I'll chime in as somebody who's been considered top 10% of attractiveness in one country and bottom 50% in another - the difference in the amount of sexual opportunities on apps is absolutely staggering. Not that this should be a surprise to anyone.
Where I am considered attractive, I've gotten 80+ matches in one day and random women messaging me at 11PM telling me they're lonely and to come hang out. I've had more first dates that involved sex than first dates that didn't.
Where I am not considered attractive, I get literally no matches except for the occasional Onlyfans spammer. It was extremely depressing to go from one extreme to the other and I just don't bother with dating apps at all now.
Dating Apps are notorious for this type of gamification. Tinder will literally give your account a huge visibility bump for the first two weeks, after that, it's removed. Of course Tinder would be more than happy to help, if you're willing to pay them to boost your profile again. I've found it mostly happens to my male friends, but I've heard it happening to women as well (mostly of the lesbian / polyam variety)
Are you sure it had to do with your appearance? I experienced this same thing in the past but in hindsight I came to the conclusion it was because I went from a place where generalized casual promiscuity was an accepted part of the culture, to a place where it's not.
I know a guy who tried to do that, but his desperation traveled alongside him.
Here in Buenos Aires if there's something valued as much as looks, is spontaneity. So much, that we have the same words for "going on a date" and "hanging out". Because "a date" sounds like you are looking forwards to it and that's a turn off.
You have to read the vibe to see if it's really a date or not.
So, as soon as he got some attention, he scared them away.
Very good point, this whole notion of "asking X out on a date" is an anti-pattern if you're genuinely trying to get to know each other socially. If you want to "date" in a formal sense, do it after the interest has been clearly reciprocated not before. Anything else really is quite creepy, and it's no surprise that people outside the U.S. will mostly reject it outright.
maybe in this or that country. in many countries, including the US, "asking X out on a date" is a perfectly normal pattern to genuinely getting to know someone socially and isn't considered "creepy" at all. in general, more people should be more forgiving, especially of foreigners, who try to get to know people socially, especially when it comes down to usage of a single word.
Without calling it a date, you are expected to read the vibe. And yes, you can misread it. But, without making it clear, it's not so bad if you misread, because that's where you get the first "no".
I personally think that if one part is into the other, but not vice-versa, not only the relationships won't happen, but also that friendship likely won't happen either. Like relationships, friendships need to have both parties actually wanting it.
As a tall male with some success on the apps, I find women 5'10" or more are much more likely to match me than those who are shorter. They prefer taller men and for a tall woman that reduces my competition.
Still contemplating why those apps are so terrible, but the are.
Shit I can drop like 3 (relative) points on the good ol' 10 scale just by traveling to different sections of my own city. And while I'm not bad by local standards I'm only like a 2 or a 3 in some cities I've visited. From "not bad" to "uggo" just by traveling to another city, without ethnicity being a factor.
Largely fitness level and attention to appearance (very-nice well-kept haircuts, probably a little male use of makeup, that kind of thing). Skin care routines (say, consistency of applying sunscreen and wearing hats when outdoors, from early ages on) can vary wildly with local cultural norms and, notably, with class-related socialization, with the result that some cohorts have much nicer skin in middle age than others.
Plus I've been in a few cities where, frankly, it just looks like the gene pool's exceptionally good.
[EDIT] Oh and stuff like serious hair-loss treatments and plugs and such, and skin blemish removal, short of full-on plastic surgery. I can just about guarantee those are more common in rich areas and richer cities than in poorer areas and poorer cities.
Los Angeles: 19 million people and home to Hollywood. It's to attractive people[1] what Silicon Valley is to nerds (not saying there isn't an overlap).
To be completely honest, I also incorrectly thought LA was America's plastic surgery capital - but it turns out to be Miami.
1. Who want to be in entertainment/acting, but being attractive is almost a prerequisite.
People find their tribes. A few years ago at work we were invaded by an intern army of what we affectionately called “dudebros”. They all had prince Harry style beards and talked about IPAs. By all accounts, the female interns were very polarized by the look.
you present this as some sort of negative?
What is wrong with people being attracted to certain races?
People cannot control who they find attractive and there is no racist component to it. People should be allowed to engage in relationships with whoever they want using whatever criteria they want.
Mentioned in another post but I think I misinterpreted your statement. Based on the search term, this appears to be a concept held by the incel community. Are you positioning it as true and if so, as a solvable problem or just a fact of life?
> this appears to be a concept held by the incel community
Not exclusively. I would bet that many more people who are completely clueless about incelosphere hold that belief. After all, the belief is as old as the advent of mass communication.
> Are you positioning it as true
Yes, I already said that much; also I will consider it true until a preponderance of evidence comes along that blows the pile of current evidence away.
> a solvable problem
That phrase can be interpreted in two ways.
1. Can a person fake being white? I would say, if the goal is a convincing result, then it's difficult for most people because it would involve cosmetic surgery (expensive, non-negligible risk), and ISTR that the skin treatment to make it appear light in colour comes with nasty side effects that cannot be avoided. For a smaller group, suitable contact lenses might be sufficient. Broadly spoken, the trade-off cost/risk/reward seems bad, that's why we don't see much adoption of the practice, but I gauge that solely from canvassing in popular media. I would be very interested in what the sociologists are writing in their scientific journals.
2. Can society be changed to eliminate the JBW bonus? I don't see how, but since it is an entirely social construct, I admit that under the right circumstances, it could happen quickly. Also, as a white myself, I don't have a particular interest to make it happen.
There's a tension between the belief espoused by many on this thread that a man struggling dating is purely a matter of him being an unkempt, terrible person and the fact that arbitrary things like race can make dating a struggle.
I can agree that being a minority in a small pond can make things more difficult in regards to dating but I don't think that is anyone's fault or that anything should be done about it. I took the person I responded to as meaning that preferring a certain race or ethnicity is a negative thing. Perhaps I misunderstood their intent.
I had some luck with my looks although I am certainly no super model. I never used a dating app and the thought of them is a bit repellent. I was never interested in meeting women this way at all. Sure, there is a lot of prejudice from my side, but I don't know a single relationship in my fairly large social circle that came about by dating apps. There are exception for some platforms, mainly less gamified dating sites, but it would be difficult to convince me that you are looking for love on tinder. Maybe this is romance for you, but certainly not for everyone.
And I guess there is a tendency that more women don't like this style of dating than men. So the few women that are have a lot of choices. Why shouldn't they use that?
To me this is about hookups and nothing more. And some people aren't interested in that and I guess for several reasons they are also more successful in relationships.
Dating apps are not a solution to this problem. Period. Stop thinking that the light plastic square you carry in the pocket all the time can be the cure for everything. It is exactly the opposite.
How you you know there isn't a cultural difference where one group replies that you're attractive to be polite where as the other says the opposite because they feel you're being rude?
So is this statistic based on people you've shagged? This appears to be a self selecting group at best.
Did you find more people to have sex with in one group, and concluding you are more attractive to that group? Are you getting more matches from one group? Is the percentage of matches that leads to sex in one group higher? Non of those necessarily mean you were more attractive to one group.
I mean you could be extremely attractive to devout Muslim women and only averagely attractive to college girls. What do you think the stats would say about how many of each group you slept with after a first date?
Sorry, you're right. I made up those numbers based on data suggesting a pareto distribution of matches. I also didn't intend to imply that I'm somehow in the top 10% of objective attractiveness - I meant attractiveness within the context of the app based on my match performance.
> Users are assigned an attractiveness score based on how many people like them. The dating apps tends towards a pareto distribution where 20% of the users get 80% of the matches as seen in Figure 5. However, users are sorted based on their attractiveness score, and thus you’re shown users who are roughly in the same league as you. Furthermore, the average male user gets one match in 115 profiles [9]. With only 100 free swipes a day, 80% males who haven’t paid for premium service will average less than a single match a day.
Considering those figures, maybe I'm in the top 20% of the country where I do well (seems unlikely if the 80th percentile is getting less than a single match a day while I'm getting dozens) and I could be anywhere in the bottom 1%-80% in the country where I'm not doing well.
The classic formula for hooking up is time and proximity - throw people together in the same space and wait - people will start hooking up. No app can provide this - they are designed with the exact opposite scenario in mind.
This is why people meet in high school (4 years)/college(4 years)/at the office (40 years). With the move to remote work in many places we've cut off the office part - where people had the most time to find a partner. What replaces that? Nearly everyone I know who is married met in one of those 3 places. I met my wife in the office before remote work was common (today we are both 100% remote).
> /at the office (40 years). With the move to remote work in many places we've cut off the office part
There might be another factor here, that office relationships are far more taboo than they used to be. I'm not saying harass your office mates, but if two people click they click. Like you're saying, it isn't that the office is a place "to look" for a partner, but rather that it simply happens because you build emotional bonds with people you spend time with and have shared experiences with.
The problem is not what happens when two people click, but what if the relationship goes south. Do you really want that former partner you might hate as your coworker, or your boss? Or your subordinate, whom you're required to treat fairly, as a matter of basic business ethics? How many people would manage to achieve this and be trusted to?
In addition to what Jacob said, it is also an important social skill to learn to interact with people you have bad blood with. There is a sign of maturity to not run away from your problems. That's all this is doing really. As long as the two people aren't forced to have frequent and sustained close proximity (working together on the same projects) then this shouldn't be an issue.
And to the list the once more common community places, like church which pretty much disappearing from modern life (at least in the US and Europe). I'm not religious but more and more I think that church as a community place back then had a postive effect on local communites.
Even the places where church is still a significant part of the social fabric have trended towards the mega-church format. It’s the difference between trying to get to know someone in your 30 person section course versus the 800 person lecture hall.
Tried to get back to university as a means to socialize more, in my 30s. It didn't work as intended, because attending classes while holding a day job left very little time for actual socialization with my colleagues. Ended giving up. I think it would have worked better with more free time to invest on it.
It's not difficulty level, more like just raw time. Most social interaction occurs while hanging on between classes, while having lunch, paying a visit to the library, et cetera. It doesn't work when you rush in to the class and then rush out back to job soon after. Just hanging around people and getting to know them takes time.
I'm going to answer assuming you're not being deliberately obtuse: Yes.
Obviously it's not a bar where you're looking for a one night stand or a casual hookup. But churches as a general rule encourage their congregations to get together in a myriad of social settings. So yeah, if you were looking to meet a person who shared similar beliefs and values to you, joining a church would be a pretty decent way to get frequent exposition to those people.
I don't attend a church now, but my parents were heavily involved in our local Catholic church when I was a kid. Not a week went by where I wasn't taken to some sort of social event - fish fries, Sunday 'socials' (i.e. donuts and coffee after mass), volunteering opportunities. Not to mention just general small talk after services.
If you didn't grow up religious, it's really hard to oversell just how much church events are part of your life, and how much the people you meet can become a community for your family. My dad loves to tell a story of how one year they gave a family friend a few hundred dollars around Christmas, because they knew the guy had just lost his job. A few years later, unprompted, they returned the favor, at a time that turned out to be really helpful for my family.
I don't take my family to church but I do really miss the communal aspects of the whole enterprise, and wish there was a good way to get a similar vibe without the aspects of religion I don't like. But I think there is something special about a group of people with a shared commitment to a set of beliefs that makes the upsides of church difficult to replicate in secular settings.
>I don't take my family to church but I do really miss the communal aspects of the whole enterprise, and wish there was a good way to get a similar vibe without the aspects of religion I don't like.
Maybe there's a Unitarian Universalist congregation near you?
You know, I've always kind of dismissed UU. Not sure why. Having taken a look at the website for our local congregation it actually sounds way better than I've given it credit for. Might have to check it out.
+1 for UU. I'm not formally a member, but as far as churches go it's one of the few that I know of that atheist me might be able to tolerate. If you would prefer Xian, Jesus-y content with your (still quite-liberal) church, another to consider would be the UUC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Church_of_Christ .
Also Unity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Church . 'Unity describes itself as "for people who might call themselves spiritual but not religious."' If you ever are in the KC area, Unity Village is a nice place to visit, the church has a beautiful campus there.
Thought I'd just say that I met my wife through my church. The above is absolutely the truth, though churches vary enormously in demographics. Get connected to a young church with a 'singles' group and you will meet lots of prospective spouses.
Marriage first, at least ostensibly, but yes. Many churches have special small groups/social events for people in prime dating age ranges and those groups are often meat market-y.
> The classic formula for hooking up is time and proximity - throw people together in the same space and wait - people will start hooking up. No app can provide this - they are designed with the exact opposite scenario in mind.
Yes, 100% this is correct. Proximity is everything. When people "bump" into each other frequently, they are more likely to start conversations, more likely to get to know each other, and naturally, hook up.
This is why the "third place" concept is so important. Home is the 1st, Office 2nd, but you generally need another place where people just hang out. This might be a community pool, garden, plaza etc. Somewhat more restricted 3rd places are coffeeshops, bars, art galleries, museums, libraries etc.
I believe that cities that want to attract people should invest heavily in creating these places. e.g. Austin built a First Class public library; I was extremely skeptical about that investment, but when the library opened, its a work of art!
I agree with this, remove school, college and work and what is left? Not much. Maybe a house of worship if you are religous.
Remote work while it provides benefits to people; especially those already in a relationship and with kids, has its costs. Online college is an option now.
Literature clubs, language classes. Literally any hobbie that does not require you to stay focused on device that may cut off your fingers if you look away.
Trying to "flirt" in those spheres is looked down upon just as ferociously as doing it at the office. Have you not seen the viral TikTok of the woman that was "angry" that some guy was "checking her out" at the gym, while the man was barely paying attention at her at all?
Treating hobby scenes as pure dating opportunities is definitely looked down on. If you show up to Introductory Spanish and start dropping pick-up lines on strangers, yeah, people are gonna show you the door.
But hobbies are an opportunity for repeated exposure to strangers. Lots and lots and lots of people start casual friendships that can turn into romantic ones.
Using a hobby as a meat market: deeply uncool, and people will notice very quickly.
Using a hobby as a way to meet people, and having one of those relationships turn romantic: totally natural!
It’s a very fine line, yeah, but trust me, it is extremely obvious which one people are doing.
I don't use TikTok but I understand the problem. I wasn't talking about visiting those places just to pick up a partner. I was talking about opporunities provided by a place were you are basically forced into communication.
The hardest part in any relationship (at least if you are a shy person without much of experience) is to start talking. It's much easier to talk to someone if you already know each other. Work\clubs etc - provide a great ground for a first step(s)
Obviously people will turn away from you if you just came by to flirt.
>as ferociously as doing it at the office
People always flirt in the office thouth. In many cases they do this naturally and even without any thought about any kind of continuation. In many cases they are in a relationship even.
Flirtin is not only about sex, in fact it is more about sharing with other people "youtube pickup masters")
Is it? 1 Tik tok video doesn't really prove the point (seems to me it proves the opposite).
Also it depends what you mean by flirting. If you join a class and immediately start trying to pull every person of the opposite sex (or same sex if that's your thing), that just gives the vibe of being there for the wrong reason. If on the other hand you meet someone doing a thing you wanted to do anyway, and a friendship blossoms, that seems to be the point at which you start flirting.
The problem with hobby relationships is not only that it is just awkward in the first place as people said above. The other significant problem is that hobbies are long term activity. Say you sign up for a club/class/sports team and you genuinely interested in that activity. You meet 10-15 new people, and lets say there are no single people of opposite gender. Now what? Cancel your kayaking club after few weeks and sign for the hiking club? Then if that one is a wash too, cancel and move to learning chess? Etc.
In the case you're describing, the hypothetical person is going into the hobby for the wrong reason. The primary objective should be the hobby, if you happen to find someone you get on well with all the better.
I understand your point. But the original premise is to find a relationship via hobby. Then some said it's wrong. You should have a hobby because of the hobby itself. People looking for relationships in hobbies would be a turnoff.
So the original question is how people find relationships IRL (outside dating apps). Some answer just get a hobby. But then the same problem remains as you can see.
The same thing can be applied for working in an office. People do get relationships in an office but you would be a turnoff if you said you're looking for a relationship when applying for a job.
So for people looking for relationships primarily, what should they do outside dating apps? Or should they just repress their desire and live their life? If they meet one in hobbies or offices, great! If not, c'est la vie.
The idea is that romantic relationships are a side-effect, pursuing them head-on is often the wrong approach. It is better to set up your life in a way that makes them more likely, and to forget about them being any sort of goal.
So yes, get hobbies that you are genuinely interested in, but cultivate ones that can be pursued in a more social way and that have a decent representation of the demographic you're interested in. Then be open and friendly, but don't actively look for romance. Get the rest of your life in order in that manner and it'll happen as a side-effect.
The problem of course is that it is easier done in certain cultures and environments than others. E.g. probably much easier in some slower university town in continental Europe than in some busy car-centric US city. Also easier if you have a more relaxed working life than a busy career with only barely enough free time to eat and sleep. And if people are generally are more open and social and are not all holed in in their apartments online.
Arguably, in a lot of the developed world the culture and the environment has become very unconducive for such things, especially in the last 15 years. Watching older European movies from the 70s, you can really see how much things have changed.
These are all valid options but they result in a much smaller pool of potential matches. Colleges depending on the size have tens of thousands of potential matching opportunities. These are further enhanced by the social nature of college. Work while a smaller pool provides repeated exposure to people under a long time frame. Clubs and individual classes provide a very reduced pool of potential mates under a stricter timeline to establish a match. I am not arguing that what you are saying is wrong and indeed they are far superior than just sitting at home checking your tinder profile each day. They are just difficult and are more challenging with lower odds. Probably equal opportunity to just hit the gym for a few months, do what you can to work on your individual attractiveness and go to a bar a couple times a week. At least then there are better odds that the people there are looking for a match as well.
For millennia, most people weren't busy sustaining the family during ~all waking hours and year round (all the while living 1 not-rare event away from homelessness).
But where do you find people to form clubs or whatever with? Work/school/office. Also covid wiped a lot of these out and it will take some time for them to re-appear
> throw people together in the same space and wait - people will start hooking up. No app can provide this
I would contest this. Don't (EDIT: i m talking about social network apps) apps do exactly this, on a global scale? They bring people closer at all times, have regularity, and even have silly competitions, self-promotion , and all ways for people to 'hook up' with each other.
Of course, in any physical space there is only a limited amount of people so competition is lower and possibly that s why there are more compromises. in a global contest only the olympic athletes win.
And while remote work is certainly going to be a huge factor, things have changed a whole decade before remote work became mainstream
Apps do bring people together, but by aggregating potential partners in a large area most matches go to the top 10-20% of men. In person, women are a lot less selective. So the absence of in person venues to meet partners really curbs opportunities for most men.
What the parent is really talking about is that people in close proximity for extended periods are going through shared experiences. If you spend time with people and experience similar things then you will start to form emotional bonds with them. The parent could have also replaced partners with friends and the statement would hold true for the same reasons.
On the other hand, let's do the same analogy and replace partners with friends for the goals of apps. I think it would be obvious to many that these wouldn't be good platforms to build strong friendships on. If Tinder is the equivalent of asking someone out at a bar it is also similar to approaching someone at a bar and asking them to be your best friend. It might happen, but odds likely aren't in your favor, and especially not if you're not someone that likes to go bar hopping.
I honestly don't believe that social networks bring us closer together. They can, but in practice they don't. Instead I believe they give us the illusion of feeling closer and more involved, but that is likely cognitive dissonance (akin to thinking ChatGPT is smart because it speaks). The only way to build relationships is through shared experiences. This can be done online btw, but these experiences are not doing things like liking peoples posts or occasionally commenting in threads. They involved personal and/or group conversations/activities. That's why you're more likely to find friends playing videogames online than through a social network (assuming pure online).
I think they were talking specifically about dating apps. You either go on a date right away or never talk to the person again. There is no room to slowly build a relationship after "bumping into each other" over time.
In large scale social networks, you're interacting with a lot of different people, relatively superficially. In contrast, if you have a relatively small group that spends a lot of time together, close relationships will form. An example is the Discord server I'm on (started off as an invite-only Among Us group, ended up just a general group of decently vetted friends who play games together), in which several relationships have formed (with the downside of there being an inconvenient amount of distance between parties, but plane tickets aren't that expensive).
> I would contest this. Don't apps do exactly this, on a global scale? They bring people closer at all times, have regularity, and even have silly competitions, self-promotion , and all ways for people to 'hook up' with each other.
No. "Same place" means here "same people, repeatedly over prolonged periods of time". Dating apps are, AFAIK, not making same people to keep in contact "until the spark comes".
As a 30+ year old kissless virgin I have recently began noticing that the loneliness part has began affecting me more deeply than usual. I suppose noticing the first signs of aging in my face led to the realization of all things not-done. I've had a couple of episodes of despair in the past few months because of this.
Unfortunately people like me become helpless. You'll be alone because you _are_ alone: you don't have any social proof, any social skill, people your age don't "get together" to find a partner at the same rate as younger people, they have higher expectations regarding your experience and more.
The way I see it, once each man crosses a certain age without any or much sexual experience they will become stuck in that category the rest of their lives. Whether we have the tendency to lash out violently against others or ourselves more than the average, I don't know. I wonder if the solution by Western society will come in the way of some "Minority Report-like" way to identify us and pre-emptively lock us out.
This is obviously very dependent on life situation but consider taking a year off and traveling somewhere where you'll have better luck dating and just focusing on yourself.
Thailand and Colombia are the two obvious choices to me. Quit work, and just get a $500 a month apartment and focus on working out every day and enjoying life. You WILL find people interested in dating you if you have reasonable expectations.
There's gotta be somebody you can pay to help you develop social skills. Kind of like etiquette schools or something, maybe with opportunities to practice. It's like a personal trainer of sorts. I'd charge, what, maybe $60/hr to take somebody with me to the dog park and help them engage in conversation, give them feedback and ideas, etc.
I am under psychiatric treatment. And the way we treat it isn't by expecting me to magically integrate to society at my age with my lack of experience but by managing the despair.
That's why I wanted to comment here: I found most comments looking for "ways" to get these guys "dates". But some (and I bet it's most) of those who are sexually lonely (or romantically lonely) are past the social point-of-no-return. They are pestilent to others. Constantly exposing them to environments where they will face rejection at best, excoriation at worst is only going to drive them deeper into misantropy. And that may lead to violence.
As others mentioned you could “just jump in the pool.” And it would work eventually. But from these comments I don’t think you will.
Instead going to point out that you are not the only one. I know a female version of this for example. You might seek these folks out, it’s the age of micro communities, however unlikely.
Bluntly and ultimately a person needs to “get over themselves.” Our lives are filled with pain. We and everyone we love will be dead within a few decades. Refusing to live to avoid pain is on you, barring disease or dismemberment. Not to mention unrealistic.
Continuing your treatment sounds like a good idea. When you feel stable, one thing that blew my mind was skydiving. Cheapest quickest therapy ever. In a few seconds everything you thought was important ceases to exist. I literally kissed the ground after landing and said, “I’m alive!”
I'd agree with the point that "it's never too late". However, other ideas seem more suspicious. E.g. it's not that "I don't think you will" - he won't because he can't, not because he doesn't want to.
Possibly; we don't have enough information to know what strictly cannot be done in this situation.
Many times when I can't get myself to do something directly, I trick/outsmart myself into doing it another way. Give myself no choice, for example.
There's also perspective. Watch Les Miserables for that perhaps.
But, as you alluded these are appeals to the rational mind, which may not be available right now. Only the doctor/patient has an idea.
That wouldn't accomplish anything about developing the skills to get a relationship. It can get someone over the nervousness of first sex, but that's it.
I'm curious, how'd you know? I would guess pretending to go on a date with paid partner could help connect some dots - after all that's a real human right there. And the nervousness actually is a big deal of the problem.
I may be totally wrong, but please bear with me: what do you feel about going out? Not for dates but for "honing" some social skills and maybe even creating opportunities (okay less of that but still).
I can't "hone" social skills because I have none. And at my age you can't "get" these skills because in order to get them you need to interact with other people, and in order to interact with people my age you need social skills.
Like I commented elsewhere: exposing oneself to more scenarios of rejection can only drive one deeper into misery. Like wanting to cure an autistic child's sensitivity to noise by exposing him to a string of loud, crowdy concerts.
We are having here a little conversation about a very sensitive topic to many, this counts for me as a social skill. But maybe you mean in "real life" - about which I cannot comment.
The replies your comment got are very very illustrative of HN. Not much actual advice but plenty of gut responses masquerading as advice.
At one point in my life most/all of my socialization stemmed from going to garage and estate sales. This was during a time where I would have been homeless without my parents.
Otherwise, I’ve also gone the Forest Gump route in the past. Walking for an hour or longer has an amazing affect on inhibitions that’s much healthier than alcohol or medication.
I do reject that learning social skills is suddenly locked out at some age. But I definitely agree that it gets more difficult. Oddly, supposedly there’s a long low point until the 60s. People in their 60s have an uptick in happiness and life satisfaction that seems more about actually being 60 than about the life lived to that point.
At the time of this comment, your comment is the only reply to his or her comment… However, thanks for sharing your story. Non-gut responses are the better kind.
> One possible aid for sexual loneliness might come from online dating apps such as Tinder. In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner. However, online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers – perhaps even more so than traditional dating. While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them
My wife doesn't get it ... I often tell her that if both her and I signed up for a dating app, her inbox would be flooded with messages. Yet, if I were to message hundreds of women, I might get lucky and get a handful of responses. She thinks I'm exaggerating ...
I've been running online communities for years and this, as far as I can see, factual.
I've read somewhere, maybe multiple times, that most men are emotionally and sexually deprived. That sounds correct given the data I have.
I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years.
We don't talk too much about this but it's clear to me that it hurts them a lot, because it's not only about feeling desired, self-steem, or they can't fullfill their sexual desires.
It's that they don't have those moments of intimacy that you have with members of the oposite sex, when you're naked or just cuddling.
