> And with men I date, I feel pressure to make something of the relationship too soon (move in, get married, “I have to have kids in a couple of years”; fun times!). All the while still trying to be the sexpot 25-year-old I thought I was until what seemed like a moment ago.
It sounds like going from one end of the spectrum (aventuros, yolo) to the other (a family, fast), all while punching above their weight, so to speak, in terms of compatible long term partners.
Most young women can easily find "serial monogamous", short term, male partners with highly desirable qualities such as physical good looks, relative success, social skills etc., but most of this limited pool knows they are desirable and do not really want to get bogged down with a family.
When youth starts to fade away, reality kicks in - the highly desirable partners are not interested, and the average ones are already committed to long time partners who valued them in their own youth. Their "family" started a long time ago with mutual investment - you can choose not to make that trade-off but cannot have the cake and eat it too.
I'm 33 and male, I find it amazing how the dating balance has shifted since I was 23. If I wanted I could easily line up multiple dates per week with women who I'd date. When I was younger a lot of women wouldn't give me the time of day.
Mainly dating apps. I live in a very large city and I keep my age filters somewhat appropriate (27-35). If you struggle with dating apps I'd recommend getting decent photos, even if you need to pay a photographer and spend a day taking good Tinder/etc photos. Dating, even from people looking for serious partners, is a very shallow game. The more attractive someone finds you, the more interest they'll show you. This makes conversation much easier.
When I say appropriate I mean "an age range which will likely result in swipes from them too". I'm not what a lot of 23 year olds want but I'm fairly desirable for a 29 year old. On top of that I don't have anything in common with women who are under 25.
Not rooted in science, perhaps, but in empirical evidence? Boy howdy.
I used to be 260lb and invisible to most women. I decided to get my act together, start lifting weights, and dropped a significant amount (nearly 100lb over the last three years) and wouldn't you know: interest is through the roof. Couple that with a burgeoning business and money getting stable and it's point and shoot.
Most men (people) don't like that reality because it means a few harsh truths about looks, status, and money. It also means you have to take responsibility for your results which is the antithesis to ideologies that push as-is self-acceptance and "good enough" ideals. That is to say, my starting to understand and accept this reality hurt beyond belief. It took the better part of a year to really swallow the changes that were taking place.
You have a ranking and women especially are either subconsciously or (for a select few) consciously aware of it. Coincidentally, men are too (read: they don't like you climbing the ranks; their behavior in response makes this clear). I've lost a lot of friends in the process of getting my stuff together—people who I'd consider second family. Serious food for thought.
They are rooted in science in the sense that they make predictions based on a sensible model that seem to match the past and predict reality better than any other available theory.
They are not rooted in science in the sense of sophistry where they are anti-authoritarian and anti-conformist. Its impossible to express something new without being in conflict with established authority.
Its actually a fairly normal situation for all paradigm shifts. Kuhn wrote a book about it named "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" about a half century ago; it seems a pretty accurate model for how real paradigm change happens in societies (as opposed to idealized theory).
I'm not saying you're wrong and certainly not in any sort of value judgment but am saying that historically there seems to be no possible way for a paradigm shift to roll out without those relatively standard feelings and attitudes toward change you express.
The legacy model seems to result in sad middle aged lonely cat ladies for no obvious reason; clearly that model doesn't work well enough; the paradigm shift proposes a workable model with successful predictions, perhaps workable solutions.
Okay, it's science in the sense that it makes predictions. So it's a theory. Is it science in the sense that the theory has been tested, and peer reviewed? As soon as you started in on the "anti-authoritarian and anti-conformist" part, I got the sense that you're somewhat invested in this being true. But science means more than proposing an idea; it means testing the predictions, looking for evidence, subjecting it to a critical eye and seeing if it withstands objective scrutiny. Is that the case here?
This is the elephant in the room that most people don't want to discuss. Young women get confused, they are able to "short term date" men out of their league and so then balk at men who are their equals. I've seen a number of awkward marriage dynamics where the women was used to dating men of higher caliber than the man she married.
Of all the elephants in the room when it comes to modern tech-enabled dating, this is possibly the biggest and ugliest.
The thought of ending up as one of those husbands genuinely makes my skin crawl. Imagine the woman you adore secretly resenting you for not measuring up to those alpha dudes she met on Tinder and dated for a few weeks at a time.
I sometimes wonder if we’ll see total change in relationship dynamics in my lifetime. Perhaps even a return to a “harem” system, where women decide that sharing a very high-value man is preferable to having a low-value one all to herself.
I don't think this has anything to do with modern dating. Powerful men have had mistresses and before that they had concubines. Now that casual dating is socially acceptable, the tendency for high social class men sleeping with lower social class women is more visible, but it isn't necessarily more popular. The number of sexual partners millennials have is similar to that of Gen X and the Boomers.
There will always be women (and men) who want a single partner and don't really care about value or whatever it is you're on about.
It's just that, like me, by 25 they're married. If you're 35 these people are pretty much permanently unavailable to you unless you have very auspicious financial or cultural circumstances.
The weird thing is most people will call you a misogynist for bringing this up. I would argue that in most major US cities there is already a large "harem" dynamic. It's mostly invisible to the general population, but quite obvious if you're friends with men in the top 1 to 2% of dating potential.
