19 ms·

In the "good old days" dating was simpler, but also much, much worse for the average woman. People dated within their town almost exclusively. The best bachelor

by gizmo 3y ago

In the "good old days" dating was simpler, but also much, much worse for the average woman. People dated within their town almost exclusively. The best bachelors would be gone pretty quickly. That put a ton of pressure on the remaining women to quickly settle for an average guy in order not to be stuck with a terrible partner (an angry drunk or other kind of lowlife). Not marrying wasn't an option, and divorce wasn't an option. They had to choose, and their dating pool was small and constantly shrinking. Many women got stuck in unhappy marriages, but that was life. I agree with you that many guys today struggle with dating because they haven't done the necessary work to be good partners, but the problem isn't that "contemporary life doesn't encourage self-improvement". The "problem", if you even want to call it that, is that women prefer being single over a bad relationship with a crummy guy. For the first time in history, women have the economic independence to walk away from a bad deal, and guys have up their game as a consequence.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
Women don't prefer being single. Women want a relationship - but with a hot tall confident rich guy their friends will be envious of who makes them feel butterflies ("chemistry"). That's the definition of the ideal boyfriend for most younger women. So the hot tall confident rich guys play the field, because they can. Worse, some of the hottest and most confident guys are narcissists - because narcissists and sociopaths are very good at seducing people with love bombing and future faking. Inexperienced women get their hearts broken and decide that all men are jerks - partly because at this stage the kind funny not-so-hot guys don't register as realistic prospects on their dating radar. There are subcultures within this, and there's certainly a niche of women who find clever, funny, and kind men more attractive than rich and tall etc men. But it's relatively small compared to most of the population. At the same time there's a strongly gender-polarised and adversarial (actually hate-filled) culture in the US where wannabe manly men who hate everything woke etc are in a permanent war with feminists who are convinced that all masculinity is toxic. It's not so much that "guys have to up their game" but that the entire culture is emotionally dysfunctional, and dating is stuck in a kind of permanent adolescence where healthy give-and-take relationships aren't modelled at all. Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?
- deleted 3y ago
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- boppo1 3y ago
  >Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal? Oh man this is such a big one. There's so much media out there that depicts total loser guys winding up with incredible women & vice versa. If you're a young man & didn't have dad or older brother guide you through your end of the responsibilities in a relationship, there's almost nowhere to get the correct information, and tons of 'malware' information out there. One might be inclined to point to feminist literature on the subject, but that will just make you a doormat.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- atq2119 3y ago
  > Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal? The first thing that comes to mind is the relationship between Holden and Naomi in The Expanse. (Okay, so it's not a marriage. Does that really matter?) I'm sure there are others, but they are difficult to recall precisely because they just are, without calling too much attention to themselves. So there's a selection bias in what we remember.
  - eru 3y ago
    Bluey's parents, probably?
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    Damn dude my example number two is o Brian and his wife in DS9. Star Trek and parodies are really coming in clutch for good examples of married life.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    Naomi who has a kid she never tells him about and whose ex (who she also fails to mention) is the head of a lunatic fringe terrorist organization? Naomi who was also a part of that and was integral in executing an attack (also without a mention)? Naomi who disappears without a word to go infiltrate that organization in a move she thinks is likely to get her killed? Holden is no peach of a partner either. Don’t play the “Holden does something the hardest way possible because he can’t ask for help” drinking game, you’ll be unconscious in a few hours. Bruh.
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
Those women also had far less competition. The men the next town over they now have access to come with a town full of women who are now able to access the men of the town the woman is in. Each time her dating pool increases, the competition increases too. There's no free lunch, just tyranny of too many choices, endless analysis paralyses and FOMO.
mattigames 3y ago
I don't think is that simple, the happiness levels of women have not increased in recent years according to many studies, its more likely a complex issue and that aspect you mention may be a minor variable; I believe is more likely than us (our brains to be exact) have had not time to adapt to the new times where you have to watch hundreds of people with "better" partners than us just by scrolling through your feeds, and that is quite chaotic but soon enough we will adapt a bit better.
- thfuran 3y ago
  Why do you think that will happen soon? Absent extreme selection pressure, evolution tends to be quite slow.
  - mattigames 3y ago
    Our brain means we adapt faster than any other species so we are not as dependend on evolutionary self-selection as other species, its the major reason we "won" the evolutionary race (e.g. same reason we would be the only species to survive a meteorite collision against earth -even if not for long- without any evolutionary progress to increase our adaptability to space)
zikduruqe 3y ago