The only advice I've told them is to get out of any online stuff and hit bars. But they're in their 30s, their self-steem is already pretty low, and when I bring em somewhere it's pretty difficult to get it running. The times we've been around women, they get tired after a while and just want to grab me and go somewhere else.
The've had GFs and hookups from time to time (meaning maybe about 2 years), and from my POV the've been treated pretty badly.
IDK what to say, but I try to not think about it too much because it makes me sad.
In a past life I got pretty deep into trying to help guys like this.
There's a whole industry around it peddling advice that ranges from effective (yet impossible to implement for a broken person) to counter-productive and evil.
It's really very simple, but people just have massive amounts of negative programming that radiates out from them like a reverse pheromone.
Those who are hungry do not eat. You can't fake it, but letting go of fear and just talking to strangers in public flirting spaces (bar, club, maybe target, NOT WORK OR FRIENDS) over and over again while making no effort to hide one's sexual interest will eventually give one the appearance of non-attachment to sexual outcomes. Having a conversation with any kind of sexual implications while maintaining a stance of non-attachment to sexual outcomes is my definition of flirting.
The mindset (feel free to actually say this. it works):
"I think we should do sexy stuff together because it would be fun for both of us, and I'm happy to tell you that because even if you say no, I hope I've flattered you and spoken my truth and that feels good."
I'm glad I'm married and (hopefully forever) out of the game, because I can imagine it's even more difficult these days where harassment and creepiness is much more prominently on the radar. It can be a minefield. The difference between flirting (wanted attention) and creeping (unwanted attention) is entirely in the mind of the recipient. So you don't really know which one you've done until the recipient reacts either positively or negatively.
"while making no effort to hide one's sexual interest"
This is tricky, but key. If you hide your interest, you will most likely act weird.
And yes, rejection is part of the game and no problem. Unless of course - like you say - one is already broken. Then a simple rejection can be devastating of the remaining confidence.
Flirting is a game, but some never learned how to play. I also learned it quite late and remember the awkward teenage years and feel sorry for those who never got the chance. And nowdays it even seems harder.
Just understanding what many women are generally attracted to is a huge differentiator, worth quite a few points on the conventional attractiveness scale. If you're reading this, you probably come across to others as nice and inoffensive, which is actually a very good thing! But you do generally need to show off a little bit of a "wilder" side that's been properly tamed and made harmless, in a way that she can intuit. It's a big component of flirting of any sort.
Might be simple but still unattainable to a huge swath of guys. It's like trying to tell someone not to freak out before a job interview - just go there, be yourself and don't care about the outcome. Let me know how well that worked out...
The trick is to not be desperate for the job, and to schedule as many job interviews as humanly possible until it's just a thing you do[1]. Most people don't feel great after each rejection and so are not willing to put in the work.
1. The same strategy applies to public speaking, or product demos, or chairing a meeting, or systems design for people who feel they are not good at it. The human mind is incredibly adaptable and has great capacity for learning when exposed to new environments. The only exception is if the person has some kind of trauma or psychological wall and exposure harms them - in that case, I recommend talking to a professional first.
> Most people don't feel great after each rejection and so are not willing to put in the work.
Don't talk lightly about such things. Rejections are a known cause for suicides.
> The only exception is if the person has some kind of trauma or psychological wall and exposure harms them - in that case, I recommend talking to a professional first.
It's likely everybody had a rejection at least once. It's also likely a large percent didn't particularly enjoy the outcome. I don't think that so many people should seek professional help though - or it should be something very different from what we assume now.
There's a huge difference between "being rejected, and a bit bummed about it" and "being rejected, and being traumatized by it". The only way anybody gets good at anything is repeated failures. While learning to ice skate, you get some bruises from falling on your ass. Get up, dust yourself off, keep trying. If you fall down and break your arm, maybe get some professional help before trying again.
There could be an ocean of difference between failures learning to skate and failures learning to get dates, to the point it's not interesting to compare. At very least to some people.
> Don't talk lightly about such things. Rejections are a known cause for suicides.
If being rejected by a potential employer or potential sexual partner results in suicide ideation - I strongly recommend talking to a professional expeditiously.
A person in a healthy state of mind can be disappointed by rejection, but ought to realize that a self-fulfilling fear response while interacting with the potential employer/partner is unhelpful and take steps to mitigate future occurrences.
> If being rejected by a potential employer or potential sexual partner results in suicide ideation - I strongly recommend talking to a professional expeditiously.
Hmm...
> A person in a healthy state of mind can be disappointed by rejection, but ought to realize that a self-fulfilling fear response while interacting with the potential employer/partner is unhelpful and take steps to mitigate future occurrences.
Imagine you need to fly over a river to save your life, because you're being chased by a maniac with an axe. Would you fly?
No, because you can't. Person in a healthy etc. can realize that thing about fear response, but be unable to control that said response. Somewhat, but not quite, similar to being unable to hold breath voluntarily, for arbitrarily long time.
You might be right about the need talking to professional expeditiously. However many don't, and are ok, even though they pass through quite - to the point of those thoughts - dark area in their life. We know about some unfortunate outcomes of such situations; that doesn't mean all the rest have it easy.
> Imagine you need to fly over a river to save your life, because you're being chased by a maniac with an axe. Would you fly?
No, I would not - but if I survive the encounter, I would learn to swim under highly controlled circumstances (i.e. while not being chased by a maniac), and swim an increasing number of laps to help my endurance. That way I may have confidence to swim across raging river, if my life involved having to borrow axes from strangers near rivers.
Correct. If I had a cure I might still be doing it. Like I said, some people are broken. What I've described is more fundamental. It probably will be of more assistance to people doing okay with some hangups than people whose self esteem is not in a place where flirting can be an uplifting activity.
Edit:
-Therapy
-Dance classes (not for flirting, just having positive touch experiences)
Dance classes could be still a downlifting experience but yes, could still be beneficial, even though not by much. Some numbing could be achieved, when after downfall one reaches a plato where for some range of input conditions the output doesn't worsen.
I meant talk therapy. Therapy is tough because a good therapist is probably very expensive, and might be a major expense for someone.
Cheaper options would be trauma or addiction groups if those fit.
A lot of people have just horrible “truths” they absorbed from their upbringing that need to be deprogrammed. Framing this as a parental trauma and working through it in a group setting could be useful.
Some people have had success with MDMA or psilocybin
Increasing numbers of people don't drink--which rules out bars. And you seem to be suggesting actions with a hookup as the desired objective--not of much use for those who desire a relationship rather than a hookup.
By "club" do you mean hobby type things? It's perennial advice but it has the serious flaw that to a large degree you encounter the same people over and over, most of whom are too young/too old/not available.
I'm married so I'm not looking but as a game I have paid attention to the suitability of those I get to know--and the number of relationship prospects approximates zero.
"Increasing numbers of people don't drink--which rules out bars."
It is possible to not drink alcohol at a bar and still have fun, but I also never liked bars to meet people.
And "clubs", no he did not meant a "hobby thing", but a place where you can dance and enjoy music.
Dancing is a very old way of hooking up.
Back in time it was the village dance, where the young people got close. And this still works, either in formal settings like a dance studio - or free style on a dance floor.
Dancing is body language and you can signal to other people, whether you are interested, or not. And then you get close, or apart.
It is general advice. Even if you're taking it slowly, you need to somehow let the person you are interested in know that they will enjoy hooking up with you someday, or they won't stick around to wait for you.
Edit: I still need to emphasize the public element. Don’t let your co-workers and friends know you’re into them (at least don’t blame me if you do)
It's interesting to me. I have female friends in their 30s who go on tons of dates but reject pretty much all of them for any long-term relationship. The ones they seem to be in to tend to reject them after a couple of dates.
I'm not there in those interactions but I wonder how much of it is a mismatch between what you desire in a relationship and who you are attracted to in a person.
>It's interesting to me. I have female friends in their 30s who go on tons of dates but reject pretty much all of them for any long-term relationship. The ones they seem to be in to tend to reject them after a couple of dates.
This is simply the other side of the coin, "online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers"
What is happening is that in the same way most women get more attention than most men, the few men who do get attention get to pick and choose because all of the women are going for them.
Women are okay with sharing one desirable man (polygyny). It has been that way since humans exist, as evidenced by the different rate of reproductive success for men and women respectively, as recorded in our genome. This is stable from a biological and social standpoint, if the social environment is how we spent the last couple of hundreds of thousands of years: in clans and tribes, size below Dunbar's number. If you look closely, polygyny is making its comeback since the end of enforced monogamy.
For modern society, this return to acting out the ancestral environment makes everything unstable. I predict in my lifetime for depression and suicide to be overtaken in number by extreme bouts of violence and riots.
> wouldn't it be better for them to lower expectations?
There's two metrics here though which influence and confuse one another. Women get plenty of attention on the attractiveness side, but just because you can get laid doesn't mean you can get a relationship. It makes sense that if a lot of people are acting as suitors that you would then down select from this group. The problem is that on the woman's side you don't know if the suitor is looking for a relationship or just to get laid. Without a good metric for that, you can't properly down select and might just end up with a pool of only people that want to get laid. Especially if the primary initial selecting criteria is simply attractiveness (i.e. you're using an app). This is probably unsurprising considering in the digital world we often convince ourselves that we have stronger relationships because of tools like these (e.g. keeping up with friends more because Facebook) but in reality we don't because we are sacrificing the only meaningful tool to build and maintain relationships: physical time together.
Yes. But it takes time. Most importantly, women lose their ability to have children earlier than men but in their early 20s many of them are busy with other things and think they have a lot of time.
They get less desirable as time goes by so when they decide to ‘get serious’ at 35 it is already getting late
If this is the case then it would seem an easy problem to solve as men looking for relationships and not getting any responses should only have to message those 35 and older.
If they are young they are less established in a career which disqualifies them.
My take is that "age gap" relationships are difficult, even somebody who is 50 today grew up in a very different world than someone who is 27 on top of all the other issues about not outliving your partner too much, etc.
This is a proven dating strategy for around average value men. You present yourself as a provider beta looking for commitment, approach mid 30s to 40s women, establish a bond, bang them, and then ghost and move on to the next one. That sounds like a poor way to live to me, but it definitely works.
Tricky. In an environment where it takes time to collect information about competitiveness, updating of expectations is slow (and costly, because it is hard to be rational about this), there is a lot of randomness, and one's own competitiveness might be typically decreasing ... the slope of the expectation update might be not steep enough.
A common tendency is for women to become accustomed to the type of men she can find for casual sex online, it's rough to go from dating the top few to an average partner.
I'm sure they are aware of the situation as well as their own biological clock and are acting according to their desires. Unfortunately we have to just let people make their own decisions in the realm of dating. Maybe the future is common egg freezing or artificial wombs and people can delay serious families until their 40s or 50s.
That's because 80% of the women are chasing 20% of the men.
Okcupids data showed this in nice clear charts.
The numbers invert as you get closer to 40. Single women at 40 are desperate, single men at 40 have a jaded, and quite accurate, view of the majority of women.
It's really easy for them to do that with the massive quantity of men to choose from. It's a kid in a candy store. They (women friends and dates I spoke to in this big city) tend to whine about bad dates and 'I want to delete this app' but it's what happens when you get 10 matches per day and you have to quickly select who to give a chance.
Then they meet someone, it's hard to drop everything if there's still more matches you haven't met yet.
"what you desire in a relationship and who you are attracted to in a person. "
What the head wants and what the heart wants ...
I am not sure, if this is a new thing, but there quite some social norms and expectations, that are impossible to fullfill (for both sides), creating unfulfillment and then drama.
I cannot say, that I know many happy couples. I met some and trying to work on my relationship, but it is really, really hard. Much harder, than I thought it is supposed to be.
Many women struggle with how the set of men that are willing to have sex with them is a much larger set than that of men who are willing to commit to them. The size of the set intersection thereof declines precipitously as women age too.
It's kinda curious that women emphasize commitability as a desirable trait, yet they agree and understand that commits could and should be a rare thing.
What about that majority of cases when a woman doesn't want a commit? People grow to sexual age in 18 and can be not committed until much later, so in between they can/should/want to have less consequential encounters, right? So what about that majority of cases, do women still struggle when they are in the same situation - when they would have sex but unwilling to commit?
Sorry for going off on a tangent, but I think this needs correction. By that age, puberty is already over. For girls, onset of puberty is 10, reproductive maturity is 14.
It could be that you mean something else, namely a related social/legal construct, but that does not seem likely to me because of the word "grow".
yeah 18 has more to do with the experience and emotional maturity necessary to navigate the society we've built than it does with biological maturity. Our private parts are ready to go long before our 18th birthday, which is obvious from the ultra hormone shot that high-schoolers get. On the other hand, full cognitive maturity isn't complete until long after that birthday. It seems almost like the line at 18 is purely for practical reasons around the need for workers than it is due to any scientific understanding of the way humans work.
"I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years."
I have a friends like this. One solution a couple of them have found is dating internationally. Not via "mail-order" services though. It was sort of a situation where they had a domestic friend who had friends or relatives abroad who were looking for a US marriage. So there was some trust there, and it was set up sort of like an arranged marriage. A lot of people hate on arraigned marriages, but the older I get, the more they make sense.
The international dating absolutely ruins dating for local guys. Look into Eastern Europe or even better, Thailand.
Also, is it really long term solution to loneliness? If only motivation for marriage was to get the attractive citezenship, what will hold the marriage after it's done? Anecdotally, internet is full of stories of "mail-brides", who divorce the men and take a sweet part of his assets with it.
There are prenups, which I believe would be wise for any couple to create (together), and especially important in this type of arrangement.
As I said, this isn't through a mail order service. This is via friends of friends. The marriage would not just be for citizenship. Just like the arranged marriages I mentioned, there would be an element of matchmaking via the intermediary (the mutual friend in this case, or the two families in a traditional arrangement) that has a true belief that the two people would get along well together and share similar values. Then you would have visits and such to see how you liked the other person.
But yes, I see how that can create problems in specific locales. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how the problem can be solved universally.
They can't override prenups. They can invalidate prenups, or portions of the prenup for specific reasons. I couldn't find the stats that you mentioned. I would guess that number included specific provisions that were invalidates, such as custody arrangements, which are outside the scope of a prenup.
Yeah, again, they can invalidate portions of the prenup for specific reasons. In the case of second look, that reason would be if the terms are considered unreasonable at the time of divorce. So it is fairly open ended due to "reasonable" being subjective based on the judge (or master) that you get. But the use of this doctrine is supposed to be pretty limited and should only be applied if the terms were egregiously lopsided or a significant life event occurred (disabled spouse).
I would strongly discourage fishing in international waters. The basic problem is that there is a huge incentive for such women to pretend interest when what they really want is the green card. The balance of what each brings to the table shifts considerably once the permanent green card is issued.
Note that this is *not* to say that international relationships can't work--I've seen some that do (including my own) but I do not know of one that didn't involve one person being in the other's country already (although I would not rule out both people being in a third country, I just don't know any such.)
yeah internationally traveling to date I encourage it.
even if it's just for short term flings.
a lot of average guys tend to get overlooked with online dating, and don't have the cojones to approach their local women.
whereas if it's international - you become interesting - just by being someone a woman doesn't interact with on a daily basis i.e you not the local loser. so chances of her fucking you for the "wow" factor are higher than if you were a local.
At minimum I think most people (the bottom ~90% dating-success-wise, both men and women) in our society would be better off with arranged marriages compared to our current cultural hellscape.
The problem is no one thinks they're in the bottom 90% of anything.
Yeah, mindset is a huge component to this. I think the media has exasperated the problem through idealized fantasy which does not match reality. I think people tend to have high expectations of a match, but don't hold themselves to the same standards.
As an example, I've had fat/obese friends say they wouldn't date a fat girl... Or friends that expect the man to pay for everything like it's 1950 and make grand gestures like in the movies.. what do they expect then?
Just like porn ruins actual sex for so many young men, romantic movies of all types ruin relationships for so many young women. Smut novels sell millions of copies a year to women of all ages so even if women intellectually know its 'not real' it becomes their default internal vocabulary.
Re: paying for everything. A lot of women want to step outside of their own traditional gender role but have a man firmly inside his.
There's a somewhat well-known series on HBO in USA, called Game of Thrones. A character there, Tyrion Lannister, who's a kind of a nerd, describes how he lost virginity in staged encounter with a paid woman.
It could be hard to figure out what would be better - this kind of initiation with associated large risk of getting emotionally attached to the paid person, or staying virgin for years and years, having no comparative to peers experience and somewhat falling more behind, so having to dig out from deeper and deeper pit. So I wouldn't with certainty recommend looking for paid services to get initial experience, even though that could - not always - simplify subsequent interactions. Even though such an approach could be sufficiently different for men vs. women.
Agree. Arranged marriages worked for generations. And to me it looks like a perfect mechanism to tame hormone-induced young people, who, en masse, hurt not only themselves but whole society.
Existed, sure. Whether they “work” or not is... well, for most of history no one was gathering data, but arranged marriage still exists now, and there is evidence linking it to higher rates of suicide, for women particularly.
There's a big statistical problem here--these days the things shown to relate to a relationship "working" are basically reasons not to dissolve failed relationships. Lots of couples stay together but are basically financially-linked roommates.
> I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years.
While I think that globally the sentiment about this is true (market is driven by women), I also had many average-looking, intellectually stimulating male friends that said "that girl is too ugly".
I've fallen for plenty of women who I was not initially sexually attracted to but as I spent more time with them they became so. Not because they looked any different, but because emotional bonds formed. So called "inner beauty." I'm confident this is an extremely common experience for men and women alike. The issue is that this will never happen through a dating app.
> I also had many average-looking, intellectually stimulating male friends that said "that girl is too ugly".
That however doesn't mean that male friends would rule out going with said girl.
There's the "wisdom" which summarizes the idea that there are no ugly women. It's in other words the same idea as above - for vast majority of women men would still go with them.
I've been married for 8 years so not sure anyone should care about my advice, but I wouldn't suggest going to bars or clubs at all. I know there are exceptions, but for the most part it's hard to think of an environment where a nerdy introverted person will be perceived as lower status.
When I learned to play poker, one of the key insights was that beyond the point of basic competence, literally the most important factor is table selection, and second most important is seat selection. It doesn't matter how good of a player you are if you're in a game with an even better player on your left. Similarly, you don't have to be very good to make a lot of money if you can find a terrible player and sit to their left.
I think this applies to dating and social skills more generally. While it's great to occasionally get out of your comfort zone, you're more likely to have success socially and romantically in settings where you feel in your element. The more comfortable you are and the more you're authentically enjoying yourself, the more attractive you'll appear to others. So unless you really like bars and clubs, don't go to them--or at least look for places with a vibe that suits you, not places where you feel like a loser. The best bet is to somehow find the overlap in the venn diagram of 'places/activities you authentically enjoy' and 'places where single women are present'.
They aren't always easy to find and it might take some work to arrange these types of settings if you don't have access to any that already exist, but at the same time, anyone can host a game night or book club or running group etc. and start promoting and networking to get people involved.
Seconded. And going to a bar with the goal of finding romantic partners makes you sound particularly idiotic when you loosen up a bit. That's why many approaches here, which assume rational part, especially - importantly - at the moment of human-touchness, e.g. when you're actually communicating with potential partners, can fail dramatically. Imagine you'd drink enough and start broadcasting a little your ideas which brought you - especially if you're a nerd - to the bar. You're going to have spectacular, epic what-they-say. And if you don't loosen up, you're perceived as incincere, somebody who's hiding something, likely nasty, behind them and trying to catch strangers in who knows which schemes.
Most women aren't intimidated by intelligence. They're turned off by condescending assholes who constantly recite facts and contradict others instead of carrying on a normal conversation.
For most of my life, I have been one of those guys who were like your friends. The point about intimacy hit hard - I have never seen such a simple point expressed so beautifully.
Aren't bars similar to dating sites? A forum for men to compete with other men for women. I would think they'd have better luck with group activities (rec sports, craft/hobby stuff) or online groups devoted to something (restaurant enthusiasts, etc).
Yes, but the crucial difference is that online you're competing with everyone else in your city, in a bar you're only competing with the other guys in the bar.
Nightclubs, yeah, most bars aren't nightclubs though.
Bars are a fairly decent place for low stakes socialization, at the very least.
In person dynamics are just different - I met my husband in a bar. At the time neither of us were looking to date anyone for various reasons but we happened to get chatting and our chemistry was immediately apparent. If he were exactly the same person but I first "met" him as a dating profile on the screen I almost certainly would have passed.
Groups could be drinking at someone's house. They're paying money and arranging transportation to be doing their group drinking in public. It's rude not to engage with them.
There is much less competition in a bar. Very rarely would an attractive guy in a bar be picking up 3 or 4 women at the same time. So those women would be forced to not choose anyone, or choose a different man. Next, an attractive man can only "court" a very small actual number of women in a physical real time setting, vs online.
Not really the same at all. People in bars tend to be much more willing to engage with others than they are on the apps. Its very easy to set insanely high standards when the next person is only a swipe away.. compared to in person you can see 'these are all of my options so pick someone and see how it goes'
Let me recommend how I met my wife: Reddit! I posted, not on the main /r4r which moves quickly, but a more niche one. The fact that I posted is key: Women on Reddit are inundated with tons of PMs when they post. However, there are a ton of both men and women who browse those subreddits but do not post themselves. And unlike a dating app, which is both algorithmically driven and focused on attractiveness, Reddit provies you a textbox with which you can differentiate yourself in whatever way makes you you.
> It's that they don't have those moments of intimacy that you have with members of the oposite sex, when you're naked or just cuddling.
I have not read the paper yet so I don't know if this idea was captured but I agree the issue is not only about the sex, it's also (maybe even moreso) about intimacy and connection.
I wonder to what degree this is an issue brought on by a higher level of education and awareness. I mean there are plenty of loveless marriages and I expect the further in the past you go the more common this was. I can not imagine that at the time when marriages were usually arranged, mostly for economic reasons, there was much love unless they were lucky. There was also just so much inequality contributing to this. I can believe many people were not aware better was possible.
Have people become aware that relationships can be more and now find it impossible to settle for less?
Edit, just to make it clear, is not necessarily a bad thing. Changing the expectation about what a relationship should be towards one where more things are valued is a good thing. It does however mean we are suffering the consequences of being in the transition period between two value systems.
Being inexperienced in your 30s as a man is game over. Sorry to put it bluntly but for those guys there isn't a path that leads to a relationship or real intimacy of any kind.
> I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me.
So, I promise I'm not just picking on the phrasing (though yeah, the phrasing is pretty bad).
I find it amazing that you went through that whole discussion about the perspective of your seemingly-hetero-male-only social environment without once recognizing that intimacy is a two-way transaction and that the other party needs to get something in return. Everyone, including women, wants a satisfying relationship. And most people aren't getting one at any given moment.
And it doesn't seem like any part of your calculus is how to square those perspectives? Your whole comment is about women in some sense, but the only time their perspective even enters the discussion is in one sentence where you talk about compelling them to like you out of physical desire?
And you don't think this might be part of the reason your negotiations are failing? Sales people don't try to close a deal without getting to know the customer first. Why do you think it should work any different here?
You seem to be missing the point that has been made many times here that these studies and reports are demonstrating that a significant number of ordinary men are not even getting to the point they can negotiate a "transaction".
The imbalance since the onset of online dating is huge and it and its dismissal with implied equivalence on each side is a real problem for society.
Even with that imbalance what the OP said is entirely correct. You can't dismiss the feelings of the other partner in a potential romantic relationship and view it as transactional. If someone does it's probably a large part of why they have issues finding one. Even beyond the initial ability to actually speak to someone of the opposite sex.
This is overstating the case. This can all be measured. Statistics like median number of partners, age at marriage, etc... are indeed all trending downward and growing more asymmetric between men and women. The linked article cites a few studies like this. But it's not a "huge" effect.
This is a meme, created largely by feedback communities like the incel folks. Note, FWIW, the Betteridge question mark in the title of the linked paper. Contra everyone's assumptions here, it does not seem to be presenting solid evidence for a "public health problem".
It works out horribly. In China men at the lower end of the economic scale have effectively no chance of finding anyone and many do not even try because the cost is too high. That causes social unrest.
> What happens to a society that has too many men? In this provocative book, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer argue that, historically, high male-to-female ratios often trigger domestic and international violence. Most violent crime is committed by young unmarried males who lack stable social bonds. Although there is not always a direct cause-and-effect relationship, these surplus men often play a crucial role in making violence prevalent within society. Governments sometimes respond to this problem by enlisting young surplus males in military campaigns and high-risk public works projects. Countries with high male-to-female ratios also tend to develop authoritarian political systems.
> Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, is a highlight in Chinese society. But for many young people, the joy of vacation and family reunion is mixed with questions from parents and relatives about their achievements in the past year, including about their relationships.
> This is a particularly stressful occasion for single men who – unless they choose to rent a fake partner or have a stroke of luck at the local marriage “market” - are forced to face the miserable fate of singlehood.
> These involuntary bachelors, who fail to add fruit to their family tree are often referred to as “bare branches”, or guanggun. And the Chinese state has recently started to worry about the dire demographic trend posed by the growing number of bare branches.
> The 2010 national census data suggests that 24.7% Chinese men above the age of 15 have never been married, while 18.5% of women in the same age group remain unwed.
> Your whole comment is about women in some sense, but the only time their perspective even enters the discussion is in one sentence where you talk about compelling them to like you out of physical desire?
Presumably what spaniard89277 means is "I have talked to long-term-single men and this is what I think their aggregate perspective is, I don't know many long-term-single women so I don't really know their perspective"
After all, if he knew a lot of single people of both genders, presumably he'd point them at one another.
Your right about the two-sided thing. The key to successful dating is understanding the woman's perspective. Most men think women should act like them and want to have meaningless sex right away. No, that's not how it works. For most women who are going to have more than a one night stand, sex is a big deal and an enormous emotional investment. I could go on, but this is HN not a dating advice subreddit.
