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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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But you raise an interesting alternative hypothesis, which is that maybe women are the ones selecting "intellectually superior" men to date, and that's why they perceive all the men they date as "needing to feel intellectually superior," because they actually are.

This seems to be another version of a fairly common trope about the dating market, which is that most women tend to date men that most other women tend to date, and those men tend to have qualities that most women find attractive, which are qualities that also either tend to be or correlate with qualities that they say out loud that men shouldn't take on. The "men don't want to get married" cliche largely seems to stem from this, from my view; where I look, there's no shortage of single men who are eager to settle down and get married, but there's a dearth of women who would even give them a chance on a date. On the other hand, the men that are getting dates from women tend to be men who, whether intrinsically or due to the female attention they've gotten, are pushed towards deciding that playing the field would be more beneficial to their lives than settling down.

It's even simpler than that (and applies to both men and women). Dating preferences are heavily correlated. If you find a single person who matches all the desirable dating preferences, they likely have other factors that make them unsuitable for a long-term relationship; otherwise, they'd have landed and stayed in one. The old saw "all the good ones are taken" is true.

This is why widows/widowers tend to be really good potential partners, despite the baggage of their partner's death. They became single through no choice of their own, but still have all the traits that make them a good partner.