> In the "good old days" dating was simpler "I am eighteen years old, have a good set of teeth, and believe in Andy Johnson, the Star-Spangled Banner, and the 4th of July. I have taken up a State lot, cleared up eighteen acres last year, and seeded ten of it down. My buckwheat looks first rate, and the oats and potatoes are bully. I have got nine sheep, a two year old bull, and two heifers, besides a house and a barn. I want to get married. I want to buy bread and butter, hoop skirts, and waterfalls for some person of the female persuasion during life. That’s what’s the matter with me. But I don’t know how to do it." https://dustyoldthing.com/ad-looking-for-wife-in-1865/ https://dustyoldthing.com/ad-looking-for-wife-in-1865/
- PoignardAzur 3y ago
  The "of the female persuasion" part is where I burst out laughing. Apparently cringe is timeless.
  - fakedang 3y ago
    > besides a house and a barn. Still did better than most in the dating pool today.
  - amlib 3y ago
    This has Dwight Schrute energy written all over it
rayiner 3y ago
And yet women’s happiness has declined since the 1970s: https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Stevenson_ParadoxDecliningFemaleHappiness_Dec08.pdf https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel...
- hackinthebochs 3y ago
  It turns out greater choice and rising expectations are an increasing burden on one's psyche. Many of our lives are much better on many objective measures, yet we're more and more unhappy. We're optimizing for the wrong things.
  - kikokikokiko 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - miffel 3y ago
      Or maybe life satisfaction has been going down for every gender because we live in a horrible system that asks too much of the individual? With women in the workplace now they also get to suffer under the stress of capitalism on top of also being expected to shoulder the majority of domestic and childrearing tasks in the household. I don't see this as a "biology is destiny" issue, I see this as a women are still facing pressures from the past and facing pressures of the present.
      - rayiner 3y ago
        By that logic, men should be getting happier if now they don’t need to do either the breadwinning or the child raising? I don’t think biology is deterministic, but it is a factor, for both sexes. (Note that surveys show little to no difference between men and women when it comes to the question of whether they want children and how many.) My suggestion is instead that we have a market failure. People have choices, but not necessarily the ones that will make them happy. The solution to market failure is, of course, regulation of the market, but western individualists don’t want to hear that.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
It’s interesting you mention how much worse it was for women, because their reported life satisfaction keeps declining over the past many decades. https://docs.iza.org/dp4200.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp4200.pdf Some people argue with the ‘no true woman’ fallacy, or don’t trust them to know how to self reflect properly, but clearly something is dying in society.
- NoGravitas 3y ago
  It's probably more a matter that women's lives have improved greatly, but not kept pace with rising hopes or expectations.
- gammarator 3y ago
  If I look at the plot in the linked study I see essentially the same trend for men.
- sarchertech 3y ago
  You need to find some kind of proxy for life satisfaction otherwise you could just be measuring a change in society’s expectations regarding the answer to that question. That is, if there’s less expectation to lie and say everything is fine, you could get declining life satisfaction numbers with no actual decline in satisfaction. Anecdotally people I know from my grandparent’s generation are much less likely to admit to being unhappy.
  - krona 3y ago
    p.7 > ...answers to subjective well-being questions have been shown to be correlated with physical evidence of affect such as smiling, laughing, heart rate measures, sociability, and electrical activity in the brain (Diener, 1984)
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      Unless you check that correlation at the beginning and end of the time period in question, it’s meaningless.
boppo1 3y ago
>guys have up their game as a consequence. This sentiment is all over & is very demoralizing to guys who got an education, have a decent job, go to the gym and still get rejected by women who seem to be their peers. I'm not a fan of incel ideology, but there is something to the 'she'll have her fun with bad boys then settle down with you in her 30s when she's looking for someone with a stable income' sentiment that goes around. 20s dating is hugely depressing for men and it shows with all the stats of young men 'dropping out' of life. I got lucky and met someone sweet a couple years ago, but it was extremely rocky for a long time, and it still is for most of my friends. But men just have to 'step it up'. Six feet, six figures, bare minimum right?
- XorNot 3y ago
  > but there is something to the 'she'll have her fun with bad boys then settle down with you in her 30s No, there isn't. The reality here is there's a bunch of men who have "here's my list of positive traits" and are leaving something out, because everyone is the angel of their own story.
  - boppo1 3y ago
    > The reality here is there's a bunch of men who have "here's my list of positive traits" and are leaving something out, because everyone is the angel of their own story. Sure. Average men have flaws. But so do women. When I was dating around I met a bunch of girls who had a wild drugs & partying phase in college. A couple still had cocaine habits. I smoked some weed in high school then stopped. I’ve had sex with 7 women in my entire life, 5 of which were one or two night stands because we didn’t get on. I’m told I’m judgemental & picky because I’m not attracted to women with twice or more my sexual experience. It’s true that a person’s sexual history does not define their worth as a person, just as height or weight doesn’t. But, what is ignored these days, every person absolutely has a right to their own preferences of attraction. But we insist that young men are terrible people if they don’t accept a history of promiscuity with anything less than enthusiasm.