> The key to successful dating is understanding the woman's perspective.
Understanding could be required, but sufficiently not sufficient condition. That understanding should have a chance to be demonstrated - and the choice of actions, given highly unpredictable short-term decision making, could easily make or break the transaction.
I say "could be", even though I seen cases where that was completely bypassed - only the form was in place, and one side of the transaction remained under wrong assumptions long after the initial actions had place.
FWIW: the point works fine without generalisms about sex or whatever. My point was really that 90% of incel culture is just pure self-centered lack of empathy. If you aren't interested in the lived experience of your "target" and are focused only on what you want "from" them, you're not going to be successful.
And to repeat: that same logic is identical to sales, which is another area most incels are extremely bad at.
Of course intimacy is a two-way transaction. It's also a thing where the chain of events and actions happen, and there are many possible breaking points, which at beast move the interaction to square one. So to summarize in short words, "make women like me" means passing this chain of events - from men's point of view - so that there's a passable chance to actually complete the transaction. Note that the situation is hardly symmetrical for men vs. women - I'd argue men are much more forgiving and willing to continue the chain of actions should something go sufficiently unexpected, in the wrong enough way.
I would guess you don't see the attempt to square the perspectives because it could be too obvious to talk about. Like, when we talk about programming we usually assume ability to handle basic addition of numbers under a hundred, which comes handy - and similarly when we talk about relationships we assume the two-wayness just the same, there's no need to talk about it.
> Sales people don't try to close a deal without getting to know the customer first.
This could vary widely. One can study somebody else for long time - see e.g. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070735/ The Sting, where the conspirators take time to study the ways their counterparts behave. Or in other case one could fly by the seat of your pants on a dance floor, when he sees a woman partner for some minutes at best. There could be little opportunities to get to know the other side better though - Tinder illustrates that when you make a split-second decision having barely even studied the image on the screen, not saying anything about the person themselves.
> Why do you think it should work any different here?
I agree with this. The importance of being okay-looking and intellectually stimulating are small compared to the importance of being a good emotional communicator, self aware, reciprocating in conversation etc.
I'd disagree regarding okay-looking - that could be surprisingly more important than assumed. Without looks which make enough of a pause many other qualities are worth little.
In my experience, looks matter to men a lot more than they matter to women. Of course some level of attraction is necessary but (again in my limited experience) women are far more willing to go for an average-looking partner with a great personality than men are.
> and when I bring em somewhere it's pretty difficult to get it running
How much time do these friends spend in social situations with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend?
I don't know your friends, but have known people in similar situations. In all those cases, their were others in our social circles who looked worse "on paper" but had no real difficulties here - it wasn't really about attractiveness or intelligence, but about behavior and/or expectations.
> How much time do these friends spend in social situations with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend?
Sometimes it's all available time. Which could be really small or none at all.
Behavior could be significantly affected by proximity with women, when you're in certain age and experience. It's described in the literature, for here it could be said a social - social - situation with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend - and where such goal doesn't quickly appear and supersedes whatever other goals there were - could be rare to find.
What norms have to do with this? Imagine that whenever a man is in proximity of women it's like a loud signal which doesn't go away, and he needs to concentrate on anything else to avoid following the noise. It's irrelevant which cultural norms are around.
Cultural norm meaning it is normal to be in social contexts with mixed groups of genders without it being primarily sexual, and generally expected of people. There are countries and cultures where this is not true, which makes mixed gender interactions different.
> Imagine that whenever a man is in proximity of women it's like a loud signal which doesn't go away,
This is not normal, and may point to deeper problems.
I dont think most people realize how big a deal location is. Move to a big city in the north east (NYC is the best) and you will have better luck than the west coast or midwest. The numbers favor men in those locations.
Without or with it leads to all kind of emotional problems.
So to be alone isnt that bad.
And relations are not always about sex, the most stable relations are based upon understanding and care friendship. Sure sex is something but after the kids do people still want to live like rabbits, well there much more in life than sex.
The media might make you think peole have sex every day or so, thats bullshit some relations are not based on sex at all but are by all means perfect relastions. (some people dont enjoy sex, or because of medical reasons).
If you want a happy life enjoy other peoples smile, go to places where people smile, enjoy your life yourself visit places. There is no perfect face or figure. And stay away from people who build their life on consumables as drugs or alcoholics a its reciepe for disaster.
Dont try to search for it, not online either, accidents just happen ;)
To be fair this is not entirely due to social dynamics but rather due to MatchGroup companies following identical monetization patterns. They’re just capitalizing on male desperation and artificially widening or narrowing the gap depending on how much you pay.
If you observe the actual dating climate it’s nowhere near this bad and in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1.
Rather than a social problem this is an economic problem, and as dystopian as it sounds I personally think the solution here is a non-profit or even govt sponsored dating app. It would be stupidly easy to do this and also add a whole lot more trust (bad actors may face real consequences), which is one of the other huge reasons why dating apps struggle with getting women into their app.
I don't know if that's true. From most data I've seen women's preferences skew towards a small percentage of men. i.e. most women want the same guys, which are the small minority. This leaves (making up numbers) 80% of women wanting 20% of men. Where as men tend to be less discriminating in their choices of women.
>This leaves (making up numbers) 80% of women wanting 20% of men. Where as men tend to be less discriminating in their choices of women.
Well... kind of. Except that men also tend to all be looking at the same pool of younger women, while women tend to look for men closer to their own age, according to OKCupid's data.
There is a big difference between what they see as "the best" and what they are looking at. If a 42 yo man sees a good looking 30 year old on a dating app he is quite unlikely to disregard her simply because she is not 20.
I wonder about the actual numbers here, and how they vary between cultures, regions, age groups, etc. From what I see from my single female friends 20% is waaay too high. Not trying to be a jerk here, just observation.
Singling out dating apps, or worse a single company thinking their monopoly created the problem, is missing the forest for the trees.
The social dynamic exists independent of dating apps which monetize and exploit it.
The dynamic is the same in real life, for example at a nightclub where women drink for free, promoters who bring them get paid per girl, and lonely men pay $40 cover for a chance to shoot their shot
If dynamic in real life is 1:2 then it’s 1:1000 on dating apps. Also I would actually blame MatchGroup here, they’ve been fighting dating apps with better models for years, every company they swallow has adopted the same bad ethics (case and point Hinge), and the only company that’s managed to stay afloat away from them (Bumble) is suing them. They are most definitely a major component of the problem
> The social dynamic exists independent of dating apps which monetize and exploit it.
> The dynamic is the same in real life...
While I agree it isn't unique to OLD, it's vastly different to real life. In real life you can strike up a conversation with someone, become friends, develop feelings, and end up in a relationship weeks/months/years down the line.
The equivalent to this is that the more focus the app your own has on "hookup", or "sex", the worse the ratios get.
Tinder would be more comparable to a swinger club in this regard. Swinger clubs will charge single dudes well over 100$ for that same chance, and those guys will have to try to get lucky with predominantly older couples. Usually these dudes will find that their success levels go up if they are bisexual too. (The reasons for that are left as an exercise for the reader)
One difference with online dating is that people tend to objective and quantify the other person more easily. In person, there tends to be fewer traits known before getting to know the person. Online, you have a dossier that causes more candidates to be rejected without a chance to get to know then.
In some ways this is great because you don't waste your time, or their's, if there's a serious incompatibility. But I think it can also be used negatively when people are too picky. Sure, there are people who are too picky in real life, but those snap judgements are based just on what you can see. The absence of other information can make someone go, "Ok, I'll give them a shot even if they're average looking because maybe they're interesting/mysterious/etc".
I'm not sure that's true. The traits "known" are more subversive. Did you meet at a country/city club? At a gym? An upscale restaurant or bar? Do you have an accent? What are you wearing? What are you drinking? What do your friends look like? How do you carry a conversation? What unconscious body language and facial cues do you communicate?
I'm willing to bet that I could reliably predict 80%+ of whatever profile attributes you fill out online, with a 2 minute conversation and good look at you.
Aha! But that's the point. A 2 minute conversation can convey a lot about the person which a glance at a profile (or algorithmic filter) never could. That can produce the interest or chemistry.
> I'm willing to bet that I could reliably predict 80%+ of whatever profile attributes you fill out online, with a 2 minute conversation and good look at you.
Hahaha—I have a pretty good track record at the game, "spot the software industry dude" on hiking trails. We have a certain look and demeanor. Our preference for conspicuously-expensive outdoor gear from the right brands (not "hick" or "red" brands) does make it relatively easy as such games go, though.
There was an article a few years ago saying that in Manhattan women outnumber men, and that led to men needing to compete less there, so yeah probably economics related.
But a gov-sponsored app? No way. It's bad enough they have your whole financial/employment history (IRS), but to add your health (medicare/aid) and now dating/sexual histories too? What's left that you can keep private? Sorry, bad idea there.
I hear you on privacy, but would you rather the data be given to MatchGroup who can sell and use that as they wish, or to the government that at least has an incredible amount of oversight and has to go thru greatly transparent lengths to move data? Having worked in both the gov and commercial spaces for a while I’d definitely say govt agencies are much, much, much more careful about how they handle sensitive information.
Yup, if I were in the dating market I would definitely favor a government system. Not only do I trust the government more with data privacy (not that they are good, it's just they are way beyond private enterprise), but they have the data to weed out most of the junk. There wouldn't be a bunch of bots, there wouldn't be a bunch of sex workers who just create a new profile when the old one is banned etc.
(And I would like to see government job boards, also, for basically the same reasons.)
They might be more bureaucratic about your data, but I wouldn't says it's really any safer. Even places with sensitive info like OPM have been hacked. I think the IRS had a leak at one point too, but don't remember now.
I’ve also worked in gov. And they’re not very good at it either, OPM breach especially was pretty bad, and that’s it’s own workforce: the most protected set of people under any government.
Gov does default to classifying documents, if that’s what you’re talking about, which leads to it being very secretive; the opposite of transparent. See the Biden/Trump cavalier treatment of such documents - honestly probably none are actually important anyway.
But again the IRS, which deals with everyone most directly (more than say intel documents) is notoriously bad and behind the times at it’s computer systems.
MatchGroup might sell your data to a company for ads and the like, but it’s opt in, and one of several. When’s the last time government did something opt-in?
Who knows, the ads might be useful sometimes. Giving politicians and bureaucrats access to more information about you in another centralized db somewhere is a recipe for disaster, and even if they are angels, it’ll be a huge target for others!
> in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1
I don't know the stats but on places like Blind there's a lot of anecdotes about the dating scene favoring men in NYC and favoring women in SF, due to the gender balances.
Having seen data that most have not (believe me or don't, but if you want to take a chance on a random anon user I would say I can give a more data-informed take on this exact issue than 99.9% of people), it's really not as dramatic of an effect as lonely people would like to pretend, but even subtle as it is numerically, it does affect the feeling. An extra cup of water still feels like a world of difference if you're in a desert.
Possibly, as disgusting as it sounds this is a pretty good use case for web3. Federate identity via blockchain to prevent bad actors, require a $1 or so NFT to use the app to prevent scammers from mass-botting, and some regular security and privacy measures = you’re good to go
Expanding user graphs for matches across multiple nodes isn’t just easy, it’s actually way more efficient too. Have nodes calculate match likelihood among their users and verify they’re using the same algorithm with a simple hash. Then you’ve reduced getting matches for user X from the entire population Y (calculating distance, applying filters, and then ordering by compatibility, all expensive tasks) to getting matches for user X from nodes N that are purposely geolocated nearby reducing the search space even more.
Basically not only could you do this open-source and decentralized, it would actually be more secure, safer, and way better both accuracy wise and cost wise at finding matches.
Interesting, but if the information's public, that's a no go. Nobody wants their personal information out there. And seeing all of the information before you submit your own profile is problematic, especially if the algorithm's known and reproducible. I'm afraid you'd have a system where you could declare "a great match" to any targeted account for the cost of $1. Worse, you're now snagged in the canonical smart contract problem: you can't fix problems in the algorithm anymore. How do you tune the dang thing after release?
Please tell me you are joking. The cryptolibertarian crowd is not usually seen as the most trustworthy especially when in comes to topics like dating. To put it very mildly.
Can't speak for NYC but this is not true for the west coast tech hubs (SF, Seattle, Portland). In these places, even 300K per year tech wealth isn't enough to make one attractive to the opposite sex.
I've talked about it on other threads but where and how you earn your money matters. 300K per year as a lawyer = sexy and powerful. Even "don draper" vibes. 300K as a SWE? The moment you mention this at a bar the girl knows you went to university courses that averaged 9 men to 1 woman. They know you're likely on the ASD spectrum. The know "the odds are good but the goods are odd".
This is why blind is filled with posts by high earning folks who can't ever get a single date. It's hard out there and thinking that you can beta-bux your way out of it in a west coast city isn't going to work out for you.
Its because youre not a rare commodity and because society has shifted from family-building to endless dating. Big salaries work wonders for dating in relatively not that well off environments, if you had a salary like that and lived in Mobile Alabama, or like Slovakia I am sure you would be a hot cake there, but bay area or LA or NYC it doesnt really matter. What matters is whether you have the romancing vibes and whether youre an exciting partner. I highly suggest you go travel somewhere for like a few months and totally immerse yourself in the culture and try dating, it will be a paradigm shift for you. Places like Argentina or Brazil or Mexico, just make sure you research whether Americans are accepted and try dating there, it will blow your mind.
Having a lot of money is correlated with personality traits that are attractive, because those traits facilitate accumulating money. You are conflating correlation and causation. Lucking into money because you happen to work in tech is not evidence of quality dating material ipso facto.
It is not hard to get a date on the west coast on $300k as a tech person, as long as you have more to offer than just that.
Yeah, there's rightly a lot of concern over the power of the big social media monopolies and dating apps don't seem to get the same level of scrutiny.
Ultimately you decide who you want to date, but in scenarios where most people meet through apps, those apps have a lot of influence over who meets who. Nobody knows how the matching algorithms work, all we see is the effects and a mountain of anecdotal evidence that some men are having a difficult time finding partners.
I've lived in big cities like that and I can tell you its still pretty much the same thing. Even though I hate this word but I had been what some consider a pick up artist before I got married, although a quite successful one. My n-count is in the higher double digits and I've dated a a "Miss" beauty pageant winner from an eastern european country that competed in the Miss Universe.
There's endless science that supports why this happens though. In order to understand why this exists we have to go back in history. For every single man that reproduced, theres 10 other women that reproduced [1]. That means that a significant percent of the male population died without having any offspring, unlike the female population which could always find a partner. On the other hand, polyginy has always been practiced throughout the world universally pretty much everywhere in most cultures, especially by men of influence and power, unlike polyandry which is quite rare [2]
The theory goes that evolutionary speaking, women try to find the best mating partner (most well-off, most influencing, most powerful etc) in order to secure the best future for their offspring to grow up healthy, without any regard whether that man already has other offspring or partners. This is also supported by the fact that women 100% know that the offspring is in fact theirs since they gave birth to them, unlike men which have zero assurance that the kid is in fact theirs. And this is why for most of recorded history premarital sex for women in civilized societies was a big no no up until like the 1950s that started to change in the western world.
So dating apps create this perfect environment where choice is abundant, so men take their shot on everybody, and girls only choose the most handsomest, most well-off guys on there. Its similar to a big high school environment, where most of the popular pretty girls from all years and generations would date a dozen guys in the sports teams and just swap around every few months. In high school and college I was in a similar situation, and girls were in fact excited that I was so experienced and that I was seeing other girls at the same time.
On dating apps most men get somewhere like 0-4 matches a week and most women get somewhere like 100-1000. That’s a 25x difference best-case scenario and often it’s over 100x. Which is kind of insane considering there are about 50/50 men to women ratio in real life.
People say “the 20% top men get 80% of matches” but it’s worse than that. The 20% top men may get something reasonable like 3-4 matches a day, but your average women is getting something crazy like 1 match every 15 minutes.
Because a lot of men like to swipe right on nearly everyone and buy passes which get them unlimited swipes. And most women get extremely choosy and swipe right on only the super handsome nearly-perfect men, but you can’t even blame them when they have literally 1,000 matches.
So dating apps are a waste of time, much better to go out and talk to girls in real life and get yourself out of the synthetic environment apps like Tinder create. You'll have much easier time.
> So dating apps are a waste of time, much better to go out and talk to girls in real life and get yourself out of the synthetic environment apps like Tinder create.
Given your self-description, you're probably not understanding the problem from the men side. The problem is - how, specifically, to go out and talk to girls in real life.
As Elon Musk says, let this sink in. We're talking here about modern times, where people have less opportunity to contact each other - and the problem existed way before, now it only became harder. The main chunk of the problem is that it's unclear how to arrange for a lot - enough - opportunities to talk to girls in real life so that the results would be sufficient.
I feel like dating apps created this problem, the same way social media made everyone lonely and depressed by "connecting everyone". There's thousands of ways to talk to girls, and millions of resources and guides and books on how to do it, yet people do it less and less thinking dating apps will produce results.
I agree with the sentiment that dating apps have changed the dating landscape and have made it easier for people to connect with potential partners. However, this has also led to an overabundance of options and a culture of instant gratification, where people expect to find the perfect match with minimal effort. As a result, many people may become reliant on dating apps and may not put in the effort to meet potential partners in real life.
But the fact is, there are thousands of ways to talk to girls, and millions of resources and guides and books on how to do it, yet people do it less and less thinking dating apps will produce results.
We should not forget that building a social circle, joining clubs or groups, and participating in activities that align with your interests are all great ways to meet new people. Additionally, working on building social skills and confidence can also help in real-life interactions. And not all dating apps are created equal, and some may have a higher success rate for men than others. Some apps or websites are geared towards specific interests or demographics, and targeting these may increase your chances of success.
tl;dr dating apps can be a useful tool, but they should not be the only way to meet potential partners. It's important to actively seek out opportunities to meet new people in real life and to put in the effort to build genuine connections.
There's nothing dystopian in a non-profit dating service. If anything it is very dystopian that we allow for-profit companies to get involved in something so delicate!
From what I've gathered by listening to women, there are fundamentally different problems. "Attention" is not valuable in itself. Getting spammed with dick pics is about as appealing as any other kind of spam. No one looks in their spam folder and thinks "Gosh, all of these advertisers think I have money to burn! What a great compliment!". It doesn't show any personal interest. It's not a sign that the other person is going to treat you like a human being instead of a sentient (flesh-)wallet.
The difference in experiences starts early in life. For boys, girls showing interest in them is often an exciting and empowering experience. For girls, often as not, the first sign of sexual interest is a creepy older man making uncomfortable comments at them when they're 11 years old. IIRC this shows up in mental health statistics -- boys who start puberty earlier tend to do better; girls who start puberty earlier tend to do worse. And of course there are different social standards applied to men's and women's sexuality.
Women also have much bigger safety concerns than men do, and have a harder time getting anything done about attacks afterwards.
I think all of this does make it harder for women to understand the destructive loneliness that a lot of men (particularly young men) face. I've been there, and I remember that trying to talk about with my female friends was a frustrating experience. But over time I've come to see that women don't really have it any better than we do. We're wandering through a desert looking for an oasis; they're swimming through a lake of garbage looking for an intact water bottle.
> We're wandering through a desert looking for an oasis; they're swimming through a lake of garbage looking for an intact water bottle.
I think it's more like, we're both in a corner store and while many men can't afford something to eat, though it's right in front of them; women won't stop looking before they find Caviar and a bottle of Champaign.
> The difference in experiences starts early in life. For boys, girls showing interest in them is often an exciting and empowering experience.
Hence, if you're going to try and show interest in a woman, do it in a way that's clearly going to be interesting, exciting and empowering to her, even if she doesn't seem to reciprocate sexually. (Which in practice means you'll need to show genuine social interest and friendship to her, combined with a modicum of sexual interest that's demonstrably connoted as non-threatening. Mostly by showing yourself off as sexually attractive and attainable, and leaving it at that. Yes, it's very unintuitive from a male POV - many males will reject this approach as weak. But a neutral assessment of strategy says it will work, and give women what they're mostly looking for.)
It's not easy, but it should be your goal. Do you think most guys (or even most women, perhaps) have ever paid the least bit of attention to being interesting and exciting to their prospective partners, much less empowering them? Even with people you genuinely like and care for, it's not something you'd know to strive for intuitively. So the bar is not that high.
> Do you think most guys (or even most women, perhaps) have ever paid the least bit of attention to being interesting and exciting to their prospective partners, much less empowering them?
I know for sure that a lot of men, significant percent of my single friends, actually tried that for years, with little to no effect. Seems like when a woman needs the man to be interesting and exciting, she wants some non-trivial specifics which are actually hard to either understand or achieve.
> So the bar is not that high.
Would you think that this whole situation the article describing happens while the bar is not that high? Do you think the problem is illusory? Or the society as a whole just doesn't know some rather simple to make and simple to understand actions?
> Or the society as a whole just doesn't know some rather simple to make and simple to understand actions?
Yes, society as a whole does not care in the least about giving people viable social "scripts" by which they might get to know each other and pursue intimacy in safe, healthy and effective ways.
(Of course, the consequences of this lack become all the more apparent when ludicrous excuses are put forth to minimize or justify serious coercive and predatory behavior. Teach people to relate to each other in better ways, and you'll also deprive dangerous predators of the excuses they like to fall back on.)
> Yes, society as a whole does not care in the least about giving people viable social "scripts" by which they might get to know each other and pursue intimacy in safe, healthy and effective ways.
The question effectively was, do you know a smart thing the majority of the rest of people doesn't know - and that is for a problem which is older than all of us here. Seems like you believe you do but can't explain :( .
The problem with dating apps is that there is an inherent divide, and Match Group (the company that owns pretty much all online dating apps) actively exploits this. Lonely men are deliberately targeted and charged more for services. It may seem silly or nonsensical from above, but for many young men apps like Tinder are the only way of finding "love" they've ever known and they directly equate swipes (or the lack thereof) with their desirability and prospects.
OLD used to be a great way to meet people. However, helping people establish meaningful longterm connections and stop using the service isn't a sustainable business model.
> While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them
When it comes to dating apps, everyone I know falls into one of two categories:
The first group invests time into generating a good profile. They put the effort into getting get photos of themselves and presenting the photos properly. They write a good bio, avoiding the tired tropes ("love food and travel"), and they iterate on their bio based on responses. They go out on dates with an open mind and are willing to give people a chance.
The second group grabs random, unflattering pictures of themselves and throw them into the app without much consideration. They do things like use group photos where it's hard to even tell whose profile you're viewing. They grab a lot of silly or exaggerated pictures that make them look immature or present an image that doesn't match their personality. They write a short bio with useless tropes copied from other profiles. They make up their minds about people before even going on the first date.
The first group isn't finding their soulmate in the first month, but they do well. I've attended a double-digit number of weddings from people in this group. The second group is just relentlessly cynical and disappointed. I know a group of people, some of whom are classically attractive women, who have been doing online dating for years while complaining about the lack of good matches.
Online dating is a tool. Like any other tool, people get out of it what they put into it. You don't have to be in the top 10% of most attractive and successful people to match with others, but you do have to get over the cynicism and put in some effort.
Unfortunately this response is divorced from reality.
I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?
You're greatly underestimating the effect of good photos. As a bi guy, I've seen my share of both men's and women's dating profiles. The general trend: most profiles are terrible. Of the decent ones, women tend to have good photos, but shitty/non-existent bios, and the men tend to have good bios but bad photos. Only a small fraction of people combine both to make really compelling profiles.
So for men, the biggest improvement they can make is take more photos of yourself in hope for some good ones and maybe get some professional photos taken. What constitutes a good photo? In descending order of importance: 1) they want to be flattering. You'd think this would be obvious, but far too many profiles have photos that actively highlight negative features of their subject. If your hairline is failing, have photos with hats on. If you've got a beer belly, don't have side-facing photos. Etc. 2) They should suggest that you do fun things, and are thus likely to bring a potential date to such fun things. Nature shot, beach shot, interesting place shot. If you have some interesting hobby, maybe an action shot of you woodcutting/flying a model plane/intricately painting plastic figures. 3) Since this is a forum for tech workers, you probably have more discretionary income than average. *Subtly* demonstrate that.
Ultimately, what it boils down to is that everyone knows your profile pictures are going to be your absolute best photos of yourself, carefully crafted to make you look your best, overselling reality substantially. If you put bad pictures in your profile, people will STILL ASSUME THAT, and thus assume you look even worse.
I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual. And the guys they do think are attractive are often just their particular brand of 'cute' average guy who to my eyes as a non-attracted-to-men person don't look that much different than the previous 10 guys they swiped left on.
> I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual
The OkCupid data confirmed this is false. Top 20% of men receive the vast majority of female attention.
The inverse of that is that the majority of women think that 80% of men are mostly unattractive or at least unattractive to them. This is about as far as you can get from just trying to sweep the stats aside with a "highly individual" comment.
The even bigger takeaway from OKCupid's stats, IMO, was the fact that divisive profiles performed better than generally okay ones. People were more likely to actually engage with a match they found attractive, but other people didn't.
There are broad patterns of agreement but individual differences also. The faces most people will find attractive can be identified, but you can't select a face everyone will find attractive.
I would follow some accounts like She Rates Dogs and Ask Aubry to see some of what women are up against on dating apps. Every woman on those apps has an experience like you'll find on those feeds of their own, and as a man on those apps, it helps to understand the experience they're used to, and are expecting could happen again at any moment.
Men do the same thing. That’s literally why the swipe style of dating apps was created; to quickly judge if you are interested or not mainly in appearance. That’s why the OPs first point was about good photos and presentation.
This is correct, to an extent. But all the good presentation and clever bio-writing in the world will not save you if you are a typical 5/10 male on Tinder.
It’s more that not doing those things can be problematic for attractive people who would otherwise get matches.
The average woman does way more to take care of herself than the average man. I'm betting if most/a substantial portion of women didn't wash themselves, for example, that that would become another cutoff pretty quickly. Or if women didn't shave regularly/were showing stubble everywhere. Or if they routinely showed up with rat's nest hair.
