In the midst of the cries to young men to man up and the concern over hookup culture, it’s important to really understand what is motivating both young women and young men. When women don’t need a man as a personal provider and protector they are freed up to have casual sex, delay marriage and pursue hotter men, in hopes of catching him, or, to a lesser extent, simply enjoy the ride. Top men clean up while average and lesser men are left out in the parched desert of involuntary celibacy with only their discouraging thirst for love and sex to keep them company.
Women Delayed Marriage Over the Last 50 Years
Looking at the chart below, we see that the age of first marriage dropped during WWII and then plateaued for about 15 years after. My guess is that a good part of this was due to removing a large number of young men from the population which made the ratio more favorable to men and since marriage was still the culturally-approved venue for sexual expression young men wanted to get married when they got back from the war or became old enough.
Then as we hit the 70s, many women started to get more education and gradually started to choose to delay marriage so that they could finish college and/or work and enjoy their youth so they wouldn’t regret it when they were older. Of course, other factors, including some men delaying marriage, had an impact on things but it is my opinion that it was driven more by women than by men. Some women wanted high-profile careers and naturally took advantage of the new opportunities while other women started to listen to the new alpha mares that told them that they needed to put off the oppression of relationships, marriage and children and march in the glorious liberation of the working woman.
Let’s fast forward to today and see how many young women view work and education as mutually exclusive with relationships during and just after college while others are willing to have relationships as long as they don’t interfere. Here’s one girl, Hanna in the UK, describing her friend:
my friend Robyn (22, works in PR) weighed up her priorities and decided that there was no room for a boyfriend, full stop. “It’s not that I feel I have to be single in order to succeed,” she explains. “But I am very aware that my twenties will be when I make or break my career – to me, investing time in a full-time relationship is a risk I don’t want to take.
Hanna herself was very cautious and had to go through her mental checklist to see if a relationship that she didn’t need was compatible with her career goals and worth it:
I might be in a relationship now but I certainly weighed up the pros and cons beforehand. Did I have enough time for a boyfriend? What if I wanted to move abroad for work? Was it all just more hassle that I could do without? In the end I did the “sums” and concluded, yes, I wanted this relationship, but I had to have that conversation in my head first.
Why was I so cautious? Well, my mental checklist for the next decade goes: job success, clear my overdraft, get on the property ladder, then later – maybe, possibly – marriage and children. (Today, [in the UK,] the average age for women to marry is 30; 30 years ago it was 23.) I didn’t need a relationship, so it had to be worth it, and it certainly couldn’t limit my chances at ticking off my checklist.
Good or bad, even Hanna who had a relationship was more picky because she, as most Western girls, lives in a safe and prosperous society where she doesn’t need a relationship. This gives women who choose to be so more leverage to be picky. This is a stark contrast to how women quickly picked forest husbands for protection and provision in the WWII movie, Defiance, when jews escaped into the forests and lived there primitively as a small tribe.
Further examples of how women put off both relationships and children for fear of offending or betraying the feminist herd can be found in my article:
http://www.justfourguys.com/feminists-and-raunch-queens-are-the-dominant-alpha-mares/
I’ll share again one passage from that post about women feeling guilty for wanting relationships.
Some young women deeply desire meaningful relationships with men, even as they feel guilty about those desires. Many express the same sentiment again and again: “Why do I, a young and highly educated woman in the 21st century, value relationships with men so highly?” To do so feels like a betrayal of themselves, of their education, and of their achievements.
…many young and aspiring women with whom I spoke felt as though it were counterproductive to their development to prioritize a relationship with a man. This is a new phenomenon that goes against the grain of centuries of female socialization. Historically, women have been encouraged to value relationships, often at the expense of their own aspirations. Today’s young women are part of a new generation of highly educated women who are, of course, still socialized differently than are men, but who feel they ought to focus on their career goals in their 20s, potentially at the expense of developing a relationship. All the women I interviewed felt this pressure, and many expressed anxiety over their desire to prioritize a relationship.
From an article in the NY Times, we see the same feminist narrative being played out by hard-charging, ambitious future alpha mares:
Typical of elite universities today, Penn is filled with driven young women, many of whom aspire to be doctors, lawyers, politicians, bankers or corporate executives like Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg or Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer. …
These women said they saw building their résumés, not finding boyfriends (never mind husbands), as their main job at Penn. They envisioned their 20s as a period of unencumbered striving, when they might work at a bank in Hong Kong one year, then go to business school, then move to a corporate job in New York. The idea of lugging a relationship through all those transitions was hard for many to imagine. Almost universally, the women said they did not plan to marry until their late 20s or early 30s. …
In interviews, “Some of them actually said things like, ‘A relationship is like taking a four-credit class,’ or ‘I could get in a relationship, or I could finish my film,’ ” Dr. Armstrong said. [ed: notice how at the height of their sexual power they just assume they can get a relationship, which they probably could]
Of course, not all women think this way, not even necessarily a majority, but enough (and in varying degrees) to take a significant chunk of women out of the relationship market.
This leads to the question, what do these women do during all these years while they’re avoiding relationships or being very picky about entering into one?
Many Women Have Casual Sex To Pass the Time While Single
From the same NY Times article,
Hanna Rosin, in her recent book, “The End of Men,” argues that hooking up is a functional strategy for today’s hard-charging and ambitious young women, allowing them to have enjoyable sex lives while focusing most of their energy on academic and professional goals.
Elizabeth A. Armstrong, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who studies young women’s sexuality, said that women at elite universities were choosing hookups because they saw relationships as too demanding and potentially too distracting from their goals.
Back in the UK, Robyn fills her relationship-free time with lots of casual sex, in part because it doesn’t bare the risk of turning into something more:
“…to me, investing time in a full-time relationship is a risk I don’t want to take. A one-night stand, on the other hand, doesn’t have that level of risk as it is so short-term.” (That it entails other forms of risk doesn’t seem to enter her mind.)
For Robyn, casual sex allows her to interact with men without diverting her from work.
What Kind of Men do these Women Have Sex With?
Continuing in the UK, we find one “lovely” young woman who specifically looks for hot guys.
“I will go out ‘sharking’ – with the specific intention of finding a hot guy to have sex with – and I’m usually successful,” says Milly. “I don’t have a boyfriend, but why should that stop me enjoying sex?”
In terms of casual sex, women can get men that are hotter or badder–or whatever other adjective tingles their fancy–than they can get to marry. As I reported here, women are having sex with hotter men.
And, as one woman I was conversing with once said, “If I’m going to do casual sex then might as well get the hottest guy I can find.” In a casual sex environment, where a guy isn’t expected to stick around, then the hotter (or more whatever) guys will clean up, just like the top peacock gets all the peahens.
Back to the NY Times article, look at who this virgin chose to lose her virginity to (hint: it wasn’t the average beta guy):
“I’m like, ‘O.K., I could do this now,’ ” she recalled thinking. “ ‘He’s superhot, I like him, he’s nice. But I’m not going to expect anything out of it, either.’ ”
Some women even have reported that they avoid having casual sex with good guys in favor of assholes so that they won’t fall in love.
Meanwhile, many young women who want relationships have lists a mile long. Others mistake their sexual value for their relationship value and keep getting pumped and dumped or strung along in noncommittal relationships where they think it is something or hope it will lead somewhere–but in the guys’ mind the woman is clearly on the sex-only ladder and not the relationship ladder.
Let’s recall that more men than women consider themselves to be in sex-only situations while more women than men thought they were in a relationship. I wrote the following:
Where it get’s interesting is that twice as many very attractive men say they’re just fuck buddies than the very attractive women. So what’s going on? Are the men having less-attractive FBs? Very possible. Are the women thinking they’re in a romantic relationship when the guy thinks he’s only in it for sex? Very likely as well, since we see that, overall, 31% of men in relationships say it’s sex only while only 19% of women say that. Well, sorry sisters, when the man says it’s sex only and you say it’s love, guess who’s right? The man. Sorry, but that’s how it is. If women really want emotionally-rich LTRs then many of them need to stop deluding themselves that the guy is into them or can be won over. Yeah, it happens from time to time but it’s not a high-odds strategy. Stop going for the players or cads and start going for the stable Abels that will actually be excited about you as more than just a sex toy–that is, if you really want a man that will love you.
Personally, about half of the women I’ve had sex with were roughly in my league and I was desirous of or open to the possibility of a relationship with them (indeed, some of them became my girlfriend). The other half was not in my league and was on my sex-only ladder–but the vast majority of them were seeking for a relationship with me, a clear case of them mistaking sexual value for relationship value. And for completeness, there were a couple women that arguably were out of my league and I had sex with them in the context of developing a relationship. I’ve seen and heard the same dynamic from many men and have heard or inferred it from many women’s tales as well. So this idea of women trying to get relationships with out-of-their-league men but only getting sex that leads nowhere is very real.
Today’s UK Women Have 3x as Many Partners as Grandma
A study showed that as time has gone on, each generation has had more partners, with a doubling occuring between the 1960s and the 1980s, and a tripling between the 1960s and recent years:
The average [for today’s young women] was 5.65 people. [3x more than grandma]
By contrast, women of their mother’s generation, who were in their early twenties in the 1980s, had had an average of 3.72 sexual partners by the same age. [2x more than their mothers]
And the previous generation were even less promiscuous.
Women of their grandmother’s generation, aged 24 in the 1960s, averaged just 1.67 partners.
Less Attractive Men Have to Wait on the Sidelines
As can be seen from all of the above, many of the average and lesser males have to sit it out. Yeah, they may get lucky once in a while in their thirsty march across the desert but they’re not getting much sex. They may even have a higher partner count than their grandpas but still be getting less total sex. At the same time, there are many average young men who are able to get into relationships still and marry but it’s certainly harder today than 50 years ago.
We know that many women are purposefully delaying marriage. Others are so picky that they are pricing themselves out of the market. Many young women either engage in casual sex because they enjoy it or they think it’s the only way they can get a relationship (usually this is attempted with hotter men, which they of course rarely acknowledge because they overestimate their relationship value and their looks). Other young women are not slutting it up but are putting off relationships which reduces the number of young women available for young men, especially the average ones.
Incentives matter.
And the biggest incentive for most non-apex men is this: find a good woman in his league to love and be loved by. A society that removes this incentive from young men is a society where said young men will be much more listless and detached. In fact, I think this is one of the biggest factors in why so many young men are underachieving today–the incentive’s just not there for them anymore.
Well reasoned.
Millennial women might turn out to be a Lost Generation, albeit not literally like the original. Large numbers of them will fail to have kids, but not because they were machine-gunned en masse during war. Rather, they’ll be victims of their own foolish choices regarding The Wall, The Pill, and The Carousel. It’s a tragedy for a society to lose armies of young men in battle. It’s even worse to have a glut of used-up, childless spinsters.
Sperm is cheap and plentiful. A lack of fertile wombs, though? That right there’s a major bottleneck if you’re trying to keep civilization going.
Hey
Certain religions/cultures continue to have large families. Mormons, some traditional Catholics, conservative Christians, Muslims.
The future, as Mark Steyn said, belongs to those who show up for it.
To the extent that the next generation is smaller, there will be fewer young people looking at the niches for prosperity, which is to say, less competition.
Would a mid-level manager hire a straight arrow or a slacker? And since slackers won’t be reproducing as fast as the straight arrows….
Said it before, Britain had two–at least–eras of great license. One was the Restoration and the other the Regency. The first was followed by and greatly modified by the explosive growth of Methodism in the middle classes, both upper and lower middle classes. The second by Victorianism.
“Less Attractive Men Have to Wait on the Sidelines”
I think maybe this should be pretty much all men (who are interested) have to wait while the men above them choose. As their level comes they get to look at the women that were rejected by the men that those women wanted. Women that are feeling like they’re settling (when really they’re not). Now they’re past their peak SMV they look at those they should have considered in the first place.
No man wants to pay the new Cadillac price for a used Daihatsu, especially a used Daihatsu that believes you should be grateful for getting to take them off of not-so-honest Joe’s used car lot.
Feminism is telling women that they get to play on the carousel horsies for a decade and if they fail to trap what they want then the men they ignored will have to take what they can get, however shop soiled and unable to bond. Given the impaired ability to bond they are of course more likely to divorce the guy once the financial incentives to do so are settled. I recommend men give the marriage and divorce roller coaster a miss.
Of course there’s another lie being told to women. One that also screws the marketplace. They are told that there’s deep satisfaction in a glorious career. I remember newspaper articles talking of women burning out in their late twenties and thirties when they realise what most men have long known, working to put bread on the table isn’t all that. Suddenly women post thirty start seeing the subsidised existance of part time career and kids looking much more enticing than paper pushing make work in PR / HR. Especially when the alternative is shovelling their own gravel for another 40 years.
Feminism isn’t your friend ladies. If it were it would lay out the truth about the choices that you legitimately get to make*. Not lead you astray into the pretty lies and leave you dumped as an invisible woman without kids when you hit your forties. Feminism may look to hurt men but it sure doesn’t care how many women it leaves as roadkill.
(*I am NOT a fan of a return to the fifties, that sucked for many men and women.)
Make the marriage and divorce processes fair, tell everyone the truth about their choices and consequences and let the chips fall as they may. Men have no duty to pick up ladies in their thirties looking for a plan B.
If you are a woman in her thirties looking for a man, make sure that you bring something to the table (beyond debt, crumbling princess fairystories and an entitled attitude regarding what ‘he’ needs to be). Be realistic, be honest and be proactive. Smiling is a great start by the way. oh and men do not want a competitive as-good-as-a-man-the-same-as-a-man superannuated yugogirl we like honest, nuturing, feminine women who pull their weight in marriage (as opposed to seeing it as semi-retirement). Or those men that haven’t given up and gone their own way (the smart ones IMHO but I’m playing nicely here).
“To the extent that the next generation is smaller, there will be fewer young people looking at the niches for prosperity, which is to say, less competition.”
Those fewer people only have to pay to support the rest. Not going to be great times to being a producer pack mule for society for the next 90-100 years (and more, as I don’t see any slow down in the production of takers)
“Would a mid-level manager hire a straight arrow or a slacker? And since slackers won’t be reproducing as fast as the straight arrows….”
If he’s allowed to hire who he wants rather than filling some quota or other, maybe. If the HR department hasn’t already filtered out the straight arrows’ CVs. If he can identify the straight arrows’ CVs from the slackers that have got all the right paperwork too (or better). When the first thing HR does is bin any application without an BSc, MSc or better, how are you going to identify the self motivated guysngals who saved the college fees (but don;t have the paperwork)?
Subbed
Who is responsible for telling these broads they could have it all? Do any of you guys remember ever being told you could have it all? I don’t. I was told I had to make choices, and have priorities. Having it all was never an option for men.
How are men supposed to achieve when they have to compete against potential mates for jobs? It’s double whammy.
I hope these gals enjoy their 20s and have a lot fond memories their going to need them. Whilst a small number now there is growing discontent amongst the perpetually rejected that LTRs with used up sluts are not worth the effort. These gals will have to face the reality of near celibacy, or hopping on the beta carousel in their 30s and 40s.
I have to say with each year I become more indifferent to women’s woes and less accepting of a woman’s flaws. For example:
* Last summer a 35 year old who I would have accepted 5 years ago didn’t get the third date because she needed to lose 15 pounds, and her personality didn’t make up for it. Not worth the investment.
* Last fall I get up and leave in the middle of sex because she’s just lying there like a corpse. I offer a little snark out the door, “ya shoulda just said no and saved us some time.” Amazingly she wanted to meet up again, I actually had to say “I’d prefer self abuse, you’re awful at sex.”
If you look at the graph, what jumps out is that women are simply emulating men. That is, prior to the WWII-induced demographic outlier situation, men were getting married in the later 20s – that is, they were getting established first and then marrying girls in their early 20s. That’s indicated by the graph.
Beginning with second wave feminism, women begin to emulate men by pursuing degrees and careers and financial independence. So, what we see is the age of marriage for women getting driven up, over time as each generation of women becomes more careerist, to match more or less what it was for men in the time prior to the WWII bubble. In other words, they want to become established (at least foundationally) before they marry.
Now, of course, the motivations are different . The Pre-WWII men were looking to get established so that they could attract a good wife. This was an important part of how men were evaluated by women and their parents as potential husbands, so the guys were maximizing their potential in that area before marrying. The women of this era are not motivated by that, but are instead motivated either (i) by outright ambition and careerism (there are women like this, think Sandberg – they’re just a small percentage of women overall, as Sandberg herself laments in her book) or (ii) by the desire to create a “firm Plan B” which provides them with flexibility/independence when it comes to relationships (most of the women in this category, which is most women overall, do want to marry and have kids, but they want their firm Plan B as a kind of insurance policy). In this sense, for most women, it reflects a fear of insecurity which manifests in the desire to secure financial independence which is further seen as the key to providing flexibility and options in case things “go wrong” in the relationship/marriage. It’s this which is what is driving the average age of marriage up for women, primarily.
Of course, this raises quite a few problems, as the OP describes well, in terms of what women are doing in the interim, and the impact this has on peer-age men – because, increasingly (as the graph also reflects) marriages are happening between peer-age men and women with a much smaller age gap than was the case pre-WWII — this is due to ideas about equality, primarily, with the fear, again, that an older and more established man (even 5 years older) will too easily dominate the relationship and prevent a true “partnership of equals” from forming – which is what women *think* they want, for the most part … until the divorces happen as they discover in their 30s that they don’t want to be married to a peer kitchen bitch man. So you have the peer age men looking at what the peer age women are doing, and likely they will end up with one of these rather than a 22 year old when they are 27 – this leads to the kind of resentments that many guys feel about their peer-age women. The guys wouldn’t care as much, probably, if they were reasonably assured of marrying a woman -5 in her early 20s (what the pre-WWII guys were doing). But they do mind watching Susie ride a score of cocks and then turning to want to marry the peer age guy who has been observing that for the past ten years. It’s kind of a squeeze play dynamic.
Despite all of that, to date most women who want to get married are able to marry. By 40, the rate of never married women in the US is very small (less than 10%), and included in that are the women who would be very hard to marry in any era (unattractive for whatever reason). Women who are not at the bottom of the pole in terms of attraction and who want to get married have, so far, been able to find men who will marry them – even if they are single mothers, born again virgins, former hookers and so on. Lots of desperate men out there in the pussy desert, I think, who are just happy to have had some reasonably attractive woman agree to marry them. The key issue is whether this continues. I don’t see any evidence either way on that, really. We’ll have to wait another 10-15 years to see how the marriage game plays out for this generation to determine whether younger men really do forego marriage and leave a lot more of these women unmarried at 40+ than is the case today, or whether it is mostly talk, and they will buckle under in the 30s and marry these girls anyway. Remains to be seen.
What has changed really? Top men were always the prize, average men needed to work harder and lesser men were never part of the game. Style and a pleasan dominant personnality can change any average man into a stud.
“My guess is that a good part of this was due to removing a large number of young men from the population which made the ratio more favorable to men and since marriage was still the culturally-approved venue for sexual expression young men wanted to get married when they got back from the war or became old enough.”
My guess is that widespread economic prosperity after 1945 played a bigger role.
In other words, the plan is working.
#6 that was a one-handed diss. I must be getting bad, because I am yielding to the temptation to post this comment. You know how women pretend that “Go f- yourself!” is good advice to the majority of beta males who aren’t getting any tonight, whereas in reality we all know it the worst diss women can say to a man? Well, I think you’ve discovered that “I’m going to go f- myself” is the worst diss a man can say to women.
Interesting writeup. The link to Hanna in the UK, sounds very Bridget Jones Diariesque.
There are a lot of costs to waiting for marriage and children that sure aren’t weighed into her or her friends’ equation. Physically, emotionally, and even financially having kids later in life is harder. There’s no easy time to settle down and have kids, just easier times.
Lotario says:
January 29, 2014 at 9:37 am
What has changed really? Top men were always the prize, average men needed to work harder and lesser men were never part of the game. Style and a pleasan dominant personnality can change any average man into a stud.
Murder was always part of the game.
Rape (brutal, invasive and violent) not drunken regret idiocy, was always part of the game
Torture, gibbets, hanging, amputations were always part of the game.
You want to run your mouth about how much of a dominate alpha you are, fine, remember what happens to “dominant” alphas with out beta’s (and well trained and loyal) to protect them in a land full of colt made equal men.
#6 “Do any of you guys remember ever being told you could have it all? I don’t.” I don’t. But women have always told alpha men they could have it all. In contrast to what is commonly portrayed, in my experience alpha males are coddled by women, and were mama’s boy when growing up too.
What’s different is that women didn’t used to be so delusional about their own value. It didn’t take them till it was getting late to realise that they weren’t a special princess and had to be realistic about what man they could get. Big Daddy Government now ensures divorce is easy and profitable, or you can get support for your single mom lifestyle (shitty support to most, but to some it’s an attractive lifestyle). No shaming about being single or divorced. Feminism has been telling them that they can have a spectacular career, every one of them.
Some of the changes are fine by me, others are poisonous to society IMHO.
#7
I can picture a theoretical compromise: girl marries her long-term college boyfriend roughly at 20 or 22 (when her SMV and MMV peaks), they move into a new apartment after graduation as means to share expenses and economize. It’s easier for two people to keep up one household than for one. Both of them start their careers and delay parenthood for 5-10 years or even more if they decide to do so. Both sides get most of what they want from a relationship, and the woman gets her Plan B.
One probable reason we don’t see this happening is because the idea of childless marriage is unappealing for women. As far as I can tell, they see it as a lopsided relationship where the (beta) man is enjoying all the advantages of marriage but avoiding the obligations that come with it. They basically think that would mean the husband using her as his personal slut in a socially sanctioned way.
As well as not having it all, there was also the old response to ‘that’s not fair!’ which was ‘life’s not fair. deal with it’. Nowadays ‘not being fair’ is seen as a catastrophic failure of human rights rather than just how it works in reality.
Women seem particularly determined that everything is fair when they will benefit, or when the other will lose. The most recent example that I have seen was this:
Again with the fundamental, and I mean mental, obsession that women have that their fertility drying up in their mid to late thirties or forties must be exactly matched by men. They demand it. Lots of numbers, big ones: survey size, increase of risk % etc etc in the article
Notice what isn’t there in the article? The number that matters. 34% increase from what risk?
Only the final line of the article even hints at it
“Mutation in the developing sperm cell may contribute to an increased risk for a surprisingly wide range of mental health disorders, including schizophrenia, autism and mental retardation,” he said. “The absolute risk of these disorders is still very low – but people should know about them.”
So there is no ‘fairness’ at all, it’s all bullshit.
Tell me that you’re forcing me to play Russian Roulette with a revolver with three out of six chambers filled…but then up the risk by 33% by loading a fourth chanber? Yikes, I didn’t want to play anyway, but now it’s looking far grimmer.
Tell me my risk of having an accident crossing the road is going up by 33% from 3 in 10000 to 4 in 10000? I don’t care.
Numeracy, probabilty theory and basic reading comprehension in the public at large sucks. But that lack sure helps when you’re pushing some bullshit line that women will lap up. (women in this instance. the number of people doing the lottery shows that it’s men too).
#1
The apparent social consensus in Western soceties today is that human wombs no longer have any value. It’s the self that has supreme value, and the survival of their traditions and civilization is no longer important.
#17
“The international study found that children of fathers aged 45 or over had a 34 per cent higher risk of developing a mental disorder, compared with the offspring of men aged between 25 and 29.”
Did they take the age of the mothers into consideration?
@HH2
even if they did, or didn’t, the age of the father doesn’t have much effect on the health of the baby.
The whole article is slanted to make it sound like his risj factors increase in a way that mirrors hers. And that slant is dishonest, it isn’t true in absolute terms. Nature says women’s fertility is better when she’s young, men’s declines less. However, does he fancy having a 16 year old kid around when he’s 70? I do not.
There is a potential issue with ED ten or so years later at 50+. I don’t know what the odds are of that. The funny thing about that issue (if there is a funny thing to be found) is that research shows that it’s about 50:50 whether ‘he’ has a problem, or whether ‘he’ just has a problem with ‘her’. With the au-pair? he’s just fine.
Ran across an essay by George Orwell, written I think in the 1930s, where he said he’d observed that when working-class people got married, they assumed the “fun” part of life was over, whereas this was not true of upper-class people.
#19 the short answer is no not a bit, the longer answer is yes a smidgen. There is still an effect of aging sperm when a 64 yr old man impregnates an 18 yr old girl, but it isn’t much of an effect. As #17 explained, actual numbers matter. A 70 yr old father’s risk of conceiving a Down’s syndrome kid could be 100% more than a 17 yr old boy, but the actual number may change from a 1% risk to a 2% risk. Ooh.
Only 98 of Charlie Chaplin’s 100 kids with Oona will not have Down’s! He could have had 99 out of 100 with her if he had just started a few decades earlier.
Hey, David, can you tell me the name of Orwell’s essay please? I’d like to read it.
@JF12
That’s not fair!!!
(and I feel sorry for Oona, bet she needed control top tights)
By the way, it should be noted that we have seen the complete disappearance of the idea that one must marry a lieutenant if one wants to be the wife of a general. In the bygone culture one unspoken tenet was that men need the support of women on a one-on-one basis in order to fulfill their maximum potential in life, that a man can only become succesful if his wife is there for him from the beginning.
@hh2
In one of the articles, one of the girls was quoted as saying she didn’t want to grow together with a man while he was getting his career started. She wanted her decade+ of only her life and then to marry a man who had everything together.
@ Spwany Swithers
That article you posted is disappointingly biased. To be honest, I find it difficult to trust most research. In my view pure objectivity is not achievable.
A very, very solid post, Han. Well done.
@Starlight
Well…the research might have been very well structured to look into risk of birth defects vs dad’s age. We don’t know. The results were not reported in any usable away, or any scientificly usable way.
What we do know is that the announcement of the results and the reporting of that announcement was entirely spun to be click bait for women deep down wanting to see men have the same (or analogous issues with similar severity) issues as women do. Which they don’t.
If you watch the news it is full of incompetent reporting of stats, hooky graphs (the hockystick graph is a triumph of bent stats), alarmist reports, cherry picked start points for trends (ever wondered why ice levels tend to be referred back to ’97 (iirc)? it’s because that year had a freak high level of ice. Most years after that had levels that looked low in comparison, but were pretty average over the longer term.)
Suyt’s Space is a fun light site that reports on this kind of thing. He’ll point you on to other sites if you want heavyweight analysis. This was a typical referred to climate report; http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/just-hit-the-noaa-motherlode/
@Richard 2
Yes, many cultures and cultural elements from the past persist but they are often being dragged along by the vanguard cultural movement and are 20 or 40 years behind.
For example, Mormons marry younger than the average population, divorce less and have more kids, but all of these things have shifted in the same direction as the rest of the country, only less so.
Here it says that Utah’s fertility rate (about 2/3 Mormon) was 41% higher than the national average in 1999, so roughly 3 kids instead of 2, closer to what the general population was doing back in the 60s but much lower than what Mormons were doing back then when probably more like 4 or 5 kids was the norm.
http://www.adherents.com/largecom/lds_dem.html
http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Vital_Statistics
@Heywood and deti
Thanks.
@ Spawny Swithers
Indeed, unsurprisingly really to patch parts of a research paper together to suit one opinion.
How reputable is The Telegraph? I’m not familiar with UK newspapers.
Here’s a graph of LDS (Mormon) worldwide rates, US and Utah.
http://rsc.byu.edu/sites/default/files/image/LDS%20Social%20LIfe/4_6%20ldssoc.jpg
@Han
Times and Telegraph at the right wing authoritative papers. The Guardian is the left wing closest to that (its what the BBC staff reads). The Mail is the next rung down on the right, then you get The Sun
Hehe, I was the one asking you that question.
#3: I think maybe this should be pretty much all men (who are interested) have to wait while the men above them choose. As their level comes they get to look at the women that were rejected by the men that those women wanted.
Except that top men don’t choose. Why would they? Why pick one, when you have a sampler platter in front of you?
It’s not the fact that top men are choosing, it’s that the clapped out women are giving up the chase and settling for what they’re still able to get.
If it were just a case of the top men getting the pick of the litter, well, that’s always been the case. Instead, it’s that top men have no incentive to pick (and quite a few disincentives), the women are in a perpetual holding pattern on the off chance they can snag a top man (or because they’re strongnindependent until baby rabbies kick in), and the lower 80% of men are frozen out of the marketplace altogether until the women settle for divorcing them.
@hh2 9
I think that economic prosperity helped post 1945 but the drop occured by around 1945 and then plateaued for about 15 years. So it wasn’t economic prosperity that caused the drop itself. A lot of young men were removed from the American marriage market due to WWII (most temporarily but some permanently). Then you had the Korean War too.
@CP 36
Yeah, top males remaining available keeps the hypergamous hopes of many of the female masses alive.
Getting the top males to marry and be relatively faithful is one of the lynch pins of stable quasi-monogamy.
If there’s no one to pine after, get led on by or delude themselves that there’s hope for more than just sex, many such women will smarten up.
Of course, the economic freedom (from jobs and the gov’t) of a prosperous age allow women the luxury to wait and aspire to getting a man who’s 2 points out of her league.
@novaseeker 7
It’s hard to know just from the graph who was doing what. We only see the results.
Pre-WWII, the men were likely marrying older after they got more economically established but why? Were the men delaying marriage or was it the women who didn’t want to marry men that weren’t established and thus older? I suspect that it’s about 2/3 due to women’s choices and 1/3 due to the men.
That wise observation from Dave Chapelle comes to mind: “If a man could fuck in a cardboard box, he wouldn’t buy a house.”
Now, once feminism came on full steam during the 70’s and later and women started going more and more for education and career then I think it is safe to say they were emulating men.
I think your comment about wanting a firm Plan B is spot on. What if my husband dies (while young)? Even though the odds of that happening are pretty low so it’s more of a scare tactic. However, many women want to maintain as many options as possible and buy into the feminist scare tactics of “what if he abandons you for a younger woman?” Even though we know college-educated divorce rates are pretty low.
One minor correction about the % of women that never get married by 40. It’s not under 10% but roughly 15%.
Looking at the US stats Dalrock compiled, it’s 15% of all 40-44 y/o women, 11% for whites and 36% for blacks.
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/more-grim-news-for-carousellers-hoping-to-jump-at-the-last-minute/
@Starlight, fair point. It was you. I was halfway through eating tea, hence also the its vs it’s issue. Have a nice day cobbette
@Spawny
“Suddenly women post thirty start seeing the subsidised existance of part time career and kids looking much more enticing than paper pushing make work in PR / HR. Especially when the alternative is shovelling their own gravel for another 40 years.”
Yes, this is a good point; its the other shoe that seems to fall more often these days. Women are encouraged to optimize their options, only striking a deal, compromise, or accepting “risk” when they have maximum hand. Fine, but one must be very keen on Time and the various counter-party intersects. After all, those counter-parties are not static nor are they in the service of mitigating her risk (as much as that gets embedded in the femprogressive messaging).
Optimization is like playing chicken with time. You don’t know you have reached the apex until it is already well in the rear-view. So it comes down to our expectations and how we internalize the optimal. The fem/progressives paint this as “settling” when it should be more like taking profits while they are still available; one can profit and still leave money on the table, but if leaving anything on the table is a non-starter, well good luck with that (you are right honey, it probably will go to $60/share, but can you?).
So there seems to be a misunderstanding (misrepresentation) of the male axis; that our course can be plotted with such reliability (effectively constant) that women are free to direct a course of wiggles and giggles always knowing that the linear and stable trajectory of men is there and with a few iterations of simple calculus she can find her optimal intersect. Hawt guy at the alter. This is why “they” get so agitated when men exercise their own freedoms and responses to the marketplace: less predictability, less reliability.
To your point, Spawny, once the thin veil of the over-sold fantasy of freedom, empowerment, and “independence” burns off into the reality of marginally (at best) fulfilling work days coupled with the drudgery of commutes, dry cleaning bills, and long days capped with more couch-and-TV time than cosmos with the girls and/or “hawt” guys, that other shoe begins to fall.
Then not only is solving for the the intersect with AlphaHusband feeling a bit too finite – with a stirring sense that it might actually be a bit too the left of her on the (t), but that the cost/risk of sustaining her trajectory and seeking the optimal was perhaps not worth the supposed spoils; that she has been sitting on a two legged stool. She wants to rest her legs. Enter the eat-pray-love sans marriage. Or what I see at the yoga shop: $3,000 teacher training classes filled with women searching for *something* other than their day-job. A day job that used to be the *something*. But hey, still, “who needs men?”.
Even with the go-getters, they realize that in those apex professional positions the competition increases as you rise; responsibilities increase, people are mean, less forgiving, results trump sensibilities, men see you as an equal (at best) and a competitor, not a (gasp) romantic interest, and there really is no “end”, no cruise control; there is no golden parachute but for the very few – roughly the same few as those who become major league pitchers. For these women, their either marry a house bitch they despise or they bang the CEO and despise themselves, just a bit. Ok, some do “have it all” just like some guys collect Cy Youngs.
@CP #36
yes, that’s all true.
Alphas are not having to commit AND they’re delaying the assortive mating market for everyone until the baby rabies cuts in forcing women’s hands. And till the point where men’s hormone fest is dying down a little, so they can have a better think about what they’re getting into (or going MGTOW). I think that that’s when you might actually see a provable marriage strike; when women are delaying marriage to the point that men decide it’s not worth doing at all. That’s getting close to happening IMHO. Men’s median age at first marriage is rising along with the women’s. It’s also getting to the point that men will be looking at a prospect of teenage kids when they’re looking to retire.
Han and Nemesis have played on such scenarios about marriage strikes on JFG.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/m-g-t-o-w/everything-is-wrong-with-mgtow
Han Solo- “Pre-WWII, the men were likely marrying older after they got more economically established but why? Were the men delaying marriage or was it the women who didn’t want to marry men that weren’t established and thus older? I suspect that it’s about 2/3 due to women’s choices and 1/3 due to the men.”
umm…the great depression? Thus limited ability to achieve provider status for men, society expects no pre-marital sex (no birth control) and SAHMs so no plan B for women.
Similar situation with recorded ages for marriage in England in the 1300s because of economic depression due to financial displacements during the hundred years war. Of course this affects the merchant/freeman class more than peasants and nobility who have some degree of economic certainty/survival.
@Tasmin #41
I don’t begrudge women their choices, even as they grudge against ‘us’ (the MGTOWs).
I get annoyed that they’re being mislead as to the consequences of their choices while they’re still young enough to have a choice. Being mislead by feminists ‘you can have it all’, ‘shhh don’t mention the menopause’, ‘loads of women have healthy kids in their forties, no problem’, ‘slut it up, men don’t mind your N and they have to take you anyway’.
At the end of the day, when (if) women wise up to the con on more than a ‘oh shit it’s too late’ individual basis, I just need them to take their torches and pitchforks to the fembots that told the lies. Rather than coming wailing at the men who don’t want the deal on offer and don’t need to take it either. History suggests that whatever the problem it’s the men supposed to take the hit and bail society out. Well…we’ll see. That’s all I’m saying. The money and good will are both running out.
Personally I’ve done the marriage thing, done the divorce thing (rather painful at the time but no lasting damage), never was much fussed about kids and don’t want one now, feel no need for live in company. MGTOW is not something I had to make an effort to become, or pay a price for, it was a label laying conveniently to hand when I got where I was going under my own steam. C’est la vie, muchas gracias, wiedersehen mateys MGTOW.
Starlight #23…its in a book of Orwell essays I was re-reading…will dig out the name of the specific essay. Watch this space.
Badpainter, the age of marriage didn’t rise for men during the Great Depression and only half a year or so for women. Look at the graph. And the marriage age was lower for both men and women than during the 1890s. Now it could be the case that the economic situation was worse during the 1890s and the economy had advanced so much that Great Depression life was actually more wealthy than 1890s less-industrialized life.
But I think there is something to your argument that economics is one factor that affects when and whether people marry. Some of the decline in marriage during 2008-2012 was likely due to the bad economy and young adults living at home without work.
As I showed in this post
http://www.justfourguys.com/2013-never-married-rates-reach-new-highs-but-change-might-be-coming/
2013 showed that there might be a bit of a reprieve in or even reversal of the declining marriage rates and ever-growing never-married numbers (though 1 year doesn’t make a trend).
Starlight…I found the whole essay on-line:
http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/McGill/english/e_mcgill
Excerpt:
“One of the few authentic class-differences, as opposed to class-distinctions, still existing in England is that the working classes age very much earlier. They do not live less long, provided that they survive their childhood, nor do they lose their physical activity earlier, but they do lose very early their youthful appearance. This fact is observable everywhere, but can be most easily verified by watching one of the higher age groups registering for military service; the middle- and upper-class members look, on average, ten years younger than the others. It is usual to attribute this to the harder lives that the working classes have to live, but it is doubtful whether any such difference now exists as would account for it. More probably the truth is that the working classes reach middle age earlier because they accept it earlier. For to look young after, say, thirty is largely a matter of wanting to do so. This generalization is less true of the better-paid workers, especially those who live in council houses and labour-saving flats, but it is true enough even of them to point to a difference of outlook. And in this, as usual, they are more traditional, more in accord with the Christian past than the well-to-do women who try to stay young at forty by means of physical-jerks, cosmetics and avoidance of child-bearing. The impulse to cling to youth at all costs, to attempt to preserve your sexual attraction, to see even in middle age a future for yourself and not merely for your children, is a thing of recent growth and has only precariously established itself. It will probably disappear again when our standard of living drops and our birth-rate rises. ‘Youth’s a stuff will not endure’ expresses the normal, traditional attitude.”
oops mis-read the graph.
I think the numbers to look out for are the never married men, and the numbers for 2nd marriages for men in 10 years. That’ll at least tell us if the numbers matter.
As well I question how much of a change in the numbers is necessary to have a real impact. A small pebble ripples a pond, but does it matter? Who knows.
Happened to read about the first of the great plagues in Britain, in the Middle Ages. The disease being associated with stock care, more men than women died, leaving women with some substantial assets–relative to their economic position pre-plague–marrying another guy…and then another.
According to my parents, both born 1920, people who got married expected either to live in a really small apartment with crummy amenities, or with family. That was the normal. The post-war prosperity put millions into brand new, 1200 ft2 homes, four floor plans on each block, 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4….. and they absolutely loved it, considering their pre-war expectations. Fifteen year notes were common which meant you built up equity rapidly and could swap out for your got-it-made house in fifteen or twenty years.
Han Solo. Wrt Mormons et al. Less than before, but still more, which is the point. As long as there are more, there will be more.
Good piece. I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago that was loosely similar to this one. My article was about the mythical ’80-20 Rule’ theory, that asserts that roughly 80% of the women in any social environment will end up having sex at least one time with approximately 20% of the most desirable Alpha males in that environment.
Here is what the “lesser desirable” Beta males need to do: Become extraordinarily selective and “stingy” regarding the amount of flattering attention and platonic companionship they give women the privilege of having. If more men treated their platonic attention and companionship in the same manner that most women treat their sexual attention and companionship, male-female interactions in society would be totally different ….
Richard, I bet the Mormon birth rate will continue to fall as time goes on and they follow the rest of society. There’s definitely a trend to smaller families among most of my Mormon friends and relatives.
Also, in terms of the group itself, Mormons are having a devil of a time retaining their young born-in-the-church members and the converts.
Still, they’ll continue to do a bit better in terms of birth rate than the average population.
@The King of V.S.
I think your version of the 80/20 rule is pretty accurate. The good girls who have casual sex once or thrice tend to do it with more attractive guys that cause them to get infatuated and override their “morals.”
Another version of the 80/20 rule would be that of the people open to having casual sex, 20% of the guys in that group are getting 80% of casual sex. The 80/20 rule breaks down when applied to the whole population since a large % are married or not into frequent or much casual.
I agree that betas need to cut way back on the praise, attention and unrequited benefits they hand out to women.
@King
” If more men treated their platonic attention and companionship in the same manner that most women treat their sexual attention and companionship, male-female interactions in society would be totally different ….”
I suspect that you’re right. It would send a strong signal that men’s interest should not be presumed. i.e. Plan B is not such a sure thing. It’s a more humane way to correct the market than actually let them get to the ‘too late’ stage before realising plan B wasn’t on the table as assumed.
@David
Starlight is on the Aussie clock, she has left the building. Sheila be back tomorrow though.
Novaseeker
Despite all of that, to date most women who want to get married are able to marry. By 40, the rate of never married women in the US is very small (less than 10%), and included in that are the women who would be very hard to marry in any era (unattractive for whatever reason).
Bear in mind this data is essentially looking backward. The cohort of 40 year old women right now was born in 1973, was 20 in 1993, and thus what one sees by looking at the “40 year old ever married woman” is really the marriage rate during Bill Clinton’s first term in office. A period of time when the Bradley Amendment of 1986 was only 7 years old and thus just starting to bite men, when VAWA had not been passed or was brand new, and so forth. A lot has changed in both the SMP and MMP since then.
A 25 year old woman who looks at that data (20 year old data) to decide “well, I’m all but certain to be married in the next 15 years” is like someone on the freeway “driving” by looking at the cars well behind, via the rear-view mirror.
IMO the remarriage rate offers us a bit more up to date information, and likely pointers to what the marriage rate will be in the future, sometime between now and 2020.
Also bear in mind that today’s 25 year old man is very likely to be from a home busted by divorce – 40% or so of those men. They may be full of testosterone, they may be optimistic and have some degree of self confidence, but they also have seen, either in their own family, or in the family of a friend, just what the divorce machine can do to a man. Add to that the new “guilty until we decide you aren’t” standard for sexually inappropriate behavior in increasingly feminized colleges, and what will the 20 year old man of right now experience in the next 5 years to make him more interested in marriage?
In closing, I disagree that women have been emulating men since the 1970’s. It is more accurate to state that women have been acting as they believe men act since then. They’ve been emulating top men, likely because thanks to hypergamy and the Apex fallacy, those are the only men that many young women can “see”.
Women have not been acting like men. They have been acting like alpha players, with the result that as they approach the age of 30 they can’t understand why their game no longer works…
Anon Reader 54
Good point on them acting like alpha players. Makes sense. Young women and alpha players both have loads of sexual market power and can afford to act that way (at least while the music keeps playing; once the women start to hit their 30’s then their sexual power starts to drop relative to their peak).
In the UK, cute girls (a minority, the previous generation was hotter) divert to either:
(1) only hot guys
(2) the most useless, unemployable men available (she’s insecure, he is unattractive and hence won’t leave her – the welfare state plays the role of provider whilst the fact he can’t leave provides the security)
All the guys in-between are out of luck. Free sex (feminism) meets the welfare state. What could possibly go wrong? Except it defeats the point of working.
“avoid having casual sex with good guys in favor of assholes”
And I thank women every time I take one home and bang her. And women have a thousand reasons just like that one, for being f**ked by guys like me – bless their black little hearts (as well as the warm and wet places that I enjoy so much).
Actually I didn’t mean “women are acting like men sexually” (although some are). What I meant was that women were pursuing the life path formerly associated with men — get somewhat established before getting married. In that sense I very much do believe women are emulating men — or emulating what men *used* to do.
I am a woman. I don’t want children. It has nothing to do with “fear of offending the feminist herd.” It is what I don’t want. Children are a huge responsibility. You have to really be willing to sacrifice to raise them right. Often for women that means sacrificing your own dignity and happiness because they do better in 2-parent homes and men husbands are unfaithful or neglectful or just plain lazy and if you want to give your kid the best possible chance in life, you have to put up with it regardless. This is about what I want, NOT about what feminists want.
In addition, I’m sorry but I just don’t buy it. Men are not “incel” they are choosing to not sleep with all kinds of average women: “2/3 of male messages go to the top 1/3 of women” http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
“Ive talked to alot of white guys about such things at school,they all say what you said! they would rather be Incel then date a black woman that will treat them right.” http://www.happierabroad.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19102
If you’re CHOOSING to be incel, you’re not really incel, you are just only paying attention to certain kinds of women and trying to police their choices.
In addition to ignoring average-looking and black women, men also routinely ignore older women and women in their 30’s while whining that they can’t get anyone to date them.
J says:
“If you’re CHOOSING to be incel, you’re not really…..”
Ummm…. no. You see men don’t get that choice. We only get to choose which women are allowed to reject us. Rarely, very, very rarely does a man get an offer he can reject. Your point would be valid if women made a significant number of the approaches. They don’t. Men assume that risk to ego in such lopsided proportion that any collection of anecdotes to the contrary is merely amusing as a novelty. If I had a nickle for every time I’d been approached by a woman of any color or age and that approach lead to an offer of sex I’d be five cents short.
What has changed really? Top men were always the prize, average men needed to work harder and lesser men were never part of the game.
What has changed is the age at which people plan to settle down. Whereas the top men were always able to get the hottest women for less effort, they didn’t used to be able to monopolize all the other women as well. When she was 20 grandma took a shot at Mr. Big, lost out when he married Miss Perfect, and married grandpa instead.
Today Mr. Big is nailing Miss Perfect and all the Miss Almost Perfects as well, so unlike grandpa the other men are out in the cold. In grandma’s day people paired off before they were middle aged, so she was keenly aware she had to sort things out early or settle for a picked-over selection. Between late marriage and divorce today’s young women are expecting there will be attractive, high status men available when they decide the time is right for a family. Of course they’re correct – there will be attractive, high status men available. To younger women.
I’m not sure what I’d do if I were 20 today and didn’t fall into the “top men” category. Probably spend all my time smoking weed, playing video games, and masturbating.
“Ummm…. no. You see men don’t get that choice. We only get to choose which women are allowed to reject us. Rarely, very, very rarely does a man get an offer he can reject. Your point would be valid if women made a significant number of the approaches. They don’t.”
Ummmm…. no. It’s called assortative mating. If 100% of men are only 1/3rd of women, they can’t be sure that the other 2/3rd would not be willing to date them. Men are the hyperselective ones, and I know plenty of average-looking and beta guys who wanted to sow their wild oats when they entered college (dumped their high school girlfriends for this very reason!)
They get to college and it didn’t turn out to be the free-for-all fuckfest they expected, at least not for them. So they regretted their choice. Do I feel sorry for them? Nope.
J says:
“It’s called assortative mating…”
No point risking rejection on mediocre prospects. It’s an investment of time and energy, and ego. When you’ve been playing the aggressor in the SMP, when you make the approaches (and online doesn’t count), when you suffer a hundred direct face to face rejections then we can talk. But just showing up and not being chosen doesn’t cut it. Men do that every single day as well. We are all playing passive game. But MEN are the only ones playing the aggressor. We take the risk, we get to determine who is worth the risk. Please feel free to do more than just show up.
@J
I’m English, white.
Wee-Bay’s wife on the wire – NOOOO
Snoops -NOOOO
Angry black woman on daytime tv – NO
Angry white woman on daytime tv – NO
Beyonce (Austin Powers) – Hell yes, the bubbly personality pushes her to a ‘hell’
Halle Berry (Swordfish, Cat woman, passenger 57) – Yes
The singer from Morcheeba whose name escapes me right now – Yes
Colour might complicate things, but it’s seldom an absolute barrier. Any inter cultural relationship is affected by the differences in good and bad ways. Will your kids have a bad time?
But if you fundamentally see men as untrustworthy dickheads, well they’re gonna pick up on that. The men you’re most likely to get will likely be like that. That much is true of all colours and nationalities.
Got to say that there’s some truth in what you say in #60 though. True for men and women.
I’m not knocking women for having standards, I’m advising them to have realistic standards, or at least not drop them to such a level too late. That’s not the same thing. I’ve turned down sex for various reasons, I’d rather go without, but I don’t wail about not getting any. Not like women shrieking, “where have all the good men gone”.
I’m also with you on kids.
@BadPainter
The rejection thing as rejector comes with age (in my experience). When you’re younger women don’t chase you very much (at all). Though I had a girlfriend try an oops pregnancy scam in my mid twenties. That wasn’t fun. Instant end to the relationshit. But, back on point, things do change. I’m not saying that it’s an everyday experience, it isn’t. But it does happen even to normal guys.
As Tom Leykis says, young guys need to hang in there, things swap over around the age of 30. Nemesis had an early post on it, I think, here on JFG. Can’t search for it, but it’s there.
#63 cognitive disconnect
“Men are the hyperselective ones … I know plenty of average-looking and beta guys who wanted to sow their wild oats when they entered college … They get to college and it didn’t turn out …, at least not for them.”
Hint: an example shouldn’t be a counterexample.
J —
It’s true that unattractive women get overlooked. I’d say that the lower 1/3 of women gets a pass from most men because they are below the attraction floor. Not from all men, of course, but from most men.
One has to be careful about interpreting the online dating stats. Online dating is a very specific environment. It’s well known that women are bombarded with messages there (other studies have shown that this is true at all levels — even the lesser attractive women have more messages sent to them than the most attractive men do), and so it’s a total 100% crapshoot with a very low chance of success. In that environment, yes, men will take the crapshoot with the hot women — because it’s like spinning the one armed bandit in the casino. If it’s a total crapshoot anyway due to the volume of messages and getting through is like winning the lottery, you may as well place your bet on the jackpot.
That isn’t how the dynamic plays itself out in the offline world. In the offline world what is happening is that in the mid ranges (say 5-6-7), the women are having access to the higher levels of men (for sex, and they hope for commitment, but that rarely happens) — so a 6 woman can get an 8 man for casual, hoping he will turn into BF. That means that 6 is not available for her “assortative” peer 6 man. Because the 8 has her on a rotation for sex (probably deceiving her, spinning plates and so on). This continues until she is no longer able to attract higher attractiveness men by deploying sex as a strategy to try to get commitment from them, and only then does she turn to the assortative peer 6, who by then is quite pissed off at the entire situation. Now, not all women do this. But enough do it such that the number of women in that 6 range who are “available” to assortative male 6s is reduced, which creates a very tough environment in terms of competition for those remaining 6 women among the male 6s. Of course, it’s easier if the male 6 goes to a female 5, because of hypergamy in his favor, but that’s probably about as low as he’s going to go. At some point between 3 and 4 there is an attraction floor issue, and he can’t “reach down” and still be attracted to the girl.
J you sound like a woman who had a bad time in the SMP, it happens. You’re talking to many guys that did too. Neither sex has the monopoly on misery.
I’ve known a woman for 45 years or so, she was alright when younger (not stunning, but alright), I suspect that she’s still a virgin. There are men here with the same story, or close, I suspect. Doesn’t make them terrible people, but it does hurt. But being angry (either sex) is not going to work.
If I were hurting that much, I’d take precautions and go on holiday somewhere tropical and pay to get it sorted there and then. Once you’ve done it you can put it into perspective, until then ‘American Pie’ seems normal, I guess. I assure you that it isn’t!!!
Check out Deti’s last post and his next one. Han did one on girl game iirc, that’s worth a look too.
Angry does not work.
#59 the okcupid et al studies have been done ad nauseum. While the highest quintile (20%) women get several times as many contacts from men as the lowest quintile women, the lowest women get as many or more responses as the top quintile men, and these tend to be hundreds of contacts, mostly from undesirables of course. And the rest of the men, the lower 80%, tend to get zero. Not “a few”, zero.
The apex fallacy has a certain purple mountains’ majesty when seen in the right light. But it is a continual source of amazement to me that an intelligent woman will deny it even when faced with evidence in her own writing that the only men she considers to be men are apex men. “Oh, all those contacts from undesirable men, I didn’t count those. Those guys had to be joking, see, so I know they didn’t mean it.”
Compare Badpainter, who considers himself now to find women easy and to be much pickier than the average bear of a beta, “If I had a nickle for every time I’d been approached by a woman of any color or age and that approach lead to an offer of sex I’d be five cents short.” to J, who apparently considers herself a victim of male hyperselectivity “I’ve turned down sex for various reasons”.
Remember, logic doesn’t work.
J, Spawney et.al,
I need to correct something in comment 61.
I am in error, if I had a nickle for every time I’d been approached I would have one nickle. An opportunity that I failed to capitalize on which is says more about my own defects than anything else, and a story better suited for a game related topic. So, I’ve been approached once in 43 years. There the record is corrected.
It’s true that unattractive women get overlooked. I’d say that the lower 1/3 of women gets a pass from most men because they are below the attraction floor. Not from all men, of course, but from most men.
For most men, the magnitude of sexual attraction is very visually based. I think one thing underestimated is how much of an impact widespread HD Internet porn has had. On another blog, I’ve read a few 50+ women talk about how common it is for some of their friends'(other 50+ women) husbands to be “uninterested” in sex. I’d bet every dollar in my 401(k) in many of those cases it isn’t that the husband’s sex drive has gone to zero, but that they are spanking it to Internet porn. I think for many men at some point a virtual hottie becomes a more attractive alternative to the real thing when the woman is very unattractive. I’m not saying that is right or making a judgement, simply describing what I think is the likely factual reality.
@Morph
Porn is a great methadone. It can release tension, put things into perspective but perhaps damage your attraction to real life people. Reduce your frustration with a frigid wife. Turn you off a potentially loving one.
But as someone who showed, at times, great wisdom said ‘elsewhere’, you can unpornify your mind. It doesn’t take all that long either. Put the porn down, think of increasingly wholesome sex with the viable other…it can work (it has worked in both directions for me) in a surprisingly short time – if you want it to, and if you can find her realistically attractive. It’ll never work with warthogs, however hard you try. But it can work with reasonable women.
I’d rather use porn than seek sex with a three bagger* but maybe others take a different view (in fact I know they do).
*one bag for her, one bag for you in case hers falls off and one for the dog, so he’ll respect you in the morning. Ba-dum-tish! Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Here every night this week.
I get annoyed that they’re being mislead as to the consequences of their choices while they’re still young enough to have a choice.
What is also unfortunate is for older women who should know better and have positioned themselves as expert advisors to young women to tell those women that their career success, intelligence, ambition, and “confidence” are the most important things to attracting a man. Don’t get me wrong. None of those is a bad thing, in fact a good thing just as a human being. But they won’t have 5% of the impact simply looking your best and being pleasant will have in terms of appeal to men.
Advising women is tough. Many cannot handle blunt truths. Give me a nerdy 24-year old virgin guy who dresses like a dork, and I can tell him, “Hey, try not to talk like a nerd so much and lose the Alan Harper wardrobe” and he’ll be more inclined to listen. As I said recently in a e-mail to a fellow Guy, the business of advising women is better when you tell them what they WANT to hear rather than what they NEED to hear.
I’d bet every dollar in my 401(k) in many of those cases it isn’t that the husband’s sex drive has gone to zero, but that they are spanking it to Internet porn. I think for many men at some point a virtual hottie becomes a more attractive alternative to the real thing when the woman is very unattractive. I’m not saying that is right or making a judgement, simply describing what I think is the likely factual reality.
Undoubtedly. This also happens among younger, unmarried men when their “viable options” are not that attractive to them, while HD internet porn on their cellphones has an endless smorgasbord of beautiful women of whatever type he may desire at any point in time. After a while, he really doesn’t care that much about his viable options any more, because the “edge” of his sex drive is bled off by porn use, and so it doesn’t bother him as much (likely it still does, but it does seem critical that the edge is removed — that seems to change behaviors).