    - distances 3y ago
d0mine 3y ago
The interesting fact is that most most men are "below average" "bad" partners according to how women perceive men (I don't remember the exact numbers but it is something ridiculous like only 5% of men are worth considerations).
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  This is a joke made on Seinfeld, about men and women, 30 years ago.
  - d0mine 3y ago
    The statistics is from a study. I don't remember the original but here's what google suggests «women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium.» http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/11/17/your-looks-and-online-dating/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/11/17/your-looks-and-... I guess 80% in 2009 is better than 95% that I remembered.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Try tallying the men you think are above bar on such a site on a female profile and see how it adjusts your thinking
    - Detrytus 3y ago
      I guess that's the result of watching television for 4-5 hours a day, where every actor/actress is super humanly handsome. This changes your baseline, and makes guys/girls in the real world ugly by comparison.
      - pcbro141 3y ago
        That does not explain why men and women rate attractiveness so differently. Both men and women watch TV and consume media.
        iteria 3y ago
jeegsy 3y ago
> For the first time in history, women have the economic independence to walk away from a bad deal, and guys have up their game as a consequence. I see variations of this statement all the time. This weird, almost gleeful misandry masquerading as a historical perspective. It needs to stop. It has poisoned all our interactions and it is hurting people.
- iteria 3y ago
  I feel like anyone who feels this way should sit and talk to the older women in their lives and ask themselves would they want that. I've talked to happily married women in their 60s and 70s and I hear nothing but abuse and more abuse. I watched my mom and aunt fall into poverty when they got a divorce and have the marry the first man that seemed decent to keep their kids fr starving. My unmarried aunt is dissatisfied by never having children and never marrying, but she's always have independence and never been hit and never worried she would be homeless. When I consider old spinsters vs old married people well, it makes think I'd rather be a spinster if I can't find a decent guy. Of course there are true happy couple in there but they are so few it really makes me grateful no fault divorce exists. For me, I dated a lot of men. Sometimes we're not a match, but a lot of the time these guys seemed angry I didn't need them. One guy actually became physically abusive when he came over to my house and saw how much nicer I lived than him. We'd been dating for weeks. Another guy, dumped me for paying for a whole date. Another guy, withdrew his interest upon learning my profession and considering I'd definitely make more than him whatever I made. You know the advice female relatives give me? Hide how much I make. That is the state of heterosexual dating. It's where my friend who is a self made millionaire gets asked by her boyfriend when she's going to become a housewife so he can marry her. Women aren't perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for men as a collective. I know some great male partners, but I also know that they're out weighed by so many men I know personally.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    I was with you until this part: > Women aren't perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for men as a collective. I know some great male partners, but I also know that they're out weighed by so many men I know personally. This is a bit like saying: “White people aren’t perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for black people as a collective. I know some great black folks, but I also know that they’re outweighed by so many blacks I know personally.” (I suspect that this is the reason your comment has been downvoted.)
lazide 3y ago
That is a very short term view. It’s essentially ‘Uber driving for relationships’. Those same women will then complain bitterly when they get older or become a single mom, and no one pays attention to them anymore and have to start actually doing the work. Like an Uber driver whose car has been worn to a nub with zero equity in anything, still living paycheck to paycheck, and no new skills. But 10 years down the tubes, and they never had to work for ‘the man’, and saw a lot of cool stuff. The social construct of marriage tries to even this out - that ‘crummy’ man stays around and provides in many ways (social, financial, physical) even after she’s no longer hot and ‘marketable’. And who will help support and protect her while she has kids. The things that make them ‘crummy’ is exactly what is needed to support all that. It’s the social/relationship equivalent of a retirement fund/pension. It’s not exciting up front. Pay in now, (and keep him around) so you’re not eating dogfood in 20 years and have kids who can help you too. Instead of being terribly lonely, mentally ill, and then dying alone and getting eaten by your cats. Which society has also been nuking social safety net wise, much to everyone’s likely long term regret frankly. It’s folks losing the plot society wide. It’s how we end up with a lot of very sad stories later.
- PoignardAzur 3y ago
  > Which society has also been nuking social safety net wise If you mean "marriage with no possible divorce is a social safety net", then I have to protest that "safety" is pretty relative here. It's a system with absolutely no safeguards against the husband (or wife) becoming abusive or violent, especially if your society is patriarchal enough to encourage honor killings.
  - lazide 3y ago
    I meant pensions/retirement. Nothing is perfect of course. Lots of pensions destroyed/raided, and retirements screwed up by greed too. And going crazy in the other direction marriage wise definitely has very real downsides too! I’d be curious to see how the majority of cases went though, overall. We’re discovering the downsides of going too far in our current direction now, and I suspect this winter is going to be a doozy. We currently are getting the worst of both worlds near as I can tell on both fronts (men and women), but it often gets worse before it gets better!