(Most women who don't do basic things are depressed to the point they aren't on dating apps, so you wouldn't have an opportunity to swipe on them.)
One reason I'm glad I'm gay is that so many men just reek or don't perform basic hygiene.
That's false. Out of the seven characteristics of attractiveness, only one is under locus of control, the rest are genetically determined and exceedingly hard to change.
> The environment happens to you after your genes do.
So what? This correction changes nothing, the discussion is about control.
A man who wants to improve his attractiveness in terms of body height, skin colour or sensitivity of the scalp against 5α-DHT expressing follicle miniaturisation can't achieve shit by changing his environment.
Sure, but then say "it's too late to change it". Which I agree with! But being overly pop-scientific leads to, you know, eugenics.
If your hair is thinning that's less of a problem than you think. It looks bad if you look like you're intentionally ignoring it, but lean into it and you're fine.
I can't upvote this enough. HN is known to be very negative towards Tinder.
My first marriage ended with my wife divorcing me. We have 3 kids. On my Tinder profile I made it very clear I'm a dad. I'm not tall and not that handsome.
I'm a developer, so I don't meet that many single women in real life. Tinder was excellent. I met my current wife on Tinder, and still happily married years after our first Tinder date.
My wife is a relationship coach, and has great success with women. But the men are just uncoachable. They are not able to find a relationship, and still know better when an actual women tries to tell them what women want. Crazy.
Pretty grand generalization. Sometimes it feels like a coach advices you impossible, mutually contradictory or equivalent of jumping off a cliff. I guess it could be hard to find a matching coach.
I think it's very telling there's no real lesbian equivalent to the sex clubs for gay men, or Grindr for that matter. They do exist; relatively few women actually use them.
Pornography by and for gay men, is as popular if not more so, with gay men as pornography is with straight men. The market for such material aimed at women, gay or straight, is rather marginal by comparison.
Similarly, a very large % of gay men who are partnered romantically, are in open relationships. And by large % I mean around half. At least with American gay women, open relationships are a very minor thing, similar to the rates with heterosexuals.
The sexual behaviour of homosexual men and women is very different at a population/statistical level. Whether it's nature or nurture can of course be debated, but it seems like a very strong indicator that women's and men's sexuality are of a slightly different nature.
> Similarly, a very large % of gay men who are partnered romantically, are in open relationships. And by large % I mean around half. At least with American gay women, open relationships are a very minor thing, similar to the rates with heterosexuals.
I would love to know the actual number here, as someone in the gay male open relationship category.
I remember discussing this with a friend of mine, who is also in an open relationship. He came out with a fascinating statement that he had never seen a long term monogamous gay relationship where both parties were perfectly happy. After he said it, my first thought was that was ridiculous and then tried to think of friends who were the exception... I couldn't name a single one either. Every monogamous gay couple I've met going for longer than >1 year had at least one person in the relationship air that they were sexually frustrated to me in private and wanted more. Most were jealous of our relationship, but worried about the consequences of opening their relationship.
I am sure the monogamous gay couple who are happy is out there somewhere, but I've yet to meet them.
Sorry I did not include data I was thinking of when I posted:
> When analyzing the whole sample, approximately 2% of heterosexual participants, 32% of gay participants, 5% of lesbian participants, 22% of bisexual participants, and 14% of those who described their sexualities as “other” reported being in open relationships;
As another gay man, I used to be radically skeptical of monogamy. Like in my 20s I was spouting the line that it's a heterosexual construct falsely imposed on us for moralistic reasons. But both personal experience, and a widened social group, has led me to believe that, for a significant number of gay men a monogamous relationship is ideal. They're happiest in them, and seem to be able to make them work. Perhaps with some compromises and perhaps not entirely happy, but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.
> As another gay man, I used to be radically skeptical of monogamy. Like in my 20s I was spouting the line that it's a heterosexual construct falsely imposed on us for moralistic reasons. But both personal experience, and a widened social group, has led me to believe that, for a significant number of gay men a monogamous relationship is ideal. They're happiest in them, and seem to be able to make them work. Perhaps with some compromises and perhaps not entirely happy, but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.
Funnily enough I am precisely the opposite. I spent my 20s trying to hunt for "the one" and had a series of short, failed relationships. Now I'm in my 30s I am in a 9 year long successful (I think?) open/polyamorous relationship.
Really I think gay men (and men in general) struggle with communication skills and emotional maturity. Gaining those skills are key to maintaining long, healthy relationships. Non-monogamy is an avenue towards working towards achieving those skills because maintaining a healthy, open relationship means a lot of communication is required. In my opinion, it is a high risk, high reward strategy to a maintaining a relationship.
> but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.
I think we have to distinguish minor annoyances from major communication issues due to sex. Like it or not, sex is a big part of being human and sex drive is something can be wildly different between people. Non-monogamy can be an outlet for this.
A friend of mine did a small experiment. She’s quite good looking so she made a new account and another guy friend made another account at the same time. She has usually has 3000+ likes on bumble so we wanted to see how many she gets in 30 minutes. In 30 minutes the guy got 5 because of a new account and she got 150.
The ratio is so badly skewed that the apps end up working for no one. Neither men nor women.
You say that like she's getting the good end of the deal. But everything I've heard from women on those apps, they'd rather have the "handful of sincere responses" experience than the "bazillion goofs spamming them and sending dick pics at the first hello".
This isn't a refutation. You aren't saying women would trade places with men. You're saying women would trade the current experience of massive attention for a new experience of curated sincere attention. So damaging the male experience further.
I don't know if they would trade places with men, but it's definitely not a fun experience for them either. There seems to be a large group of men out there who are, not to put too fine a point on it, "single for a reason". Curating them out of the matches would damage their experience, but vastly improve the experience for everyone else. And maybe help clue them in that they need to make some changes if they want to find a compatible partner. Assuming a perfect curation system, which, I concede, is impossible.
It's been a while since I was on a dating site, but my experience was exactly that of a small amount of incoming attention, but almost all of it sincere. So yes, I think a lot of women would be happy to make that trade.
I just never saw a lot of the awful behavior that women get on the regular. E.g., the guys who will go from "u r hot" to "fuck you bitch" in a series of DMs over 12 hours with absolutely no response from women. It honestly amazes me that so many of them stay in the dating market at all.
If you're talking about the Halo Effect, both men and women are susceptible to it. Interestingly, this effect might be "negated by feelings of jealousy in women" [1].
Suggest her to try being a recruiter on LinkedIn as a thought experiment. Initial message should be "Hello, I have an exciting job offer for you, I've seen you know React".
You can have a stable/growing population with only 1 male per n>1 females. So, the evolutionarily optimal strategy is to crank up trait variance in males and have females select only the top 1/n males (hand-wavily speaking). Most modern human cultures suppressed this dynamic via socially enforced pair bonding. When you lose that social adaptation, you revert back to more atavistic matching dynamics.
Very interesting, from a systems perspective it makes a lot of sense that this would be the limit cycle behavior. The conclusion is a kind of corrolary to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateman's_principle, as regards the presence of energy bottlenecks (namely, gestation) in the process that propagates a species.
Came here to say something similar. Humans are much closer to “other” animals than what they think, and social instituions like marriage were created to prevent social mayhem.
> Humans are much closer to “other” animals than what they think
Plain false. Humans are very unique compared to other animals as I wrote in another response. See prof. Sapolsky's lectures on the topic. He's an outstanding anthropologist.
I think I agree with this. Society's laws and contracts mirror our instincts and feelings. We create laws because they encode a deep-seated feeling that most of us have about things. Not everyone agrees on every law; most of us don't want to murder, and would be sad if we did, but there are still serial killers.
We don't change our instincts just because there are laws. Look at how many people are in prison for drug possession. The law is much weaker than brain chemicals being expressed. (Also, not every law is based on wide agreement of human emotion. Sometimes lawmakers simply do whatever. I'm mostly talking about the ones that have been around since the dawn of humanity.)
Gender roles (and sexism) are primarily cultural. If you look through history there has been matriarchal and patriarchal societies. Monogamous and polygamous and so on in many combinations.
Humans sexuality is very unique compared to other animals and, respectfully, we should try not to play armchair Darwin.
There are very good lectures from prof. Sapolsky on youtube on the topic. Humans are complex and very weird.
Roles are very cultural, but who has the eggs isn't. One person can create 10-20 offspring over their life, another can create thousands (hypothetically).
The perceived imbalance in likes is not really the problem, it’s just the difference in social norms across genders. OLD is not terribly easy for men or women, let alone NB folks. Women have to sort through all those men, while men have to swipe on tons of women. There are also more men on the sites. The result is low quality matches all around because men are incentivized to swipe on everyone. Women will have an easier time just obtaining sex, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good, and it’s not what most women are looking for, for numerous reasons.
Yeah, but you don't have deal with her problem which is an inbox flooded with random noise. It might be flattering for a minute but after that I'm sure it's a burden not much lighter than the empty inbox.
Besides, as long as you get those few responses, that will be enough for all but the most active and adventurous daters. There are only so many hours in the day.
Feels like there's a strong analog between tech careers and recruiters and men and women in the online dating scene.
In tech, fending recruiters off with a stick is far less of a burden and stress than being unemployed or permanently underemployed or underpaid in a different field. It's annoying, sure, but it's not going to cause you depression to have so many people showing interest in you, it validates some amount of self-worth. Recruiters also take an approach to recruitment very similarly to men in online dating, treating it as a numbers game and where they don't care about candidate quality before first contact. Blast out interest and feelers indiscriminately to anyone and then evaluate the quality of those who respond and be happy to settle for any commission in the end. Both are broken processes of course, but the power dynamics seem similar.
Her inbox might be flooded with messages, but most of those messages are spam. Most of the guys didn't even look at her profile, and instead swiped right on everyone and copy-pasted the same message to all of their matches. If she replies, most of them will not respond. Few will put in the effort to have a substantial conversation, and fewer will actually try to go out on a date with her.
If she goes on a date, she would end up in the same situation. She will probably carry the conversation and will be more interested in them than they are in her. Many will agree to have sex with her for the sake of their own pleasure, but few would attempt to give her pleasure. If she gets into a relationship, chances are the guy won't pull his weight (because he's not really interested) and she will end up doing all the work. He will regularly flake on her to hang out with his friends and play videogames, and will try to hide the fact that he doesn't actually like her as a person or enjoy being around her.
On the other hand, if you get a handful of responses, that means a handful of women are interested in you. They actually want to talk to YOU, to the extent that you are accurately represented by your profile. The chance that one of those people are a good match for you, and that they are willing to give you a fair chance is high. And if they end up not actually liking who you are, they will do you the favor of ending it instead of wasting your time.
As for guys who don't get matches or messages at all: it's because your profile sucks. Take better pictures. No, those pictures suck too, try again.
Funny for you to imply that women carry the conversations on dates.
My experience on dating apps, and in real life dating (including with my current partner) is that it's the man's burden to entertain the date. The overwhelming majority of date time was spent with me asking questions to try to coax the girl into actually talking, and talking about themselves (which people like to do).
Hell, most of the time that girls ghost guys on dating apps is because they're "boring". Dick pics are not sent out by more than half of all men who are rejected, but at least half of those rejctees we're "boring".
One way to try to fight this is to jestermax or goofmax. I refuse. I shouldn't have to become a damn comedian to prove that I've got "game".
The flawed assumption here is that every match a guy gets is a wonderful, invested woman, while the vast majority of the matches women get are evil depraved men.
In practice, the proportion of good matches are similar for men and women. The issue is that men get many fewer of them in total, which means many fewer good, invested matches.
> As for guys who don't get matches or messages at all: it's because your profile sucks. Take better pictures.
No amount of picture taking changes the fact that being short or ugly or bald or old or non-white firmly entrenches the profile in the "never match" category.
> * Theres a power imbalance due to cultural expectations that men are the pursuers
I've been told by a male friend who (quite successfully) uses several of these apps that even on that one that makes women initiate contact (is it Bumble?) the first message is just "hi" like 99% of the time. Meanwhile, that's a guaranteed way for a dude to get ghosted, on any platform where guys can initiate contact, as is responding with a reciprocal "hi" on that one. In either case the clear expectation is that the guy needs to present something interesting right out of the gate, very first message, and generally drive the discussion. (this guy attributes his success largely to his A+ chat game, so I'm inclined to believe his take on this)
I have a healthy dating life outside of apps, but yeah - I think women understanding how difficult and dramatically different online dating is for men in comparison to women will never truly be accepted or taken seriously by women.
I think the most damaging reality of these apps is when a man who himself thinks he's low-value and doesn't understand how to improve only gets a few matches from the algo of women who are below average attractiveness.
I'm going to get flamed for this but in general I think it's right to assume that the average woman in 2022 is less attractive than the average man, BMI / height stats support this.
This outcome generally signals to at-risk men (in terms of mental state) that women they would find attractive have all swiped left on them only leaving below average or physically unfit women. It's also entirely likely that they might just not be desire-able on dating apps and in fact, are only matched with people who don't have standards. That said, I think standards are important on both sides AND I've had men far more attractive than me also encounter a situation of only having a handful of matches even in NYC.
> I'm going to get flamed for this but in general I think it's right to assume that the average woman in 2022 is less attractive than the average man, BMI / height stats support this.
Definitely 6' and up - and I'm shorter than that. It's pretty obvious, but I don't lose sleep about it. I also meant BMI relative to height, not height in general. Statistics don't lie in terms of what each population generally finds attractive.
Women want men to message first. So they don't message first. So a lot of men spray all the women with generic messages first (because spending even any amount of effort on a single woman is most likely going to get ignored, so men just assume 1 in 100 people respond and don't put much effort until there is at least one response from her). Women then get inboxes flooded. Women then increasingly don't message first because they get complacent with the hundreds of messages in their inbox.
The dating culture needs to change, women need to stop expecting men to lead, take some control, and pick and message people they'd like to get to know. If men start getting some nonzero amount of inbound from people who like them, they are less likely to need to "spray" the entire female population with generic messages.
Except for a lot of people Bumble often just doesn't show your profile to anyone you swiped right on. Might be if you don't meet conventional attractiveness thresholds. It's a waste of time if you're not some DiCaprio. I get enough matches on other apps with the same profile that it's pretty clear there's something fishy going on in their algorithm.
I've been told by a few women in person that I'm really good to talk to. I disagree and think I'm average at conversation. Apparently most guys actually suck at it, at least with women.
I responded to one profile by noting the lake in the background of one of her pics and asking where it was. She about fell off her chair and said I might be the only guy on there who actually reads profiles.
Up your f'ing game guys, it doesn't take much apparently.
I got out of my shell by having dinner at the bar and talking to strangers of both genders. Now I'm a known regular and sometime people buy me a shot. This took years, so get started today.
Not a club or pickup type place, just the local pubs where people eat, drink, and watch sports while seated at the bar. You can sit there and have dinner and not say anything, or choose to engage with the person next to you if they seem receptive. How to tell? Ask a question, see if they answer and make some attempt to continue - like asking something back, or telling more than a terse response.
Dating apps are terrible. Women respond well to genuine friendship and gradually deepening intimacy. No one, man or woman, wants to be thrown into a super short-term popularity contest where physical appearance and some shallow "chatting" is the only differentiator. That's not how you build community and intimacy.
I hear this all the time. Perhaps demand follows an 80/20% rule because my experience doesn't align with this.
I'm a man, 40 years, polyamorous, yet I have zero problems finding people to date. On average, I have more partners than the women I often date. I agree that Tinder and such are highly skewed, but it doesn't make it useful for any gender. In-person (events, social groups, etc), I find there are a large number of people who actively want to date me and spend time with me.
I don't see a clear gender divide in dating opportunities in my personal experience. I haven't been able to figure out what is unique about my experience vs the majority of men. I am not a "10" in any way; I just have a lot of hobbies.
One potential danger here is single friends seeing you/your partner on the app. In the ideal world they'd bring this to your attention and you'd be able to explain it away easily. In the real world it's absolutely how vicious rumors start.
Could easily result in her losing interest in him when she sees how coldly other women treats him. Emotions are fickle and an experience like that might change the way she sees him.
How you write profiles probably matters. If you're sparse or you're too wordy, that's going to put people off.
You also have to have some hooks --things that are part of your personality that can instigate some interest. Could be climbing, playing an instrument, working on a farm, etc. But also don't make things up. Looks matter, but after that initial attraction, other things matter, are they organized, are they too compulsive... You know their habits and so on. You want someone normal but also not someone boring, for the most part.
Having done the dating thing for a while and being male, I've had no problem with making contacts and going on dates. Quality not quantity. Can easily end up on two dates a week. I'm nothing special.
i know women get inundated with messages on dating apps, but I would not blame the structure of dating app for the misfortune of some men.
The #1 cause of men not being datable is the advice they get from other men. Try listening to women instead.
In workplace settings, men tend to speak up whether or not they have something wise to contribute. This communications style carries over into the way men use dating apps.
Also, you can't sell the libertarian techbro thing as attractive. It isn't. Your prerogative to be that way. It doesn't bother me in a workplace setting. But it is a massive turn off. You are lowering your odds. You can find counterexamples, such as that when I was an undergrad, women ran the Objectivist newspaper. But outliers be outlying.
Libertarian techbros aren't that common. Most tech people are liberals just like any other college educated group.
(Similarly, richer people/political donors are usually liberals and the richer/more they donate the more liberal they are. It's all thanks to education polarization.)
Tinder is straight up depressing for the median dude. My mind was blown just how much harder it was to get a date on tinder vs getting a date in real life. I can do the latter pretty easily but trying to get one on tinder would be like months of constant effort to then get ditched before the date even starts.
It feels like 90% of women on there are chasing the top 10% of dudes and not settling for anything else.
While the 80/20 stuff is true i think another under-explored aspect is that there just isn't many non-bot women on these dating apps, after all their business is exploiting men for these gold memberships/boosts. Most women i know in their 20s easily get attention on a daily basis through posting on Instagram, working a retail orwaitress job or simply walking into a bar, they also have social groups and hobbies so they aren't really using Tinder.
the wildest part is that the very people who advocate not hitting on people at work will be the first people talk have a nice relationship with a customer who hit on them at work
everyone can perceive that this acts as just gatekeeping for unattractive people
yes, newsflash people would rather not have advances from ugly people, but to masquerade that as trying to vilify advances at all is pure fiction
Those 10% dudes are smart enough not to settle for a 90% woman for more than a few dates when they can pull a new one off the app at a moments notice. In the end they are the only winners in this situation.
I think our generation will be remembered for over-optimization more than anything. We keep chasing the best hotel, the best restaurant, the best partner, not realizing that things that give us meaning and happiness are intangible, unique, weird, and usually right in front of us.
I often wonder exactly how much happier I am having a billion excellent choices for entertainment, versus the small set we might have in the '90s.
I doubt it's that much. Is the very-best movie from last year, uncovered by ten or fifteen minutes of targeted searching and reading, likely to be better than whatever I'd have picked up at the video store based on gut feeling and what a few friends had told me? Oh, god yes, of course it is. Am I happier this way, though? I'm less certain about that. Probably a little? But I don't think it's a large effect.
Ditto having "the world's knowledge at your fingertips" (well, ignore that it's far from all of it and that you're probably still better off hitting the books for a lot of things, but it's good at the trivial stuff anyway). Can I answer most silly little "I wonder..." questions in five to ten seconds? Yep. Am I happier this way? I'm not so sure, since before the Internet was available nearly everywhere nearly all the time I rarely even became consciously aware of such trivial thoughts and they were very easy to dismiss when I did.
I don't know, haven't most people learned by now that all these fine-grained ratings essentially mean either "crap" or "not crap, it depends on your preferences"? In a few cases, "crap but you might like it".
Yes, but I don't see why everyone is acting like Tinder is the only choice. There are other apps that seem to work differently and better.
I used Tinder for close to a year and had an experience close to what you're describing. I only managed to go on two dates that both went nowhere. At the suggestion of someone on one of the dating subreddits, I switched to Hinge, saw the difference in the amount of attention I was getting, and never looked back. Eventually, I met my girlfriend on there.
That's Tinder. I'm told Bumble and Hinge actually work for people.
Of course, what really helps is to be on the favorable end of the gender mismatch if you're somewhere like SF or NYC. It's not nearly as bad as online people say it is though. You only need to find one person!
> The National Survey of Family Growth data shows that in 2002 the most sexually active
top 20 % of American heterosexual men had 12 lifetime sex partners while the top 5 %
had 38 partners.3 Ten years later, in 2012, the most sexually active top 20 % now
reported 15 lifetime sex partners and the top 5 % of men reported 50 lifetime sex
partners.
Hasn't been reported yet, but some simple extrapolation would expect top 20% to drop to 8 lifetime partners and top 5% to increase to 80 lifetime partners.
I think you lot should get off apps and approach women the old-fashioned way. I am ok looking guy and have not encountered any problems meeting women my entire life. But one thing I can say that my experience with that is entirely IRL so to speak, I’ve never bothered with apps, never even downloaded one.
I have freckles, speak with an accent, and not at all athletic (though not what one might call fat either). I drive a ford truck. Just your average software engineer.
One word of advice I can offer - is that women (and same goes for men) often become a lot more attractive when you see them in person, get to know them, learn what they are like, see them smile and experience emotions. All the things you can never understand by looking at a pic in an app. And as you interact with them - they too will see you in a new light.
And one more thing. You should also know that some people who look really great in pictures - become impossible to be around and quite unlikable because of how they behave and what they say.
Calling this a "health issue" is quite misleading, as these issues cut through the fabric of society itself. Sexual competition might have been a thing in our deep past but what we call "societies" in historic times were built around sexual regulations that ensured people wouldn't just 'leave because they have nothing to lose'. Ancient Rome's foundational myth contained the abduction of the Sabine women . In ancient Athens, Solon estabished brothels to limit adultery and increase social cohesion
> seeing Athens full of young men, with both an instinctual compulsion, and a habit of straying in an inappropriate direction, bought women and established them in various places, equipped and common to all.
Of course in those days, it was expected that if you were a decent-ish member of society you were basically guaranteed a wife (which you might have not even met) and a family that would perpetuate the same kind of society. Sexual competition is feral and fundamentally anti-society.
But that is the choice that people make, deliberately. we are increasingly individualists and have chosen to live that way , especially in western societies. Seeing this as a "problem" implies that there is a solution somewhere and that it is fundamentally a bad thing. But it seems that it is just the future. And there will be consequences as large percentages of mainly men feel increasing disconnected and having nothing to bind them in a society. As these men grow up, approach retirement or financial independence they will increasingly move to places where they can live with less strings attached. Not necessarily to a sexual paradise, but just to a place that demands less taxes, is more tolerant to single men (western culture isn't), that shames them less, etc etc. We are already having the trend of record numbers of households being single-person homes. The next logical step is to move that household to whatever place treats the individual best.
Online dating absolutely benefits "the typical female mating strategy" more than it does "the typical male mating strategy". I recommend all folks who use the latter (I intentionally phrased this non-gender-specifically) get away from online dating as it is a sucker’s game for us. You have a significantly better chance of scoring an “out of your league” partner in meatspace.
If anyone doesn't believe this, make a fake dating profile using photos from someone of the opposite sex that you think is about as attractive as you are and observe what happens when you try to reach out to people. Actually, this might be a great exercise for the guys in particular to see all the low-effort crap that gets thrown their way (and the occasional unsolicited dick pic), but it would also be a great exercise for women to see how much effort it takes simply to get interest returned (in which case you might get so fatigued by the number of sincere requests you send out unanswered, that you resort to sending many more low-effort inquiries instead... See how that works?)
I predict this thread will get modlocked later today since every conversation that brings in sexual concerns related to gender/orientation ends up becoming dynamite.
Tinder is fine as a male if your profile don't absolutely suck. Most guys have 0 basic understanding of what to put and look like dumb lazy fucks / nice guys.
I have friends who are short and not particularly attractive and successful IRL score 60 girls a year because they put some effort into their photos and have a good attitude.
I'm married and older so I'm not trying to speak with any dating authority here, but my advice would be to get involved. Volunteer in your community. Join a recreational group. Get to know your neighbors. Basically, expand your social network and do it face-to-face.
I'm not saying to ditch dating apps. Rather, supplement by getting out and getting to know the people around you.
You aren't wrong but what's different today is these are often substitutes for the sort of organic socializing that was largely wiped out by modern street and neighborhood planning.
Crafted socializing tends to take more energy and resources, two things that are scarce for many in our modern economy.
I love how the article compares the unequal distribution of sex partners with the unequal distribution of wealth, because in my opinion that might be part of the cause.
I would predict that being able to afford a nice apartment in a good area close to date locations will easily 10x your sex chances.
There have been other studies about young men struggling to find jobs that pay well enough for them to become financially independent, and there's been a lot of discussions about Hikkomori and the Japanese Grasseaters movement, which is basically older guys that refuse to move out of their parent's home.
My overall impression is that a bad economy and bad job market makes it difficult for young men to become independent and that makes it extremely difficult for them to become sexually active. Because despite all progress with regards to gender equality, the overwhelming majority of girls prefers to date a guy who can afford a nice shirt and a nice appartment.
I happen to catch part of conversation between two young, very good looking female colleagues of mine back when I still used to go to office (same cubicle, sometimes I heard things even though I didn't mean to). They were disappointed that they couldn't get invites to some party where rich wall street type guys were going to, aka "catches" (their words, not mine).
The funny thing is, the very same office was filled with nice, young, smart, good looking men. Just not rich enough.
This is just an anecdote, I am not saying all women go for rich dudes, neither am I stereotyping. But yeah, being able to afford nice things in life is a significant advantage in dating. I suppose being rich is advantageous in everything
I'm sorry but this comment is missing OP's point, and is instead just feeding into the stereotype of women being gold diggers.
OP's comment was talking about the difference between guys who can afford a nice apartment vs guys who still need to live in their parents' home. It was a practical thing, where anyone would want a private space for dating.