@BadPainter
I worked in France fir a few years (wanted a change if scene) where I didn’t meet another native English speaker for months at a time. I stood out, I was ‘different’, when I arrived I remembered no speakable French, so it was reasonably gutsy (no real danger, but still, I drove 1000 miles on the wrong side of the road to work in a company that I’d spent a couple of hours talking to on the phone).
There are ways to be more appealing other than tattoos and a motorbike plus hard drug habit. Might be worth giving your life a bit if a shakeup? Acquire unexpected abilities, like massacring a usually beautiful language with an apocalyptic accent. Kissing women on both cheeks and blaming it on your time in ze belle France. Zis is ow zey do eet in France ma cherie…
Maybe a musical instrument, an ugly dog that provokes conversations (the private man blog). A handsome dog (Dannyfrom504). Danny is doling out great stories about game lately, check out his blog.
I’m not fussed at trapping a woman, but it’s fun playing at chatting to them anyway. Have fun, be different…who knows?
Be lucky BadPainter (and other guys and J (why not?))
@Morph
Yes, the pretty lies over the truth. And the fact that misery loves company. And that the herd has no loyalty to its younger members.
@ TKVS
This makes perfect sense, and is something that beta males who would reject game would still be comfortable implementing.
Spawwney,
When I have a lucid moment of situational awareness I can muster astonishingly good game. I can rock the complicated, mysterious, brutish, romantic thing. You see nothing confuses and befuddles the ladies like explaining a day job as a union tradesman, working in dangerous conditions and then explaining my off time spent pursuing the fine arts as a bad painter and pretty good sculptor. I have the look of a hardened man of violence but I can discuss history, philosophy, politics, and popular music and culture with enough authority to lose points for over intelligence. Add in a sense of humor that is dryer than Bond’s martini, and a natural sense of irony that is matched only by my demonstrated poor writing and proof reading skills and the ladies don’t quite know what to make of me. The failure is never having learned how to effectively turn that into repeatable success.
A story to illustrate.
Out with the crew one weekend the boss sits us near a table with couple nice looking gals. He’s goofy fucker and goes for the hottest one, and ends up making out with her inside of 10 minutes. The other and I end up talking about art. The hot one for some reason has decided that I am exuding hatred toward her. I get the question several times “Why do you hate me.” She explains she’s a nice person. I explain that this is my face and she is going to have to learn to cope with it, my permanent scowl is not to be taken personally. One of my coworkers say “Badpainter’s bark is worse than his bite.” I correct him and say I don’t bark, but will bite on request. By the end of the night the hot one has dental impressions covering one arm and the left side of her neck. Truly amazing how hard you have to bite a woman before she says stop. Clearly not a victory but the opportunity was there, I just don’t how to capitalize on it. Still much to learn.
@ J
So? Average women still get way more messages than any of the guys: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/ten-fake-profiles-one-okcupid-experiment-okcupid-on-trial/1405
Here is what the “lesser desirable” Beta males need to do: Become extraordinarily selective and “stingy” regarding the amount of flattering attention and platonic companionship they give women the privilege of having. If more men treated their platonic attention and companionship in the same manner that most women treat their sexual attention and companionship, male-female interactions in society would be totally different
It’s not bad advice, really, but it’s not going to get you anywhere either. If a woman has already decided you aren’t attractive and you don’t provide some other benefit, from her perspective you don’t even exist. If you decide to start ignoring her it should be because you want more return on your time (even if it only means leveling up your WoW character) than blue balls.
If you decide to start ignoring her it should be because you want more return on your time (even if it only means leveling up your WoW character) than blue balls.
Well, yeah. You don’t get time back.
And in a marginal case you may be looking like the man of mystery. And the unneedy guy is more attractive, or less unattractive, than the needy guy. In various decisions, you have to make a choice between one expense–opportunity cost–and what might be called the purchase.
What is the cost of reducing flattering attention and platonic companionship? It’s not a rhetorical question. There must be some, at least to some guys. And that, I would guess, is hope. Quit that nonsense and you see yourself losing hope.
But that requires delusion and fooling oneself is pretty easy.
Maybe an intervention is required.
richardaubrey, two questions:
1. To whom is the “cost of reducing flattering attention and platonic companionship” being billed?
2. Are you saying hope is itself delusional, or that abandoning hope is delusional?
it’s a load of bullshit
Guys, the first thing you need to do is get over the assumption that I’m talking about personal experiences here. I have not had a bad time in the SMP, and I’m still young (under 30). In addition, I’m in a committed and happy relationship and have been since I was 26 (I’m 28 now, barely). These are my observations based on the data and the people I have seen. The facts are that women AND men do the compromising; women have to accept that they will not be able to get the hottest guys to commit to them, and do eventually become realistic about this, and men have to accept that sowing their wild oats isn’t going to be a fruitful strategy for most of them because they’re going to get more sex in the context of a commitment than casual sex. Both sexes need to come back down to earth but you guys only see and whine about the female half of the equation. This is what I am acknowledging.
Also to be fair,
Sorry, got cut off too soon.
I was going to say, also, to be fair, the millennials are an extremely poor generation. They are delaying children for a lot more reasons than simply “carousel-riding.” Comment #1 strikes me as both extremely accusatory and naive.
I had no problems in the sexual marketplace. I am just being objective here, but if you guys were actually to view me you would probably place me within the top 20 percentile of women under 30, if only because I take care of myself (am in good shape, long hair, etc.). My opinion is that people and especially women in the absence of economic dependency are drawn to assortative mating (after all, we are the ones who MAINTAIN the close-in-age preference throughout our lives). This angers men because they are less interested in assortative mating and more interested in just physicality. Women are interested in physicality as well but overall want a man who is a physical and intellectual equal. A smaller minority of women are hypergamous. Men are hypogamous when it comes to looks.
and men have to accept that sowing their wild oats isn’t going to be a fruitful strategy for most of them because they’re going to get more sex in the context of a commitment than casual sex.
Jen,
I agree with your statement here. To be honest though, I’m skeptical that there are that many men actually deluding themselves about their abilities to run harems. I think most guys want to and are content to meet one girl and lock it down. I don’t have the source now, but I think something like 80% of guys who sign up for PUA/Game seminars have getting a girlfriend as their primary objective.
Morpheus –
What is the age of the participants? I would not be surprised if they are in their mid-to-late 20’s but in the late teens and early 20’s, you’d be surprised just how many men ARE deluding themselves. The MRA trope seems to be always that of women getting burned by alphas and then going for betas but I have more than a handful of male friends whose entire type literally reversed after getting burned by the skinny bottle blondes in their early 20’s; the only type of women they would consider pursuing at that point in time. Many men don’t become realistic until their hairlines start to recede and I’m not saying that as a figure of speech.
It’s a blatant falsehood to me that it’s only young women who are like this. Look around you.
They are delaying children for a lot more reasons than simply “carousel-riding.” Comment #1 strikes me as both extremely accusatory and naive.
No doubt, economic reasons are also at work. I think very few women set out to deliberately “carousel-ride” in terms of consciously deciding “I am just going to casually hook up with the hottest guys I can”. I think what happens is other things besides marriage are a higher priority, but most women aren’t going to live as nuns either. So they capitalize on the opportunities that present themselves.
This angers men because they are less interested in assortative mating and more interested in just physicality. Women are interested in physicality as well but overall want a man who is a physical and intellectual equal.
So are you equating assortative mating with equivalent IQs? For the record, I am married and likely + 1 SD in IQ to my wife. I can honestly say I never gave one consideration to her IQ level as to whether we were “equally matched”. I think this is where many women including yourself go astray. Perhaps many women do highly prioritize intelligence but most guys do NOT beyond a certain point. I don’t need to be with a Mensa member to feel like I am equally matched. Frankly, physicality is 50x more important. I wouldn’t feel equally matched with an obese brilliant woman. I’d feel like I married DOWN.
Men are hypogamous when it comes to looks.
Not sure what you mean here
Men are hypogamous when it comes to looks.
As in, preferring women who are less attractive than themselves?
“So are you equating assortative mating with equivalent IQs? For the record, I am married and likely + 1 SD in IQ to my wife. I can honestly say I never gave one consideration to her IQ level as to whether we were “equally matched”. I think this is where many women including yourself go astray. Perhaps many women do highly prioritize intelligence but most guys do NOT beyond a certain point. I don’t need to be with a Mensa member to feel like I am equally matched. Frankly, physicality is 50x more important. I wouldn’t feel equally matched with an obese brilliant woman. I’d feel like I married DOWN.”
No, this is in line with what I am saying; women want an equal all the way around, but men care primarily about physical attractiveness. For this reason, they are not actually looking at their peers, they are looking at the women who are actually MORE attractive than they are and complaining that those women are “chasing alphas” when in all likelihood, the attractive women are pursuing or dating their equals. Men who have this complaint in reality are ignoring their peers/equals and think there are just no women for them but in reality they’re not pursuing the women they should be.
@ Jen
You’re going to have to be more clear about what you mean by “equal” and “assortative mating”.
For example, is the agreeable, skinny, and low-N guy who wants an agreeable skinny, low-N girl someone who is dating his equal since she has the same traits he has? Or is he trying to date someone more attractive, since agreeableness, thinness, and chastity are all much more attractive in a girl?
No, this is in line with what I am saying; women want an equal all the way around, but men care primarily about physical attractiveness. For this reason, they are not actually looking at their peers, they are looking at the women who are actually MORE attractive than they are and complaining that those women are “chasing alphas” when in all likelihood, the attractive women are pursuing or dating their equals. Men who have this complaint in reality are ignoring their peers/equals and think there are just no women for them but in reality they’re not pursuing the women they should be.
Basically you are saying that female attraction vectors trump male attraction vectors. Such that a man seeing a woman who is his “physical peer” sees that as a match, whereas a woman does not, because she is looking for a “higher total match” due to her non-physical features, and therefore, from her perspective, that man who thinks he is her peer isn’t really her peer when taking non-physical into account. This is just a conflict between the sexes.
However I don’t see how it applies to what Morpheus described — he married a physical peer who was not his “intellectual” peer (of course, I hope you’re not suggesting those are the only two factors, and I will assume that you are not) — he didn’t marry “up” looks-wise –> he just didn’t marry “down” looks-wise in order to marry an intellectual peer.
No, this is in line with what I am saying; women want an equal all the way around, but men care primarily about physical attractiveness.
Ha. That is the way we are hard-wired. Blame God or Nature or whomever. It is what it is. Believe me, there are components of female attraction that I find annoying..which just coincidentally happen to be the ones I am naturally deficient in or had to work hard as hell to improve. Luckily, I was blessed in some areas (I am 6’3″, deep voice, full head of thick hair at nearly 40). Frankly, my view is women are lucky physical attractiveness is the main male attraction trigger. For the woman who is outcome and results oriented as opposed who just wants to bitch and complain and stubbornly assert her right to chop her hair off, it gives her one thing to focus on and improve whereas a guy wanting to boost his attractiveness has to work on a multitude of things. I work out same time every Saturday, and for about the last year I see this same girl there every time doing probably 1 hour of cardio. The transformation really has been something to observe.
For this reason, they are not actually looking at their peers, they are looking at the women who are actually MORE attractive than they are and complaining that those women are “chasing alphas” when in all likelihood, the attractive women are pursuing or dating their equals.
I’m oversimplifying a bit, but many men will commit to their equals, they’ll keep women they do not see as equals on the late night booty call rotation. It is basically axiomatic that women having sex with men who basically invest nothing…maybe a bag of Skittles and a movie are reaching out of their league. In contrast, men who go out of their league get nothing because they get shot down immediately. There isn’t good data on this. I will say this. I’ve seen women refer to themselves as an 8 or similar, or other women refer to another women as an 8, and then when I’ve seen a pic, I think “What the hell are you smoking, please give me some”. Generally speaking I think women overinflate their looks. Why? Because when evaluating a woman’s hair they evaluate it on fashion style instead of length. They tend to evaluate a woman on the clothes she wears rather then her raw body. They seem to not understand or see how perky the tits are. Or how tight and round the ass is. Or if the skin isn’t wrinkled? Just as women are generally better than men at reading emotional states, I’m fairly convinced that women simply don’t have the same visual acuity when evaluating other women. They literally do NOT see what we see.
Men who have this complaint in reality are ignoring their peers/equals and think there are just no women for them but in reality they’re not pursuing the women they should be.
This can be a tricky thing to calibrate. If you aim way too low, you get way less than you are capable of. If you continually aim way too high, you get constantly rejected. I would think most guys eventually find the medium point. This is going to sound cocky, but it is what it is. I’ve had sex with two women who were not even close to in my league. There was a third that I could have that at the last moment, I walked away for reasons of conscience. I can tell you that I think one of them probably thought she could eventually land me as a boyfriend. I’m not proud to say this but she was an “in between” girl. Whenever I was in between relationships or even other girls I was trying to work on, she was the go to for literally zero effort.
I mean that women are looking for long-term partners with roughly the same degree of physical attractiveness and same level of education they have. Common interests are important to both sexes as well, I think. Men are less concerned with the woman’s level of education and more concerned with the woman’s physical attractiveness. That is to say, overweight men are less open to dating overweight women, on average, than overweight women are to dating overweight men. Another example is that a woman who finds herself in the SMP at 38 would be looking for a mate with in 5 years of her age, but is going to find that there are far more men looking past her and exclusively pursuing women ten and more years younger (and yes, I have these male friends too). It’s women’s persistent drive to mate assortatively and men’s persistent drive to NOT do so that creates the imbalance imho.
As a personal anecdote, I do have a friend who was quite successful and promiscuous in his 20s and is now in his late 30’s and only seems interested in pursuing women my age, who are increasingly unavailable/pairing off with their peers. In his case, he very much DID avoid and delay serious commitments in his 20’s and now wants that, but with women the same age as he dated in his prime. He refuses to see the source of the problem (he’s gained 2 pounds, isn’t a semi-famous DJ anymore, and is now almost completely bald) and he remains single when he’d prefer to be in a relationship.
That is to say, overweight men are less open to dating overweight women, on average, than overweight women are to dating overweight men.
Ok, but that’s not ‘hypogamous’ in terms of looks. Hypogamous in terms of looks would mean downward looking — kind of the opposite of what you are describing. I suspect what you meant is that men emphasize looks and are hypogamous as to other aspects.
gained 20 pounds, sorry*
You’re going to have to be more clear about what you mean by “equal” and “assortative mating”.
For example, is the agreeable, skinny, and low-N guy who wants an agreeable skinny, low-N girl someone who is dating his equal since she has the same traits he has? Or is he trying to date someone more attractive, since agreeableness, thinness, and chastity are all much more attractive in a girl?
Yup. The concept of assortative mating makes zero sense to me if you don’t account for the fact that the sexes value different things in a mate to an enormous degree. In these discussions, I find the biggest factor that gets obfuscated on is physical appearance. On the one hand, women will tout that other things besides looks can make a man “attractive”. Often this comes from a frame of “Hey, we aren’t as superficial as you guys”. But in the next breath, they’ll argue a mismatch with a guy who isn’t as physically attractive. NO. He may be hitting other attraction triggers such as “confidence” and status that make up for his lower physical attractiveness and make his TOTAL attractiveness equal to her attractiveness based on looks.
“Hypogamous in terms of looks would mean downward looking — kind of the opposite of what you are describing. I suspect what you meant is that men emphasize looks and are hypogamous as to other aspects.”
Yes, that’s what I was getting at. I suppose I meant to say that they’re hypergamous to looks.
Let’s be honest: most men these days don’t care about N. Kim Kardashian didn’t get a marriage proposal for being so chaste. Men care more about looks and education now and chastity has fallen completely off the list of things that men want: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/02/12/opinion/sunday/12-coontz-gfx.html?ref=sunday.
Realistically, if a woman is beautiful a contemporary man will overlook that she used to be a slut.
Such that a man seeing a woman who is his “physical peer” sees that as a match, whereas a woman does not, because she is looking for a “higher total match” due to her non-physical features, and therefore, from her perspective, that man who thinks he is her peer isn’t really her peer when taking non-physical into account. This is just a conflict between the sexes.
This is HUGE. I think this is the source of much confusion and consternation amongst women. I think many women, perhaps especially in that 35-45 age bracke award themselves tons of “sexual market value” based on things that frankly to most men have value approaching zero. Your accomplishments, your career success, your sense of style, your experience as a world traveler, that is all well and good but it doesn’t have much value at all next to the C cup tits of a 23-year that still defy gravity. That is crude yes, but it is reality. Now the vast majority of guys who are 35-40 aren’t going to be able to pull that 23-year old so that is a moot point, but in my experience women systematically misvalue their rough SMV because they overvalue the attributes that most guys assign little value to and undervalue the attributes that to us are the bulk of the value.
Realistically, if a woman is beautiful a contemporary man will overlook that she used to be a slut.
Very true, and very unfortunate at the same time. Leads to problems (as we can see with Kim K).
I mean that women are looking for long-term partners with roughly the same degree of physical attractiveness and same level of education they have. Common interests are important to both sexes as well, I think. Men are less concerned with the woman’s level of education and more concerned with the woman’s physical attractiveness.
Correct. I’m on my 2nd marriage. My first wife had only completed high school, and my second wife has high school plus some very specific professional education. Ironically, she outearns many women with graduate degrees. Frankly, to me, income mattered more than education and the two are not always perfectly correlated. You are right about common interests. In our case, we share one avocation that we are both very passionate about. I do think women care much, much more about educational match such that it is essentially a dealbreaker. You won’t find many PhD women married to plumbers, but I bet you would find more PhD men married to flight attendants, dental hygienists, etc.
Another example is that a woman who finds herself in the SMP at 38 would be looking for a mate with in 5 years of her age, but is going to find that there are far more men looking past her and exclusively pursuing women ten and more years younger (and yes, I have these male friends too). It’s women’s persistent drive to mate assortatively and men’s persistent drive to NOT do so that creates the imbalance imho.
Ehh…you are conveniently disregarding the trajectories in male and female SMV especially at say 38 where it really starts to diverge, but I have no interest in rehashing that debate. Of course, from a female POV it makes perfect self-interested sense to presume the average 38-year old man SMV and average 38-year old woman SMV are roughly equivalent and thus an “assortative” match. That aint reality though.
Yes, that’s what I was getting at. I suppose I meant to say that they’re hypergamous to looks.
Close but not quite. There is a difference between the desire to optimize and hypergamous desire. It has to do with attraction floors. A man will be attracted, to some degree, to all women above the attraction floor for himself, but will try to maximize within that pool. But he’s attracted to some degree to all of them. Hypergamy sets a very high attraction floor, which is actually above the attractiveness of the woman (as women are the hypergamous sex), below which all men are unattractive. So it’s a much narrower field.
Man walks into a room. At least 50% of the women are attractive under normal circumstances. Maybe a bit more or less depending on context. Of course, some much more than others, but still a lot are at least somewhat attractive.
Woman walks into a room. Most men are greyed out, off the radar screen, not even sexualized as men. Maybe one, maybe two men are actually perceived sexually by the woman. That’s hypergamy.
Realistically, if a woman is beautiful a contemporary man will overlook that she used to be a slut.
Yes….probably quite often to his later regret. I assume Jen you are familiar with the story of Helen of Troy. No doubt, men are powerfully motivated by and can be swayed by beauty. Ironically, a powerful Game technique in my opinion is to remain nonplussed in the presence of great female beauty. That immediately separates you from 99% of guys.
Morpheus says:
“Your accomplishments, your career success, your sense of style, your experience as a world traveler, that is all well and good but it doesn’t have much value at all”
Genius right here.
Those things are just past experiences that the man she met today didn’t share in and probably won’t be able to meet or exceed in the future. They raise fears of expectations that a permanent relationship will necessitate providing an equal or greater amount of such entertainments. If the man wants domesticity, and children the woman will be forced to accept and embrace a life style characterized by the mundane. Or she’ll become unhappy and seek a better arrangement.
This is also why men are secretly un-nerved by women with high Ns. The challenge of being the one guy who can scratch that itch is daunting for the average Beta. This is matched by the equally valid fear that the high N woman has lost all interest in sex, while her Beta still is waiting to experience something close her past level of frequency and adventure.
This is also why men are secretly un-nerved by women with high Ns. The challenge of being the one guy who can scratch that itch is daunting for the average Beta. This is matched by the equally valid fear that the high N woman has lost all interest in sex, while her Beta still is waiting to experience something close her past level of frequency and adventure.
Here’s the irony, and it goes back to when I said women will often hold mutually contradictory positions. Many women will say don’t worry about N, you are just being insecure. That said, I was perusing a thread where all the women were complaining how bad most men are at sex. Simple logic would dictate that the higher a woman’s N, the greater the possibility that somewhere in her past is a man who rocked her world in a way that you probably don’t measure up to. So the fact is that in some cases, the insecurity is warranted. There is that old expression, You are NOT paranoid if they REALLY are out to get you.
Jen, maybe I/we could take you more seriously if you took yourself more seriously. Several of us, notably Sir Nemesis in #82, demolished your initial assertion about men being the picky ones, and you haven’t bothered to defend yourself or acknowledge your demolition.
Novaseeker, that is the key point about hypergamy. Sure, “everyone” would love to have an amazing person but the real issue is how low will you go. Men, on average, have a lower threshold or floor than women.
Hypergamy reveals itself in thousands of women fucking rock stars, athletes or Fidel Castro and enjoying it. Thousands of women don’t fuck Joe Blow 5.
Hypergamy also reveals itself in women saying “where are all the good men? where are all the real men?”
The post I wrote on women fucking hotter men only focuses on 1 variable, physical attractiveness, not even the most important for men to have to attract women, and even there the women were fucking upwards in attractiveness.
If the same study could add other things to the men like charisma, successfulness, etc., I have no doubt that you’d see the men that had all of those things would be cleaning up even more.
Another important point is that as the okcupid study shows, the men rate the women in a quasi bell curve while the women said 80% were less than “average” so, likely, their perception of average is skewed and that “average” is actually about an 85th percentile man. Now, other factors like personality could decrease that amount somewhat so that maybe 60% of men are less than “average.” Anyway, the point is that women think there are far fewer male 7-10’s (maybe 10-15% of all men) than men think there are female 7-10’s (maybe 25%). So hypergamous women are not trying to be sneaky or dishonest when they say that there aren’t many good/attractive/real men. Their hypergamy is so built into many of them that they can’t even notice it, and society amplifies it.
What men and women mean by assortative equals is likely a different thing. When men (and a few enlightened women) talk about assortative equals they are roughly talking about matching up percentile equals with each other.
However, in the female view of things (talking about the more hypergamous 50%, NAWALT), the thought that 60th-percentile Joe Blow is good enough for 60th-percentile Jane Doe is often mortifying.
Now how does anyone get into an LTR then? Well, first of all I think that female hypergamy is on a spectrum: I’d guess that naturally, 1/4 are highly so, 1/4 moderately, 1/4 a bit and 1/4 not at all or even hypogamous. (Those numbers are more for argument sake than precise values.) Society can push things one way or the other. Historically, it elevated men and combined with the need that women had for a provider/protector which can add a bit of attractiveness to a man when she really does need him, this made it so that percentile equal men were pretty attractive to the less-hypergamous half, alright to the moderate 1/4 and passable to most of the top 1/4.
Now, economic, technological and societal winds blow the other way and the most hypergamous 1/4 will likely never be satisfied with an equal, the next quartile can hold their nose when they have to, the 3rd quartile might get a few heart breaks or P&D’s and then learn to appreciate an equal and the bottom 1/4 will still be happy (though some of them might be F’d up with really low self esteem and that’s why they’re hypogamous and go for losers).
Follow up to 111.
Sometimes a man can be invisible to a woman and then she gets to know him and sees some of the inner stuff that isn’t obvious up front and can become attracted to him, so that’s another way that good relationships can actually happen. That’s not necessarily the best strategy for men but for non-flashy men (most men) it’s often how they meet a woman in their social circle or work or school and he grows on her. Sometimes in the sphere it’s implied that men can’t grow on women but I think that’s BS. Seen it happen too often to discount it. However, men shouldn’t delude themselves either into thinking that they can necessarily turn any given woman who shows no interest. They should focus on the women that do show interest and non-needily show their value and as they do a few of those that maybe at first weren’t interested will give him a second look once he establishes some preselection and as the non-flashy types can show the other sides of them that take longer to notice.
Most of the young guys I know are not picky at all. One of my old work buddies has been dating a girl for 2-3 years and she cannot sauté vegetables. One of my best friends is married to a girl that the friend group has universally decreed as ugly and his last crush was a good 20 pounds overweight. One of my other best friends fawned over an unremarkable red-head for well over a year. His sister is disabled and had 4 boyfriends in one year.
Perhaps you are correct. However, it does not jive up with my experience. Most men can, however, be rather temperamental and turn on a girl on the drop of a hat, in a way I think most women really cannot appreciate. Because we will put up with a lot, until you cross some red-line, and then we become frigid.
The only “picky” guy I know is myself. However, that’s only relatively speaking, because I tend to view myself as forgiving and tolerant, and most other people as completely without standards. All about how you perceive things, I suppose
However, in the female view of things (talking about the more hypergamous 50%, NAWALT), the thought that 60th-percentile Joe Blow is good enough for 60th-percentile Jane Doe is often mortifying.
The other aspect of this is the dynamic nature of how this shifts over time.
So, in other words, a man at 23 may see a woman who is his physical peer at 23 be assortative, but she doesn’t, because she can pull much higher men. So she isn’t “really” a peer 6, say, but an 8. In this analysis it’s irrelevant that this pulling is for sex and not marriage — it’s pulling that’s relevant. So from this perspective, that looks female 6 is actually an SMV 8, and the “SMV peers” of that male looks 6 are female 3-5s.
This shifts over time. At some point the lines cross and the SMV and looks peer-ness lines cross and meet — probably around 30. But before then the woman that the man sees as his physical peer is really not his SMV/SMP peer — women who are, in many cases, significantly less physically attractive and not his looks peer are his SMV/SMP peers.
Of course this isn’t acceptable to most men in this situation — which occurs mostly for men between 18 and, say, 28 for a round number. This is why many of these men X-Box it, to be frank.
I missed this.
Morpheus #96 says:
“I’m fairly convinced that women simply don’t have the same visual acuity when evaluating other women. They literally do NOT see what we see.”
This an absolute true fact and it applies to how men see people versus how women see people. If you want proof go to an beginning art class and observe how men and women treat the human form when working from a live nude model. Serious students all get better with practice at performing the cold accounting necessary to represent the form. But initially the men tend to be better at it and much more likely to focus on particular details, either flaws in the physique, nipples, eyes, wrinkles etc. Whereas women tend to focus on broad contours and are much more suggestive in their interpretation. I’d say it’s a tendency for the men to be realistic and the women to be idealistic especially when the model is a woman.
Nova 114
Yeah, many younger women don’t discern between the kind of attention they’re getting and mistake the sexual attention for possible LTR attention and think they’re oh so close to next time getting that hot guy to stick around.
I agree that for men and women in their teens and 20’s that many female 6’s get attention from male 8’s and unless they’re serious about finding someone that shows they want a relationship they won’t go for the male 6. Of course, there are some assortative couples at young ages too but it’s that good 1/4 to 1/2 of women that spend a few or 10 or more years either being hypergamous or avoiding relationships altogether to focus on career that really leave the average and lower guys out in the desert.
Of course, there are some assortative couples at young ages too but it’s that good 1/4 to 1/2 of women that spend a few or 10 or more years either being hypergamous or avoiding relationships altogether to focus on career that really leave the average and lower guys out in the desert.
Yes, that’s the issue. Saw that in college, as I described in the last thread. 50-70% on the sidelines, avoiding, another 20% hypergamy chasing (either hi-test or lo-test). Leaves a lot of men in the desert, and not a small number of women as well (although I tend to think that a goodly number of the women who are avoidant still get laid when they want/need to in ONSs).
Yeah, when women get really horny, they can easily find a man. How often the average or restricted actually do that is debatable but it definitely does happen and probably adds an N of 2 or 3 to such women over a 5 year span if they’re single that whole time. They may even think they’re hoping for a relationship. Then the lustful trance passes and some might feel guilty, others not, and they’ll go a good long while until the next time. Often they’ll have some past bf or casual sex guy that they can turn to again so that it’s with someone they know and perhaps trust. I’ve had girls tell me they do that and, occasionally, I’ve been that guy (though not that much really), though that was more making out with chaste or relatively chaste Mormon girls than outright sex.
The idea of “shooting out your league” is irrelevant. As they saying goes, “Son, it’s her job to decide she isn’t interested in you… don’t do it for her.”
You see, *all* women have standards. If a super-hot woman is 99% likely to say no, then someone in our “league” is still 95% likely, and a total beast is still 90%.
They’re functionally identical odds.
(And I haven’t even considered the fact that what a particular man considers “hot” is often very different than others. Niche appeal is huge. We know that the lower one’s overall SMV, the higher their variance, meaning there are more people who find very compelling.)
If a guy isn’t getting traction, it’s not because he’s shooting out of league. It’s because he is not reading social cues well enough to see which women are interested. Hot, pretty, cute, average, or ugly all the same.
@ Jen
Well obviously. Given that good looks are in short supply (especially due to obesity), and most women have high-N, it’s going to be rather unrealistic to manage to get both. When forced to choose, men will of course forego the latter in favor of the former.
Point still stands, though. Heck, let’s take out low-N if you like. Skinny, highly agreeable guy. For good measure, let’s make him short. Wants a skinny, agreeable, and short girl. Assortative?
Let’s be honest: most men these days don’t care about N. Kim Kardashian didn’t get a marriage proposal for being so chaste. Men care more about looks and education now and chastity has fallen completely off the list of things that men want
It’s true many men are willing to overlook a lot in pursuit of physical beauty. But not many women measure up to Kim K. in that respect. Furthermore, she’s rich as well as famous, and there are men as attracted to fame as women. Nobody expects a Holly wood marriage to last, anyway, particularly this Hollywood marriage, so let’s not draw society-wide inferences here.
Chastity hasn’t at all fallen off the list of things men want. But most of us are realistic enough to know that at this time and at this place we can’t expect to marry a virgin, and there may indeed be something wrong with a woman who’s still a virgin more than a decade after sexual maturity. Lower N will never be a hindrance, and a high N is definitely a disqualifier for some percentage of men when it comes to marriage. I’d bang Scarlett Johansson like a drum but I’d never marry her. And I’m not exactly flush with options on that score.
Generalizing:
We really don’t care about your education, particularly if your major was something useless like art history or sociology. Anything that ends in “studies” isn’t really education but it is a red flag, especially an advanced degree. We know you’re proud of your degree, so we will act suitably impressed. But we’re not. And that $40k in student loan debt is definitely a strike against you.
We don’t care about your shoes, how much you spent on your bag, that you speak passable French, or that you visited twenty five countries in nine months with your sorority sister who later turned out to be a lesbian (yes, we know, there’s nothing wrong with that). We definitely don’t want the pictures inflicted on us over a period of three hours. But I digress. We like fit women but the fact that you were a division 1 athlete in college adds nothing to your allure. We don’t care about your last promotion or that you were the First Woman at your company to sell 25 units in a month, or that you can drink the guys at work under the table. These things are all good for bragging to your friends over drinks, but to a potential husband they’re neutral at best.
I would add those of us who are looking to start a family aren’t “threatened” by a woman who makes a lot of money, but if we’re looking for a SAHM we question whether someone who spent a decade building a high powered career on top of seven years of college and law school will be willing to chuck it all and stay home full time to take care of children, and whether she can ever be happy even if she is willing.
@Jen
I don’t disagree with this. And quite frankly, I don’t have much sympathy for guys who pick the Kim K types. That’s digging your own grave.
I wouldn’t feel sorry for those guys at all either.
But quite frankly, that doesn’t jibe with my experience… The number of guys I’ve known through the years who had any aspirations of sowing wild oats or being players has been extremely low. I’d peg it at less than 10% of guys I’ve known. Most have always just wanted to find a cute girl and lock it down.
And adding to that, most guys I’ve known have been consistent with their behavior over time and haven’t gone through “phases” (i.e., the realtionship minded guys have always been relationship minded, from HS all the way up to present day… and the players have always been on prowl, many dating back to grade school).
If there’s one meme I’ll fight till my last breath, it’s the ever popular “guys aren’t mature enogh/don’t want relationships until after their 25.” Quite frankly, it’s a load of BS.
And this is coming from a guy who’s 26, so I’m in the age bracket that actually benefits the most from it. But I refuse to sell my younger bros down the river on a pile of lies.
#110
She hasn’t bothered to do so because she doesn’t want to. She isn’t interested in having any real discussion about this issue. She’s basically talking to herself. She thinks when she comments here she can finally stick it to the kind of “evil men” who’ve ruined her life. She obviously found this site via HUS, where she’s probably a regular commenter. Her completely idiotic assertions (all husbands are a**holes, it’s men who’re hyperselective instead of women etc.) reveal that she’s both malignant and ignorant when it comes to men. Her attitude obviously stems from her bad experiences, which are in turn the result of her alpha-chasing ways [edit: no need for speculative accusations–please keep things relatively civil.]
Have nothing to do with her. And stop treating her ilk with kid gloves.
I’ve also found it humorous that some women love to extoll the virtues of assortive mating as a rationalization that the only reason any guy is unsuccessful with women is because he must be some loser shooting way out of his league
But the second anyone questions if a women is shooting out of her league, suddenly you’ll hear things like: “Giving a rating to someone’s attractiveness is soooooo dehumanizing. We just need to treat people like human beings.”
Unless that human being is an average guy. In that case he just needs to learn his place… cuz, like, assortive mating.
And for the record, I’ve never been a beleiver in “leagues”… Obviously most of the Johnah Hills of the world aren’t going to be banging the Kate Uptons… but for the vast majority of us in the 5-8 range, there aren’t clearly defined boundaries.
As OTC said, your rejection rate is going to be through the roof in any case…. might as well go after what you like. Throw in the fact that women tend to vary a lot more in what they’re physically attracted to than guys are… so you never know if you just might be the niche she physically goes for. Add in a little status and game, and she might even be thinking she’s the lucky one.
I also don’t completely agree with the idea that the #1 reason women get pump & dumped is because they shoot out of their league. I could be wrong, but I think top guys still have relatively generous attraction floors… the problem for the decent but not great girls is that those guys just have better options available to them. If you took away all those options (like a move to North Dakota or other male dominated population), he’d probably be able be satisfied with a 6-7 if that was the best he could find.
In my observation, the biggest reasons women get P&D’d are:
1) They’re choosing guys that aren’t interested in serious relationships to begin with.
2) As women have become less feminine, I think they’ve lost a lot of their ability to get guys to “fall in love” with them, for lack of a better term. Guys can be physically attracted to her, even enjoy spending time with her, but just don’t like her “that way.” LJBFWB from players, polite rejections or fadeaways from relationship-oriented guys.
But back to my original point… Leagues are for baseball.
“[edit: no need for speculative accusations–please keep things relatively civil.]”
My comment was not a bit less speculative or civil than hers.
Jimmy, leagues are not absolute or anything like that. It’s simply a short-hand way of talking about whether someone is interested in you or not. Certain patterns can be observed of who shows interest and who doesn’t. This doesn’t mean that 100% of future people like those in the past that accepted or rejected you will do so but to say that a certain man isn’t going to have a high likelihood of wanting a woman of certain beauty and other attributes (of course, subject to what he deems attractive) is to ignore reality.
Of course, in the end, each person will have things they are or are not attracted to and so you could say that each person determines who they consider to be in, above or below their “league.” This may be tempered by experience and realizing that many may not reciprocate one’s interest and the person may seek out people that do show interest or try to become more attractive to those people that didn’t.
In the end, it’s mostly a shorthand and shouldn’t be taken too absolutely or rigidly.
For women, it’s key to understand that men (at the individual level) do generally have two ladders, a sex-only ladder and a sex+love/commitment ladder. Women need to understand which ladder they are on for a given man.
Same thing for men. They need to understand that the two most likely ladders they’ll encounter are the friends ladder and the attraction/sex/relationship ladder. (Of course there could be many more ladders but I’m keeping it simple.)
So, at its essence, this whole talk of leagues is more the market of two people, a man and a woman and what each wants or doesn’t want from the other and whether they can “strike a bargain” and whether that “bargain” is what both want.
Too many women mistake sex for interest in a relationship and too many men mistake friendship from a woman as a sign of potential sex and a relationship.
#68
Online dating is skewed in other ways as well. It’s pretty obvious that the top 20% and the bottom 40-50% of all men don’t even bother with it. The latter don’t do it because they know they don’t have a chance, the former don’t do it because they have no reason to do so. For women, these ratios are different. It’s probably the top 40% and the bottom 10% that don’t bother with it. It skews the whole thing.
@hh2
Looking at J/Jen’s comments, this one does seem misandristic in smearing most/all men as unfaithful or lazy:
“Often for women that means sacrificing your own dignity and happiness because they do better in 2-parent homes and men husbands are unfaithful or neglectful or just plain lazy and if you want to give your kid the best possible chance in life, you have to put up with it regardless.”
Now, if she said that some or even many men were this way then I have no problem with that because that’s true but most and certainly not all men are like that.
At any rate, we don’t know if she’s a commenter from another site or not or what race she is so no need to bring that into the argument. Simply address what she said, or don’t address it but we don’t need to get into personal speculation about who she is unless she acts like a troll.
FWIW, I also disagree with her that we’re whining. We’re simply observing what’s happening with men and women.
She may be a troll but since many women out there think just like her, I think it’s better for us to rebutt her accusations so that readers can see how to do it themselves when confronted with such arguments in the real world.
Han,
I think we’re on the same page here.
The key, as you pointed out, is realizing that “leagues”, SMV 1-10 ratings, even alpha-beta distinctions, etc. are all meant to be generalizations to describe the macroeconomics of the SMP.
I always want to pull my hair out when I see people trying to apply them rigidly or for specific situations when they were created for the exact opposite purpose.
But as far as “leagues” go, I do think the vast majority of people have a fairly realistic idea of what they can get.
[…] In the midst of the cries to young men to man up and the concern over hookup culture, it’s important to really understand what is motivating both young women and young men. […]
Jimmy, yeah, we agree on the generalizations part.
I will agree that I think most guys and many girls realize what they can get. I will disagree about a good portion of the young female population, though. I think a lot of them don’t have a realistic idea of what they can get. As I mentioned, I’ve seen it first hand with women that thought they could get me. I’ve also heard lots of other guys talk about that. I remember Jason773 saying how the looks distribution he had in his N was very similar to mine and that there were some virgins and low-N women in there too, just like mine. I don’t remember if he said the not-so-hot ones were wanting relationships with him or not but I think they were. We have Morpheus telling us about the 3 or so girls that were not in his league that wanted a relationship with him.
Now, guys pine after girls that aren’t interested in them either. Some of these girls would be thought by most to be out of the guys’ “league.” And some of them would be thought to be in their league but have been blinded by the attention of hotter guys to think they can get those hotter guys for LTRs.
Of course, the difference is that no sex usually happens when guys pine after girls that aren’t interested, only friend zoning, whereas sex often does happen with girls that pine after guys that aren’t interested in relationships with them.
#129
Fair enough. I won’t be responding to her anymore.There’s a female commenter at HUS with the name J2.0 and I simply assumed they’re the same since both are obnoxious. And I think it’s also a safe bet to say that a woman who links to a forum thread entitled “Black Woman gets kicked off dating website–racism involved?” in order to support her “argument” is probably black herself.
I don’t mind that such women exist – the planet is big enough for all of us. But it’s frankly angering to see that they obviously feel compelled to visit men’s blogs such as this and pollute it with their nonsense, even though there are thousands of websites, forums, blogs, message boards magazines created specifically for them to whine, bitch and moan about men.
*message boards and magazines*
“Often for women that means sacrificing your own dignity and happiness because they do better in 2-parent homes and men husbands are unfaithful or neglectful or just plain lazy and if you want to give your kid the best possible chance in life, you have to put up with it regardless.”
This would be the kind of impression that a restricted woman might get if she spent a lot of years around bad boys. I that such a woman took a hard look at her attraction triggers in men.
IF Jen is black, maybe Obsidian could set her straight?
If not, Jen try and find a nicer bunch of guys to socialise (just socialise, this isn’t code for sleep with them all) with.
There is NO WAY all men are like that.
“She may be a troll but since many women out there think just like her, I think it’s better for us to rebutt her accusations so that readers can see how to do it themselves when confronted with such arguments in the real world.”
Yes
#135
You mean she spent a lot of time around “bad boy” husbands living in 2-parent households? How likely is that? Such households are a tiny minority. Did she actually see how they live, day to day? Or did she listen to the wives whining and accepted it as the obvious, unbiased truth? By the way, what exactly counts as “neglectfulness” or “laziness” in the vocabulary of such women?
#136
Well, not necessarily. In my view, the correct course of action when confronted with such an “argument” (technically it’s a baseless and hateful accusation, not an argument) is to simply walk away and never talk to that woman again.
@HH 2
“I don’t mind that such women exist – the planet is big enough for all of us. But it’s frankly angering to see that they obviously feel compelled to visit men’s blogs such as this and pollute it with their nonsense, even though there are thousands of websites, forums, blogs, message boards magazines created specifically for them to whine, bitch and moan about men.”
I don’t think it’s J2.0, but I get your point. Some women do seem amazed that there are sites aimed at men, use male tone, talk about male issues from a male point of view. I don’t think they’re all deliberately trolling when they stampede into the comments ranting, but it amounts to trolling when they start tone policing etc.
Jen appears to fishing for men in the wrong pool and is pissed over what she can land. The fact she won’t have kids if she’ll end up bringing them up alone (she knows that that isn’t good for the kids) is actually pretty commendable. She needs to fish elsewhere and fish without anger. Smiles actually work to attract men, manhate causes anyone good to walk away.
And to be fair, HUS had the mirroring problem with men from time to time, leading to the mass expulsions last year. We got JFG from it, Susan got HUS back. I have no anger over it. I just don’t read there, I hope they’re having productive fun. I hope that those looking to get a man (the whole point of HUS, I thought) are keeping a positive image of men. Otherwise, why bother? Mais, chaque a son gout.
HH2
Maybe seen a lot of friends marry wasters who ran off after fathering kids (maybe for their sanity, maybe just wasters).
But also has seen the stats on crime, drugs and suicide for kids of single moms.
There are plenty of good men that will stick around good women to raise kids. If you want a good man, look for a good man, and be a good woman.
HH2 #138
I toss whatever comments I’m in the mood to make to help them and let them get on with it. If I’m not in the mood I don’t bother. They don’t get to change my mood.
As Han said, it can be more for the lurkers rather than the (potential) troll. Even trolls can raise points worth refuting. Refuting trolls can benefit others. And maybe some of them aren’t trolls.
#140
She was specifically talking about lazy, negligent husbands living in 2-parent homes, not fatherless homes.
#141
One-on-one live communication is different. There are no “lurkers” there to address.
@HH2
I think that you may have read her comments more carefully than me, brother.
I just skimmed after I got the message that she’s an angry woman who hates men cos they’re all losers an’ shit.
Who’s got the time to read every word? Why would I want to? Beyond taking time that I don’t wish to allocate to her specific misandric points. I won’t have her ‘harshing my mellow, man’. Trolls do not get to win, but neither do non-troll man haters, or genuinely hurt women who might be able to be talked down from their anger. Whichever she is, it doesn’t matter to me at this point. If she calms down maybe that changes (who knows?) but untill then I’m certainly not investing huge amounts of time wallowing in her filth.
I gave my generic (but true) lady, you ain’t gonna find a decent man with that attitude, you’re looking in the wrong places because NAMALT and smile and be nice (men lap that shit up).
Which is all good, generic advice that every woman reading here should understand, and every man reading JFG who is sick of being put down by psycho fembot liars (MSM, the fembotsphere etc), manginas (like Driscoll) and white knight mo’fo’s projecting their own mental issues on all men to the delight of fembots the world over (Hugs Schitzer – have they locked your arse up yet, bitch?) needs to know.
You should all understand:
@ Jen:
“Men who have this complaint in reality are ignoring their peers/equals and think there are just no women for them but in reality they’re not pursuing the women they should be.”
I see. IOW, “know your place, little boy.”
What I saw of men was not so much that they were “shooting out of their league”. I saw men trying to date and have sex with who they thought were their rough SMV peers but getting shot down. I didn’t see all men going for the two or three hottest girls – most men implicitly understood they had no shot, none at all, with those top women, and so they didn’t even try.
Badpainter.
Ref #85. The cost of giving up the flattering attention and platonic whatchamacallit is the loss of hope that, sooner or later, it will pay off.
In some cases, hope is delusional. I suppose we could get into a semantic issue here conflating or distinguishing a reasonably well-supported anticipation versus a baseless wish.
The latter may be delusional if it is supported either by actual things that happened that aren’t actually relevant, or if the actual things aren’t actual but are artifacts of the hope itself.
Han Solo: Pasted one of your grafs below:
Sometimes a man can be invisible to a woman and then she gets to know him and sees some of the inner stuff that isn’t obvious up front and can become attracted to him, so that’s another way that good relationships can actually happen. That’s not necessarily the best strategy for men but for non-flashy men (most men) it’s often how they meet a woman in their social circle or work or school and he grows on her. Sometimes in the sphere it’s implied that men can’t grow on women but I think that’s BS. Seen it happen too often to discount it. However, men shouldn’t delude themselves either into thinking that they can necessarily turn any given woman who shows no interest. They should focus on the women that do show interest and non-needily show their value and as they do a few of those that maybe at first weren’t interested will give him a second look once he establishes some preselection and as the non-flashy types can show the other sides of them that take longer to notice.””
Couple of points: One is, you can do this in front of many women at once. It takes no effort directed at women. Your effort is put into whatever it is that puts you in front of or in the company of the women. You are not “non-plussed” as one commenter said, in the presence of beautiful women because you’re there, wherever you are, for another reason than getting to know someone. You’re not needy.
You’re competent–presumably–in something in front of the woman. And there may be occasions where exclusively male competencies range from extremely and uniquely useful to decisive.
But it’s practically effort-free, once you figure out where to go to do this stuff, and if your situation(s) are picked for some other reason–it’s my shift at the bookstore, I like this field project, etc.–you did absolutely nothing regarding finding a relationship with women. So, if looking for relationships takes time and emotional energy (because you’re uncertain), this increases your chances substantially without effort.
Oh, okay. You do a bit more hygiene before your…shift at the bookstore, the project meeting. BFD.
Would have worked a treat for me, if I’d noticed the results, which I didn’t.
@BadPainter
I have a similar issue regarding my facial expression, I think. I’m fine when engaged in talking to someone, but my default expression when in deep thought, or at least not in conversation, seems to be taken as ‘pissed off’ by many people that don’t know me (and some that do).
Ah well, better to be seen as someone whose space should be respected, rather than some child like simpleton wandering around gurning in wonderment at everyone (I suppose). It is rumoured that women find happy, smiley men less attractive for some bizarre reason known only to women. May they get the men that they deserve, not my problem.
Maybe one day you’ll meet a woman that was dropped on her head as a kid (or something of that ilk) and has developed that rare mental disorder that they call ‘sanity’? One that values what women claim to value: character, kindness, empathy, good fatherhood potential, honesty and integrity…all that weird shit that appears to be such an impediment in current society. Don’t hold your breath though, I’m sure that there are women like that out there, but they do not appear to be the majority.
Point still stands, though. Heck, let’s take out low-N if you like. Skinny, highly agreeable guy. For good measure, let’s make him short. Wants a skinny, agreeable, and short girl. Assortative?
See, this is a good example. A good number of guys would view this as assortative based on those characteristics, whereas I think almost no woman would. The reason is that “short” for men is huge negative — it’s huge, like a woman being 400 lbs — whereas it is not a negative for a woman. So from a woman’s perspective, this is a bad match, in assortative terms, and the guy — who other than his height may be a 6 — is seen as being assortative with a female 2 or 3 due to his height.
A lot of guys (especially short ones) think this is “unfair” because they can’t make themselves taller, but attraction isn’t about fairness, and being short as a man is a huge handicap — the worst thing possible for a man that falls into the “unchangeable” category. Of course, it can be overcome — there are short men who do well with women, but they need to really bring it in other categories (fame, social dominance, social power, rippedness, etc.). So it isn’t the kiss of death, but if you asked a typical woman based on the few criteria you threw out there whether this was assortative or not, the overwhelming majority of women would say “no” due to the height issue.
What I saw of men was not so much that they were “shooting out of their league”. I saw men trying to date and have sex with who they thought were their rough SMV peers but getting shot down. I didn’t see all men going for the two or three hottest girls – most men implicitly understood they had no shot, none at all, with those top women, and so they didn’t even try.
I think this happens often because men and women have different perceptions of each other’s SMV levels. Men tend to view “in their league” as a physical question primarily (or only). So they see themselves as a physical 6, identify a woman who is a physical 6, and take a shot because she is supposed to be an SMV peer. The woman, however, has different criteria when assigning SMV to the men, so the fact that a man is a physical peer is an input into that but isn’t dispositive. Other factors — dominance, charm, power, intelligence, etc. — weigh as well in assessing his SMV, so while he may be a physical 6 and therefore her physical peer, when the other factors get weighted in, she sees him as an SMV 4 or 5 relative to herself (assuming for the purposes of this case that she sees herself as an SMV 6), despite the fact that they are physical peers.
The guy sees her shooting him down and says “WTF, what a stuck up bitch!”, because from his filter criteria, she’s his peer. The girl doesn’t see the guy as her peer, however, applying her *own* filters, of which the physical is, for most women, one of several filters that get applied — also just for attraction itself, not even getting to the “suitability filters”, which come later.
Of course, hypergamy is a factor here as well, with a good number of women not wanting a peer but wanting higher than a peer, but the same analysis applies to that as well. In particular, when looking at peer-age young men (say 18-25), many of these guys don’t have that much going on (yet) with respect to the other filters, so the looks filter gets a heavy weighting on the upside –> in other words, if a 22 year old guy doesn’t have much going on in terms of power, status and so on, but is really god looking (say a physical 8), the “total SMV” from the woman’s point of view may be close to a 6 (perhaps a high 6), because while he is a physical 8, the rest of the package drags him down, in her eyes, to a level that is closer to her own SMV, while remaining slightly above it. So she doesn’t see this as swinging way out of her league.
But a key point is this: women have a very different concept of who is in their league than men do, because it isn’t based on the physical solely.
Sometimes a man can be invisible to a woman and then she gets to know him and sees some of the inner stuff that isn’t obvious up front and can become attracted to him, so that’s another way that good relationships can actually happen. That’s not necessarily the best strategy for men
It can happen, sure — people meet in all sorts of ways, really, some of them very odd indeed. But there are higher probability strategies and lower probability strategies. The friend route is a low probability strategy, and one that, for many men, gets to be very distracting. In other words, it’s one thing to have a few “potentials” on the friend route going on, in a very low maintenance way, while you actively and directly are pursuing other women in a more high probability way. The trouble is that due to “one-itis” and related obsessions, men can get fixated easily on their low probability friend route option, and this almost always burns them.
#150 “women have a very different concept of who is in their league than men do” I think hypergamy is born at puberty, when, for example, 14 yr old girls start noticing attentions from 17 yr old guys. And hypergamy ratchets up from there, strictly up, growing from feeding off the highly skewed SMV ratios for the next dozen years. And it never “grows” down, for the same reason no gowing thing grows down.
I believe men have a more realistic view on SMV’s than women. They are able to hook up easily with top guys, hence most women believe to be much more valuable than they really are. Most can easily be considered short term material, but the key is to be considered long term material.
On another note, I feel women are quite selective due to their lengthy list of requirements a man needs to fulfil, which are mostly non negotiable. Literally the amount of times I have had to exercise restraint in eye-rolling upon hearing their demands. In contrast, my male friends just tell me a few key things they desire in a woman. That’s it.
No wonder average men check out.
“Man walks into a room. At least 50% of the women are attractive under normal circumstances. Maybe a bit more or less depending on context. Of course, some much more than others, but still a lot are at least somewhat attractive.”
Novaseeker, I also agree with you that it depends on context. The fact is that women do not all have the same type. Where I live they eliminated the “Sunshine Boy” for this very reason, while the Sunshine Girl has been running for 40 years strong and continues to do so. Some women prefer muscular male bimbos, some svelte hipster-types, some metalheads, some ghetto guys with their pants hanging under their bums, some older “silver foxes,” some guys around 21, etc. etc. etc. For men, they always prefer youthful women and this only increases as they age.
So in this sense, men are more selective than women are.
It’s interesting that the OKCupid result shows that women rated 80% of men as below attractive but were open to dating them anyways depending on other factors (this makes sense to me because each woman has her own “type” and the majority do not adhere to it), whereas men all agreed on the women’s level of attractiveness and only messaged the top 1/3rd.
jf12, it’s called “going to bed.” Some of us do have a life, you know. You are as ever welcome to your opinion though. As this is a discussion forum, others are welcome to disagree. I see diplomacy is not your strong suit.
Novaseeker,
It’s not a strategy in that it takes time and effort. About the ony thing you do is find activities you like, or need to do, which put you in the company of more women than fewer women. Then you do the activities, which you would be doing anyway.
And sometimes you don’t even have to pick.
Say you’re a good baritone and join a mixed choir….
I was in a coed judo and self-defense club. Joined a sorority project in a dicey area, the only guy. Figured that was a coup, but it was something I’d have done anyway even if the fraternities had been running it. Part time work in a college cafeteria where half the part-timers were women students.
As I say, you show up and do your job competently and treat everybody like people instead of a batch of ladyparts you clearly want to use.
Takes no time, as I say, because you’d be doing this anyway.
As I also say, it worked for me. More or less.
It can happen, sure — people meet in all sorts of ways, really, some of them very odd indeed. But there are higher probability strategies and lower probability strategies. The friend route is a low probability strategy, and one that, for many men, gets to be very distracting. In other words, it’s one thing to have a few “potentials” on the friend route going on, in a very low maintenance way, while you actively and directly are pursuing other women in a more high probability way. The trouble is that due to “one-itis” and related obsessions, men can get fixated easily on their low probability friend route option, and this almost always burns them.
Steel on target. No doubt, there are happy, successful relationships that started out as “friends” or just platonic socializing and then over time of “getting to know” the guy something happens for the woman to view him as a potential romantic partner. I’ve read elsewhere that “familiarity breeds attraction” and I’m sure there is some degree of truth to that, but I don’t think it is capable of creating 180 degree shifts. This path favors women and their interests. They can delay sexual investment while the man has to put in the time, effort, and energy to get that attraction effect going. Time that perhaps might be better spent pursuing higher probability strategies and women. I’ve come to believe TIME is the most scarce resource we have as human beings. Once you’ve reached a point where you can provide for your basic necessities, the most important decision you can make is how you spend your excess time. IMO, it is not a good use of time to be friends with/get to know a woman slowly in the hopes of flipping her to a romantic partner. My guess is the “conversion ratio” here is abysmal.
I’ve only had one situation where I successfully flipped someone who I think did not see me sexually to becoming a sex partner. And it happened to coincide with me introducing a lot more “Game” concepts to how I interacted with her and other women.
“For men, they always prefer youthful women and this only increases as they age. So in this sense, men are more selective than women are.”
Honest question: how many further BS statements are you planning to make?
Han Solo, I agree with your post in #127, I can’t take issue with anything you’ve said there.