gwervc 3y ago
> The best bachelors would be gone pretty quickly. That put a ton of pressure on the remaining women to quickly settle for an average guy in order not to be stuck with a terrible partner So average women with average men, I don't see the issue. The problem is now a lot of women aims very high, even out of their league, when they don't have much to put on the table.
- userinanother 3y ago
  The average kind of sucks for everyone. Being average single is a lot better than average income family. Raising your average family of 4 on an average 61k salary just seems like hell in any major metro. Better just Netflix and seek other validation.
benopal64 3y ago
I agree with you and the person you responded to. I don't see many men, old or young, doing much to improve their standing as a bachelor, given what is in their control. I've had to do a lot of listening and learning to be a man women would be interested in. Modern male culture in the US typically does NOT do that. At the same time, I think you're right that women have more power over their life decisions more than ever. This is great and I want that for the women of earth.
- userinanother 3y ago
  Not limited to males. Most people have poor capacity for introspection and self improvement
pcbro141 3y ago
> I agree with you that many guys today struggle with dating because they haven't done the necessary work to be good partners, but the problem isn't that "contemporary life doesn't encourage self-improvement". The "problem", if you even want to call it that, is that women prefer being single over a bad relationship with a crummy guy. For the first time in history, women have the economic independence to walk away from a bad deal, and guys have up their game as a consequence. --- What if there actually are plenty of men who have 'stepped their game up' and are perfectly qualified peers to women and would make suitable partners, but the women just have wildly unrealistic expectations? Or the women just aren't that interested in men in general? Could those be factors, rather than men just being so beneath women?
- mikhael28 3y ago
  Nah. Men who think like that are thinking like victims. Shifting the blame elsewhere. No one owes you any love, except your family. If you want to find love or a partner out there, you’ve gotta find it and earn it. It could take a long time, or not happen - but if you aren’t in good shape, don’t have any money saved up and aren’t interesting, don’t be surprised if you end up alone or with someone below your standards.
  - pcbro141 3y ago
    I didn't say men are owed anything. I'm saying perhaps a major part of the reason so many men are single is not necessarily because they are lazy losers who refuse to level up like you suggest, but because they can't meet modern women's unrealistic standards or women just aren't that interested in them even after they've leveled up. Many men can 'level up' to the maximum realistic extent, and still have few women interested in them. That doesn't make these men lazy losers who refuse to put in the work. I'm not suggesting they are owed a woman for leveling up to the maximum realistic extent, I'm just saying it's very unfair of you to call them lazy losers for their effort not bearing fruit.
  - Levitz 3y ago
    I'm baffled that you so easily dismiss the idea in an age in which unrealistic expectations for women is an issue that has been talked about to death.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> In the "good old days" dating was simpler, but also much, much worse for the average woman. People dated within their town almost exclusively. The best bachelors would be gone pretty quickly. Honestly, the ability to tell “the best bachelor” without experience together of the type that used to be frowned on before marriage was always weak; what has changed is that the social and economic compulsion/incentive (on both sides) to marry has become a lot weaker and the volume of exposure much greater, and norms limiting the kind of experience that reveals fundamental incompatibility before marriage have weakened.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  When you're fresh out of high school and the push is to make a rush for the best bachelor or the cream of the crop in your small town, oftentimes you'd end up with the guy "who peaked in high school", because you only had high school to really go off of. The worst part is those guys were considered the best bachelors, and the "peaked in high school" bit wasn't discovered until later/too late.
  - esafak 3y ago
    If you scored the best girl in high school, you have less incentive to keep improving yourself, so the phenomenon is not altogether surprising.
onetimeusename 3y ago
I don't think things have changed much. Your explanation pretty much blames men which has been in vogue. The dating apps just expanded the size of the "town". Women still look for the top tier guys. I don't believe they are choosing to be single but convincing themselves they can do better when in reality they can't. Dating apps feed the illusion of choice that mr. right is easily obtainable.
- Levitz 3y ago
  I mean they can, kind of. Top tier guys will have sex with multiple women, some of which will be "lower" on the rankings than them. This leads women to believe they are in their league, since they are having sex. Then time comes to settle down and those guys don't settle with those girls. Cue "Where have all the good men gone?" and "Why are men so scared to settle?". It's the same problem the average male faces, just in reverse.
gedy 3y ago
> quickly settle for an average guy These are average women too.
FireBeyond 3y ago
I don't disagree with your point, but still: there was plenty of pressure on the men, too, and "many men got stuck in unhappy marriages, but that was life". Also, early pressure to marry "the best bachelor" often meant "the guy on the football team", "the guy that peaked in high school" (you just didn't know it yet). Often they were the ones who became the angry alcoholics.