Your comment took it to a different level, where you're talking about people in your office vs wall street rich people. In this scenario, there are people like those two female colleagues of yours (that you described as young and very good looking, which was unnecessary), who will have a preference for rich guys, but there are other women who would prefer your coworkers in the office. It's a preference thing rather than a practical thing, like OP's observation in their comment.
Not all stereotypes are untrue. People may engage in the stereotype that men are more likely to commit violent crime - does that invalidate crime stats?
I think social signaling has more to do with ... society. Wall street rich guys are more popular/more talked about/famous than the rich guys at the office and people want validation, always and everywhere. The vast majority of women are not golddiggers and will be happy with some (good) amount of money (many men will, too), not necessarily the highest. Many women are charmed by influential but poor people
I dont know if you can solve this popularity contest, because 'geek chic' has been tried and failed. But maybe if the guys who are lower in the sexual pecking order stopped worshipping and making the guys at the top even more famous, it would help them.
> I would predict that being able to afford a nice apartment in a good area close to date locations will easily 10x your sex chances.
This matches my experience. But overall, location is extremely important. I used to date quite a lot, and depending on the place, I could find dates extremely easily, or it could be virtually impossible.
But one thing I understood after I turned 40. The number one criteria is age! It gets exponentially harder as years pass.
What is your gender? I'm 46 and male, and more and more women (my preferred gender!) seem to be attracted to me over time, though surely at some point that trend will go into reverse.
I've heard a lot of women around my age suffering from the opposite trend.
Seconded. Part of it is projecting confidence and communication skills. I knew in the back of my mind this was true, but it took me well over a decade (arguably two) to actually learn. Part of it is how you talk to people, part of it is how well you can pick up on body language, hints, subtle social contexts.
This is very very very important to women. It's a big red flag when a guy is as they might put it, "clueless." Meanwhile it's a frustrating experience not understanding what's going on for the guy.
Dating aside, an empathetic listener who reads body language will usually be someone more engaging and engaged to interact with.
Mostly 25–60? I mostly only notice the attraction state of the ones I see as desirable partners, though I've dated a few that turned out to be a very poor fit.
There are lots and lots of vast differences among the different women who have been attracted to me over the years; age is just one of them, while others include national origin, educational attainment, socio-economic class, country of residence, pluriparity, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeability, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, autism, height, weight, sexual orientation, political party alignment, favorite operating system, hair color, skin color, and religion.
What's so special about their age to you?
I don't think I have a sample size large enough to confidently discriminate among particular age groups' attraction to me. I'm not, like, a celebrity or something. Even if I did, I don't see how such a sample could avoid being far too biased to draw any useful conclusions from.
A weird thing about this is that I think I've had more sex, and met more new partners, in periods when I was unemployed or underemployed. When I've been really poor I've been depressed, which cuts my chances of meeting a new partner to about zero. But when I've been extremely employed I think I haven't had the time or emotional bandwidth for intimate relationships. Or travel: travelers get an automatic +4 bonus to sexiness, but it's really hard to travel when you have a job.
Even when my apartment has looked like something out of Hoarders I think it's cost me, at most, one nascent sexual relationship, and I think that was actually because she didn't enjoy our sex, not because of the apartment. (I'll probably never know.) By the time a new lover has decided to come home with me, they generally already have a strong interest in making love with me. So I think worrying about whether your apartment is nice enough might be analogous to worrying about whether your penis is big enough: it's a factor, but it usually comes into play too late to make a big difference, and in only a small minority of cases is it so bad as to actually matter.
As for financial independence, here in Buenos Aires you can always go to a telo. If you do that twice a month you are spending, say, $10000 a month (US$26) which is not an insignificant expenditure but is tiny compared to renting your own apartment. Other Latin American countries call them "motels", and in Japan they're "rabu hoteru".
Nice shirt? You can get an all-cotton button-down dress shirt for like US$40 if women won't look twice at you because you're wearing a T-shirt. This is not a significant issue for Japanese hikikomori. Also, though, the vast majority of women aren't that picky, if you're attractive in other ways.
Bad economy? Japan and Switzerland have much better economies than Brazil, Nigeria, and Haiti, but the better economies aren't the ones where people are more easily finding sex partners.
I do agree that location is important, though. Burning Man is not the same as Cairo at all.
I'm male, for what it's worth; 46 years old; and so far all my partners have been women. I think I'm way out on the right tail of the distribution when it comes to a variety of traits, including ⓐ height, ⓑ tendency to initiate conversations with strangers, ⓒ willingness to touch and be touched by new people, and ⓓ interest in and enjoyment of sex. So my experience is probably not typical.
> So I think worrying about whether your apartment is nice enough might be analogous to worrying about whether your penis is big enough
I think the point of an "expensive" place (really just a big one that isn't disgusting) is that you can host people, throw parties, etc.
Being able to host is a massive boost to people being willing to go out of their way to spend time of you, and (good) hosts get a +4 bonus to sexiness also
Yeah, throwing parties and hosting people is pretty great as a way to meet people. My current apartment is an efficiency, so it's not well suited to hosting people unless we're already comfortable being naked around each other. This doesn't totally exclude meeting a new intimate partner that way (my friends from the dance world are generally totally comfortable being naked around each other, and most of them have never been my lovers) but it does diminish the opportunity a lot.
But you don't really need a big place to host someone from CouchSurfing or WarmShowers or Hospitality Club or whatever the current one is. Just having two bedrooms with doors that close is enough. Or one bedroom, if you yourself sleep in the living room in pajamas, or something.
Here in Buenos Aires the apartments are mostly small, so the usual way for people here to throw parties is to either rent an event space for the night, propose an event to a cultural center, or just arrange to all meet up in a bar.
In Asia (very vaguely speaking…) it's comparatively more common to meet people exclusively outside the home whether you're friends, dates, or even early into a committed relationship. It's entirely possible you'll never see inside someone's house, though "home dates"/"home parties" are a thing.
That's probably an effect of small apartments and lots of restaurants.
Thanks! Karaoke can work here (in Koreantown). Arcades (you mean video arcades, right?) have kind of disappeared, though there are a couple left. In past years "ciberes" were potentially feasible; those are businesses where you pay by the hour to use an internet-connected PC, similar to a "PC bang". I've done meetups in the park, with or without picnics, but not barbecue. Bars do exist. Any other ideas?
Yeah, gaming arcades. They still exist in Japan and are coming back in the US by attaching things like karaoke and bowling alleys to them. But I think that's more for young people and I suspect all the adult activities involve drinking.
It's pretty culturally specific though, so I'd just check what everyone else is doing with whatever the local versions of Meetup/Foursquare/Google Maps are.
The unequal distribution is more related to the power law (80/20 rule) than each other. Money definitely helps, but if it had high correlation, Software Engineers would be viewed as rock stars, instead of the nerds we are lol
I graduated right around the 2008 GFC. I can confirm - dating was non-existent when I was unemployed and living at home with parents, and then changed dramatically when I got a job and an apartment.
Obviously, it also hit my self-esteem, so I sort of shelled up and did not even want to socialize with friends. I also had a high-achieving family, where i was one of the youngest children, and I was constantly gas-lit by my parents, older sibling, aunts, uncles, etc. That was the worst.
I would say my early 20s were the worst time of my life.
IMO a lot get lost in the stats. I can think of plenty of guys in my hometown who have no problem attracting female acquaintances, despite low or no prospects.
Alot of people in these situations have let the broader zeitgeist tell them they are entitled to something. If you’re a 40-year old divorcee, the market for supermodels or professional athletes is limited.
> how the article compares the unequal distribution of sex partners with the unequal distribution of wealth
I think Houellebecq's quote from 1994 is what popularized the sexual marketplace
> “It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
I wish he wrote another future-looking book about the next decade
> a bad economy and bad job market makes it difficult for young men to become independent and that makes it extremely difficult for them to become sexually active
I m not sure about that because a lot of the frustrated guys are nerds with lucrative jobs (hence why they hang out in reddit). They make great uncles but are not considered boyfriend material.
Fortunatelly I have a wife now, but for me for the longest time the so called "sexual lineliness" was linked with the three facts:
1) I was raised into believing that sex implies serious relationship and vice versa. As in "if we are having sex that means we are in serious relatioinship".
As it turned out - this does not work like this for most (many?) people. Turns out yuo can just have a good time and some sex without worrying about 1001 things before you do so.
2) I simply do not like dating. Like at all. For me a perfect date is the one that I can attend during my lunch time or maybe after studies\work. Definatelly not on weekend. Definetely not longer that 2 hours (well 3-4 if we are really into each other and both have the same kind of thinking about how to spent free time). May be just bad luck but many girls I've met wanted those stupid 6 hours walks around the city talking about all things you can imagine. (don't you have things to do?)
3) I failed to realise I can suggest any type of activity during our date and not just try and adjust to her preferences. As a result a bunch of dates were just me doing shit I didn't like
> 1) I was raised into believing that sex implies serious relationship and vice versa. As in "if we are having sex that means we are in serious relatioinship".
As it turned out - this does not work like this for most (many?) people. Turns out yuo can just have a good time and some sex without worrying about 1001 things before you do so.
This seems to contradict some view on women's POV here. As in, for women the sexual transaction is big serious deal.
Well, everything is different for everyone (not to mention different countries etc).
My experince:
1) First time I was almost forces into sex by a girl one year younger than me whom I invited to my apartment. While I obviously hoped for something romantic to happen - this was us meeting for the third time maybe and we knew each other (I mean irl, not online forum bullshit) for like 4 hours.
I "opted out" of it while she was sitting on me alread half naked. There were several reasons for this actually but the one about "if I do this now - I will be using her" was the main one I guess. After this I was told (by her) I shouldn't be "a log" (sorry, not sure about the best way to translate the idiom into english).
2) The second time the girl, seeing me being not as straightforward as she hoped for, simple asked if I ever had a girlfriend before. I was honest, saying that while I had a couple, it never went as far as sex - and she simple saying she fine with doing it with me (while inviting me to go to her apartment). Again maybe I'm more of a girl in this regard but for me this was a turn off again. Wtf do you mean you are okay? Do you want it? More importantly - do you want me?
.... some years with no sex later ....
My girlfriend (now wife) descibes her experiences. As it turns out she had more than a few partners by the time she was 20 (we met when she was around 26). Most of them - just your regular fellow student\coworker etc. She needed sex, was not interested in longterm relationship etc.
If you go to twitter these days - people (most of whom women) are also quite open to the thought of going all the way without too much worries. (as long the guys seems nice of course, I don't mean sex with the first stranger here)
> As in, for women the sexual transaction is big serious deal.
If that truly were the case, you wouldn't see 5% of these hypersexual men monopolizing 50% of sex (as the paper says). Or maybe many women like intentionally putting themselves in harem-like situation, if in exchange they get to have sex with "hot men". Overall, it's a deplorable state of affairs.
Just like a very high Gini index (the index that measures economic inequality), results in economic suffering and pain for a significant portion of the population, the current state of affairs causes analogous (here, intimacy and lack-of-sex-related suffering) for million of the less-fortunate gender+orientation (cis heterosexual men).
I'd prefer monogamy that's state-enforced[1] socially-promoted culturally-inculcated. That would go a long way in fixing the inequality (both not in countries like China and India which a separate sex ratio issue to deal with).
Even with a positive sex ratio with more women than men, in North America, if it is indeed true that top 5% end up monopolizing 50% of sex (as the linked research paper), that's a staggeringly bad and deplorable state of affairs.
[1] Enforced by fully utilizing the state's monopoly on violence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence), e.g. with both long prison sentences, and torture or severe corporal punishment – to completely and utterly suppress and root out any violations of hypothetical future sexual morality laws.
I disagree, but partially because I'm not sexually frustrated but I can see it happening if I get sick or poor or disfigured - which I can see as occurring all at once - so I'll entertain it for a moment.
We could probably co-opt existing antitrust laws to reach this result. Probably different against the men and women as different anticompetitive practices are put into play. Funny concept, antitrust on unincorporated businesses that trade in paid meals (dinner dates), federal jurisdiction could be extended with evidence of the interstate usage of the internet communications, that fits the interstate commerce jurisdiction, with evidence being number of matches in combination with meetups per month or some other interval. I could see it working, especially if there was a whistleblower bounty.
>This seems to contradict some view on women's POV here. As in, for women the sexual transaction is big serious deal.
Also by her experience and some other stories from a few women I know close enough - even losing their virginity was more of a technicality. Literally "well, I had to go to a cdifferent city for university and I didn't want to lose it in some dorms, so I just hooked up with a guy with a good reputation (known to be able to do the job without any mess or future problems)"
Guys do now have this kind of option aside from visiting a prostitute.
> This seems to contradict some view on women's POV here. As in, for women the sexual transaction is big serious deal.
And other women learn how to decrease the cost.
Women that are fine with hormonal birth control with partners that test for STDs frequently are fine. There is a lot of consequence free sex happening.
It doesn't matter that it contradicts a view, your mistake is elevating them as representatives of the entire sex. They aren't, even if they masquerade as so, they are just individuals.
I'm glad you realized 3), I'm a variety act and don't consider "fortunately I have a wife now" to be an objective or finish line where I can breathe easier.
The way I would rephrase your observation is "have non-sedentary collaborative interests".
I'm having a good time. I'd like to have a better time with even less energy involved, but reading this paper suggests I have it very good and it probably doesn't really get better for me. I don't keep count but I would guess I'm in top 8-15%.
I am happy about the study, since I think this is underresearched. However, I think Gini Index this is a horrible way to look at it.
Regular sex is important, but regularly switching sex partners isn't really how I want to live my life. I don't want 50 lifetime partners, 38, 15, or even 12. I wanted one. That I have more than one is a sign of failure of a relationship each time, which is not a success.
If I had my choice, I'd:
1. go back to a 1930-style relationship, were I would have married early and stayed together.
2. We'd have clear roles, although not the sexist, dated ones from 1930. I'm very flexible, so I don't much care what they are. I just don't want conflict over who does what, re-negotiation of everything, and clear roles eliminate a lot of room for conflict. With some permanent, clear division of responsibility, we both know what's required of a good partner, and if each of us focuses on that, things work out.
3. As a cultural norm, divorce would only happen for fault (abuse, infidelity, etc.). Both sides would try to be good spouses.
4. Extended families would live together and support each other (which also keeps an eye on things not going south).
I'm not trying to impose that on anyone else, except for a research methodology to account for people like me.
I'm not going to downvote this. (I'm paying partictular attention to the "how I want to live my life" part) But there's a number of presumptions made that I think are worth calling out that should not be assumed:
- That the ending of a relationship is necessarily a failure.
- That two very young people are in a place to understand the implications of choosing a life partner.
- That extended families are necessary to "keep things from going south". (What does that mean? Helping mediate conflict, or to bury persistent issues in the name of stability?)
There's others here, but I'll stick with the three. But overall, while it may be good for some ("you do you"), I find a lot here to raise an eyebrow at and much too discomforting to simply scroll past. So much of this seems to reinforce unhealthy and oppressive norms that, in my strong opinion, lead eventually to so many destructing relationships in the long run.
I've lived in several countries. I've found that things function better, and people seem healthier, in more collectivist societies where there are real, permanent families and communities.
To the point of the book, the way things actually were is that we evolved as tribal creatures. We didn't pick our communities, didn't have much choice of mate, and we did need to rely on our tribes and families. My belief is that's the way we're wired. We're social creatures. That's not the US in the fifties, but rather a statement on the nature of humanity for tens of thousands of years.
Now, we're wealthy enough each of us can be 100% independent. I don't see that as a pathway to happiness, though. The connections I see between people in the US seem so shallow compared to those I've seen in other cultures.
Yes, that does mean I need to repress a lot of "self" to fit in, and bury many issues, but I'm okay with that. The US has a loneliness and a mental health pandemic. The whole place is so incredibly isolating.
And yes, ending a relationship is a failure *for me*. I'm not saying it needs to be for other people. However, I want someone to grow together and to grow old with. I want more people around me too, whom I know well.
I would argue society-level collectivism is actually a big destroyer of these families.
The phenomenon of say the elderly being disconnected from the younger I theorize is in part due to the fact they extract their social security through violence of the state in taxation rather than through family bonds. The lack of mutual familial reliance destroys the unspoken quid-pro-quo arrangements that held families together. The end effect also is children are a pure cost driver as the support they provide as adults to seniors is equally distributed amongst society rather than mostly directed towards the benefit of the parent who invested in their upbringing. This brings a massive free-rider problem where everyone is incentivized for the other guy to have kids but not for you personally to have one.
I theorize this also has destroyed to some extent inner city poor families. Non-familial nation state social payments to single mothers can actually work against marriage in poor families, as the single mother may be financially penalized for getting married. The resulting lack of father figure inspires more poverty and crime and recycling of the issues.
When my partner and I were first expecting we honestly were not sure whether to get married or not, as a lot of possible government benefits vaporized when you took my partner from "single poor mom" to "married middle of the road family."
take away social security and state pensions and see the birth rate shoot up.
since the benefit and cost is localized. people will be encouraged to have more children i.e spread the risk of getting taken care of in the future by their progeny.
some gvt social programs are necessary - but social security is not one of them. it's one big ponzi
I think that's only true if those roles line up with practical realities. The bulk of the problem with the 'old' roles is that become obsolete due to technological and cultural changes. The two biggest changes were household electricity, which enabled the mechanization of most houeshold chores; and refrigeration/modern fertilizer production, which made household gardens impractical for many people.
> As a cultural norm, divorce would only happen for fault ... Both sides would try to be good spouses.
+1. I grew up amoung pretty conservative Americans, and while they had some pretty toxic views around sex, the attitudes around cultivating healthy relationships has been one one of the most important things in giving me a happy life.
I was fairly deep in religious culture through college and can definitely argue that the "values" I learned were somewhat crippling in a liberal society. Especially ideas around interpreting intimacy as a sign of commitment. I was trying to capture some powerful sanctified physical connection, and the women I dated expected to hook up on the third date and still be non-commital. I don't think either approach was superior or healthy/unhealthy, but the mismatch can be jarring.
Ho boy. When I first ran across a date like this, I crashed-and-burned there. I thought sex implied a connection. My partner didn't. The outcome, emotionally, for me was bad.
Right, and each of these automatically get red-flagged by women, which takes out of the dating pool, people who subscribe to them. Advocating for them is the social/relationship equivalent of rent-seeking behavior: rather than compete, change the competitive landscape.
It's a difference in values. There are both men and women on both sides of the cultural divide. If anything, my experience is that there are more women on my side. The stereotype that women value commitment might be exaggerated, but there seems to be at least a kernel of truth there.
That's fine. I think we've reached the part of the conversation where we're bound by not having large-scale descriptive statistics that can convince the other.
Either way, my experience is completely opposite. I can't recall a single woman I know who, that when meeting someone prescribing any of these points, would not use them as a proxy for their willingness to engage in a relationship and their subsequent happiness in such a relationship. Maybe we just live in separate bubbles, or maybe one of us does and one doesn't, or maybe they are geographic bubbles or context dependent in some other way that introduces nuance in a way that ends with "it depends." We probably won't know unless doing some sort of statistical survey.
I don't think we need large-scale statistics to convince each other of our mutual experiences. We just need to accept neither of us is speaking in bad faith.
I don't know you, but I would speculate that you mostly interact with people from white, progressive, Western, middle-upper-class, educated, American culture, and that would be the experience there.
There are 8 billion people in the world, though. I'm an immigrant and mostly interact with immigrants. The signalling is different. Divorce is bad for kids, and a lot of people in the world would like a spouse who is committed. A lot of women want someone who will commit to one relationship and work on it.
I view marriage the same way as I do having a child, a parent, or any other family member; thick or thin, it not something you just opt out of unless something extreme happens. I do have one family member most of us disowned, but that was due to something rather extreme.
> go back to a 1930-style relationship, were I would have married early and stayed together.
I do a lot of US genealogy and this scenario wasn't as prevalent in the US as we've been led to believe.
For 1920-1950, what I've personally observed are 1) nuclear families tending to live together as adults and 2) a large percentage of adults not starting families until their 30s.
> As a cultural norm, divorce would only happen for fault (abuse, infidelity, etc.). Both sides would try to be good spouses.
As far as divorce goes, this really depended on where one lived. Divorce was routine in certain regions (north Mid-West, FL) and in many communities (typically depending on culture).
> Extended families would live together and support each other (which also keeps an eye on things not going south).
This faded as industrialization took hold. By the time we get to 1920-1950, most aging parents lived alone or in a boarding house or with an adult child who didn't marry.
There were a non-insignificant number of parents who lived in a 3+ generation household but that was usually a transient arrangement. Their final living arrangement tended to be one of the 3 above.
Relationships fail without having fault. My wife is from a culture much like you envision and at first was horrified at the bed-hopping she saw in the US. However, over time she's come to see that the old ways didn't actually work, AFIAK everyone she knew of her generation is still in their original relationships--but of those only one of those is still a meaningful relationship. All the rest are two people under one roof, neutral or hostile to each other.
So the problem about 1930s-style relationships, is that a lot more of them were held together by fear and taboo than people would care to admit. Abusive relationships usually aren't known by the public. Someone might try to leave an abusive relationship, but be shamed by the public for not being "committed enough" or even get excommunicated from their church.
I'm now happily married, and I hope to remain so for life. But the difference between the 1930s and now is that not only am I aware that if I'm a bad partner, she can leave me, but I accept that as a reasonable recourse.
Long-term marriage is absolutely possible today, but people who want that have to work for it. It's not automatic anymore because people are less scared of being branded for leaving a bad situation.
"Roles" is a very loaded term, but I think there's a definite place for understanding who is handling what. The key thing is understanding roles change, and in a good marriage, both partners will take whatever role serves the family unit. They shouldn't be attached to the gender of the partner, and can move as needs change.
I honestly don't know which is worse though. The 1930s fear and taboo or the 2020 divorce court take you to the cleaners, TRO issued and banned from seeing your kids and your guns taken away and then tossed in jail because you lost your job and the judge says you still owe support. I think I'd actually take the 1930s and I say that as someone who really dislikes those taboos and social pressures you mention.
So the experience I've seen is quite different: Family courts today are actually really focused on joint custody, to the extent that I guarantee you a lot of people have joint custody who probably shouldn't. If someone has a TRO and is banned from seeing their kids, there's a good chance a court has a really strong case to believe that person is violent and abusive.
And I think a lot of the hostility that does come from divorce starts with the belief it shouldn't happen or "isn't fair". If I accept that my wife has the right to divorce me if I'm a bad partner, if she does, the first thing I have to acknowledge is that I failed as a husband at meeting her needs (or perhaps that we are incompatible in a way that I never could do so). That would be absolutely crushing, but I wouldn't blame her for it, and if I blame myself, I am probably not going to end up communicating in that procedure in a way the court would feel I am not safe to share custody with.
Accepting that both parties have the right to exit, and that a relationship is a process of continual consent changes the entire dynamic.
Also: Child support, or even alimony, is a recognition that in a marriage, the income may be produced by a single party, even if the overall roles and responsibilities were divided equally. If someone is a stay-at-home-partner, they may not be bringing in the cash income, but they are still 50% of the effort of operating that family unit as they tend to take on more responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning and child rearing which all need to be done by someone. When a marriage ends, the low-income partner cannot necessarily immediately shift into self-sufficient career mode, and obviously the child should be seeing the necessary financial support they would have, so the income of the two parents needs to be compared with where the child spends most of their time (and hence, incurs the most expenses).
Or she got bored of you, fell out of love, and found someone else to bang. Divorces happen for a variety of reasons. If you failed, that's fine. What if you didn't fail, but she did?
Child support is not bad in theory. It's bad in practice, because divorce is an adversarial process with lawyers, rather than social workers, and designed to inflame conflict. The whole divorce industry is corrupt and rancid.
As a footnote: Expenses with joint custody tend to be pretty equal. If you have a child 3 nights a week, and your spouse has them 4 nights, do you think it makes a real difference to expenses? However, child support in some jurisdictions and income brackets will be about 1/3 of your income. The parent with four nights will have double the income.
That's not designed to support kids. You should consider what that's designed for.
TROs and sexual abuse allegations can be used as a weapon to get concessions from the other person, or simply to hurt them. They are not evaluated adequately in either direction--plenty are granted without evidence, plenty more aren't granted when warranted. The whole situation is a mess that I don't think should be handled by judges in the first place.
I don't mind alimony per se, but we use a radically wrong standard. It should not be the standard to which they are accustomed, but where they likely would have been had they not taken the years out of the labor force.
David letterman had a TRO because a woman claimed he was harassing her with code words over the television on his show. [0] The judge granted it "because she filled the form out properly."
This varies wildly by jurisdiction, but the burden of proof can be pretty slim and the judges in some jurisdiction have been on the record saying they grant them out of fear if something goes wrong when they haven't that they'll be held responsible.
>Also: Child support, or even alimony, is a recognition that in a marriage, the income may be produced by a single party, even if the overall roles and responsibilities were divided equally. If someone is a stay-at-home-partner, they may not be bringing in the cash income, but they are still 50% of the effort of operating that family unit as they tend to take on more responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning and child rearing which all need to be done by someone. When a marriage ends, the low-income partner cannot necessarily immediately shift into self-sufficient career mode, and obviously the child should be seeing the necessary financial support they would have, so the income of the two parents needs to be compared with where the child spends most of their time (and hence, incurs the most expenses).
This is an interesting monologue but we all know the reasoning by child support. I'm merely pointing out it's a real specter. When I'm married if I lose my job there's no court process and if I have to take a shitty one and spend way less money on the kid then we will adapt; but after a divorce you have an "imputed income" which is what the judge expects you could make. The judge also expects you're spending 20% of that imputed income towards the kid even though if when you were married it could be just 5% and the kid was fine. If I have to take up trucking and the judge says I really could be an engineer and I'm slacking then I could end up in jail. Granted most people making an effort probably aren't going to end up in jail but merely the fact you have potential debtor's prison hanging over your head at all times is a very real concern even in the event it is justified.