One of my friends at work is like this. He just keeps tripping over and finding women. He's been at work just this year and has been involved with nearly every available woman (and some that aren't), he plays football on the weekends and has the women involved in the club throwing themselves at him, etc. In any one week, he is courting literally 5-8 women despite the fact he does nothing to go out and meet them. It's like every woman in his social circles gravitates towards him. This year he's had 3 women break up with their boyfriends to chase him! It's crazy.
You’re right, and it’s happening throughout the western world. As someone who is definitely not in the top 2%, there are some difficult truths to confront.
It will be a strange time when & if it starts happening out in the open.
It is misogynist in its worldview; the woman's value is her attractiveness (which declines with age), and a man's attractiveness (which may be a function of money as well as just looks) is all she cares about.
Just because it is misogynist does not mean that women don't participate in it. But whenever you reduce human relationships to something "simple", you're likely doing something offensive.
The implication that all people of a certain group behave and desire a certain thing is obviously false, especially when the group is as large as half the population.
Furthermore, even if it is true for a wide swath of the group, that does not mean it should not be criticized and torn apart for the assumptions that it rests on. A lot of people of both genders internalize negative messages about themselves and operate as though they are more fundamental truths.
Often, seeing them successfully challenged is what allows a person to grow and live a happier life.
The person in the original article believes, at least on some level, that her value as a person is tied to her attractiveness and thus her age. Clearly a lot of others in society believe that too. It's still harmful to her and often them as well and it is a misogynist belief. Simply because a lot of people believe it and operate on that assumption does not mean everyone does, and it does not mean that doing so is beneficial.
Your argument seems to be along the same lines as “my grandad smoked 2 packs a day and lived until he was 95”.
On average, smoking is harmful. On average, women’s perceived attractiveness is highly tied to their beauty and youthfulness.
It’s a shame if the woman in the article believes her value as a person is tied to her attractiveness and age. Given that “value as a person” is an entirely subjective concept, there’s no reason for this to be true.
However, her value in the “dating market place” is tied to her attractiveness and age. That’s a fact, it’s objectively measurable and it’s as cold and uncaring as natural selection. It certainly doesn’t care how offensive you find it.
> It’s a shame if the woman in the article believes her value as a person is tied to her attractiveness and age
This is exactly my point (and that's why I used that phrase). The letter writer feels that her value in the world is diminished by her age; with her most fertile years squandered she hasn't much else to give it. The response author goes to pains to illustrate that even someone well into her 90s still has value - that she values her interactions with the older woman.
The letter writer's is a misogynist worldview. To get there, you have to assume that women aren't really contributing anything to the world beyond reproduction. Men's lives have meaning without a woman and children, perhaps, but women's don't.
Separately, I think saying that someone's value as a romantic partner is primarily in their physical attractiveness is obnoxiously reductionist. I went off on quite the drunken rant about that last night in another thread (not my best work, tbh).
But basically, I argue optimizing for the most attractive partner I can find for someone at my level of attractiveness and then locking that down (via marriage or similar monogamous institution) is a poor strategy, even if it is the most common one and one implied by genetics. My genes would also love me to sit in bed eating sugar all day, and that won't make me happy.
Ultimately: I accept that people approach dating (especially app dating) primarily by looking at attractiveness, aiming for someone in their "league" or a bit higher as evaluated visually. However, I don't think it's the best approach for your overall happiness, nor is it one that everyone employs.
I mean, can you imagine dating a teenager? They're at peak fertility. But not only is it illegal depending on the exact age and where you live, it sounds like a nightmare. Like just talking to them gives me a headache.
Me? I'm a transwoman and a lesbian so I'm a bit of an evo-psych nightmare. Despite having no real fertility to speak of and a noticeable lack of childbearing hips, I do quite alright. I'm doing much better dating women as a 36yo transwoman than I did as a 31yo cis male. I've been trying to figure out why, and the only explanation I have is that me being more authentic is, in fact, valuable to the people I date.
I think you’re assuming tabula rasa here; that there is no innate human nature, that everything is socially constructed. If there is such a thing as an innate, biologically derived measure of attractiveness, then your point doesn’t really hold up. Unless we’re comfortable with saying biology is misogynistic. That would be an interesting one.
Frankly it would be great to have real, impartial numbers about all of this so we could actually reach some conclusions, but it’s so politicised that’s effectively impossible.
If you take this extreme reductionist viewpoint, "biology"is misandrist and misogynist both. It reduces human relationships to an exchange of genetic material and its optimization. The male human may as well be the the male anglerfish and the life of the female is barely more meaningful than that.
And, well, no. We live in an industrialized world where we have all the food we could ever need and yet we have fewer children than ever before in history. People make human decisions that are more than their genetics, even when choosing romantic and sexual partners. Why would we take the most socially complex species we're aware of, and then look at one of the most complex social interactions that species engages in, and say "well, but it's really just about making babies"?
Another way to put it - I accept these things as true
1) Physical attractiveness is important to most people in picking a partner
2) Physical attractiveness is correlated with fertility
2) Physical attractiveness negatively correlates with age
Yet I still argue that a woman's worth, not just to the world but even as a partner, is more than her physical attractiveness. Biologically, a post-menopausal woman is not contributing new humans to the world, but she still can contribute to the world as a whole, contributing happiness and meaning to others, doing all kinds of things that make the world a better place. I would argue that meaning in romantic relationships isn't limited to fertility, either.