by gizmo 3y ago

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago

Women don't prefer being single. Women want a relationship - but with a hot tall confident rich guy their friends will be envious of who makes them feel butterflies ("chemistry"). That's the definition of the ideal boyfriend for most younger women. So the hot tall confident rich guys play the field, because they can. Worse, some of the hottest and most confident guys are narcissists - because narcissists and sociopaths are very good at seducing people with love bombing and future faking. Inexperienced women get their hearts broken and decide that all men are jerks - partly because at this stage the kind funny not-so-hot guys don't register as realistic prospects on their dating radar. There are subcultures within this, and there's certainly a niche of women who find clever, funny, and kind men more attractive than rich and tall etc men. But it's relatively small compared to most of the population. At the same time there's a strongly gender-polarised and adversarial (actually hate-filled) culture in the US where wannabe manly men who hate everything woke etc are in a permanent war with feminists who are convinced that all masculinity is toxic. It's not so much that "guys have to up their game" but that the entire culture is emotionally dysfunctional, and dating is stuck in a kind of permanent adolescence where healthy give-and-take relationships aren't modelled at all. Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
boppo1 3y ago
>Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal? Oh man this is such a big one. There's so much media out there that depicts total loser guys winding up with incredible women & vice versa. If you're a young man & didn't have dad or older brother guide you through your end of the responsibilities in a relationship, there's almost nowhere to get the correct information, and tons of 'malware' information out there. One might be inclined to point to feminist literature on the subject, but that will just make you a doormat.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
atq2119 3y ago
> Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal? The first thing that comes to mind is the relationship between Holden and Naomi in The Expanse. (Okay, so it's not a marriage. Does that really matter?) I'm sure there are others, but they are difficult to recall precisely because they just are, without calling too much attention to themselves. So there's a selection bias in what we remember.
- eru 3y ago
  Bluey's parents, probably?
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  Damn dude my example number two is o Brian and his wife in DS9. Star Trek and parodies are really coming in clutch for good examples of married life.
- c0pium 3y ago
  Naomi who has a kid she never tells him about and whose ex (who she also fails to mention) is the head of a lunatic fringe terrorist organization? Naomi who was also a part of that and was integral in executing an attack (also without a mention)? Naomi who disappears without a word to go infiltrate that organization in a move she thinks is likely to get her killed? Holden is no peach of a partner either. Don’t play the “Holden does something the hardest way possible because he can’t ask for help” drinking game, you’ll be unconscious in a few hours. Bruh.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

Those women also had far less competition. The men the next town over they now have access to come with a town full of women who are now able to access the men of the town the woman is in. Each time her dating pool increases, the competition increases too. There's no free lunch, just tyranny of too many choices, endless analysis paralyses and FOMO.

mattigames 3y ago

I don't think is that simple, the happiness levels of women have not increased in recent years according to many studies, its more likely a complex issue and that aspect you mention may be a minor variable; I believe is more likely than us (our brains to be exact) have had not time to adapt to the new times where you have to watch hundreds of people with "better" partners than us just by scrolling through your feeds, and that is quite chaotic but soon enough we will adapt a bit better.

thfuran 3y ago
Why do you think that will happen soon? Absent extreme selection pressure, evolution tends to be quite slow.
- mattigames 3y ago
  Our brain means we adapt faster than any other species so we are not as dependend on evolutionary self-selection as other species, its the major reason we "won" the evolutionary race (e.g. same reason we would be the only species to survive a meteorite collision against earth -even if not for long- without any evolutionary progress to increase our adaptability to space)

zikduruqe 3y ago

> In the "good old days" dating was simpler "I am eighteen years old, have a good set of teeth, and believe in Andy Johnson, the Star-Spangled Banner, and the 4th of July. I have taken up a State lot, cleared up eighteen acres last year, and seeded ten of it down. My buckwheat looks first rate, and the oats and potatoes are bully. I have got nine sheep, a two year old bull, and two heifers, besides a house and a barn. I want to get married. I want to buy bread and butter, hoop skirts, and waterfalls for some person of the female persuasion during life. That’s what’s the matter with me. But I don’t know how to do it." https://dustyoldthing.com/ad-looking-for-wife-in-1865/ https://dustyoldthing.com/ad-looking-for-wife-in-1865/

