need to spam to get a hit. At this point OKCupid is just one massive cesspool of copypasta flying around at great volume.

I agree for the most part. You can be picky once you actually get a response. Start with a wide net of needs. Age range, body type, kids

Whether you are looking for "the one" or for "the many", the mathematics is still the same. You need to reach out to lots of women.

You aren't disagreeing. Both you and the article state that your decision making process collapses.

Does anyone else want to take a different tack here?

Perhaps we need to start considering if we're entering a somewhat polyamorous age. Perhaps monogamy makes less sense today. This is a dangerous subject... it certainly isn't something I can talk to my partner about openly. But that's why I bring it up: perhaps as a society we need to start admitting that we have changed our level of expectations on what is okay for activity partners and perhaps even sex partners, with members of the opposite sex.

Perhaps we can have our cake and eat it too. We should acknowledge that long-term relationships built on friendships may not always provide all the perks we expect in this internet age. Perhaps we need not lose these wonderful relationships in the wake... rather have both.

I'm not offering a clear path for how it would work or how to get there. But I'm challenging the baseline assumption here that, somehow, a more liquid market for cross-sexual meeting is a bad thing. It's the reality of today, so perhaps we need to update our lifestyles.

Polyamorous relationships are on the rise due to the age of self-centered and narcissistic people. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the nuclear family for everyone credo. But let's not fool ourselves about being more open minded. It's just the basic irrational impulse, now unrestrained.

TL;DR: anecdotally, "internet dating has made people more disposable"

The argument goes that internet dating has made commitment less attractive, and divorce more common.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. In the future we will have fewer people clinging to abusive partners and putting up with destructive relationships. Online dating provides more options.

On the other hand, a lot more children are going to grow up without both their biological parents. Is that such a bad thing? I'm not convinced it is, but I've never really bought into the concept of family.

Counterpoint: I'm young, but I still measure my core friendships in decades ...

I'm not going to settle for a life where 'romantic partner' is not a core friendship, one which I can rely on in the same way as my lifelong friends and close family.

I think that a lot of people feel the same way.

To me, that's more persuasive even than the 'think of the children argument', and much less likely to change.

The 'think of the children' argument is pretty strong here. We all know the stats: kids from single-parent families tend to grow up in more negative environments, tend towards worse outcomes.

But maybe society can solve that problem! For instance, if a kid's parents are divorced, but are constantly in caring relationships, maybe society can evolve to a point where those kids aren't disadvantaged, and where they have a relatively stable upbringing.

But that won't change my mind about 'romantic partner' belonging in the category of 'secure, long-term friendships.'

People change; they come and go.

To me, the notion of marriage flies in the face of this basic observation. How can you possibly commit to spending the rest of your life with someone when you know so little about how they will change, intentionally or not?

> The 'think of the children' argument is pretty strong here. We all know the stats: kids from single-parent families tend to grow up in more negative environments, tend towards worse outcomes.

This sounds like selection bias to me.

At present, in Western society at least, members of certain socioeconomic classes are significantly more likely to become single parents, and it is likely the socioeconomic conditions their children grow up in that have the most significant effect on their outcomes.

Conversely, abusive relationships and unhappy marriages also provide negative environments for children to grow up in. A future in which relationships are more fluid could reduce the number of children growing up in these environments.

> Conversely, abusive relationships and unhappy marriages also provide negative environments for children to grow up in. A future in which relationships are more fluid could reduce the number of children growing up in these environments.

Maybe in the completely imaginary world where the parents who have stable long term relationships are the ones most likely to be abused and unhappy.

In the real world, parents who have "fluid" romantic attachments with people who "come and go" are the ones more likely to be raising their children in negative and abusive environments.

People don't change totally randomly. Relationships take work, like any other hobby or vocation

People don't change as much as they'd like to think too. Especially after a certain age, 26-30? They are more predictable than not

Now you have to really hope that your romantic partner sees things just the way you do.

That's a primary concern in pretty much every single romantic relationship.

Well, I haven't solved that part!

Nor do I think the permanence-of-marriage problem is any more or less solvable than the disadvantaged-single-parent-children problem.

But the permanence-of-marriage problem interests me, at least in my case.

And it seems like a problem that can be addressed in ways that improve outcomes, even granting that it has random/unknowable components.

> But maybe society can solve that problem! For instance, if a kid's parents are divorced, but are constantly in caring relationships, maybe society can evolve to a point where those kids aren't disadvantaged, and where they have a relatively stable upbringing.

See Sweden: where there are a lot of single parents but (unlike the US) children do not suffer from worse outcomes.

> On the other hand, a lot more children are going to grow up without both their biological parents. Is that such a bad thing? I'm not convinced it is, but I've never really bought into the concept of family.