I don't think is even that controversial a viewpoint, but as a woman, there is certainly a cultural notion that your value IS your attractiveness. If you justify the viewpoint that a woman in her 40s is of no value simply because her fertility is phbbt, that's misogynist.
It is a biological reality that men can remain fertile much longer than women. Using that fact to justify a worldview that women in general have less value, especially past a certain age, is misogynist.
When we’re anthropomorphising facts and telling them that they’re bad, something has gone wrong. Facts are not social actors, they don’t care if you try to shame them, they’ll still be true.
> The male human may as well be the male anglerfish and the life of the female is barely more meaningful than that.
I’m honestly not sure what meaning you’re looking for here, or what bearing that has on the conversation. There isn’t any meaning to life other than that which we make for ourselves.
> Why would we take the most socially complex species we're aware of, and then look at one of the most complex social interactions that species engages in, and say "well, but it's really just about making babies"?
Because that statement is true? Is your argument that we should reject reality in order to tell ourselves pleasing lies about the world?
> Yet I still argue that a woman's worth, not just to the world but even as a partner, is more than her physical attractiveness.
I agree. There are different kinds of value to be sure. However this is a discussion of sexual attraction and romantic partnership. Someone’s, let’s say, java skills, are not very likely to factor heavily. Nor are they likely to be a replacement for sexual attractiveness if it is absent.
> Facts are not social actors, they don’t care if you try to shame them, they’ll still be true.
And yet science has a history of creating "facts" that exist to promote a certain worldview with a veneer of impartiality. These "facts" are created by and to be social actors. Racist and misogynist ones in particular.
> I’m honestly not sure what meaning you’re looking for here, or what bearing that has on the conversation. There isn’t any meaning to life other than that which we make for ourselves.
This is exactly my point; there is more meaning to our mating choices than merely optimizing for making children. We take meaning from, and find happiness in, things that are much more complex than raw physical attractiveness.
> Because that statement is true? Is your argument that we should reject reality in order to tell ourselves pleasing lies about the world?
It is not; it is absurdly reductionist. We live in a world with as much food as we could ever want, yet we make fewer babies than we ever did before. We live in a world with homosexuality. We make countless choices about our romantic and sexual partners that have nothing to do with their fertility. A lot of our choices have to do with social signaling, for instance; things that genetics alone can't be controlling directly.
>I agree. There are different kinds of value to be sure. However this is a discussion of sexual attraction and romantic partnership. Someone’s, let’s say, java skills, are not very likely to factor heavily. Nor are they likely to be a replacement for sexual attractiveness if it is absent.
It is a discussion of physical attractiveness, romantic/sexual value, and overall human value. I am arguing for decoupling all three.
There is a viewpoint that couples all three, and that viewpoint is not merely wrong; it is toxic and pernicious. It is fundamentally the viewpoint of the incel community. A viewpoint that, at its extreme, motivates people to acts of violence because they believe their lives are worthless as a result of unchangeable physical traits. It is also a view that is clearly held, at least to some degree, by the letter writer in the parent article. It is a drain on humanity.
Is it the case that a more attractive person will have more people interested in them sexually? Of course. Almost by definition.
However, attractiveness (particularly of the youthful variety) is neither necessary nor sufficient to have positive romantic relationships. Furthermore, positive romantic relationships are neither necessary nor sufficient to having a meaningful, happy life.
Ultimately I'm arguing that a 35 year old, 40 year old, whatever-year-old woman's life is not over if she's "still" single. Her dating life isn't over either. Do I expect all men to be attracted to her? Of course not; but some definitely would be, and she still has a lot to offer in that context.
> And yet science has a history of creating "facts" that exist to promote a certain worldview with a veneer of impartiality. These "facts" are created by and to be social actors. Racist and misogynist ones in particular.
Which reads as an excuse to dismiss any inconvenient finding as a lie.
Also, to nitpick, the facts themselves still cannot be social actors, they aren’t people.
> We make countless choices about our romantic and sexual partners that have nothing to do with their fertility.
Fertility? Try perceived reproductive fitness instead. Now remove the conscious element, where someone is actively selecting for reproductive fitness, and replace it with a host of emotions and drives that have been selected by evolution for the perception of reproductive fitness without the benefit of reason.
This is where all of the magic of emotionality and meaning that you are talking about comes from. They’re a bunch of imperfect heuristics designed to ensure survival and reproduction. As they are simple they often go wrong and are easily hijacked, see the term super-stimulus for an example.
> It is a discussion of physical attractiveness, romantic/sexual value, and overall human value. I am arguing for decoupling all three.
You seem to want to pretend that attractiveness does not have the value it does so that people who are low in it don’t feel bad. On top of this, you seem to want to force other people to pretend along with you.
> Ultimately I'm arguing that a 35 year old, 40 year old, whatever-year-old woman's life is not over if she's "still" single. Her dating life isn't over either. Do I expect all men to be attracted to her? Of course not; but some definitely would be, and she still has a lot to offer in that context.
I agree. But is she justified in feeling bad about it, knowing that her opportunities have narrowed? Yes. Indeed you seem to acknowledge this. Her life is by no means ruined, but she’d be lying to herself to pretend that it were a bed of roses. This is also about giving advice to younger people, and telling them that following in her footsteps is fine and dandy would be doing them a disservice.
> Which reads as an excuse to dismiss any inconvenient finding as a lie.