“Now, if she said that some or even many men were this way then I have no problem with that because that’s true but most and certainly not all men are like that.”
I actually did mean to type many husbands, there was a typo in which I typed “men” instead of “many.”
“Honest question: how many further BS statements are you planning to make?”
This isn’t BS, look at the OKCupid results: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-woman/
Men’s floor of allowable goes lower and lower the older they get.
“Jen appears to fishing for men in the wrong pool and is pissed over what she can land. The fact she won’t have kids if she’ll end up bringing them up alone (she knows that that isn’t good for the kids) is actually pretty commendable. She needs to fish elsewhere and fish without anger. Smiles actually work to attract men, manhate causes anyone good to walk away.”
I’m not quite sure why you guys can’t internalize what I have said. I’m not angry. I have a wonderful boyfriend, therefore I’m not “fishing” at all. I have been taken for almost 2 years. Before that, I was taken for 2.5 years; we broke up, and I got into a much healthier and more satisfying relationship a few months after that relationship ended. Both relationships have culminated in cohabitations and that is my only goal. Are we having an objective conversation, or are we not? I haven’t accused the guys here of being losers because they speak of women in a derogatory way so why assume that I’m having trouble with men?
But a key point is this: women have a very different concept of who is in their league than men do, because it isn’t based on the physical solely.
I think this is very important to highlight.
“I don’t mind that such women exist – the planet is big enough for all of us. But it’s frankly angering to see that they obviously feel compelled to visit men’s blogs such as this and pollute it with their nonsense, even though there are thousands of websites, forums, blogs, message boards magazines created specifically for them to whine, bitch and moan about men.”
Don’t advertise “women are welcome too” if they’re not. Or perhaps what you’re looking for is an echo chamber instead of respectful but spirited debate. Only women who nod along to everything you say are welcome? OK, then explicitly say that. I do read Jezebel and I used to frequent the Facebook page and comment there but ultimately I disagreed with a large portion of the audience on the issue of sexual monogamy, so I stopped commenting there. I understand that as a childfree secularist egalitarian indifferent or even outright hostile to marriage who nonetheless is also staunchly pro-monogamy, my views are rather unconventional and there’s no place I fit 100% in. That doesn’t stop me from exploring all the different blogs and websites, though.
This isn’t BS, look at the OKCupid results: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-woman/
Men’s floor of allowable goes lower and lower the older they get.
I don’t see how it’s news that men prefer younger women — that’s been known since time immemorial. Just like women prefer taller men. All the articles in the world won’t “convince” men to as be attracted to older women vs younger women, just as all the articles in the world won’t “convince” women to be as attracted to shorter men vs taller men. Attraction is what it is.
If anything the charts there confirm what is often discussed here — namely that women own the SMP until their mid-late 20s, and beginning in the late 20s/around 30, men begin to own it and own it the rest of the way (on average). The ages in the real world will vary from OKC, and will also vary depending on place, in terms of when the lines cross, but of course they do cross — we all know that.
Jen 154:
“So in this sense, men are more selective than women are.”
You’re correct that men want younger women if we’re talking about marriage and long term commitment. But if you are talking about raw attraction, you have it backwards.
Women should thank their lucky stars that for every size, shape and body part, there’s a cohort of men who like them. There are tit men, ass men, leg men and face men. There are men who like slender, SSBBW and everything in between. There are men who love small breasts, grotesquely huge implant breasts and everything in between. There are men who love blonds, some are partial to redheads, and men who love brunettes.
Moreover, the only women I have ever, ever seen go without male attention are the unfortunate very unattractive girls, the 1s and 2s. All others can get that attention if they want it. If she wants a guy, she can get one. It’s simply the KIND of attention she can get and the CALIBER of male she can get that attention from that’s the issue. So when a woman says she gets “no attention” from men, what’s really going on is that she is not getting attention from the men she wants, nor the kind of type of attention she wants.
Most women like the classic V shaped torso, muscular but not jockhead build. It is universally attractive among women. Think Michelangelo’s “David” – this is the quintessential male form all women find sexually attractive.
So no, I don’t agree that men are more selective.
@ David #45
Thanks, I’ll watch this space.
@ David #46
Just saw you posted the essay. Sweet as! Thanks mate. Time to read some Orwell.
“Some women prefer muscular male bimbos, some svelte hipster-types, some metalheads, some ghetto guys with their pants hanging under their bums, some older “silver foxes,” some guys around 21, etc. etc. etc.”
This is the real world manifestation of what Morpheus and Nova were talking about last night – that for women, attraction is more than physical; and does include many other things such as status, persona, outward personality, etc. it’s true that these kinds of guys get girls all the time; but not because of physical look. What’s going on there is contextual status, outward conduct, personality, etc. We’ve got the typical archetypes here – the good looking musclehead, the hipster kinds that some female bloggers go on and on about, Fuckbuddy Rockbanddrummer, etc.
This is much less about physical type and more about status and persona.
In the end, it’s mostly a shorthand and shouldn’t be taken too absolutely or rigidly.
For women, it’s key to understand that men (at the individual level) do generally have two ladders, a sex-only ladder and a sex+love/commitment ladder. Women need to understand which ladder they are on for a given man.
Same thing for men. They need to understand that the two most likely ladders they’ll encounter are the friends ladder and the attraction/sex/relationship ladder. (Of course there could be many more ladders but I’m keeping it simple.)
So, at its essence, this whole talk of leagues is more the market of two people, a man and a woman and what each wants or doesn’t want from the other and whether they can “strike a bargain” and whether that “bargain” is what both want.
Too many women mistake sex for interest in a relationship and too many men mistake friendship from a woman as a sign of potential sex and a relationship.
Agree with all of this strongly. The key part of “leagues” is whether or not it is realistic that this person would be interested in me sexually (for a guy) or interested in me for committment (for a woman). For example, if she and I were single I’m pretty confident Blake Lively would be “out of my league”. With her physical appearance and status, if I approached her and asked her out my base case is she would most certainly turn me down. The “penalties” for men and women getting their league wrong are different. Worst case, a man might get a nuclear rejection (hahahahahah, me go out with you, are you kidding) or be used as an emotional tampon. A woman may falsely think she can convert very low investment sex into a LTR or marriage.
#161
I suppose you can actually notice that the charts you linked to don’t prove that “men’s floor of allowable goes lower and lower the older they get”. Nor do they prove that “men always prefer youthful women and this only increases as they age”. By the way, these are two different statements.
#164
I don’t make the rules on this blog, so that issue doesn’t concern me. Having said that, you aren’t signalling any appetite for “spirited debate”. All you did was to roll out bogus statements about “whiny” men and horrid, negligent husbands to justify your “childfree” status.
The fact is that women do not all have the same type. Where I live they eliminated the “Sunshine Boy” for this very reason, while the Sunshine Girl has been running for 40 years strong and continues to do so. Some women prefer muscular male bimbos, some svelte hipster-types, some metalheads, some ghetto guys with their pants hanging under their bums, some older “silver foxes,” some guys around 21, etc. etc. etc. For men, they always prefer youthful women and this only increases as they age.
So in this sense, men are more selective than women are.
I agree on the concept of “type”, but your conclusion doesn’t follow.
If a woman prefers a certain type, and basically all men outside that type are excluded erotically for the most part, that’s *extremely* selective, because most men are selected out per se. It’s much more selective than men are, because men find many more women attractive — or at least do not per se exclude them — so there is a much larger pool. A woman’s pool when it comes to men is extremely small — much smaller than a man’s pool when it comes to women — and is therefore much more selective just in terms of raw numbers.
The difference, again, is between (1) per se exclusion of most candidates right off the bat (what women do) and (2) optimization within a larger pool of candidates (what men do). Again, OKC is a bad example, because that’s like a casino in terms of the odds for any individual man given the number of messages women in the top 50% or so get — so he’s going to emphasize on going for the jackpot. In the real world, it really depends on who is in the club/bar/party that night, who is standing at the bus-stop, or reading in the cafe or what have you at any given time, and so on. A man won’t walk into any of those situations and say “oh well, no attractive women here at all, ugh” — that’s pretty much never the case unless the women are all older (ah, yes, the bugbear of age, which I will get to in a minute). A man always has a pool, and generally he will try to optimize within that pool. A woman may not have any pool at all in some of those situations, and when she does have one, it’s small because it’s limited both by “type” and, within “type”, by the high attraction floor of hypergamy.
As for age — yes as noted above men do prefer younger women. But, men will choose older women when they have to, or when it’s all they can realistically manage. Again, OKC is not useful because it’s viewed as a casino by men. But in the real world, there aren’t that many 35 year old men dating 22 year olds. They are plenty who date 27 year olds. Many more than there are who are dating 40 year olds. So, yes, there is a sharp preference there, but it moves up as he ages (so a 40 year old with a 35 year old or a 45 year old with a 40 year old is common enough — but it’s true that 5+ in terms of the woman’s age is not common at all, and it has to do with men’s preference for youth — which is just a hard preference most guys have, just like most women have a hard preference for height. Sucks to be an older woman or a short man — life isn’t fair however.
#161 It’s not bulls- because it’s cows-. In the same way that it’s NOT the case that shorter men wouldn’t like dating taller women
http://nypost.com/2013/12/08/short-men-dont-stack-up-with-nyc-women/
it’s NOT the case that younger men wouldn’t be fine with older women, also. Men truly don’t care who they have fun with as long as they’re having fun, but they don’t want to waste time trying to have fun when they know for a fact from long experience that it’s not going to happen.
Some online dating services refuse to show a woman potential matches that are shorter than her even when she says she wouldn’t mind, because those services have been hit by lawsuits by more than one woman claiming fraud since the only guys that were contacting her were short. “80% of the guys are below average” in height, too, according to women.
In the same way, all the usual online dating services will try to match a woman with a slightly older man even if she says she would prefer a younger man, because they do know better than she does.
“Men’s floor of allowable goes lower and lower the older they get.” I think what you are trying to say with this floor statement is that the older the men the more likely the old men are to bother trying for an older woman. I can’t pretend to think you could possibly mean anything else, but I’m willing to hear otherwise. As it turns out, if you mean what I think, you are completely wrong. The older the man is, the larger the age discrepancy with the younger women he would prefer. You already acknowledged this fact, remember? ” For men, they always prefer youthful women and this only increases as they age.”
In large part men’s preferences are driven by experience. For example the older the woman the more difficult she is, not less. The taller the woman the more difficult. Etc.
“Another example is that a woman who finds herself in the SMP at 38 would be looking for a mate with in 5 years of her age, but is going to find that there are far more men looking past her and exclusively pursuing women ten and more years younger (and yes, I have these male friends too). It’s women’s persistent drive to mate assortatively and men’s persistent drive to NOT do so that creates the imbalance imho.”
This is from the thread’s new participant, “J” or “Jen”. She has contributed a series of content-free truisms about the perfidy of husbands, the hypergamy of men, and simplicity of male desire (“physicality”) vs. the richness of female desire (assortative selection of looks, brains, values, and achievement). I’ll comment only on the above quote, as it is a dominant attitude amongst the 38 year-old never-marrieds one encounters in a place like DC; it’s less dominant in an environment like NYC, where women are more willing to look the other way on age if a guy has the requisite money, and there are a lot of guys in NYC with a lot of money.)
Note that HUS is discussing assortative mating this week, so we are enjoying a fine harmonic convergence. Cool stuff.
It’s an odd comment, Jen’s, for several reasons:
a. as noted by others, it assumes men and women interact with the SMP symmetrically. It overlooks the fact that a 25 year-old woman ignores the assorted 25 year-olds that she later believes are her peers at 38. And as noted, the 38 year-old males have a tendency to remember this fact and date younger because they can, and such is the market equilibrium. Fortunately we have observers like Jen who pronounce this fact as false, or simply inappropriate if not debauched. Women, you see, have always been the civilizing, moral agents of change, and we see this absolutely today in the SMP. Also, romance novels.
b. as an entitlement — “I should be able to find an assortative mating arrangement at 38 consistent with my opinion that this is how the sexual marketplace works” — this is a very, very good one. It is outstanding. It is a kind of rallying cry, accompanied in the dating environment with such other insights as “I’m amazing!” or “I’m finally ready but I won’t settle!” or (my favorite from Match.com) “Wants kids? Definitely!”. So I applaud wholeheartedly the assertion of this form of entitlement thinking, devoid of observation and historical fact, because absent entitlement thinking, who or what could possibly advance an agenda to improve the sexual marketplace? See above: women are our agents of moral change.
c. it is completely at odds with how a divorced woman who has been married 10 or more years and has a couple of children, thinks. Completely. The entire context of the comment is that of a superannuated college girl saying “Gimme Gimme Gimme.” What a woman of 38, who has been married, and does have children, asserts is something entirely different. She will seek a man she can trust, admire, be attracted to; if she’s educated, she will have clear expectations about conversational intimacy, educational and professional compatibility, and parenting values; living styles (having a home that is designed, considered and attractive, perhaps a second home, certainly a rhythm of domesticity that may involve a beloved ski mountain, a preferred beach, a small hotel in Paris); if one takes money out of the equation (which Jen cannot do with her model because her 38 year-old superannuated college girls haven’t bothered to save or make any as they work for the government, in dead-end soft corporate jobs, while traveling the world spending what’s left over; the fraction of these women who even own a home is astonishingly small) she is focused on something that the Jens, and their ilk in the last desperate push for pregnancy and the call option on mid-life retirement, cannot even comprehend: she wants a man with A Track Record, A Body of Work. She wants a man who has not fiddled and played, because she herself has not fiddled and played. She’s married, built a home, built a career perhaps, birthed children: she’s a *grownup* now. She wants to date *grown-up men*. These men could be 38, but in all likelihood they will be more like 48 or even 56. (She also knows that an older man will be happier with her sexually, and she wants a monogamous man, not a superannuated college playboy.) Such a woman has zero — zero — in common with Jen’s superannuated college girl who’s “Ready!” to settle down with her assortative-mating peer.
d. Maybe there are 38 year-old perpetually single men who are ready to Man UP! and grant Jen’s 38 year-old her assortative mating peer. Call me crazy, call me naive, but in 30 years of building companies and interacting with large institutions, I’ve never met an accomplished 38 year-old man who had never married who represented good marriage material. I’ve met a few guys who are gay, and I’ve met a few with substance-abuse or psychological issues. I know a few who are highly accomplished (I think there’s at least one in our group here) who are not marriage material *because they have rejected its terms and constraints*. Thus an accomplished 38 year-old man who has never married is rarer than Jen’s bland objective permits. However, as noted above, as an expression of entitlement, this mythical “peer” of the “play-times over, I’m amazing, marry me now, you’re fertile right?” female is perfect. It’s a terrific springboard from which to launch shaming exercises at 38 year-olds who prefer to date younger, and 48 year-olds who prefer to date younger and more mature (than our superannuated college girl archetype). Or men of any stripe who simply don’t view their role as helping our superannuated college girl cram 20 years of adulthood into the next three, because her fertility and looks are failing.
e. If Jen’s definition of “assortative mating” for the 38 year-old female, who is ready to get pregnant and retire, and therefore IT MUST HAPPEN, were grounded in reality, I have a question that is consistent, I suppose with my limited intelligence. WHY ISN’T IT HAPPENING? I dunno. It just seems that if assortative mating of the superannuated, property-free, savings-deficient, gaining-3-pounds-a-year female college student were reality, we would, like, see some of it. Instead of a swelling population of hypergamous ex-singles market virtuosi who misunderstood the fleeting nature of love, life and youth.
CODA:
Obviously I date in this group, though I generally avoid anyone who has never been married and actually, like, ya know, have actually done something with her life besides consume stuff. Consider this a field report, if you wish. I absolutely affirm Jen’s archetype of the entitled 38 year-old who is whiffing socially according to her definition of assortative mating. She’s right there. The problem is that Jen is up at the plate looking for some soft-tossing BP stuff, and the guys on the mound are throwing 100.
I do believe assortative mating is a fact, and perhaps even a compelling one socially in the USA today, but we need to look more carefully at who the real peers are in this SMP. Again, if Jen’s model were correct, her Brown U. film studies major would be pairing up at 25 with her male Wharton MBA, children and mortgage and Volvo to follow. However, that Wharton MBA is unproven at 25 so he is ignored, Film Studies Girl proceeds with more established men, and … then wonders at 38 why “all the good men are taken.” Well, the good men at 38 may have already put in 15 years of 80-100 weeks, discovered the joys of $30K/year preschools, long sexual droughts as the children come and the wife is unavailable or still remembering how painful childbirth was (“get that dick away from me!”), maybe nearly died a time or two. And maybe watched a couple of his friends blow up their lives getting mixed up with such a 38 year-old college girl living in a crappy rental with a dog that needs a bath.
Alpha females who win in the SMP today do achieve their coupling, but they do it long before 38. This has been hashed out and shown so many times I worry I’ll be banned for even referencing it.
Sorry for the long post, per usual. But as Jen explains, when it comes to women, I — like most men — am only interested in looks. I mean, that’s basically it. I just look at a woman’s figure and face and my brain shuts down LIKE TOTALLY. So I can’t properly comment on why men and women do what they do, in fact. And I cannot possibly inform a discussion v. a woman claiming to be interested in a stable match-up with a man while simultaneously asserting delusional prejudices: if men weren’t so incredibly shallow, there wouldn’t be any problem, eh? It’s probably just my solipsism that led me to attempt to comment.
As OTC said, your rejection rate is going to be through the roof in any case…. might as well go after what you like. Throw in the fact that women tend to vary a lot more in what they’re physically attracted to than guys are… so you never know if you just might be the niche she physically goes for. Add in a little status and game, and she might even be thinking she’s the lucky one.
Agree with this. There really is no harm for a guy to aim high as long as he can stay cool about rejection and adjust downward as needed.
But the second anyone questions if a women is shooting out of her league, suddenly you’ll hear things like: “Giving a rating to someone’s attractiveness is soooooo dehumanizing. We just need to treat people like human beings.”
Unless that human being is an average guy. In that case he just needs to learn his place… cuz, like, assortive mating.
LOL, yup.
I tend to think that many men actually don’t have the most accurate perception of what their “league” is because many think purely in terms of what they believe is important and not in terms of what women want or find attractive. The best analogy I can use would be a woman who is greatly out of shape talking about how much love she has to give. It may be the case, and she might really be the sweetest, most loyal woman in the world, but if that is not what a man finds attractive, it won’t matter.
The issue of men becoming disincentivized and checking out is important because a lack of motivation/ambition will usually be one of the main things a woman finds actively unattractive about a man. The things that make men and women attractive to one another are actually highly controllable, which means that if a man is striking out a lot, he can improve his prospects by improving himself.
Don’t advertise “women are welcome too” if they’re not. Or perhaps what you’re looking for is an echo chamber instead of respectful but spirited debate. Only women who nod along to everything you say are welcome? OK, then explicitly say that. I do read Jezebel and I used to frequent the Facebook page and comment there but ultimately I disagreed with a large portion of the audience on the issue of sexual monogamy, so I stopped commenting there. I understand that as a childfree secularist egalitarian indifferent or even outright hostile to marriage who nonetheless is also staunchly pro-monogamy, my views are rather unconventional and there’s no place I fit 100% in. That doesn’t stop me from exploring all the different blogs and websites, though.
Jen, I’ve had no issues, but I am very hands off. You do need to distinguish between those of us associated with the blog and other commenters. I’m not going to police other commenters who you think are going on the attack. If you are a big girl, you are free to respond in kind.
Oops, sorry, I see Novaseeker already made the same points.
#157 very good points all around. It is simple for an unattractive man to be friends with women; it really is. In many ways, although this low-probability route has a low probability of success with any one woman, the overall strategy has the *highest* probability of eventual payoff for *him* since essentially it is the only strategy that keeps him in the company of women. “Maybe I’ll get out of the friendzone eventually” is the rusty bicycle path from the suburbs into the downtown city goal. If it’s all he’s got, then that is what has the highest probability of working for him, even though it is painful for him and doesn’t work as well for him as a better ride would if he could. For example in contrast, attractive men lounge in their limousine ride the whole way, insulated from the friendzone suburbs, with women limo drivers.
Maybe one reason Game was less relevant to earlier generations was because bicycle men rationally reckoned it would be too difficult to take the time to scrimp and save to buy their own limo. But now Game is a mere bus ticket away. It’s potentially mass transit for masses of men.
” I think what you are trying to say with this floor statement is that the older the men the more likely the old men are to bother trying for an older woman.”
jf12, I don’t know how you could possibly extract this from what I have said OR the link I have provided. I am saying the exact opposite so I assume you have a reading comprehension issue.
“In large part men’s preferences are driven by experience. For example the older the woman the more difficult she is, not less. The taller the woman the more difficult. Etc.”
And what makes you think women’s preferences are not the same? I know in my case for instance when I was dating again after my breakup I actively avoided same-height men due to poor experiences with same-height men including my most recent ex.
“as noted by others, it assumes men and women interact with the SMP symmetrically. It overlooks the fact that a 25 year-old woman ignores the assorted 25 year-olds that she later believes are her peers at 38.”
False. The marital age gap has lowered over the last 50 years because women are selecting for men closer to (within 2 years of) their age. Again, because women including young ones prefer to date their equals.
“This is from the thread’s new participant, “J” or “Jen”. She has contributed a series of content-free truisms about the perfidy of husbands, the hypergamy of men, and simplicity of male desire (“physicality”) vs. the richness of female desire (assortative selection of looks, brains, values, and achievement” – deliberately discarding where I stated that men also value common interests.
The rest…. tl;dr.
BuenaVista, I’ll give you this; I agree that the 38-year-old probably has higher standards for her partner (for instance, professionally) than her younger peer.
“lack of motivation/ambition will usually be one of the main things a woman finds actively unattractive about a man.”
No. You’re conflating attraction with desirability. You’re confusing SMV with MMV.
I write about Fuckbuddy Rockbanddrummer because I’ve known lots and lots of men who fit the archetype: Plays in a shitty garage band. Barely made it out of high school. Dumber than a box of rocks. Fun to hang out with. Musically talented, but because he’s not really ambitious, he’ll be in shitty bands playing bars and county fairs for the rest of his life.
Fuckbuddy is also very attractive and has more pussy than he can handle. His SMV is through the roof. His MMV is quite a bit lower, though.
#177 “I tend to think that many men actually don’t have the most accurate perception of what their “league” is”
This seems to be the crucial division between men commenters and women commenters. The men know that men are much better at rating, and given 100 men and 100 women, the men would accurately line themselves up with their matching-level partner. But the women consider 80% of men below average, and even if the women intellectually acknowledge that fact, their feminine imperative drives them to make illogical leaps “Maybe 80% of men really ARE below average “in terms of what women want or find attractive”!!”
Assortative mating to men means musical chairs: each one get one, as you can, and sooner rather than later. Assortative mating to women mean: 80% of the chairs are icky, so some lucky guy will have several girls on his lap, and many other girls will stand around waiting their turn on his lap.
185 —
The problem is that the way that men and women, respectively, rate each other (what criteria they are using) when they rank everyone up differs, so you really have two sets of rankings: the way it looks to men (based on peer looks) and the way it looks to women (based on a bunch of things). Couple that with hypergamy, and you get what we see.
“All you did was to roll out bogus statements about “whiny” men and horrid, negligent husbands to justify your “childfree” status.”
Childfree status does not need to be “justified.” It’s a source of pride for most people who hold it, not shame. I think the issue is that you’re projecting your own values onto me. A person’s reasons for being childfree are going to be a completely different than the average woman (who wants kids’) reasons for being presently childLESS. Those reasons usually involve wanting to be financially secure and in a stable relationship and home large enough to accomodate children before having them, which is logical. Then there is also the other reason; women know that there are no guarantees with men so they make sure they can support themselves and are educated enough should the marriage or relationship not work out. This is logical imo and I don’t understand how it gets so much derogation here.
@deti “No. You’re conflating attraction with desirability. You’re confusing SMV with MMV.”
I don’t think so, actually. Most women are not looking at men in pure SMV terms because most women are not looking for purely casual relationships with men, the anecdotes in the op notwithstanding. I’m talking about general LAMPs factors.
@jf12 ““Maybe 80% of men really ARE below average “in terms of what women want or find attractive”!!”
Question for you. If 80% of women become obese, does that mean that 80% of men should find that attractive?
What is an is not attractive to the opposite sex is not dependent on what happens to be currently available. Both men and women are becoming less attractive to one another on the whole.
“I write about Fuckbuddy Rockbanddrummer because I’ve known lots and lots of men who fit the archetype: Plays in a shitty garage band. Barely made it out of high school. Dumber than a box of rocks. Fun to hang out with. Musically talented, but because he’s not really ambitious, he’ll be in shitty bands playing bars and county fairs for the rest of his life.
Fuckbuddy is also very attractive and has more pussy than he can handle. His SMV is through the roof. His MMV is quite a bit lower, though.”
So you basically described my ex that I was with for 2.5 years. He was a drummer, dumber than rocks, barely scraped through high school, good-looking, etc. To be fair though he was quite funny and charismatic, and gave the impression of being polite, humble and a nice guy (at first). He’d had a lot of girlfriends and fuckbuddies but inevitably got cheated on by every – and I do mean every – girlfriend he had ever had. I think the issue was less with his earning potential and more with his overall irresponsibility. He was a stoner, slob, heavy smoker, etc. He also had anger management issues that were not immediately apparent and he’d actually been ordered into counselling for them by the government.
So I agree with your assessment.
#181 I’ll restate your floor statement in the way you indicate, since you didn’t bother explaining. Firstly, we were talking about men’s low attraction floor in the SMP, since most men consider most women attractive enough for sex/dating/seeing if there’s potential, and you agreed. And you agreed that an important aspect in what men consider attractive is youthfulness, reflected primarily in age gap in preferred pairings. Hence, to be consistent with what you were saying you agreed with in these discussions, you HAD to mean by your floor statement that “Men’s low attraction floor of allowable age gap goes lower and lower the older they get.” I understand it is nonsense and that you want to disown it, but that is what you meant, unless you bother explaining other than dismissing “I meant the opposite.”
I know, I know, what you really want to say, because of the apex fallacy, is that “It makes me sick that those attractive guys get all those young girls. Ha! Just wait til they get older! Then {here comes the restated floor statement} Those older attractive guys will find that they have to settle for not-so-young girls. Ha! That’ll show them, then!”
#188 Answer for you: if 80% of women are obese (if! hee hee) then yes 80% of the sex that men will strive for will be with obese women. Even obese prostitutes charge for it.
@ Denise:
deti “No. You’re conflating attraction with desirability. You’re confusing SMV with MMV.”
Denise: “I don’t think so, actually. Most women are not looking at men in pure SMV terms because most women are not looking for purely casual relationships with men, the anecdotes in the op notwithstanding. I’m talking about general LAMPs factors.”
Yes, you are confusing attraction and desirability.
For the uninitiated, the blogger Donalgraeme came up with five main attraction vectors he acronymed as LAMPS (Looks, athleticism, money, status and power). Desirability traits are things like fidelity, bravery, thrift, perseverance, commitment, self control, kindness, etc.
Ambition and motivation are provider traits which signal the man’s ability to furnish a woman with security and comfort. They have nothing to do with money (having and commanding material resources) and power (confidence, dominance, influence).
I can understand, though, why women consistently confuse these two broad categories of attraction and desirability though; and it is because women eventually get to the point of evaluating a man as a whole without picking apart what they like/want about him. But at first, women are evaluating a man for attractiveness, not desirability. At first, women are judging men pretty harshly on the attractiveness/SMV factors at the outset.
“Men’s low attraction floor of allowable age gap goes lower and lower the older they get.”
Ahh, so I see that it IS a reading comprehension issue on your part. I did not say that. I said “Men’s floor of allowable [age] goes lower and lower the older they get” and then linked to an article showing that older men spent more time messaging women on the lowest end of the age spectrum in their allowable age group than they did women closer to their age that they would likely have more success with.
I’m willing to allow that perhaps the real world works differently than OKC, but if the pairings are closer-in-age in the real world, imo, that’s largely or at least partially because of female-driven preferences, not male ones. The men are taking what they can get.
In #82 link there is this gem after 4 months of contacts.
http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/okcupid_fake.jpeg
The apex man got infinitely times more contacts than the nadir man, and the lowest woman got as many contacts as the second-highest man, and the second lowest woman got more contacts than the highest man.
But I guarantee women’s takeaway is “Look at all the contacts the highest women get! And some of those were from apex men. In contrast, most of the contacts that the lower women get come from undesirable men. I bet the lowest woman only got contacts from the lowest 80% of men. That proves she is like totally discriminated against by apex men, the only men that really count.”
Jen 189:
The point is that women like Denise come here and other places, and assert that Fuckbuddy isn’t attractive because he lacks motivation and ambition. That’s just not true. Guys like him get laid like tile all the time, girlfriends or no. The main reason is because of his status (takes a little talent and dedication to get some competency on an instrument) and power (it takes some big brass ones to get on a stage and perform for others, he’s the center of attention) and, occasionally, looks.
Interesting that you were with a Fuckbuddy Rockbanddrummer for 2.5 years. I’m going to regret asking this, but… why did you stay with him for that long? I have my preconceived notions but I’d love to hear your reasons.
#193 When talking about low floors getting lower, you don’t get to decide to redefine lower. Although you are duly permitted to disavow and change the words in what you wrote.
Moi: “as noted by others, it assumes men and women interact with the SMP symmetrically. It overlooks the fact that a 25 year-old woman ignores the assorted 25 year-olds that she later believes are her peers at 38.”
Jen: “False. The marital age gap has lowered over the last 50 years because women are selecting for men closer to (within 2 years of) their age. Again, because women including young ones prefer to date their equals.”
You know, since you don’t read paragraphs (according to your prior comment), I will be brief. Your comment doesn’t address either premise in my text. The marital age gap may have shrank, but it has nothing to do with the swelling population of women who hit their late thirties thinking that the marriage gap should still shrink, and your stridency on the matter. Nor does it have anything to do with the dating habits of one percenters at age 25. It’s not clear you’re smart enough to understand this, but I thought I would give it a shot.
#63, #194 “Men are the hyperselective ones”, “The men are taking what they can get.” We aren’t rubbing your nose in it for fun; we’re trying to help you recognize there is a grave problem in your thinking.
Interesting that you were with a Fuckbuddy Rockbanddrummer for 2.5 years. I’m going to regret asking this, but… why did you stay with him for that long? I have my preconceived notions but I’d love to hear your reasons.
I am curious as well.
“Interesting that you were with a Fuckbuddy Rockbanddrummer for 2.5 years. I’m going to regret asking this, but… why did you stay with him for that long? I have my preconceived notions but I’d love to hear your reasons.”
I have a psycho mother and came from a highly toxic and abusive home, so I have a higher-than-normal tolerance for bullshit.
Having said that, I wasn’t his longest relationship! He’d had a very attractive girlfriend in his late teens/until 21 who was with him for 3 years but eventually ended up living in Europe as a trophy wife. Presumably, she outgrew him.
“You know, since you don’t read paragraphs (according to your prior comment), I will be brief. Your comment doesn’t address either premise in my text. The marital age gap may have shrank, but it has nothing to do with the swelling population of women who hit their late thirties thinking that the marriage gap should still shrink, and your stridency on the matter. Nor does it have anything to do with the dating habits of one percenters at age 25. It’s not clear you’re smart enough to understand this, but I thought I would give it a shot.”
Sorry BuenaVista, but you’re just plain wrong. Women at 25 will be marrying two years later on average (in the United States anyway). And they’ll be marrying men who are their age or a few years older – their peers. The 1% are the 25-year-olds dating 38-year-old men: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130506114052.htm.
I thought you’d be smart enough to understand this, but evidently not:-p
USA lost 405,000 KIA or MIA in WW2. Population in 1945 was ~150 million. I don’t think it was that significant on the marriage market, even when you factor in age.
Now, if you look at comparable #s for Russia in WW2 or France/Britain in WW1, the %s of marriagiable men lost are much higher. It really did have an effect there.
I agree that the 1945-1965 economy was a more significant driver of the anomylous MMP of the US in that period. 50% of global GDP was American in 1945. It ticked down to below 30% during “stagflation.” then surged back to around 35% in the mid-Reagan era, and has been in decline ever since.
“When talking about low floors getting lower, you don’t get to decide to redefine lower. Although you are duly permitted to disavow and change the words in what you wrote.”
You mean adding in the 1 word that should go without saying, because the initial post was about age?
#201
“I have a psycho mother and came from a highly toxic and abusive home, so I have a higher-than-normal tolerance for bullshit.”
That’d explain your ability to tolerate the company of toxic, abusive people you can’t get away from. It doesn’t explain your lack of willingness to separate from such a person even though the opportunity was always there.
I’m willing to allow that perhaps the real world works differently than OKC, but if the pairings are closer-in-age in the real world, imo, that’s largely or at least partially because of female-driven preferences, not male ones. The men are taking what they can get.
It’s driven by both — as is all mate selection. Women are also taking what they can get, especially once they get north of 30 or, even more, 35, believe me. The point, however, is that there are plenty of relationships that are -5f in the real world, and not many that are -10-15f until you get to older age groups (where it is more common) — and that therefore the fact that guys message very attractive young women in a casino like OKC isn’t really relevant.
Really solid run of comments.
@Morph/Badpainter 108/109 +1
I think the “carousel” concept gets overplayed, but also tends to get painted as a fixture that women consciously board, ticket in hand. This is not the case. That wicked horsey-humper is fueled by a series of choices – that often don’t *feel* as such since they are merely defaulting to the pretty lies (“sexual experience is important”) and pluralistic ignorance (“everyone is doing it”; “I guess this is just how ‘it’ works”), but nevertheless look a lot like the schematics of a ONS: “It just kinda happened”. The carousel spins, but she likely hops on and off, between LTR’s or other life changes. Its cumulative. She may not ever “decide” to be a rider, nor will she retrospectively see those decisions for the pattern that it is, but that lengthening isle toward the alter provides for a lot of time to both ride and sit on the sidelines and “date” and reside in LTR’s, to the point where she can’t see the carousel through all of the horses.
@Eric 121 +1
Good summation of the female projection of male attributes. This is one of the major blind-spots of women, particularly the achievement-oriented career women. By the time they are confronted with some measure of the truth they are too invested in their CV of credentials, adventures, travels, etc. that they often flat-out refuse to believe that men don’t consider those things to be attractive. Something must be wrong with those men.
@JF12 125 +1
Indeed, hypergamy is ingrained in men at an early age with the simple and obvious headwind of competing with older men for female attention. Starts in grade school. The divergence in age-directed attentions starts with women responding to those older men and never really changes. Men look younger in part because they see how it works, “poaching” goes down hill. The SMV curve divergence merely amplifies this. And yes, many men have vivid memories of those days in the early 20’s. But aiming out of their league? Nonsense. Apex men aim high, or up. Because they have success at it. But in-between they also clean up with women 1-3 points below them. Which puts downward pressure on the market for the more average of men – which isn’t to say, plain or overly “beta”. These average guys know full well that aiming high is simply not an effective investment of time/energy/resources. I think game aware guys do alter their efforts in this regard, but these are not the norm.
@Starlight 153 +1
Yep.
@JF12 173 +1
Something like 18% of men are 6’0 and over. Most women want 6’0. It sounds nice, tall, but not greedy tall like 6’4″. She can wear heels, etc. That cuts out 4 out of 5 men before “go”. Picky? Naaaa. When will men stop showing preference for thin women of certain proportions? Perhaps when women stop showing preference for tall men of certain status. After all, we are all equal. Its not like she needs a big man to fend off guys with clubs looking to drag her to the cave across the valley. Right.
@BV174 +1
One for the guidebooks for sure.
Re: Men threatened by $, “success”.
I know what it takes to turn scratch. Call me a cynic, but most of those things are not particularly positives. Most are of very little interest to me in a partner, a GF, a wife. If I’m looking for a business partner, then sure, a good-looking power-woman is gold. But I’m not. The “skills”, drive, “smarts”, etc. have value – I’m a cerebral guy, I like to connect in the brain space, but they are too often inseparable from the ego, self-absorption, the self-promotion, the competitive, and confrontational; and a host of other masculine adaptations that just don’t get a rise out of me – above or below the waist. Even if I don’t want kids, I’m still going to filter for the feminine, nurturing qualities in a GF/Wife. And as BV notes, often in the younger cohorts, these accolades and “skills” don’t even come with financial maturity or real-world savvy, but rather just a pattern of consumption and indulgence. Pass.
hoellenhund2, you’ve got it backwards. It’s not like the guy wasn’t toxic or abusive on the first date! He was charming and funny and came across as humble initially, (arrogance revealed after getting to know him better). It doesn’t surprise me that you don’t get it, you probably come from a normal home. I lived in said household until the day my mother attempted to stab me with a pair of scissors at 20 years old. People from toxic homes usually tolerate guilt and obligation and emotional manipulation from their family members for years before they finally walk away. It’s normal for us. Why should it be any different with romantic partners?
#187
Your first comment to this thread clearly indicated that childfree status is something that needs to be justified, and can be justified by the negligence and laziness that supposedly characterizes “many husbands”. In other words, childbearing would be acceptable if only men would finally man up and become great husbands and fathers, which they are mostly not, in your view.
Jen:
“I have a psycho mother and came from a highly toxic and abusive home, so I have a higher-than-normal tolerance for bullshit.”
HH: “It doesn’t explain your lack of willingness to separate from such a person even though the opportunity was always there.”
Yeah. HH is right. With all due respect, answer the question. Why did you stay with your stupid BF? I have my theories which I’ll share later.
#208
The difference is that you can leave your “romantic partner” whenever you want. There’s no law, rule, social convention or tradition holding you back. But you cannot leave your parents even if they’re toxic because you’re not legally an adult and you have no resources and probably no place to escape to. I understand your ability to tolerate toxic behavior when you have no option to run away. But it doesn’t explain why you put up with that alpha thug for so long. You had a choice.
Jen:
Your explanation at 208 doesn’t answer the question. It’s closer, but still not there.
You’ve explained (part of) why you GOT WITH HIM (In fact, you’ve given us the sanitized, “nice girl”, fit for public consumption answer of why you got with him.)
I want to know why you (really) got with him, and then why you STAYED with him.
Who says I didn’t attempt to separate from this person? There were 20 or so breakups before the final one. Part of it was pragmatic (we were living together at that point), and part of it was optimism (if we work on it we can get to a good place.) When you’ve invested in someone and you get attached, it’s not always so easy to “just” walk away, even when you know you should. Indeed, I’ve never been very good at breaking up with boyfriends (this may make me atypical, I’m really not sure). I have usually preferred “ghosting” or getting dumped, it’s probably my attachment style.
This will explain it better than I can: http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/1/29/building-a-lasting-relationship-the-three-pillars-of-commitm.html
#213
Why were you invested? Why did you think the two of you can get to a good place if you work on it? Why did you get attached?
hoellenhund2, you just ***don’t get it.*** You CAN’T. I continued a relationship with my mother for years after I moved out, even when there was a court case involved. I was in my 20s! I was no longer dependent on her, either. And she was mentally abusive and occasionally still physically abusive though nowhere near as much as she had been when I’d lived under her roof. I found the strength to walk away at 26, but she called me saying her boyfriend had died and I was there for her and tried to repair/restore our relationship for another year before cutting the cord for good. That wasn’t even that long ago. Are you really so obtuse that you cannot grasp the concept of human attachment? Do you have Aspergers?
#214 I have already stated what his good traits were in a previous post (came across as unassuming, humble, was funny). It’s called “the honeymoon phase.” You build a lot of memories during it, usually. Go on vacations, etc. Then your lives get intertwined, you meet each other’s families, befriend each other’s friends. I’ve already told you I’ve never been good at breaking up boyfriends so this should give you a hint that I’m not cold or detached and DO form attachments.
#215
I understand why you felt attached to your mother. It’s not equally clear why you felt attached to that alpha lout for such a long time even though his undesirable characteristics were there for you to see.
@ Denise
Pretty sure this is basically what happens in certain parts of the Midwest/Great Plains.
#216
You wrote that he was dumber than rocks, barely scraped through high school, had a lot of girlfriends and fuckbuddies, a stoner, slob, heavy smoker. All this must have been obvious to you when you got to know him, and yet you stayed with him.
@ Escoffier
That would mean 75 million men. The casualties would be concentrated on men in their late teens and early 20s, so most would be from a population of ~10 million men. That means 4% of the men get taken out. That’s actually quite big, especially considering that the low percentage of singles would amplify the sex differences, leading to earlier pairings, further lowering the percentage of singles, and amplifying the singles sex ratio, etc…
hoellenhund2, we had a pretty decent first year of the relationship. It was fairly low-conflict for the first year and we developed a good friendship. Certainly enough to be optimistic that whatever less-desireable traits he had we could work on together and come to an understanding. This is the nature of relationships in general. I have a much more responsible boyfriend right now and we have a very good relationship but that’s not to say it’s been entirely smooth-sailing. We’ve had periods of high conflict and periods of adjustment as well. The difference is that my ex was stubborn and set in his ways and not open to compromise. His attitude was “my way or the highway” and you can’t grow with people like that, which led to the eventual demise of the relationship.
Well, that and his temper which REALLY reared its head after year 1.
@ Jen
And men are the ones making poor choices…
#219 actually, we are still friends today albeit we see each other very sporadically. I still think he’s quite funny and talented, he’s just a really shitty boyfriend and tenant.
Friends with benefits?
#221
Yeah, relationships have such a nature if the woman feels strongly attracted to the man for some reason. If the attraction isn’t there, the woman normally ends the relationship quickly and isn’t very tolerant or forgiving to the man’s various flaws. More precisely, things don’t even get to a stage that one can call a relatinship. I’m pretty sure there were men you rejected instantly. What was different about them? Did they have much worse flaws?
It should be noted that this guy is basically a textbook example of a guy with lots of outer game but poor inner game. He seems to have been quite successful in the SMP (at least two decently long relationships with attractive young women).
Jen:
All this sturm und drang, and you still haven’t given the real reason you got with him or stayed with him.
Starlight 153
We see things so similarly.
#222, they were high school sweethearts and she left him at 20 because they were no longer compatible. How is that a bad choice?
Nemesis and HH have actually gotten closest to the real reason Jen stayed with her douchebag ex.
Jen 154
“So in this sense, men are more selective than women are.”
I’d say that in terms of their lower looks floor, men are more selective than women but when you add in all the other things that women look for in a man that then women’s floor of how many guys pass it is higher (more picky) than that of men. That’s the essences of hypergamy: the floor based on all factors that go into attraction and love is higher for women than for men, on average.
deti, I am beginning to think you guys have some real issues that you project onto all females. I mean, nevermind female behaviour in general, if any ONE woman’s behaviour doesn’t correspond with your stereotypes of how you think ALL women are, you simply ignore what she is telling you. I get attached to all of my boyfriends. This one relationship lasted so long because I had to do something unforgiveable for him to break up with me permanently. I don’t initiate my breakups. I never do.
“I’d say that in terms of their lower looks floor, men are more selective than women but when you add in all the other things that women look for in a man that then women’s floor of how many guys pass it is higher (more picky) than that of men. That’s the essences of hypergamy: the floor based on all factors that go into attraction and love is higher for women than for men, on average.”
I think you may be right about that. I do think men are easier to satisfy when it comes to relationships because their emotional and even physical health is less dependent on the actual quality of the relationship than it is for women.
@Jenn 155
“It’s interesting that the OKCupid result shows that women rated 80% of men as below attractive but were open to dating them anyways depending on other factors (this makes sense to me because each woman has her own “type” and the majority do not adhere to it), whereas men all agreed on the women’s level of attractiveness and only messaged the top 1/3rd.”
You’re confusing open to dating them with sending them a message (presumably in response), though some of those messages would lead to dates.
Your last statement is false. Men did not message only the top 1/3. You need to refrain from such false statements in the future or you will be viewed as purposefullly trying to mislead people.
Here’s the link: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
And even though the less-attractive women got a small % of the total messages, the total number of messages they get dwarfs the number of messages that the less attractive men get.
deti, I am beginning to think you guys have some real issues that you project onto all females.
Jen, we all have small penises that we are trying to compensate for.
#235: Lol!
“This one relationship lasted so long because I had to do something unforgiveable for him to break up with me permanently.
Jen, this statement makes you sound mentally unbalanced in the extreme. Too unbalanced to throw barbs.
“Jen, we all have small penises that we are trying to compensate for.”
Apparently so. (kidding!)
But seriously, this wasn’t my first long-term relationship, it was actually my second. The guy I had dated before him was an IT guy, very smart, and he wasn’t in the best shape. I was even younger when I dated that guy than I was when I dated my most recent ex. I already told you why I dated him in the first place (sweet, charismatic, talented, good-looking, and came across as unassuming), and why I stayed with him (I tend to get attached to my romantic partners and avoid breakups, and the relationship started out well). There is no ulterior reason. Those are the reasons.
@Jenn 164
Women are welcome but no one, man or woman, is welcome to come and distort things, like you did in saying that men only message 1/3 of women on okcupid. However, many things that are not agreed with or that might even be false will be allowed to stand on this blog because we want to allow the debate to go forward. But persistent patterns of saying false things will not be allowed.
I already snipped off part of a comment that went too far in speculating about you personally in a negative way so that is sign enough that you are welcome to comment here but you need to be more careful in your statements going forward.
I’ll take your explanation that you mistyped when you meant to say “many husbands” instead of “men husbands.”
Jen, this statement makes you sound mentally unbalanced in the extreme. Too unbalanced to throw barbs.
I think she said that every one of his GFs cheated on him, and included herself in that statement. Guessing it was done to trigger the breakup. That’s not that uncommon — it also happens in marriages.
@ Han Solo 228.
As they say, great minds think alike.
I honestly enjoy reading what you write. You use clear concepts that are easy to understand IMHO. I hope most women are able to take your post for what it is instead of reading too much into it.
“Jen, this statement makes you sound mentally unbalanced in the extreme. Too unbalanced to throw barbs.”
Liz, with all due respect, I’ve seen your comments here, and you come across to me as a groupie.
No, we had broken up several times but as we were living together, they never seemed to stick. So I told him that I had already began dating others and that was the nail in the coffin, so to speak. That gave him the impetus to finally move out. It’s really not as dramatic as it may have come across, although it certainly seemed that way at the time.
“Women are welcome but no one, man or woman, is welcome to come and distort things, like you did in saying that men only message 1/3 of women on okcupid. However, many things that are not agreed with or that might even be false will be allowed to stand on this blog because we want to allow the debate to go forward. But persistent patterns of saying false things will not be allowed.”
HanSolo, you have a problem with generalizations that are proven with data if you disagree with them? You DO realize that that came directly from the OK Cupid blog itself, right?
Gentlemen, given Jen’s comment at # 223 is it safe to say we have here an example of Alpha Widow?
“I already told you why I dated him in the first place (sweet, charismatic, talented, good-looking, and came across as unassuming), and why I stayed with him (I tend to get attached to my romantic partners and avoid breakups, and the relationship started out well). There is no ulterior reason. Those are the reasons.”
I’m going to make a run at something here.
You got with your F-buddy because he was hawt. He was great looking and exuded raw sexuality that you couldn’t resist. Then you stayed with him for the toe-curling sex. As HH pointed out above, you overlooked all his flaws and maltreatment because you were very, very strongly sexually attracted to him. I’d venture a guess that your F-buddy was monumental in the sack, you loved every bit of the sex he gave you. That’s why you got with him, and that’s why you stayed. You stayed until you just couldn’t take it anymore; you reached a breaking point where the sex wasn’t worth it anymore. You found a more attractive man, and ended things.
That, I surmise, is how it went down.
HanSolo, looking at the meme in 195, I know it’s probably fake but let’s assume that it isn’t. The most attractive woman got 48.72 more messages than the least attractive woman. The most attractive man got 38 more messages than the least attractive man. You don’t see a discrepancy there?
Women aren’t the initiators and are less proactively seeking men in general, attractive or not. Men are proactively seeking women but basically, only the hotties, at least as far as OKC is concerned.
Deti, seriously now, stop projecting your insecurities onto me. We met in a rock club. He was “so hawt,” yes. We liked the same music, that was obvious, so we got to talking, and I gave him my number. He called me the next day which impressed me because most men nowadays only text. I hadn’t gotten an actual phone call in forever. We agreed to go on a date the following Friday. On the date I found out he’s in a band. We got along well. We went on a few more dates and 3 weeks later made it official. That is how it started.
The relationship actually became sexless during our cohabitation and even before that because this particular person is only sexual when there is novelty present. I didn’t know this until we’d been together for a long while. We were sleeping together once a month, and not by my choosing. The sexlessness contributed to the dating of others. We were already in a high-conflict relationship at that point, but the sexlessness didn’t help.
I find it interesting that you can’t accept that people are complicated and do not always fit into formulas. [edit: cut out the aspergers stuff to talk about the whole group or any particular man here
#241: I come across as a groupie? That’s awesome! First time in my life anyone has ever said that to me.
I will add that the dwindling sex was easier to rationalize before we lived together because there was a bit of a distance between us and neither of us had a car (yet, he got one while we were living together). So we didn’t have many sleepovers. I believed that once we had more access to each other, that would resolve itself but the reverse actually happened. It went from twice a month to once. You never really know someone until you live with them in my view. There are definite red flags and indicators and things but it’s still a bit of a crapshoot.
Badpainter, what exactly makes someone an alpha? My current boyfriend is better-looking than he was, more educated, and 4 inches taller, so was it the fact that he was in a band, or a smoker? I’m just curious because you guys seem extremely eager to label people.
There’s no reason to be that hostile to Jen, H.
That said, Jen, I’d say that when you come onto a site that has a long history of discussion that you’re not familiar with, starting off with guns-blazing disagreement is a great way to start off on the wrong foot. Especially since, pretty much, everyone of us here has heard the specific point being made before (e.g., “all guys shoot out of their league”, et al) and have dismantled it a hundred times.
You know, like, say hello first or something.
When people pulled that crap on HUS, male or female (e.g., Doug1 or Piper or whatever) I found it annoying and counterproductive, and were glad they are gone. (Yeah, we all know that eventually, even if you disagreed 2% with Susan and were totally civil, you’d be banned anyway — but that’s not the point here.)
I can’t speak for the site owners, but a lot of us do miss the honest back-and-forth between men and women. It’s difficult to keep that running over time as we drill down to divergent and irreconcilable views, but we can keep the civility over disagreements.
Jen:
Ha. the “he’s mentally ill/has small penis” shaming language.
Jen, I’m just an observer. I take what I know and what people reveal, and draw conclusions from it. That’s all. I’m wrong sometimes, but I’ve been right most of the time here and elsewhere.
I’ll take your words at face value for what they’re worth; but I can tell you that from what little you described and before you fleshed it out, your situation looked very much like the “girl wants to fix, tame and take care of bad boy who sexes her up juuuuuust right/alpha widow” situation I’ve seen play out over and over again on these boards.
OffTheCuff, I hear what you’re saying and you do have a point, but read comment #1. Now imagine you’re me. You don’t think that’s a “guns-ablazing” horrible and overly simplistic assessment of all women under the age of 32? No offense but I really don’t see how you guys don’t see how you’re asking for it, at least occasionally.
OTC:
Yeah, but watching Jen get her “I’m a special snowflake” on has been fun.
It wasn’t that long ago that I myself was in the dating trenches (after all, I’m still in my 20’s, I’m only turning 28 next month), and it’s not as you guys make it seem (average “beta” guys are just cast-off victims of women “riding the carousel.”) Relationships end for all sorts of reasons and many times it’s been average guys DOING THE DUMPING. That’s not to say they don’t have their (legitimate) reasons but they ARE getting the opportunity to date and many of them are out there looking for their best possible match, just like women are.
It’s not really about labelling specific people (“HA HA you are alpha and you are not, you suck”), but naming a pattern. There is a certain type men who do well with women, so much so, that they find it effortless to find a new sex partner.
Now, we could call it something like “person who finds a new partner easily” or “SMV leader” or whatever, but, it’s cumbersome, so shorthand words are used to refer to a concept. Any sufficiently complex topic requires some sort of jargon.
#246
You do fit into a formula. Your childhood was screwed up, so you turned into an alpha widow. Were you raised by a single mother btw?
It wasn’t that long ago that I myself was in the dating trenches (after all, I’m still in my 20′s, I’m only turning 28 next month), and it’s not as you guys make it seem (average “beta” guys are just cast-off victims of women “riding the carousel.”) Relationships end for all sorts of reasons and many times it’s been average guys DOING THE DUMPING. That’s not to say they don’t have their (legitimate) reasons but they ARE getting the opportunity to date and many of them are out there looking for their best possible match, just like women are.
No, not really, but this depends on perspective.
Rather generally, people who have a lot of success in this free for all system tend to see others who have a lot of success in it, while the majority who is not having that is invisible. This is a constant problem — perspective tends to rule one’s perceptions of the current market. It’s a terrible market for people who are not at the very top of their game, full stop.
Jen:
“read comment #1. Now imagine you’re me. You don’t think that’s a “guns-ablazing” horrible and overly simplistic assessment of all women under the age of 32? No offense but I really don’t see how you guys don’t see how you’re asking for it, at least occasionally.”
You read a general assessment of a situation, and you took it personally.
Generalizations are useful because they describe overall trends, patterns and markers.
You’ll have to do better than “Not all millenials are like that”.
Something like 18% of men are 6’0 and over.
Really? is that all? I never would have thought the percentage was so small.
OffTheCuff, is it not the case that MOST men could find sex effortlessly? It’s a question of standards. A guy who has a policy of “no fat chicks” may not get sex as effortlessly as some others, but that doesn’t mean he’s “incel.”
Perhaps your issue is with those men who are having sex with the women you consider beautiful with less effort, as opposed to just men having sex easily.
Really? is that all? I never would have thought the percentage was so small.
Likely a visibility issue, I think. Also, it skews different in different racial populations, so likely higher percentage among AAs.
Jen 252.
While you have a point (the article is worded strongly, and I don’t agree with 100% with it), you are missing out on the idea of “turf”.
Had Han isn’t posted this it as a comment on Jezebel or Huffington Post or Slate or HUS, it certainly would be “guns blazing” because of the turf it was played out. But it’s not. It’s posted here.
It would be like me taking some ridiculous Jezebel article about how all men are rapists, me going in with a new account and taking it down point by point. I’d be rightfully mocked… because I didn’t understand the turf.
A smart debater works their way into the crowd first, and subverts it from within.
hoellenhund2, are you by any chance single? Also, what is an “alpha widow” is it someone with an attractive ex-boyfriend? Yep, I have one of those. I also have less attractive exes. Do they not count for convenience or what? Am I a “future alpha widow” because my current boyfriend is conventionally attractive and had options when we began dating, even though he’s responsible? Help me understand your logic, or more accurately, lack thereof.