PoignardAzur 3y ago
The "of the female persuasion" part is where I burst out laughing. Apparently cringe is timeless.
- fakedang 3y ago
  > besides a house and a barn. Still did better than most in the dating pool today.
- amlib 3y ago
  This has Dwight Schrute energy written all over it

rayiner 3y ago

And yet women’s happiness has declined since the 1970s: https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Stevenson_ParadoxDecliningFemaleHappiness_Dec08.pdf https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel...

hackinthebochs 3y ago
It turns out greater choice and rising expectations are an increasing burden on one's psyche. Many of our lives are much better on many objective measures, yet we're more and more unhappy. We're optimizing for the wrong things.
- kikokikokiko 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - miffel 3y ago
    Or maybe life satisfaction has been going down for every gender because we live in a horrible system that asks too much of the individual? With women in the workplace now they also get to suffer under the stress of capitalism on top of also being expected to shoulder the majority of domestic and childrearing tasks in the household. I don't see this as a "biology is destiny" issue, I see this as a women are still facing pressures from the past and facing pressures of the present.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      By that logic, men should be getting happier if now they don’t need to do either the breadwinning or the child raising? I don’t think biology is deterministic, but it is a factor, for both sexes. (Note that surveys show little to no difference between men and women when it comes to the question of whether they want children and how many.) My suggestion is instead that we have a market failure. People have choices, but not necessarily the ones that will make them happy. The solution to market failure is, of course, regulation of the market, but western individualists don’t want to hear that.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

It’s interesting you mention how much worse it was for women, because their reported life satisfaction keeps declining over the past many decades. https://docs.iza.org/dp4200.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp4200.pdf Some people argue with the ‘no true woman’ fallacy, or don’t trust them to know how to self reflect properly, but clearly something is dying in society.

NoGravitas 3y ago
It's probably more a matter that women's lives have improved greatly, but not kept pace with rising hopes or expectations.
gammarator 3y ago
If I look at the plot in the linked study I see essentially the same trend for men.
sarchertech 3y ago
You need to find some kind of proxy for life satisfaction otherwise you could just be measuring a change in society’s expectations regarding the answer to that question. That is, if there’s less expectation to lie and say everything is fine, you could get declining life satisfaction numbers with no actual decline in satisfaction. Anecdotally people I know from my grandparent’s generation are much less likely to admit to being unhappy.
- krona 3y ago
  p.7 > ...answers to subjective well-being questions have been shown to be correlated with physical evidence of affect such as smiling, laughing, heart rate measures, sociability, and electrical activity in the brain (Diener, 1984)
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    Unless you check that correlation at the beginning and end of the time period in question, it’s meaningless.

boppo1 3y ago

>guys have up their game as a consequence. This sentiment is all over & is very demoralizing to guys who got an education, have a decent job, go to the gym and still get rejected by women who seem to be their peers. I'm not a fan of incel ideology, but there is something to the 'she'll have her fun with bad boys then settle down with you in her 30s when she's looking for someone with a stable income' sentiment that goes around. 20s dating is hugely depressing for men and it shows with all the stats of young men 'dropping out' of life. I got lucky and met someone sweet a couple years ago, but it was extremely rocky for a long time, and it still is for most of my friends. But men just have to 'step it up'. Six feet, six figures, bare minimum right?

XorNot 3y ago
> but there is something to the 'she'll have her fun with bad boys then settle down with you in her 30s No, there isn't. The reality here is there's a bunch of men who have "here's my list of positive traits" and are leaving something out, because everyone is the angel of their own story.
- boppo1 3y ago
  > The reality here is there's a bunch of men who have "here's my list of positive traits" and are leaving something out, because everyone is the angel of their own story. Sure. Average men have flaws. But so do women. When I was dating around I met a bunch of girls who had a wild drugs & partying phase in college. A couple still had cocaine habits. I smoked some weed in high school then stopped. I’ve had sex with 7 women in my entire life, 5 of which were one or two night stands because we didn’t get on. I’m told I’m judgemental & picky because I’m not attracted to women with twice or more my sexual experience. It’s true that a person’s sexual history does not define their worth as a person, just as height or weight doesn’t. But, what is ignored these days, every person absolutely has a right to their own preferences of attraction. But we insist that young men are terrible people if they don’t accept a history of promiscuity with anything less than enthusiasm.
  - distances 3y ago

d0mine 3y ago

The interesting fact is that most most men are "below average" "bad" partners according to how women perceive men (I don't remember the exact numbers but it is something ridiculous like only 5% of men are worth considerations).