No? I'm not even sure what fields we are talking about any more, but the findings of some fields and some works are so thoroughly polluted by their political motivations that they can indeed be dismissed entirely.
There are no doubt scientific works that are manipulated not merely for commercial reasons (e.g., the classic publication bias with pharmaceutical research) but for ideological ones as well. Some fields attract this sort of thing with such regularity that every work in the field is at least somewhat suspect, if the field itself has any credibility left (e.g. phrenology)
> Also, to nitpick, the facts themselves still cannot be social actors, they aren’t people.
Perhaps the term "actor" is the source of the nitpicking; my belief is that some science is done primarily to be a social force; to push a certain ideology.
> This is where all of the magic of emotionality and meaning that you are talking about comes from. They’re a bunch of imperfect heuristics designed to ensure survival and reproduction. As they are simple they often go wrong and are easily hijacked, see the term super-stimulus for an example.
Perhaps we agree here; I am arguing attraction and partnership and all of that is very complex, that there is a lot of emergent behavior. And that, to use your "super-stimulus" as an example, it is often beneficial to consciously override the simplest impulses in order to live a happier and more fulfilling life.
"I only date the most attractive person I possibly can; it's my genetics after all" is about as good a strategy as "I only eat sugar; it's my genetics after all".
> This is also about giving advice to younger people, and telling them that following in her footsteps is fine and dandy would be doing them a disservice.
I stand by my previous reply in that the destructive forms of an attraction-focused ideology are the far larger disservice. The message that a woman's worth is strongly related to her attractiveness which is strongly related to her age is the far more dangerous (and honestly, pervasive) message.
Far too many people are embracing a message that tells them to "lay down and rot" because they aren't attractive and have no chance at a normal, meaningful human relationship. Far too many people are convinced their attractiveness is extremely low, when it is low-average.
Far too many people believe that they are unattractive and unloveable and let that view trap them in bad relationships and decisions; I know I did it. I've seen this stuff rip through my friends and communities far too often. It doesn't even need to be age; there are countless ways people of both genders can be less than ideally attractive and feel worse for it.
My own lived experience tells me that as a 36 year old woman I'm more successful at dating than I was at any previous point in my life. Would I be even moreso if I was 10 years younger? Probably, but in my case success has come only with age, so I find it hard to accept a narrative that insists otherwise.
It’s an easy strategy to fall back on, you don’t like the implications of a piece of research? Claim the researchers are just propagandists. Make this claim of anyone who finds against your claims, actively attempt to damage their careers due to their obvious bias, and effectively censor any research proposal that doesn’t declare it’s findings as being within acceptable bounds before being carried out. Of course this can be applied to honest and dishonest researchers alike, muddying the waters to the fullest.
> Perhaps the term "actor" is the source of the nitpicking; my belief is that some science is done primarily to be a social force; to push a certain ideology.
My take on your position is that you want everyone to lie about the way the world really works in a misguided attempt to make things better for some.
This is damaging in the long term, people can only make the best decisions for themselves if they know the relevant facts. Telling young women to ignore the implications of this letter while also telling them a mixture of “it’s not true” and “society is morally bankrupt because it’s true!” does not help them, in fact it actively makes them worse off.
> It’s an easy strategy to fall back on, you don’t like the implications of a piece of research? Claim the researchers are just propagandists. Make this claim of anyone who finds against your claims, actively attempt to damage their careers due to their obvious bias, and effectively censor any research proposal that doesn’t declare it’s findings as being within acceptable bounds before being carried out. Of course this can be applied to honest and dishonest researchers alike, muddying the waters to the fullest.
It's an imperfect heuristic, but I can't accept every claim that's given to me as a "fact" as true; some I have so little respect for due to a long history of falsehood that they go straight to the circular file. Climate change, for instance, I have seen very detailed research on and personally witnessed, and I am satisfied that it is real and meaningful. If my mom sends me an email with "facts" showing it to be false, I no longer pay them attention. There was a time when I considered them and researched the conflicting data, but I've consistently found it to be of such poor quality that it would take exceptional circumstances for me to consider it again.
Credibility is real, in other words. It's not a perfect measure, but I can't thoroughly debunk (or validate) every "fact" that comes into my world.
> My take on your position is that you want everyone to lie about the way the world really works in a misguided attempt to make things better for some.
> This is damaging in the long term, people can only make the best decisions for themselves if they know the relevant facts. Telling young women to ignore the implications of this letter while also telling them a mixture of “it’s not true” and “society is morally bankrupt because it’s true!” does not help them, in fact it actively makes them worse off.
Too many people are taking "the world values attractive people more" to such an extreme that it diminishes their existence. I would say that it applies to men as well; as I've mentioned, incels are in service to that same ideology to their own detriment.
Yes, in most areas, attractive people do better. Yes they have more dating options. I'll even accept that people have a bias towards seeing them as more trustworthy and other positively in other traits that have nothing to do with fertility or partner selection. (Though for women, there's a tradeoff; being perceived as more attractive often means being perceived as less competent)
As a person, you cannot let that fact run your life. You cannot look in the mirror and say you'll never find a boyfriend because you're in your 30s now; no girl will want you with this skull shape; since you had a kid nobody is ever going to want you, etc.
You can find happy relationships in your 30s, you can find them with a less than ideal skull shape, if you're a single parent, if you have a "dad bod". It does happen. It is possible.
