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Notes -
I’m going to echo what I posted on the fertility thread- lots of women are just fine, or at least not missing anything in an acute way, by not having a romantic relationship. In the past social pressures and general expectations and in a lot of cases actual institutions would push them into relationships anyways, but those are gone. Yes, in the long run women are happier married to Mr good enough. But that’s not apparent to single women.
And AFAICT the actual standards women have are mostly pretty reasonable even if they’re phrased badly- six feet and six figures really just means ‘makes enough to support us and taller than me’. I think, yes, women are saying that because they miss having someone else vet for them, but crucially, that vetting in the past was not an after the fact thing- as recently as the fifties it was seen as important to make sure young women were in contact with high-quality men. This is because women are perfectly fine for a while living with their parents, part time job/in school, social life with no men in it. Until they’re not.
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