To point out the absurdity of child support debtor's prison as currently run, see the story of the guy arrested because he was held hostage in Iraq while working the contract job he needed to work to pay his child support... [1]. The reasoning? He did not mail the support while the captors were pointing a gun to his head. IMO any system where you can be jailed because you didn't make payments because you were taken hostage while trying to earn support for your children is just utterly fucked.
Not going to imply you need dozens of partners but no, you need at least a few. Like every dance partner produces a wildly different outcome so does a relationship. You learn a lot about yourself in the process. Enough that it should be considered a prerequisite to a mature relationship.
If you zoom out far enough, a greater proportion of women than men are in general able to find as many sexual partners they want. The problem isn't complex. The solution probably is, because (I think) obviously the solution in general isn't just sexual gratification. The necessary dynamic involves more than just "getting laid." There's the courtship/pursuit, the uncertainty of matchmaking -- the thing that is missing is not simply "sexual partners."
There is something messed up in modern dating. IME a girl who is a 5/10 can get a date/laid easily, with barely any effort, and usually with a more attractive male.
A guy who is 5/10 has to do insane antics just to get a shot, including learn to be a standup comedian, be in great shape, have a good job, read tons of dating books, etc.
I’m not sure it’s the fault of OLD, but something is messed up. It’s frankly depressing to date as a guy these days.
Off balance because there are more men and they are greedy, simple as that. Perhaps find a place with more women and the tide will turn. Be grateful we’re not trapped in China after the one kid policy.
In a cruel paradox, I find talking to women who are already in a relationship much more enjoyable. They are more humble, open-minded and treat me as a real person, not means to an end or some necessary evil. Which boosts confidence a lot.
I think women naturally just aren't into men as much as men are into women (in general, at a group level). They're also more likely to choose to be alone than be with someone who doesn't meet their standards. So any society where they "don't need a man" (no financial/cultural/patriarchy pressure) is going to have the same large incel issue over time.
> They're also more likely to choose to be alone than be with someone who doesn't meet their standards.
But they are not, as the article says women do have sexual partners while men increasingly don't. Men are hugely unmatched in loneliness in the young age groups
There is a well-known, foolproof solution to sexual loneliness. As the ancient philosopher Diogenes put it, "I wish it was just as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly!"
Now, relationship loneliness may well be a different matter. But it can only be addressed by the individual.
> In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner. However, online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers – perhaps even more so than traditional dating.
Another reminder to delete your dating profiles and then delete the dating apps! Don't let anyone gaslight you into suggesting your selection of photos are the problem, the jury has returned and the verdict is out.
You might think that just keeping those feelers out there will benefit you in a wider network, but inactive use of a dating app will decrease the visibility of your profile at all, and undiscerning use of a dating app trying to match with other unattractive/unpopular people will also decrease the visibility of your profile to only the people in your same level of unpopularity. The hot people are never evaluating your profile because the app won't even let them see you, its way worse than just imagining their inbox is inundated as that's just the next hurdle.
Delete it, you'll have to modify your lifestyle and schedule to do things that are social and interesting just like in the before times.
The article correctly identifies that lack of intimacy and relationships are serious problems, with sexual loneliness being a related comorbidity (if you will). The comments, so far, predictably drift toward "how do we get everyone laid?"
Giving everyone access to sex will not solve sexual loneliness. And, solving (a lot of) sexual loneliness can be achieved without giving everyone access to sex.
Anecdotally, I spent several years as part of the 5% mentioned in this article (lots of regular sex with several different women, most of whom I had very little in common with). After that, I spent several years having very little sex because my wife and I were living on opposite coasts. My experience of sexual loneliness during those two periods of my life were inversely correlated with the amount of sex I was actually having.
Intimacy and relationship matters. Proposals like prostitution or nonmonogamy fundamentally misunderstand the problem.
Yeah everyone seems to be very focused on sex whereas to me the problem is not fostering intimate connections in the first place. We don’t have an epidemic of relationships that aren’t having sex, we’re having an epidemic of people who aren’t fostering those relationships and as a downstream byproduct they aren’t having sex. Pay a prostitute is a bandaid patch on the downstream problem, but it will never makeup for the loneliness hole of the upstream problem
I'm single and male, and personally I don't feel a "need" for sex. I do wish other less intrusive forms of intimacy e.g. hugs could be more legitimized between single people, though.
Sometimes I see pictures of cats cuddling and just wonder why humans are so bad at engaging in simple, consensual comforts like that.
Most animals are in heat just a small part of the time, humans are in heat all the time. Animals in heat behave a lot more like humans do regarding these things. Humans still have the genes to populate the earth, we haven't adapted to having a stable population yet where we don't optimize for maximum kids.
I would like to add that humans are in heat only when they are healthy and feel safe (emotionally, financially, physically). The traumatized modern western society tends to get in the way of this.
Its also quite cultural. Its normal for men to hold hands when walking in India, Nepal for example. At first it looked ridiculous to me...having grown up since then I think its Western civilization that's a bit ridiculous in that aspect.
Perhaps. But it's also "weird" that it only exists with same-sex. Why is it a cultural taboo for single men and single women to say, hold hands, if they aren't in a monogamous relationship with anyone else, and are doing so consensually?
I feel like traditional culture is the only thing that says "you shouldn't do that", which seems equally ridiculous to me.
Because there is a potential underlying motive, and it presents danger for one of the parties due to them being physically weaker. The risk of sending (or the other party assuming) the wrong signal is probably not worth it.
But that underlying motive could be mutual, it could not, the key is consensuality, at any point one party isn't on the same page they can and should say no, this applies to same-sex and opposite-sex configurations, no?
> and it presents danger for one of the parties due to them being physically weaker
That's also true of same-sex configurations, though.
> But that underlying motive could be mutual, it could not, the key is consensuality, at any point one party isn't on the same page they can and should say no, this applies to same-sex and opposite-sex configurations, no?
Hence the purpose of flirting to ensure both are on the same page and accepting of the risks. Consensual-ity and motive may not be easy to objectively establish in the moment, so I am guessing this is one area where societies have evolved to play it safe.
> That's also true of same-sex configurations, though.
The low probability of this, as well as the relative strength differences between an average man and the weakest man versus an average man and an average woman make it not worth worrying about, evidently.
Yeah, but I've never understood the appeal. I am no more interested in professional cuddling than professional sex. They are natural parts of a relationship and to me have no value outside that context.
It seems so weird to me that one would pay for something like that.
Why isn't it something that friends engage in, like animal counterparts? I mean, it seems like an artificial cultural norm we've set upon ourselves -- The idea of no extended touching unless with a sexual partner is one that exists only in my mind, but it's certainly not what my body wants.
I don't think I would enjoy a cuddle party, though.
For me having an emotional connection with someone (e.g. long term friends who have gone through struggles together, or people I haven't known for long but we've done something out of compassion for each other) is a prerequisite for touch to be desirable. I'm averse to being touched by a bunch of strangers and people I don't know well, especially in a group setting where I know everyone to different levels. I have a more cat-like personality than a dog-like personality in that regard.
Given favorable circumstances, it might be possible for you to form enough intimacy with someone during a single party to enjoy cuddling with them. Or it might not; people are very different.
(I think a lot of people take MDMA in order to be able to enjoy being touched by a bunch of strangers if they normally wouldn't, and it seems to be effective, but I haven't tried it myself, and although the risks are relatively low, they're far from insignificant.)
There's more than one problem. Trust me, being in a loving marriage where your partner just wants sex with other people and not you, but is jealous of your sexual fidelity, is corrosive. Especially if you have a high sex and intimacy drive.
While I agree that nonmonogamy doesn't solve the problem of heterosexual members of gender A having almost sex almost exclusively with a small group drawn from gender B, I think it can be helpful in ameliorating a different aspect of the problem of loneliness, and in particular sexual loneliness.
If you're in a monogamous relationship with someone with a permanent major sexual incompatibility with you, your options are to stay together (likely creating sexual loneliness for yourself and possibly both of you) or to break up and try to find a different partner (creating sexual loneliness for your ex-partner which may, depending on circumstances, last a long time). Non-monogamous relationships are a lot more flexible with this kind of thing: you can have sex with a different partner without blowing up the relationship that contains the sexual incompatibility.
By "major sexual incompatibilities" I mean to include things like impotence, vaginismus, vulvodynia, fetishes that are a turnoff to the other partner, same-gender couples where one partner is nearly heterosexual, opposite-gender couples where one partner is nearly homosexual, extreme mismatches in preferences of frequency of intercourse, serious illnesses interfering with sex, and some constellations of asexuality.
Of course some people have vulvodynia, or frustrated fetishes, or whatever, and both they and their monogamous partner have a satisfying sex life anyway. But, as you can easily imagine, these situations often do lead to big problems with sex, and I think monogamy tends to amplify that into big problems with intimacy and relationships. (But if you're in a monogamous relationship that's struggling with this, and you try to solve a problem like this by going non-monogamous, you're probably going to have an extremely hard time with it.)
My point was not to criticize non-monogamy per se or to suggest that it should be completely avoided. To wit: the human experience is infinitely varied and consenting adults should be free to address the special circumstances of their own lives in whichever way works for them.
However, non-monogamy isn't a reasonable solution to the epidemic of sexual loneliness characterized in the article. With respect to the issues you raised this is nearly tautologically true because the epidemic is amount single people rather than sexually incompatible couples.
Further, the hypothesis that non-monogamy (or prostitution) can solve the epidemic of sexual loneliness merely by virtue of increasing the supply of sexually compatible partners is misguided.
I concur, and I find the quasi-economic formulation of the problem somewhat repellent; I think it tends to inhibit the kind of thinking that's needed to form meaningful and intimate connections with other people.
> I find the quasi-economic formulation of the problem somewhat repellent
Totally agreed. I'd even go so far as to assert that, for people who use this language and are sexually lonely, the very best thing they can do to end that loneliness is to stop thinking of other people as economic goods.
Most people crave intimacy and are repelled by objectification.
I think that something that is part of this and poorly understood is female health and the feelings of guilt, shame and resentment that pop up in relationships.
Hormonal cycles are very different in women, and are affected by age, factors like weight and inflammation and stress. Doctors tend to look at acute problems and miss the more holistic or secondary affects.
My wife and I have a pretty awesome relationship, but we went through hard patches that were ultimately caused by medical conditions that neither of us knew existed.
I think people pursue “other options” sometimes because they don’t know how to cope with things. As a male, these things are simpler.
I mean to be fair a lot of this is because men don't compliment each other.
I'm a lesbian and I've been out for 22 years and I still have to be careful giving men compliments because they think 'I like your shirt' means 'I want to suck your dick'.
Not really, the 'Girl Next Door' and 'Gamer Girl' have been sexualized so I'm just slotted into that category. Most of it is a function of what you look like and unfortunately for me my appearance just screams feminine and I tick a lot of physical boxes that are attractive to men.
My understanding is once you're like...55 or 60 you can start complimenting men under 40. Then men put you into 'nice grandma' instead of 'she wants to nail me'.
I think the post was sensitively written about a topic that can be touchy. It's pretty easy for someone to get on the apps and have sex with people they don't have much in common with, I don't think we need to consider that a humble-brag.
If some perceived desirable accomplishment is retold as an experience without obvious boasting and with wisdom drawn from it, I think that responding with insecurity is delegitimizing only to you, not them
The wisdom is not all that profound and it comes off as boastful. Whether or not it deligitimizes the reader is irrelevant. The poster knows it's a sensitive topic from the very outset and still goes ahead with the comment.
I’d love to start a conversation here about attempting to solve this in a very narrowly defined place as an experiment. Since this is HN, I nominate San Francisco.
My hypothesis is that the bandwidth required to present oneself and assess another person is larger than what fits in the self_awareness -> profile_creation -> dating_app_algorithm -> profile_selection -> personality_model_creation -> model_evaluation pipeline.
We already know that a lot of communication happens non verbally. There are other signals we care about: do this person’s friends like them, etc. There are questions about compatible value systems and one’s relationship to risk, money, independence etc.
If there is a technology solution here, I doubt that it looks like a collection of profiles.
Anecdotally, online gaming and niche reddit communities have a somewhat high success rate at creating friendships. One possible way to use this model is a dating app that lets you solve puzzles with another person real time instead of swiping on profile pictures?
I don’t know. I’m throwing ideas here to get a conversation started.
I haven’t checked, but my intuition is that removing photos reduces the available bandwidth, not increases it.
Perhaps a dating app that only allows photos taken with the app, that ensures no filters or edits were done to the image probably increases the bandwidth. But then, that’s an antifeature - I doubt people would want to use such an app.
The need itself is the problem, and it's really surprising noone looks at it this way. A drug that 'd make me completely asexual (with no orientation) is the real solution for me, as currently there's none available.
There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him.
[....]
[Socrates:] And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the “threshold of old age” —Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?
[....]
[Cephalus, after listing the ways others claim getting old sucks:] But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles —are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them.
— Plato, The Republic, Book I
(It's worth noting that some readings of this are that Socrates is giving Cephalus a little friendly ribbing by prompting him to talk about this, Socrates [the character, or the man, either way] actually being around the same age as Cephalus in this dialog and still plainly being far more vigorous and eagerly engaging with life)
------------
I don't need a lover, no, no, no
The wretched beast is tame
I don't need a lover
So blow out the flame
— Leonard Cohen, "Leaving the Table", from his final album.
According to Wikipedia, they might[0]. Note however that the procedure is not generally available, I can't just purchase chemical castration pills, which is a problem because it should be my choice.
Meta, but it's interesting how many comments here are reflexively blaming men and their collective behaviour for this. On its face this seems irrational since who has sex in present day culture is basically gatekept by women. There appears to be this bizarre cultural taboo or cognitive bias where women can (collectively) have agency but when they use that agency to make decisions that harm others, you aren't allowed to criticize them collectively because that would be immoral or something.
Sex in general may or may not be gatekept by women, but good, enjoyable, risk-free sex is gatekept by men. Is it any wonder that people don't want bad. risky sex?
> It was reported that the 5% of the population with the highest number of vaginal sex acts accounted for more vaginal sex acts than the bottom 50% of the population
People have been having a lot less sex for a while now. I think technology is largely to blame, too. We're so accustomed to things being served up for us that the ability to function outside that specific setting has atrophied.
We've become more connected than ever, but we're more singular and selfish than ever. This is worse with generations that have had an internet-connected computer in from of them their whole life, especially in the social media era (studies show). I expect people to be getting more and more neurotic and weird.
I think also that the effects of internet porn really can't be underestimated. There's something emasculating about one of humanity's ultimate drives being sated with a couple of mouse clicks. Then look at what is delivered: it's not sex, it's not even a depiction of sex, it's a depiction of a simulacra of sex. Generally speaking, porn divorces us from our own sexuality. Instead of exploring and developing our own sexuality with others, we're served the depiction of others performing for the camera and we get that in our heads. If you think that doesn't impact your sex life or sexuality I don't know what to say.
Sexual loneliness and frustration is strange to me. I accept that it is real and painful for many people. But I just don't understand how the desire for sex drives people to take risks with their health and safety, or how the lack of it causes despair or violence.
What is the big deal about sex anyway? Why do some guys go crazy if they can't have sexual intimacy? A lot of time and effort for what, ten minutes of pleasure? But a deep (non-sexual) friendship can last all your life.
I don't think we should restructure society and become more traditional and conservative (whether de jure or de facto) just to cater to the very few who may become violent when they can't get laid. I think the not getting laid part is just an excuse. Prior to the sexual revolution, when people married young and divorce was rare, violence inside marriages was very common.
Overall I think I'm lucky that I'm asexual. There is a whole class of problems that I have never had to think about. I have no desire to exercise power over others or to allow them to exercise power over me.
Many boys spend nearly their entire first 18 years of their lives stewing in an extremely toxic media/community/family ecosystem where sexual virility and your ability to have sex with women is _directly_ correlated with status and success in life. Similarly, your in-abililty to attract members of the opposite sex is _directly_ correlated with your status as a loser and station in life.
Short answer: because we're genetically programmed to care about it. And no amount of reasoning or handwaving or logical thought will change what the genes encode.
Sensitivity to status exists in all primates - not just humans. It's one of the most basic instincts of an animal.
We are just vessels for the reproduction of our genetic code (although we believe in our own free will). Status is directly linked to the probability of the genes reproducing, ergo short of some weird chemical drugs, we will never be able to ignore it.
Replace all the references to sex with food/hunger in your statements - "What is the big deal about food anyway? Why do some guys go crazy if they can't eat? A lot of time and effort for what, ten minutes of deliciousness?" I think perhaps it will make sense?
The reason libido is referred to as a 'biological drive' (definition: "an innate motivational state produced by depletion or deprivation of a needed substance (e.g., water, oxygen) in order to impel behavior that will restore physiological equilibrium.) is that it's a biological "need". Quotes because while you obviously don't need it to survive, the brain feels the same way for some people that it does when you "need" food.
it s not a need though, nobody died from celibacy. there are thousands of men who choose to become monks etc forgoing sexual pleasure. it is a drive, but not a need
When viewed through a biological lens, celibacy guarantees you'll never pass on your genes. A 50/50 chance of getting laid or dying is evolutionarily a better choice than a life of celibacy.
> the desire for sex drives people to take risks with their health and safety, or how the lack of it causes despair or violence.
They don't . There are scores of men who are lonely. You only hear about a tiny few vocal cases which are not even statistically significant. Men are much more likely to commit violence in general regardless of sexual frustration. But it's easy for psychopaths to attribute their violent behavior to anything
I think I first heard the phrase "involuntary celibate" on USENET around 1994 or so.
People are pretty self-centered and prone to sensationalism so I think most people didn't hear the contraction "incel" until there were some high-profile killings a few years ago.
That article tells a story very similar to what some incels tell, which is that men who are at the top of desirability have more access to a range of partners than they ever did while men who are average and below frequently get nothing. People blame dating sites like Tinder for this as women now get to be choosier in the short term, but in the long term they find they can't get men to commit to them because the men that they choose on Tinder don't have any reason to commit to them, a situation written up in
(I would love to get Eva Illouz in a conversation with a blackpiller like Wheat Waffles as the situations they describe look like two sides of the same coin to me.)
In general people make policy based on looking in the rear view mirror and nowhere is this more pernicious than in gender issues where the fact that boys are dropping out of education and men dropping out of work are only barely starting to get attention after having been worsening trends for 30 years. The "standard model" of intersectionality really gets things wrong because the assumptions that "Men do better than women" and "Whites do better than blacks" don't compose to make black women particularly wretched, instead you find black women don't do nearly as bad as black men because it is black men who seem to be on a conveyor belt from the cradle to prison.
Yeah, but there is a vocal subset who have made it into a hate group and they drive anyone sane away because they don't want to be associated with the hate. There's also the basic flaw of humanity that most people will look very hard indeed for others to blame before accepting that the problem is internal or just the luck of the draw and unfixable. And once someone is seduced by this they'll never address the real issue and thus the belief becomes self-perpetuating.
For a long time the response of men in suffering has been to be quiet, turn anger inward and suffer from suicide, heart disease, drug addiction and other deadly forms of despair.
I'd agree that inceldom is toxic (one of my son's friends fell under the spell of an incel Youtuber and dumped my son as a friend because my son is taller than him and could possibly "heightmog" him.) but the average man has never had a social movement that cares about his plight.
Reading early feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and such I get the impression that their basic rhetorical strategy is to compare the top 0.1% man to the median woman but then implicitly comparing the agency of the average woman to a man who might not have a lot (there is a war on... time to go to war and die)
This conflation of power and gender is structural to discussions of "sexual harassment" which seems to almost always be up and down power hierarchies. Hypothetically it could so sideways and sometimes it must, but you hear about it so little that I think there is some mechanism that suppresses it from being talked about. In this old book
The tragic thing about incels and the broader online men's rights movements is that the pain is real, but they've rejected the most useful lens for understanding where it comes from and how to address it.
Third wave feminism prominently addresses the origins and dangers of certain aspects of masculinity, diagnoses how they harm men, and proposes well thought out mitigations and alternatives. Bell hooks for example wrote several entire books on exactly this subject, and she's not the only one.
Of course they rejected it. Accepting feminism didn't result in them being accepted in return. Feminists can write a million books about toxic masculinity and it won't matter because those are the men that women actually have sex with.
The sexual liberation of women is a major theme of feminism. Does that imply even so called "incels" will get some of that? No. On the contrary, they're even more marginalized now.
People are really negative towards outsiders with explanations. When I was in grad school, a friend and I tried to unify all the progressive organizations on campus. One thing we found was that black organizations reacted negatively to any hint of vanguardism or anything that sounded like some white people think they know better than black people.
It is one reason why I reject How to be an anti-racist because it is not for white people to take a leadership role in solving black people’s problems, in particular blacks “own the problem” and get to decide what is an acceptable solution or not.
That's one-sided view. Obviously the sexual market disposition is PROBLEMATIC to some(majority?) of men. Then minority of men will create PROBLEMATIC situation for the rest of society.
Feels like someone should say something about the decline in participation in civil society, group activity, clubs (that are not purely online), and Putnam’s Bowling Alone.
I always wondered if this commonly quoted fact is the wrong way of causation. Men who are more healthy are more likely to seek more love sounds more logical.
It also seems that men who have a lot of sex have a lot of STDs. I would like to see the statistics
I've noticed that a lot of college aged women dated (at least briefly) men 10+ years older, in some cases more than once. Inevitably they got figuratively screwed by the man who can't get women his age to date him, and eventually go back to dating people their own age.
> One possible aid for sexual loneliness might come from online dating apps such as Tinder. In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner.
In a theory that, like many 101-level econonic theories, assumes no-cost perfect information, rather than the real costs of information gathering on the alternatives and the real incentives to game this (making it worse for everyone else) by misrepresentation.
I would in fact argue that a major cause of the modern issue is belief in the theory that dating apps offer this, and the divide between that theory and the reality. Even pre-dating apps, the dating methods that did the most to divorce dating from general social intercourse contributed to this, but dating apps take that to a whole new level.
“It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Extension du domaine de la lutte
As a gay man (who, fortunately, doesn't have any issue with finding partners for casual "stress relief"), I agree that this is a definite issue.
It seems the world has moved on in many ways and traditional roles/barriers are being broken down, but unfortunately not so much for this topic. I look at hetero friends of mine and it still seems to be the same old rat-race for them.
Men get treated as disposable resources when it comes to dating/relationships. Sure, not all men; if you're pretty or wealthy or otherwise "useful" you'll do fine. But it seems very one-sided in that women do not need to do all that much in order to be desirable to someone (though perhaps not desirable to the type of people they want to meet specifically).
It really just makes me so glad to be gay, and so sad to see men treated like they have no worth; you do have worth, every man, every woman, and every person in between.
It's also incredibly unfortunate that many of the traits exhibited by "men who work in technology" are generally not seen as desirable by many women. I count myself as incredibly fortunate that I can easily meet other men who are into the same things; the only downside is obviously that: * there are fewer gay men available compared to the hetero pool * some (a large number really) of hetero guys will get aggressive to the point of violence if you flirt with them, so it's still very important to sound it out/gaydar someone.
There are a lot of factors at play here. Porn is ubiquitous which reduces the number of people looking for real-life hookups to satisfy their immediate urges. Awareness of the health risks (STDs, etc) of having many partners has probably never been higher. And the economic stakes of an unwanted pregnancy are higher than they've ever been due to increasing restrictions on abortion.
If porn were outlawed, contraception was free, and abortion was legal everywhere, I think you would see a lot more young people getting out there and having a good time.
Porn is ubiquitous which reduces the number of people looking for real-life hookups to satisfy their immediate urges
Why is that a bad thing? For me the problem is the opposite - it might not completely satisfy it, but if it'd completely satisfy the urge, then wouldn't it be a good thing?
The OP frames sexual loneliness as a problem. I don't think it's a huge leap to say porn is part of the reason why people are having less real-life sex. Morally I have no issue with it, but ease/speed/price are important factors in market behavior. It's why I'm more likely to flop down on the couch to watch Netflix than drive across town to watch a movie at the cinema, or listen to Spotify vs attend a live music performance. The cinema and the rock concert are probably better experiences, but streaming makes everything so easy and cheap I don't often seek out those experiences.
Porn access as a causal explanation also helps explain why we see the same problem happening even in Nordic countries where access to abortion/contraception is not a problem and parental leave benefits are far superior to the US.
This isn't the root problem though, its consequences are, including how one feels.
It's why I'm more likely to flop down on the couch to watch Netflix than drive across town to watch a movie at the cinema
So you pick the better option, right? That's why I asked my question, the problem can't be that a better option exists, it must be something else and it should be precisely stated.
The cinema and the rock concert are probably better experiences, but streaming makes everything so easy and cheap I don't often seek out those experiences.
So overall they're better only if you exclude their negative consequences.
Get out of the house, meet people (even if only in the pursuit of getting laid), inadvertently make relationships in the process of just trying to get laid, find that special somebody. Or stay at home, jerk off, and then go browse the web.
Basically the urges we all have, even if they can obviously lead to some awful things, are also the process of aeons of evolution. And they've shown themselves to be remarkably effective at keeping our species alive and healthy even when we knew nothing at all about our world beyond what we might randomly intuit. Having a 'shot' that can pleasantly "fix" those urges is not necessarily a good thing.
Basically the urges we all have, even if they can obviously lead to some awful things, are also the process of aeons of evolution. And they've shown themselves to be remarkably effective at keeping our species alive
Ah, so the disagreement stems from the fact that you don't think those are all awful things. I'm afraid I can't explain it further on HN..
Does anyone think this a lot of this is hormone driven? I know there are studies that show sperm counts are dropping due to chemicals, but I haven’t been able to find anything regarding testosterone levels. I’m not arguing that having higher testosterone will make women more attracted to men, but having higher testosterone undoubtedly gives you more energy/confidence to succeed in life (which probably makes you more attractive to women).