Society isn't morally bankrupt. In fact what I'm saying is there's hope and love out there for everyone. If you try, if you compromise, if you open your heart. But age, weight, finances... these are not reasons to give up on life.
Yes, people do need to think about what will make them happy, what they want to do with their lives, and the earlier the better. If you are someone who wants to have children and a family and you know that when you are 25, doing nothing to advance that goal for 10 years will not help you. It will be harder for you.
But that is not the end of the story. If you just figured that out at 35, if it took that long to realize who you are, you have options. Some of us are infertile, for instance, but that doesn't mean we can't have children in our lives.
My perspective is colored by the communities I inhabit and the friends I have, but the number of people I see squandering their youth? Basically 0. The number of people allowing something like age or body shape to convince them they have no options, at times to seriously consider suicide? It's not 0.
After I finish this reply I'm going to message a friend who is deeply depressed and feels they can't live authentically because of their body shape. This person is brilliant, young, amazing, one of the most interesting people I know, but can't see it. Because of how they see their body. They think it's impossible to have the life want.
I see people deciding it's impossible to make changes in their life at 20 because of their age that I know I made in my 30s. People who resign themselves to defeat over things I know can be overcome.
There are a lot of things that make a lot of areas of life harder. Privilege comes in all kinds of forms, not just race and gender - being born attractive, having parents that support you financially, being a US Citizen, being young, it just goes on and on. Not having these things makes life hard.
But hard isn't impossible. I'm telling people out there not to give up. It's a message I wish I could have given myself so many times over, to tell her the person I was who she could be. I was in an abusive relationship for years because I thought it was all I deserved, all I was worth. If I could go back in time, for even for 15 seconds, to show me what future awaited me... I could've saved years of the deepest, most soul rending pain.
The surest way for this woman to never find what she wants in life is to resign herself and stop trying. Resigning yourself to your fate only lets the hole gradually get deeper. You can always fight your way out of it.
The fight might be hard, and choices she has made will make that fight harder. But the past is the past. As the proverb says, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
I think I’ve said as much as I need to at this point. However regarding your friend, incels, and other such people: some people have mental and personality disorders that make them act extremely towards themselves and others. I don’t think we should misrepresent reality for the sake of such people, certainly not for fundamental truths of life that affect us all. There are better ways to help them, ways that don’t involve distorting reality for the rest of society. Being realistic in this case does not mean being unduly pessimistic as they may be, but nor does it mean denying the reality of one’s position.
No, even without innate human nature / assuming tabula rasa, it makes logical sense, because we still cannot escape biology (yet). Women can only have kids when young, so youth is hugely important when men choose their partners, and is proxied by beauty. Women also invest much more than men into each kid (9 months of their life and a chance of dying), so it makes sense for them to seek men of wealth, status, power.
In other words, differences in preferences for choosing sexual partners follow directly (logically) from sexual dimorphism, nothing else required, and are thus in a sense “correct”.
> but most of this limited pool knows they are desirable and do not really want to get bogged down with a family.
My friends who enjoyed dating for fun, found they had trouble with it, because most guys were looking to commit - they weren't too interested in merely flings.
But this is anecdata, from Europe, so it may have limited applicability.
I think his view is fairly correct. I also don’t see it as being negative, you’re making your own value judgement equating commitment with positivity. Men do tend to want to have a lot of partners, and many of those who can, do.
It is just not my impresion that men who hop relationships look all that better. The comitted ones are not ugly ones.
Also, a men who is having relationship with you solely because he can't find replacement likely sux as a partner. Or maybe she sux or they don't match, but in any case, that relationship will be crap.
And that relationship will become real bad after children.
>It is just not my impresion that men who hop relationships look all that better. The comitted ones are not ugly ones.
There are plenty of good-looking men in committed relationships. You're reading the relationship in reverse. It's not that "men who hop relationships look all that better". It's that better-looking men can hop relationships.
I wouldn't equate looks with desirability, for men it's much more complex because women have complex expectations, and that's exactly why men maintain and even enhance their desirability with age.
That being said, the desirable men are either committed (unavailable) or available because they can hop and choose to do so. So only a minority of desirable men are available. This is in strict contrast with the large majority of young women, who can almost always hop relationships should they so choose. Since overall there needs to be gender equilibrium, females are sliced by age to a much larger degree, allowing the minority of desirable men of all ages to pursue the minority of younger women.
The asimetry is caused by the fact that females are selective and males are partner-maximizing. It's not good or bad, it's a sociological truth.
No, it is not that easy to find desirable men for large majority of young women. No, women can not hop relationships as easily as you seem to believe.
Also real sociologists do not claim what you claim. They have a lot more nuance into it and in terms of marriages, talk a lot a lot more about economy and it's affects.
Your version sounds like something that emerges on chat when people cherry pick half understood studies, not what sociologists says.
Most young women can easily find "serial monogamous", short term, male partners with highly desirable qualities such as physical good looks, relative success, social skills etc., but most of this limited pool knows they are desirable and do not really want to get bogged down with a family
Women stopped being overly monogamous compared to men since the introduction of birth control. I wouldn't be surprised if tables have turned.
This tangent of ripping on guys more attractive than you seems incredibly irrelevant. At no point does the author say she dated men with "good looks, relative success, social skills etc."
You just sound grouchy, making excuses for yourself. Also, attractive men don't want a life of serial monogamy either.