lotsofpulp 3y ago
This is a joke made on Seinfeld, about men and women, 30 years ago.
- d0mine 3y ago
  The statistics is from a study. I don't remember the original but here's what google suggests «women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium.» http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/11/17/your-looks-and-online-dating/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/11/17/your-looks-and-... I guess 80% in 2009 is better than 95% that I remembered.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Try tallying the men you think are above bar on such a site on a female profile and see how it adjusts your thinking
  - Detrytus 3y ago
    I guess that's the result of watching television for 4-5 hours a day, where every actor/actress is super humanly handsome. This changes your baseline, and makes guys/girls in the real world ugly by comparison.
    - pcbro141 3y ago
      That does not explain why men and women rate attractiveness so differently. Both men and women watch TV and consume media.
      - iteria 3y ago

jeegsy 3y ago

> For the first time in history, women have the economic independence to walk away from a bad deal, and guys have up their game as a consequence. I see variations of this statement all the time. This weird, almost gleeful misandry masquerading as a historical perspective. It needs to stop. It has poisoned all our interactions and it is hurting people.

iteria 3y ago
I feel like anyone who feels this way should sit and talk to the older women in their lives and ask themselves would they want that. I've talked to happily married women in their 60s and 70s and I hear nothing but abuse and more abuse. I watched my mom and aunt fall into poverty when they got a divorce and have the marry the first man that seemed decent to keep their kids fr starving. My unmarried aunt is dissatisfied by never having children and never marrying, but she's always have independence and never been hit and never worried she would be homeless. When I consider old spinsters vs old married people well, it makes think I'd rather be a spinster if I can't find a decent guy. Of course there are true happy couple in there but they are so few it really makes me grateful no fault divorce exists. For me, I dated a lot of men. Sometimes we're not a match, but a lot of the time these guys seemed angry I didn't need them. One guy actually became physically abusive when he came over to my house and saw how much nicer I lived than him. We'd been dating for weeks. Another guy, dumped me for paying for a whole date. Another guy, withdrew his interest upon learning my profession and considering I'd definitely make more than him whatever I made. You know the advice female relatives give me? Hide how much I make. That is the state of heterosexual dating. It's where my friend who is a self made millionaire gets asked by her boyfriend when she's going to become a housewife so he can marry her. Women aren't perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for men as a collective. I know some great male partners, but I also know that they're out weighed by so many men I know personally.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  I was with you until this part: > Women aren't perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for men as a collective. I know some great male partners, but I also know that they're out weighed by so many men I know personally. This is a bit like saying: “White people aren’t perfect, but there's definitely got to be some kind of change for black people as a collective. I know some great black folks, but I also know that they’re outweighed by so many blacks I know personally.” (I suspect that this is the reason your comment has been downvoted.)

lazide 3y ago

That is a very short term view. It’s essentially ‘Uber driving for relationships’. Those same women will then complain bitterly when they get older or become a single mom, and no one pays attention to them anymore and have to start actually doing the work. Like an Uber driver whose car has been worn to a nub with zero equity in anything, still living paycheck to paycheck, and no new skills. But 10 years down the tubes, and they never had to work for ‘the man’, and saw a lot of cool stuff. The social construct of marriage tries to even this out - that ‘crummy’ man stays around and provides in many ways (social, financial, physical) even after she’s no longer hot and ‘marketable’. And who will help support and protect her while she has kids. The things that make them ‘crummy’ is exactly what is needed to support all that. It’s the social/relationship equivalent of a retirement fund/pension. It’s not exciting up front. Pay in now, (and keep him around) so you’re not eating dogfood in 20 years and have kids who can help you too. Instead of being terribly lonely, mentally ill, and then dying alone and getting eaten by your cats. Which society has also been nuking social safety net wise, much to everyone’s likely long term regret frankly. It’s folks losing the plot society wide. It’s how we end up with a lot of very sad stories later.

PoignardAzur 3y ago
> Which society has also been nuking social safety net wise If you mean "marriage with no possible divorce is a social safety net", then I have to protest that "safety" is pretty relative here. It's a system with absolutely no safeguards against the husband (or wife) becoming abusive or violent, especially if your society is patriarchal enough to encourage honor killings.
- lazide 3y ago
  I meant pensions/retirement. Nothing is perfect of course. Lots of pensions destroyed/raided, and retirements screwed up by greed too. And going crazy in the other direction marriage wise definitely has very real downsides too! I’d be curious to see how the majority of cases went though, overall. We’re discovering the downsides of going too far in our current direction now, and I suspect this winter is going to be a doozy. We currently are getting the worst of both worlds near as I can tell on both fronts (men and women), but it often gets worse before it gets better!