I don’t know, OTC. I rather enjoy talking points instead of critical thought, and the high point of my day is ad hominems and tu quoque (don’t worry, Jen, I don’t know what it means either) in lieu of logic and wit. (This is because I’m a guy, and all I really care about is looks; disregard her personal story about living for 2.5 years with a guy who had nothing to offer *except* looks and orgasms, because it’s not her fault MOMMIE WAS MEAN she’s really not a victim of her own choices and who said girls should have more abstract thinking ability than Death Valley has water?) Jen lacks the self-awareness and reading skills to understand that she exemplifies in her choice of the abusive, shit-for-brains-but-hawt cliche Roissy has ever trotted out. She doesn’t realize that she just spent two hours walking into a self-characterization as a manosphere cliche. So the amazing thing is she volunteered the empirical case study data that makes Roissy’s excesses seem understated. (Remember, this means anyone who understands this hates women, possesses the empathy of sociopaths, and is compensating for a small penis.) I hope she hangs around and continues to insult Liz and complain about postings that have too many paragraphs, while demonstrating an uncanny ability to misread simple graphs of the sort that are taught to seventh-graders.
I mean, really. I am Jen’s “groupie”. I want more. I have to admit, at this point, she’s just an anecdotal proof of appeal of Game. As I have never met a complete stooge with rocks for brains but a reasonable physique, who has zero life skills or accomplishments other than the ability to score HAWT CHICKS like Jen, and I totally believe her when she says that she made him pay cash rent and he wasn’t just squatting there in exchange for a few orgasms per week … oh. What was I saying? TL;DR. Plus I only care about “physicality.”
Escoffier,
WRT WW II casualties. You need a multiplier, probably doubling the KIA/MIA number for those crippled, blinded,mained, mutilated or driven insane. So figure a million and a half out of that age cohort.
Jen:
Jen:
No, a man cannot have sex easily. Sex is not on tap for men, as it is for women.
As for your apparent suggestion that a man can snap his fingers and get a 1 or 2 to sex him, this isn’t analogous to a woman’s ability to obtain sex easily. A man has an attraction floor below which he won’t go for sex. So if the 1 or 2 isn’t attractive to him, he won’t have sex with her no matter how pent up or hard up he is. A woman can obtain quick sex 2 or 3 points above her own SMV. So it’s just not a good comparison at all.
Second, for most men getting a woman into the sack is like having all the stars align. If he’s an average Joe he has to do everything EXACTLY right, or he is blown out of the water.
The relationship actually became sexless during our cohabitation and even before that because this particular person is only sexual when there is novelty present. I didn’t know this until we’d been together for a long while. We were sleeping together once a month, and not by my choosing. The sexlessness contributed to the dating of others. We were already in a high-conflict relationship at that point, but the sexlessness didn’t help.
Jen, sincere question here. Did you make any attempts to introduce any novelty such as different outfits? How often did you aggressively initiate versus wait for him?
BuenaVista, reading comprehension issue? “a guy who had nothing to offer *except* looks and orgasms” – read: relationship ended up SEXLESS, therefore OBVIOUS LACK OF ORGASMS. And nothing to offer except – exactly! This is why we remain friends.
“because it’s not her fault MOMMIE WAS MEAN she’s really not a victim of her own choices” I don’t recall saying I’m a victim at all? It was an experience, I learned from it, I enjoyed the initial part, it didn’t work out, that’s life, and I’m in a good place and a happy relationship now. No victimhood here!
“two hours walking into a self-characterization as a manosphere cliche.” Except that I don’t fit your cliche, you’re just too obtuse and apparently plain old deaf to read properly. You have literally been wrong every step of the way. First you assumed that I was ugly and unable to attract a mate, which was incorrect. Then when it was revealed that I had an ex-boyfriend who was in a band, you assumed that I was his fuckbuddy groupie and stayed in the relationship for sex. That was disproven. When all else fails, just discard the actual facts and pretend your “formula” is working for you, anyways.
@ Jen
Well, she could have chosen someone better for a high school sweetheart…
Hopping off that point, high school SMPs are an interesting thing. People seem to have diametrically opposite experiences with high school SMPs.
My local high school SMP (in a decently academic high school in a well-to-do suburb) was far better than the college SMP that I witnessed. I believe this was due to two factors. First, there was the fact that sexual attraction wasn’t messing up people’s choices (few of the students had sex in high school, so “SMP” is somewhat of a misnomer). Second, there was the fact that students were together for so long, creating familiarity and making it easier to approach (no worrying about cold approaches), but not so close and personal that students would friend-zone themselves.
On the other hand, a lot of guys I have talked to seem to have gone to high schools where the SMP was terrible, with jocks cleaning up and everyone else being left out…
“Jen, sincere question here. Did you make any attempts to introduce any novelty such as different outfits? How often did you aggressively initiate versus wait for him?”
Yes, I was turned down in lingerie as well at one point. It was humiliating at the time and I don’t really want to relive the experience. The man had no sex drive outside of the initial “thril” of a relationship by his own admission.
#233 “I do think men are easier to satisfy when it comes to relationships” Men think so too. It’s easy to agree!
@Escoffier 203
This is missing the point in regards to attempting to explain why the marriage age went downduring WW2. The main factor is the number that were out of the market for those years because they were serving (although some that were serving would still be in the market if they stayed in the US). In the link below it shows that there were about 4 million in 1942, 9 million in ’43, and over 10 million in 44-45. US population at the half-way point of WW2 was closer to 135 million, divide by 2, leaves 67.5 million males, roughly. If you assume a roughly equal age distribution (it’s wrong but close enough), then the number of men aged 18-31 (14 years, or 20% of the male population, assuming 70 year average life expectancy) would be 13.5 Million. So taking 10 million men out is a big deal, though of course some of those would already be married, or older, or stationed in the US.
Main point is that a big portion were taken out of the dating pool for several years. This would make women outnumber the men at home and give the men more relative power than they would have with more men present. And what happened? The marriage age dropped during WW2. Who knows? Perhaps some were due to young soldiers marrying before going off to war.
Now, having 400k lost from the young male population of roughly 13 million, plus others serving in Korea or stationed overseas would still have some influence on the postwar mating market but that’s not what I’m claiming (at least right this moment) was the biggest change. I’m saying (speculating) that it was removing a huge portion of the eligible men from the market during WW2 is what caused the age to lower and caused a shift in the perception of women, that men were scarce and they needed to latch onto one soon. I’m guessing that that attitude lingered for 10 or 15 years postwar and then the effects of feminism started to make women put off marriage more and more as the 70s were entered.
Now I do think that the good and rising wages in the 15-20 years postwar did enable people to marry younger in a culture that valued that, but I don’t think that is what caused the initial large dip during WW2.
Thoughts?
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/ww2-by-the-numbers/us-military.html
“and I totally believe her when she says that she made him pay cash rent and he wasn’t just squatting there in exchange for a few orgasms per week”
I can’t afford the whole rent. When he moved out I got a roommate. Everything was split halfway. Do you really know women this desperate or do you just not have any experience with women whatsoever?
“Then when it was revealed that I had an ex-boyfriend who was in a band, you assumed that I was his fuckbuddy groupie and stayed in the relationship for sex. That was disproven.”
Well, to be fair, it hasn’t been “disproven”, but merely “rebutted”. I told you I’d take your words at face value for what they’re worth. That doesn’t mean I believe the story.
I have to agree with BV that it’s quite difficult to see an attractive woman in her early 20s staying with a douchebag in a band just because you were “really attached” to him. Your story doesn’t add up, in particular the whole “doesn’t want sex unless there’s novelty” bit. Sorry, don’t buy it. Douchebag idiots with no ambition live for the booze, bongs and babes party train. They’ll have sex pretty much whenever it’s on offer, which for them, is all the time.
It is interesting. 6’2″ sounds like a nice reasonable height for a husband. Over that, It falls to 6%, i.e. ~94% of US males are under 6’2″. The 20-29 cohort is actually averaging down. (1.7% are over 6’3″ as opposed to 4.2% in the 30-39 cohort) Likely due to greater overall ethnic diversity, i.e. populations with shorter averages having higher birth rates. (US Census Data).
Good new is: you find a man over 6’3″ and you really have found a bit of a unicorn, statistically speaking.
#248 Re: “the dwindling sex was easier to rationalize before we lived together” I see the attempt by deti to get you to cough up the hairball “Ok, fine! It was the tingles after all!” didn’t work they way he planned, but it did produce something. This fact of Drummerboy’s lack of tinglalingaling seems to be more relevant than anything else you had mentioned earlier.
hoellenhund2, my upbringing was not cut and dry. I was raised by my stepdad and my mother, but he was stationed overseas for much of my childhood because he got transferred to Geneva when I was 5 (he was a CFO of a Fortune 500 company). My mother was incredibly mentally abusive of him as well, and today him and I are close. So why do you think he stayed with her so long? (Keeping in mind that I know you’re emotionally [edit: cut the adhoms and deal with the argument; last warning]). Also, is he an “alpha widow” as well, given his long-term involvement with my beautiful-but-deadly mom?
BV: “I hope she hangs around and continues to insult Liz and complain about postings that have too many paragraphs, while demonstrating an uncanny ability to misread simple graphs of the sort that are taught to seventh-graders.”
It was a compliment.
I’ve always wanted to be called a groupie. All those years of servicing random male members of garage bands and the best I could ever get was “party girl”…though more typically I was just “nice” or “fun” and so forth. The “groupie” title had always escaped me.
I want a JFG teeshirt now damnit!
#263:
Baby, an alpha widow is a woman who obsesses in public about a prior flame who was so good in bed that all future and former men are measured against him — such as the socially acceptable “IT guy” who was just okay physically (i.e., Wonderbread, not artisanal pumpernickel) in bed. Alpha widows are the sorts of women who keep, on their bureaux, nude photos of their ex-husbands.
But of course, I have Asperger’s, I never get dates, I’m a creepy old man, I have no dating options, and my dick is undersized. That’s why, in the past seven days I’ve been texted (i.e., propositioned) by a) a Ph.D who speaks five languages and whose last five stations were Beirut, Amman, Lahore, Kabul and Benghazi; an SVP of Neiman’s; a senior partner of a global law firm; the founder/CEO of the largest woman-owned PR firm in NYC; a 767 Captain for Delta who was the youngest instructor pilot in the US airline industry; a clinical psychologist, ex-JHU; a prominent software CEOs mistress; the Russian/CIS girl I visit in central Asia when on business; the 24 year-old who tends bar in my prairie safe-house; and … and … oh.
Sorry. I’m lost. TL;DR. Also, I only care about “physicality.” My ex-wife, who is smart, used to say, “Project much?”
I realize my errors. I needs to stop shaving and start smoking (more), sos I can get a free bedroom in some girl’s apartment. Roissy keeps slamming me and deleting my posts for being too much of a Nice Guy(Domesticated Drafthorse Variety), and as of today, I have seen the light. I’m glad we’ve had this talk.
Badpainter, what exactly makes someone an alpha?
Ha. You have no idea how much that question has been debated at various blogs. Probably millions of words have been typed about alpha vs beta. Assuming your question is sincere, this is one of the best write-ups in my opinion:
http://therationalmale.com/2012/02/21/defining-alpha/
Rollo has written extensively on the subject of alpha and there are many other blog posts covering various facets.
I’m just curious because you guys seem extremely eager to label people.
Ahhh. The “labeling” thing thrown out there with a negative frame. It isn’t about labeling. It is about categorizing. Knowledge and understanding about “how something works” comes from analysis, and a combination of logic and inductive reasoning. That process must begin with categorizing. Creating some taxonomy/classification scheme is necessary before we can analyze and discuss intelligently. This is core to human knowledge, and is done in most every discipline.
For example, in chemistry you have the grouping of the elements into the periodic table and groups like the inert gases (neon, argon, helium, etc.) and the alkali metals such as sodium and potassium. God forbid we engage in the dreaded labeling to understand the commonalities and better understanding of chemical reactions.
In the stock market, you have stocks grouped into categories like small-cap, large-cap, value, growth, momentum, sectors like consumer staples versus utilities. The point is to categorize to better understand a particular stock’s behavior under certain variables. For example, utilities are interest rate sensitive, consumer staples are not.
Biologists do the same with the animal kingdom with genus, species, etc.
The point of alpha vs. beta is it is a tool to categorize and understand the EXTREMELY DIFFERENT SEXUAL ATTRACTION RESPONSE most women have to different men who tend to exhibit very specific communication and behavior patterns. It is obviously useful to men to understand why a woman will feel an immediate attraction to one guy and go fuck him the club bathroom (extreme example) whereas she is going to make some other guy date her for 6 months to have sex.
@ Elspeth
It’s actually somewhat higher these days, especially when you exclude old men (who were shorter). Around 30%. http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0209.pdf
Deti, I see there is no point with you guys. You are so deeply entrenched in your false, deeply flawed worldview that you will discard anything that doesn’t match up to it. I have a female friend who is blonde and thin and gorgeous and she has been with my ex’s friend for 5 years. I don’t see what she sees in him, but she never broke up with him. He doesn’t make a ton of money and he’s not even still in the band (he was when they began dating). Human attachment is not as mercenary as you guys are making it sound. I can only assume that you all have very little actual dating experience (not hard to believe given that it’s your primary complaint here), and stereotyping helps you deal with that. I can’t continue talking to people who are going to take everything I say that’s true and call it a lie just so they can avoid coming to terms with the fact that maybe women are forming genuine attachments to men who are not them.
#260 “is it not the case that MOST men could find sex effortlessly?” The good news is that Jen cannot be a man pretending to be a woman, because he could not type that without crying too hard from laughter or sadness. The bad news is that Jen, being a woman, suffers from the apex fallacy, and can ONLY see apex men.
#278: I’m make up the t-shirt, Liz. Do have your husband pour a bucket of 90-degree water over it, though, and forward a selfie.
You read a general assessment of a situation, and you took it personally.
Generalizations are useful because they describe overall trends, patterns and markers.
It is very important not to take generalizations personally and project yourself into the situation. For whatever reason, this seems more difficult for women to do.
@ Jen
Err no… Although most men might not be incel, it takes a lot of effort for them to find sex, even if they’re willing to go for ugly women…
I could provide pictures of all involved, but I would have no guarantee of it not circulating everywhere first of all, and second of all, what would it prove? Even if I provide pictures of all involved and everyone being mentioned including myself, you’ll still say it’s “fake” because it “doesn’t add up” to what your manosphere masters have drilled into your head about how all women behave. And you have very little actual experience to compare it to.
The marriage age dropped during WW2. Who knows? Perhaps some were due to young soldiers marrying before going off to war.
It may just be the prospect of mortal danger prompts one to have those “what’s it all about?” internal conversations instead of waiting until the first signs of aging. In other words, the war may have prompted men to grow up faster.
@Starlight 240
Thanks. I would agree that this and other similar posts can be very helpful to women to understand what’s going on in the dating, sex and marriage world. I think that the biggest thing that women need to do is to open their minds and remove their ego from the equation and be willing to rationally analyse what is going on. Of course, some women are willing to do this, others are not.
Some have the philosophy of sugarcoating advice to women to help the medicine go down. That may work but too often that approach has too much sugar and too little medicine and too often the supposed medicine is outright “poison.”
That’s what a lot of dating advice for women gurus do, they sell false hope that women can “have it all” and get an out-of-her league man instead of a more realistic (yet still optimistic) strategy like what I outlined in my post on girl game being so easy and yet so hard:
http://www.justfourguys.com/girl-game-is-simple-yet-so-hard/
This confusion over age differences at marriage is pretty dumb.
Women that do get married might do so with guys within a year or two in age. She’s 28, he’s 30 – fine.
But women aged 38 don’t get married to a man 38-40, in fact they don’t get married at all on a statistical level.
Process the stats and get a 1-2 year age difference at marriage if you want, but what does that matter at the age when marriages stop happening?
Dalrock on his site and Han on this one have shown marriage rates vs age. Basically if a woman isn’t married by around mid thirties, it is not likely to happen ever. I’m sure Han has the correct links at his fingertips.
This mystical ‘Jen aged 38′ can look for acceptable by her standards men in the range 38-40 all she wants. But they aren’t going to marry her. All Jen the commentator’s glee stating that women set the market place might work when the women are younger, but it doesn’t when they hit mid thirties and up. Because the men set the market then.
Who do you think does all the shrieking about, “where did all the good guys go?”?
It’s the mid-thirties and up Jens who find that the men they believe that should be assortatively looking to woo them up, have either legged it or got married years earlier to someone else.
It’s pretty obvious really, one of the only reasons men look to get married (generally speaking) is to have a wife to have kids with. Such men are not going to be looking to marry a women whose fertility is plummeting, they just aren’t.
I too have seen POF profiles of women wanting marriage and kids in their late thirties and beyond. Crazy stuff. The feminists that led them to believe that that was medically likely should be tarred and feathered by such women. They have been betrayed by their sisters.
Jen
“HanSolo, you have a problem with generalizations that are proven with data if you disagree with them? You DO realize that that came directly from the OK Cupid blog itself, right?”
You said that men only message 1/3 of women on OK Cupid. That is outright false.
From the link I provided, I quote, “2/3 of male messages go to the top 1/3 of women.”
Got it? I expect an acknowledgement that you were wrong since I have now clearly proved it.
#259 Re: “Really? is that all? I never would have thought the percentage was so small.” It’s actually only about 14% of adult men in the US, currently, that are over 6’0″. And keep in mind you are among the most enlightened women as to her own apex fallacy, afaik.
The feminine imperative matrix is alive and well, which is one reason we try to keep it at bay with our 10 foot poles.
@ deti
Are you sure about this? Remember the anecdotes from Sassy and SnarkWhaat about guys who completely lost their sex drive? Methinks that many garage-band players, hister cads, opera dudes, etc. have low sex drives, especially when the Coolidge effect isn’t helping. Jen’s experience seems to be a perfect example of this…
Apologies. Correction to #279:
“Alpha widows are the sorts of women who keep, on their bureaux, nude photos of their ex-husbands *or write about them at length on the internet.*”
It’s been real. I’m off to buy a lift-kit for the truck, some Red Man, a couple copies of Hustler to occupy the evening, and to place a call to my mom in order to tell her she never loved me enough. It’s be an early evening because I have an appointment at the urologist tomorrow, who found a way to bill Medicaid (I’m unemployed) for my penis pump.
That said, I’m convinced Jen is a fabrication of the Four Guys, and really 4G, one should not fashion false flag internet personae simply to perpetuate the cliches of your “false, deeply flawed worldview.” Don’t you realize? With such as “Jen”, “you can’t make this stuff up.” I’m onto you, pal. BV out.
That said, I’m convinced Jen is a fabrication of the Four Guys, and really 4G, one should not fashion false flag internet personae simply to perpetuate the cliches of your “false, deeply flawed worldview.” Don’t you realize? With such as “Jen”, “you can’t make this stuff up.” I’m onto you, pal. BV out.
Fuck. You got me
I thought I could pull it off.
*Facepalm*
Sir Nemesis, I figured it was all the weed he was smoking (2-3 times a day).
@Jen 245
OkCupid distorts things from real life because there is very little cost to message a hot woman. It takes 1 minute or less to click on her profile and write something. Also, no risk nuclear rejection for everyone to see. So it’s like buying a lottery ticket. But some men will send the less attractive women messages too and those will tend to be the ones that respond to them and they might actually go on a date. Also, some men will message less attractive women looking for sex.
Anyway, there’s a big difference between sending a quick message to lots of women (the shotgun approach) and not being willing to go out with the average women.
I still sense you haven’t read my post on how women fuck hotter men. That means men are fucking women that aren’t as hot as themselves. Please read it:
http://www.justfourguys.com/study-shows-women-fuck-hotter-men/
I want a JFG teeshirt now damnit!
The design is in development
#287: Listen, Jen, “Pictures or GTFO”.
I’m behind on my errands because I’ve been drinking since breakfast, my mom was mean to me last night, and our mystery-fake-alpha-widow keeps walking the line of manosphere cliches.
#288
I’d say the factor that played a bigger role was young men’s bigger economic opportunities due to the end of the Great Depression, which, as we know, coincided with the beginning of the war.
@ Jen
I’ve heard from a guy with firsthand experience that the most effective dating strategy for a guy in San Francisco is to get a college degree, and then to become a stoner. Girls will hookup with a stoner, and then want to stick around when they find out he has a college degree.
But of course, I have Asperger’s, I never get dates, I’m a creepy old man, I have no dating options, and my dick is undersized. That’s why, in the past seven days I’ve been texted (i.e., propositioned) by a) a Ph.D who speaks five languages and whose last five stations were Beirut, Amman, Lahore, Kabul and Benghazi; an SVP of Neiman’s; a senior partner of a global law firm; the founder/CEO of the largest woman-owned PR firm in NYC; a 767 Captain for Delta who was the youngest instructor pilot in the US airline industry; a clinical psychologist, ex-JHU; a prominent software CEOs mistress; the Russian/CIS girl I visit in central Asia when on business; the 24 year-old who tends bar in my prairie safe-house; and … and … oh.
BV,
Curious to get your thoughts on something given the demographic of women you socialize with. Do you find that for say the 35/40 to 50 age group, regardless of their intellect, their career success, their education, their credentials, and contrary to official feminist orthodoxy that a fairly significant amount of their self-perception is still related to successful men like yourself seeing them as viable sex partners. This is pure hypothesizing/speculation on my part but I am wondering if past a certain age 35ish to 40ish that many women in fact get much more sexually aggressive because they need that affirmation that men stll strongly want them sexually?
#281 eh what? What numbers are you looking at to get 30%? They have rounded up and down to nearest inch, btw. The percent of men who are 6’1″ or taller is given as {89.0, 89.0, 87.4, 91.6, 93.6, 94.9} for roughly equal age ranges, simple numerical average 90.9, i.e. only 9.1% of men are 6’1″ or taller. From the other side of 6’0″, 82.3% are under 6’0″. Given the one inch slop from rounding, I claim the best number to use for “over 6’0″ tall” is the average of 9.1% and 17.7%, i.e. 13.4%. I said 14%, which is probably correcter.
“That said, I’m convinced Jen is a fabrication of the Four Guys…”
TedD has been rather illusive lately. (Seriously though, hoping all is well.)
@ jf12
Oh, I was using the 5’9″ data and subtracting it from 100% to get those 6’0″ or taller.
Do 5’9″ men actually exist?
#297 Re: “I figured it was all the weed”. We are an informative lot, so here’s some more info from me. If a man, especially a young man, is not seeking sex about once a day at least, then he has a problem and it isn’t weed. Some claim weed helps them score. Anyway the problem is either ill health or burnout from getting it elsewhere or both. The timing (early 20s?) of his problem suggests probable burnout. All true simple burnout cases are completely resolved by abstinence for a week or so. Yes, that fast.
On the other, hairier, hand, a lot of young men, especially nowadays, are totally depleted in zinc, for an example of burnout resulting in health issues. From puberty onwards they had ejaculated like five times a day, using up their bodily reserves within a few years, even on a reasonable diet. The sure sign of this kind of zinc deficiency is instant cure upon supplementation, or uncharacteristic horniness after an oyster buffet.
FWIW, I agree with Nemesis that some hipster guys might have low sex drives when no novelty is present. And as disagreeable as Jen can be at times, her feeling bonded to a guy or not wanting to leave for a long time is plausible. I’ve seen women that won’t leave a ne’er do well. Now I would think that often the sex is good but there could be cases where it wasn’t but the woman, for various reasons, still was attached to him.
#307 I can’t see 5’9″ men as real options, so no they don’t exist for me.
I am not understanding why being child-free would be a source of “pride.” Unless you really wanted one and thought that by not having one you were doing something incredibly noble. I suppose a Malthusian might count.
Otherwise it makes no sense.
By all means, if you don’t want children, don’t have them. That’s absolutely the best decision all around. But I see nothing to take “pride” in. It’s not in any way an accomplishment, or an example of moral virtue.
It’s a damn shame that an interesting comment thread devolved into a discussion of Jen’s personal life… boring.
#245 false equivalencies abound in every application of women’s apex fallacies. The correct numbers from this true experiment using fake profiles is that the most-contacted woman got 11 times as many contacts as the *second* least contacted woman, while the most-contacted man got 38 times as many contacts as the second least contacted man. Overall the women got 40 or more times as many contacts as men of the same level.
#312 it illustrates.
Han, speculating here, but something like 12 million men wore the uniform in WW2 (when you count all those demobilized before the end of the war). So, with only 400K dead (and I don’t know how many so wounded that their SMV went to zero or lose—let’s say 600K though I think that’s probably very high—that leaves 11 million men who had some alpha cred simply for having served.
There was a massive demobilization until the Korea invasion in June 1950, but we never ramped up back to 1945 levels.
I think you make too much of the dead+overseas factor. By the mid 1950s the total US military was back up to around 5 million, but our highwater mark in Korea was 325K. And, lots in Japan and Germany, to be sure, but still most were based in the US.
So, perhaps what impacted the marriage rate was women having their hypergamy sonars pinged by so many men in uniform.
@OffTheCuff
We, of course, don’t have to agree on everything but I’m curious what you don’t agree with in this post. Perhaps it’s an actual disagreement (which is fine) or simply how I communicated something or you interpreted it.
@Esc
That could be for the postwar period but what is your explanation of why the age of marriage dropped so much DURING the war itself?
Also, regarding the postwar plateau of low age, I do think that it could have been a bump in status for the men due to them having heroically served, with society at large and women specifically honoring them and feeling tingles over it. Plus, throw in the improving earnings for men from 1945-1973. But that would speak to my larger point of when average men have more power they choose to marry earlier. When women have more power (70’s and later), they want to delay. Thoughts on that?
#317 “when average men have more power they choose to marry earlier”
The larger pattern is that early strict monogamy is what most men would choose if they could, e.g. the 80% of men who are below average. But effective polygamy is what most women would and do choose in order to get a piece of the other 20% of men.
Go Hanna! Who’s she kidding? “Why was I so cautious?”
A mere twenty-four (graduated BA Hons in Studies, University of Bums-on-Seats ca. 2012)? Even for a brit ladette, she’s a bit of a beast. Almost spherical.
And as for her pal Lily .. Articled Clerks are the drunkest of the drunk. Any city-center boozer is filled with these shrieking nitwits, any night of the week, in herds. Worse than nurses or football fans.
#317 re: off to war. “Well, I did it. I signed up, and I’ll be shipping out in less than a month. I no longer think I can wait until I come back, and so will you marry me?” Probably a combination of mate-guarding on his end, putting her in the fridge during his deployment, and starry eyes and stress on her end, her hero leaving her but she might get his baby.
#307 FTW!
#318
“effective polygamy is what most women would and do choose in order to get a piece of the other 20% of men.”
Do most women think that they’d be wanted in even a soft harem of the top 20%? *facepalm*
I really doubt it would happen for even half of women. And those that manage it will only have a limited shelf life before having to search for their next slot, till they can’t find one.
Any guy with an eight on tap isn’t going to ring up a six very often, certainly not if she wants more than to turn up to be pumped. Just what glorious future of polygamy are most women looking for? Once again, I don’t think that women have thought it through. Many of them will just finding them scrubbing floors, lorded over by the harem ‘ladies’. Only so many fairy caves are magical enough to qualify for alpha visitation.
It’s like women watching Downton Abbey, they all imagine they’d be Lady MuckityPoshDress swanning around with Lord McDreamyDeepPockets rather than the pot scrubbing wench boinked by the boot boy. Then sacked and booted out when she gets pregnant.
@jf12 318
I agree that women’s choices often lead to defacto polygamy (serial or otherwise) but I don’t think they’re consciously thinking they want to share the top men (you aren’t necessarily saying they are consciously thinking that). It’s simply that they want the top men and are willing to put up with crap along the way or delude themselves and end up sharing, either at the same time (harem, top men spinning plates) or top men dating one woman after another.
‘visitation’? damn, should have been ‘spelunking’. Type too fast, regret at leisure.
Ref WW II and post-war military:
When I was in, 69-71, an E4–corporal or specialist 4th class–earned enough money to support his family if he got food stamps. He qualified by the numbers but some food stamp offices were assholes about it anyway. Probably filled with draft dodgers and anti-war assholes.
So while a uni might have started the tingles–Joan–Joanie Phonie–Baez used to say girls say yes to men who say no–to service and maybe it wasn’t all one way, a guy in uniform was a lousy prospect unless the prospective wife had a job.
One of my part time jobs was Army Emergency Relief, and other kinds of social work for troops and their families. Fighting with Allotment Inquiries for guys overseas whose families hadn’t seen a check in three months….
Oh, yeah. Took a couple of years to reach E4 rank. Worse before that.
Most of the married guys in stable situations–in CONUS, usually–had outside jobs.
Not many guys, knowing the score, were likely to tell a woman it would be fine.
And at the time, with a standing military of at least 3 million, most of them two and three-year guys, we were cycling a million a year in and out. You’d get drafted at, say eighteen or nineteen, serve two or three years–you could, sometimes, get what you wanted if you enlisted, which cost an extra year or so. But even if you hadn’t been drafted at, say, nineteen, the likelihood of getting the notice in the next month was always there. And everybody knew it.
So we were knocking the hell out of the earliest-marrying cohort with the usual results on the mean.
You might get an accompanied tour–means family goes with you–to Germany or some place. Wife would be working at the PX or an aide in the elementary school or something. Could be an adventure if you didn’t have kids.
The idea that a soldier was a provider was nuts.
Any attraction was something else.
‘course it could be that many of them were good guys and they loved each other and were willing to put up with the crap. My folks’ first place had bathroom privileges, then they got a place with kitchen privileges, then he shipped out to the ETO. Sept 44. Only shot three times.
#325 lol at kitchen privileges. I know what it means, but still lol “Oh honey! Look! Now I can make you sandwiches at home, like I’ve always wanted to!”
Escoffier,
Regarding the postwar U.S. economy and that 1945-1970s time period…here is some interesting reading:
http://alephblog.com/2011/11/30/a-large-middle-class-isnt-necessarily-normal/
http://alephblog.com/2014/01/30/equality-and-its-after-effects/
#322 the inexorable arithmetic of hypergamy is, that as we see in practice in ghetto fatherhood, it is not the 10 scale guy that shuffles from crib to crib. It’s the remaining lone non-jailed 6 guy who stayz with a little bit of Monica on Mondays, Erica on Choosdays, Rita on Hump Day, etc.
#303, Morpheus:
Given my glib posing and other self-indulgences today, I will be inordinately brief.
First, however, I’m really pissed off no one got the Johnny Cash allusion. Just for the record.
To your question: In respect of StrongIndependentWomen, who comprise my dating cohort, and what they really want:
They all blush and stutter when I bait them with comments to the effect that “Women don’t really care about feminist orthodoxy, it’s not a philosophy but a set of talking points a chimpanzee could recite, and women just want to be treated well and respected for what they do. Red or white, what shall I order for you, dear? And some foie gras?”
Every single one of the women I know at present is a sex-positive, pro-abortion, Obama-voting, Hillary-loving, secular, blah blah blah standard-bearer. I think this is simply of a piece with single women being obsessed with the opinion of other women. My approach is to ignore the feminist prattle, be a gentleman in the public sphere, be better at housework than they are, and never, ever, ever forget Roissy #14. N.B., however, I have no designs on marrying one of them. I’ve been to that barn fire. So my experience is of little utility to the marriage-minded man. If I were to be married, I’d like a little less noise and more legal protection on the back end.
The most avowed feminist and atheist I know at present nonetheless wanted to talk for an hour the other night as to why C.S. Lewis is worth considering. Now. She works for Hillary, or did, and thinks the world of her. I say things like, “What is Hillary good at? What has she done? Oh, yes, just half a glass, thanks.” When she launches on one of her anti-Christian spittle-inducing screeds, I tend to listen genially, then laugh and present a counter. Whereupon she largely shuts up and asks interesting, challenging questions, which is the part I enjoy. Then we fuck like wild animals. YMMV.
Basically, as someone from a long line of original-issue feminists (my great-great aunt started the first women’s college in China (and was murdered by the Japanese for doing so; every woman in my family has had a job or published since the 19th century)), the current-issue dogma produces characters who can’t think their way out of a paper bag (see above example) — or regard feminist compliance as a rule on the order of “My handbag should match my shoes.” (I.e., I think it’s more of a social convention than a heartfelt rule of life.) They know it’s a scam at this point, and they are not looking to date PajamaBoy. So I just ignore most of it. I do appreciate a pleasing handbag and a great pair of shoes. But have you read, dear, Chesterton or Salter or von Mises or Blake?
The only price one pays for ignoring feminist obeisance occurs during a fight or breakup. Then I’m suddenly a member of the patriarchy. To which my response is, “Funny, you didn’t think that in the private lingerie dressing room at Bergdorfs. Remember? You were on your hands and knees and I had my fist in your mouth.” But the reason why most of my friends are poor marriage material is that I know — and I truly KNOW — that if we were to divorce I would suddenly be painted as a patriarchal monster, and the court system would enforce that point of view. This is just another unfunded option women hold in this society. So, no thanks.
In sum: sure, they want affirmation from the opposite sex. Who doesn’t? Isn’t this the bottom line of all of existence? Isn’t it universal? Feminism cannot replace this desire. One of my closest friends, at this point, is a 60 year-old lesbian who must weigh 220+ and is 5’2″. We spend a couple weekends each year doing the culture-vulture thing. *SHE* enjoys my company at the opera or the local cafe. So we all want affirmation, and thus I just accentuate the positive, ignore the noise, *and* raise the discussion to something worthwhile. Most people, of any stripe, have an ability to drop superficial politics if one demonstrates a willingness to laugh at superficial politics. The question I have is, So why don’t more people laugh at superficial politics?
I guess I wasn’t so brief. I must have a small dick and hate my mom. But I laugh at these deficiencies, too.
They may know it [feminism] is a scam, but they also know that the quiver full of no-cost options, State enforcement, and other tidy little conveniences are fed from that beast. Or one of its bastard offspring. Its part of why they may have been betrayed by their sisters as it relates to certain things, i.e. the 38 y/o ready (now) to receive her husband, but will resist to the bitter end, tracing both the bacon and the feces back to the same pig.
I don’t think they can laugh at the politics because of how politics, like education (even in the pure non-credentialed sense of ‘knowledge’), like “policy”, like “regulation”, have all converged – or spawned (checken/egg) from the same progressive obsession with Identity. They don’t identify with a political ideal, the political ideal is part of their identity. See: Facebook, and abortion, sex trade, AIDS, pink ribbons, etc.
So even if it is superficial, or full-on absurd, no one really likes to laugh at themselves, particularly when seeking affirmation. And since all politics now are just emotional appeals designed to circumvent rational thought, even the superficial stuff is entangled in her heartstrings. Takes a lot to rise above/beyond both emotional attachment and identity even in the superficial. But then we have to consider how we even qualify superficial in the first place. I sense there’s plenty of differences along gender lines, among others.
The ability to laugh at yourself, in general, is on the decline. So follows politics.
Excellent write up Han.
Your post is the well thought out and articulate version of my hyperbolic and invective laced screed here
http://whoism3.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/is-it-fair/
I’m working on a really long post.. probably too long by all accounts, but that’s just how i write. Many J4G links within, and this too shall be linked to. Cheers!
@ Spawny Get
“Do most women think that they’d be wanted in even a soft harem of the top 20%? *facepalm*”
Most women don’t even know where the fuck the water comes from when they turn on the tap.. it’s solipsism’s magic at it’s finest. To a great majority of women, just getting fucked by a top man constitutes a relationship. They’ll even tolerate ‘the other woman’.. but the internal hamster assumes that she is the primary.
Meanwhile the guy has already removed her phone number from his cell and deleted her texts.
On a beach some years ago, raking trash. Three people stopped to talk. Two girls of, I judged, early high school and a woman in her forties, probably. Chatted a bit. Inquired where they went to school. Some magnet or charter. Asked what they did for football ames. “Oh, you can go to Central if you really want THAT.” Such sneering, superior condescension towards one’s age mates struck me as imposed and not natural. Carefully taught. Figured the teacher was the older woman.
Chatted a bit more about the history they were studying.
Woman says, “You know a lot, for a man.”
Me. “Oh, come on.”
Her. “No, really, for a guy you know a lot of history.”
Short interval wondering how to respond.
Three A10s went screaming by, not out far nor up high. Turned to look, putting my back to the three.
Her. “Your tax dollars at work,” in the sneering tone of contempt one is likely to hear.
Feigning complete ignorance of the ambience, I turned with a big smile, “Isn’t that great! The more of those I have working for me, the better I like it.”
She looked at me in horror. “You were in the Air Force?”
Me. Thinking. The Hog is a ground attack aircraft so if it’s working for me I must be on the ground and not in the bloody Air force where do the Get these people?
Bigger, dumber, more oblivious smile. “No. Infantry.”
Looked down to rake trash for a few seconds. Looked up. They were thirty yards away and still accelerating.
Love to know about that stereotype repair and I like to think it wasn’t completely successful.
@M3 331
Thanks. I look forward to the new post.
I’ll look at that hyperbolic and invective laced screed.
haha
jf12 says:
“#188 Answer for you: if 80% of women are obese (if! hee hee) then yes 80% of the sex that men will strive for will be with obese women. Even obese prostitutes charge for it.”
Not so fast, sir. That’s not what I said. I didn’t ask who they’d ultimately pursue. I asked whether what they find attractive would change. The ideal doesn’t change even if people will take what they can get.
#192 @deti. We will likely have to agree to disagree. Largely because I think that men are assuming women view men the way that they view women.
#298 Han Solo thank you, I will read the link.
#311 Escoffier it’s a source of pride because it takes self-awareness and oftentimes courage to make a decision that is authentic and appropriate for yourself in the face of considerable societal pressure and even patronization, as your very last words clearly demonstrate. Having that courage to stand up and make that choice is a source of pride. Also, I disagree about moral virtue, given the problem of overpopulation in high-consuming nations. Also, many people have children for narcissistic and self-serving reasons.
#317 Han Solo, that depends on what you mean by power. When women have less power in the SMP (because they outnumber men), they marry later. When they have more power in the SMP (because men outnumber them), they marry earlier. This has been proven by looking at US population trends and marital age (the cities with more men, the women use that leverage to lock men down earlier). You interpret it economically. It’s subjective.
#328 jf12, the ghetto as an example of polygamy? Do you think women are choosing for the men to be locked up making the women vastly outnumber that? That doesn’t strike me as a natural example of mate selection.
vastly outnumber them*
“Women that do get married might do so with guys within a year or two in age. She’s 28, he’s 30 – fine.
But women aged 38 don’t get married to a man 38-40, in fact they don’t get married at all on a statistical level.”
Spawny Get, do you have census data attesting to that? I am interested because in the country in which I live the average woman marries at 31.5 and the average man at 34, so obviously quite a few women are getting married on the other side of the 50th percentile. It wouldn’t actually surprise me if that were the case here as we’re much more different about marriage culturally, but Americans seem pretty marriage-obsessed as a nation, and I find that hard to believe for some reason. I mean just off the top of my head I remember reading that black women in the US marry much later than other groups (close to 40) but still, almost 90% of them are married by 55.
The problem with SMV is that it isn’t static and isn’t simply determined by micro factors (looks, height, success etc).
SMV is also a function of macro factors like sex ratios, employment rates, inflation and income discrepancies.
As it stands the current >35 year old women are the product of one of the sharpest birth rate declines in several hundred years. Basically they were swimming in men and could have their cake and eat it too.
As the birth rate remains steady the price of women (SMV) has dropped and they have to adjust their expectations but they are still getting advice from their (have it all) peers. There is a dislocation between women’s perceived SMV and the actual market rate, as they continue to hold out they are going to get caught stranded.
Jen, where’s your evidence that women marry later when there are more of them?
Average beta men will want to marry sooner when they have the power (in part, due to more women around) while alpha men will likely marry later when confronted with a favorable ratio because they can get so much casual sex or form harems.
@Jen
Most of the stuff was processed for whites
http://www.justfourguys.com/marriage-rates-plummet-projection-of-never-married-rates-to-2017/
See also, from the best of links on the title page here, the last link, the one about the marriage strike by Sir Nemesis
#327
“I always fault the man. I have adopted five children that men would not take responsibility for, in addition to the three that I sired with my wife. Men create poverty through their unwillingness to own up to their actions, the results of which create female and child poverty.”
alephblog.com/2011/11/30/a-large-middle-class-isnt-necessarily-normal/comment-page-1/#comment-29420
This man is a white-knighting blue piller. I don’t think I’ll be his regular reader.
#336
In that case it’s entirely fair to say that motherhood can also be a source of pride for many women. After all, it’s a decision that takes self-awareness and often courage, and in many cases it’s authentic and appropriate for yourself in the face of considerable societal pressure and even patronization. Because, as we know, many young women are widely encouraged by feminists and their ilk to delay and even renounce motherhood.
So there we have it. Childree status is a source of pride. Motherhood is a source of pride. Women are apparently empowered by whatever they decide to do.
“Do you think women are choosing for the men to be locked up making the women vastly outnumber that?”
Men who engage in dangerous, risky criminal activities get a disproportionate amount of female attention. These are also the men most likely to get locked up. So yes, the women, by and large, are choosing this situation.
#277
There’s no such creature as a male alpha widow. Male sexual attraction doesn’t work that way. It seems that your mother was an alpha-chasing psycho.
Jen
Smoothed data, so it bounces around, but the trend is clear.
http://paulmurray.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/nevermarried.png
Han, Nemesis and Dalrock give the data and methods. Read the comments too.
Ladies, if you want to get married, GET ON WITH IT.
Men, why would you even consider marriage? I suggest you think about it VERY HARD first. What is in it for you?
Likely a visibility issue, I think. Also, it skews different in different racial populations, so likely higher percentage among AAs.
As it turns out Nova, black men are apparently shorter on average than their white counterparts. I did some checking after reading that stat yesterday.
Being 5’9″ myself, having brothers over 6 feet, and a 6’2″ husband clearly skewed my perception.
The consensus seems to be that the whites are following blacks. So whatever the posts say, it’s very likely worse if you crunch those numbers.
Women, you are doing this yourselves by delaying marriage till your market value is dropping, mandating an ever worse legal environment for men, discarding femininity for yugogirl ‘tude, overvaluing yourself and undervaluing him even as he passes you. But you won’t listen till it’s too late, then you start wailing about the good men being gone and the rest are ‘toxic’ (noncompliant is really the complaint)
@ Han Solo 289
That’s true, sugarcoating doesn’t really help. I find that Girl Game post of yours to be essential reading material for anyone who is looking to find an LTR or get married. Perhaps you could have a FAQ for newbies?
@ Tasmin
Thanks for the +1. It’s interesting to read JFG – You hear some great tips on what we ladies can do to improve our chances to end up with a worthy lad. Also, you find out a more on men / men’s world.
Let’s presume, for grits, that college is the new high school in terms of being prepared for the world, including marriage. That means, for nearly half of the young people, a four-five year delay in being ready for marriage. We’ll ignore for the moment student loan debt and the proliferation of useless degrees.
At the same time,, those who do not go to college are not the average, ordinary folks as in, say,, 1955, but include a much higer proportion of those who couldn’t get in due to lack of resources, poor K12 experience, or lack of interest.
In neither case would the marriage age(s) resemble those of half a century ago.
And in neither case would women’s view of the institution be the relevant factor.
“Married housing” in the postwar days was Quonset huts on the campus I attended. They’d later been refitted to be chem labs so there wouldn’t be much lost if the undergrads misread the directions on something. Crummy apartments were available when I was there.
There are lots of assertions–can’t think of any which are positive–about women’s views on marriage which are based on assertions about women’s views on marriage.
Lots of acronyms and numerals to the nearest tenth of a percent or one percent (one decimal point in the SMP 1-10 is one percent) and so it probably feels all scientific and shit.
However, taking into account external factors like–college being the new high school and what that does to the numbers–mean, not median–has been difficult to spot.
Then, of course, we go back to reality and include student loan debt and useless degrees and wonder why things have changed. Well, we know. Women have the Wrong Idea. Simple.
BTW, if a woman graduates with a degree in Literary Criticism which, among other things, doesn’t include the western canon, she’s right up there with her uneducated sister as a candidate for a part-time job at Starbucks. You’d think she’d be desperate for a provider.
“BTW, if a woman graduates with a degree in Literary Criticism which, among other things, doesn’t include the western canon, she’s right up there with her uneducated sister as a candidate for a part-time job at Starbucks. You’d think she’d be desperate for a provider.”
The employer knows that her need for the job is greater, so she might nudge ahead there. 50K of non-dischargeable debt can improve one’s work ethic. It’s not all bad news…
There are plenty of examples of men being presented with her worthless degrees’ loan to pay off, sometimes at divorce. Who’s that whor…US political candidate right now who left her second (sugar daddy) husband the day after he paid off her loan? Wiped out his 401K (beat Obama to it). Not her only scummy deed BTW not by a long chalk, but she’s still standing for high office(!) as an empowered woman who worked her way to the top. YCMTSU
Many suspect that generic ‘her’s carelessness in selecting her degrees is related to the fact that she only envisages two life outcomes:
1) fabulous career, the debt just get rolled up with her car payments, condo etc etc – no probs.
2) a hubby will be paying them off
option 3) starbucks’ barrista and single is not considered. ‘She can have it all’, in fact it’s her right to have it all.
BUT, Big Daddy Government will cave and bail out all the trillion(?) dollars of debt soon, there’s no way that they can not bail out all the degree debt. Too many women voters are going to be screaming. And anyway, it’s only taxes / debt of the simpletons that let this build up.
There’ll be tears before bed time, as we say over here.
#336 Jen: “#311 Escoffier it’s a source of pride because it takes self-awareness and oftentimes courage to make a decision that is authentic and appropriate for yourself in the face of considerable societal pressure and even patronization, as your very last words clearly demonstrate. Having that courage to stand up and make that choice is a source of pride.”
Please do not cheapen the word courage. There’s nothing whatsoever courageous about your decision not to have children. It’s probably prudent from what you’ve indicated here having children would be a very foolish decision on your part. But deciding not to do something foolish is not the equivalent of courage.
jen, there will be a lot of money paid for ignorance when the need for delusion is deep.
textbook. thank you for the read!
HH2: “In that case it’s entirely fair to say that motherhood can also be a source of pride for many women. After all, it’s a decision that takes self-awareness and often courage, and in many cases it’s authentic and appropriate for yourself in the face of considerable societal pressure and even patronization.”
It should probably be a source of pride for us all to be posting on the internet. We might find ourselves under societal pressure and even patronization afterall. In fact, putting one’s shoes on in the morning might take courage as well (especially if it’s an ugly pair of shoes!). There’s a hero in all of us.
Spawny. She’s a democrat and a foe of modest abortion regulations.
Par for the course.
As to the college grad with no prospects: Point is not what happens at the back end. Young guys of 24 and 25 are unlikely to have had direct experience with the divorce issue, nor even experience of one degree of separation.
However, it’s unlikely that she will be wanting to play the marriage delay game as explained on this thread. So she wouldn’t be part of the delay numbers.
Heywood Jablome is completely right.
There grows a generation of lost women with barren wombs. But it’s worse in the sense that they are not dead, their life is their spinster torture and they have political power as voters.
Their great depression actually IS their lives.
Really, I detect close to zero “societal pressure” for women to have children these days, at least in the “advanced west” and Japan, etc. So why this “courage” is necessary, I cannot see.
I already made the Malthusian point which you bring up, but as I said then, it would only make sense to claim “pride” (and even then, it’s a stretch) if you were actually denying yourself something you really wanted. But since you don’t actually want children, you are exerting no effort of self-denial in not having them.
I could claim to be “proud” that I don’t eat an entire chocolate cake every day, but the fact is, I don’t want to. Takes no effort at all to avoid.
@Richard
“Young guys of 24 and 25 are unlikely to have had direct experience with the divorce issue, nor even experience of one degree of separation.”
Well, you raise an interesting question there, one that I’ve wanted clarified for a long time.
Modern kids have seen much parental divorce. Their parents or their friends’ parents. They’ve been brought up in misandric schools that tailor the entire environment towards girls’ learning style. No breaks, quiet individual study, team work, course work (not exams), boys bad, girls good propaganda, loads of drugging of boys. There’s scientific research showing that female teachers mark boys more harshly, especially those that fidget. Quotas to get women into college, female only grants etc…
I know that some young men now absolutely have no time for women. They have seen the single mothers in every class in their schools post 13/14, tricking boys into parenthood and ruining any chance of an education. They see girls going for bad boys, false accusations etc. All the feminine mystique was ripped away.
Now we all know NAWALT and NAYMALT, but rumours are that the next cohort of guys are not the blue pill innocents that we were. The trouble is these guys are hard to find on the internet. They tend to hangout on 4chan and Reddit, neither of which are very suited for investigation by allegedly mature folk. ‘Troll King’ and ‘Steve_85′ are the only commenters that I have seen much of on Spearhead, AVFM and even Dalrock (iirc).
So, I’m very curious about how the young’uns think. I have no time for anybody telling them to man up. Society has made them second class citizens their whole life, now they need to man up to support some woman? psshaw. Those guys take the red-pill and GTOW before leaving school. Good on them Let society improve the deal before asking anything of them at all, and even then it’s up to them to take it or leave it.
YMMV
Spawny Get.
Your views on how boys are raised are more or less correct. NABALT, of course.
My point was the young’uns views of divorce court. Even if a friend’s parents are divorced, the kid is not likely to be informed of the custody battle, the unfairness, or the financial situation. He’s not in the position of a MRA of, say, forty years old.
Now, there are sluts and crooks in middle school and high school. Against which backdrop the exceptions might look pretty good.
Once you get past a certain number of people, there are is “all” or or “none” and, in many cases, the exceptions can be substantial. Keeping in mind that, fifty years ago, not every 17-yr-old girl was such a hot bet anyway, given manifest personality issues, looks aside.
At most we have a lot more of something, less of something else.
And numbers don’t mean anything when dealing with an individual. At most, some caution.
I think a lot of the interpretation of what women will and will not get married has much to do with what some think *ought* to be the case than with what actually is the case.
Higher earning women both marry and stay married at higher rates, though later. But getting married later for this group does not mean less likely. By the time these women reach their late 30s, a higher percentage of them have married than other women. Check out the work of Dr. Christine Whelan .
Also, among black women, the more education she has, the more likely she is to be married, with black women possessing doctorates being the most likely of all to get married. Dr. Ivory Toldson has done a lot of work on this and has challenged head on, using Census data, much of the conventional media wisdom about this issue.
Second thid and fourth that. Today’s kids have to deal with divorce as early as 3 or 4. Among their classmates a good half of them split time between houses. With all the flying batshit warring spouses can generate.
So that’s the romantic ideal they’re shown. Even the kids from intact families are front row center for this shit. Tack onto all of that the helicopter-ing and the inability to let anyone try to do anything because someone might get HURT or a classmate might be made to feel INADEQUATE and you have a great recipe for Generation Fucks Do Not Give, in terms of “manning up” or doing their “duty” to be good at-will worker bees and make famblys and squeeze out sprogs because…uh wait a minute…duty to WHOM? And WHY is there that duty to WHOM… and what do we get out of obeying besides a “Laurel and a Hardy handshake”? I missed that part.
Jen #338:
“I am interested because in the country in which I live”
“as we’re much more different about marriage culturally, but Americans seem pretty marriage-obsessed as a nation, and I find that hard to believe for some reason.”
Now I fully understand the approach you take to these issues. You aren’t even part of this SMP/MMP, you don’t live in it, you haven’t been marinated and saturated in it, and you thus don’t understand it at all.
Carry on.
@Richard
prosecutorial misconduct gets a slap on the wrist. Man repeatedly persecuted by an ideological prosecutor chasing false allegations by his known to have mental problems wife.
WAKE THE FUCK UP. You don’t think boys see this shit?
Denise,
What you say above makes a great deal of sense, but it’s also not relevant to the discussion at hand. High earning women, and highly educated women (especially other than white) are such a small part of the population that their circumstances are best considered exceptional.
Most men aren’t Alphas or one percenters in income and wealth. Most women aren’t high earning, or highly educated. Those who are are the elites and they live differently. If we could level off traits for Alphaness and wealth in men and education and earnings in women nature would create a new set of characteristics to sift the elites from the proles. No amount of social engineering, justice, or -ism can change the dynamics of human nature.
And another example, that of the abuse of the divorce process. This one is current. AVFM is after this guy’s PI licence
http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/domestic-violence-industry/meet-john-nazarian-the-king-of-scumbags/
FFS Richard. I can see that you’re a decent guy, but you’re living on another planet.
Thank you Fred
@bedpainter. In 2012, 71% of women who graduated from high school went on to college. As I mentioned, this actually increases the likelihood of marriage. And it is college that is still a significant predictor of income down the line. So no, this population isn’t a minority.
I will further clarify. The increase in likelihood begins with college and gets higher as a woman progresses. The same with income. For every $10,000 increase in income, there can be up to a 7% increase in the likelihood of marriage for white women and up to an 8% increase in the likelihood of marriage for black women.
It’s not an all or nothing thing. It’s not simply that women who meet a certain “high earning” threshold are more likely to get married. It’s that every step in that direction increases the likelihood of marriage for that woman. And that is pretty much the opposite of what is being claimed here.
HanSolo, here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609220829.htm
There is also a PDF document which examines the trend in greater detail that I’ve come across and I will look for and hope to post today.
But even your data in #298 seems to show that women are the arbiters of commitment as well; the more attractive ones use their looks to leverage commitment out of men, which is why they have fewer sexual partners than the ugliest women.
deti re. 361, we’re neighbours. I’m not that far away. I also live in a major city (4th biggest in North America) with more women than men. So I “marinate” in it plenty. And trust me: when there are plenty of gorgeous women around, average guys aren’t in any hurry to settle down. And they sure as heck aren’t being victimized.
“It’s not an all or nothing thing. It’s not simply that women who meet a certain “high earning” threshold are more likely to get married. It’s that every step in that direction increases the likelihood of marriage for that woman. And that is pretty much the opposite of what is being claimed here.”
I agree with this.
SpawnyGet, I fail to see what is in marriage for women, though. I can see the benefit for children, but not women.
I mean, first of all, married men do less housework than cohabitational partners. They also weigh more than single and cohabitational men: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-marriage-impacts-health-2014-1. And married women are more depressed than unmarried women: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8740278/Women-more-than-twice-as-likely-to-be-depressed.html. And they also don’t live longer than single women do. Also, married men report cheating more than any other group: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17951664/ns/health-sexual_health/t/many-cheat-thrill-more-stay-true-love/
So for women marriage can be sacrificial, whereas for men, only divorce is.
Denise,
If you’re asserting that making it through the obstacle course of Higher Education confers legitimate status as “highly educated” then we are working with different understandings of what highly educated means. For example if you have degree(s), less than PHD level in any of the humanities, or liberal arts, _______-studies, or social sciences you are not highly educated but rather highly indoctrinated. The real incomes of the real employment outcomes tell the tale. Ask me how I know.
And finally, an excerpt from a Troll King comment regarding his experiences (he’s mid 20s I think). This isn’t his best comment (I can’t find it, but it gives a taste of a guy growing up in the States, WC or LMC at a guess).
I would LOVE to hear more from him and his cohort, because they’re approaching the age where they’re supposed to ‘man-up’ and marry a woman. These guys might be the cutting edge of the new marital reality when they get to early/mid thirties and have no interest in marriage and no status for marriage either (they have had better things to do). These are the guys getting the tardcons the heeby geebies. They’re the guys in guyland, the man-boys etc etc Cannot wait to see how this plays out (from poolside) because these guys know what’s real abut living in our present matriarchy. Their black equivalents have, I assume, already arrived at but failed to enter the marketplace (the whites are trailing their trends. they’re there already). Or fund the society that hates them. The wind has been sown, are we about to reap the whirlwind? (we shall see).