I didn't read this as "ripping on guys" in any way. It seemed more focused on the perspective of women, and the shifting marketplace of relationships as people start looking to form a family. I don't think this was portraying or referencing attractive men in any negative light, and I'm curious as to why you interpreted the above comment on this way.
> When youth starts to fade away, reality kicks in - the highly desirable partners are not interested, and the average ones are already committed to long time partners who valued them in their own youth.
You're forgetting about a) divorcees and b) men who have also gone down the same path.
Men don't have the same time pressure to start a family with many starting at 45+. The other thing is men often become more attractive to women as they age due to things like financial success while the same can't be said for women.
As a 32-year-old with 3 kids, my parents are still in their mid-50s and can watch our kids for a week while we go on vacation. My father-in-law passed away last in his mid-70s (my mother-in-law is amazing and is a huge help, but she can't watch 3 kids alone for a week). There's a good chance my parents will be at my kids' weddings.
When you're 83 and your kid is my age, he'll probably wish there was anything he could do to make you 20 years younger.
I'm not saying you shouldn't have had a kid, or anything like that, but I don't know how you can suggest that it will never be a problem that you are a relatively old father (versus if you had kids in your 30s, other things being equal, which obviously they aren't).
It's nice that your parents are able to help with your kids. But, you know, it's rather common nowadays for people with kids to have parents (whatever their age) that live thousands of miles away...
I debated about whether to post this, because it’s rather emotive, even unsettling, but on the off chance it might actually sway someone, I will.
The average life expectancy for a male in the USA is 76. All other things being equal, a 51 year old father will die when their offspring is 25 years old. This is too early to lose a parent. Think about how this would have effected you, reader of this post. This is also assuming that the father does not experience any debilitating illnesses prior to dying, such as dementia, which would place an inordinate burden on a young person, who would have far fewer resources and life experience to draw on during such an ordeal.
These are not small potatoes. Think before you act, be responsible. You’re gambling with someone else’s life and wellbeing.
The life expectancy of a man who has already reached the age of 51 however, is 82, because that average no longer includes deaths of younger men. If you add things like good health, education and higher income, which are likely for someone that decides to have kids at 51 (and that manages to find a most likely younger partner willing to have kids with them), then one might lose their parent at the age of 35. It's still early but not uncommon.
That’s the best case scenario. Add in smoking, drinking, high blood pressure and obesity, all of which are common, and it’s as low as 62, from a starting age of 51.
Oh? Would you like to tell when is a _good_ time for your father to die? He's going to die sometime, you know.
And maybe taking care of a parent with dementia is actually more of a problem when you're older and have kids of your own?
At my advanced age, I have the advantage of remembering things like the arguments you would hear back in the 1960's about why interracial marriage was a bad idea. Not because we're racist of course! But think of the practical difficulties. Like, the kids won't fit into either community! I'm sure you can think of more reasons too.
> Oh? Would you like to tell when is a _good_ time for your father to die?
The later the better.
> And maybe taking care of a parent with dementia is actually more of a problem when you're older and have kids of your own?
It would certainly be easier to deal with when you have more stability in your life and are more emotionally mature.
> At my advanced age, I have the advantage of remembering things like the arguments you would hear back in the 1960's about why interracial marriage was a bad idea. Not because we're racist of course! But think of the practical difficulties. Like, the kids won't fit into either community! I'm sure you can think of more reasons too.
Do you really think this is a reasonable comparison? Of course you’ll say that you do. It’s not.
Well, it may be that you're not ageist. You may instead be anti-natalist. If we were talking about a 20-year-old having a kid, you might go on about how they don't have the maturity necessary to take on such a responsibility. And of course it's obvious that you shouldn't have kids if you haven't achieved an upper-middle-class level of financial stability. Then there is the matter of genetics. Do you have ancestors who died of Alzheimer's disease, cancer, or heart disease? Those all have a genetic risk component. Do you want to pass on such genes to your kids?
The fact is that every kid comes into the world with some advantages and some disadvantages. Any disadvantages from having an older parent are at most on a par with the disadvantages from not having particularly wealthy parents, or not having parents with perfect genes, or having parents who were abused by their own parents, or having parents who aren't citizens of a first-world country, and so on and so on.
Would you like to assign me any more imaginary opinions? Your reply is an exercise in whatabouttery: ignore this harm because look at all those harms over there. Controlling the age at which one has children is within one’s power to control, and helps to alleviate obvious harm. Nothing you have said or can say will change that.
Your statement that "the age at which one has children is within one’s power to control" is just obviously false. Especially for men. But also for everyone, if you're trying to time things to mitigate other disadvantages.
In reality, you may be 51, and may be in a good position otherwise to have a kid, and the question is whether being 51 is a reason not to. And the answer is "no", it is not. Not unless you also think that other people with non-major reasons not to have a kid shouldn't. In other words, not unless you think nobody should have kids.
I don't wish to belittle the hardships and sadness having an elderly parent at a relatively young age may potentially bring, but the alternative you're suggesting is never being born, which surely is even less preferable.
No, I’m suggesting that you have your children earlier in life. It’s best to think of it like a certain number, the exact genetic identity of the kids is a toss-up anyway, and if you really want to argue that point you’d be arguing for being responsible for people not being born every day.
I'm not sure this is always the case, starting a family later has a swath of benefits such as more life experience on on the part of parents, greater financial stability, and usually more ability to take time off. Both my parents quit their jobs and raised kids full time when my sister was born, and they were largely able to do so because they had kids later than average.
