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Yeah, great post. If you want a hot, relatively chaste, young, smart right-leaning woman, that’s not impossible, but you better be the equivalent of that as a man, namely a successful, attractive, charming, relatively young guy who probably has similar values, which in the case of chastity is likely some kind of religious conservatism. Young Mormon men seem to have no issue marrying chaste(ish) pretty blondes who will vote for Romney and deliver 3-4 children, because that’s their milieu. Too often some chubby suburban secular engineer whose primary hobbies are video games and online political discussion thinks he deserves the same.
Hot young people are in no short supply, and some substantial subsection of that group (assuming nothing truly weird or ambitious) likely meets anyone’s individual extra standards. But you have to make sure you’re part of that group, and you’re where the young people are (NYC, SF, LA, etc) and that you have things to offer that they want, too.
A 35 year old average looking guy of average means probably isn’t going to marry a 23 year old conservative trad virgin. If that’s the blackpill @faceh was talking about then, sure, it’s real. But at that point the unlikelihood of winning the lottery is a blackpill, and so is a peasant girl realizing she’s unlikely to marry the prince. If you’re in your thirties as a man you have to accept you missed the first wave of pairings (and arguably the second) and likely (unless extremely hot or successful) have to make do with women for whom the same is true. That’s no great injustice.
The fact that you think these are equivalent requirements shows how ridiculously lopsided the sexual marketplace is against men. All a woman needs to do is be young and chaste, which is something every girl was at some point and which practically guarantees hotness (to men) by itself, and vote for a party that half the country supports. Meanwhile, a man who has spent decades studying and working to become an engineer is told "whoops, sorry, that's not enough, you also need to have interesting (to women) hobbies, be physically fit, and have a handsome face; I'm sure you will find time and energy to do all while you are working at a ridiculously demanding intellectual job, and also you better get all of that done way before you turn 35 because otherwise the idea of you marrying a 23 year old is just creepy!"
In other words, every aspect of a man's life, from his career to his hobbies to his body, must be optimized for attracting women, and it is no one's fault but his own if he fails.
"Women don't care about your struggles, they wait at the finish line and fuck the winners." -- Richard Cooper, The Unplugged Alpha
There was a time when this would have been ordinary. When fathers would have been jockeying for the chance to marry their daughters off to a man of established means instead of standing by impotently as they spend their fertile years getting pumped and dumped by the prince in the futile hope that he will commit. God willing, that time will come again, when the insanity of feminism and the sexual revolution has been consigned to the trash can of history.
But that just isn’t true. Tons of normal men have girlfriends of the same class, social status and hotness. The average 23 year old woman in a relationship is dating a man her age or perhaps one or two years older. He’s unlikely to be particularly rich or successful; he is probably about as hot as she is. What is unbalanced about that?
Most young women aren’t interested in dating a 35 year old guy at 23. They’re interested in dating a 23-25 year old guy at 23, who likely doesn’t have a great deal of money, and who is probably pretty similar to them on all the usual axes. If you missed the boat because you were a loser at 23 that’s sad, but no moreso than a woman who missed the boat and might now deal with infertility or the greater difficulty of finding a good husband in her thirties. That’s life.
I remain entirely unconvinced that it is hugely difficult for an average young man to find a girlfriend that is looks matched (which in America usually means fat) and of approximately the same social status (we can include relative chastity here) and class. I think the obesity crisis has made most people ugly, such that fat people aren’t attracted to each other, and that many people think they deserve more than they can get.
At 29, most women I know married or are soon to marry the boyfriend they had in their early/mid 20s. The minor improvement in income/wealth from marrying an ugly older dude with means just isn’t worth it for most young women.
What sort of evidence would you find 'convincing?'
I don't think @2rafa will find any evidence convincing. I say this because tI never got a response once from her when I push back on her repeatedly and tirelessly asserting that attracting a woman as a man is, easy (or just not hard).
I'll reiterate my response again anyways.
Just because it's done doesn't mean it's not hard. There are countless hard things that get done by almost all people universally. Raising kids, sending kids out of the home, burying your parents, all of it. All experiences almost everyone has, and all tremendously hard.
Much in the same way, males have a biological imperative, and they do what needs to be done to attract women. Asserting that its easy in the same way its easy for a woman to attract a man is glib and farcical. If every other man who has to experience and live it says its hard, I think that's more than enough evidence than theorizing.
And I push back on this only because one ought to have a model of other human experiences to speak about them. If I can understand that women have it hard too, but in a different way, in that they have a hard time attracting a mate that they find attractive, it shouldn't be too hard to understand that becoming the mate that they want also takes work.
Almost in all mammals males do the selling, the female does the buying. If you don't understand this, you have no business taking part in such conversations.
And I can see this coming from a mile away.
"Proximity is all that matters, most men are partnered with people from school and work". Alright, do you think it all happened serendipitously? Or the man didn't do any planning or asking out or navigating the social minefield and making any moves? Are any of these particularly hard? No. Is it harder than just sitting there an existing? Yes.
Yeah.
I'm going to revert directly to that question when I encounter them in the future.
People who INSIST that your arguments aren't convincing to them because they are so certain of their position should be able to articulate what kind of evidence might nudge them to change their mind a little. If they have an absurdly high standard that's fine, but they can't very well complain if others hold them to the same standard.