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2011/02/26/offensive-and-defensive-strategies-and-tactics-in-the-gender-war/#comment-75250
“Ask me how I know.”
ah! humour. Cheers BadPainter, I love you
Friday evening looms close over here…
I also agree with Denise that telling women to “get on with it” is poor advice for them given what we know about marriage; women who marry in their 30’s earn significantly more: http://www.thejanedough.com/putting-off-marriage-pays-off-for-women/
@Bedpainter. Higher education begins with college. The increases in likelihood to get married and stay married begin with college education.
The comments about whether a degree is valuable or whether it is a good education are personal opinion that don’t really speak to the statistics. But if we’re throwing opinions in there, the quality of your education would have a lot to do with school choice and the professors involved, as well as the ownership you take or took of what you were learning and how you were learning it.
#349 My ex-wife not only is a professional literary critic, she has been writing the curricula (and directing the boards)for literary criticism degrees for a couple of generations. fwiw
#373 “it weren’t for my libido and their soft skin” ah, love.
#368 the study cherry picked data to compare black welfare men to white yuppies. No joke. Almost all sociological studies by women are ideology-driven and not data-driven.
Denise,
In that case most college degrees are crap because the vast majority of schools and instructors are at best only Mediocre. Which is OK as most students should be in college to start with. Only credentials from the very best schools are of objective value. Back in the days before HR departments, and diversity programs a graduate from a second tier school could compete for employment based on demonstrating knowledge, interview skills, or through good old fashioned networking. Now you can’t get a job at Home Depot without first going through the HR kiosk, there’s no way to sway an employer in the interview because by that point the decision is all but certain. The new FI world has implemented pre-selection across the whole economy. Woe be to the man who can’t game the interviewer.
Also keep in mind my contention about the size of this population segment of “highly educated” is a distinct minority. If their marriage stats are different than the non/lesser educated then educating everyone will only serve to eliminate the marginal differences between the two groups while nullifying any advantage of education.
#369 “when there are plenty of gorgeous women around, average guys aren’t in any hurry to settle down” The apex fallacy in full regalia. “Of the top 20% of men, the average of those men has no problem playing the field with gorgeous women.” Ask me how I know.
oops, meant to say “most students should not be in college to start with”
Jen
“women who manage tomarry in their 30′s earn significantly more.” The odds on achieving that are shifting.
Denise
“The comments about whether a degree is valuable or whether it is a good education are personal opinion that don’t really speak to the statistics.”
No? This book does
Worthless: The Young Person’s Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1467978302
Big Daddy Government is currently propping up the job market for women with worthless degrees. Obama is eyeing up your 401Ks precisely because the money for such makework is running out. The debt is real, the job market not.
Welcome to the manosphere, where pretty lies perish (h/t Roissy)
#368 “[attractive] women are the arbiters of commitment as well” Yes, this is a key consequence of sexual economics as reflected in the MMV. Most men are not attractive enough to get a woman in the SMP, so they work to provide resources within a committed relationship. The BEST thing most men have to offer most women, in exchange for sex, is committment. In contrast, always the best thing women have to offer a man is between her legs. The unattractive woman is, broadly, less valuable sexually so she has to give more of it. The attractive woman can get committment without yielding as much sexually i.e. the ring goes on before the panties come off. Thus, attractive women being doorkeepers of committment is merely a reflection their being doorkeepers of sex.
Guys don’t get easy sex by lowering their standards, more than a few points runs into trouble. If a decent-looking guy starts talking up an obviously lower value woman, it’s obvious what he is after. Believe it or not, ugly doesn’t mean stupid, man or woman. So what usually happens is a nuclear rejection by the warpig.
Now, contrary to women’s normal beliefs, men have feelings too. Getting rejected by gorgeous (who have practice rejecting passes, so can be more tactful as well) is par for the course, getting rejected by ugly (who don’t have the social skills, have convinced themselves it doesn’t matter, and have years of venom stored up) really hurts. Conclusion – chances of painful failure high, the success isn’t that successful, so why bother?
@Denise
“And that is pretty much the opposite of what is being claimed here.”
Wrong.
The claim is that women are delaying marriage (true fact, though it’s more speculative of why they are doing so), not that they never marry. And while they delay marriage, many women will date/fuck out-of-their-league or “inappropriate”-for-marriage men.
@BadPainter
“most students should not be in college to start with”
man…we must both be smart, thinking that same thing. But I bought references
We need to start making sure that we ask in what subject some ‘fabulous’ woman has a master’s. It is truly mindblowing that they consider that some subjects have any value at all, let alone what they paid for them. AFAIACS A woman’s studies ( or any ******* studies) degree makes you unemployable. I wouldn’t employ anybody with five years of indoctrination into grievence mongering and man hatred.
I remember talking to sociology grads when we left Uni (I was STEM, sociology was the one with women, one socialises where one must). They were mystified when they found that the job market was bleak for them. I’d always assumed that they knew, but that employment wasn’t a concern for them, they were studying it out of interest alone. I couldn’t believe the idiocy. Nice women, but nobody had ever talked to them about job market value. In those days though, we had no debt on graduation (UK).
@ Jen:
“ I’m not that far away. I also live in a major city (4th biggest in North America) with more women than men. So I “marinate” in it plenty. “
I see. You’re in Toronto. Still, as you say, it’s culturally different in that marriage as a status symbol for women is king (queen) here in the States. Traditional Christian marriage is a status symbol, not a way of life. It’s a vestigial leftover that last existed as a true cultural force around 1975 or thereabouts. Our women talk a good game about wanting marriage. It’s the walking it out that’s the problem for them, mostly because they’ve never actually seen a woman do it.
“And trust me: when there are plenty of gorgeous women around, average guys aren’t in any hurry to settle down. And they sure as heck aren’t being victimized.”
Not too interested in fighting this battle again. All I can say is that this doesn’t line up with my experience at all. Average guys aren’t getting with those gorgeous girls because all those gorgeous girls are holding out for, and sharing, the top men.
As Nova said above – those who are having success in this area tend only to see those having success. Those who are failing are invisible. You’re not seeing the failures because you, as a success at love and life, simply ignore them.
@Han
“not that they never marry”
no, not exactly, I AM arguing that they are risking more than they think by delaying marriage. That the odds of achieving marriage are worsening and will likely continue to do so (next gen coming through soon).
I’m surprised that you disagree (or have I misread something?)
@Jen:
“So for women marriage can be sacrificial, whereas for men, only divorce is.”
Ummmm, no.
Marriage is extraordinarily sacrificial for a man, and is a boon for a woman.
A married man must invest enormous time to earn money to support his wife and kids. He must then invest that money into food, housing, clothing and medical care. He has little free time; and what free time he does have is expected to be invested in the children. For all of this, in modern marriage he has no rights – he doesn’t even have a right to sexual congress with his wife at reasonable intervals. His wife has the right to refuse sex at any time for any reason, legally.
For a woman, marriage means she is entitled the security of a man’s labor, time, and resources. She has the protection of a man willing and able to do violence on her behalf and even to die protecting and providing for her. And she need not give her husband anything, not even common courtesy, and certainly not sex.
#385 The universal, 100.00000%, experience of men is that they prefer to be turned down by an attractive woman than turned down by an unattractive woman. It simply makes obvious sense to all men that getting turned down by Kate Upton (e.g.) hurts less than getting turned down by Rosie O’Donnell (e.g., although I confess I like Rosie and think she’s quite cute, and I might even have a chance …). A man might even try for Upton *knowing* he’ll get turned down just to get close to her and to see that he managed to furrow her attractive brow.
In total contrast, to women apparently it hurts so much to be turned down by a truly attractive man that they cannot even go there in their imaginations, and I guarantee 99.9% of women think men are lying about preferring to be turned down by attractive women.
@Spawny
Well, women overall that never marry by 30-something have slim odds of ever marrying but that doesn’t split out the highly-educated vs. the educated vs. the not. It wouldn’t surprise me that 30+ y/o educated women would have a higher chance than their 30+ y/o not-educated female peers.
But the other thing is that over the last decade, the marriage rates have been generally going down for white women (again no granularization based on education in that statement) with a bit of an uptick in the most recent data.
See here:
http://www.justfourguys.com/2013-never-married-rates-reach-new-highs-but-change-might-be-coming/
So for women marriage can be sacrificial, whereas for men, only divorce is.
Married men work harder, with all the stresses that entails. Even when they have a working wife, they bear the lion’s share of the financial load while being expected to split the housework because they have a working wife. His money being “theirs” and her money being “hers” and all that good stuff. The irony…
That is one of the reasons (besides the well being of our children) I believe that my husband was adamant about me NOT working.
And yes, I do all the housework. Or I did before we had teenagers. Only a woman who doesn’t understand the burden of provision would argue that marriage isn’t a sacrifice for the husband. That they bother at all when there’s a better than 50% chance that they’ll be frivorced and separated from their offspring is a wonder all its own.
jf12 illustrates, albeit tongue in cheek, another important point.
While men prefer getting rejected by attractive women, men also have personal tastes as to what constitutes attractive and those preferences are not always in conformity with what the culture claims is attractive. I for example don’t get the drooling over Scarlett Johannsen, but I have several times hamfisted my way to rejection from women that were objectively plain or a bit on the homely side. Usually because of something like the way she walked or the sound her voice. I have never approached, or secretly pined away for a woman I didn’t find attractive. However, when confronted with the choice to face rejection from any of several attractive (to me) women I’ll always choose the most attractive of the batch.
#388 I haven’t spent much time north of the border in the past twenty years, but iirc Toronto was exactly like any of the saltwater urban areas in the US, crowds of old and young, busy yuppies, a lot of wannabe hippies who wished the 90s were the 60s, etc. One time I and two of my proteges, young women working in my research lab while getting their masters, were presenting at a conference, and were walking around at lunch, stopping in a conveinece store for a Coke, and the less-traveled one was marveling that “Canada is just like the US! Except, you know, the gas prices are lower.” I did the calculation in a few microseconds and corrected her to within a few pennies per gallon, remarking nicely “Oh, you made a mistake because it’s *Canadian* dollars per liter.”
@Jen 368
Many of the cities in the link you provided have majority or much-larger-than-the-national-average portions of black people, and much, much higher than the southwestern cities. Also, NYC has a lot of hard-charging finance and business types that are notorious for being players. Also, Salt Lake City is the Mormon “capital” so there the men are more marriage minded. Phoenix also has a higher-than-the-national-average % of Mormons.
So, that article kind of proves my point. Black men tend to have a less favorable view on marriage, probably in part due to black women’s hypergamy, so they’ve been cast aside for the last 50 years and wised up and stopped trying to marry so much.
The whiter (and more latino) populations of the southwestern cities mentioned in the link are still more marriage minded. So blacks and players are less marriage minded and Mormons and whites (on average) are more marriage minded.
As to women being arbiters of commitment, I actually agree that women in their 20’s have a ton of power in terms of committing or not, as I talked about in this post:
http://www.justfourguys.com/are-men-the-gatekeepers-of-commitment/
I am saying that young women are at their peak sexual power during their 20’s and the fact that some/many of them are choosing to put off relationships and marriage to pursue education, career and fun is one primary reason of why marriage age has increased over the last 40 years.
Also, waiting for you to acknowledge that you were wrong about men ONLY messaging the prettiest 1/3 of the okcupid women.
@Jen
Look at New Orleans, one of the cities mentioned in the study you provided. 60% of the population is black/African American. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/22/2255000.html
Birmingham: 73% black. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/01/0107000.html
Memphis: 63% black. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/47/4748000.html
Richmond: 50% black. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/5167000.html
We all know that blacks have much lower marriage rates. So the study is very flawed to compare mostly black cities (or even Philly with 44% blacks http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/42/42101.html) with mostly white cities since the populations are not made up of people of the same racial, socioeconomic and marriage-outlook characteristics.
“71% of women who graduated from high school went on to college”
So, 71% of women are going to be high earners? WTF
What about all these graduate barristas I hear of? Waitresses etc (glad they found work, but how are they going to pay off their loans on that income?)
Many of these women will be turning up at the marriage market with huge debt they’ve never bothered to even try to pay off (and never be able to themselves). Basically they’ll be demanding hubby pays it off while they have kids and stay home or earn pin money.
How come that you’re so sure that men aren’t going to baulk at that offer? With 50% divorce? You think that it won’t further depress marriage rates.
You have no understanding of this stuff, do you? You know; consequences, changes in the market place, not everybody being at the top, the artificialty of some of the jobs that they’re getting and their vulnerability to budget cuts. Those things, those details. FS
Spawney, this neatly explains it:
@Han
“It wouldn’t surprise me that 30+ y/o educated women would have a higher chance than their 30+ y/o not-educated female peers.”
Ah! That clarifies it. I am very clear that socioeconomic class has very strong influence on results (marriage rates and divorce rates as well). We are in agreement.
I’d check that ‘others’ are aware that most people are not at the top, or at least get them to state that they don’t care about ‘losers’ (the 80%). Those women need to know that their interests are of no import whatsoever to Jen and her ilk (or why Jen assumes that she is a ‘top’ female at 26 with an ex who’s a druggie drummer – I’m not so sure at all where her assumption comes from). I’m not sure that the ‘top’ will remain as large as it is now once government jobs decline, but we’ll see.
In the UK the fembots complained that public sector job cuts hit women harder. Well, yeah, of course they do. The majority (2/3 iirc) of such public sector jobs are held by females and even more so when it comes to paper pushing make work. What guys there are, are employed in the dirty, dangerous, outside, hard jobs. Who would you cut first?
@BadPainter
I F**King LOVE THAT LINE. Some others here ought to ponder it a little, try a whiff of reality.
I wonder if in the future the historians will look back on the late 20th century as a time when the greatest measure of a properous economy was its ability to provide women with non-productive luxury job in fields that had no positive productive impact on the economy.
That is to say necessary jobs are necessary no matter who does them. But most work in government, fashion, entertainment, publishing, education, communications (non-infrastructure), legal, and food service were the result of prosperity and ultimately the death of prosperity.
#393: “And yes, I do all the housework. Or I did before we had teenagers. Only a woman who doesn’t understand the burden of provision would argue that marriage isn’t a sacrifice for the husband. That they bother at all when there’s a better than 50% chance that they’ll be frivorced and separated from their offspring is a wonder all its own.”
Watch out, Elspeth! She might call you a groupie.
It isn’t surprising that women who marry young and raise children aren’t making as much money by their thirties as those who have only worked on their careers and put it above everything else. But then, (by contrast) at retirement age single women are the least financially set.
I don’t believe that single middle aged women are happier than married ones, as claimed, however. Anyone who wants to test that theory only has to go as far as their local pub/club/ equal place of public hookup, and as a casual observer of the obvious watch the interactions of the older single female participants. They don’t seem happy. It’s actually a pretty desperate looking act, and usually they’re just hoping someone will go home with them for a single night. But then, the CDC did a report on this in 2004 and indicated married couples are less likely to be depressed. There was also a study entitled the female happiness paradox that indicated women have grown increasingly depressed and having progressively lower levels of happiness since the 1970s. There is also this one: http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/marriagehealth.pdf
“• Marital entry decreases depressive symptoms. This result holds whether the comparison group is the continuously married (Kim and McKenry 2002; Marks and Lambert 1998) or the continuously unmarried (Lamb et al. 2003; Simon Chapter IV: The Effects of Marriage on Mental Health 2002). There is some evidence, however, that remarriage is less beneficial than first marriage (Kim and McKenry 2002) and that marriage preceded by cohabitation also is less beneficial (Kim and McKenry 2002; Lamb et al. 2003).
• Marital dissolution increases depressive symptoms, particularly for women. Marital loss increases depressive symptoms, relative to the increases experienced among those who remain married (Kim and McKenry 2002; Marks and Lambert 1998; Simon 2002). Furthermore, two of the studies suggest that the impact is greater for women than men (Marks and Lambert 1998; Simon 2002). However, another finds no gender difference (Kim and McKenry 2002).
• Those who are stably unmarried experience larger increases in depressive symptoms than do those who are stably married. Those who remained unmarried over the five-year follow-up period experienced larger increases in depressive symptoms than did similar people who were stably married over this period (Kim and McKenry 2002; Marks and Lambert 1998; Simon 2002).”
Hi Elspeth
you have a long track record around and about.
have seen you around for years (me under many different names), I welcome another grounded in reality type like you to the site. Liz has well earned her beloved groupie rating. Yours is there for the asking
auf wiedersehen (ich hoffe)
(bit rusty on that sprache, I’m afraid. apologies if I screwed up)
@Groupie Liz
“Marital dissolution increases depressive symptoms, particularly for women.”
it’s dynamite for men’s suicide rate. there’s a question over whether road deaths should also be looked into more carefully after divorce / unhappy marriage. men committing suicide in a way that doesn’t invalidate life cover for their kids to inherit.
On average men commit suicide at a rate of 4:1 to females. It’s worse after divorce.
“Marital dissolution increases depressive symptoms, particularly for women.”
it’s dynamite for men’s suicide rate. there’s a question over whether road deaths should also be looked into more carefully after divorce / unhappy marriage. men committing suicide in a way that doesn’t invalidate life cover for their kids to inherit.
On average men commit suicide at a rate of 4:1 to females. It’s worse after divorce. Military divorces that occur when he returns from active service are particularly dangerous for guys (I believe).
@ Richard
You make it sound like it’s pulled out of thin air. In fact, there are clear statistics that suggest this. The research is out there:
http://www.justfourguys.com/women-start-marriage-strike-men-complete-it/
@ Jen
You’ve got the causation backwards…
Good stuff, Nemesis.
Watch out, Elspeth! She might call you a groupie.
Huh. I am most certainly my husband’s groupie. Been taken to task a time or two over my years of blogging for possibly “worshiping” him too much. Or trying to make other women jealous because I always speak well of him. Or that there’s no way I could possibly enjoy serving him the way I do.
You name it. I’ve heard it. “Groupie” sounds positively friendly by comparison. I can handle that.
I think the big question, in terms of marriage among the educated, is how the current large female skew in higher education is going to impact the continuation of that trend.
In other words, with colleges skewing 60/40 female, just in terms of pure numbers there are going to be a LOT of female college grads who won’t be able to find a male college grad, because there are so few of them relative to women. Now, of course, even today some of these women marry down educationally (say a nurse or a teacher married to a tradesman or a fireman – not very uncommon), but the real benefits of education and marriage accrue, per the stats, in terms of marriage rates and divorce rates, when both parties are educated, not just one.
I suspect that what we will see is that the “SuperFriends” type marriages (two high powered people married to each other – think investment bankers, top tier lawyers, top tier medical specialists and so on) because there will be enough uptake at that level to satisfy the female demand. I think where we will see the dropoff will likely be among the educated-yet-mundane (i.e., people who aren’t exactly blowing the doors off), because in terms of the overall numbers game, the educated men will be picked by the educated women who have more going on than less going on. In any case, a good number of women are going to be left holding the bag if they want a man who is equally educated, just due to the numbers. The screeching about there not being enough good men is just getting started – it’s going to reach a fever pitch at some point in the next 10-15 years due to this educational skew, once it really hits full throttle.
Swithy: ” there’s a question over whether road deaths should also be looked into more carefully after divorce / unhappy marriage. men committing suicide in a way that doesn’t invalidate life cover for their kids to inherit.
Christ, that sucks.
“On average men commit suicide at a rate of 4:1 to females. It’s worse after divorce. Military divorces that occur when he returns from active service are particularly dangerous for guys (I believe).”
I’ve seen a lot of bad military breakups. Ex-spouses will use deployments to their advantage and obtain sole custody while the soldier is deployed. They return from overseas duty not to happy family reunions but to endless hearings trying to get their children back.
Liz
It was an Aussie site I saw it on iirc. It makes sense though, doesn’t it? Damn. Even in utmost despair some of these guys risk a lingering death just to look after their kids, rather than going out quick with a bang. Can’t prove it, but then if you could it wouldn’t work.
Seen a YouTube short vid with a guy in uniform eating his gun. Tragic stuff.
@ Spawny Get
Which is quite ironic, considering that sociobiology is becoming one area where evo psych is actually considered… http://www.unc.edu/~nielsen/soci111/m12/soci111m12.pdf
Nem,
They spent a week writing about witchcraft in the sixteenth century iirc… pretty though, some of them
@ Badpainter
Same here. Not to mention Angelina Jolie in my case. There’s also Sarah Jessica Parker. But I think it’s only women that drool over her: http://jezebel.com/5032126/the-sjp-divide-why-men-hate-sarah-jessica-parker
Nova 410
I think you’re right about what will happen with marriages between people of differing educational levels.
We’re already seeing women with college degrees marrying men without degrees, and those marriages seem to have varying level of success depending on the husband’s earning power. Those marriages seem to do OK if he outearns her, regardless of his position. This, I think, is why you see cops and firemen married to college educated women. Same with plumbers and electricians, both of whom do well financially.
It’s where he earns less than she does that strains the marriages; and especially where she is by far the primary breadwinner. Examples would be a female hospital executive married to a starving artist; or a high powered female lawyer married to a male high school teacher.
I suppose you might have highly educated women marrying men with low income who make up for it in other ways, like being extremely good looking (boy toy), or very high status (a low paid artist/athlete with some notoriety). But those marriage tend not to last because the wife will inevitably see him as a kitchen bitch.
Wrong slide, sorry: http://www.unc.edu/~nielsen/soci111/m6/soci111m6.pdf
The infamous Frankie Boyle described SJP as a magical sea horse…I laughed.
Hey Nem, didn’t you have a 1-10 scale quiz on your site? Any chance of a link? Somebody wants to put a number on a picture. Hope I’m remembering right that it was your blog. You really ought to consider a content merger with JFG.
Just sayin’
I told my 14yr old niece that because of the changes to the economy that by the time she’s ready to find a hubby she should be looking for guys In HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or perhaps union dozer operators since their won’t be any other stable forms of employment for most men.
Needless to say her mother was horrified at the suggestion that a blue collar man would be suitable for her daughter.
@ Spawny Get
Here was the poll: http://pollmill.com/f/attractiveness-ratings-2pldvhz/answers/new.fullpage
Here was the article: http://monogamygame.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/attractiveness-rating-calibration/
I might start reposting some of my better posts from there onto here some time.
Cheers Men. And I think that you should.
I hate giving numbers, I know a ten and a one when I see one, everything in between not so much. As I remember it all I did was generally agree generally.
Bad Uncle BadPainter, bad uncle!
The horror of a hubby that works with his hands! How will he pay for her underwater basketweaving master’s?
So he’s paying all the bills, but she’s the one settling, right? Oh thems wimminz just lurve credentials don’t they? The ultimate validation of the valueless. Same as the right label on a bag or the right colour sole on a pair of heels. She doesn’t have to know how to judge value, because the stamp does that for her. Men have their own foibles, but women pretty much* own that one.
*I had a friend who bought a Porsche kettle and toaster (no idea why), so can’t quite give men a total pass. What a berk! Honestly. Though cheaper than a PhD in victim studies, I guess.
Swithy: “*I had a friend who bought a Porsche kettle and toaster (no idea why), so can’t quite give men a total pass.”
Perhaps it’s the only company that doesn’t include parts made in China?
In which case, that’s brilliant! Might have cost considerably more…but they’ll last for the next fifty years, rather than just the next five months. And he doesn’t have to worry about toxic metallic impurities contaminating his hot beverages.
I want to start by saying there are a lot of contradictory, illogical and just plain disengenous messages being discussed here.
Han Solo: OK, you have my apologies. Instead of saying men only messaged the top 1/3rd of women, I’ll rephrase to ‘a strong majority of men only messaged the top 1/3rd of women’ for accuracy. Hope this satisfies you. And add that they were almost 50X more likely to message the most attractive woman than the least attractive, while the difference for women messaging the most attractive to least attractive man was less than 40 messages TOTAL.
@Tweell #385 – interesting point of view, I’ll take it into consideration.
On the one hand, Spawny Get talks of a “marriage strike” that apparently Han and Nemesis have discussed before. OK, so if men are going on strike for marriage, how are women the ones primarily responsible for the marriage delay? Perhaps when women begin proposing to THEMSELVES that would make actual sense. The most that can be claimed is that women are failing to adequately pressure some poor schmuck to marry them like they have before. Otherwise, men are the ones delaying, or to varying degrees, both sexes are responsible.
Han Solo @396 you brought up an interesting point, so I did some further investigation and found that the trend holds steady in Canadian cities (there is no Canadian city with a large portion of black people). In male-heavy industrial and rural areas, the women use that leverage to lock them down sooner. When there are more women than men, anecdotally, the women become more attractive, and the men delay marrying or become pickier about who they marry. I would not be surprised to find that this trend is true in all Western areas. Alas, nowhere has America’s number of Mormons. Ya got me there.
Liz@403: Marital quality is paramount for women, far moreso than for men. First of all, poor marital quality has more adverse health effects for women than it does for men: “Women who experienced more conflicts and disagreements in their relationships also had a higher risk of high blood pressure, abdominal obesity , high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low levels of “good” high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, according to a study of 276 couples presented in the 2009 American Psychosomatic Society’s annual meeting. The study also found the wives to be more affected than the husbands.”
“Marital distress was associated with worse recovery trajectory for breast cancer survivors , according to a 2009 study published in the journal Cancer. Patients in a distressed relationship not only had continuously heightened levels of stress, they also eventually showed more impaired functioning compared with those in stable, non-distressed relationships, said the study. In addition, patients dissatisfied with their marriage were also less compliant with medical regimens, such as adhering to healthy dietary habits.” http://www.livescience.com/35469-5-ways-relationships-are-bad-for-your-health.html, http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec01/badmarriage.aspx
In addition, a study encompassing 100,000 people found that women in bad marriages who filed for divorce experienced an increase in general mood and wellness lasting for up to 5 years after separation: http://www.thestar.com/life/2013/07/11/marital_split_women_happier_after_divorce_study.html. The effect held steady even though women were more likely to report living in poverty following divorce.
Speaking of poverty, women who are divorced are more likely to be impoverished than women who never married.
Liz, we live in a narcissistic, confessional culture. I don’t believe that women are less happy today, I think they’re more honest. Further, actions do speak louder, and there is an increase in “grey divorce” among Boomer women. If marriage is so fulfilling for women, so many older ones would not be deciding they would rather go it alone. They’re not delusional. They’re not under the impression a passionate love affair awaits them at 60. It’s just that the benefits do not outweigh the costs. In addition, “Married women have higher rates of depression than unmarried women, but the reverse is true for men. Marriage seems to confer a greater protective advantage on men than on women. In unhappy marriages, women are three times as likely as men to be depressed. Women’s risk of depressive symptoms and demoralization is higher among mothers of young children and increases with the number of children in the house (McGrath et al., 1990).” https://www.apa.org/about/gr/issues/women/depression.aspx. So it seems that it depends on who you ask. Apart from that, if there were any truth at all to the claim that women today are less happy, perhaps it has something to do with the rise of micro-parenting: http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/time-management/spending-time-with-kids-00100000077147/
Marriage is a high-risk venture, on that much we agree, Spawny Get. Where we disagree is that this is only true for men.
It’s often said here that a man’s SMP relative to women’s increases the older he gets. So with that being the case, marriage becomes riskier and riskier for women the longer they are in it. Indeed, this is reflected in the stats as well: “but among married men, the likelihood of extramarital involvement decreases over time until the eighteenth year of matrimony, after which the likelihood of extramarital involvement increases (Liu, 2000).”
In addition, “Certain developmental stages in a marriage, including pregnancy and the months following the birth of a child, are also high risk times for infidelity among males (Allen & Baucom, 2001; Brown, 1991; Whisman et al., 2007).” As I mentioned, this puts many women in the precarious position of choosing between their dignity and being in a genuine relationship with someone they love and who respects them enough to be faithful, and the wellbeing of their child (raising them in an intact home).
Liz, I’m glad you think it’s prudent of me to not have kids. I’m not sure why there is such a negative attitude towards female prudence in life and love in general here.
It’s sort of illogical how you guys talk about how ruinous and emotionally dispiriting divorce is for men (which I agree with), but then you turn around and urge women to rush into marriages they’re ill-prepared for a second after discussing this, knowing full well that early marriages more often than not end in divorce. If you were really interested in lowering the divorce rate you would have no problem with the trend of delayed divorce. Instead, it seems you prioritize men getting laid in college more than lasting marriages later on. Um, no offense, but wtf?
Also illogical is the fearmongering towards women altogether. You must realize how disingenuous this comes across. If marriage really IS as disadvantageous for men as is claimed here and you want to encourage them to be more careful, then surely it is a GOOD thing if women are discussing the disadvantages of marriage. It would seem you and I are fundamentally in agreement!
Certain things are happening ref marriage,etc. The assertions I speak of are assertions wrt viewpoint and reasons.
“For a woman, marriage means she is entitled the security of a man’s labor, time, and resources. She has the protection of a man willing and able to do violence on her behalf and even to die protecting and providing for her. And she need not give her husband anything, not even common courtesy, and certainly not sex.”
Deti, statistically, a woman is more likely to be beaten or killed by her husband and protected by an unknown police officer than to NEED a husband’s protection.
Also, rape rates and domestic violence rates have declined since the 1970s.
The happiest nations in the world all have older marital ages than the US: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/09/world-happiness-report-happiest-countries_n_3894041.html. This might explain why their divorce rates are lower.
I want to start by saying there are a lot of contradictory, illogical and just plain disengenous messages being discussed here.
Han Solo: OK, you have my apologies. Instead of saying men only messaged the top 1/3rd of women, I’ll rephrase to ‘a strong majority of men only messaged the top 1/3rd of women’ for accuracy. Hope this satisfies you. And add that they were almost 50X more likely to message the most attractive woman than the least attractive, while the difference for women messaging the most attractive to least attractive man was less than 40 messages TOTAL.
@Tweell #385 – interesting point of view, I’ll take it into consideration.
On the one hand, Spawny Get talks of a “marriage strike” that apparently Han and Nemesis have discussed before. OK, so if men are going on strike for marriage, how are women the ones primarily responsible for the marriage delay? Perhaps when women begin proposing to THEMSELVES that would make actual sense. The most that can be claimed is that women are failing to adequately pressure some poor schmuck to marry them like they have before. Otherwise, men are the ones delaying, or to varying degrees, both sexes are responsible.
Han Solo @396 you brought up an interesting point, so I did some further investigation and found that the trend holds steady in Canadian cities (there is no Canadian city with a large portion of black people). In male-heavy industrial and rural areas, the women use that leverage to lock them down sooner. When there are more women than men, anecdotally, the women become more attractive, and the men delay marrying or become pickier about who they marry. I would not be surprised to find that this trend is true in all Western areas. Alas, nowhere has America’s number of Mormons. Ya got me there.
@ richardaubrey
I don’t know if you lack reading comprehension or are being intentionally obtuse. The linked article provides reference to direct sources on women’s views about marriage.
Happy to see you here Elspeth.
As for Jen… Read the 10th word in the article title. It means something different than you think it means.
Can someone please approve my posting? I know it’s big but I don’t want to have to go looking for all the data again just to break it up into smaller pieces.
You’re giving him a lot of credit there, nice of you to do…but I think that you’re over reaching a little.
What happened to society that we seem to make so few nice women like you and Starlight? You can manage feminine and planted in reality, why does it feel so rare? I’m not arse kissing here, I am asking the question.
I know I hang out in the manosphere a lot, I do know some such women IRL (but they are usually older), but where have ‘normal’ women gone? Where has all the hostility come from? the obsession with labels? the entitlement? the inability to reason about reality?
Does it all come down to “you can have it all”, “you’re worth it”, “yugogurl”, “patriarchy”, “oppressed throughout history”, “77¢”, “1 in 3″ and “rape culture”? A few slogans, some meaningless, some delusional, some lies, and half the world, give or take, goes bananas and starts tearing down society. And some of the other half start helping them…madness.
Anyway, good night.
@Jen, possibly link count is an issue, if so they’ll unleash it when they see it.
Jen, the potential marriage strike. Nem’s title is aimed at being a little provocative, but can’t you even read the title and understand it?
http://www.justfourguys.com/women-start-marriage-strike-men-complete-it/
It’s a mixture of effects that may or may not add up to an impending marriage strike. The article is a bit speculative as the numbers are always a few years out of date. It started a fun discussion though, as intended.
The fact that you are thinking impaired does not make us disingenuous.
Spawny Get, obviously I get that you don’t mean there is a literal marriage strike. I’m not stupid. I know what you’re alluding to, and I’m saying that maybe it’s a good thing all the way around.
And sorry but if you have said “Men, why would you even consider marriage? I suggest you think about it VERY HARD first. What is in it for you?” and I say I agree with you but would add, “Women, what’s in it for you?” and you take issue with me saying that, you’re being disingenuous. If you want women to pressure men to get married to them, then surely, you believe there’s a LOT in it for men.
Jen’s not here to have her point of view challenged, or to have questions answered. She’s here on a sort of reconquista for the status quo. It’s gonna be a hard fought campaign relying on the tactics of appeal to authority and multiple vollys of shame.But she’s a believer and her faith is strong so it’s either victory or martyrdom, either way her righteousness will never be questioned, her bravery assured, with the scars earned from battling male privilege securing a lasting aand durable status as victim.
Onward FI soldier!You can have it all!
Also Liz, the effects of marriage on health are incredibly exaggerated for women:
“The most popular cheater method is to pretend that people who are divorced or widowed never did get married. (It is the same method used most often to make the bogus claim that getting married makes you happier or healthier.) Practitioners of this bit of artifice are trying to make an argument that goes something like this: “Divorced people don’t live as long as married people, so that shows that getting married expands your life span.” But divorced and widowed people DID get married!
Neither the 1996 study based only on men, nor any of the studies cited in The Case for Marriage, compared all of the people who ever got married to the people who stayed single.
So when the authors of The Case claimed that getting married saved men’s lives, they did so by acting as if the men who got divorced or widowed did not actually get married. I call that a statistical annulment.
Here’s something else interesting from that book. Even after using the cheater method, the authors ended up admitting that getting married did not matter much to women’s longevity. Even the women who got married and stayed married did not seem to live longer than the other women.
Now let me tell you the results of what is probably the longest-running study of longevity ever conducted. It is the Terman Life-Cycle Study, started in 1921. The 1,528 men and women, who were 11-years old when the study started, have been followed for as long as they lived. Two groups of people lived the longest: those who got married and stayed married, and those who stayed single. People who divorced, or who divorced and remarried, had shorter lives. What mattered was consistency, not marriage. The results were the same for the men and the women.”
Also, married women drink more: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/249193.php
This is important because female alcohol consumption is linked to breast cancer, and research shows that when a wife has cancer, there is a 21% chance that her husband will leave her.
“Onward FI soldier!You can have it all!”
Actually Badpainter, I tend to agree with this. And I don’t disagree with your assertion that the status quo is essentially good. As it is now, if a woman wants to be a housewife like Liz here, she can be.
If she wants to be childfree, she can be. If she wants to work part-time so she can spend more time with her kids, she can (and studies show these are the happiest moms). If she wants to climb the corporate ladder, she can. Humans are not monolithic. There’s no “one way” that is going to make women happy. So the status quo of today merely says that permissiveness is OK. Don’t condemn other women’s choices. I don’t actually disrespect housewives. Some of them make excellent mothers and are very happy doing that. It’s not a choice I would make for myself, but I respect a woman’s right to choose that for herself. I personally view that as a high-risk lifestyle choice, and I am a risk-averse person by nature (I’ve never even smoked a cigarette). Some people are gamblers. There’s room enough for all of us in an egalitarian society, no?
Jen tsk tsk
All the bs about domestic violence (actually about 50:50 initiated by men:women) you forgot the rule of thumb lie. That old favourite of women that is just plain made up. Is there one dv shelter for men in Canada, or none? What about female shelters turning away boys? Heard of that? YouTube Erin Pizzey, she can set you straight about dv realities.
So men, you say, go looking for sex elsewhere. No female involvement in that? Sexless marriages, she let herself go, the other woman as temptress? None of them make him the good guy, but there’s blame to go around. Also that infidelity gap is getting closed. Women file for the majority of divorces nowadays. The rate was far lower before no fault divorce was allowed. That change giving birth to the frivorce phenomenon where she’s just not happy any more. Screw hubby and the kids, and the ‘vows’ she’s unhappy so she pulls the trigger.
mout
@ Jen #424
That is absolutely not demonstrated by the data. That they disproportionately message the top 1/3rd of women does not imply that they don’t message the rest of the women.
Also, the point still stands that the bottom 1/3rd of women get more messages than the top 1/3rd of men.
@BP
I vote for martyrdom. I’m sick of her solipsistic femdrivel lies. She doesn’t listen, doesn’t read, doesn’t comprehend anything but the woe is me breastbeating oppressed woman stats farmed out by bent feminist liars. That she spews endlessly.
On the bright side, no kids.
Jen,
I’m fine with your choices just so long as I am not in anyway accountable, legally liable, or held responsible for the consequences of choices you make.
Badpainter:
I don’t see how you would be. I have no children that you are paying for. However, childfree people do help pay for other people’s baby bonuses, and I don’t complain about this.
“That is absolutely not demonstrated by the data.” It’s absolutely demonstrated by the graphic that you posted. Whether it’s fake or not is another matter.
Also, the point still stands that the bottom 1/3rd of women get more messages than the top 1/3rd of men.” And this is consistent with the fact that 60-70% of online daters are men.
Spawny Get, I am aware that domestic violence victims are often men. I didn’t say that they’re not. I said that reported DV and rapes have DECLINED since the 1970’s. This is a positive side effect of the current social infrastructure. So even with the false reports you are mentioning, there are still fewer reports than there used to be. That is my point.
“Women file for the majority of divorces nowadays.” This is consistent with the fact that marriage makes women less happy, as I’ve stated. Again, “women, what’s in it for you?”
“The rate was far lower before no fault divorce was allowed.” No-fault divorce was introduced when it became impossible to prove fault with all the mudslinging/accusations of infidelity from both parties in court. I actually can’t verify the accuracy of this, but I had an online man’s rights activist tell me this, so I assume it must be so:-p
Speaking of mudslinging, insults in place of refutations? How childish. It’s like the equivalent of losing a game on the playground, pouting and then picking up your ball and going home. I expect better from you guys.
Re: ““Women file for the majority of divorces nowadays.” This is consistent with the fact that marriage makes women less happy”
If it rains, women are unhappy. If the sun shines, women are unhappy. If the man is nice, the woman is unhappy. If the man is mean, the woman is unhappy.
That’s right guys, why do we have to intentionally fail to meet Jen’s expectations? Why can’t we all see how much she values us and in return grant her the same respect? Why are we so reluctant to see the truth? Is it fear, small penises, mommy issues? Can’t we admit when we’re wrong? Why can’t we just grow up? After all we’re all in it together. It takes the entire village doing its part. Why can’t we all just get along? Why can’t we play by the rules like we always have in the past? Why do we have to say things that discomfit the lady? Why are we taking our balls home instead of letting everyone play with them however, he/she/they want? Why are we so mean? WHY? WHY? WHY?
@ Jen
Again, you’ve got the causality backwards. Wealth causes people to be happy and to delay marriage. Such nations are also breeding themselves into extinction.
There used to be one. The guy in charge of it ran out of money to pay his bills and killed himself. Then the feminist media dragged his name through the mud: http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/feminism_didnt_kill_mens_rights_advocate_earl_silverman/
@ Jen
And my children will have your social security bill pinned on them. Guess which one is a bigger expense: social security or baby bonuses?
@ Jen
No it isn’t. Get a sense of proportion.
“However, childfree people do help pay for other people’s baby bonuses”
Jen, let’s just stipulate that you are one of the rare women who will, on her own, fully find her entire retirement, medical care, etc., for life, into your 80s (which is a rather typical age for women to reach these days).
However, even if so, you will be in a small minority. The rest are net-takers who rely on the taxes that I pay, and that my children will pay, to fund their older years.
Collapsing demographics will first crush the welfare state and, eventually, make life very hard for the 99 out of 100 single who are not so thrifty and prudent as you. Whereas oldsters with children will have extended families to help them when the redistribution spigot is shut off by necessity.
“If it rains, women are unhappy. If the sun shines, women are unhappy. If the man is nice, the woman is unhappy. If the man is mean, the woman is unhappy.”
Then why is it that women in egalitarian marriages report being fairly happy? http://www.whattoexpect.com/wom/family-life/0325/shared-chores-may-be-the-key-to-a-happy-marriage.aspx.
#451: Yes, that’s why they have less sex. They’re so happy.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082258.htm
(the above study 4500 people, by comparison to your 160)
Liz, didn’t you know that happy women don’t have sex?
“Collapsing demographics will first crush the welfare state and, eventually, make life very hard for the 99 out of 100 single who are not so thrifty and prudent as you. Whereas oldsters with children will have extended families to help them when the redistribution spigot is shut off by necessity.”
I don’t foresee any major crisis, after all Japan has been doing fine with 20 years of stagnation. Other countries have also had lower birthrates than the USA for much longer and have much lower public debt than the US does. The solution is to curb spending and raise the retirement age. There shouldn’t be a lot of resistance to that what with the Greatest Generation holding onto their jobs for dear life. They had plenty of babies (the Boomers) and they certainly aren’t in any hurry to retire. Wonder why?
Liz, a more recent study found the opposite: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/men-want-more-sex-do-the-laundry-12-09-2007/
The sample size was 17,000 in 28 countries. And it’s not 20 years old like the one you cited.
Also Liz, in the old and irrelevant study you cite, the media sensationalized the less-than-one fewer time the egalitarian men had sex per month, but completely ignored the fact that those men still reported higher marital satisfaction (as did their wives).
So I guess to a traditionalist, sex is more important than not getting divorced. I guess that’s why red states have such high divorce rates compared to states with more feminists in them.
“Wealth causes people to be happy and to delay marriage.”
So you are saying that happy people delay marriage? And the problem with this is what exactly? Is quantity of said people more important than their quality of life? Really, is that how you think?
#455: The study didn’t indicate the opposite. It indicated that cohabitating couples share household chores more than married couples. Surprise surprise.
“Also Liz, in the old and irrelevant study you cite, the media sensationalized the less-than-one fewer time the egalitarian men had sex per month, but completely ignored the fact that those men still reported higher marital satisfaction (as did their wives).”
Where did you read that? Not in the article I linked to. And I doubt very much you went to the source because you obviously couldn’t be bothered to even check on your source in the last piece you linked to.
“So I guess to a traditionalist, sex is more important than not getting divorced.”
I don’t know any divorced people who had a great sex life when they divorced. Sex and marital happiness are pretty closely linked.
“It indicated that cohabitating couples share household chores more than married couples. Surprise surprise.” Yes, and it’s been long-acknowledged that cohabitating couples have the highest sexual frequency, especially at older ages. You can see the exact numbers here: http://cdn.goodmenproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Screen-Shot-2013-03-05-at-10.48.10-AM-e1362509355455.png and here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/201002/getting-married-and-getting-sex-or-not
Having said that, there is no correlation between marital happiness and frequency of sex: http://family-studies.org/who-cheats/?utm_source=IFS+Update+List&utm_campaign=dd1f0d567e-Newsletter_11_big_list_12_12_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b337cbdfb-dd1f0d567e-89112097
What matters is agreement on how much is enough.
Also Liz, I’ll find you the original study. I DID look at the original source… months ago.
And Jen shows us the difference between highly educated and highly indoctrinated. Sad, all that time and money spent and the results are:
Failure to differentiate between correlation and causation.
Failure to consider differing coincident effects of the same cause.
Unwarranted appeals to dubious authority.
Strawman arguments.
Failure to appreciate the difference between static and dynamic systems.
Resorts to shaming when rhetoric fails to persuade.
Dismissal of personal experiences that differ from her own.
Cherry picking
Failure to grasp the main point of the original post.
All of which are exemplified here:
“I don’t foresee any major crisis, after all Japan has been doing fine with 20 years of stagnation. Other countries have also had lower birthrates than the USA for much longer and have much lower public debt than the US does.”
The notion that “Japan is doing fine” is by itself is all we need to see the spoon like depth of thinking. The rest her statement illustrates an almost perfect economic illiteracy coupled an equally lacking understanding of history.
Per the original study, “Here again, special attention is devoted to the household
division of unpaid family work. For example, research shows that when men do more
housework, wives’ perceptions of fairness and marital satisfaction tend to rise (Amato
et al. 2003; Stevens, Kiger, and Mannon 2005) and couples experience less marital
conflict (Coltrane 2000).1
Other research shows that U.S. couples who have more equal divisions of labor are less likely to divorce than are couples where one partner specializes in breadwinning and the other partner specializes in family work (Cooke 206).”
http://www.asanet.org/journals/ASR/Feb13ASRFeature.pdf
Badpainter, there was a special on CNN discussing this very matter days ago. There were experts on their discussing the demographics on the United States and their opinions differ from yours. Your opinion is just that – your opinion. It’s subjective. Japanese investment being as high as it is is miraculous given that until recently it held the crown for highest corporate tax rate for that entire 20-year period of stagnation. And still, the individual tax burden is lower than it is for many Americans. Indeed, Japan is doing fine. They opt for robots instead of immigrants; to each their own.
“Resorts to shaming when rhetoric fails to persuade.” Yeah, you guys should really stop doing that. Calling me ‘thinking impaired” (Spawny Get) and the sarcastic and ridiculing tactics you’ve demonstrated here: ‘ Why do we have to say things that discomfit the lady? Why are we taking our balls home instead of letting everyone play with them however, he/she/they want? Why are we so mean? WHY? WHY? WHY?’ really show a lack of integrity and reason.
Liz, the sensationalized results from the study could be summed up and explained here: “More recent research finds that husbands’ housework is positively linked to sexual frequency, but women’s own housework hours are even more strongly associated with sexual frequency, suggesting that greater egalitarianism may not be associated with higher sexual frequency (Gager and Yabiku 2010.) In other words, it’s not that men aren’t getting some, it’s that the women are busier. They have jobs, after all.
Look Badpainter, I get it. You can’t prove that delaying marriage is a net negative on an individual level given that all of the data demonstrates the exact opposite, so you must instead point out issues on a societal level. I have read that a stable birthrate is between 1.7 and 2.3. Yes, there is such a thing as too many children. Beyond 2.3 you get instability and riots because there aren’t enough jobs for all the young people (who are more likely to riot). So I can definitely see how there are issues when the tfr drops below 1.7. However, these are overshadowed by the issues created by a planet that has more people than its carrying capacity, and quality of life collapses because all of those people are fighting for resources. Thankfully, the population growth rate has finally slowed and it’s projected to peak at 10 billion by the end of this century, after which point we will finally see decline. The countries with really high birth rates also have really high mortality rates, especially infant mortality, so it’s a moot point. At least mine is one of the last generations that will only be able to afford tiny little boxes in the sky because there are too many people fighting for a piece of land and a job.
CNN? Seriously?
Re: sexual frequency in marriages is not negotiable. A husband CANNOT do enough dishes, or bring enough flowers, or do enough footrubs to get more sex. The ONLY thing that counts for sexual frequency in almost all long term relationships is the woman’s lack of contempt for the man. And frankly, the more stuff he has to do to try to make her satisfied, the more contempt she has for him. Period.
Re: “women’s own housework hours are even more strongly associated with sexual frequency”. Yes. The more that women make themselves to do for their husbands outside the bedroom, the more that women do for their husbands in the bedroom. Exactly as men have always said.
#459 You said it exactly backwards. Cohabitating couples have LESS sex than married, except at the very highest ages. Because brave old married men continue to bother living with their cold lifeless wives only if still married; a cohabitating man just makes like a banana and splits as soon as she starts acting wrong.
#462:
”Although the notion that egalitarian marriages are sexier was widely broadcast in the media, there is little empirical support for this view. The claim rests on results of a small- scale (N = 300) survey and reports of couples in therapy conducted by Chethik,
This was, case in point, the survey you cited before…
which, while intriguing, are difficult to evaluate (Chethik 2006; cf. North 2007). Moreover, other research suggests that for all the benefits of peer marriage, more egalitarian couples are more likely to have unsatisfactory sex lives and experience a lack of passion due to habitu- ation, and these differences are not explained byashortageoftime(Schwartz1995).While couples in more traditional marriages may experience a range of marital difficulties, lower sexual interest is especially a problem among egalitarian couples (Schwartz 1995). More recent research finds that husbands’ housework is positively linked to sexual fre- quency, but women’s own housework hours are even more strongly associated with sexual frequency, suggesting that greater egalitarian- ism may not be associated with higher sexual frequency (Gager and Yabiku 2010).
(snip)
Nonetheless, sex is an important component of marriage. Blumstein and Schwartz’s classic, American Couples (1983), identified sex (in addition to money and power) as a key good around which marriages—indeed all intimate partnerships—are organized. Sexual frequency is of interest for researchers because it is positively linked to emotional satisfaction and physical pleasure, and couples with greater sexual frequency are less likely to divorce or break up (Waite and Joyner 2001; Yabiku and Gager 2009; Yeh et al. 2006).
And so forth…I don’t see much support for your claims. No support in this peer reviewed journal article, nor in practical reality, nor in common sense for that matter. You yourself indicated you had a bad relationship and cited infrequent sex to make the point.
@ Jen
Give it another decade or two.
All the major West European countries (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Italy) had a higher public debt as a percent of GDP than the United States as of 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt
Additionally, given the mass protests (and even riots) over austerity going on there, things aren’t exactly working out there.
@ Jen
Given modest technological innovation (i.e. fully implementing sustainable technologies that are already feasible), the carrying capacity of this planet is at 10-20 billion. And that isn’t even considering extra-terrestrial resources.
And yet again you have gotten the causation completely backwards. This has got to be a record.
More people = more consumers = more jobs. Thus jobs are proportional to the population size. And we have plenty of land space (your own country is sparsely populated except at the Southern edges – and many other regions, such as Siberia and the Great Plains are highly underpopulated). People (usually young women) wish to live in cities and then complain about how expensive housing is…
@ Jen
Almost missed another statistical mistake (although this one is tricky and your committing it is forgivable – I’m sure many in the manosphere have made the same error):
Thanks to Simpson’s Paradox, correlations are not transitive. You can’t necessarily combine two results to get a third.
#424
„I’ll rephrase to ‘a strong majority of men only messaged the top 1/3rd of women’ for accuracy.”
What it actually states is that „two-thirds of male messages go to the best-looking third of women”. The two statements are rather different.
„And add that they were almost 50X more likely to message the most attractive woman than the least attractive, while the difference for women messaging the most attractive to least attractive man was less than 40 messages TOTAL.”
The least attractive men got zero messages. If you multiply zero, you still get zero, therefore the difference between female attention directed at the most and least attractive men is more pronounced.
„OK, so if men are going on strike for marriage, how are women the ones primarily responsible for the marriage delay?”
Maybe you should read the linked article. Then you’ll find out.
„The most that can be claimed is that women are failing to adequately pressure some poor schmuck to marry them like they have before.”
They are failing to „adequately pressure” the men they see as potential future husbands because those men are mostly outside their league.
„In addition, a study encompassing 100,000 people found that women in bad marriages who filed for divorce experienced an increase in general mood and wellness lasting for up to 5 years after separation”
On what basis did they characterize such marriages as „bad”? The article doesn’t make it clear. Let me guess: they did so according to the wives’ statements and nothing more. I’m pretty sure they didn’t even bother asking the husbands.
„Speaking of poverty, women who are divorced are more likely to be impoverished than women who never married.”
Source?
„Married women have higher rates of depression than unmarried women, but the reverse is true for men.”
That’s because they count divorced men as „unmarried”, and this skewes the data. Divorce is a boon for wives but frivorce rape has grave effects on the husbands’ health.
„If marriage is so fulfilling for women, so many older ones would not be deciding they would rather go it alone.”
We were talking about marriage as it exists today, not how it existed 40-50 years ago. That’s a different issue.
„Marriage is a high-risk venture, on that much we agree, Spawny Get. Where we disagree is that this is only true for men.”
You’re getting it wrong. Marriage in itself isn’t a high-risk venture for men. Female-initiated divorce is.
„Marital quality is paramount for women, far moreso than for men.”
Men are generally more likely to be content with their lot in life than women, with or without marriage. That’s because they aren’t hypergamous and don’t have the same general fear of insecurity as women do.
The statement that „the likelihood of extramarital involvement decreases over time until the eighteenth year of matrimony, after which the likelihood of extramarital involvement increases” is not the same as „marriage becomes riskier and riskier for women the longer they are in it”. I suggest you do something about your reading comprehension skills.
„Certain developmental stages in a marriage, including pregnancy and the months following the birth of a child, are also high risk times for infidelity among males”
The risk of male infidelity increases when the wife is essentially unavailable for sex. Color me shocked. Is that supposed to be an indictment against husbands? Or something that is a reason for childlessness?
„As I mentioned, this puts many women in the precarious position of choosing between their dignity and being in a genuine relationship with someone they love and who respects them enough to be faithful, and the wellbeing of their child (raising them in an intact home).”
So the more likely the husband is to be faithful and respectful, the less likely is his child to be raised well?
„I’m not sure why there is such a negative attitude towards female prudence in life and love in general here.”
Childlessness wasn’t an act of prudence on your part. An act of prudence would’ve been the avoidance of wasting many of your younger years on alpha louts and focusing on marriage-minded betas instead.
„It’s sort of illogical how you guys talk about how ruinous and emotionally dispiriting divorce is for men (which I agree with), but then you turn around and urge women to rush into marriages they’re ill-prepared for a second after discussing this, knowing full well that early marriages more often than not end in divorce.”
Again, you’re getting it wrong. What we’re simply saying is that delaying marriage harms women’s own selfish and long-term interests, and seeking commitment from men unsuited for commitment to the woman in question also harms her own interests.
„If you were really interested in lowering the divorce rate you would have no problem with the trend of delayed divorce.”
What?
„Instead, it seems you prioritize men getting laid in college more than lasting marriages later on. Um, no offense, but wtf?”
There’s no contradiction. Who is more likely to have a lasting marriage: a man who can get laid in college or a man that cannot?
„If marriage really IS as disadvantageous for men as is claimed here and you want to encourage them to be more careful, then surely it is a GOOD thing if women are discussing the disadvantages of marriage.”
Disadvantages of marriage for men and disadvantages of marriage for women are two completely different things.
This is exactly why it’s worthless talking to Jen. (#436)
You are a waste of time, space and oxygen.
Please can we ban this totally solipsistic, emo-incontinent, reality blinkered, drama queen, guys?
We tried to get through to her that there’s more to life than the BS feminists have splattered all over our society. Other points of view. She can’t do it. And she’s boring. We’ve used her to address her issues (for the sake of lurkers), but enough is enough. She’s as mental as PlainJane when she’s self medicating. Assuming that it isn’t PJ (doesn’t feel like her).
“Speaking of mudslinging, insults in place of refutations? How childish. It’s like the equivalent of losing a game on the playground, pouting and then picking up your ball and going home. I expect better from you guys.”
Just go fuck yourself somewhere else then.