Balanced vs. ill health due to old age and dying earlier in your child’s life. I’ll agree that having children somewhat later, circa thirties, is better due to stability than twenties, but pushing into the forties is too much for me.
Don't forget higher chances your kid has a genetic disorder, and not being able to play sports with your kid because of bad joints. The situation you describe isn't one most people can relate to, given early retirement is not common.
They never see the dad bod as a sexual thing, it's more a symbol of other traits that the man brings to a relationship. Traits that are very important to a woman looking to start a family. The 'hot body' will still be their sexual choice but it's a trade-off.
I meant that women who don't become interested in having a long-term committed relationship until later in life have the option of dating men who followed the same path as them, as well as the option of dating divorced men.
I would hope that as they mature, at least some men realize there is more value in a partner than youthful good looks. That others who have led winding and complex paths in life are often more mature, supportive, and all around better partners than someone whose world view is, essentially, "I'm attractive so people do what I want".
Perhaps a lot of 35 year old women have realized that the value of a young attractive partner isn't very high and have realized that a committed relationship can bring happiness?
Imagine how a man might pick a woman if attractiness was completely off the table - an older woman is generally more mature, more sure of herself, simply had more life experiences and knows how to handle more situations. A 21 year old has barely spent any time supporting herself; a 35 year old has moore than a decade of life.
Perhaps women value men this way; with physical attractiveness less important than emotional maturity? Which tends to increase with age?
Some of these I would argue are positively correlated, especially loyalty and kindness. Some I would argue are a bit of a toss up, like intelligence. I am not sure what flexibility means (ability to adapt to change? I would argue that a 40 year old is more capable than a 20-something on average in that regard). Some I feel are more about having a similar level to a partner rather than being an absolute value (energy level).
I feel like this list is really answering the question "what do I find attractive, besides her face/body?", and not "what kind of traits in a partner actually bring me happiness?" - with the exception of kindness and loyalty.
Even as someone who used to identify as a man and thus was in the dating market as such, I can't understand how emotional maturity is of no value; it's one of the most important traits to me in a partner and essentially the reason I picked my last partner for a long term relationship.
You're trying to contort a mate selection process that has an inherently sexual-reproductive basis (for most people) into an exercise in platonic pair bonding. It doesn't make sense as such, and it isn't supposed to. People are seeking fulfillment of motivations that are fundamentally evolutionary in nature.
For everything else, we have friendship. (Setting aside the evolutionary advantages of e.g. male coalition-building, which we really can't, but whatever!)
I am someone who exists outside of evolution's traditional goals. I'm a transwoman, and predominantly lesbian at that. In all honesty, I'm so far outside the norm (even for a transwoman) that it causes most people I date not to have a script for it; the usual reaction is for them to become "starry eyed" and metaphorically eat out of my hand.
This is extra bizarre to me, as someone who used to be read as a relatively uninteresting, effeminate male; being passably female in pretty much every sense (including hormonally) should not increase my attractiveness to other women, yet it does. Not a single woman I've dated has expressed any particular interest in me as a fertile partner, and in what biological sense am I, really? While I have banked sperm, my testosterone levels are lower than most cisgender women's - in all likelihood, I am not fertile. There's very little way for a casual observer - even one who has access to my blood to run non-genetic tests on - to recognize that I am transgender.
I'm not just bragging; I straight up don't understand it. It was one of the things that kept me from transitioning for so long - being afraid women would have no interest in me if I did. I have postulated that the unique mix of hormones that I currently have, somehow, smells like perpetual ovulation; and yet if so why am I apparently far more attractive to women than men? Most girls I date seem particularly attached to my smell in a way they weren't before, but the interest I get from men is somehow less than before I transitioned.
I am promiscuous and unwilling to commit; I neither seek nor am particularly attractive to women seeking someone to support them and potentially their children. I regularly date women who have or have previously had male partners (in an ethical way).
Unless my humanity itself, the fact that I am living authentically and being who I truly am is more attractive, more valuable to the women I date, I simply have no explanation for the reactions I get now.
As a result - my own lived experience tells me that humans, and our relationships, are so much more than evolutionary motivations - at least as we understand them.
The testosterone running through my veins was just as real as the estradiol running through them now; the queerness of my life does not in any way diminish my humanity nor that of those who have interacted with me.
If you come at it from a queer perspective, you plainly see that your argument falls apart. Us queers are very sexual people, but by nature of being queer, don't feel compelled to follow any particular script; as a result our interests are very diverse. Some lesbians might prefer childbearing hips; the ones that date me definitely don't! And yet my femininity is nonetheless compelling; I've had girls tell me how nice it was to date someone so feminine (and how hard that was to find).
The women I find the most attractive tend to be KPop stars; east Asian (usually Korean) women in their early 20s (if that), often who are borderline underweight. The woman who I bonded with like nobody else in my life, the one I loved, the one I always thought was beautiful even when she couldn't see it, the one who gave my life meaning, the one who I still sometimes weep about even months after I last saw her was an obese scots woman in her early 30s with a serious disability.
And she was beautiful to me. Even before I transitioned.