If they won't, that to me is proof of bad faith. They are taking the other side of the argument then, ultimately failing to support their side, and dismissing every form of evidence, data, anecdote, or even thought experiment without explaining why they disbelieve it.
Not particularly enjoyable to encounter repeatedly.
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So you yourself admit it’s not “particularly” hard and something that the vast majority of men figure out, just like various other things?
By the way, I have never denied and would never deny that being a man involves a more assertive role, requires more gumption, more risk taking, than being a woman in the pursuit of a heterosexual relationship. That is obvious and the product of biology. It is also different, however, to the specific claim that being an average guy sucks when it comes to getting a date or girlfriend or wife (etc).
Okay here's my analogy.
Finding a girlfriend is equivalently difficult as finding a (well paying) job.
The act of sealing the deal is easy. Just go do the interview, sign some papers and you are done. But the leadup to the job is hard. Becoming someone they want to hire, and getting your CV to the top of the stack is really hard. It's the leadup to the easy part.
Same with finding a mate. Becoming the man a woman wants, and getting yourself to the front of the line is hard. Crossing the line is easy.
There are 8 billion people on the planet and counting, every single one of your ancestors found a mate. It may be "hard" however you chose to define it, but it is one of the most common and least exceptional things that humans do. Proximity is a big part of finding a mate, people tend to date and marry those around them (how could it be otherwise?), put yourself in a situation with lots of available partners and I'm sure you'll find one, unless you're ugly as sin, absolutely insufferable and poor all at once.
It helps if you're funny and like to party! I tend to see a lot of joyless posts when people talk about relationships like math problems on here, where is the FUN?! If you don't have any zest for life or don't know how to enjoy yourself and have fun with others, then yes, it is going to be hard for someone to appreciate what you bring to the table.
Optimizers suck the fun out of every game in the world.
2 females reproducing to 1 man is the historical minimum.
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Sure, again I agree that if you want a woman who is very beautiful and high status and has her pick of men you probably need to work to stand out in some way (at least unless you’re also extraordinarily handsome, and perhaps even then). I’m less convinced that attracting a woman similar to you is as difficult, although I concede that Dubai is probably a very weird place to date and men are very much overrepresented among expats there.
Most women I know make similar amounts (some more, some less) to their boyfriends, have similar bodies (ie the fit gymgoing ones are with fit men, the fat ones with more overweight men), are similarly facially attractive, come from similar backgrounds. If a regular man had to be very successful and fit to attract an average partner, then one would expect to see a widespread phenomenon of handsome and successful men with average-to-ugly women of few means, and that simply isn’t something I’ve seen at all. One occasionally finds a woman with a more generally attractive partner, but it isn’t the norm.
Doesn't matter all that much because:
It's still nightmare difficult mode compared to other parts of the world for other reasons. The only analogies I have in hand are:
But I don't really need to discuss my personal details (I'm seeing a girl so this topic isn't very salient to me ATM), I'm speaking more in the abstract, for the modal genz male.
The widespread phenomenon of male sexlessness is a proxy for that.
If you don't live in an urban core, or work in tech, and only have to use the dating apps (which is a more and more common mode of finding partners), getting proximity in and of itself requires a lot of time and money and effort ! Just like getting a well paying job.
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What evidence might convince you that men are struggling to find available and eligible women, and especially that they're struggling more than usual?
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Great post (as always--you're a great contributor, which I think you know, but which bears repeating).
To further elaborate on this point--young Mormon men also seem to have no issue marrying a reasonable match. Some years ago a Mormon colleague invited me to his son's wedding reception. The bride was obese; the groom, a NEET. The groom's father said "she's a nice girl. I wouldn't say she's a great catch but let's be honest, neither is he." But he had done a Mormon mission trip and she had the right social attitudes. Now they've been married maybe 15 years, no kids (fertility issues). Neither ever completed college, they both do gig work to scrape by with the help of their parents (they're in their 40s now!). They have dreams and goals they're unlikely to ever achieve, but they have a common social milieu, and they're clearly better off supporting one another than they would be as atomized incels.
It's not a life I'd want, but I have to remind myself--it's the kind of life most people get. Most people don't even get a bachelor's degree. Most people aren't particularly attractive. If we reserve the "good life" for "high value" people, things are going to get real bleak, real quick. But without the social support structures encouraging men and women to accept a good match, rather than always "marrying up," that's where we're headed.
This is exactly it. It doesn't matter if you're talking about marriage and family, career, or just general life circumstances, when you (I.e. mainstream culture) keeps pushing "shoot for the moon" the result is a detonation on the launch pad. This is meme-stocks, Botox, Eat, Pray, Love (both the book and the insufferable wall art), self-taught "AI experts", SoundCloud rappers, 38 year old club DJs, and dudes with their Instagram handle on their car.
Being average is OK needs to be the message for literally half (or more) of society. Know who you are, know that happiness comes from self-knowledge and adherence to whatever your chosen moral / virtue code is, not unbridled personal achievement (however noble that achievement may be). The America of Bruce Springsteen and "Jack and Diane" may have never actually existed, but it's still worth playing the songs.
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