To be honest, I don’t think Jen should be banned. Her antics aren’t a tangible hindrance to spirited discussion among men, and she doesn’t sound like someone who’s deliberately trolling. Having said that, I do think we should stop replying to her, because she clearly isn’t willing to listen to what we have to say.
All in all, it’s important to keep in mind that she’s a perfect representative of the widespread worldview we’re up against. It’s entirely fair and accurate to call her an average Western woman. She subscribes to the apex fallacy and other prejudices against men, she had a crappy upbringing that did nothing to prepare her for the role of the chaste, respectable, pleasant traditional woman, she has ample psychological baggage and has ridden the carousel. She’s completely unfit to be a mother and a wife. In other words, she’s average, a run-of-the-mill woman. She isn’t an outliner.
@Nem #447
“There used to be one [male DV shelter in Canada]. The guy in charge of it ran out of money to pay his bills and killed himself. Then the feminist media dragged his name through the mud”
I knew of his suicide, which I assume was seen as some fantasy feminist ‘act of violence against women’. That’s been said about some husbands killing themselves BTW, that they did so as an attack on their wives. They wonder why some people see the bleaders of Fembotia as mentally cracked.
There were rumours of a new centre being set up in his honour (by WBB at least originally), wasn’t sure if it had come to anything yet.
“Then the feminist media dragged his name through the mud”
They have no soul, no code, no honour.
Sir Nemesis: “Thanks to Simpson’s Paradox, correlations are not transitive. You can’t necessarily combine two results to get a third.”
The numbers she cited for sexual frequency of cohabitants versus married don’t really support her apples and cherries contention that “cohabitating couples have the highest sexual frequency” anyway. The chart indicates cohabitating males under 60 are more likely to have gone without sex for the entire past year and the rest seems kind of a wash.
Without context (as you noted), of course, there’s no telling anyway (no idea how long any of the relationships on the chart have lasted, but since marriages last longer than cohabitations there’s obviously probably a large discrepency there as well).
FWIW, the study on housework/sex coorelation is most interesting less for the hard data and more for what it implies. It isn’t the housework that is pertinent but the relationship dynamic. All has more to do with general level of domesticity than the chores themselves, and can be summed up in six words or less: Tigers get more sex than housecats.
Also, the sky is blue, water is wet, and cat ranchers are often lonely and depressed.
“Calling me ‘thinking impaired” (Spawny Get)”
I was being very, very kind. Never met you in real life, never will. Maybe you carry the drool speckled, foaming at the lips, poo flinging, finger jabbing psycho role off like a champ…?
Come to think of it, are you Big Red? She’s from your town.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gB0XweIE5s
A musical tribute to Toronto’s Big Red
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avu5NT1ZYT8
That’s you, that is. That’s why there’s no reasoning with you.
And that last line caused me to dig into youtube. Back into a good mood.
“That’s you, that is” – Newman and Baddiel
Hee hee. Good video, Swithy.
Jen, you don’t even have to look to the future is already here. In the US, there are massive wealth transfers going on–state enforced–every day, from young to old. It is unsustainable given current demographics. Very, very few old people are living on the fruits of their own efforts. They are living, in no insignificant part, off the taxes paid by younger workers. So the idea of the childless oldster who is paying for everyone else’s babies is exactly backwards. Or, at best, a needle in a haystack.
Japan is in full grown demographic collapse and has been in a depression/recession for 25 years. The standard of living is still 1st world but they are simply spending down the capital accumulated through many decades of virtuous toil. It can’t last, and it won’t.
You seem to be willing to say anything, no matter how foolish, to justify your decision not to have children. let us all assure you, there is no need. We all agree, if you don’t want them, don’t have them. Elaborate phony justifications are not necessary.
And I at least applaud you if it is really true that you will fully fund your own life without needing recourse to state-forced wealth transfers from young to old. Both because, that’s the more moral way to live and because–within your lifetime, whether you believe it or not–those transfers are going to come to an end, so they won’t be there for you even if you wanted to use them.
“All in all, it’s important to keep in mind that she’s a perfect representative of the widespread worldview we’re up against. It’s entirely fair and accurate to call her an average Western woman. She subscribes to the apex fallacy and other prejudices against men, she had a crappy upbringing that did nothing to prepare her for the role of the chaste, respectable, pleasant traditional woman, she has ample psychological baggage and has ridden the carousel. She’s completely unfit to be a mother and a wife. In other words, she’s average, a run-of-the-mill woman. She isn’t an outlier.”
Not much there that I can’t agree with.
But she’s destroying the thread by just word salading the same mistakes again and again. Big Red Jen is loopy beyond redemption and has provided all the evidence we need of her ‘mind’set.
Did really enjoy hearing the ‘History Today’ skits again though (That’s you, that is). So a pleasant end to the morning despite BigRedJen’s best efforts.
From the professor on the right. This is how BigRedJen sees all men.
“Hee hee. Good video, Swithy. :-)”
Thanks Liz. Some comedy never ages, just things like the references to Geoff Capes / Thora Hird (mentioned in some of the later episodes) won’t mean much to young ‘uns or danged furriners. Geoff Capes was a huge guy, a shot putter (iirc). Thora was an old, old actress at that point.
Here’s Thora as an Undertaker in a contemporary comedy show. So inoffensive it’s safe for Granny, let’s put it that way. (you can skip to 1:00 if you must)
That’s your mum that is, that’s your girlfriend.
Re sex frequency.
First, having more isn’t “winning”. Getting what you want is. If a couple wants it 2x a week and gets it and is happy, vs a man who that goes 4x but wants it twice a day, who’s better off?
The Kinsey stats clearly show married couples have the most sex compared to all other groups, except for old cohabitators.
Also remember, lots of cohabitators do get married at some point. There’s a big split between the never-marry and the trial-marriage types. Nearly all couples I know, lived together before marriage.
“„Speaking of poverty, women who are divorced are more likely to be impoverished than women who never married.”
Source?”
“According to recent data, around 20 percent of divorced women aged 65 or older live in poverty, compared with 18 percent of never-married women and 15 percent of widowed women. Differences in poverty rates are even larger at the oldest ages—22 percent of divorced women aged 80 or older are poor, compared with only 17 percent of never-married women and 15 percent of widowed women (SSA 2010).” http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v72n1/v72n1p11.html
“So the more likely the husband is to be faithful and respectful, the less likely is his child to be raised well?” What is wrong with your reading comprehension? I am clearly stating that women whose husbands have cheated while they were busy tending to their newborn infant are then put into a position that they have to decide to keep their family together, or stay with a disrespectul, selfish cheating cad (I know you don’t see it that way as you essentially dismissed cheating husbands as being justifiedin breaking the vows they took shortly before because their wives aren’t available for sex.)
“Childlessness wasn’t an act of prudence on your part. An act of prudence would’ve been the avoidance of wasting many of your younger years on alpha louts and focusing on marriage-minded betas instead.” Excuse me? Do you know me to be making such a statement? Again, you have failed to define what an “alpha” even IS. I have had exactly two long term relationships prior to meeting the person I intend to spend my life with; one was an IT guy and the other a painter. Apparently your definition of an “alpha” is anyone who is someone’s ex-boyfriend since no one wanted to date you!
“„If you were really interested in lowering the divorce rate you would have no problem with the trend of delayed divorce.”
What?” Again, what is wrong with your reading comprehension? We all know that marriages that take place when the couple is older last longer and are less likely to end in divorce. You people like to sweep that statistically proven fact under the rug where you can, but it doesn’t stop it from being a fact. Those who marry in their early 20’s have a divorce rate over 50%.
“„If marriage really IS as disadvantageous for men as is claimed here and you want to encourage them to be more careful, then surely it is a GOOD thing if women are discussing the disadvantages of marriage.”
Disadvantages of marriage for men and disadvantages of marriage for women are two completely different things.” No, they’re not. Marriage is high-risk for both genders. That’s the disadvantage. The rewards can be great but if it doesn’t work out, you’re worse off than if you hadn’t bothered.
#486 jf12, cohabitating couples are more likely to report from age 30 up that they have sex 3 or more times a week than married couples are.
“And so forth…I don’t see much support for your claims. No support in this peer reviewed journal article, nor in practical reality, nor in common sense for that matter. You yourself indicated you had a bad relationship and cited infrequent sex to make the point.” Liz, lower sexual frequency is subjective. That’s the issue. Some men may be happy with sex twice a week; to another man, that may not be enough. What matters is agreement about what is enough, and egalitarian couples are more likely to agree on things in general, which would explain their overall higher satisfaction. Not sure why you are deliberately denying what is obvious. Furthermore, the actual difference in frequency was barely statistically significant.
As for the cheap shot, once a month was not enough for me, but there may be women out there who are OK with that that he would be more compatible with. Also, that relationship was not egalitarian. I did far more housework than he did, which was a bigger contributor to the demise than the sex issue was.
Spawny Get, overlooking the fact that you keep choosing to prove my point about shaming tactics and potshots in place of actual refutations, I would just like to point out the irony in you posting a video that apparently paints me as seeing all men negatively only moments after saying this: ” She’s completely unfit to be a mother and a wife. In other words, she’s average, a run-of-the-mill woman. She isn’t an outlier.”
Not much there that I can’t agree with.”
In other words, you hate women, [Edit: Jen, cut out the egregious mischaracterizations. He doesn’t hate women.]and your only proof that I hate men is that I point out accurately that women are smart to pursue higher education and caeers and delay marriage until they’re established not only because it improves their general life prospects, but because it improves their chances of having a lasting marriage and choosing wisely if they make the decision after their frontal lobe has set. And if the marriage doesn’t work out, they are less likely to be completely impoverished if they were not completely financially dependent on someone else.
Alrighty, then. Just as long as hypocrisy is cool coming from butthurt misogynistic men and self-described ‘betas.’
“Jen, you don’t even have to look to the future is already here. In the US, there are massive wealth transfers going on–state enforced–every day, from young to old. It is unsustainable given current demographics.”
The US has a higher birthrate than most other first-world nations. The birthrate for the last 20 years has been higher than it was in the mid-’70’s. The problem is by no means their demographics but their spending habits.
Japan is an extreme example because their birth rate is SO low, but the fact is that even with one of the lowest tfr’s in the world, they have not collapsed, they’ve stagnated, and there is a difference.
When I said that there is such a thing as too many children, I wasn’t simply making it up; experts have stated this.
From right-wing paper The Toronto Sun
“And although the fertility rate is below the generational replacement level, immigration compensates for a fewer births than at other times in the country’s history.
“The population of Canada would still be growing without immigration, but at a slower pace,” Foot said.
An ideal fertility rate is somewhere between 1.6 and 2.6 births per 1,000 women, Foot said.
A society with too few children can’t afford the costs of caring for its aging population, and a society with too many children will suffer from political instability because there won’t be enough jobs for them all, Foot said.”
And that is exactly what happened in the Middle East.
Jen “What matters is agreement about what is enough, and egalitarian couples are more likely to agree on things in general, which would explain their overall higher satisfaction.”
And AGAIN you have offered no evidence that egalitarian couples have overall higher satisfaction. The journal article you offered as evidence actually counters your claim.
“Not sure why you are deliberately denying what is obvious. Furthermore, the actual difference in frequency was barely statistically significant.”
It is far from obvious to me that egalitarian couples are happier. It’s opposite in my experience. In fact, couples are more egalitarian than ever and divorces ever more ubiquitous. Anti-depressants are ubiquitous too. An odd thing for such happy happy times.
“As for the cheap shot, once a month was not enough for me, but there may be women out there who are OK with that that he would be more compatible with. Also, that relationship was not egalitarian. I did far more housework than he did, which was a bigger contributor to the demise than the sex issue was.”
When your own personal experience (which you threw out yourself, I certainly didn’t inquire) counters your claims it’s evidence that your claim is in error. Funny you call this a cheap shot after referring to “my lifestyle” as “risky” (should I have a mother’s Pride parade?).
Ideal for what? You are conflating and confusing so many things.
I am not totally dismissive of Malthus, there are some societies in which overpopulation is a real problem. But none of those are in the OECD.
Also, where do you think immigrants come from?
Jen, the main point is, you don’t need any justification not to have children. Don’t want them, don’t have them. The justifications are pointless if in fact you truly feel no desire for children. If, however, part of you actually does want them, but the part which does not is stronger (at the moment), then I can see why you keep on with the rationalizations.
As for Japan being “stable,” what does that really mean? Everything looks stable until it doesn’t. We’re in uncharted waters here with a dozen or so advanced countries with TFRs barely above 1. No one can predict the future, yada yada, but lot of people can read actuarial tables and ledgers, and the numbers don’t add up for sustaining first-world standards of living and welfare states with these demographics.
“The journal article you offered as evidence actually counters your claim.”
No Liz, it doesn’t:
“Per the original study, “Here again, special attention is devoted to the household
division of unpaid family work. For example, research shows that when men do more
housework, wives’ perceptions of fairness and marital satisfaction tend to rise (Amato
et al. 2003; Stevens, Kiger, and Mannon 2005) and couples experience less marital
conflict (Coltrane 2000).1
Other research shows that U.S. couples who have more equal divisions of labor are less likely to divorce than are couples where one partner specializes in breadwinning and the other partner specializes in family work (Cooke 206).”
“But the trend jibes with other research showing that egalitarian marriages, though happier, are less likely to have that sexual frisson, said Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist at the University of Washington and the author of “The Normal Bar: The Surprising Secrets of Happy Couples and What They Reveal About Creating a New Normal in Your Relationship” (Harmony, February 2013.)” http://www.livescience.com/26696-housework-makes-men-less-sexy.html
“It is far from obvious to me that egalitarian couples are happier. It’s opposite in my experience.” That’s your experience. It’s anecdotal. The happiest countries on earth are uniformly more egalitarian. They also have lower divorce rates than the US does (actually, all other first-world countries, do). In the US, states with more egalitarian achievement rates also have lower divorce rates. Insofar as divorce is correlated with satisfaction, more satisfied couples are those who marry later and are more educated. Antidepressants are ubiquitous in the US, which has the highest rate of their use in the world, but then again… so is marriage.
“When your own personal experience (which you threw out yourself, I certainly didn’t inquire) counters your claims it’s evidence that your claim is in error.” Where did I ever say that my prior relationship was egalitarian? I stated only that my ex’s SMV was high, but his MMV was low. Part of the reason his MMV was low is because he was too lazy to do much housework! My current relationship is FAR more egalitarian; we share the chores, we have the same salary, and yes we are happy. I think it would be better if you would refrain from pretending to know my own life better than I do, if only to avoid sounding like an idiot. Yes, I view your lifestyle as high risk, but I don’t begrudge you your choices. If anything, I think women are not a monolith. Some women are going to be happier with traditional dynamics, and others are not. On average. women do prefer egalitarian dynamics but there’s never been a one-size-fits-all: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090805142905.htm
@jf12#468 – Men beginning at age 30 are more likely to report sex 3X or more a week in the cohabitating vs. married group. Call me crazy but I assumed men spend more time over 30 than under it. That is why the media and sociologists consistently report that cohabitors have the highest sexual frequency.
“Because brave old married men continue to bother living with their cold lifeless wives only if still married; a cohabitating man just makes like a banana and splits as soon as she starts acting wrong.”
Well yeah, you can be happy, or you can be married.
I kid! I kid! In all sincerity, I think a happily married couple is a beautiful thing. It’s just too bad that they’re so scarce, particularly in middle age.
Re: crisis/welfare state, etc. Base interest rates would normally serve as the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” to reveal the very serious problems that come with deteriorating Debt/GDP; lenders would demand higher rates as compensation for dealing with a counter-party that had potential balance sheet impairments.
Alas, this time our little canary has already been killed—assassinated by the the Fed’s ZIRP, QE, Operation Twist, etc. My hero Frederic Bastiat may have put it best: “The plans differ. The planners are all alike.”
Regarding Japan. If Japan’s interest rates were to rise by a few hundred basis points and the shock propagated through to a logical increase in its average cost of capital, the country would find itself *unable to service even the interest on its debt with 100% tax revenues devoted to debt service*. We’d then get front-row seats to a rare, violent, and quite thrilling market event: a G3 sovereign default (of course, it would probably be termed a “restructuring opportunity” or even “debt jubilee”).
Demographics, later marriages, debt as a claim against the future, lower fertility rates, aging populations, social Ponzi scheme implosion, etc. definitely play a major role in these things, as will an increasing climate of financial repression used by desperate statists, but it is difficult to tease out one or two factors when you are talking about a complex adaptive system like a modern economy. Guys like Harry Dent base many of their forecasts on demographic trends and consumer spending arcs associated with different age cohorts.
For whatever it is worth—many of my friends in the global macro HF and CTA communities have of late developed a keen interest in having a paramilitary/survivalist capability. Neal Strauss of “The Game” fame has gone the same way and sought out tactical and survival training, bought a Rokon and weapons, etc. (all detailed in his “Emergency” book), as have Sam Sheridan, Tim Ferriss, and several other high profile Bro Code-type authors and thinkers. It’s part of a convergence of disciplines which may mark a new Masculinity Movement (of which BV’s Sovereign Man could ultimately be the unifying philosophical glue).
In terms of mating market effects, I think there is less call for a division of labor/complementarity pattern which marked traditional home economics efficiencies, and more call for a “merger between equals” in which the woman needs to show a very high level of psychological and economic independence—i.e., a ready surplus of these relationship macronutrients is considered healthy, and low neediness, anxiety/neuroticism, etc.are considered markers of psychological maturity. The guy likes this because, as we have discussed, he wants to be able to reinvest his own surplus back into himself and his own toys and interests (and, with later marriage, this has probably become habituated), not to have to spend it on relationship maintenance (which would now be considered deadweight costs). While in the past men may have wanted to feel “needed”, I think that now they want to feel “free.”
I think we will see men being more and more wary of discussions about “emotional needs” and “intimacy” as these will be seen, rightly or wrongly, as catch-phrases for neuroticism, absorption, inability to emotionally self-regulate, need for the man to play psychotherapist, etc. A friend of mine who is female quotes the old military injunction that “an officer is responsible for his or her own morale.” I suppose that everyone will just have to be cooler, more nonchalant, more self-contained, tougher, and in some ways harder because chivalry won’t be there as the protective social lubricant to grease the normal frictions between male and female emotional communication styles.
I would speculate that this Stoic framework will in fact serve male interests more than female ones over the long term, and that it probably will not be great for the typical female’s mental health, positive affect, etc.. For all the talk about the feminizing of men, I think the masculinization of young women is a much more potent contemporary social force.
“I am not totally dismissive of Malthus, there are some societies in which overpopulation is a real problem. But none of those are in the OECD.”
I remember reading a report that there are actually fewer childless people than there used to be, but those who did have children simply used to have more of them. So it IS unfortunate that childfree people sort of feel like they have to defend themselves. They’ve always existed, we are nothing new.
Jen: “Where did I ever say that my prior relationship was egalitarian?”
You didn’t. You stated it was a bad relationship and used sexual infrequency as an illustrative example. There are two arguments here: One, that sexual frequency is related to relationship happiness (I certainly think so). And the other whether or not egalitarian relationships are happier. My reference to you was made in support of the first point. And 1.6 times a month difference in a five time a month average is not a “statistically insignificant difference”.
“My current relationship is FAR more egalitarian; we share the chores, we have the same salary, and yes we are happy. I think it would be better if you would refrain from pretending to know my own life better than I do, if only to avoid sounding like an idiot.”
I haven’t referenced your current relationship. You hadn’t thrown any information out for our perusal. If you feel your personal life experiences are untouchable as a reference rather than stooping to insults you shouldn’t throw them out in the first place, becuase it gives the assumption that you want us to know about them and are handing out those personal details for that reason. I know you had sex once a month and you know I’m a housewife (though I’m not sure when you read that one, probably just an assumption on your part…I’m sure I’ve worked longer than you however). If and when I throw out personal details about my sex life feel free to reference them and I won’t call you an idiot for it.
Last I knew, divorce correlates more with education and class, than age, unless, they marry as teenagers. People who complete college, or never attend, do quite well. People who drop out of college tend to fare the worst. I’ve seen lots the stats, and they don’t back up the idea that “marriage before 30 is always unstable”.
Delaying marriage past 21 or so has no real significance on divorce rates. There are far other more important factors.
As for housework, I’m of the mind it doesn’t have to be 50/50 equal. When we didn’t have kids, we split it evenly. When we had kids, she stayed home since I earn enough to bankroll the family of 5. Having her work would cost more in day care than she would earn, and we both had stay-at-home mothers and wanted to give that gift to our kids, at least, during their young years. So she does more housework than me, because she is home, and the specialization is more efficient. When the kids are gone, I imagine it will change back, as I enjoy cooking and, I have maintained my own house alone just fine. Right now I’m bankrolling her second degree and I’m happy to, because she put in the time home with the kids.
It’s sad that people have such poor relationship skills these days that they have to “plan to divorce”. That’s one foot out of the door IMO.
“”a society with too many children will suffer from political instability because there won’t be enough jobs for them all, Foot said.”
And that is exactly what happened in the Middle East.”
Pretty simplistic. The devastated economies of the Middle East are largely a function of corrupt and incompetent governments and certain cultural factors that have led to the perpetuance of these governments.
It isn’t the housework that matters (IMO) OTC, it’s the relationship dynamic. There are seasons of life when it’s “all hands on deck”.
Side note to Jen: The reflexive colloquial spittle that’s flying from your keyboard tells me all I need to know about the “happy” state of your relationship.
Liz, my only intent in mentioning the prior relationship was to illustrate agreement with deti’s comment about SMV vs. MMV. I stated that my ex being very good-looking (if short) and charismatic ultimately could not keep a woman because “I think the issue was less with his earning potential and more with his overall irresponsibility. He was a stoner, slob, heavy smoker, etc.” Where in that you got the sense that the relationship was fully egalitarian, I’ll never know. And still, I have yet to have anyone define what an alpha is. Is it a man who has a lot of sexual prospects? A man who earns a lot? What is it? Because someone here referred to my mother as an “alpha chasing psycho,” so I’m assuming then that my stepdad would be considered alpha because he was high-earning in spite of the fact that he was actually a pretty shy family man. If that’s the definition, then my ex cannot be considered alpha because he was an average earner, he just so happened to play in a band that was popular on the local scene and had lots of under-24 who found him attractive because of his looks.
Or maybe as hoellenhund2 suggested, I wasted years on “alpha louts” because I had relationships that dared to not work out? (Nevermind that one of my exes WAS marriage-minded.) I’m having trouble finding any consistency or logic in your comments as a whole. It seems to me that the objective of this post and to a smaller extent the site is to simply denigrate the choices that women make, whether that’s marriage that takes places when they feel ready, having relationships in their early 20’s, not having relationships in their early 20’s, not having children in their early 20’s, having children in their early 20’s before they’re ready and later getting divorced, getting divorced for frivolous reasons, getting divorced for good reasons, getting divorced from a man who cheated on them, getting a full-time job, pursuing a degree instead of getting married, getting married after pursuing a degree, dating attractive people, not unattractive people, etc.
I don’t know what an alpha is myself, Jen. I think the definition is pretty fluid and it isn’t my favorite term. I’ve been told my husband must be beta because he’s married (and married young).
Yes Liz I am quite happy with my boyfriend, who was a trained registered massage therapist until last year. I get a massage literally every single night (and of course I return the favour). I’m happier than a pig in mud, which is one big reason I have NO desire to change anything.
When was the last time you got a massage, I wonder? I guess it was a few months ago, after a diaper change?
“When was the last time you got a massage, I wonder? I guess it was a few months ago, after a diaper change?”
Lol! I must admit it has been a while.
We have diverging opinions, here. I am not deti or Han or BV or Bastiat. The purpose of this site is more discussion of non-PC topics, with a bias towards male-interests.
I see the overall purpose here as Bastiat called “male lifestyle design” be it marriage, kids, being a playboy or hermit or even a polyamorist, with all the enthusiasm for personal choice that feminists give to their protogés. To be fairly, the top men have always done this, but equality means ALL men should have this choice, too!
That means giving information about how the world really works, so they can make informed choices. Rather than being raised in the delusion of how it should work, fed by Christian ideals or Disney movies.
Personally, I’m not into the sky-is-falling-marriage-sucks thing, since I am pro marriage… for me. I’m pro-getting-what-you-want.
Why are you here? To try to change our opinion? Follow a link from some sort that linked to this with “Wow, just wow” as “critique”?
Jen,
What you fail to appreciate is that this site and the others like it are not about you or even for your benefit. Rather we men are trying to figure out individually, by collectively discussing the best and most effective ways to navigate the consequences of the choices women make, and the social and economic drivers behind those choices. We are shedding the indoctrination, and assumptions of society because we have been lied to.
Because we are men we are going to break things down to the smallest parts and build models of reality from those parts to map the world before us. We are going to discuss tactics and strategies and the philosophies behind those strategies. We are analytical, and detached from the facts, and yet at the same time we have reactions to them that are emotional. The emotional reaction is just blowing off steam because emotions are counter productive to logic. We recognize this, most women do not. We men are not in the business of intuiting the world, but understanding it rationally. The first precept of this process is to accept reality regardless of whether are not we like it.
You are not a part of this process.
“Rather we men are trying to figure out individually, by collectively discussing the best and most effective ways to navigate the consequences”
I can appreciate that actually because I consider myself a realist too. I guess I don’t really have any issue with data itself – I really, really like data in fact and that’s how I found this site – I guess the tone sometimes tends to bug me. But I agree that men and women should both be making decisions that are in their interests instead of just in a reactionary or mechanical way.
OffTheCuff, I know that there are women who look down on traditionalist and stay-at-home women and I’m not one of them. I think it can take courage – sometimes impulsivity, but other times courage – to make that decision when the odds are what they are of it going well. I don’t judge anyone who makes that choice but for me personally I am and have always been a risk-averse person. I mean, realistically, someone’s gotta have the babies and there is no harm in discussing the best way to go about that. I just don’t personally think the trend towards delaying families should be considered a bad thing.
For instance, here in Canada: “The overall number of young people who are marrying is decreasing and the average age for both men and women when they first marry has been gradually rising. In 1950 the average age for first marriage for men was 28.5 years and for women was 25.9 years. This was higher than the 1960s-70s, when people married at younger ages — for example, in 1972 the average age of 23.0 years for women and 25.4 years for men. By 2008, the average age for first marriage had resumed the trend and was 29.6 years for women and 31.6 years for men.” So it remains true that the issue isn’t one of childless people or even necessarily delayed marriage, it’s that those couples who had children use to have more of them.
@Jen
“self-described ‘betas.’”
source please [$#%@%]?
Divorce 50 percent more likely for couples who share housework equally. Study from Norway, the second happiest country on earth:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/28/divorce-rates-couples-who_n_1923623.html
I don’t think it’s bad to delay marriage, however, for me, had zero interest in having kids when old. So late marriage seemed rather pointless to me.
My wife hardly a traditionalist. She stayed at home for a while, because it made economic sense, not out of pure principles. Her mother stayed at home full-time, but mine worked.
As for risk, if we suddenly divorced, then she’d have plenty of money in child support, assets that I have built up, and alimony. And since she already has a degree as of age 21, she would easily find a job. True, she’d be missing 10 years of seniority, but, she’d hardly be destitute. She’d re-certify and be working at a school in a month or two.
The funny thing is you see marriage as a *risk* to the low earner, whereas one of the purposes of it is to mitigate the risk of the higher-earner walking out. Well, to the higher earner, marriage has a risk that the lower-earner can up and walk out, too. Or can you not see that? That risks are shared by both parties?
Compare with a cohab. Your boyfriend can dump you any time he pleases, take his cash, and go home. Maybe he saved his oennies while you paid for dinner. Which is higher risk then, being married as the lower earner, or cohabitating?
So, I would imagine as a long-term no-marry cohab, people must carefully avoid building shared assets and interdependence, to avoid all the risk that they are creating in the first place by not marrying. Talk about the tail wagging the dog!
Lets face it. The real risk is getting into a bad relationship, not marriage itself. Living your life and making all decisions based out of fear of abandonment sounds exhausting.
“Living your life and making all decisions based out of fear of abandonment sounds exhausting.”
Anyone sane would abandon this woman. She lies, she ignores reasoned argument, she makes shit up. All without shame.
She’s smart to fear abandonment because it’s going to happen. [Edit: whether she’d make a bad mother or not is not relevant to the conversation. Let’s stay on the subject and not get into personal speculations.
Abandonment issues are learned. I was worried about abandonment too. Even though I married young, I was insecure for many years and mostly due to drinking the egalitarian koolaid. I was raised to worry about abandonment. The fear is contagious and encouraged.
Very glad I didn’t let my fears influence my big life decisions though. I could have ended up like Miranda. The real Miranda, not the fairytale one who marries at forty along with all of her successful girlfriends in Manhattan.
@ Escoffier
Japan has the highest public debt as a percent of GDP of any country in the world, beating out such illustrious countries as Zimbabwe.
Okay, I think it’s time I stepped in.
QUESTION FOR MS. JEN:
Clearly, there is something about J4G that you find bothersome, so let’s try a little thought experiment:
You are now Queen of the Manosphere Empire – not just J4G, but allManosphere lands hither and yon, and your word is law. Now then:
What would you do to improve the Manosphere? What do you see as the major failings and problems attendant to it? How would you address them?
You have made clear, over the course of this discussion, that quite a few Men are going way wrong in the way they’re doing things, and it seeems clear to me at least, that the ‘sphere in its current form you find not to be useful or helpful to them. So, in light of this fact, what would you recommend to these fellows as a better course of action?
What say you, of “the Red Pill” in general, and Game more specifically? Do you think it has some truth to it, and if so, what? Or, do you think it’s all wet, and if so, how and why?
What would you recommend Men seeking relationships of varying stripe to do, and why?
It has been speculated that you are not White and indeed could be Black; and as I recall, we’ve had discussions obtaining on Black relationship dynamics and related issues. As you know, I am an African American Man, and my writing is informed y Woman from this POV. Tell me, what do you make of my contribution here at J4G – do you see it as pretty much in line with my fellow brothers here, or more/less so, and why? What do you make of my particular positions on the issues I have brought forward thus far? Do you think they have any merit to them, or do you think they are way out of left field, and why?
I suppose I should close out by saying, that personally, I could less what any Woman chooses to do with her body, time or dime – if she wants to delay marriage, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. I have no problem in the least with Women gaining education or careers/jobs, have no problem with them getting property/money, and have no problem with who they do or don’t choose as mates, be that short or long term.
That being said however, I also think that Men have every right to determine for themselves, per criteria of their choosing, whether they wish to partner with Women, and if they find that the kinds of Women that is the topic of this post are not to their liking, they should have the right to decline such an “offer”. It is also my view, that these Men have every bit as a right to give voice to their views, just as Women have had license to do so on the other end (read: “the lists”) forever and a day now – and to do so, WITHOUT ANY JUDGMENT WHATSOEVER. After all, that’s only fair – nothing more, or less, than again, what Women themselves have enjoyed for lo these many years.
For my part – and I’ll be discussing this in greater detail on Monday, so definitely stay tuned – it is my view that far too many Black American Women are NOT attractive long(er) term mating options for many Black Men, and which goes to explain how and why Black American Men are the least likely to put a ring on it (along with a great many other disincentives and COSTS incurred for doing so) – and it is also my position, that it is time that Black American Men began to actually vocalize this, if nothing else, than to bring in a long overdue facet to the neverending “conversation” on “Black relationships” that has basically been held hostage by Black Women and their White Knight/Uncle Time enablers. I do this, not only because I can, but because I want to be an inspiration to my Brothas, to follow my leader in lifting up their voices so that they can finally, be heard.
So, Ms. Jen, I am very interested in getting your take on all of this. Hit me up with your thoughts.
Thanks.
O.
Editorial note:
Everyone, let’s cut out the personal attacks against Jen. Jen, cut out your exaggerated claims and personal attacks as well, such as claiming that Spawny hates all women.
I’ve snipped/edited out a few of the more over-the top comments directed at Jen and called Jen to task on a few of her misrepresentations.
I’m not going to go read through all the comments to find further stuff to snip out or that is overly offensive so if there is something that you feel that Jen has said or has been said towards Jen that crosses the pale then let me know and I’ll look at it and if it gets too far into ad hom territory or excessively-false representation of a group then I’ll axe it.
The bias here at JFG is to allow the conversation to flow, short of personal attacks and consistent or obvious trolling.
Many of us disagree with many of the things that Jen says and she has made excessive accusations against men in general and muddied the waters with some of her comments but I do think she is rather representative of the views of many women (and some men) out there so it’s good to debate the ideas (as much as anyone wants to engage in it).
Wow. Well, I just wanna say that this blog has NEVER been more enjoyable for me than it was over the past few days. This was awesome. It had the real worldliness of Chateau Heartiste, but without its soul sucking, puppy crushing, evil vibe. And it had the brassiness and snark of Jezebel, but without its mind numbing stupidity. It’s the best of both worlds!
Oftentimes, I’ve thought of this blog as an uber mellow echo chamber of sorts. Like a bunch of stuffy British people who always sit together and agree with themselves. “Oh, undoubtedly! Yes, absolutely darling. How deelicciouus!”
The perfect analogy that comes to mind of this blog is two reasonably happy, well-adjusted people in a healthy and productive relationship. No domestic violence, no oops pregnancies, no STDs, no ‘Sorry dear, but I’m having a baby with your brother’ shenanigans. Which is all well good, because stability is totes important. But it’s also boring! Someone needs to get mad and disagree every once in a while. You know, keep things spicy. Break some dishes. Run off to Vegas with a stripper. Cut loose and bite somebody.
This blog is like the chick who is a 7/7.5 on the attractiveness scale, but only wears sweat pants and Mr. Roger’s sweaters. But over the last few days, she FINALLY blew her hair out, and put on a cocktail dress and 5 inch pumps. About time. Cuz she looks hot!
In short, I like this new J4G: a blog for men where women are welcome…and where people get into hilarious slap fights in the comment section. Stuff like this is why Santa made the internet.
520: Oh, plain Jane again. Snore….
No. Not Plain Jane. I’m just a lurker who’s thoroughly enjoyed this blog this past week.
But I’m deeply amused that you would think so.
Jen,
Do women delay marriage to try and get better men then ?
Re: definition of an alpha, for all the ladies. Since all the men already know. An alpha is any man for whom the majority of women don’t go out of their way to make his life more difficult. Same definition: an alpha is a man for whom women make themselves easy. Same definition: women do stuff for alphas, whereas in total contrast betas have to do stuff for women. Same definition: an alpha is any man to whom women evidently have difficulty saying “No”; in obvious contrast every beta is constantly told “no” by essentially all women all the time every where no wmatter what.
Keep in mind in all primates, always and everywhere no exceptions, the alpha males are groomed by females and the females bring the alphas food offerings. In complete contrast, the beta males groom females and bring the females food.
So that means all the back rubs, taking off his shoes and socks, cooking and bringing my husband his meals make him an “alpha” right?
Except he works 55-60 hours a week so I’m not the only one taking care of a spouse around here.
I couldn’t agree more that some women are pursuing this strategy. But this dialog seems to proceed as though every woman is some Berkley grad on the fast track – and that just isn’t the case. There is a whole world of women who didn’t go to college and are more down to earth who guys can pursue. Granted, you won’t find them in a bar in Brooklyn at 2 in the morning, but maybe that’s why you should move out of NYC. I do agree that top Alpha men can ride this carousel of corporate/career oriented women and that the other than top tier men will have a harder time. So, what are they to do? I have a few thoughts.
1. If you aren’t an Alpha, stop being such a pussy. Embrace your masculinity. If you have to go on a diet, pump some iron, take Tony Robbins or whatever, do something to up your SMV. Whining about reality is a waste of time. Don’t take a PUA course – that only comes from your insecurity. Do become actually confident. If you have a crap job, ask yourself, are you happy with no financial prospects or future? Enroll in night school, learn a skill, start a business – have some ambition for your own purposes. If you aren’t willing to be attractive, don’t complain when nobody wants to fuck you.
2. If you are a 25 year old guy who is a 6, why not go for a 35 yr old who’s just hit the wall? Do short termers with these very horny women until you get a bit older. The sex will be great and she will not expect the long term from you. And you can come and go as you please.
3. Whatever you do, stop being a Beta. Better off you go Omega than be a provisioner and “friend” to the hot chick who’s fucking your buddies. Have some self respect and also take responsibility for it. You have decided to not be a player. Even if you are never going to be a 10, most men, if they try could be a 7.5 or 8. Lower your standards a bit too – not the fatty in the corner, but maybe the one who’s a little unfashionably dressed or has some acne.
@Glenn
I agree with you that not every woman is the delaying type, as I said in the OP that
So, we’re in agreement there. The big point is that if, say, 30% check out of the mating market for 5 or 10 or 15 years (or whatever amount fall into that delaying for fun or career or too picky category) that that has a big effect on the market, even though the other 70% might be the more down-to-earth types that are getting into serious relationships and marrying. I’ve often said that it seems that perhaps 50% of society still acts largely like 30 or 50 years ago and get married and are relatively happy and don’t go getting divorced or treating people like shit. But it’s in the other portion of people where so much of what’s talked about here and in the sphere in general happens and that has a huge effect on a lot of people.
Regarding your 3 points:
1) Good advice and you won’t find anyone here disagreeing. The only clarification would be that describing a situation isn’t necessarily whining. But we should be careful not to veer from a proactive path into whine country.
2) That’s a good option for guys and sort of along the lines of one of my recommendations in this post, to basically start with the girls you can get and improve from there:
http://www.justfourguys.com/suboptimal-preselection-still-helps/
3) Again, good advice to not be a needy beta orbiter. I would slightly disagree with the advice to not be a beta (although it’s probably a matter of semantics where you mean a needy pushover and I think of beta as more like the 80 or 90% of guys that are followers and cogs in the social hierarchy) since most guys are simply betas by nature in terms of not being the kind of person to dominate the social hierarchy (alpha) or to be some successful badass lone wolf (sigma). Most guys simply are incapable of transforming themselves into a complete alpha or sigma but they CAN reduce many of the bad/needy sides of being beta and add or allow out some alpha/sigma properties.
#489
„According to recent data, around 20 percent of divorced women aged 65 or older live in poverty, compared with 18 percent of never-married women and 15 percent of widowed women. Differences in poverty rates are even larger at the oldest ages—22 percent of divorced women aged 80 or older are poor, compared with only 17 percent of never-married women and 15 percent of widowed women”
Fair enough. Having said that, a difference of 2 percentage points for women aged 65 or older doesn’t seem that relevant, and it can be due to other factors as well. The one conclusion that is safe to draw from this data is that divorce is financially riskier for women than spinsterhood – if they correctly factored in alimony and child support payments, that is (I’m not certain about that). It doesn’t prove that marriage is riskier for women than spinsterhood. What is the poverty rate of married women aged 65 or older? Plus let’s not forget that the overwhelming majority of divorces are initiated by women. If divorce brings financial ruin for them, it’s mostly their own fault.
And since there is a strong correlation between being married and being a mother, plus being a spinster and being childless, I suppose another conclusion to draw is that being a mother is financially riskier than being a spinster. This, of course, did not apply throughout most of human history, when pensions didn’t exist and it was children and grandchildren who supported parents when they turned frail and old.
„I am clearly stating that women whose husbands have cheated while they were busy tending to their newborn infant are then put into a position that they have to decide to keep their family together, or stay with a disrespectul, selfish cheating cad”
So what? Husbands are routinely placed in the same position: end the marriage due to the wife’s unacceptable behavior or keep the family together. And no, you didn’t state it clearly. What you stated was that „this puts many women in the precarious position of choosing between their dignity and being in a genuine relationship with someone they love and who respects them enough to be faithful, and the wellbeing of their child (raising them in an intact home).” Do you mean that the faithful partner and the father are two different men?
„I know you don’t see it that way as you essentially dismissed cheating husbands as being justified in breaking the vows they took shortly before because their wives aren’t available for sex.”
Justifying something isn’t the same as explaining something. And the truth is that it doesn’t have to be justified anyway. Now no-fault divorce is the norm, marriages can be ended for no reason at all and vows aren’t taken seriously by the law. You can break the vow, file for divorce and get a nice financial settlement.
„Do you know me to be making such a statement?”
I can only base my assessment on the information you revealed, provided it’s actually true. You wasted almost three years of your youth on a man that was completely unfit to be a „boyfriend”, let alone a husband. What does that say about you? How would you describe a man who wastes almost three years on a woman that is similarly unfit for any relationship?
„Again, you have failed to define what an “alpha” even IS.”
Look it up. You cannot expect me to explain everything to the smallest detail.
„Again, what is wrong with your reading comprehension?”
Delaying divorce doesn’t lower the divorce rate.
„Marriage is high-risk for both genders. That’s the disadvantage.”
That doesn’t seem to be what you actually think. You apparently think marriage is a fantastic boon for negligent, lazy men, they even get to cheat on their wives and they’ll put up with it.
Over-interpretation of statistics makes Math Jesus cry.
Women who marry in their 30s are less likely to take time off of work to have children, and have had more work continuity, which is why they earn more money. However, money has a diminishing return and MOST women are happy to earn SOMEWHAT less money in order to raise a family.
This is one of those “revealed preference” thing-ys.
The most important thing is to have stable, fulfilling relationships. A sexual free-for-all really does not encourage this. That means high levels of intra-sexual competition that undermine your friendships. Think “Mean Girls” but with the girls fighting over nothing but boys non-stop.
And while, on the whole, some nations report higher happiness levels, despite higher social spending/marriage ages/divorce/etc, nations are a conglomeration of different people inside of them, with different effects. Ex: Canada might have more stringent regulations than the US, but you actually KNOW the regulations, and there are less agencies, which means there is less regulatory compliance and therefore greater economic “freedom.”
Contrast with, say, Indiana Medicaid Dispense As Written laws. Does a doctor have to print out an electroinc prescription, right “Brand Medically Necessary” on it, and submit it to the pharmacy? Yes, according to Indiana State Law. No, according to Indiana State Law, in the next section.
Indiana Medicaid comes to us, and asks “how do I interpret this?” The woman on our end responsible for these audits comes to me, and keep in mind I am a lowly Temp making $12/hour at the time, and asks me “how do I interpret this”?
Uhhhh….
So, last I checked, there’s a good bit of regulatory burden on Indiana pharmacists right now, imposed entirely by dumb-asses in Indianapolis, and a Beta Guy who errs on the side of caution when it comes to “comply with state law.”
That does not show up your in “see, higher tax dollars and social progressivism makes society better, so let’s all be socialists now!” argument. So, looking at the microcosm?
Married people are happier and married men make more money. That does not mean marriage is for everyone. Obviously if you are mentally ill or one of the ever-increasing narcissistic foot-soldiers in the Gen Y cohort, marriage is a bad deal for you and whoever you marry.
The real question are the network effects. Do you invest in people or do you invest in capital? Building a skyscraper does not magically turn the pile of rubble around it into a prosperous city. Turning a person into an educated, principled individual, DOES help the people around him or her. Similarly, if you get fat, I am more likely to get fat, if you don’t get enough sleep, I am less likely to get enough sleep, etc.
Humans are social and our social illnesses are contagious.
Luckily, economics gives me the ability to do some extremely rough-around-the-edges thinking about this. Stable equilibrium, with Man-N married to Woman-N, and Man-X, married to Woman-X, single firm economy, with wage W2 at Labor Supply 2, and correspondingly lower wage W3 at Labor Supply 3, and W4 at Labor Supply 4.
In original, stable equilibrium, the cleared Wage is W2 because men are working and women stay at home.
Dyad X divorces. Now Woman X enters the labor force, pushing the overall supply of Labor to 3, and pushing the overall wage down to W3. Not only that, but the cost of living increases arbitrarily because Woman-X requires separate living arrangements, etc.
Our poor, stable, Dyad N now has decreases wages, and substantially higher living costs. So now Woman-N needs to enter the labor force, lowering overall wage to W4.
However, now we need to factor in the child-provisioning. We also need to expand our road infrastructure to accommodate this plague of “commuting,” not to mention the resource strains on scarce water supplies, the elimination of retention ponds that leads to mass flooding down river, etc…..
Sort of a big knock-on effect here, Jen! Unfortunately, your stupidity affects me, much like my stupidity affects you and all the pharmacists in Indiana who now have to print out electronic prescriptions and submit them to doctors and have them write “brand medically necessary” on them, which is in turn an effect of my parents telling me “always better safe than sorry,” and don’t get me started on BB’s stupidity possibly killing all of us by imploding the whole financial sector, and….
I really don’t buy into all of this “you’re not affecting me, so do whatever you want” bullshit. I’m not a libertarian.
#491 “self-described betas” Again, from the fourth woman commenter here recently, who doesn’t accept that the majority of men are betas. ‘Tis the ape fallacy, as we know.
@Elpeth “So that means all the back rubs, taking off his shoes and socks, cooking and bringing my husband his meals make him an “alpha” right?” Yes, very much so. And I know you MUST know how unusual your situation is in the present day.
#530: Awesome post.
The “my choices don’t affect anyone else” bromide is fallacious in a dynamic social environment filled with cascading consequences.
jf12: Re: definition of an alpha, for all the ladies. Since all the men already know.
In my experience men have varying definitions as well. Case in point, I hadn’t even heard the terms ‘alpha’ or ‘beta’ applied in this way before I started perusing manosphere sites. And my confusion is due to those varying interpretations.
@Spawny Get #512 – betas are described as “average guys” here multiple times, so I’m going off that description.
@Liz #513 – That’s just one study (in case you haven’t noticed yet, it’s always possible to find one sociological study that contradicts another; for example, you posted a study showing that married women are less depressed; I posted a study showing they’re MORE depressed. You posted a study showing that couples who cohabit before marriage are more likely to divorce later; here’s a more recent one showing the opposite: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/longtermunion.htm. In other words, these studies should be taken with a grain of salt). I would be more interested in the fact that Norway’s divorce rate is still 9 percentage points lower than the US’.
“Compare with a cohab. Your boyfriend can dump you any time he pleases, take his cash, and go home.” That is essentially the point. The average wedding is $28k and the average divorce is now $27k. Women pay court fees as well. And the stats don’t lie; divorced women are way worse off. Alimony is only awarded in 15% of cases. I know of one woman whose alimony payment was 10% of her former spouse’s income, and the man wasn’t rich.
“Lets face it. The real risk is getting into a bad relationship, not marriage itself. Living your life and making all decisions based out of fear of abandonment sounds exhausting.” Fear of abandonment is not the only driver. Many people stay in unhappy marriages and stay with unfaithful partners for practical reasons or because they feel like they have no other choice. That is why divorce rates always rise after a recession eases off. The point is to make separation as painless as possible if that’s what needs to happen, by retaining as much of your independence as possible.
@Obsidian #518 – I think that there is some truth to what is being said. Yeah, obviously, some men are going to be more desireable than others, in a general sense, and there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that and discussing ways to work with what you’ve got. The details are missing though. Like I was asking, what is an alpha? For the most part, women in their 20’s and especially before 25 or so do not give a crap how much money a man makes, so a high-earner is not automatically going to be desireable to them. Women begin to care about a man’s income as they get older and especially as they begin to think about having kids. I also disagree that most 25-year-olds are ignoring their same-age peers. The only women I know in that age bracket who have dated 40-year-old men are those who struck out with or recently been dumped by one of their peers. Women are most interested in dating guys within 5 years of their age in either direction. That’s my opinion and I have seen zero evidence to the contrary to be frank. So that aspect of the discussion is baffling to me and pretty wrong. One aspect of “red pill” is a guy’s relative attractiveness begins to go up in his late 20’s and early 30’s. I agree with this, his relative attractiveness DOES begin to go up but that’s going to be to the women in his own age group because men single men have become way more scarce and those that are there earn more than they did when they were younger. On top of this, women’s allowable age difference increases when they get older so while an 8-year difference to a 20-year-old is usually gross, a 35-year-old is not going to consider a 43-year-old gross, so that’s another reason why I think “red pillers” are right there.
“What would you recommend Men seeking relationships of varying stripe to do, and why?”
I agree with Glenn#527 in telling men who are younger and looking for a relationship to consider slightly older women. I have a few reasons for this. One thing is that as was noted, most women in their early 20’s are not going to be interested in having a kid yet. If a young man is really, really eager for kids right away, the older woman is looking to have them right now, too. A lot of older women are wary of younger men because they think they’re only looking for sex from them, not because they don’t think they’re attractive. So if a 24-year-old guy can convince a 31-year-old woman that he is really serious, then he can probably have marriage and children within a year or two of the relationship starting. That’s one suggestion. Another is to know your market. Women ARE attracted to certain archetypes. Not having a distinct style will not get you laid. That’s just from what I’ve seen. If you’re going to be a hipster and attract that type of woman, know your style and own it 100%. Do something radical with your hair. Be the most ridiculously obvious hipster a girl has ever seen. If you’re going to be urban, go all out and you’ll attract those women. If you are aiming for financial success, dress the part when you go out. Some women are looking for an ambitious man. The problem with some young guys is an indistinct personal style that makes them not stand out. If there’s any one thing about the whole concept of ‘hypergamy’ I agree with, it’s that most women aren’t going to notice you if you’re not striking or individualistic in some way.
Ethnically, I don’t really have a race. I identify as black, but I also identify as mixed since that is what I am biologically and phenotypically. I can’t be 100% sure but I think that AA dynamics are different from what we have in Canada at least a little bit. That is to say that, and this isn’t a shot at you, but black Americans are more dysfunctional and less assimilated. This is just from what I have seen. There is a lot less cultural variation between whites and blacks here, the divisions are moreso along the lines of “recent immigrant/fob” and “native-born Canadian or grew up here.” The reason for that is that we get more immigrants per capita than any other G8 country, so the newbies sort of set up camp in their own communities. So I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best source to ask about racial things as Americans see them. You may be right about black American women. From all the mudslinging and bitterness I’ve seen from both genders though I do wonder why they even bother to date/marry each other at all. I would almost suggest just quitting with all that mistrust and resentment but I know that with such a huge African American population that’s probably not a practical solution. It’s definitely an option for us here, though.
@Han Solo, thank you for your consideration.
@Marellus#523 – I reread some of the comments in the thread yesterday and came across one comment about a “plan B.” I think it’s a number of things. I think that women do genuinely think they’ll be bored silly without a job of some sort but they’re not aiming for retail, they do think they’ll have a higher MMV and be able to attract a better mate if they’re educated and successful (and these days, they’re not wrong), and they do want to make sure they can provide for themselves in case something goes wrong. I am getting to that age where people are starting to get married and most of the people who married at 27 were paired off for a really long time before that – I’m talking high school sweethearts. They’re delaying but that doesn’t mean coupling that means marriage. The only person I know who got married before 25 has Bahraini parents who forbid her from living with the guy first, so that’s why she got married at 23. Otherwise she’d probably be like the others and marry sometime between 27 and 32, but have been with the guy from college or even before in many cases.
“Justifying something isn’t the same as explaining something. And the truth is that it doesn’t have to be justified anyway. Now no-fault divorce is the norm, marriages can be ended for no reason at all and vows aren’t taken seriously by the law. You can break the vow, file for divorce and get a nice financial settlement.”
hoellenhund2, I don’t agree though. People are pairing off assortatively now more than ever. Educated women marry educated men. Poor women marry poor men. In order to even qualify for alimony there has to be a huge discrepancy in the earnings, and that is usually not the case. Divorces cost money (if you’re REALLY broke you can file for one of those $300 “quickie” divorces if they’re uncontested though, but what if they’re contested?). Most women are not profitting off divorce, that’s the truth. Housewives maybe, but most women are not housewives and most housewives when they reenter the labour market after years of unemployment are screwed and regretful. Men on average gain a wealth advantage from divorce. The men who end up truly impoverished are the small minority that you guys exaggerate.
“„Marriage is high-risk for both genders. That’s the disadvantage.”
That doesn’t seem to be what you actually think. You apparently think marriage is a fantastic boon for negligent, lazy men, they even get to cheat on their wives and they’ll put up with it.”
If that’s what you want to conclude from the data I’ve posted, then that’s what you can conclude. I think it’s fairly obvious though from who files for divorce that if a husband is like that, his wife is unlikely to put up with it forever. It’s just that she is in a difficult position because much of the time she ends up poor or a single mom. There are no easy choices. Men are worse off emotionally, and women are worse off in every other way when they leave a bad marriage. That’s what makes it high-risk for both genders.
Jen: ”@Liz #513 – That’s just one study (in case you haven’t noticed yet, it’s always possible to find one sociological study that contradicts another…(snip)”
Yes, I too have noticed this phenomenon. In case you haven’t noticed yet, you’ve thrown the brunt of these sorts of links out (usually attached to fem-centric articles). I’m responding in kind with a couple of my own. In case you haven’t noticed yet, when I don’t offer a link you dismiss my observations as anecdotal and with all the implied irrelevancies.
”I would be more interested in the fact that Norway’s divorce rate is still 9 percentage points lower than the US’.”
That one is easy. Marriage is becoming an anachronism in Norway. Fewer marriages=fewer divorces.
Another thing I wanted to add is that women delay marriage because weddings are expensive and most women want the expensive wedding and the nice honeymoon, so they’ll wait until they can afford it.
“That one is easy. Marriage is becoming an anachronism in Norway. Fewer marriages=fewer divorces.”
BECOMING, yes, but the divorce rate I’m referring to is the crude divorce rate, which compares a larger number of marriages (the ones that took place years ago and are ending now) to the smaller number of marriages that are occurring today. And it’s still 9% lower. So in actual reality, since their marriages last longer than Americans’ do, there is a greater lag, so the divorce rate is probably much lower still.
#537:
Some women do want very expensive weddings and honeymoons. I’d use that as a litmus test for women to avoid when thinking about marriage and children. If they want the expensive wedding, they’ll want the expensive everything-to-relate-with-having-children too. And they’ll want to keep up with the hypothetical Joneses in all other respects. And they won’t be supportive. Ever.
#538:
Can we agree that a couple cannot get a divorce if they don’t get married in the first place? That should offer a little clue…people who cohabitate instead of marrying and then split don’t show up on those statistics. Their “split-with-kids-rates” might dwarf ours, but it wouldn’t show up in divorce stats because they never married in the first place.
Jen says:
“Another thing I wanted to add is that women delay marriage because weddings are expensive and most women want the expensive wedding and the nice honeymoon, so they’ll wait until they can afford it.”
I ended a relationship because of this, fortunately it was early on. Focus on one day, a ring, and a vacation is an absolute deal breaker. Usually indicates no real interest in the marriage to follow. No point in trying to negotiate, automatic next.
#538 I agree, but that’s not essentially my point. The number of people splitting up in either scenario would be really high because people tend to take each other for granted when they’ve been together for a long time. Men help out less because they feel they don’t have to if they’re 1) men and (2) earning more, no matter how much marginally more. The men here talk routinely about how much men value women most in their 20’s, and women don’t stay there for very long, so they probably grow more and more resentful of a woman who is, at least physically, a diminishing return and this shows in their behaviour towards them. Women tend to do take their partners’ for granted too but this especially problematic for women because they derive so much of their psychological wellbeing from the romanticism in and quality of their relationship and the man’s attitude towards them. A woman’s blood pressure is more affected by marital spats, for example, than a man’s is. Also because they do the lion’s share of the housework and if they don’t need a man fiscally then he has to be wooing her/worthwhile romantically or she needs him like a hole in the head; he is just creating more work.