By interesting papers you mean "paper" singular and it was conducted at a science center with no control.
> Target participants were 170 male-female couples (aged between 18 and 73, mean = 35.8, SD = 11.3). All couples reported to be heterosexual. We collected data and images from 333 couples who were visitors to a science exhibition centre and who responded positively to a face-to-face invitation to participate.
That is just one paper about one facet of the issue.
"Although this general idea and the research looking into it is still in its infancy, the data that do exist suggest that the pill might influence who you’re attracted to, the dynamics of your relationships, the quality of your sex life, how jealous you are, how you respond to your partner’s face, how sexy you are to others, and your likelihood of getting a divorce."
no , unless you mean that increasing testosterone will make men oppress women again so they can have more equitable distribution among themselves.
"This" is the result of max level sexual competition. If anything, if it were hormonal it would affect disproportionally more the high-partner-count males compared to low-partner, which would flatten the distribution
I am a handsome gay man and I can open up Grindr to pick todays solution to my sexual loneliness at any time. Sometimes I do, because my hormones and lust dictate my actions. Just invite someone over during home
office and fornicate while I carefully listen to Slack sounds in the background.
Generally all it lead to so far was the whole ABC of STDs and even more loneliness. Sex is incredibly overrated and I probably have more experience with it than the vast majority of all humans so I can say that with confidence. The only part of me that would miss it is are my uncontrollable lower animal brain areas and my misaligned pleasure/reward circuits.
Let me repeat: Having lots of great sexual encounters with people you consider very attractive changes nothing in your life. Building and finding friendships, "true connections" and love does, but those generally do not need sex.
At least a few of my (sex) dates turned into lasting friendships.
The problem is, the ones valuing it most are the ones getting it the least. My guess is that if they do end up getting it a lot, they might end up with the same conclusion as you.
this is not solving anything though. people who end up with long-term lonenlines feel (rightly) practically excluded from society and STDs are not high in their concerns
Homo Sapiens evolved to be uber-sexual[^1]. But at some point we decided we were only going to have a very narrow type of sex partner in a very narrow set of conditions, and doing otherwise would be a social taboo. Fast-forward, we live in a world where guys' natural needs go unfulfilled. Who figures.
Don't hate me for saying this, but if you are one of those guys who can't get laid with the girl they want: broaden your scope. Try to date the girl who would be your number 3 choice, or your boss' wife, or try an intimate friend of your same sex. Also, stop watching Netflix and Hollywood movies, that's not how life works.
---
[^1] I'm basing this on some reading of "Sex at Dawn". Call that work disreputable if you may, but it's written by scientists.
Legalize prostitution and regulate safety and perhaps incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit from paid sexual interactions?
I'm kind of ignorant to the subject of what is the cause of 'sexual loneliness' but I believe the world's oldest profession shouldn't be pushed into the shadows as that causes more problems than it prevents.
> incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit
While there's a perception that incels are ugly, socially awkward nerds, the one's I've interreacted with online (and off) tend to be angry, misogynistic douchebags.
The nerdiest guys I know (IRL) all have significant others. The bitter guys I know (two) IRL are older, have let themselves go and have nothing "going for them". They are both very active online however. This is my personal experience, anecdotal of course.
Agree. There's a cottage industry of social media influencers who find money in selling this cadre a simple message, "There is a reason it's hard for you and this is the group who's making it that way. I'll teach you why they're wrong and how to fight them to win."
It's an appealing message for a group who sees their intrinsic or essential power impotent in a changing world. It means that radical self-growth, a long and difficult process, doesn't have to happen, painful self-truths don't have to be addressed, and basic skills like empathy don't have to be cultivated. In short, issues can be externalized.
> have let themselves go and have nothing "going for them"
that is, they fell ill with depression because of lack of relationships, entering a loop of ever-furthering isolation and depression, which made them bitter and undesirable.
Some "ugly, socially awkward nerds" somehow find meaningful relationships and get saved. Others don't, and go down the nasty road.
That's exactly it, and it really muddies discussions. So many dumbass discussions of "why don't the femcels and incels just date each other" by people who have absolutely no idea what either of the groups are beyond the name.
I think there's a vast gap between people who feel hopeless and worthless and occasionally vent a little bit online, and people who adopt the incel identity so thoroughly that they'll cop to it IRL. I think the latter are rare, and their perceived importance is inflated the vast numbers of the former.
My teens and twenties predated the term "incel," but I was horny, lonely, and unhappy about it, and I could identify with a lot of the online whining from men who felt the same way. I did some venting in the "woe is me" vein on Reddit. But in my real life, at least when I wasn't in a depressive episode, I was always trying to improve my situation by bettering myself and buffing my social skills. I was always thinking of ways to crack the problem. When I felt defeated and discouraged, I'd complain anonymously online, because I knew nobody in my real life wanted to hear it, and then I'd get back to work figuring out my life.
I have no evidence, but I would bet that the perception of the incel phenomenon is warped by a small number of angry people who managed to inflate their importance by expressing the frustration and humiliation of a much larger group of men who are like I was, who go online to express temporary (though possibly recurring) feelings of hopelessness. As an identity, being an incel doesn't have much to offer. It's about a desire for sex, but it doesn't offer any path to sex. I think the vast majority of horny, frustrated young men who have applied the label to themselves at one time or another probably spend much more time thinking about how to be more likable to women than they spend thinking about incel ideology. And if they get any reward at all from trying to improve themselves and their empathy towards women, that will be a better deal than they get from the incel camp.
You suggestion kind of sounds like: Let's teach kids how to grow an apple tree by giving them apple juice.
Consuming the benefits of having a woman sexually interested in you is a very different skill from creating that interest in the first place. So they would just pay to skip all the steps that they are bad at, thereby never learning them.
> You suggestion kind of sounds like: Let's teach kids how to grow an apple tree by giving them apple juice.
This is a poor analogy because apples and apple juice don't involve social dynamics. I can easily see a man who is experienced having sex with women through prostitution being more confident flirting/being intimate with real-life women. And confidence is a large part of "creating that interest."
I think that may happen in some cases but they would also learn that sex is likely not what they imagined it to be. Its just something that people do together sometimes. I think there would be emotional growth after the fact.
Not a good analogy because you'd still be learning a ton from a paid sexual experience vs not having any. It'd be more like apple picking and eating them with the farmer that grew them, while they tell you how the apple trees are planted, cultivated, and harvested. Do it enough times and you'll have the confidence and general idea on how you can do it on your own. There's obviously a risk of getting too addicted to the instant gratification and getting stuck in this loop but I suspect that'd be a small percentage as eventually people will want the real deal relationship.
Plus you'd be (temporarily) alleviating the pain and frustration of loneliness, which is a huge boost in morale and will bring hope. That being said I've never tried a prostitute, although I've considered it in times of loneliness for the same reasons above.
I think that would work on the immediate effects (i.e. "sexual loneliness") but build confidence and learn to socialize? I doubt that. Sex is the endgame. Before that you've got a whole world of social interaction and skill and skipping to the end wouldn't help you with any of that.
Maybe if the prostitutes were more like escorts, you go out on a date, they give you honest feedback about how you're presenting yourself and so on. But that feels far outside the typical work of a prostitute.
EDIT: now I think of it I doubt it would work on sexual loneliness either. I can't imagine that loneliness is solved simply by the act of sex, there's feeling wanted, feeling desired, all those things. I have no experience (I swear, officer!) but I can't imagine getting those things out of something I know is a financial transaction for my partner.
Do those same countries have the same level of violence as the US? I am willing to bet that sexual frustration leads to violence in a lot of instances.
And it’s not like that any sexually deprived young man just walks into a brothel like he walks into a pharmacy in Germany. That’s highly stigmatized and I suppose it is in the other countries as well.
I'm looking at Europe and I'm a bit confused how this would be a causal relationship.
9 countries have legalized prostitution: Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, and Turkey.[0]
Human trafficking, in order of severity, is most linked to: Netherlands, UK, Romania, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Hungry, Portugal.
From this list alone (these tend to follow power laws) there's a higher correlation with being a Bloc State than legalized prostitution. Unsurprising to see UK and Germany here considering they are not only the most wealthy countries, but also the most populous. Netherlands... well I got no answer there but this is just a quick look.
Just given this quick look, I'd be shocked to learn that legalization of prostitution was a major causal factor in human trafficking.
I also find the data highly questionable--it's very popular to pretend that prostitution is "trafficking" with little or zero evidence. I recall a news article recently about a bunch of "trafficking" busts--that was the police putting up ads and busting the guys who showed up. Trafficking women requires that there be women in the first place and there were none.
And, no, women who move around a lot and live on-site isn't proof of trafficking--because that's also a way to make it much harder for the cops to investigate and thus a sensible safety strategy for them. I'm sure trafficking exists but I don't believe the claimed numbers at all.
I think there is some confusion about used terminology, where legalization is more like 'regulation', while many european countries do not criminalize prostitution but do not have legal framework for prostitution (e.g. 'abolitionism' in the Wikipedia link). In these countries prostitution is perfectly legal (but not necessary 3rd party involvement, which may may be used to bully prostitutes by attacking their business partners, e.g. landlords renting flats).
It’s more than 9. It’s also legal in the blue-colored countries confusingly labeled with ‘Abolitionism’. It in fact appears to be legal in most of the countries on your human trafficking list.
I don't think it is confusing and I don't think it is what you're suggesting. The wiki explicitly says that the act of prostitution is legal but the act of procuring it is illegal. Essentially you get arrested for paying for sex. The John. This is often done so that women have more of a safety net and can feel more comfortable going to police if they are abused. In other areas if you are trafficked you might feel scared to go to the police out of fear that they will arrest you.
This isn't the same as saying that prostitution is legal because the transaction is still illegal. It also doesn't resolve the issue of the correlation, which is the main point.
You can check the relevant Wikipedia pages on prostitution in e.g. Spain or the UK to see that your are misinterpreting the significance of the blue keying. It is not illegal to sell sex or to pay for sex in either of these countries (or in any of the other blue countries, as far as I’m aware).
This seems like finding yourself in a depressing situation, becoming depressed, and solving the problem with pharmaceuticals rather than changing the circumstances which led to depression in the first place.
100% this. How many acts of violence by lonely men would be avoided if they had just had the opportunity to go out, drop $150 and have sex. Especially sex that catered to whatever fetish they happened to indulge in. I have no scientific numbers to back this but I am willing to be the answer is "a lot". I feel like if an isolated, angry virgin was able to have sex in a non judgmental environment they would lose their hostility and likely be all the better for it.
> How many acts of violence by lonely men would be avoided if they had just had the opportunity to
Zero. It's not about the sex. It's about value and self-worth. It's about being selected. It's about being chosen by the person who could have chosen anyone. When people are rejected by other human beings, they are literally being told they are worthless. Wouldn't you turn violent if you were told you were worthless your entire life?
Prostitution is an incredibly dismissive and superficial solution to the so called "incels" and it's going to fail for the exact same reasons as sex bots solution that's often proposed: it's not genuine human acceptance.
Here we go: The time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:
Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.
They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power", i.e., it IS "about sex", at least sometimes)
Sometimes, you don't need "genuine human acceptance." Sometimes, the only thing that will clear your head is that you just need to fuck. At least for some portion of men (and possibly, just to be inclusive here, women).
The time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:
Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.
They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power")
And I don't see how there's anything to back up this assumption. It seems to me more likely that men expressing misogyny online would also express it in person. Sex workers may individually choose to tolerate that or may not, but either way this opportunity exists now and this problem still persists.
> And I don't see how there's anything to back up this assumption
I present to you, some pretty good data: the time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:
Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.
They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power")
There's also no convincing evidence (just cherrypicked data that is either pro- or con-) that legalizing prostitution results in more sex trafficking.
> Sex workers may individually choose to tolerate that or may not
Funny thing about you saying that, they can't choose anything if it's illegal- if it's legal, they can not only choose, they can bring legal charges against anyone who mistreats them.
> Legalize prostitution and regulate safety and perhaps incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit from paid sexual interactions?
Incels don't like prostitutes, they despise them. Incels believe that they are _owed_ sex, they don't want to pay for sex. You fundamentally misunderstand what Incel claim being.
Prostitution is legal in Germany, guess what country in the EU comes first when it comes to the number of self declared incels
Prostitution advocate often claim that legalizing prostitution will lower violence against females, there is absolutely not a single proof that true. All we know is that legalizing prostitution increase the demand for legal and illegal (minors, trafficked women) prostitution.
> Legalize prostitution and regulate safety and perhaps incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit from paid sexual interactions?
Prostitution is legal in my country. One can literally go to a clearnet website and get a menu full of humans to choose from. So called "incels" still exist.
I think incel is as much about involuntary celibate as antisemitism is against semitic languages.
Incels are a hate group only vaguely related to celibate. And legalizing prostitution (something I am for) will probably do as good to that group as language lessons would do against antisemitism as we know it today.
I dont think prostitution can fix that issue in the slightest. Here in Germany prostitution is legal and highly regulated (to the point that there are ticket stations for prostitutes working on the street to pay taxes). I would however never ever consider using those services.
> I would however never ever consider using those services.
Maybe because you don't need or want to?
If you're the type of person that wants to have sex with someone, and you're willing to pay for it, and you have the option - you're probably going to.
If not, you're either expecting too much for too little compensation or regulation is preventing the market from being efficient.
No because I would rather not have sex than take part in the exploitation of at risk woman. Just because it's legal and regulated doesn't mean there aren't horrible things going on.
> If you're the type of person that wants to have sex with someone, and you're willing to pay for it, and you have the option - you're probably going to.
I am the kind of person that wants to have sex with someone. I'd be willing to pay for it, i have the option. But I'd rather not have sex than be involved in such things. It's an ethical decision no matter how lonely I get.
Someone who wants sex in the context of a relationship might very well have no interest in a prostitute. The thought of sex with a stranger is repulsive to me.
Women have already chosen the safest way to be sex workers: Through media like OnlyFans. All relations with men, but especially prostitution, are vastly more dangerous for women.
The fact that women have chosen this way of interacting with men on a paid basis should tell you it's not because they are prudes about sex work. They don't feel safe, and for very good reasons.
This is yet another example of how men need to stop "solving" this problem with their own clever ideas. Stop and listen. You will hear answers.
So King Louis XVI witnessed the end of French monarchical rule because he failed to ban... what? Revolutions? Monarchy has nothing to do with whether or not the people in power believe in bans being useful.
If people consider marriage as a contract of exchange, then it is already a form of legalized prostitution. Monogamy might be a bigger underlying problem.
Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity in a good read on this topic.
Perel's argument was the inverse: people who failed their marriage because they are holding too tight on the monogamy ideal, as they expect everything from a single partner who cannot provide everything. Well, I'm not sure what to think of that. I'm just quoting her theory and I feel it's relevant in this discourse.
You shouldn't be getting all of your needs met by a sexual partner. Friends and family are critical. A lot of the people I know into polyamory do not have the best friendship and family situations. They are seeking to get everything met through partners.
I started out married thinking of it as a nebulous thing. My marriage improved when I realized it was all an exchange and I need to make sure I'm always providing my bit rather than just working towards some nebulous idea of love.
I've been married 24 years and I'm happy my marriage isn't transactional. What happened if you couldn't provide your bit due to an injury? Your marriage ends?
I have family in healthcare so I hear the stories. Serious unfixable medical injuries almost always end with the spouse at the very least getting sex on the side, at least if they're reasonably young.
Getting a long term badly limiting disability in anything but old age is a recipe for divorce. Eventually the loving spouse gets caretaker fatigue and is overloaded from carrying the weight without relief. I fully expect and will not hold it against my spouse if I'm seriously disabled for over a year and the marriage ends. Any high moral ground about love and honor or whatever falls apart when you're grinding in poverty and going to be sucked under yourself with no light at the end of the tunnel.
My wife (in her mid thirties) sustained a nerve injury, couldn't move her leg, lost all mobility, was mostly in bed everyday and needed help standing, a special toilet seat, the whole nine yards. We were told this is a permanent condition.
I never left her side or stopped supporting her. I didn't get fatigued, I got motivated and we found one of the best Neurologists in the world. It took a several years and surgeries for her to get better. She can walk, drive, and work today. I couldn't imagine throwing away my marriage over some ass. Also what kind of father would I be if I left their mother when she needed me the most?
If your entire marriage is built on sex and money transactions, your marriage will eventually fall apart no matter what.
Lol it's hilarious you pretended to ask a genuine question when you already knew the answer for your marriage. In fact you intentionally withheld it as some kind of poorly executed trap. Talk about a bad faith discussion.
Not all marriages involve people with the money to continue supporting the children when both rather than just one parent is bankrupted by medical debt, and not all disabilities end with being able to drive and walk. Usually don't involve people privileged enough to get "best in the world" Neurologists either.
There are people out there that may have to divorce precisely because they can't look their kids in the eyes with the marriage as it stands due to the disability, knowing a divorce will separate the finances and possible allow them to find more support for their child. Every human is susceptible to caretaker fatigue and you yourself can't possibly know you would never get fatigued if the disability never ended. Some people can go a 1 year without cracking, others a decade, others 100 years and until it happens you probably won't know your breaking point.
The fact of the matter is I get to see the people that deal with hundreds of seriously chronically disabled people. My dataset to work with is that it's a bad bet to expect that the counterparty will sacrifice themselves indefinitely for the sake of the marriage.
You walked right into it, that's not my fault. LOL.
First you had family that worked in healthcare "I have family in healthcare so I hear the stories.". Now you're able to draw parallels because you get to see the people that deal with others? It doesn't even make sense. I have people that work in the healthcare industry including doctors too. Your evidence is andetoal at best, hearsay at worst. You don't have a dataset, you have stories. So which is it? Talk about a bad faith discussion...
The reality is there are plenty of people that would love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
Yeah just be able to get the world's best neurologist and hope the situation gets better. If it does I'll say after the fact I'm sure no matter what it'd be in sickness and in health and I'm super man who doesn't fatigue. Obviously the impoverished mom who can't even afford to hire a doctor and walks away so the kids won't get bankrupted, well she just doesn't see marriage the same as you. Hell maybe she did all the things you tried and nothing responded, the husband couldn't go back to work after the operations failed and maybe even made things worse, we shouldn't really presume just because someone tapped out that they didn't go as far as you have.
You have even less than an anecdote, and then when you asked me for a response which uses actual anecdotes where it doesn't get better, you suddenly get upset about it.
>You walked right into it, that's not my fault. LOL.
This is just straight up sociopathy. You knew you had an unusual outcome, so you asked for the expected outcome with the trap that yours was a heartwarming but unexpected one. It was never coming from a place of curiosity.
>The reality is there are plenty of people that would love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
Marrying someone for this is also transactional if you expect this also of your partner as a condition of getting married. In this case it's like a transaction with an insurance policy built in as par of the transaction. You're just bragging about your particular transaction and terms for insurance.
To anyone else considering this, here's a test if you believe this applies to your situation. Ask your partner if they believe they would "love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." If they say yes, tell them you think that's all bullshit and you don't reciprocate the agreement. You'll find out fast whether a transaction happened.
I have an unusual outcome? You're grasping at straws, name calling, and making a ton of assumptions with literally zero data. I'll budge an inch, sure, if your partner is going to need long term hospice care, I can understand why you might move on, but that's not the case for most fully disabled people and families. You're basically saying if you lost the ability to walk and it inconveniences me I'm bailing on you. That's a weak marriage, it's might even be the definition of a weak marriage. I don't think sticking with your partner through thick and thin is abnormal.
Do you not understand the premise of the most common wedding vow ever to be spoken? "for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." That's just a fancy way of saying I'll love you for who you are because I'm not transactional.
Honestly, your marriage sounds like a sociopaths dream. How many points and transactions can I earn so my partner thinks I actually care. You also lied about your data for some silly reason. Anyway, I'm gonna take my upvotes and move on. You have a great day.
>You're basically saying if you lost the ability to walk and it inconveniences me I'm bailing on you
Nobody says it like that. Usually it gets to the point where the end-stage symptoms resulting in their leaving is something like suicidal depression and the kids are badly suffering. The impetus is the disability but you're downplaying how it gets there.
It really shows gross ignorance to think you can extrapolate the yes UNUSUAL case that after getting world's best neurologist we did what the doctors said couldn't be done. And then extrapolate all the people other than you that faced disabilities that resulted in dissolved marriage must have started with weaker marriages.
Honestly someone that belittles the plight and hard marital choices of the disabled as much as you have, would be worthy of much worse name calling than anything I've seen here, and it's especially harmful to the disabled who have actually initiated the divorce out of LOVE for their partner.
>I don't think sticking with your partner through thick and thin is abnormal, ad
Yeah investigate a bit people going through the serious disease of chronic addiction. When the husband uses the entire paycheck to keep from getting dope-sick and passes out while the toddler is crawling around after the second, at best third rehab the wife dumps them like a hot potato. Honestly it is rare to find a chronic addict that is still with their family. When push comes to shove when the kids are suffering the wife will drop your ass, even if you're trying your best to overcome the disease and act in love. All that shit about sticking around no matter what goes through the window, and these aint people in hospice care or even acting purposefully with malice against their family. Usually they genuinely and badly want to fulfill their responsibilities.
>"for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."
Again this is just smugness that you like your particular transaction more than others. I seriously doubt you would have entered this without the counterparty also agreeing to same terms as their bit of the transaction. Very few people making these vows are gonna go through with it if the spouse isn't vowing to offer the same in trade.
You can have a financially dependent relationship with actual love and affection, prostitution is purely transactional. I agree that monogamy as it is usually practiced has some drawbacks and is not well suited to many aspects of modern society, but it does work well for a large number of people, even if it is a minority.
As far as I know, there weren't any significantly life-threatening sexual diseases for most of human history in most of the world. Syphilis only affected the Americas before the 1500s, and HIV is much newer than that.
Most other sexually-transmitted diseases that existed in most of the world were unpleasant, but not life threatening, even before antibiotics. And it's also worth noting that most primates (and many mammals of all kinds) are not monogamous, and yet they are not plagued by STIs to any significant extent.
Instead, monogamy was much more important for managing babies, especially given how much hare human babies need, and for how long, compared to virtually any other animal.
Syphillis isn't from the Americas or anywhere specifically. It just gets described in European literature around the time of Columbus first documented contact. If you read descriptions of literature from that time it's either a separate virus or the virus mutated radically since then to become less fatal.
As far as primates not having STIs, you might want to read up on the animal origins of HIV a bit. The only reason we have HIV is because SIV can proliferate indefinitely in another species and crossed into humans.
It looks like the European strain wasn't as deadly as the American strain. Pre-Columbus skeletons showing signs have been found.
However, with a slow disease like syphilis there's also the issue of how well it was identified in old times. Identifying the primary form as sexual is very different than identifying the tertiary form as a continuation of the primary. It was 1965 before we realized shingles is tertiary chicken pox and the 1980s before they realized that cervical cancer is mostly tertiary HPV. Other virus/cancer links have been identified (I recently read that IIRC 5% of cancer is known to be of viral origin) and personally I think the actual number is even higher as determining a link between an asymptomatic virus and later cancer would be very hard. (Again and again I see news reports of clusters of unusual cancer where no cause is found but the pattern looks contagious. It's very hard for cancer itself to be contagious but the same effect would be observed if the cancer was due to an asymptomatic virus. I also find the notion that random mutations could cause consistent behavior of the cancer strange--but quite sensible if it's viral damage.)
As far as I understand, the exact history of syphilis is still unknown, and the idea that it was spread to Europe from the Americas is not completely impossible (though seems less likely today).
As for SIV, I am aware of it, but it is not a serious problem for most simians (though apparently Chimpanzees are being killed by SAIDS in serious numbers) - which is my point. STIs have not been so serious a threat to animals as HIV+AIDS has been to humans in the initial pandemic.
If we have solved the public health problems, does it make Monogamy an empty construct? Or there are other social/economical/biological factors that hold it in place?
Up until my generation it was really hard to raise kids as a single parent. And they take a while before you’re not responsible for their safety/wellbeing.
The answer is not "tinder" and it's not about "sexual loneliness".
Pair bonding weakens as people age and accumulate more sexual partners. We actively encourage people to delay pair bonding - mainly by discouraging "high school sweethearts" from marrying, and instead promoting college and pursuing careers over building families. This leads to atomized, lonely individuals who realize later in life what they missed out on, but now with the odds of age stacked against them. Even if you do find your partner in college, you now have families in vastly different geographic areas with different histories and values, which weakens the support structure around that union. In the majority of cases this is not a positive thing for the couple.
Pornography is also a problem, as it misdirects individuals' sex drive away from finding suitable partners.
The pendulum needs to swing back towards more traditional values from when our societies were healthier and growing. Those values exist for a reason!
I also feel that we'd be better off as a society if we emphasized and encouraged building strong inter-personal relationships over "pursuing a career", but appealing to tradition isn't a great argument. Building a strong social sense of unity and cohesion is good enough for me. On the other hand, "those values exist for a reason" is just as convincing as "we got rid of those values for a reason". Our societies also grew a lot with the help of slavery and child labor, but I doubt you'd see that as a good reason to bring those back.
>Our societies also grew a lot with the help of slavery and child labor
I'm not advocating for slavery or child labor. I'm advocating for prioritizing healthy pair bonding and acknowledging that this is more likely to happen earlier in life. The "population crisis" in Japan and other countries in the West is self inflicted. We actively promote decisions that do not lead to healthy families for the majority of people. It's lead to a reproductive rate well below replacement levels and far, far too many single parent households. It's not a mystery.
I wasn't implying you were advocating for that, I agree with you, I was just pointing out that justifying your position by appealing to tradition is not helpful in convincing others (though it is great for virtue signaling).
