Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I know what you're getting at, and for what it's worth Skookum did explicitly argue that he thinks there is a 5% chance that women in relationships with wife-beaters are happier than women in relationships with caring but socially awkward autists.
I think thinking of this in terms of revealed preferences is a kind of misleading framing. I don't think it's so much that Alice is given the choice between Bob (charming, handsome but prone to fits of violence) and Charles (not much to look at, socially awkward, but very decent) and chooses Bob, knowing full well that Bob will eventually go on to abuse her (and Charles never would) but deciding that it's worth it.
I think it's more like Alice meets Bob and is very taken by his charm and good looks, whereas at no point does Charles ever feature in her radar (because he never worked up the nerve to ask her out, or he did but was flatly turned down). Throughout their courtship, Alice never suspects that Bob will eventually go on to beat her up, even if there are obvious red flags which she wilfully ignores, rationalises away ("he only gets violent with men, he'd never lay a hand on a woman") or even romanticises ("if he's this jealous, it must mean he really loves me"). It's only months or years later when he actually starts beating her up that she realises the magnitude of her error, and notices how anxious, scared and out-and-out miserable she feels all the time.
Meanwhile Alice's friend Diane has settled down with Charles - and sure, maybe Diane never got quite as wet with Charles as Alice got with Bob, and maybe Diane wishes Charles would say more than two words at dinner parties - but they nonetheless have a healthy caring relationship that never devolves into screaming matches or broken glass.
Okay, look, I'm not saying you're posting in the wrong place; however, if you weren't a staff writer on "The Good Wife," that's Julianna Margolis's loss.
But how do you get from a compelling (even Emmy-winning) story that describes an extremely plausible series of events to being able to present evidence that what you describe is more or less confidence to what OP described, or any other type of interpersonal relationship?
Not sure what you mean, sorry.
Don't apologize--I was trying to be clever, which is always a hit-or-miss endeavor.
Anyway, my question is: how do you count what percentage of women in, say, America have the sort of relationship you describe? How does OP? Because both of you describe things that do happen, but how often they happen is very, very difficult to count. The only place I can even think to look is the GSS, and I can't find any questions on there that really seem germane.
Part of me thinks Skookum's hypothesis (which he freely admits he only has 5% confidence in it being true) should simply be disregarded out of hand: "what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". This discussion has been going on for weeks and no one has yet presented any real evidence for the claim that women are more miserable in relationships with men who are caring but unattractive and socially awkward than women in relationships with men who are physically abusive. The best someone could come up with a study which purported to demonstrate that the introduction of no-fault divorce in the US precipitated a massive drop in the female suicide rate, but that seems tangentially related at best - it could just as easily be explained by women no longer being forced to stay wedded to men who beat them, drink too much, gamble all the time, rape their children etc.
When I see some very persuasive evidence that women in relationships with socially awkward men are more miserable than women in relationships with men who beat them, then and only then will I entertain the possibility that the hypothesis is true. Until then I am taking it about as seriously as astrology or crystal healing.
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I do agree that the narratives you wrote are believable and realistic ones, certainly compared to the one where Alice is just given a choice between Bob and Charles, which is more akin to a romantic comedy or dating show than an actual real experience of a typical woman. And yet, I believe the revealed preference matters a lot here, because women, like all people, have a choice in terms of what kind of person to pursue for a long term relationship. Alice's choice to value Bob's charm and good looks and not check for signs of what kind of happiness or misery a long-term relationship would provide her - or perhaps to check but to discount - tells us something about how much she values happiness and (lack of) misery in a long-term relationship. Of course, people can't be expected to think in reasonable long-term horizons in the realm of romance, especially if heightened hormones are involved, but then I'd characterize that lack of foresight as part of their preference.
Ironically, I would wager that after Alice & wife-beating Bob have been married for a while, and if God came down and gave Alice the choice to rewind time and live what life would have been with Charles (let's say He also shows her what Charles was like to Diane, i.e. decent), in most cases, she would choose to switch. I don't think this really tells us much about her preference or what she would rather have, though, since these things don't exist only in thought experiments. At best, I think it would tell us that Alice would prefer to (or wishes to or sees herself as) be the type of person who prefers Charles, not that she is someone who prefers Charles.
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