The point of cohabitation is not to prevent breakups necessarily, but the legal problems associated with a divorce.
Liz,
Your confusion over Alpha definitions is not unwarranted. It stems from the fact that men naturally appreciate the notion of Alpha of the pack as being the leader, or the man among men. We naturally get it, and it’s never questioned. Where the confusion comes in is the Redpill focuses not on the man’s relationship with other men but a man’s relationships with women. As such success with women is the focus because because men don’t naturally get that concept.
All too often bluepill men see the player type as an untrustworthy degenerate. If such a man achieves rank the followers are all waiting for his sexual proclivities to bring him down. In some ways this is a crab bucket issue, but there exists a rational fear that this ranked player will abandon his responsibilities for a piece of ass. It’s the reason why in the past being in a stable marriage was necessary for success and promotion in business and the military.
If the stoner, bad boy has tremendous success with women he may well not be an alpha among men. I have known several of these types who are natural PUA types that never earned respect form male peers beyond their talents for scoring hot chicks, but you wouldn’t trust them unsupervised with anything important. At the same time I’ve know several men, of the real man variety, men I’d follow through fire and bullets and trust with my life who can’t get laid to save their own lives, or are henpecked, nagged and otherwise emasculated by their wives. This doesn’t seriously effect their relations with men as long as their personal lives don’t impact their core competencies.
#535 “People are pairing off assortatively now more than ever.” Totally opposite of truth. We now have the lowest marriage rate ever. People are paring off LESS than ever.
@ Glenn
I’ve always found acne to be cute, and always assumed other guys did too. Maybe it’s just me…
@ Glenn
Also, 100% cosign this.
Have some self-respect. Don’t succumb to the shaming of Nice Guys (TM).
JF: Elspeth knows the deal, perhaps even better than you. Her husband is a solid guy who takes no crap, but getting dinner and foot rubs and all the sex you can handle isn’t the sole determinant of alpha. He may very well be, but so do I, and I’m nothing even remotely alpha-like. (Now please redirect to the untold pages of “what is alpha?” elsewhere!).
Jen, #534
I understand what you’re saying. Nonetheless, I believe a gulf is growing between the two genders. The men are getting bitter, and the women are getting crazier and crazier. Soon there will not be much civilized discussion between them.
The manosphere has learned from the women’s movement just how powerful personal testimonies are in causing revolutions. The personal anecdotes of deti, BV, ADBG, YaReally etc. are more powerful than you can possibly imagine:
Think of you yourself reading a rape article, written by the victim herself, in a magazine … and how that colors your view of men, and how that article would make you vote, and picket, to organize society in a way to prevent it.
Well, here in the manosphere, that rape article you read, is similar to a divorce-rape story of good guy Johnny, or the false rape accusation which fucked up the life of Gerald, or the friendzone predicament of nice guy Jimmy, or the I-was-dumped-even-though-I-did-everything-to-please-her-story of Wally.
And there are so many of them.
Now the women are having to resort to statistics to try and calm the men down – look at the type of work HUS is putting out.
It won’t work – you can’t reason with an emotion … would you be in a mood to immerse yourself in rape statistics after reading that rape article ? No.
The same principle applies to men … because if women abhor rape, then what can stir similar emotions in men, is unfairness.
Unfairness for men, is what rape is to women.
Really.
And men can get quite nasty when unfairness is pushed too far … so how will the men get nasty with women, when that very nastiness is the cause célèbre of the women’s movement ?
They’ll find another way to make women suffer … they’ll study women and identify their prime weaknesses … which is their appearance … which is their fear of being alone … which is their desire for babies …
… how to hit all of these weaknesses at once ?
Avoid women completely.
Hence the rise of MGTOW.
Make no mistake, this uncomfortable part of the interwebz will cause major political and economic disruptions in the future … by the men just opting out … by the men not participating … by the men not courting …
And already the nagging has started (“Man up !!!”), and what happens when you nag someone?
More of the same behavior.
@Jen
“Women are most interested in dating guys within 5 years of their age in either direction.”
To the extent okcupid is representative of the general population, this statement is not true of all ages of women. Women tend to not like men that are younger, though there is a small minority that does.
Check out the graph that shows min/max age range.
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-woman/
The age of the female users studied peaks at 24 and about 75% are 32 or younger.
From 18-28, when women are at their peak sexual power and attractiveness, the women are seeking an age range that is roughly 1 year less to 6 or 7 years older.
So, young women (18-28) are not interested in men 5 years younger them. They’re more open to about 1 year younger and about 6-7 older. Taking the middle of that range would put the man about 2.5-3 years older.
Also, the median age range of marriages is about 2 years older for men, again shedding light on women’s preferences.
Now, as the okcupid graph shows, as women get over 30 then they start to allow for younger and younger men, relative to themselves. However, the men’s allowable age range doesn’t really increase. I think that there’s a higher portion of cougars amongst 35+ y/o women online who want younger men, either to feel like they are still sexually attractive or because they are looking for more virile younger men. But I wouldn’t take these 35+ y/o online women as representative of all 35+ y/o women.
As to the referencing 40 y/o men in regard to 25 y/o women, I’m not sure why you brought up such an extreme example since Obsidian didn’t mention it. Most 25 y/o women aren’t dating 40 y/o men, though men that old who do have good looks, charisma and have stayed in shape can date that young. However, that’s a small minority of men.
It seems like you’re simply putting up a strawman, claiming the sphere says any old 40 y/o man can date 25 y/o women. But the sphere doesn’t claim that, it claims what I just said above, that the cream of the 40 y/o male crop (either naturally or through getting some excellent game) can do so. I will acknowledge, however, that there do seem to be quite a few commenters on certain sites that make claims that they are doing just that. I sense that some of it is BS from keyboard warriors who like to exaggerate. But at the same time, it is possible.
There is an interesting discussion going on at SSM’s place for anyone who is interested: http://sunshinemaryandthedragon.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/women-are-heavily-influenced-by-mens-opinions/
“Dyad X divorces.” Perhaps there should have been more investment into the marriage of Dyad X then.
“Now Woman X enters the labor force…” unless she is subsisting on alimony, which as a housewife she is legally entitled to. And if Woman X were in the labour force to begin with, that’s a GOOD thing goes conservative theory because that is, after all, the purpose of pronatalism – encourage everyone to have children so there’s a glut of labour to pay for social programs and old people.
“Not only that, but the cost of living increases arbitrarily because Woman-X requires separate living arrangements, etc.”
So Woman X can get roommates and tenants and live communally, providing housing for other singles. Problem solved.
“So, young women (18-28) are not interested in men 5 years younger them. They’re more open to about 1 year younger and about 6-7 older.”
I think there are obvious reasons why an 18 or 20 year old would not be interested in a man 5 years younger. We can start with legal repercussions and go from there.
“Now, as the okcupid graph shows, as women get over 30 then they start to allow for younger and younger men, relative to themselves.” Yes, like I said, a woman’s allowable age gap increases as she gets older. So then in line with that, one solution for young men who are eager to start families right away would be to pursue those women who would be most open to the idea. If they’re not interested in older women and choose to actively spend as much time pursuing the youngest women in their “allowable age” cohort as women their own age, then that’s how they choose to invest their time. It’s not the stratgey likely to yield the results they want. I was asked for a suggestion and I gave it. All the data seems to suggest that my advice is sound; a 25-year-old young man looking to start a family immediately could look to a woman a few years older (around 30) who is probably both open to the idea of starting a family, and open to him.
jf12#543, I didn’t say people are pairing off more than ever, I said people are pairing off assortatively now more than ever. What that means is that when people marry it’s more likely than at any previous point with someone who shares their educational and fiscal background. Gone are the days that the doctor married the nurse. Now, the doctor is more likely to also marry the doctor. So who is going to get alimony in a situation like that? No one. Which would explain why it rarely ever happens anymore.
Marellus@547, that is a very interesting take. Well, I can’t and don’t pretend to speak for all women, but I know for myself, I wouldn’t push encourage men to “man up.” I mean, what is the point of doing that? If I were to perceive men in general as unreliable or irresponsible, infidelity and “gaming women” as rampant and partnering as high-risk, I would simply out of doing all of the above because partnering with such a man or in such a culture would look very unappealing to me.
So I cannot understand that particular aspect of the media. I can only assume those media sources shouting down at men are funded by the pronatalist government.
simply opt out of* typo
Jen: “All the data seems to suggest that my advice is sound; a 25-year-old young man looking to start a family immediately could look to a woman a few years older (around 30) who is probably both open to the idea of starting a family, and open to him.”
Worst advice ever.
Jen: “So who is going to get alimony in a situation like that? No one. Which would explain why it rarely ever happens anymore.”
But the engineer does marry the schoolteacher, and quadruples her income when she’s working, let alone staying home with the kids. Or the mechanic marries the day care worker, and… Still quadruples her income. Even here in liberal utopia.
You need a better handle on what jobs women really have…
Jen, you need to get in better touch with the reality of most women. Most 30 y/o women don’t want to marry 25 y/o men so your advice isn’t very useful.
Your suggestion for young guys to have casual sex with older women until they up their value enough to get the women they want was a better idea.
“Your suggestion for young guys to have casual sex with older women until they up their value enough to get the women they want was a better idea.”
That wasn’t my suggestion. I think you’re referring to Glenn. My suggestion was if these guys want relationships. But if what they are actually after is just casual sex then they can’t really complain about women having casual sex… just not with them.
In any case, it may be a strategy either way (serious relationships or casual). If the theory is that average men are ‘checking out’ because they’re not getting laid enough, then they know where to look if they just want to get laid (lower SMV women and older women who are more open to casual sex with them).
Then by marrying age, everyone’s had their fun and no one can complain.
“Jen, you need to get in better touch with the reality of most women. Most 30 y/o women don’t want to marry 25 y/o men so your advice isn’t very useful.”
This is why the manosphere exists. What women say they like/want isn’t what they actually want, and what they say contradicts what they actually do. Jen, at twenty-something, truly believes what she is saying. She can find fem-centric articles to support her views. But practical reality is going to look far different in 15 years, and 20, and so on. Even if Demi Moore is still making the covers of rag tabloids at 65 with the caption “Demi still making Ashton eat his heart out….see her with the youngest man EVER! This one just turned 18…”
From my vantage point, I’m glad I did things as I did. Happiness is a state of being, and it doesn’t come from careers or material things (though money does make things easier). There’s nothing easier in the world that getting a degree these days. I can’t think of any worthwhile thing in life that doesn’t require some level of risk.
#558 “If the theory is that average men are ‘checking out’ because they’re not getting laid enough, then they know where to look if they just want to get laid (lower SMV women and older women who are more open to casual sex with them).” Total nonsense, i.e. projection from a woman. NO MAN would ever claim that average men can get laid enough, ever. All of civilization is built on harnessing average men’s inability to get laid. “I can’t get any girl right now no matter what I do or how hard I try” is the number one (and usually only) reason most men do anything else, from building skyscrapers to playing golf.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women.html
I’ll tell an anecdote about one of my Italian cousins. When we lived in Italy, she was in her late 20s, and had been dating the same guy for many years. He was mad over her, had asked her to marry him many times and she always refused. Every single pilot in the squadron was mad over her too…and everyone in the village, and every neighboring village. Everyone at the beach when we went together. Everyone everywhere. She’s a very cosmopolitan girl, speaks five languages. She not only had her pick, she played the field behind her boyfriend’s back, insisting all those other men were “friends”.
Fast forward a few years and her boyfriend gave her and ultimatum. He wanted a family, and for her it was always, “Some day…maybe…” She again refused. For about the next year, he pretended to still be together with her and accompanied her to family outings (she begged him because her family liked him a lot and she wanted to break the news of their split slowly). He started dating a German girl, married, and he had two sons in the following three years. My cousin is now pushing 40. Men stopped circling quite a while ago. She still looks good and has no trouble with a hookup, but the choices are few and far between, and no one is looking for a LTR with her.
#552 It is still the apex fallacy, which is a product of hypergamy. When women value themselves too highly, then objectively lower value women refuse to pair off with objectively lower value men. It is an objectively bad thing.
Just to add, she does spend a lot of time (still) talking about that boyfriend who was a jerk for leaving her after years and years of dating. His life, OTOH, has moved on. He grew up.
#549 SSM kicked me out after about two of my opinions. Thus providing a reliable gauge of how much women truly value men’s opinions. SSM drives heavily under the influence of the apex fallacy, in case you can’t tell.
Re: the very idea that a woman actually VALUES her husbands input on what she whould wear, what she should buy, how she should act, etc etc etc. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
#561 I like your anecdotes too. I’ll tell one that is tangentially, or secant-ly, related. After my father died and my mother had to be hospitalized for a while when I was 15, a great uncle took me to Italy for R&R at some kin’s very old fashioned small farm on the outskirts of Rome. For example the women got up before dawn to build a fire in the outdoor brick oven, and the noon pasta was stirred in a kettle on an open fire. I was taking Latin in high school, but only had a smattering of Italian. Most of the adults spoke the modern lingua franca of broken English, but a 12 yr old girl cousin of sorts (like second cousin once removed or something) spoke only in shy glances and smiles, and eager service. She got married at 16.
#566:
Unfortunately, Italy has changed a lot in that respect.
Very few women are having children anymore and men who want to marry and start a family often do so with immigrants (girls from the former eastern bloc countries, Germany, ect). My grandmother was one of 13, my grandfather one of 9 and by the end of things I’m the only one of the grandchildren with more than one child….and only one of my cousins had a single child).
The women still maintain themselves very well though (especially by comparison to here…but even by comparison to the rest of Europe). They do place a high value on aesthetics, which is very nice.
#567 I had my heart set on finding an Italian servant-heart girl to marry, but never found one. Instead I married a Scotch-German princess, and then a Mexican princess. Sigh.
“This is why the manosphere exists. What women say they like/want isn’t what they actually want, and what they say contradicts what they actually do. Jen, at twenty-something, truly believes what she is saying. She can find fem-centric articles to support her views.”
I truly believe what I am saying in part because I know 3 women who married younger men when they were between 30 and 34, my friend is 31 and currently dating a 24-year-old, and 2 years ago, my aunt married her 9-years-younger boyfriend 16 years after they first began dating. Fwiw, she looks younger than he does, (but they are different ethnicities, so that may play a part). To me it doesn’t seem like crazy advice.
Just to add some color commentary to an epic thread—imagine that two young men are being interviewed on some kind of mating/dating site:
Guy #1: “I am interested in getting married to a Good Girl, hopefully while we are both quite young. Her level of schooling and career aren’t really that important to me; I want an attractive and chaste/low N young woman who prioritizes having and raising children and who will submit herself to my executive decisions as the traditional head-of-household. She will support my breadwinner career by being a loyal and dependable housewife, and I in turn will make sure that she never lacks for anything.
“I believe that women are more physically and emotionally vulnerable than men and should be generally treated in slightly patronizing-but-supportive, kid-gloves type ways. I hate feminism. What I hate the most are sluts who give free sex to players and then seek out traditional men when they realize that certain types of guys will never settle down.”
….
Guy #2: “I am concerned that marriage is oppressive towards women and that the family law system is very hard on females, so I am quite comfortable with more progressive, European-and-Pacific Northwest-style alternatives to marriage. If you do get married, later marriage is always the better option. I don’t really care much about a woman’s sexual history and will not ask about it—sex is a basic human drive and we have too many weird, repressed sexual hang-ups in our society. I like ambitious, empowered, independent, educated, and *very busy* career women and will encourage such women to pursue professional development opportunities even when these lead to less “couple’s time” being available. I think that being a housewife and economically dependent on a man would be risky and demeaning for both the woman and the her husband.
“Guy #1 is wrong and too old-fashioned: women can be tough, cold-blooded asskickers—just look at Nikita and Lara Croft— and it is condescending to treat them like emo little precious dolls. I consider myself a sex-positive feminist and attend local Slutwalks. What I hate the most are gold-diggers who prudishly shame honest sex workers while hypocritically engaging in highly transactional sex work themselves.”
One of the true inside jokes about the SMP is that easy-going, positive Guy #2—who uses an aikido-esque “agree and amplify” position on feminism to support his own goals of maximizing his quality and quantity of validation sex while protecting his own freedom-centric lifestyle and minimizing any costs and frictions—is perhaps *the biggest and most greedy player of them all*, but his message will nonetheless be applauded in many circles because he has aligned himself with women’s liberation bullet-points (he of course does this in order to actually liberate himself).
Most of the guys I know who are really enjoying being single in the SMP have this type of position; they are well-adapted to contemporary conditions and view them as a great gift to mankind. I think that men in general can become adapted to get almost all of their romantic needs met from validation sex; they can survive, if not thrive, on a relationship diet of only this one macronutrient! Once this adaptation occurs, it appears to be very hard to give up because the whole lifestyle design is built around it and compromises are much more difficult.
Meanwhile, judgmental and cynical Guy #1—who will no doubt be widely condemned as a sort of misogynistic, knuckle-dragging Taliban Todd—is actually the pro-relationship romantic who would enthusiastically support an SAHM (Guy #1’s nightmare) under the right conditions. He is probably going to be told that he should work on self-improvement projects and practice serial monogamy—very difficult for men because of our investment tendencies and chronic inability to ever go “cold” on our ex-GFs—until such time as women in his cohort are ready to make work-life balance decisions. He’s basically going to be told to go along with feminism until the woman rejects or quasi-rejects it, at which time his traditional provider-protector behavior may be welcomed (but with the caveat that there will be no subordination to his status as primary breadwinner and “captain”).
I think that the women who are having and will continue to have the worst time of it are those who wish to be able to pursue both progressive/feminist and traditional/domestic tracks in sequence, starting out on an aggressive education and career-development pathway and then hoping to switch gears and turn HARPy (“Husband As Retirement Program”). The ones who wish to find a traditional marriage situation and start looking relatively early will have a supply of Guy #1 types who are quite agreeable at that stage; the women who wish to “Lean In” and emphasize career will find support from highly independent Guy #2 types who compartmentalize their relationships. The women who want to jump ship at some stage can end up in a No Man’s Land in which the Guy #1 types are turned off by what they see as systemic sexual price discrimination, while the Guy #2 types are suspicious that they are dealing with a burned-out, career-disillusioned transactional-sex operator now looking to cash out and put-option a lot of responsibility onto the guy.
BB:
HARPy! Never heard that one. Love it.
I’d add a caveat to Guy#2. He might talk a big game, but I’ll use the Johnny Depp example. “Marriage doesn’t mean anything…we don’t need no state thought control…..independence, blah dee blah”
Until he meets the right woman. Then it’s a very speedy “will you marry me?” And when she refused the first time, ask again until she said yes. Even though he lived with the other one, marriage-free for over a decade, with kids.
Jen #553
Whiskey.
Regarding #570 and StrongIndependentWomen practicing sex-positive feminism:
I’m having the most unusual experience at the moment with a SIW who has made a point of positioning herself as (what I would term) a sexual outlaw. Lots of big, brash talk about how she’s had 50x as many partners as I; how she has a cornucopia of condoms in her bedside table (thanks, I have my own); how she could care less if I were still married and lying baldly to seduce her; how she has no personal constraints on sexual profligacy other than she finds it confusing to bed two men in one day; how I’m too modest physically. Her social cohort is not exactly overpopulated with sexual outlaws: she’s uber-educated, has a very, very high security clearance. (For a while there I wasn’t convinced I knew her real name.)
The oddest thing, though, is I think it’s (the proudly promiscuous talk) either ancient history or total bullshit. She’s very modest and tentative with me (I’m on the frozen prairie so she suggested some aural sex the other day then seemed to panic and later apologize), she has trouble verbalizing her wants, and struggles even to verbalize what she likes. Now she’s mad at me because I won’t fly back to DC to see her for a couple of days before she heads out to the middle east for ten days, and we haven’t even discussed being exclusive. This is not the behavior of a tough-talking sex-positive feminist dame with a PPK/s and a box of Trojans in her handbag. She’s instead acting like post-apostasy, lapsed Mormon, actually, with one very attractive Louboutin standing athwart each of BB’s examples, above. Curious.
I conclude that it is a shit-testing wrinkle, designed to elicit some prudish, jealous or otherwise unpleasant response from me. And perhaps her kink is to incite a man, once he stops laughing, to lay down a claim and boss her around a bit. Hard to say. That will likely come up soon.
Iin general, the more shrill the rhetoric (e.g., the tripe on this thread about how women suffer marriage because somebody has to do housework, and women can’t be expected to choose men who will share housework, BECAUSE PATRIARCHY, the more formulaic the polemics, the more I wonder if what we’re dealing with is an inverse correlation because the talking points, and the underlying need or desire.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming, and I can’t wait to learn how women-superior relationships, where the man is 5-10 years younger, are just the ticket for long-term marital happiness. BV out.
BV, you are in a fascinating, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”-type situation.
I wonder if “The Wall” is less about age/fertility curves and more about a particular feminist worldview eventually crashing into once-latent biological imperatives (and the hormonal and neurotransmitter reward systems which nature has installed to maximize pursuit of these imperatives) in this sudden, tipping-point type of way that causes serious confusion and anxiety. I also wonder what the male equivalent would be.
Trapped in the classical double bind, the woman who is afflicted feels compelled to go after largely-incompatible life goals simultaneously.
Wouldn’t the male equivalent of “The wall” would be “The Gate”?
The Wall is the transition from perceived abundance to actual scarcity for women where even Beta attention is not assured, let alone the commitment of a high value man without substantial comprimise.
Whereas “The Gate” is a sort starting point or entrance to a reality of actual abundance for the male. The final payoff of personal investment and having paid dues.
Or a finacial metaphor the wall is a shrinking trust fund, the gate a mature bond.
#574 Being openly profligate is Big Red Flag for clerance issues. If she isn’t just testing, then she is gaming for some reason that might be job-related.
#575: yes, people (notably PUAs talk a lot about a physical wall), but as you know, I have found too many exceptions to physical degradation to wholeheartedly subscribe. Age is as age does, and this is certainly a convenient rationalization for a man my age!
The conflicting impulses — work/retire, SIW/”Take me, own me, cum on my face”, SlutWalk/Metropolitan Opera, BeJackNicholson/BeGregoryPeck — do seem evidently irreconcilable once women reach a certain age. My theory is that this is the time that the single girl’s self-sabotage amps up before destroying everything in it’s path: after a lifetime of living feminism’s talking points, while envying SAHMs, and now fearing the social and financial isolation that afflicts anyone who starts trying to live like a grown-up at 40, it’s just easier to sabotage any new relationship before it fails on its own. I just don’t go out with women anywhere near my own age; even if I would like to be with them, their behavior undermines immediately their stated objectives. In essence, they are breaking up with themselves before I can even memorize their middle names.
If my theory has value, then the physical degradation we see when someone hits the Wall is just the individual’s *reaction* to the ugly recognition that feminism’s internal contradictions are controlling. (Did the USSR fail because the men were all drunk? Or did the men all drink because of the systems internal contradictions?) In the Sex and the City clip above, Samantha, panicking at her fate, responds by accelerating her decline (shoveling bad Chinese into her mouth while standing up, no doubt polishing off a crisp polyester Chardonnay while cruising match.com later in the evening).
[Also, we see how absurd (emotionally) feminism’s contradictions are, in the puerile nature of feminist discussion: as though it’s a life challenge, worthy of remedial legislation, to shack up with someone who shares your views on housework distribution.]
This is one interpretation a more cynical man would apply to Mrs. Smith: I’ve triggered some flickering emotion in her, so she’s brandishing her sexual biker grrl persona to make sure I don’t take her too seriously. Likewise she is self-licensing bawdy-bad-girl stuff to pre-empt any beta reaction I might have (one of her shit-tests). I get the impression I’m responding oddly, from her perspective: I’ve heard all the “the personal is political” bullshit too many times to take it seriously, and (being a lapsed beta provider) there’s a hidden side of me that just wants to take care of her, anyway, an impulse exaggerated by the difference in our ages (17).
So this sex-positive stuff is probably just how she defends herself: “Careful, buster, I love no one and fuck everyone”; fortunately, she’s not as convincing as Charlize Theron in Monster, far thinner and better dressed, and way more fun to otherwise talk to. For a few reasons, being emotionally vulnerable is probably not something she’s capable of, at least in the near-term. Thus self-sabotage. I’m hoping to at least get a trip to Somalia out of it, however.
BP, #576: I think your “Gate” concept is interesting. For me, the financial analogues, which you’ve caused me to think about, are:
a. guy is a greata beta drafthorse maka, nose to the grindstone, lives off his W-2, throws bonuses, inheritance and/or capital gains in S&P index funds. 17 years later decides maybe to take a look — and he’s up 300%. It’s a transformative event.
b. guy is a greata beta drafthorse owna, barely survives the 1980’s farming bubble and collapse. Psychologically, emotionally, he is still a leveraged, frightened guy who saw his land values cut by 75 in 18 months, nearly committed suicide a couple years running; he still *feels* the number $1500/acre as he drives his ten year-old truck around collecting parts to fix his second-hand equipment. Then his neighbor sells out. For $11,000/acre. Drafthorse owna is no longer a greata beta: he owns 1000 acres. And he’s only carrying a note on 200 of them now.
Anyway, great metaphor. Sometimes doors open and experience becomes useful instead of a burden. That has been my experience, though I would prefer not to pay some of the tuition I paid, ever again.
Why assume that every woman with a job envies stay-at-home moms? That seems very odd to me. If anything, I pity them, but I don’t judge them. I just think they are a bit strange and must have incredibly dull lives. But it’s like women who dye their hair pink; more power to them, it’s just not for me.
Actually, come to think of it, I feel a little bit bad for their husbands as well. I can’t imagine having so much responsibility falling on me and I read years ago that stay-at-homes weigh more.
Final thought: BB, perhaps the male equivalent to The Wall — if we define the Wall as the moment when female biology, feminist talking points, social isolation, financial insecurity, emerging health insecurity conspire to say MY WHOLE LIFE IS A LIE — is what happens when the domesticated drafthorse wakes up and finds out he’s just been played for a chump: the wife is leaving, the children will never view him as the protective authority figure he once reveled in being, the bank account is obliterated. None of his skills were good enough within the marital relationship; the dating market is the bar scene from Star Wars. Everything suddenly requires a simultaneous translator. It’s really the same collision of rhetoric, Shiny Happy People, and reality, that is The Wall. He’s been playing one game for 25 years but it turns out there are, as Rollo put it, a second set of books, and second set of rules. His whole life is a lie. I’d rather wreck a motorcycle. I would not rather date Katie Bolick, however.
Jen, I’m the wrong guy on whom to drop a straw man argument and some Jezebel talking points, while demonstrating reading comprehension issues. Maybe somebody else wants to play with you, but I suffer fools impolitely and I had wine with lunch, which brings out the Christopher Hitchens in me. JFG doesn’t really cotton to Hitchens’-style polemic and nuclear ripostes.
From Orwell’s Essay, ‘The Spike':
“I have come to think that boredom is the worst of all a tramp’s evils, worse than hunger and discomfort, worse even than the constant feeling of being socially disgraced.
It is a silly piece of cruelty to confine an ignorant man all day with nothing to do; it is like chaining a dog in a barrel, only an educated man, who has consolations within himself, can endure confinement.
Tramps, unlettered types as nearly all of them are, face their poverty with blank, resourceless minds. Fixed for ten hours on a comfortless bench, they know no way of occupying themselves, and if they think at all it is to whimper about hard luck and pine for work.
They have not the stuff in them to endure the horrors of idleness. And so, since so much of their lives is spent in doing nothing, they suffer agonies from boredom.”
Sorry, Jen, but I’ve never been bored a moment in my life. I find productive ways to ues my time. I did when I was working 14+ hour shifts at the hospital on my rounds, doing the best job I could for my patients, and I do so at home as well.
And my husband (who suggested I quit, fwiw) finds my conversation far more stimulating now than it was when I worked at the hospital and talked about wound care C Difficile infections.
#581 Maybe the male equivalent to hitting the Wall is feeling the glass Floor under him shatter.
“You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty” is Dave Barry’s forthcoming new comedy book
http://www.amazon.com/Date-Boys-When-Youre-Forty/dp/0399165940
The title is not intended as advice for delaying marriage, I’m sure.
which brings out the Christopher Hitchens in me. JFG doesn’t really cotton to Hitchens’-style polemic and nuclear ripostes.
I didn’t always agree with his positions, but he was a razor sharp intellect. He was like a verbal Samurai. In a sense, he was kind of a modern Oscar Wilde.
.
“If anything, I pity them, but I don’t judge them. I just think they are a bit strange and must have incredibly dull lives.”
Really, and you complain that the people here have been “mean” to you?
is what happens when the domesticated drafthorse wakes up and finds out he’s just been played for a chump: the wife is leaving, the children will never view him as the protective authority figure he once reveled in being, the bank account is obliterated. None of his skills were good enough within the marital relationship;
http://therationalmale.com/2012/05/21/relational-equity/
“That post was born out of all the efforts I’ve repeatedly read men relate to me when they say how unbelievable their breakups were. As if all of the investment, emotional, physical, financial, familial, etc. would be rationally appreciated as a buffer against hypergamy. The reason for their shock and disbelief is that their mental state originates in the assumption that women are perfectly rational agents and should take all of their efforts, all of their personal strengths, all of the involvement in their women’s lives into account before trading up to a better prospective male. There is a prevailing belief that all of their merits, if sufficient, should be proof against her hypergamous considerations.
For men, this is a logically sound idea. All of that investment adds up to their concept of relationship equity. So it’s particularly jarring for men to consider that all of that equity becomes effectively worthless to a woman presented with a sufficiently better prospect as per the dictates of her hypergamy.
That isn’t to say that women don’t take that equity into account when determining whether to trade up or in their choice of men if they’re single, but their operative point of origin is ALWAYS hypergamy. Women obviously can control their hypergamic impulses in favor of fidelity, just as men can and do keep their sexual appetites in check, but always know that it isn’t relationship equity she’s rationally considering in that moment of decision.”
BB,
Great comment…your use of hypothetical scenarios is always very instructive
One of the true inside jokes about the SMP is that easy-going, positive Guy #2—who uses an aikido-esque “agree and amplify” position on feminism to support his own goals of maximizing his quality and quantity of validation sex while protecting his own freedom-centric lifestyle and minimizing any costs and frictions—is perhaps *the biggest and most greedy player of them all*, but his message will nonetheless be applauded in many circles because he has aligned himself with women’s liberation bullet-points (he of course does this in order to actually liberate himself).
Hugo Schwyzer. If I were hypothetically single, and looking to engage a short-term casual rotation type lifestyle, one of the themes I would fully support in conversations is how I support a woman’s ability to be “empowered” and “explore her sexuality” and how wrong it is for women to be “judged” for what men are admired for. I’d hit all the buzzwords. This isn’t likely to turn the truly restricted woman into someone ready and willing to engage in relationship-less sex, but for the woman on the fence it will assure her she can go with the flow.
Meanwhile, judgmental and cynical Guy #1—who will no doubt be widely condemned as a sort of misogynistic, knuckle-dragging Taliban Todd—is actually the pro-relationship romantic who would enthusiastically support an SAHM (Guy #1′s nightmare) under the right conditions. He is probably going to be told that he should work on self-improvement projects and practice serial monogamy—very difficult for men because of our investment tendencies and chronic inability to ever go “cold” on our ex-GFs—until such time as women in his cohort are ready to make work-life balance decisions. He’s basically going to be told to go along with feminism until the woman rejects or quasi-rejects it, at which time his traditional provider-protector behavior may be welcomed (but with the caveat that there will be no subordination to his status as primary breadwinner and “captain”).
The irony is this guy is the one who is most likely to be attacked as bitter, a loser, you name it, the insults will flow because of his beliefs and candidly stating them.
I think that the women who are having and will continue to have the worst time of it are those who wish to be able to pursue both progressive/feminist and traditional/domestic tracks in sequence, starting out on an aggressive education and career-development pathway and then hoping to switch gears and turn HARPy (“Husband As Retirement Program”). The ones who wish to find a traditional marriage situation and start looking relatively early will have a supply of Guy #1 types who are quite agreeable at that stage; the women who wish to “Lean In” and emphasize career will find support from highly independent Guy #2 types who compartmentalize their relationships. The women who want to jump ship at some stage can end up in a No Man’s Land in which the Guy #1 types are turned off by what they see as systemic sexual price discrimination, while the Guy #2 types are suspicious that they are dealing with a burned-out, career-disillusioned transactional-sex operator now looking to cash out and put-option a lot of responsibility onto the guy.
Yes, and my sense is these ship jumpers feel very, very threatened which is why you often see a sort of histrionic blowback to any sort of criticism of this path.
Love the acronym. I literally laughed out loud when I read that. The double entendre is likely apt in many situations.
I truly believe what I am saying in part because I know 3 women who married younger men when they were between 30 and 34, my friend is 31 and currently dating a 24-year-old, and 2 years ago, my aunt married her 9-years-younger boyfriend 16 years after they first began dating. Fwiw, she looks younger than he does, (but they are different ethnicities, so that may play a part). To me it doesn’t seem like crazy advice.
Demi Moore married Ashton Kutcher. How did that one work out?
Marellus,
Extremely insightful comment.
Hence the rise of MGTOW.
Make no mistake, this uncomfortable part of the interwebz will cause major political and economic disruptions in the future … by the men just opting out … by the men not participating … by the men not courting …
And already the nagging has started (“Man up !!!”), and what happens when you nag someone?
More of the same behavior.
Much of the female/feminist response to what many men are saying reminds me of:
“the beatings will continue until morale improves”
I’ve snipped/edited out a few of the more over-the top comments directed at Jen and called Jen to task on a few of her misrepresentations.
I’m not going to go read through all the comments to find further stuff to snip out or that is overly offensive so if there is something that you feel that Jen has said or has been said towards Jen that crosses the pale then let me know and I’ll look at it and if it gets too far into ad hom territory or excessively-false representation of a group then I’ll axe it.
The bias here at JFG is to allow the conversation to flow, short of personal attacks and consistent or obvious trolling.
I think we take a lot of pride here at JFG that we are extremely hesitant to ban anyone and very reluctant to edit comments. Try to use some sense and avoid ad hominem, and also realize this is a place where factual inaccuracies will be called out.
@ Escoffier
Japan is in full grown demographic collapse and has been in a depression/recession for 25 years. The standard of living is still 1st world but they are simply spending down the capital accumulated through many decades of virtuous toil. It can’t last, and it won’t.
Japan has the highest public debt as a percent of GDP of any country in the world, beating out such illustrious countries as Zimbabwe.
I will point out that for countries like the U.S. and Japan, the sovereign country controls the issuance of the currency the debt is denonimated in. “Solvency” isn’t necessarily an issue. The decision to pay debt or fund programs is a political one, not one of fiscal limitations. Of course, there is the issue of inflation.
The purpose of this site is more discussion of non-PC topics, with a bias towards male-interests.
I see the overall purpose here as Bastiat called “male lifestyle design” be it marriage, kids, being a playboy or hermit or even a polyamorist, with all the enthusiasm for personal choice that feminists give to their protogés. To be fairly, the top men have always done this, but equality means ALL men should have this choice, too!
Yes. I like that summary OTC. There are no sacred cows here.
@ Liz #567
I was hiking through Muir Woods one day, when I saw a very large group of young people ahead of me, and the females in the group were exceedingly attractive – like 8-10s – no exceptions. They all had identical bags for some student tour program or something. As I got closer, I noticed that they were all speaking in Italian…
#560
Did you actually link an article by the liberal misandrist asshole David Wong? Dafuck?
#547
“They’ll find another way to make women suffer … they’ll study women and identify their prime weaknesses … which is their appearance … which is their fear of being alone … which is their desire for babies …
… how to hit all of these weaknesses at once ?
Avoid women completely.”
Yeah. That’s what Aunt Giggles and other feminists want you to believe about their motivation. It’s all BS. The reality is that most MGTOWs have moral integrity and aren’t nurturing evil schemes to take out their vengeance on the entire female sex. What drives them is self-preservation and the normal desire to live unburdened by women’s never-ending BS.
#595
Italian women generally age horribly, especially if they’re from the south.
Motivations, whether it’s malice or militancy against the malaise, adds impetus to the phenomenon … and doesn’t define it …
Morpheus #591
#572 Whiskey. ????
God bless you.
And my husband (who suggested I quit, fwiw) finds my conversation far more stimulating now…
My being at home was at the “suggestion” of my husband as well. He has always had more traditional sensibilities anyway.
As for SAHM’s being heavier, there may be some truth to that. I could stand to lose 15-20 myself to be honest. But my face has none of the wear and tear of a stress-filled, partying, carousel riding life either.
From what I can see however, there is no great difference in weight between SAHM and other women. I spend a fair amount of time around homeschooling mothers, most of whom are among the most health conscious, fit people I have ever met.
But when I went to the doctor recently (of all places) there was no shortage of fat nurses and NA’s.
#601: “But when I went to the doctor recently (of all places) there was no shortage of fat nurses and NA’s.”
Nurses and NAs are often huge. I’ve never understood that…because it’s a very active job. I’ve had days where I didn’t sit down or even take a bathroom break for over 12 hours straight. I know why they’re fat though. They snack constantly. With all the germs in the environment that’s kind of foul. It’s worst for night shift because they fell like they need the energy.
I’m about the same weight now as I was then, or less (I’ve always been thin) but i feel ten years younger and probably look a lot better too. It took a toll playing “tag, you’re it” with the kids and having so little down-time or time to just enjoy each others’ company.
There are definitely things I miss about working. It’s pretty awesome when you feel competent at a job and people give you positive feedback and respect you for your job. Not to say my husband isn’t appreciative, but it’s a bit different. I’ve known a lot of women who tried to give it up and couldn’t….not because they found life dull, quite the opposite with little ones running around, and they weren’t dullards by far (so they didn’t require someone to give them something to do to stay mentally occupied, as the tramps in Orwell’s novel and others might). Not because they needed the money either (though they tried to convince themselves and others that they had to work to appease their consciences for placing their children in daycare, or with nannies to raise them, after swearing they never would). They went back to work because their careers defined them and it was a bit like a death.
And of course, many people like Jen have little respect for mothers who stay at home. So these women go from a profession where they were respected to the type of respect an unemployed stay at home spouse commands. Their self-esteem plummets and they can’t handle it. So, they go back to work and buy themselves a lot of stuff and the kids a lot of stuff so they can feel like they’re at work for a reason and it’s best for everyone even though everyone (including they) is juggling metaphorical plates (the type that actually fall on the floor with a big crash and a lot of damage) and often unhappy. Their kids get sick and who is going to pick them up and watch them? Makes for some interesting and unnecessary conflicts.
(the ‘stay of home mom’ reaction from people kind of reminds me of the food stamp episode of Chris Rock when the mother didn’t want to use the stamps. “Julius, when I pull out food stamps, people look at me like I ain’t got no husband. They talk to me like I ain’t got no sense. They treat me like I ain’t got no class…and if somebody treats me like that, I’m gonna curse them out!”)
HH2, I haven’t noticed that Italian women age poorly. My mother still has the ass that launched a thousand ships. We had a Swiss Italian patient in the hospital I worked at in New Mexico. She was eighty and looked far better than most of the fifty-somethings in that place. European women in general age better than Americans, in my experience.
Just to add to the first post above…my husband’s health has improved a lot since I stopped working, too. He doesn’t have to worry about as many things or do as much juggling, and has time to exercise and rest. Also, obviously I’m not so tired all the time and that makes me happier and far more solicitious. The kids’ grades are awesome and there are no behavior problems whereas before there were problems in every respect. Mild problems by comparison to some, but now our life is amazing and I’m around to make sure it stays that way.
The fascination with work astounds me. My sister-in-law certainly seemed happier after quitting her various low-paying retail positions and becoming a SAHM. My brother-in-law oft-seems bored out of his mind, though he does not work 60-70 work weeks to meet impossible dead-lines. Father does not work as many hours as Mother Dearest and never seems as ridiculously stressed out.
Work is not happy fun self-actualizing martini-drinking blowjob time. It is, something has to get done, and we are paying you to get it done.
Jen,
Do you have a point, or an agenda, or do you just want to “prove” people wrong? The entirely simplistic model I came up with (and that was the point) would demonstrate that increased female work participation would drive down wage increases and increase cost-of-living, all else being equal.
Your model “extensions” seek to remedy this, by men giving women alimony so as not to work, and having all women live communally (which would still increase living expenses unless all men lived communally as well).
That still has social implications, and you had no point, other than trying to “smooth” a model dishonestly to “prove” I am “wrong.”
That’s not intelligence. That is immaturity.
#605: I don’t understand the fascination with work either. But my career never defined me, family has always taken precedence (perhaps because I married young and didnt’ shlep away in a career for years forming my identity through work).
#603 re:”We had a Swiss Italian patient” If you mean northern Italy, then that doesn’t necessarily disprove hh2’s point about “especially if they’re from the south.” My mother’s folks came from Lombardy, and looked nothing like my father’s southern relatives, who tend to be horse-faced and with aquiline noses and large teeth.
ADBG, I agree, it WAS a simplistic model. The point of pronatalist policies is to encourage an increase in the number of workers. It does not specify that the workers have to be a specific gender, just that they have to be participants in the labour force and drive the economy. If you don’t get that your model is in direct contradiction with the purpose of pronatalism, then I can’t help ya.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/global-economic-growth-may-depend-on-having-more-women-working/article13379659/
“Pronatalism” would seem to be a new catchphrase du jour.
@Ms. Jen,
Just wanted to respond to a few of the points you’ve made here.
First, I want to agree with you when you assert that some Men in our time do indeed shoot out of their league, when they could have better chances in mating effort by dating “down”; in fact, I’ve addressed this in a post called “The Primacy of Desire”; I’d be very interested in your feedback.
Second, I can certainly see how and why you would extoll the virtues of Assortative Mating – Women in particular in our time have hugely benefitted from this. However, I would like to submit that such a notion comes with a goodly bit of “fine print” – if you’re, like you, “in the top 20th percentile of hotness”, then, yeah, Assortative Mating is a plum for you. If, on the other hand, you’re on the bottom 20th percentile of attractiveness – in other words, basically a “2” on the scale – then, yeah, life sucks for you, because, while you might pairoff with your “peer”, come on, that is NOT something to be shouting to the roooftops about. I have a post in pre-poduction now that addresses this topic more fully, but I just wanted to suggest that Assortative Mating isn’t as cut and dry as you and many other boosters make it out to be.
As for the May/December thing: look, if we’re going to play the Anecdote Game, we all can point to examples of anything we want to confirm in our own minds; like you, I too know Women who’ve been able to garner the attentions of younger Men, all the way up to and including marriage – I know a 50 year old Woman right now who has a 25 year old hubbie.
But we’re not talking about our little personal social circles – we’re talking about scaling things out to populations of millions – in the case of OKC, for example, they have a database of more than 7M people – so how would the May/December strategy fare there? Not so good – and not for the reasons you think. Sure, guys want younger Women, but that’s only part of the problem – Women tend to want older Men, too. Checkout “A Billion Wicked Thoughts” for more on this point. Also, checkout “The Evolution of Desire”, too.
I guess the thing for me, when it comes to you, and your overall theme of “stop whining”, is this: why come into a Male space and make such a “request” – even if you’re right in your observations? Shouldn’t Men have a polace to vent? After all, Women have numerous spaces to vent, do they not? Why begrudge Men this same space?
Lastly: are you the same “Jen” that discussed Swirling with me recently? If so, I ama bit confused given your recent comments about Black folks in America; if you have little information about them/us, why then would you say what you did a little back wrt Swirling? It would seem to me that you weren’t informed enough to even discuss the matter as it relates to African Americans. I need clarification – please explain?
Question: if you were to live in the USA, how would other Americans see you – Black, or White?
Thanks
O.
@Jen 551
You made a blanket statement that women like +/- 5 years. I showed how you were wrong and that women in the 18-28 y/o range only want about 1 year younger and instead of acknowledging your error (you were the one that said they like 5 years younger) you only obfuscate by saying there’s a legal reason why the 18-20 y/o’s wouldn’t go 5 years younger.
You are not being intellectually honest and serve to show how weak your position and your arguments are by evading honest debate.
Hey Guys,
DAMN
looks like ALL men prefer older women. An age gap of 39 years appears ideal. This anecdatum proves the universal rule (have a bucket handy, trust me):
D’yer think they need lube?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2551532/Man-39-tells-TVs-Lorraine-moment-realised-78-year-old-wife-The-One.html
g’night
But whatever the reasons (legal or what women 18-28 are attracted to), my point stands that most of the OK Cupid women do not like men that are more than about 1 year younger. And the older women are only about 25% of the total and not as representative of the whole population of women as the 18-28 y/o portion.
Moving beyond pointing out your obfuscation, the larger point is that when women are in their peak beauty and sexual power (roughly 18-28) they want men that roughly range from their same age (or 1 less) to 6-7 years older, based on the OK Cupid data. As women enter their 30s and start to face a decline in both their beauty and the number of single men available their market power starts to decline and they start to consider men that are a few years younger than themselves. Part of this may be that once a woman is 35 or 40 that the 30 or 35 y/o man has now established enough sexual and marriage value that he really is attractive to her. I think that another part about the older online dating women is that there’s a higher % of cougars than in the general population and they’re simply looking for no- or low-commitment dating and fun and want to flatter themselves that they can still get attention of younger men that are closer to their physical peaks than the women are. Of course, a 40 y/o woman will still be able to get sex from lots of 30 y/o men but that’s a hollow victory (unless they really do just want casual/short-term sex) because they won’t usually be able to get commitment from them, and that is where a woman’s value is really measured, in who she can get to commit to her, not in who she can get to fuck her, since men will often have sex with a woman 2 or 3 points below him in overall attractiveness.
@Han
so, are you claiming that the story I posted is somewhat of a statistical outlier?
enough, off to read something while listening to the rain hammer on the roof and windows. il fait du ca-ca.
#610 is that like pro-birtherism?
One of my signatures (one of many, none forgeries) is telling someone on their birthday “Congratulations on being born!” I think that counts as being prenatal if anything does.
PROnatal, no do not add to dictionary
Spawny, that story you posted is what all 78 y/o women can aspire to.
Girl done good.
@Obsidian#611 – Thanks for the tip about the primacy of desire post, I will check it out.
“in the case of OKC, for example, they have a database of more than 7M people – so how would the May/December strategy fare there?”
My advice was based on the OKC example, actually, as it shows that women beginning at 30 ARE open to younger men, and they are actually just as likely to respond to them as men much older (their message rates were in the middle of the bell curve, while men’s messaage rates skewed on the youngest end). It wasn’t primarily based on anecdote.
“I guess the thing for me, when it comes to you, and your overall theme of “stop whining”, is this: why come into a Male space and make such a “request” – even if you’re right in your observations? Shouldn’t Men have a polace to vent? After all, Women have numerous spaces to vent, do they not? Why begrudge Men this same space?”
Men have a right to voice their opinions, and as it’s an open-comment policy, I figured the point is that other people have the right to express why they disagree with those opinions. But, come on, you can’t complain about women posting here when your latest post is DIRECTED AT WOMEN. The problem is that you’re looking for an echo chamber. Be honest about this.
“Question: if you were to live in the USA, how would other Americans see you – Black, or White?” I don’t know, as I don’t live there. I am assuming it would be black. If it’s the same as it is where I live, they would persist in asking me without much regard for decorum what my background is.
@Elspeth #601 – I imagine the SAHM’s are heavier because they report being more depressed than other women: http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2012/june/why-stay-at-home-moms-are-more-depressed-than-working-moms.html. One of the symptoms of depression is overeating, isn’t it?
@Ms. Jen:
I am looking for no more than what Jezebel, Feministing and Feministe, for starters, have – which is yes, an echo chamber. Women are culturally encouraged/sanctioned to be able to whine and moan; Men should have the same right. Do you honestly think that any of us fellas here could go to any of those forums and tell the ladies there to shutup and get over it, without getting booted with the quickness? Really?
In my view, the Manosphere gives guys a place to vent, and I think that in so doing, is actually challenging the very gender norms that so many Women and some Men claim Men need to be challenging in our time – like expressing emotions and feelings. Men in the sphere are expressing them – granted, they may not be pleasant, etc – but they ARE expresing them. What you and so many other Women and some Men, want these guys to do, is shutup – be honest. Because in so doing, you want these Men to adhere to the very archaic gvender norms that so many of your ilk claim to be challenging.
As for your racial classification as it relates to the USA, yes, we’re very intrusive like that. God Bless America!
Like me know what you think of my post “The Primacy of Desire” – interestingly enough, the only people who took issue with it were African Americans; the White folks who read it was like “duh!”, LOL. Personally, one of the reasons why the SMP in Black America is such a hot mess, is due precisely to this point: that so many of us are in such deep denial about the role that Desire plays in sexual/romantic relationships. Because of our denial along these line, it creates lots of problems, that you and so many others know so very well when it comes to gender relations between Black Men and Black Women. That was the whole point of my writing “The Primacy of Desire” in the first pl;ace, as well as subsequent posts obtaining on Tyrone/Mr. Big; when you’re able to be honest about your desires, and are willing to accept the consequences for them, you truly are free.
Don’t you agree?
O.
Wow, and I thought it was just white liberals who try to act unaware of their own skin color.
Perhaps a mirror? Your problem seems bizarre. No one here cares what your answer is beyond how it might help put your anecdata in context, thus helping us progress the debate.
We’re looking for honest debate, not an echo chamber. Your place here seems…unclear. You are in unfamiliar territory, that much is clear. It can’t help your discomfort that you lose every point that you contest. Awkward.
Maybe new tactics are worth a shot? Objectivity, honest attempt to comprehend, abandonment of strawmen, acknowledgement of error?
Unfamiliar tactics in a strange land where truth is more important than your immediate comfort. It must be terrifying, embarrassing, yet still you vent your stream of consciousness in public view. Odd.
We’re looking for honest debate, not an echo chamber. Your place here seems…unclear. You are in unfamiliar territory, that much is clear. It can’t help your discomfort that you lose every point that you contest. Awkward.
Maybe new tactics are worth a shot? Objectivity, honest attempt to comprehend, abandonment of strawmen, acknowledgement of error?
Unfamiliar tactics in a strange land where truth is more important than your immediate comfort. It must be terrifying, embarrassing, yet still you vent your stream of consciousness in public view. Odd.
One thing I’ll note is HERE and generally in discussion with men particularly some of the intelligent ones we have commenting here, is that you’ll get a lot further, gain more respect, and be listened to if you abandon the use of SNARK. This isn’t Jezebel of Feministing. There is a type of woman that believes using snark earns her points in the verbal interaction and who mistakes snark and sarcasm for wit and incisive commentary. The (over)use of snark simply reveals someone filled with petulance who greatly overestimates their intelligence.
Morpheus,
The (over)use of snark simply reveals someone filled with petulance who greatly overestimates their intelligence.
Absolutely true. The Jon Stewart-ification of the intellectual sphere. Not useful and I generally tune these people out right away.
@ Jen
We are not talking about your criticism of your pro-natalist polices. No one brought that up but you. We are talking about whether YOUR actions have implications for OTHER people. This should go without saying, but a quite simple model can be created out of thin air, which you proceeded to torture for no apparent reason other than to say “Ha! You’re wrong!”
Do you deal with any companies that have outsourced work to India? They have a different style of communication there, one that is quite “verbose” for lack of a better word. I would not recommend trying to take me off point because they do it better than you.
PS: If you ask any economist worth his salt how to improve living standards, the answer is “productivity.” Do you honestly think Italy can fix its economic disaster by simply moving women into the labor force? or do you think that’s just a desperate ploy by a nation that has over-extended its credit lines?
Here’s another question, Econ 101: what are the unintended consequences of pressuring women to join the labor force? Believe it or not, economics is not about maximizing GDP.
“acknowledgement of error”
This does bring up something that might surprise those new to the manosphere, or new to male discussion. One can admit error and just move on. Men don’t tend to see acknowledgement of error as an invitation to go for the neck, or to hammer it home incessantly forever after. (Unless you pissed them off by shoddy tactics already, then maybe you’ll get some stick for a while – a reminder to play cleanly next time).
Male debate tends to be about working shit out more than point scoring. Real team teamwork, not frenemies engaging in covert backstabbing operations.
Being right is rewarded, being honestly wrong overlooked. This isn’t a crab bucket where every point counts.
“Perhaps a mirror? Your problem seems bizarre. No one here cares what your answer is beyond how it might help put your anecdata in context…”
Oh, so you’ve never encountered a bi- or tri-racial person before? That seems bizarre to me.
I’ll never understand the American discomfort with ethnic ambiguity. Nor will I ever understand why it is that only 1 in 3 Americans even owns a passport. I guess there’s a lot about your kind that I simply shall never understand.
Fwiw, both of my biological parents were biracial. So perhaps you could be the one to explain to me then how multiracial people are classed in America, since I do not live there. Here, we are simply classed as “multiracial” unless we specify otherwise. I don’t have a relationship, however, with my biological father and was raised by my stepfather who was born in Europe and emigrated to Canada at the age of 18. I grew up in an upper-middle-class, if unconventional, home. Now perhaps you can be the one to tell me in what context all of that that is actually relevant.
A Definite Beta Guy, say 1 person has 3 children and all 3 of those children are girls. How you can genuinely believe that it would be a boon for the economy to have all of those potential workers sitting at home twiddling their thumbs and waiting for a boy to be born rather than participating meaningfully in the labour force is puzzling, but you’re welcome to your opinion, no matter how much the IMF disagrees with you.
Obsidian, why would I want you to shut up, genuinely? I am a person who enjoys debate. If you didn’t express bizarre and highly debatable opinions, I’d probably be some other place picking apart their questionable theories instead. There’s just enough that is interesting or at least a modicum of accuracy to make it worth my while. If I thought you were 100% crackpots I’d just poke fun or ignore you altogether.
[…] Ace with a great post explaining manosphere “anger”. Related: Why the manosphere exists in one post. Related: Casual sex and male incentives. […]
@Jen
1) I’m not American.
2) You never explained all that stuff about your race before. You just played games around it.
3) Ones race, in this imperfect world, will very likely impact ones lived experiences. And so knowing your race adds context to what you say.
4) nobody gives a shit about ethnic ambiguity here, per se. Though your lived experiences, given that context, might actually be more interesting because of it.
Jen:“I imagine the SAHM’s are heavier because they report being more depressed than other women
How about the family? Or is everyone else in this equation a tangential irrelevancy?
“You never explained all that stuff about your race before. You just played games around it”
Incorrect. In #534 I explicitly stated that: “Ethnically, I don’t really have a race. I identify as black, but I also identify as mixed since that is what I am biologically and phenotypically.” Obsidian pressed it further demanding that I tell him what AMERICANS would think I am, due to an obvious lack of comfort with ethnic ambiguity. That’s you guys’ issue, not mine. I already told you what I am. You can figure it out from there if you insist on putting me in a box.
“How about the family? Or is everyone else in this equation a tangential irrelevancy?”
I’m not sure. One study (referenced elsewhere in this thread) found that divorce is more common with stay-at-home moms so insofar as their families are splitting up more, it’s probably not good for them. Divorce is least likely when the wife earns around 75% of her husband’s salary, which is an interesting fact in and of itself.