gwervc 3y ago

> The best bachelors would be gone pretty quickly. That put a ton of pressure on the remaining women to quickly settle for an average guy in order not to be stuck with a terrible partner So average women with average men, I don't see the issue. The problem is now a lot of women aims very high, even out of their league, when they don't have much to put on the table.

userinanother 3y ago
The average kind of sucks for everyone. Being average single is a lot better than average income family. Raising your average family of 4 on an average 61k salary just seems like hell in any major metro. Better just Netflix and seek other validation.

benopal64 3y ago

I agree with you and the person you responded to. I don't see many men, old or young, doing much to improve their standing as a bachelor, given what is in their control. I've had to do a lot of listening and learning to be a man women would be interested in. Modern male culture in the US typically does NOT do that. At the same time, I think you're right that women have more power over their life decisions more than ever. This is great and I want that for the women of earth.

userinanother 3y ago
Not limited to males. Most people have poor capacity for introspection and self improvement

pcbro141 3y ago

> I agree with you that many guys today struggle with dating because they haven't done the necessary work to be good partners, but the problem isn't that "contemporary life doesn't encourage self-improvement". The "problem", if you even want to call it that, is that women prefer being single over a bad relationship with a crummy guy. For the first time in history, women have the economic independence to walk away from a bad deal, and guys have up their game as a consequence. --- What if there actually are plenty of men who have 'stepped their game up' and are perfectly qualified peers to women and would make suitable partners, but the women just have wildly unrealistic expectations? Or the women just aren't that interested in men in general? Could those be factors, rather than men just being so beneath women?

mikhael28 3y ago
Nah. Men who think like that are thinking like victims. Shifting the blame elsewhere. No one owes you any love, except your family. If you want to find love or a partner out there, you’ve gotta find it and earn it. It could take a long time, or not happen - but if you aren’t in good shape, don’t have any money saved up and aren’t interesting, don’t be surprised if you end up alone or with someone below your standards.
- pcbro141 3y ago
  I didn't say men are owed anything. I'm saying perhaps a major part of the reason so many men are single is not necessarily because they are lazy losers who refuse to level up like you suggest, but because they can't meet modern women's unrealistic standards or women just aren't that interested in them even after they've leveled up. Many men can 'level up' to the maximum realistic extent, and still have few women interested in them. That doesn't make these men lazy losers who refuse to put in the work. I'm not suggesting they are owed a woman for leveling up to the maximum realistic extent, I'm just saying it's very unfair of you to call them lazy losers for their effort not bearing fruit.
- Levitz 3y ago
  I'm baffled that you so easily dismiss the idea in an age in which unrealistic expectations for women is an issue that has been talked about to death.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> In the "good old days" dating was simpler, but also much, much worse for the average woman. People dated within their town almost exclusively. The best bachelors would be gone pretty quickly. Honestly, the ability to tell “the best bachelor” without experience together of the type that used to be frowned on before marriage was always weak; what has changed is that the social and economic compulsion/incentive (on both sides) to marry has become a lot weaker and the volume of exposure much greater, and norms limiting the kind of experience that reveals fundamental incompatibility before marriage have weakened.

FireBeyond 3y ago
When you're fresh out of high school and the push is to make a rush for the best bachelor or the cream of the crop in your small town, oftentimes you'd end up with the guy "who peaked in high school", because you only had high school to really go off of. The worst part is those guys were considered the best bachelors, and the "peaked in high school" bit wasn't discovered until later/too late.
- esafak 3y ago
  If you scored the best girl in high school, you have less incentive to keep improving yourself, so the phenomenon is not altogether surprising.

onetimeusename 3y ago

I don't think things have changed much. Your explanation pretty much blames men which has been in vogue. The dating apps just expanded the size of the "town". Women still look for the top tier guys. I don't believe they are choosing to be single but convincing themselves they can do better when in reality they can't. Dating apps feed the illusion of choice that mr. right is easily obtainable.

Levitz 3y ago
I mean they can, kind of. Top tier guys will have sex with multiple women, some of which will be "lower" on the rankings than them. This leads women to believe they are in their league, since they are having sex. Then time comes to settle down and those guys don't settle with those girls. Cue "Where have all the good men gone?" and "Why are men so scared to settle?". It's the same problem the average male faces, just in reverse.

gedy 3y ago

> quickly settle for an average guy These are average women too.

FireBeyond 3y ago

I don't disagree with your point, but still: there was plenty of pressure on the men, too, and "many men got stuck in unhappy marriages, but that was life". Also, early pressure to marry "the best bachelor" often meant "the guy on the football team", "the guy that peaked in high school" (you just didn't know it yet). Often they were the ones who became the angry alcoholics.