May I ask: Do you have children? What would you feel if your partner left the country with those children? Would you still feel the same way if you did not have the money for law to get some kind of custody of those children?

Yes, I thought that most of what the article stated was well supported, but they made a leap from "people are more likely to leave relationships that aren't that great" to social values suffering. I'd rather be single than trapped in a marriage I don't really enjoy.

It's tough, though. If you ask very happily married 60+ old couples, I think most will tell you that there was a patch or two they didn't really enjoy, and that they are happy they rode it out.

The trick is knowing when to make that call. Having a list of a thousand compatible singles a click away probably lowers the "walk away" threshold quite a bit.

Affairs have existed as long as marriage. There is a "walk back" threshold as well. People are practical by nature, if shortsighted.

Thank you. I kept waiting and waiting for the article to get to its point, and it just kept going on and on as a shaggy-dog story.

TL;DR: tl;drs have made journalism disposable :)

No, they raised the quality bar.

This article considers only the people whose aim in relationship is to aid in their lonliness, find someone to be with, blah blah. What about those who want to have kids, and a family. I dont think anyone will have the same line of thought after having kids.

The goals may change, but lots of people leave their spouse even after having kids, so it's not a perfect guarantee. Not saying that is right, or desirable, but it's definitely something that happens.

It's too early to tell what the effect will be on these kinds of couples. Even with kids, you go through phases, and life at age 1 (for the children) is vastly different than at age 21

One question that's come up for me a number of times in the past 2 years or so is "how permanent does a healthy relationship need to be?" Traditional values suggest that "'til death do us part" is the desired level of permanence, but as a society (even preceding online dating) we've been moving away from that idea. More specifically, it used to be somewhat taboo for a widow to remarry, but now it's almost expected that a young widow will eventually find another spouse.

As our expected lifespan grows, are the costs and benefits of fully committing to a single person changing? As far as kids are concerned, you want a marriage to last long enough to get the kids to a certain degree of autonomy, but is that level changing too (which is interesting, because it might seem that kids are taking longer to gain autonomy compared to a hundred years ago).

But we all expect to become grandparents. This is clearly beyond the point where you need to commit to a spouse for childhood reasons. Is our changing environment enough to justify an expectation that marriage should no longer be permanent?

Stop investing your time in dating sites and go outside.

OP Singular,

I have felt your pain, and I cured it for myself. The answer is not to become someone you dislike or are uncomfortable with - but instead, to grow the person you are into a person you are MORE proud.

Besides this arbitrary idea of dating quantities and success score numbers judged by the numbers of responses, let's presume to say you would be happy finding just ONE person to start with who mutually is attractive and fun to be with. Let's not get overeager just yet looking for THE ONE for all eternity, if there even is such a thing (See Dan Savage videos). Let's take this process one step at a time - just get a date, any date. Ugly, fat, tall, short, pretty, sexy, smart, boring. Doesn't matter. Get a date. Then get two. Then three. Then more. And as you realize that people are people regardless of their exterior, you are going to become a far more likable, confidently social, comfortable, and engaging person - who SINCERELY unconditionally appreciates women - your charisma will naturally improve.

And women will sense that, because indeed you accept them absolutely regardless of what they would wish to do or say or act around you. You must learn and internalize that you are impervious to any of their negativity. To anyone's negativity, man or woman, because you utterly believe in yourself and the rich, successful, beautiful life journey that you are on. Your positivity is too strong, indeed. You don't beat yourself up, and think YOU are unlovable just because there IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THEM. If you do these things, if you accept the things you can't change, your height, facial structure perhaps (plastic surgery?), whatever else you consider your lot in life, at the very least, you are going to become an extraordinarily popular personal energy to be around.

Now taking this self-embrace further, why not do things that will only better you? For instance, post a picture of yourself here, now that you have such a popular thread. Begin that effort you are no longer sensitive to the negativity anyone might bring to you commenting how you look, what height you are, or any other feature about you. 'Tis all just fodder to be examined, if there is or isn't something you can do to improve your situation. There ARE always things you can do, even if some things you have no control over. Proactivity, unconditional positivity, and pragmatism are your main principles now!

If you are indeed a bit scrawny and unhappy with your body structure, then learn to weight lift and grow your body. Take dancing classes, where your skills in dancing might overcome your physical structure. Do whatever else is active and physical, if you think that is the realm in which you lack.

I promise you, if you post a picture, or better yet, a video of yourself talking to us about your life situation, you are going to get immense and valuable feedback, far better than you are from the one dimensionality of textual defense and argumentation.. We don't, unfortunately or fortunately, live in merely a world of literal characters, so much as unique, unpredictable, infinitely dynamic human characters. =)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com