Well, I’ve seen plenty of studies indicating the opposite on all counts (stay at home moms are happiest, less likely to divorce et al). I could link, but there isn’t much point is there? Furthermore I’m using my mom’s relic computer and can’t copy and paste, with dial up internet (seriously, this sucks ass) so I’m out until next week when I get back to a real computer.
So after 533 comments on the thread, many long ones from you, then you stop playing games? Or sort of stop? Says it all.
“Divorce is least likely when the wife earns around 75% of her husband’s salary, which is an interesting fact in and of itself.”
maybe. depends on whether a reason can be identified. Your go to reason is likely to be misandric, because that is what you are.
Might just be that women don’t want to put in the hours that hubby does to finance the operation of the family home and they appreciate their husband for pulling more weight financially. They in turn might actually pull more of the domestic duties and thus earn the appreciation of their hard working man.
Mutual appreciation for different roles in marriage! Bizarre. Not in your world, right.
Re: “participating meaningfully in the labour force” doing?
Cooking? Cleaning? Child care? Sex work? Etc?
#634 Wrong. The higher the wife’s income the more likely to divorce.
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-05-15/higher-paid-women-less-married-more-divorced/
etc
Jf12, I know that higher-earning women are more likely to divorce. I never disputed that. However, women who earn nothing are also more likely to divorce, though. The lowest divorce rates were seen among women earning roughly 3/4’s of a man’s income.
I have to get ready for work, but give me a bit of time and I’ll hunt down the studies again.
“Most studies take whether or not the couple divorced as the dependent variable, failing to distinguish between divorces initiated by women and by men. Divorce has generally been found to be more likely when men’s earnings are lower (Hoffman and Duncan 1995; South and Lloyd 1995) or declining (Weiss and Willis 1997). In contrast, findings on the effects of women’s earnings are inconsistent. Some studies find that women’s earnings are positively related to divorce (Cherlin 1979; Heckert, Nowak, and Snyder 1998; Hiedemann, Suhomlinova, and O’Rand 1998; Moore and Waite 1981; Ono 1998; Rogers 2004; Ross and Sawhill 1975; Spitze and South 1985), especially when men’s earnings are lower (Heckert et al. 1998; Ono 1998), but others find no effect of women’s earnings (Greenstein 1995; Hoffman and Duncan 1995; Mott and Moore 1979; Sayer and Bianchi 2000; South and Lloyd 1995; Tzeng and Mare 1995), and a few suggest that women’s earnings, like men’s, stabilize marriage (Greenstein 1990; Hoffman and Duncan 1995; and for changes in earnings, Weiss and Willis 1997). Cooke’s (2006) analysis finds that, in the U.S., relative to dual earner couples in which the husband earns as much or more than the wife, the probability of divorce is elevated by either a traditional arrangement where the man but not the woman is employed and he does little housework, or a nontraditional arrangement in which the wife earns more than the husband.”
@JF12
But what about in JAR-JAR Land? (Jen’s Alternate Reality)
A strange world where ‘our world’ is inverted, twisted, fractured, or frankly, just made up to suit. Where refutation is ignored, and/or used to spin another two or three whoppers, ad nauseum, or ad banneum hammerum (oh blessed day).
“How you can genuinely believe that it would be a boon for the economy to have all of those potential workers sitting at home twiddling their thumbs and waiting for a boy to be born rather than participating meaningfully in the labour force is puzzling”
Those of you who keep responding to “thought” at this level of triteness are being had by an obvious troll. 641 posts in and she’s still got us all riled up, so there must be some cleverness in there somewhere, but it certainly is not evident in her analysis of the labor market.
Spawny Get, I thought you might find this interesting:
“According to the study, which examined 18- to 28-year-old married and cohabitating respondents who were in the same relationship for more than a year, men who were completely dependent on their female partner’s income were five times more likely to cheat than men who contributed an equal amount of money to the partnership. The relationship between economic dependence and infidelity disappeared when age, education level, income, religious attendance, and relationship satisfaction were taken into account.
“One or more of these variables is impacting the relationship,” Munsch said. “For example, it may be that men who make less money than their partners are more unhappy and cheat because they are unhappy, not necessarily because they make less money.”
Ironically, men who make significantly more than their female partners were also more likely to cheat. “At one end of the spectrum, making less money than a female partner may threaten men’s gender identity by calling into question the traditional notion of men as breadwinners,” Munsch said. “At the other end of the spectrum, men who make a lot more money than their partners may be in jobs that offer more opportunities for cheating like long work hours, travel, and higher incomes that make cheating easier to conceal.”
Men were the least likely to cheat when their partners made approximately 75% of their incomes.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100816095617.htm
So…married and cohabitating…not just married then? One would hope for there to be behavioural differences. And a study on couples all below median age of first marriage. Before most careers are established, hormones abated for men etc etc. okey dokey, various limitations duly noted.
What about the women’s rate of cheating? They’re closing the gap after all.
Only ever the woman as victim side with you, ain’t it Jen
Re: “Men were the least likely to cheat when their partners made approximately 75% of their incomes.”
You do know that women are not more likely to file for divorce when the man is adulterous than when he is faithful, right? In fact, women are (slightly) less likely to file for divorce when the man is physically abusive.
Refocus on women’s willing behaviors. Women who are willing to put up with a good looking partner’s laziness, enabling him to spend his time admiring his reflection in the mirror and finding others to admire his reflection, are more willing to put up with him cheating. Women who are willing to put up with a rich partner’s infidelity are more willing to do so if she benefits economically by not having to work.
… Women’s Delaying Marriage Unleashes Casual-Sex Hypergamy and Causes Average Men to Check Out
Gentlemen, and Ladies,
From the above title of this post. I declare this assertion resolved as true.
As evidence I present the full body of Jen’s work in the comments section of J4G. She has lived the sort of life* delaying and denying marriage that the OP speaks of and it’s likely if/when her priorities shift in about 7 years she will find many men her own age of the sort who once desired marriage and family and have over the years “checked out.”
*Please not I am not making or assuming characterizations of Jen’s sex life which would be necessarily defined as promiscuous, but rather her thus far admitted serial monogamy style of romantic endeavor has a similar effect in the SMP when coupled with her views on marriage and children.
@ Jen
So now you’re a supporter of child labor?
“You do know that women are not more likely to file for divorce when the man is adulterous than when he is faithful, right? In fact, women are (slightly) less likely to file for divorce when the man is physically abusive.”
Citation for the first claim? The second claim is pretty easy to explain. A man is most likely to be physically abusive at the end of a marriage, statistically speaking. A woman who fears for her physical safety will likely delay divorcing until she can make other arrangements.
Badpainter, please. You’re making yourself look like an idiot. I am not delaying marriage. My boyfriend and I are emulating Alan Rickman and Ricky Gervais; they’ve been in relationships for over 30 years, both without marrying or having children. The fact that you are incapable of grasping this concept makes me wonder how old you are. Ancient?
“So now you’re a supporter of child labor?”
You can’t seriously be this stupid. Am I giving you too much credit? Obviously it goes without saying that those children will grow up and become women. Do you need your hand held everytime you cross the road, too? Wow, the synapses are firing slowly today.
Jen please read all of the words I use I said “if/when.” i said it that way because because you are not in a position to tell me what your priorities will be in the next 7-12 years. It’s good guess at this point. Nor are you in a position to state with 100% certainty what your boyfriend’s priorities will be in the next 7-12 years. He may discover he wants children and a wife, or he may not, you won’t know for sure until the future is past.
But more importantly you represent a nice model of the typical younger serial monogamist, and of all the 28yr. old females in the Anglosphere that share your opinion today some will certainly change their minds and many will likely find themselves bemoaning a shortage of good men.
What about the other half of dv victims, the men? Men like Vladek Filler persecuted due to accusations by a known to be mentally unbalanced wife.
Nem +1 nice one.
Badpainter, OK I undestand now that you meant no malice in your post. You couldn’t possibly know that’s being patronized as an adult is a huuuuge point of contention among those of us who are childfree, as though another person could know your own mind and personal intentions for your own life when you’re an adult more than you yourself can. We call those “bingos” in the childfree community. Some of the women I converse with in the CF space are still getting them in their mid-40’s!
How on earth anyone can tell a 45-year-old woman that she will “probably change her mind” about not wanting children is beyond me, but I guess it’s what I have to look forward to for the next 7-12 years.
Jen,
With all due respect bullshit. You’re been every bit as patronizing as those who offended you. Get over yourself. If you believe the things you say then being patronized doesn’t matter. It’s OK to be self righteous, but when you add sanctimonious it’s just petty, adolescent whining.
“What about the women’s rate of cheating? They’re closing the gap after all.”
SpawnyGet, you have to the whiniest man I’ve ever come across in my life. Which is really saying something because I was an emo fan in high school.
In any case, it’s not my fault that female-specific infidelity hasn’t been studied in as much depth as male infidelity.
What I HAVE found states: “Individuals who work outside the home while their partners remain in the home also express higher rates of extramarital sexual involvement (Atkins et al., 2001)” and:
“A number of studies, conducted over decades, have consistently found that sexual dissatisfaction in marriage is the leading factor in causing women to engage in short-term extramarital sexual affairs,16 and these results have recently been corroborated by EPists.17 Indeed, although women who are emotionally dissatisfied in marriage seek extramarital emotional involvements, they are not more likely than satisfied women to have extramarital sexual affairs; only sexually dissatisfied women are more likely to have extramarital sexual involvements.18 Moreover, women who are sexually dissatisfied in marriage have been found to be over twice as likely as sexually satisfied women to have extramarital sex.19″
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/sex-jealousy-and-violence/
Badpainter, context, my friend. I’m not saying you are patronizing in general, I am saying being patronizing about the chidlfree issue in particular. Meaning, telling an adult woman that she doesn’t know whether she wants to bear children is a common complaint of patronization among the childfree.
“You couldn’t possibly know that being patronized as an adult [about being childfree] is a huuuuge point of contention among those of us who are childfree, as though another person could know your own mind and personal intentions for your own life when you’re an adult more than you yourself can.” You can’t get anymore specific than that. But it’s just a fact; you’re not the only person in the world to be patronizing about the issue, you won’t be the last, and it IS a cliche. In my case, you are wrong. I do know what my position will be in 12 years; childfree. For those who are ambiguous/open, they’re called fencesitters.
Badpainter, I’d also add that as you’ve been one of a slight few to address me with a modicum of civility, I want to return the favour.
A lot of truth to this story. I believe women only want to marry at two different times in their lives. 28 and 48 years of age. Anything in the middle is just sex or worse, someone to tell her how pretty she really isn’t. For a 44 yo AFC like myself, you get sick and tired of that shit quick. I finally went MGTOW and much happier with myself and my valuable time. Plus I got a great Christmas present. Canada threw out all their prostitution laws, going to way of Germany with brothels by end of 2014. Since I live in a border state, it works real well for me. For the blue pill dudes who say it ain’t love, guess what? The chick you’re hitting on won’t love you either when you are in divorce court or getting accused of CSC. Get real, be safe.
Thanks Jen,
But I am telling you that general complaints about being patronized, offended, or generally discomfited come off as petty, sanctimonious, whining. I was giving you solid advice. Don’t go about calling, or insinuating people are idiots, or failing to live up to your expectations and then have the gal to complain that someone is less than fully supportive of your life’s direction.
Now I’m going to preach from my aged position, stop insisting that everyone rejoice in your every decision. No one is under any obligation to give a damn. People are no damn good, get used to it. Stop, today, stop seeking external affirmation and validation. If you expect to gain from the good opinion of others, you will have to bare the bad opinion of others. Man up woman, you want equal treatment you’re going to get equal responsibility.
Badpainter, I don’t need you to be “fully supportive of my life’s direction.” I am not, in fact, complaining about the tone towards me (after all, Spawny Get cannot get out a single comment without couching it in a “mean, mean misandrist, how dare you know facts about stuff that affects women? Misandrist!” whine, and I do not complain). I would simply appreciate not insinuating complete incredulity and skepticism at what my life direction actually is. In other words, do not presume to know me more than I know myself.
#652 and “But more importantly you represent a nice model of the typical younger serial monogamist” and let’s all read the title of this article once again.
#649 among others Dalrock has outstanding articles. cf
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/is-frivolous-divorce-overstated-in-the-manosphere/
and references therein. Women in the process of filing are more likely to be adulterous themselves, and less likely to have adulterous husbands.
#649 and UK.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/10357829/Why-do-women-initiate-divorce-more-than-men.html
“In fact, slightly more men claim to have been cuckolded in court (15% of male-initiated divorces) than women (14%).”
Doesn’t it amaze you yet, that all of your prior assumptions were wrong? Doesn’t it cause you to question why that is and how it came to be?
jf12, with all due respect, so what? One study doesn’t discount all the others, and there have been hundreds.
What’s interesting is how remarkably consistent the numbers are.
First of all, infidelity is cited as the reason in 17% of divorces, not the lower number you quoted; http://www.oprah.com/own-unfaithful/blogs/Facts-About-Cheating
Per the National Science Foundation’s General Social Survey, men are about 13%% more likely to commit infidelity in the highest age range: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/health/28well.html?_r=0
Men are more likely to commit infidelity in every culture documented: http://anepigone.blogspot.ca/2010/03/infidelity-rates-by-ethnicity.html, the question is only how much more likely and this varies by culture. One study puts the black male infidelity rate at double the average: http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/02/14/reviews/990214.14fonert.html
An anonymous survey of 70,000 people found that married men were the most likely group to report infidelity, with the highest-earning men within this demographic being the most likely to cheat of all: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17951664/ns/health-sexual_health/t/many-cheat-thrill-more-stay-true-love/. “Even among couples that have been together for more than 30 years, four-fifths of women and two-thirds of men report being faithful during the entire relationship.”
The study with the narrowest gap ever reported put the female rate at 19 percent and the male rate at 23 percent: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/women-cheating-men-study/story?id=13885519
Also interesting is the different time periods in which men and women report cheating; “Among married women, the likelihood of extramarital involvement peaks in the seventh year of marriage, then declines; but among married men, the likelihood of extramarital involvement decreases over time until the eighteenth year of matrimony, after which the likelihood of extramarital involvement increases (Liu, 2000). Similarly, in a sample of couples in therapy for infidelity, sexual infidelity first occurred after an average of seven years of marriage (Wiggins & Lederer, 1984). Lawson and Samson (1988) reported, however, that the length of marriage prior to initial sexual infidelity is decreasing with younger cohorts. Certain developmental stages in a marriage, including pregnancy and the months following the birth of a child, are also high risk times for infidelity among males (Allen & Baucom, 2001; Brown, 1991; Whisman et al., 2007).” http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/01/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-infidelity/
“SpawnyGet, you have to the whiniest man I’ve ever come across in my life.”
That’s a damn shame cos I fucking love you sweety. I think that you are the shit.
Love’n’hugs from da menz.
But sweety, you never mention the men, ever, except as evildoers. It’s like we are of no import to you. Why when you point out female victims *sadface* are we supposed to care, but when I point out male ones, I’m just whining?
It’s like your famed empathy as a woman…well you have none *cwying*
We’re not feeling the love, babes, not at all… *whimper, sad face cry, trembling pout etc*
Why don’t you care about da menz, call us all misogynists, but then stamp about a manosphere blog shrieking and wailing about da wimminz?
Certain lack of logic their love bumps, sweety pie.
jf12, with all due respect, so what? One study doesn’t discount all the others, and there have been hundreds.
What’s interesting is how remarkably consistent the numbers are.
First of all, infidelity is cited as the reason in 17% of divorces, not the lower number you quoted.
Per the National Science Foundation’s General Social Survey, men are about 13%% more likely to commit infidelity in the highest age range: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/health/28well.html?_r=0
Men are more likely to commit infidelity in every culture documented: http://anepigone.blogspot.ca/2010/03/infidelity-rates-by-ethnicity.html, the question is only how much more likely and this varies by culture. One study puts the black male infidelity rate at double the average: http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/02/14/reviews/990214.14fonert.html
An anonymous survey of 70,000 people found that married men were the most likely group to report infidelity, with the highest-earning men within this demographic being the most likely to cheat of all: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17951664/ns/health-sexual_health/t/many-cheat-thrill-more-stay-true-love/. “Even among couples that have been together for more than 30 years, four-fifths of women and two-thirds of men report being faithful during the entire relationship.”
The study with the narrowest gap ever reported put the female rate at 19 percent and the male rate at 23 percent: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/women-cheating-men-study/story?id=13885519
Also interesting is the different time periods in which men and women report cheating; “Among married women, the likelihood of extramarital involvement peaks in the seventh year of marriage, then declines; but among married men, the likelihood of extramarital involvement decreases over time until the eighteenth year of matrimony, after which the likelihood of extramarital involvement increases (Liu, 2000). Similarly, in a sample of couples in therapy for infidelity, sexual infidelity first occurred after an average of seven years of marriage (Wiggins & Lederer, 1984). Lawson and Samson (1988) reported, however, that the length of marriage prior to initial sexual infidelity is decreasing with younger cohorts. Certain developmental stages in a marriage, including pregnancy and the months following the birth of a child, are also high risk times for infidelity among males (Allen & Baucom, 2001; Brown, 1991; Whisman et al., 2007).”
Also, 70% of Ashley Madison users are males.
jf12, with all due respect, so what? One study doesn’t discount all the others, and there have been hundreds.
What’s interesting is how remarkably consistent the numbers are.
First of all, infidelity is cited as the reason in 17% of divorces, not the lower number you quoted; http://www.oprah.com/own-unfaithful/blogs/Facts-About-Cheating
Per the National Science Foundation’s General Social Survey, men are about 13%% more likely to commit infidelity in the highest age range: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/health/28well.html?_r=0
Men are more likely to commit infidelity in every culture documented: http://anepigone.blogspot.ca/2010/03/infidelity-rates-by-ethnicity.html, the question is only how much more likely and this varies by culture. One study puts the black male infidelity rate at double the average: http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/02/14/reviews/990214.14fonert.html
Sorry about the misspelling their, but I’m typing through the tears and the keyboard is slippery from where I slit my wrists in despair.
Jen has fawwen out of twu wuv wiv Spawny.
SpawnyGet, there’s no point in having this debate with you. When I post a dozen studies proving you wrong (about female infidelity being more prevalent), you conveniently moderate the comment and don’t let it through.
Wonder why.
The closest infidelity gap ever documented by a credible source still puts the male rate at 4% greater than women’s.
As I mentioned in my comment you conveniently discarded, men cheat more in every culture on earth: http://anepigone.blogspot.ca/2010/03/infidelity-rates-by-ethnicity.html. Why should a woman have to depend on such a man for her livelihood and to be able to eat? When you can answer that question without looking like a misogynistic asshole, I’ll be interested. Since it’s impossible to do so, however, it’s safe to say that you’ve lost.
“But detailed analysis of the data from 1991 to 2006, to be presented next month by Dr. Atkins at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference in Orlando, show some surprising shifts. University of Washington researchers have found that the lifetime rate of infidelity for men over 60 increased to 28 percent in 2006, up from 20 percent in 1991. For women over 60, the increase is more striking: to 15 percent, up from 5 percent in 1991.”
What are you babbling about now? I modded something? Nope
You’re losing it sweet cheeks, if you ever had it.
4% difference? Men are all bastards, it’s clear. All wimminz are victimz. Whatever they do it was big bad boys who made them do it, and then ran off. Bastards.
Slipping away now, cold, so cold without your twu wuv to warm the cockles of my heart, fare well my little bundle of love and empathy.
“4% difference?”
Can you read, SG? That’s only one study and it’s the smallest gap. It required a higher female infidelity rate than all other studies. Men’s are remarkably consistent; 21 – 28% of men report cheating, with black men cheating more.
That cognitive dissonance you require in order to paint yourself (men) as victims sure requires a lot of selective reading or just plain blindness rofl.
OH I see!
This 4% gap entitles justifies women’s 50% lead in divorce filings?
Any graduation date from logic, mirality and charm school yet?
Mwah! Massive kiss on the cheek, magic nipples
In conclusion, since anywhere from 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 men are willing to admit cheating on their wife (not even girlfriend, but actual wife), if you’re a woman who doesn’t care if your man actually keeps his vows or your common golddigger, then marriage is the thing for you! You pretty cannot lose, especially if the man you marry is rich.
If, however, you’re a woman who would rather gauge her eyes out then spend the rest of her life shackled to a man without the decency and respect for her to be faithful and can’t imagine being in love with such a man, marriage is an extremely risky proposition. Nothing you’ve been able to post SG has contradicted that fact. A woman for whom fidelity actually matters is not going to want to stay married to a man to whom it does not matter, and that’s a pretty significant number of men. That only addresses the issue of divorce and women having access to it. That doesn’t even address the fact that women having access to divorce doesn’t rectify the problem of still being shackled to an unfaithful man if they don’t have the ability to provide for themselves under a system in which they are economically dependent on their husbands.
Dismissing this fact with nonsense about women cheating doesn’t actually address those problems since men are not economically dependent on women and have always been able to leave them (homeless) at any time.
“This 4% gap entitles justifies women’s 50% lead in divorce filings?”
The gap is 13% in over-60’s. You just can’t read. Only one study found a gap that small. One study, out of hundreds conducted in the last 50 years, and in multiple countries. Which pretty much says it all.
Re: “70% of Ashley Madison users are males” and the other 30% are lying.
No woman thinks “Hmm. I think I would like to have sex with basically a random guy, especially a random married guy. If only there were some tools that I could use to find random sex! Won’t anyone help me? Why should I have to go through all that wait time of two or three minutes of walking into the nearest bar and walking out with three or four random men? Why should it be that difficult?”
Jen, it’s just a fact that a lot of women who say they never want children change their minds as they get older. You may not be one of them. We can’t say at this point. But the theme is common enough that when we hear it, it’s a natural response to wonder if that “resolve” will hold.
It would be impolite to admit such doubts to a stranger face to face. But in an Internet conversation whose only purpose is to discuss this and related questions, it’s perfectly within bounds.
Over 60s, SnuggleBucket?
Why do you speak of them?
When you should be leaning on the washing machine during its spin cycle, tingling for US! Our eternal love.
I am more mature than you my little wombat of lust, but my love didgeridoo remains vibrant and fruitful. Come! Let us romp around the billabong of eternal passion, making the beast with two backs.
Away with your fanciful talk of the over 60 males forced by frigid old battleaxe wives to seek comfort elsewhere in their waning years, having supported the rancid old prunes for decades by the sweat of their brows.
@Jen from my circle of friends that recently got divorced… Most of the women did not profit very long, at most 2 years after the divorce. Then they experienced a drop in living standards unless they shacked up with a new guy with some cash. Historically and maybe still in parts of the nation such as California, the women may be leaving with cash and prizes still. I am not sure. In this last “round of divorces” going on in my circle, one of my friends has a male judge who is recently divorced. I’ll keep you posted lol
Again, let’s make it simple:
What are the unintended consequences?
You want to talk economics with me? Then answer the question. You don’t think like an economist, at all, and are talking with someone who learned Keynesian Economics from General Theory, not a college class-room. Tell me, what do you think of New Trade Theory? What’s your stance on the Solow Paradox? How about matching theory for labor economics? What discount rate do you think we should use to evaluate the present value of government projects? Should we reduce the number of asset classes under MACRS-appreciation?
If you think skimming some IMF report and fitting into boiler-plate feminist talking points makes you an economics expert, you are sorely mistaken, and hitting so far above your weight-class you might as well be punching the Colossus of Rhodes. And I’m not even smart.
BTW, here is labor force participation of women by nation. BEHOLD THE ECONOMIC POWER OF NIGERIA!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Female_Employment_to_Female_Population_in_11_Muslim_Majority_Countries.png/450px-Female_Employment_to_Female_Population_in_11_Muslim_Majority_Countries.png
Awwww, crap, Nigeria is about 1/5 as wealthy as Iran, which has less than half the female labor force participation. Actually, it’s substantially less wealthy than even 1900 America, which had a married women labor force participation rate lower than ANY Muslim nation.
GRRRRRRLLLLL POWAH! is not economic policy. If you are terribly concerned about labor force participation, would you like to eliminate Social Security Supplemental income, paid vacation time, 40 hour work weeks, and unemployment benefits? Or can we only work people to the bone when it fits pre-determined ideological bullet points?
ADBG, I am not an econ major and never claimed to be. I have a very rudimentary knowledge of economics and yes, Keynesian theory makes the most sense to me, particularly given that leading economist James Alm tested 130 variables from 48 U.S. states, covering good and bad times from 1947 to 97, and concluded that the election of Republican governments is “always negative’’ for economic growth.
To me, though, it’s a moot point as it’s less an economic issue than a human rights issue. You cannot stifle human potential because the human in question happened to be born female.
“To me, though, it’s a moot point as it’s less an economic issue than a human rights issue. You cannot stifle human potential because the human in question happened to be born female.”
SnuggleBucket! Sweetums!
The Glorious Day has dawned, you just said something that I absolutely agree with!!! OMFG. I’m away to my fainting couch toot der serweet.
“I have a very rudimentary knowledge of economics and yes, Keynesian theory makes the most sense to me”
Jen,
This what I mean when talk about indoctrination vs. education. Keynes was not entirely wrong, but his theory has a practical limit like all “scientific” economic theories. If you want to learn economics start with Adam Smith, and skip everything else but Hayek, Mises, and Rothbard. After get you the philosophy of the Austrians you will understand how everyone else is simultaneously both right and wrong and see how foolish Keynesianism is in today’s world.
I have to say I feel badly for you. You seem fairly bright, but your education has been total shit. They didn’t teach you how to think instead they taught you what to think.
@ Badpainter
The Austrian school is a brilliant. Too bad its basic premise is false; people are not rational agents.
Jen, you seem a bit obsessed over infidelity. Without going into specifics (the reasons people cheat can be complicated) are you under the impression that living with a man rather than marrying him would make him less likely to cheat? If not, what is your point?
(going back to points made days ago) Investigated this evening and found out that most of the “happiest countries” are also the ones with the highest rates of antidepressant medication use. Kind of paradoxical…or not so paradoxical afterall. Perhaps someone should ask them when they aren’t all doped up.
One of the symptoms of depression is overeating, isn’t it?
I never agreed with you that SAHM were heavier than other married women. I made a point of noting how many fat women you see working in doctor’s offices, and they aren’t SAHM’s. I simply said that it could be true and that I, personally, need to lose 15-20 pounds. I’ve had 5 children though and my very blunt husband doesn’t have complaints about my physique.
I also don’t agree that SAHM’s are more depressed. North American women in general are more depressed and it’s due to the inherent psychological damage done when we live ruggedly individualistic lives when we were created to live in interdependent relationships.
The fact that my husband and I aren’t working on different missions solidifies our bond and I am quite happy. Most SAHM mothers I know don’t seem anymore depressed than full time working women.
I am not sure how you interpreted my comment to say that I agreed with you than SAHM are heavier than other married women.
Liz, divorce is a highly traumatic and highly expensive life event. People who never marry are not spared the distress of dealing with an unfaithful partner or of heartbreak, and yet they still fare better emotionally and economically than divorced people. What they ARE spared is divorce.
Also, your second point was false. The US is the most medicated country on earth and did not make the top 10 list of happiest countries. However, Puerto Rico did.
Elspeth, you may not agree with me, but that won’t actually change the fact that SAHMs themselves are reporting that they have higher rates of depression. You seem to have a real reluctance to concede that you and the people you know are probably outliers that strikes me as baffling and to tell you the truth, a little intellectually dishonest. There is no shame in admitting that what does it for you is different than most people. I’ve done it; I don’t claim that all women want to be childless just because I do.
Here is one stidy showing that housewives are more likely to have heart attacks/be overweight/be depressed: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/122824/Heart-attack-timebomb-for-housewives
On the other hand, women working the longest hours were also more likely than average to be overweight.
“Also, your second point was false. The US is the most medicated country on earth and did not make the top 10 list of happiest countries.”
Noope. Our rate is high indeed, but Iceland is higher (thirty percent of women over 65 take anti-depressants, and ten percent of the population overall). Rates in the Scandanavian countries is higher too, and possibly Canada.
OK, I was looking at the overall trend for the last 15 years, not a recent spike linked to the great recession; “The increase has a lot to do with growing awareness about depression, which in turn has made treating the illness with drugs more socially acceptable. Big spikes in a few standout countries, the report says, may also “be linked to the insecurity created by the financial crisis” (pdf p.102). In Spain and Portugal, consumption rose 23% and 20% between 2007 and 2011, respectively. The UK’s rate doubled between 2000 and 2011.”
More interesting is that IN the US, antidepressant use is more prevalent in the most religious states.
Badpainter, what research I have done has been self-taught. Here are a few interesting pieces: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/opinion/why-india-trails-china.html?_r=0, and the paper in question is here: http://econ.tulane.edu/RePEc/pdf/tul1107.pdf if you’re genuinely interested in learning what happens when you test multiple variables in various international contexts.
@Liz #692
hmmm high use of psych meds in feminist countries? shocking, shocking, I tell you. It’s all well and good living in a feminist reality bubble, right up till it pops. Pops when the baby rabies comes on. Pops when the reallity of your career emerges. Pops when you realise that the men don’t pay attention anymore. Pops when society as a whole treats you as invisible. Pops when you realise that your never going to get married (and have kids).
Are the levels higher and trends steeper in women than in men? Might be interesting to compare.
Jen,
Stay on topic. You’re hitting a number of different points that have nothing to do with each other besides political affliation. Which is entirely the point: you support economic empowerment for women not because of its positive economic benefits but because you think it is “moral.”
That makes any economic argument suspect, especially when you are not articulating the downsides of the policy. And half of economics is unintended consequences.
There’s no convincing reason that we require labor force participation of married women to match that of married men JUST to boost GDP. Yes, you can increase GDP by working more hours, but quality of life is not measured by GDP. The European nations have traded away some of their GDP for additional time-off and there isn’t substantial evidence that is a bad trade-off.
Italy was doing just fine before it joined the craptactualr Euro-zone. For a while there it was one of the top 5 economies in the world, despite its languishing South. Northern Italy is essentially richer than any region of France besides Paris.
Liz, the rate of Americans taking antidepressants is also 1 in 10: http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/astounding-increase-in-antidepressant-use-by-americans-201110203624
“Stay on topic. You’re hitting a number of different points that have nothing to do with each other besides political affliation. Which is entirely the point: you support economic empowerment for women not because of its positive economic benefits but because you think it is “moral.””
It’s empowerment – or just plain human rights – for women to be able to choose their own life path. If a woman decides that she wants to gamble her future in economic dependency on a man, that is her prerogative, and I would never begrudge that woman her choice. The same thing goes for stay-at-home fathers whose whole livelihood and emotional wellbeing is dependent on the whims and fortunes of his wife. But if a woman wants to support herself it’s nothing short of unethical to deny her the opportunity to work or pursue her education because of her genitalia. If you disagree with that notion then I’d say you’re worse than a misogynist, you’re a despot.
I want to be clear that just because I don’t understand **why** a woman would become a housewife, I would never convey anything less than utter respect for her ability to make that choice. ADBG attempted to convey that a woman getting a divorce and a job might cause another woman to have to get a job because it may cause labour to become cheaper and the cost of each individual worker to decline making it more necessary for more workers to comprise a household; however, our government economic policy is based on the premise that labour shortages fuel stagnation, not that an abundance of labour fuels depressed wages. This is the premise that justifies immigration quotas. That is one aspect of it; our tax structure is such that corporate taxes are quite high but personal income taxes are lower than they were in the 50’s – by a lot! There are a lot of different components to the shrinking middle class so simplifying the issue and blaming women who want to support themselves is a really cheap shot.
“I would never convey anything less than utter respect for her ability to make that choice”
This is contradicted by things you have written on this very page, rather easy to check, come on, make a little more of an effort.
Nope. I may not understand or value her choice personally but I will defend to the death her right to make it. Nothing contradictory at all about that.
Perhaps in Scandinavia the percentage of women over 60 medicated for depression could be explained by the fact that they’re more likely to be married than American women are.
The marriage rates are only lower for those under 40, and marriage is always linked to depression for women.
Perhaps in Scandinavia the percentage of women over 60 medicated for depression could be explained by the fact that they’re more likely to be married than American women are.
The marriage rates are only lower for those under 40, and marriage is always linked to depression for women.
You are completely ignoring hormonal factors which may be the primary driver here when you talk about over 60. In men, testosterone levels begin to drop substantially after 40 resulting in diminished muscle mass, sex drive, and just general vigor and energy levels. Older men who go on testosterone replacement experience night and day effects compared to their previous state.
Women are highly impacted by their progesterone and estrogen ratios and menopause impacts women greatly. You are attributing to marriage what is likely mostly just aging.
You don’t understand why a woman would become a house-wife. Great. You do not understand the choice of 90+% of married women prior to 1900. Yet, despite the lack of understanding, insist that not only is our current social arrangement superior, but it is unethical for anyone to implement any policies that might somehow limit this New World Order.
FWIW, while more women work in Sweden, more women in the US earn more money and work better professions/managers/etc. This is because the US is not flexible: you are in, or you are out, and if you are in, you are playing to win. When women have a choice, they generally prefer to work a bit and spend time with kids, and do not attempt to get the corner office (because who really wants that?)
You have some talking points. Bravo. You have read some articles and are over-interpreting the results. Bravo again. You lack the ability to appreciate why 1/4 of women are not in the labor force. As in, you admit that you have no ability, at all, to understand them.
What am I missing?
@ Jen
It’s religious people that tend to prefer prescription drugs to illicit drugs.
So “I pity them” and “die of boredom” were meant as praise, or at least neutral. Eh?
[…] light of my last post, How Women’s Delaying Marriage Unleashes Casual-Sex Hypergamy and Causes Average Men to Check Out, this article seemed like a great follow-up to show a real-life example of how a hypergamous woman […]
I may not personally respect or understand the choice but I respect a woman’s right and freedom to make that choice and will defend her ability to do so. I don’t know why you struggle with this concept since it’s your exact attitude towards promiscuity and slut-shaming.
Deti,
I mean this in all seriousness: I wish I would have had friends like you when I was in high school and college.
If you and I ever are in the same place at the same time, drinks are on me. And that is a promise I will not break.
[…] Women Delaying Marriage […]
HanSolo: I have been away from the forum for a while, but I see that you, Deti and others are doing a great job. Someone has to tell the truth in this world of feminist ignorance and megalomaniac bliss.
HanSolo: I have been away from the forum for a while, but I see that you, Deti and others are doing a great job here. Someone has to tell the truth in this world of megalomaniac feminist ignorance and bliss.
Thanks, Augustus. Glad to have you back.
#706 The same faint praise is used by women to dam-n their betas to orbiting.
[…] can do and be what Game teaches a man. Most men are being told to “wait wait wait” until all the women around them have finished doing and seeing everything (and everyone) they want to do and see. Men like you are spending a decade observing this very sexual marketplace […]
[…] From the Disastrous 1920′s article, we again see that it was the more bold and attractive males that gorged on the bounty of booty while the weak and the shy were exiled to a frigid, pussy-less tundra. […]
[…] picky, confusing their sexual value with their relationship value, as I talked about in my post, How Women’s Delaying Marriage Unleashes Casual-Sex Hypergamy and Causes Average Men to Check Out. Once men hit their 30′s and women’s radiant beauty starts it’s gradual (though […]
Han Solo, your comment #26, I am not quite 28 and at the rate I am going, I fully intend and expect to be a multi-millionaire by 35. I have spent most of my early and mid 20s with low to average earnings but I have finally found my niche and I can realistically clear 300k+ this year, and from there it will keep going up. When I am a 35 year old multi-millionaire I shall have zero interest in 35 year old women who are heavily used up and who spent the last 15 years ignoring or rejecting me. They will as the 400 lb beached whales waddling around Walmart; they will not even exist for me.
So that is something that these women do not consider or just refuse to admit. When I have everything together enough that they are finally willing to pay attention to me, I am not interested in them because they have too much baggage, most have lost their figure, some have at least one kid by some random bad boy, and almost all of them have skanked around and I do not like used stuff. I am not going to pay Maserati price for a used Ford. They spent their 20s as the mistresses of doctors or the girlfriends of bad boy bikers, I have not the least bit of interest in some other guy’s left-overs.
So when I reach that point in life, I am only going to be interested in the 18-22 year old range and for marriage I would only consider a virginal woman from that age range. A non-virginal woman from that group would not be given serious consideration as marriage material.
Women do not get that men do not care about their career, men do not care about the articles they get published, men do not care about the high power business contracts they sign, or whatever their professional accomplishments are. When I am 35 I will still be about as handsome as I am now [my father has told me that his female co-workers have varyingly ranked me as “okay,” “handsome,” with some saying “hot” so probably 7ish territory] but I will be far better situated in life in terms of career, investments, and lifestyle. As a man time is on my side, my fertility will not drop to zero the day I hit 40 and my looks will not plummet like a rock, particularly given that I do not use tobacco, alcohol, or drugs, I eat in moderation, and I maintain a reasonably active life. I will not wind a male version of the bloated beached whale at age 40. Time is never on the woman’s side. If a woman spends from age 20 to age 40 becoming a high powered career woman who winds up CFO or CEO of a fortune 500, no man cares about that, it does not mean anything.
All the woman has to do is be cute/fit, have a sweet/pleasant personality, and understand and practice basic loyalty and fidelity. Men do not really ask for much… 1- Keep yourself in shape and look pretty [is this really that difficult? Is it such a burden to avoid becoming overweight or obese? How did centuries of our ancestors avoid being bloated whales?] 2- Do not be a nag and do not be a bitch, do not make me dread the idea of coming home each night… 3- Do not screw around.
A man who is accomplished and on solid financial ground by his mid-late 30s does not want a woman of that age and if a 35 year old man tells you he prefers a 35 year old woman to a 20 year old woman, he is lying because he knows he could not land a 20 year old woman and he wants to score points with the 35 year olds in hopes that he will get between their legs for it.
The way I see it, when I arrive at where I want to be at age 35, which will just be a road-mark along the road to where I want to be at 40, then 45, and 50, my peer aged women who want to get with me at that point, I will have nothing more to tell them than “where were you 15 years ago? Write a letter and mail it back in time 15 years when I might have cared about what you had to say. Depart from me!”
Do you want fresh bread made today, by the baker, just for you, or do you want the week old loaf that is half used up because a handful of passers-by broke pieces off?
I believe women project their concerns onto men. Since a woman is concerned about how accomplished a man is, how many degrees he has, where he earned his degree, how many articles he has published, how many cases he has won, how many employees he has working for him, she believes that men must care about those things in women.
A woman may care that her boyfriend is board certified and is the head of the trauma ward at the hospital, but a man could not care less if a woman has those professional credentials. Her professional accomplishments do not matter.
That said, I am sure most guys are happy for their woman if she is a writer and has had her article accepted for some prestigious journal or has been given an advance to write a book length novel based on a short story she submitted. A man can be happy for her woman and glad that her work has met success, but a man does not measure a woman by her professional accomplishments.
Women began telling themselves that they could “have it all” and live a riotous life of debauchery in their teens and 20s and then finally settle down with some guy in their 30s and that the guy would appreciate and value all of their high powered career accomplishments.
Women just do not get it or they refuse to get it. When some woman in her late 20s or early 30s tells me that family and marriage are what matter most to her in life and that she wants to be a wife and mother more than anything, I cannot help but wonder “if these things are so important why did not begin pursuing them at age 18, 19, or 20, why did you wait until you were 29, 30, or 31?” The answer is obvious, she spent her youth as an empowered self-important skank living a life liberated from morality and obligation and now that her hard lifestyle has caught up to her and her looks are rapidly fading before her time she is desperate to land some guy who will pay her way through the next 10-15 years before she looks like an extra from The Walking Dead.
Any woman who truly wants to be a wife and mother can be married with two children by age 25.
For most women marriage is an afterthought.
Women believe that all men see the world as women do, which is why they believe men rank women based on professional accomplishments. Seldom do you see a 20 year old beach boy with a 70 year old female CEO or a 50 year old 400 lb female CFO, because most men have more dignity and self-respect than that. But there are plenty of twenty year old bleach blonde beach tramps who would love to hang on the arm of some 70 year old male CEO.
Men do not care about female professional accomplishments and such accomplishments might actually weight against the woman. Most men realize that nice people do not rise to the top and do not become the CEO. If a woman is a CEO it raises serious questions as to what sort of person she is, she is probably a ruthless cut-throat and a back-stabber, and she probably did some screwing to advance up the corporate ladder.
I believe women project their concerns onto men. Since a woman is concerned about how accomplished a man is, how many degrees he has, where he earned his degree, how many articles he has published, how many cases he has won, how many employees he has working for him, she believes that men must care about those things in women.
Because many women are very solipsistic, I find that a good general default position is to ALWAYS assume a women is projecting. When a woman describes herself as attractive because she is smart and sassy, that is projecting what she finds attractive. When a woman criticizes certain behaviors or attitudes, she is projecting her own fears knowing what she might do. Almost always, assuming projection gets you to the truth of what is going on.
Women just do not get it or they refuse to get it. When some woman in her late 20s or early 30s tells me that family and marriage are what matter most to her in life and that she wants to be a wife and mother more than anything, I cannot help but wonder “if these things are so important why did not begin pursuing them at age 18, 19, or 20, why did you wait until you were 29, 30, or 31?” The answer is obvious, she spent her youth as an empowered self-important skank living a life liberated from morality and obligation and now that her hard lifestyle has caught up to her and her looks are rapidly fading before her time she is desperate to land some guy who will pay her way through the next 10-15 years before she looks like an extra from The Walking Dead.
Any woman who truly wants to be a wife and mother can be married with two children by age 25.
Word. There is another type though that may have prioritized marriage and family earlier but are waiting for their very own unicorn man/customized Prince. 99.999% of actual men are unacceptable as husbands. I’m finding it somewhat fascinating to read basically women only forums (boot licking manginas don’t qualify as men) because absent men who will engage directly, women will open up a lot more. There is a woman who has always struck me as quite kind, and prioritizing marriage, yet remains single at I’m guessing 30+ despite wanting marriage very badly. Through the course of comments though, it has come to light that she is tremendously picky about men. This being very picky can really work against a woman is she is below average looking physically because her potential pool of men isn’t very large to begin with.
Having some lunch-time tea and then it is back to work, if I get tempted I could go on for hours about how problematic women are, but that would not help me. I am literally swamped with work right now… That is another thing I have noticed, women do not appreciate the value of time and they often make unreasonable demands in regards to a man’s time.
I do not have time to talk about American Idol [although I am still not sure exactly what it is] and whatever Justin Bieber did last week that people are talking about. I do not have time to pick out new curtains or a chair for the foyer, or any of that.
I keep an ongoing list of “ongoing priorities” for any given day or any given week.
Just to give you an idea of what I have going on right now, my list reads-
1- File Motion for Rule 403 Exclusion [Case A]
2- Draft and file Reply to Defendant’s Counter-Claim [Case B]
3- Draft and file Motion to Strike Affirmative Defenses [Case B]
4- Draft and file Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings [Case B]
5- Draft and file Motion for Protective Order on Discovery [Case C]
6- Prepare for meeting with judge and defense counsel [Case A]
7- Prepare for meeting with judge and defense counsel [Case C]
8- Prepare for Deposition [Case C]
9- Brief in opposition to Defendant’s Motion for Judgment on Pleadings [Case B]
10- Brief in support of Plaintiff’s Motion for Judgment on Pleadings [Case B]
I have noticed that poor people tend not to appreciate the value of time, I am [or maybe “was” might be a better term] a gamer, although I have some games that I purchased 12-24 months ago and still have not opened and I have poor friends who tell me how I “absolutely must” buy this game and play it… When am I going to have the time to play a game? If I am not in court it means I am either preparing motions and briefs for filing or preparing to be back in court. When I am not doing that I am trying to stay active, running, bicycling, grappling/MMA, something to keep me active and stay in shape. There are only so many hours in a day and while games are fun nobody is going to pay me hundreds of dollars per hour to play video games. Not only will I not make money playing video games, but it will take away from my opportunity to use my free-time to stay in shape, get into better shape, further my education [read more about the law], or to otherwise benefit myself personally or professionally. If by some chance I have an extra six hours at the end of the week, I am far better off using those six hours to read recent rulings on laws that relate to my ongoing cases, as opposed to playing video games.
Women can just sit around for hours and talk about soap operas and pop culture. I am not interested in either topic and I do not have the luxury of being able to sit around for endless hours each day talking about nothing.
It also occurred to me that I would not to have a relationship with a woman who keeps a schedule similar to mine because I would be competing with a half-dozen other things for her time. On any given day I might be #5 or #6 on her priority list behind a handful of clients, her boss, senior associates, managing partners, etc
Movingonup: “So when I reach that point in life, I am only going to be interested in the 18-22 year old range and for marriage I would only consider a virginal woman from that age range. A non-virginal woman from that group would not be given serious consideration as marriage material.”
Are you avoiding those types now and waiting until you “reach that point in life” (aka multiple millions)?
You’re probably better served finding that before you make that much money, or you will have a woman who is interested in you for your money. And hard times aren’t always foreseeable. Furthermore, people burn out. Sounds as though you’re hungry and eager now, but with that schedule you might burn out over the next ten years. Just sayin’. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of people.
@Morpheus 721(!!!):
“Word. There is another type though that may have prioritized marriage and family earlier but are waiting for their very own unicorn man/customized Prince. 99.999% of actual men are unacceptable as husbands. I’m finding it somewhat fascinating to read basically women only forums (boot licking manginas don’t qualify as men) because absent men who will engage directly, women will open up a lot more. There is a woman who has always struck me as quite kind, and prioritizing marriage, yet remains single at I’m guessing 30+ despite wanting marriage very badly. Through the course of comments though, it has come to light that she is tremendously picky about men. This being very picky can really work against a woman is she is below average looking physically because her potential pool of men isn’t very large to begin with.”
O: Ka-Boom!
By the way, per chance, would this lady in question’s screen name happen to begin with an “S” and rates herself as a de facto Dime piece?
Just curious…
O.
#723 good advice.
Liz- permit me to address your concerns while my afternoon tea brews [then it is back to work].
As I am not interested in American women [I have decided that American women have no long-term potential] I want to wait until I have the money and the time to travel. By travel I don’t just mean a 2 week trip abroad, I mean 6-12 weeks, long enough to be on the ground, to see the sights, to meet up with friends, to make new friends/contacts, to be introduced to young ladies, to see how they operate and behave over a period of many weeks. I believe that a woman [or a man for that matter] can put on an act for a few nights in a row, but over a period of several months the truth will be revealed, or at least hints of the truth.
I believe Romania has some promise, I have enjoyed studying the history of the nation, the culture, the values, and I would like to try to learn some of their language. I mean one of their national heroes is Avram Iancu, a lawyer, their national heroes are lawyers and revolutionaries, while in America we could not care less about the Founding Fathers because studying and caring about them would take away from basketball and soap operas. You cannot make this stuff up, one of Romania’s most important national heroes is a lawyer who led an uprising of peasants in a revolution.
Suffice to say, I really do not want a wife right now because I do not have the time to go overseas for 2-3 months and work a vetting process on various women.
I am not presently in a position where I want to marry but when I am in such a position it will not be to any woman born or raised in the United States, Canada, Britain, or the rest of the Anglophone world.
Besides, on some level all women are interested in money, a woman making $8 dollars per hour stocking shelves at Walmart might see a cop making $60k per year as her “meal ticket” while a woman making $40k per year as a teacher might see a Cisco System Admin making 120k per year as a “meal ticket.” It is all relative.
The only way to be totally sure a woman is not interested in a man’s money would be to marry a woman who has roughly the same wealth or substantially more wealth and I am not interested in doing that. I am not looking to marry somebody who is going to want to compete with me. How many women actually go out of their way to marry a man who is on bad financial footing and will make their life worse? Does any woman wake up in the morning and say, “well that guy I am dating is perfect, but he has too much money, I need to find a poor man.”
At some level all women are interested in money, that might not be their sole concern but it is easily in the top 3 or at least the top 5, when they are mentally drawing up criteria for a potential mate.
What it boils down to is I have options and my options will only increase with time. I am young, healthy, reasonably fit, reasonably handsome, I have moderate fluency in two foreign languages and could likely pick up conversational fluency if I lived in a country where the language was used daily, time is not against me.
Women may take years out of their time to accumulate degrees, professional awards, advancing along the corporate ladder, but none of that adds to their overall attractiveness and the years they spent in pursuit of such things actually results in a loss of attraction as now they are older and have much more emotional baggage from years of short-term flings and one-night stands.
I recently read that the average woman in New Zealand has 29 sexual partners by age 25. I would not even want to share the same with such a woman, let alone take her to my bed, let alone try to make a life with her and have her as my wife. There must be some unofficial unpublished manual in the Western world “how to repulse men and make yourself an unmarriageable wreck by age 30.”
Darn, I am moving so fast I left a few words out- “would not even want to share the same *air* with such a woman.” Left out the word *air*.
And with that, it is back to work.
Well, sounds like you have a pretty good plan.
I’d still underplay the money aspect (when you have it), even with a foreign potential bride. Money does matter to women (as you noted), but a woman who is drawn to the traits that enabled the success rather than the bank account (and ‘stuff’) itself, is going to be the one who is drawn and attracted to actual you (rather than your wallet). That’s more likely to be the basis for creating a stable relationship…and by extension stable family.
Best of luck to you! And take care of yourself. Remember it’s about the journey.
Just curious…
O,
No, I had someone else in mind, but I’ll leave it there…we got flying monkeys here reporting back to the wicked witch.
@Morpheus:
Yea, right? Initiate the divorce, then do nothing but whine and moan about the ex. Deep!
O.
Well I am probably going to be working until 1-2 am, largely thanks to the US Postal Service… The court sent out a letter/journal entry almost a week ago, allowing 7 days for supplemental documents to be attached to a motion to amend a pleading. The letter from the court did not arrive until about 50 minutes ago when the mail was delivered. The letter is clear it states 7 days have been granted, but the letter is time-stamped the 18th although they wrote the 16th on the document itself, and the court is closed and it is too late to make an inquiry as to what sort of typo they may have made, so it has to be treated as the 16th which means it has to be in before close of court tomorrow.
Under the rules for timing you do not count the day that triggers the clock, you start counting the next day [special rules for what happens if the deadline falls on a holiday or a day where the court closes due to emergency, none of which apply, weekends that are before the deadline count, holidays before the deadline count]. So if it was the 16th then counting from the 17th forward it has to be addressed and the documents have to be filed with the court before the court closes on the 23rd [tomorrow]. If it was on the 18th then counting from the 19th forward I would have until close of court on Friday the 25th. This could have easily been delivered on Monday and any typo issues cleared up, but not having that luxury, I have to assume it means the 16th and get it done for tomorrow, in addition to what else I am working on. Having last eaten at lunch, it is now time to pause for dinner and then resume working until the work is complete [which may very well be 1-2 am]. Fortunately it appears that when I am done for the night, all of the fires that need to be put out, will be out, and Wednesday will basically be a breeze, Thursday will not be a breeze, Friday will not be, and I expect to have 12-20 hours of work to do this weekend.
So at the present I am on a brief break/hunt for some sort of food, grilled chicken and/or a vegetable smoothie, and then another cup of tea, and then it is back to work for however long it takes to finish what has to be done by tomorrow and then get back to what I was working on before the mail was delivered.
But in regards to money being important, it would be silly to try to say that money does not matter, just as it would be silly if a man tried to say that a woman’s appearance does not matter. Of course money is important, from a female perspective judging/evaluating a male, and looks are important from a male perspective judging/evaluating a female, but it is not the end-all be-all. A woman who is “pretty” and pleasant to be around, ultimately has more relationship potential than woman who is “drop dead gorgeous” but is an absolute harpie and does not allow her man a minute of peace. I have found that a lot of exceptionally beautiful women tend to be single because most men are too intimidated to speak with them, which explains why every now and then an exceptionally beautiful woman is with some plain average guy who does not have much money, he is just a normal guy and he had the courage to approach her while other guys were intimidated by her being out of their league. On the flip side, a lot of exceptionally beautiful women tend to have a “demand list” [of what they expect in a man] that is miles long, which in short means that they price themselves out of the dating/mating pool because they are holding out for some guy who is young, dashing, charming, rich, adventurous, has a huge amount of time to devote to them, and has a beach boy body. Most people who are rich are not going to be found in the 18-25 year old age bracket and they are not going to a surplus of time to devote to anybody or anything. As for adventure, well I do want to summit McKinley before I am 35, but that is not a major priority right now.
My mother often accused my father of spending too much time at work but she bombarded him with demands to live a certain high lifestyle and it takes work to finance such living.
#731 In the best-designed video games, a player resorts to grinding because he enjoys the mindless activity, the little audio-visual rewards, and the benefits from leveling up. Grinding is awful when it is mandatory, like part of training, and even worse when you *have* to do it frustratingly, in accord with the Red Queen effect.
Life as we know it is like a video game designed to frustrate the maximum number of players.
So last night I finished all of my work by about 10:15 pm [way ahead of what I had figured], I was in bed and sort of asleep by about 11:30 pm, around 1:45 am my cellphone starts to ring, it is an emergency, some documents were just sent by email, so then I am up until about 4:45 am addressing that, then I’m back in bed and sort of asleep by 5:30 am. I was supposed to get up around 8:00 am to be ready for stuff at 10:00 am but being exhausted from having to immediately address those issues that came up at 1:45 am, I was tired and ended up sleeping until around 11:00 am, which was not a particularly big deal as everything that had to be done for Wednesday was done either late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.
I could not see myself being able to make a relationship work with a woman who was keeping a similarly absurd schedule. It is rather absurd, but things are important and have to get done in a timely manner. Sometimes that means staying up all night or being roused from bed in the middle of the night to address something that just came in. Besides, I can scarcely believe that a woman actually wants to live that way. I find it reasonably enjoyable but there may come a day where I am old and tired, as my father [who is more than 50 years old] and practically collapse on the couch after 9 hours of work. That day is not yet, so I am going to maximize what I can get out of these years, while I can get it.
Right now I am in sort of a dilemma, there is nothing that needs to be done in an immediate and timely manner as in by tomorrow or Friday, so it comes down to what I am more interested in and most motivated to do right now, and there are two things I am really interested in and I have to pick between the two.
I presently have 17 things on my “to do” which need to be done by the end of the first week of May. Almost all of them will be easily completed by the end of next week, the only problem might be unexpected occurrences or something coming up between now and then, but I am well on my way to knocking out the entire list.
When considering a woman as wife material, I do not want a woman who has her own career “to do list” with her own unique 17+ items. I would much rather she have no list, or that she make herself part of my career and help my handle my list, as in, we handle it together as a team. I would rather she be working with me to facilitate for our mutual success, as opposed to being off somewhere in her own career doing her own thing as part of some ego move to “one up” me. I do not envy the thought of coming home and announcing, “well their affirmative defenses were stricken, my motion was granted” only to have a wife retort, “well I just saved a woman who had a uterine rupture during delivery and then I oversaw a heart transplant, top that!” I do not need to come home to a game of upping the ante/oneupmanship.
I would rather have a woman who is working with me, and then I could legitimately and honestly say, “you were instrumental in making this happen, I am proud of me, I am proud of you, and I am pleased with what we accomplished on this.”