Humans are wonderfully, fabulously, beautifully complex creatures. Our culture and social complexity has run far ahead of our genetics in so many ways. If we accept we have gone past our genetically programmed ways to figure out what to eat, consuming endless salt and sugar, causing us cavities and diabetes and unhappiness, why can't we accept that, too, our genetics were never meant for a world with Tinder and plastic surgery or even fast fashion? That our basest instincts do not bring us happiness - unless we examine them from a perspective that we are something greater, that we can be better than that?
The truth is, we can. The truth is, happiness - mediated by oxytocin and dopamine and all of that evolutionary history - DOES exist beyond merely eating and sex. We are programmed for empathy, for cooperation, for belonging. For love. We may desire things that will make us unhappy but we can make a choice.
If you ignore that, whether you are male or female- if you insist that, no, your life is just about having sex with the most attractive partner because evolution demands it - you will wind up like the parent of this entire conversation. You will be sad. Whether you are a 60 year old man or a 35 year old woman, you will realize at some point what you have been doing is refusing to be human, to have real relationships; you have been using sexuality to protect your feelings, and suddenly, it doesn't work any more.
Choose to be human; choose to be more than your selfish genes.
I get where you are coming from but attraction is still a thing. I'm a guy and for me, physical attraction is a minimum standard that loses value after the minimum is met. Once someone reaches the standards for the physical attraction I value other traits vastly more. These physical standards aren't even all that hard to meet if someone looks after themselves.
I actually agree with you (I was a bit drunk when I wrote that rant). If someone meets a relatively low standard of physical attractiveness, the rest matters more. I may be off in queer lala land, but that still is roughly true for me.
The argument I am encountering, the one I disagree with, is that attractiveness is a linear function and substantially the only thing that matters when dating. By virtue of being in her mid 30s, the letter writer is right to realize her value is low and declining. She will only find low value partners and even those doors are closing as she creeps closer to menopause.
I'm trying to argue that no, her value as a person AND as a romantic partner is much more than that.
I'm even going one step farther than that to say that picking a mate based on attractiveness as correlated with age is a strategy that will not bring you happiness whether you are a man, woman, or a queer degenerate like myself.
A lot of people follow other strategies, even if they are in the minority, and while it might take some time, she should seek out those who do, who value the things she has done in her life, the perspectives she's gained, all of that, and not just her youthful good looks.
tl;dr - Girl needs to chill. Her life (even romantic life!) isn't over because she's single and 35. She needs to stop evaluating herself that way.
> How does a string of short term relationships show loyalty?
Age says nothing about what prior relationships someone has had, other than that they've had more time to have them.
It translates to loyalty (albeit weakly) in that a woman who is older has better self awareness and knows what she wants in a relationship, where a younger woman might still be figuring that out (and realize only later on that her relationship isn't what she wanted)
>I’ve known plenty of early 20s women who will drop their careers to follow their boyfriend overseas and very few in their 30s who will.
So it's more valuable to have a woman who isn't independent? Who doesn't have her own life or hobbies and gets fulfillment solely through her partner?
> Why should a man find it valuable in a partner?
Seriously? You don't know why emotional maturity is valuable in a partner?
> It translates to loyalty (albeit weakly) in that a woman who is older has better self awareness and knows what she wants in a relationship, where a younger woman might still be figuring that out
Than why are there clear correlations (for women) between # of monogamous relationships and likelihood of divorce? As well as between # of sexual partners and likelihood of divorce?
> So it's more valuable to have a woman who isn't independent?
Of course! More flexibility and dependence up to a point is certainly better.
Of course the idea that this means a woman can’t have her own hobbies seems to be taking things to the extreme.
> Seriously?
Yes and honestly.
I married young and I think the troubles we went through together have deepened our relationship in a way that would never have been possible if we were both “emotionally mature”.
I’d also question whether people really do mature “globally” that much - vs maturing in specific contexts and relationships.
For example if women matured significantly in a “global” sense between mid-20s to mid-30s you would expect a big drop in obesity as women started taking better care of their health. But you don’t. Etc etc.
divorce tends to neuter men in practice. Poverty and its secondary effects from any cause, alimony or child support or legal bills in specific, is rarely "highly desirable" for men.
> When youth starts to fade away, reality kicks in - the highly desirable partners are not interested, and the average ones are already committed to long time partners who valued them in their own youth. Their "family" started a long time ago with mutual investment - you can choose not to make that trade-off but cannot have the cake and eat it too.
As someone who has his cake and eats it too (and has ice cream) I can tell you that this is incorrect. Highly desirable partners could still be interested if you have used your younger days to acquire the skills that would compensate for not being a 25-year-old sex pot.
Unless she is Miranda Kerr she better be prepared for a life of someone who needs to go to the grocery store even when it is raining, and needs to take out trash even if she does not feel like it and needs to deal with a washing machine being broken all while a cat peed in a rug because her partner did not clean the litter box. And boy if she has been a sex pot between the ages of 17 and 35 she is in for a surprise.
It sounds like going from one end of the spectrum (aventuros, yolo) to the other (a family, fast), all while punching above their weight, so to speak, in terms of compatible long term partners.
Most young women can easily find "serial monogamous", short term, male partners with highly desirable qualities such as physical good looks, relative success, social skills etc., but most of this limited pool knows they are desirable and do not really want to get bogged down with a family.
When youth starts to fade away, reality kicks in - the highly desirable partners are not interested, and the average ones are already committed to long time partners who valued them in their own youth. Their "family" started a long time ago with mutual investment - you can choose not to make that trade-off but cannot have the cake and eat it too.