On the Japan note, I actually did an internship in Japan over the summer a few years back and the work-life balance I saw there was actually depressing. Lots has been written about Japanese work culture (and I've heard Korean work culture is similar), but thankfully, I don't see the US quite getting to that point. If anything, we're pushing firmly in the opposite direction. Most people I personally know (in software engineering) hold a healthy work-life balance and are all the happier for it.
Japan's issues with reproduction seem to mostly stem from that, but the source of the problem in the US to me seems to be either overly-high expectations or over-correcting cynicism, both influenced by pop culture. On one hand, we have groups who believe fervently that "perfection" as seen in movies is realistic and are disappointed constantly by reality. On the other hand, people who have grown disillusioned with the world see everything as a chance for disappointment and avoid commitment to anything, leading to self-sabotage.
Humans emulate what they perceive to be successful as a survival mechanism.
The overwhelming majority of people do not differentiate video entertainment from reality in this regard. They "know" video entertainment is fiction, but subconsciously they still strive to attain what is presented to them as successful within video media. Every marketing person knows this, but it's far more insidious than convincing you to buy a salad spinner with free shipping.
The fear of social media retribution is real. People becoming intimate comes at the risk of being stigmatized within social networks. Adding to it the distorted key-hole, anxiety-driven on-line experience and well, becoming a Monk starts sounding more and more appealing.
Can we talk about making prostitution legal? Other countries have realized their sexual loneliness problem and made it legal, which somewhat helped. When men have some access to sex, it improves outcomes for everyone.
It's much easier to date in legal countries. A lot of Europe, Austrailia, New Zealand, have much less trouble than the US. But it doesn't completely solve the problem, sure. There are other factors too
Is it possible for a topic like this to be discussed in an informed manner on a site like HN? We're all wealthy elites dating supermodels after all, right?
I can't remember having seen someone compare a basic human need (level 2 on the Maslow hierarchy) with drug addiction. What's next, addiction to nutrients and oxygen? Your thought is baffling to me, bordering on absurd.
Also, the implication that the men who complain about surplus are responsible for flooding the market with supply is plain wrong. Literally no man chose to be born into this world.
Hookups are not a need. Male users are the overwhelming majority of these apps. If not age limitations on female attractiveness, then the underlying problem is the intensity of men's compulsions compared to women.
Careful, did you notice yourself shifting the goalpost? The article and accompanying discussion was about intimacy+sex, you just reduced this to casual sex.
> are not a need.
Factually wrong. This should prompt you to find out what the word need means, it's likely you have the wrong idea about it.
I did consider your first point, but if serious relationships are the goal, just head to the local marriage agency. No shortage of women looking for a traditional provider.
People asked for sexual liberation - this is the result.
I kind of agree that online dating has actually exacerbated existing issues rather than solving them. It's not even about the companies (eg Match) either. They simply follow what works. This is kind of a touchy subject because if you're not careful you can wander into the manosphere and become red-pilled (or, worse, black-pilled) and no good will come from that.
For convenience, let me describe this in the hetero-normative sense. Obviously this isn't th eonly dynamic at play and is not universal but there are some useful trends that (IMHO) can be extrapolated.
1. Men fear being rejected. Women fear being SAed, abducted, trafficked, beaten and/or killed. You cannot overstate how important this is. As such, women tend to be wary and will try and find signs and create rules to quickly filter people out;
2. (IMHO) Women aren't actually that good at filtering. Specifically, there is a significant correlation between traditional physical attractiveness and "trustworthiness" [1]. This extends to serial killers too [2].
3. Online dating rewards a set of skills that don't have all that much to do with relationships. People who master those skills tend to do very well. If their potential partners aren't looking for that and don't recognize it, they will be dissatisfied;
4. Men (in the hetero-normative sense) put in very little effort and somehow still have high expectations. Going to the gym by itself could put you ahead of the pack;
5. There are people who use dating apps as entertainment (eg they have no intention of meeting). If that's not what you want, you need to learn to filter that out ASAP;
6. As noted, women get a lot of messages and attention. Men, generally, get far less (each). This is exacerbated by men dominating dating apps in general.
My general advice for anyone to avoid falling down the Andrew Tate rookie hole is to, if you're a man:
1. Pay for premium and simply swipe right on everybody. Don't even look. Do this for half an hour once a week. Actually looking at a profile before deciding how to swipe is a poor use of time because each swipe is low probability no matter who you are. Only look at profiles for matches. You can always unmatch if you're not interested;
2. Your goal is to get to a meeting ASAP. It should be low investment too. Coffee, a walk (somewhere public), a museum, etc. There's no need and no point to spend a lot of money on first dates. Time management matters so do 3-4 1 hour blocks in a night, for example.
3. Don't take rejection personally. Just say "nice meeting you" and move on. This is part of the point of arranging a number of dates so you don't get over-invested too early in any particular prospective partner. Realize that even those you consider the most attractive still get rejected;
4. Don't tie your value in a relationship to your external status (eg job, car, how much money you spend, clothes, accessories). At best, you're probably attracting the wrong kind of partner (unless, you know, you want a sugar baby, which is all fine if consensual).
5. Put in some effort. You'll be surprised how far the bare minimum will get you regarding appearing groomed, clothed appropriately and even moderately fit and healthy. Go to the gym. Lift weights.
6. Avoid "yes or no" questions. Listen to the answers. Don't view it as a problem to be solved eg if someone is having problems with someone at work they're almost certainly not ask you to solve it for them.
7. Understand that women deal with a lot of shit (and, don't forget, actual danger). Be cognisant of that. Your idea of pushing and persistence may actually legitimiately scare someone and may rise to the level of a crime. You're not owed any explanation either. On the other side, realize women too can have toxic traits or simply traits you're not interested in. The term "femcel" exists for a reason. If and when that happens, it's because of that individual, not an indictment on an entire gender.
It's not a good idea to construe every inequality as an injustice begging to be rectified. In this case as if every person was entitled to a fair share of sexual experience - but people's genitals aren't a commons, thank you very much.
There's a difference between sexual loneliness and being an Incel. Incels believe the world owes them sex and they are entitled to it. People suffering from sexual loneliness aren't all incels and to lump together both groups does a disservice to non-incel people that suffer from this.
That's just factually wrong. Even a quick read of Wikipedia would tell you that.
> An incel (/ˈɪnsɛl/ IN-sel, an abbreviation of "involuntary celibate"[1]) is a member of an online subculture of people who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one.[2][3][4] Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by resentment and hatred, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against women and sexually active people.
This is the solvable part. They don't run the country; they're a minority.
> Encourage men to have sex with men?
Religion is a fig leaf here. The dislike of LGBTQ+ people is retroactively justified by religion, but it just isn't about religion. If it really was about religion, there'd be a lot more weird hills they'd be dying on, since most of the Anti-Gay stuff is in the Old Testament, and there's a lot of stuff in the OT that they seem perfectly comfortable ignoring. (For example: Crustaceans are not allowed as a food, Leviticus 11:9-12)
"They just don't like gay people" is too simplistic as well. My theory is that gay men, as well as trans women are a subversion of traditional gender roles which is why conservatives get worked up about it.
Trans men and lesbians of course get some ire too from conservatives, but it feels like an afterthought.
> This is the solvable part. They don't run the country; they're a minority.
Yes and no. They've got a 6:3 majority in the Supreme court for the foreseeable future, and thanks to gerrymandering, their distribution in rural parts gives them a significantly outsized impact on US politics. I would agree that this minority shouldn't run the country, but it isn't the case. And I'm not sure how that's "solvable" either.
> Religion is a fig leaf here.
Oh, I agree. My favorite is Leviticus 15:32-36... working on the sabbath no longer incurs the death penalty. But, religion is full of contradictions: compare the Prosperity Gospel with the actual teachings of Jesus. Laws and rulings targeting abortions and LGBT rights are couched in terms of "religious freedom." We cannot hold proclaimed religious people accountable for the contradictions we see between their books and their proclaimed faith -- their proclaimed faith is the protected part!
> My theory is that gay men, as well as trans women are a subversion of traditional gender roles which is why conservatives get worked up about it
Exactly. The traditional gender roles come out of the tradition of patriarchal exploitation of women and subordinate men. The extreme version of this is seen in groups like the FLDS [1] and make the dynamics more apparent. But it's the same basic deal even on the softer complementarian end of things. The far right will talk about how gay marriage is a threat to marriage in general, and in one sense I agree with them: functional marriages without rigid gender roles demonstrate that their conception of marriage is limited and grimly unequal.
The irony of transgenderism is that it's just yet another form of patriarchal exploitation of women, in its drive to eradicate female-only spaces, in encouraging actual female women to mutilate themselves to reach some twisted ideal of masculinity, and in reifying gendered impositions as the epitome of womanhood, for the pleasure of men.
Conservatives don't see it from this point of view, of course, but feminists - the radical ones, at least - certainly do.
It's a movement that hides behind the LGB to paint itself as progressive, but really this is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Indeed, without regressive gender roles, there would be no transgenderism. How else would men be able to pretend they are women without the cloak of false femininity to wrap themselves in.
For sure. Especially when it's regurgitating a blob of standard-issue partisan nonsense that is only tenuously related to what's actually being discussed.
Which parts of my comment do you believe are dubious, and why?
If we look at the eradication of female-only spaces, for example, the reasoning behind this is that proponents of transgenderism want women's spaces to be based on self-declared gender identity rather than sex. Where this occurs, it means that formerly female-only spaces and services now admit a mixture of males and females, as they will also include men who say they are women. Any attempts to maintain female-only spaces are shot down as being 'bigoted' and 'transphobic'.
Everyone here can clearly see that you are a sea lion, and not worth debating.
You're not here in good faith. If you were, you wouldn't be making inflammatory assertions from the partisan playbook with no references, and you wouldn't be on here with a burner account. There's another name for that behavior: shitposting.
That's a rather lazy dismissal, seems that you don't like having your beliefs challenged, and will say anything to avoid considering a different point of view.
Perhaps you can explain which parts of my comment you think are factually incorrect?
Resolve the economic equality issues that halted wage growth in the 80s, so that the non-executives see pay increases matching inflation; and cap tuitions for all schools to be affordable at local minimum wage rates, to stop the disparity between white-collar and blue-collar workers from driving men to quit paid work.
Not the worst idea, but moreso because men should be comfortable and encouraged to have sex with whatever gender they want. Right now there is a lack of unanimous support for men who have sex with men.
There's the real rub. The principle issue with this sexual loneliness is an unavailability of consensual partnerships. The men who are not getting sex are not desirable to the women they desire, and they're also not desirable to each other.
Looking back to Greek and Roman times, it really seems that this is not "natural" as much as it is cultural. Culture changes itself, to its own whims. I do not think it can be changed by policy short of genocide (also bad).
I am a regular reader of Reddit's "Am I the Asshole" and the sheer number of terrible boyfriends/husbands is jaw-dropping. And that's probably always been true, but what has changed is the extent to which women now have agency through having decent jobs and not being social pariahs if they're not married and pregnant by 22. The stuff my grandmother put up with just doesn't fly today.
So if the content of AITA is any guide, we could solve a lot of these problems just by training the bottom quartile of men in the basics. Hygiene. Being a good roommate. Being a good friend. Being a good economic partner. Etc, etc. There appear to be a lot of guys out there who want to go from having mommy do everything while they play video games to having a bang maid [1] who does the same. It's no wonder they're having a harder and harder time getting any.
> training the bottom quartile of men in the basics ....
I always thought schools should teach children "how to date". I went through sex-ed in Delaware public schools in the mid 1990s, and it was all the clinical physical aspects of sex, and the dangers of HIV. There was nothing about intimacy or consent.
I did have a separate class in 7th grade called Conflict Resolution. It felt like a low effort attempt to teach basic social skills that should have been a regular part of schooling since kindergarten.
Well into adulthood I came across a book, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It is the single most astute thing I have ever read. It's written by somebody who was a therapist for men in court-ordered programs. He spent years listening to their BS and at some point had enough and broke it all down.
I truly believe that if everybody spent 2 weeks on the topic at circa 16 years old, the world could be radically different. It wouldn't take that much longer to educate them on other relationships basics. Just the kind of minimum stuff and basic techniques that you see from, say, the Gottman Institute.
But I expect that will never happen because there are quite a lot of powerful people who benefit from and/or positively enjoy power differentials and exploitable ignorance. Harvey Weinstein comes to mind here.
I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this but AITA is about as credible as newspaper advice columns and 4chan greentexts, that is to say not at all.
Oh, sure, a lot of the posts are made up. But a lot of them aren't. And most of the replies grounded in personal experience appear to be sincere, as they tend to come from established accounts with consistent histories, at least when I look.
But in some sense, that doesn't matter, because even popular fiction serves as an important mirror for popular concerns. I hear enough verifiable real-world stories of entitled, lazy male partners to know that it's not all fiction. I think the extent to which things get upvoted on AITA is a pretty good indicator of popular concern. And a lot of replies clearly come from people who, whatever the truth of the original post, have lived through similar things.
But the people experiencing sexual loneliness aren't bad boyfriends and husbands. They can't even get a significant other or spouse. Counterintuitively, being a disagreeable or even abusive partner is positively correlated with sexual success: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-roman...
> That blog post is -- and this is putting it charitably -- so horribly misguided and confused I hardly know where to begin.
The post is horribly misguided and confused. Yet despite being so horrible you can't bother to explain what's bad about it? It always amuses me something is evidently so horrible as to warrant this language, but apparently not quite horrible enough to actually explain why.
Ultimately, i'm not really looking to make an empirical claim here. Just read this sentence a few times and maybe the contradiction will make sense:
> the sheer number of terrible boyfriends/husbands is jaw-dropping.
If someone is a boyfriend or a husband, they are by definition not single.
Don't you think the "Am I The Asshole" subreddit is going to have a bit of a selection bias towards describing men who are assholes?
You seem to be using AITA as evidence that some huge percentage of women want to date/marry asshole/abusive men. It does not provide evidence of that.
You and the article you linked are suggesting a correlation between being an abusive/asshole man and having a large number of women want to have sex with you. But there is no such correlation. It's false.
I just want you and anyone else who ever comes across this part of the thread to not believe in such garbage.
For sure. It's true that men in abusive relationships are definitionally in relationships. But the reason for that isn't, "women like abuse". Many people of all genders have abusive bosses, but nobody uses that to conclude that people like having abusive bosses. The way it works is that successful abusers are good at fooling people to get them into contexts where they can abuse. The ones not good enough at that end up alone, of course.
For anybody who wants to actually understand the dynamic, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" is a great resource. Recently discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34497066
Again, the question isn't whether people like having an abusive partner. The question is, is being an abusive (or just bad) partner positively or inversely correlated with sexual opportunity? Your linked post doesn't engage with that question at all. It does explore why people perpetrate abuse, which is an interesting discussion in its own right, but not relevant to this OP.
And you conclude that this is incorrect and garbage on the grounds of what, exactly? I'm more inclined to believe the licensed psychiatrist over a random internet commenter.
To spare the HN community from this whole discussion, feel free to find my contact info in my profile. We can have a respectful debate over email if you want.
I will just end by saying, you are the one making claims which require evidence to back them up. Especially on a site like HN, it is a good idea to provide evidence for broad, sweeping claims. Or else dial those claims back.
I shared a source making this claim. You don't think it's a good source, which is a totally valid position, but you've not shared any evidence for this assertion. It'd be good to follow your own advice and back up your own claims with evidence, or dial back your claims about the blog. I'm really baffled why someone who called a piece of writing "horrible guided and confused" with nothing to back that claim up is in any position to lecture someone else about substantiating claims with evidence
As I said, I'd be happy to continue a respectful debate over email. Please engage me in that way, so that we can help each other and understand each other. This web site is not the right venue to continue this debate ad nauseam. I would like to respond to many of the things that you have said, but it doesn't make sense for us to do it on HN. If you really feel strongly about keeping the discourse public, you can always make a new HN submission showing our emails.
Again, my contact is in my profile. Whether or not we continue to talk, I wish you all the best.
Or we can skip this and just post the messages straight to HN - if you're fine with the submitting emails to HN then this is just and efficiency gain by skipping one layer of indirection.
So back to where we left off: I shared a blob post by a psychiatrist, which you disagreed with and called "horribly misguided and confused" yet neglected to explain any particular explanation why. Furthermore, you insisted that I post additional sources to back up the article I shared, yet you've shared none to support your criticisms. Do you think this is an effective way to argue your point?
Too bad this was flagged, since the OP 1) not only described himself as "a regular reader" of reddit (embarrassing enough), but of a particular reddit where people post made up stories (that he takes at face value), and 2) that he has the physiognomy (google him) of a male feminist undone by sexual assault allegations.
Well government likes equal outcomes. Perhaps a new department to ensure everyone is getting the same results regardless of gender, attractiveness, hygiene, etc.
Jordan Peterson is completely wrong though. Monogamy is part of the problem. We should normalize as a society that there are indeed people you just want to have sex with but are not interested in marrying/reproduction with. It shouldn't be that big of a deal.
I don't think anyone has an issue with that. Everyone that does not want to be monogamous is free to do so with others the do not want to be monogamous. I think tinder is well known for this. For many other people monogamy is important and a violation of that monogamy is grounds for ending a relationship. Why can both groups not just live their lives and wish each other well? The OP article is not about that, men that want to have sex, monogamous or not are not able to and that number is increasing.
I've been with my wife for 23 years now, more than half my life. 100% monogamous on both sides. It works for us and if either one of us was to cheat then that would be the end of the relationship. Relationships are managed by rules accepted by both sides. If a relationship does not want to have monogamy in its rule set and all parties agree then more power to them.
The problem with this approach is eventually people who think this way are bred out of gene pool. Monogamy has been successful at continuing human race for quite a long time by providing stable growing environments for kids.
There's mixed perspectives on this question. The prevailing opinions are that monogamy flattens sexual opportunity, since sex people choose to have outside of marriage tend to concentrate in a small segment of the dating pool.
Jordan Peterson's life is a freakshow. If he had such idiosyncratic views on coding, nobody here would even consider listening to him. If you want to keep your dick dry, go watch some JP.
You are not owed sex or intimacy. To men: want to be desired by other people? make yourself more desirable. As for women in this situation, that is largely self imposed because their sex drives are lower and they are often in denial about how their attractiveness declines with age, and are unable to adjust their expectations to match.
In the modern dating / hookup culture young men and older women are the clear losers. Men are figuring this out and largely either going full anti-women "red pill rage" into "$!tches aint shit" using women when they're older or opting out all together. Women party it up when young, and are then shocked only when the "good times" start to end as younger ladies supplant them.
The age old solution throughout the ages, has been to control female sexuality with shame (often enforced by other women). This is now considered unthinkable, despite the surge in single parent homes, massive decline in birth rates, increased loneliness and decreased happiness by all. So instead sex bots, prostitution, more welfare, and artificial wombs are promoted as the only politically tenable out. I think the future shall be inherited by the Amish, Mormons, and other such groups that have managed to find ways to maintain family units in opposition to modern culture. They're certainly the only ones breeding at above replacement levels.
TLDR: in practice based religion beats out free love in providing more sex, without all the messy fatherlessness and STD problems to boot.
And I guess you could say that nobody deserves to live in an safe environment free of violence, black people don't serve to not get beaten up by the cops, poor people don't deserve health care, nobody is owed a job in a non-toxic environment that doesn't kill them because of stress, etc.
So often when people have problems that are hard to solve the answer is just "talk to the hand" at best.
Even if one believes in forced labor in order to provide goods and services to those in need, are you really drawing some sort of parallel where people should be compelled to perform sexual favors for others? I mean one could be a full on communist and not think that state provided prostitution (where people would be assigned those jobs by the state) is ethical. Didn't think I'd see apologism for something akin to North Korea's "pleasure Squad" on Hacker News, but alright then.
What I would like to do is disallow use of the concept of "entitlement" particularly "you are not entitled to..." in conversation.
There are many other arguments people could make, they don't need that one.
There is a theme in psychology going back to the Freudian days that female desire has a self-destructive aspect (e.g. "masochism"), we all know the woman who dates one bad boyfriend and then finds another bad boyfriend and another bad boyfriend. It's a subject that has been suppressed in serious discussion though because it is perceived to be antifeminist. I think it's going to come back.
Roughly it seems that many men are unhappy with their relationship prospects at age 20 but by age 40 many women have been going out with the men that they desire and found that none of them want to commit to the long-term relationship because... they all want the same few guys!
It could be if women had a more realistic understanding of their life course and prospects they'd realize what a dead end it is to be dating the guys they want and learn to want some guy that is not so exciting but that has the potential to be loyal... A solution looks something like that, not having state-endorsed prostitution or anything.
This is an example of aspirational 1950s churchgoing America being seen as an "age old solution." That's not age old, not a solution, and not an accurate view of the reality of sex relations globally and over the long course of history.
Nostalgia is what people like Jordan Peterson are selling. Go back to the "good" (but very bad for most people) old days and things will be fine. It won't work.
I've yet to find a guy who was worth dating that wasn't in a relationship if they wanted to be in one.
I do know a lot of guys who struggle with the fact that the woman they're attracted to aren't to them. I definitely know a few women for whom that's true too, but it's mostly men, and generally younger ones.
And so they quote that same 80/20 rule from Peterson, which has no data behind it beside one bad survey, and insist its society's fault.
Meanwhile their Tinder profiles are just lists of all they things they demand from a partner – generally things they themselves won't provide.
Which isn't to say the problem isn't real – it definitely is – but it seems like any "solution" is going to have start at either commercial ideas (sex work) or a cultural shift.
This is hilarious. They found that young men are having less sex, young women are not having less sex, and some young men are having way more sex. And they conclude the problem is "loneliness". No, dude, the problem is young men are increasingly not worth having sex with.
This of course has precedence in the natural world. Not every male is always having sex. Most often, a smaller number of males that are considered the most desirable sire more children. It's a Darwin thing: you mate with the most successful of your species to carry the best genes and adapt to your environment better to survive longer.
But it doesn't have to be that way. More males could simply become more attractive partners. Or more females could lower their standards (but honestly I think their standards have been low enough... I mean, have you seen my gender, next to its opposite?).
Rather than treat sexual loneliness as some kind of unfortunate but normal condition, let's encourage these people to make themselves more attractive. And by attractive I mean the general concept of desirability, which encompasses the entire spectrum of the human condition, not just the body or some societal trope of gender norms.
> No, dude, the problem is young men are increasingly not worth having sex with.
That's some victim blaming if I've ever seen one. No, dude, the problem is not that men have changed, but societal circumstances have, and women just act according to the new environment they have been afforded.
Increasing one's market value (desirability) works, but that's doctoring the symptoms instead of healing the root cause. It ceases working if everyone hears about the idea and does it.
Your argument proves my point. If it's true that women are "acting in accord with a new environment", and in the new environment, there is less need to have sex with them, or new standards dictate higher requirements for sex, then by definition their worth has been devalued... therefore, less worth having sex with.
It's also possible that men have changed, and are increasingly becoming hikikomori due to increased adoption of introverted online social pursuits, or increased pornography or toxic male cultures, or whatever reason you choose.
But regardless of whether they have changed or haven't, they are simply less valuable today, and they need to adapt if they want to have sex more. Hence the onus is on them to improve themselves. It's not victim-blaming, it's fact-stating.
The alternative would be to revert the culture. Jordan Petersen's fans would love it if women would just shut up and go back to the kitchen and do what they're told, I don't think women really like that idea.
There seems to be an underlying assumption that because men are expendable, we ought to structure the way we live according to this principle (naturalist fallacy). Tell me whether I understand this correctly or whether I read too much into it.
> [men] are simply less valuable today, and they need to adapt […] The alternative would be to revert the culture.
False dichotomy alert.
In reality, there are many more things we can do. The feminist forebears a hundred years ago fought for rights and equality; they would fall faint with shame if they could see how women in our times betray the ideals and can act so childish, selfish, entitled, cruel and dishonourable. We could start by putting responsibility on the shoulders of women. Here are some ideas how that could look concretely:
1. Teach women that treating 80% of men as not worthy of interacting with is unreasonable and has grave, society-wide first-order and second-order effects. Just as men need to control their instincts (immense sex drive) for a well functioning social environment, women need to control theirs (hypergamy).
2. End the sexist practice of giving women preferential treatment based on the women-are-wonderful effect, particularly where it matters most, namely in court. Men can help with that and learn to keep their paternal protection instinct in check which expresses in the practice of white-knighting.
3. Threat of violence is an effective means to curb excesses of bad behaviour, this should be familiar to people who grew up in e.g. Islam. I understand the thought comes across as revolting to HN readers who are mostly liberal-minded westerners unless one is generations older, holds an orthodox-conservative world-view for some other reason or has been reading a lot of Heinlein. Just as men must align their life with this concept in mind, women should too (once again).
I'm doing my part to diminish the suffering; often I think this generation is lost, but I can still exert influence over the next one to some degree. Children can't become $APPROPRIATE_COLOUR-pilled early enough.
> women would just shut up and go back to the kitchen and do what they're told, I don't think women really like that idea.
It's very clear that women hate being pressured to spend a life long relationship with a man they do not really love or want; it's similar to slavery. I do not wish that upon any of my fellow human beings. If there really are JP fans who think that way, then I condemn that; that's not a good interpretation of what JP said. I want them to reconsider and think hard to come up with better solutions.
> I mean, have you seen my gender, next to its opposite?
This is an incredibly sexist point of view. Cultural expectations for the role of women in society have been continuously expanded while nothing remotely similar has been done for men.
That... isn't indicated by the data. There would have to be a simultaneous increase in the number of men cheating on their SOs at the same time as a decrease in sex with single men, for.... no apparent reason.
Where I am considered attractive, I've gotten 80+ matches in one day and random women messaging me at 11PM telling me they're lonely and to come hang out. I've had more first dates that involved sex than first dates that didn't.
Where I am not considered attractive, I get literally no matches except for the occasional Onlyfans spammer. It was extremely depressing to go from one extreme to the other and I just don't bother with dating apps at all now.