I think a lot of this is self-inflicted, though. Professional women often still carry with them some of this 1960's mentality and refuse to "date down." As the demographics change and women being overrepresented among the college-educated, this puts them at the wrong end of a supply/demand imbalance.

On the other hand, some of the voluntary decisions are due to unfair social pressures. I think women wouldn't wait so long to get married if doing so didn't start a timer on their downshifting their career. My wife and I got married at 26/27 and had a baby shortly thereafter. My wife is a corporate lawyer and gets a lot of flak for working long hours, especially from family. Nobody ever gives me flak for working long hours. Painting in broad brush strokes, men tend to find that when they get married, society reinforces their career ambitions. Women tend to find that when they get married, society chips away at their career ambitions. Other women, particularly other moms, are the worst about it.

Being college educated doesn't mean much these days in america. read the statistics about college grads and how little they know. Of course there are exceptions, but most US college grads are about as well educated as typical Finnish high school grad.

Another way to put it - will a man be seen as (a) more or (b) less desirable to most women if he makes the following statement: “I’d like to marry a successful career woman, and when we have kids, I’d like to stay home and be the primary caretaker for the kids”?

What I'm really trying to get at is that no one should be staying home full time while the other is at work all day.

Careers are a very personal thing. Having a child shouldn't be thought of as something you do for yourself. You are doing it for the child and the world. It is important to raise them right, but not at the cost of your future. With two parents, it shouldn't be that difficult to split the time across both.

That may sound wrong, but in reality, it takes a village to raise a child. Why should one person sacrifice the rest of their life?

It may quite well take a village to raise a child, but in practice for most people there won't ba a village to do so; One person shouldn't have to sacrifice the rest of their life, but more likely than not one you will have to do that; and while I can agree that 'no one should be staying home full time while the other is at work all day' and Scandinavian countries have very nice results with such policies for both parents, in USA most people will be forced to choose between either that or poverty.

So, to answer the question, you're stating "clearly the answer should be b" ... but is the answer b in reality?

I didn't say that it should be B, I'm saying that unfortunately it is B. I can guarantee few women in the US want to support a man. However, I think the inverse is making more ground. Meaning I think less men are interested in highly dependent women.

The leveling of the double standard is happening not by women accepting dependent men, but by men expecting an independent woman.

I think about this a lot, but have not formed any convincing theoryas to why this is.

Try to sleep with maybe, but marry? I doubt it.

edit: This wasn't clear in my post, but I was speaking for myself. To each his own of course. :)

That said, this was a really bad algorithm. My divorce sucked.

Since then, I've selected on a maxmin of a quirky combination of intelligence plus subjective cuteness combined with financial stability. So far, so good. I had to rule out several otherwise promising contenders on the way using the second criterion though.

I would not consider marrying the receptionist, no matter how hot, unless I noticed that she was reading O'Reilly books and/or managing her multiple rental properties between visitors to the front desk. You do not want to marry a boat anchor and make beautiful concrete galoshes with her.

Finally, while looks are a mediocre measure of long-term compatibility when one is young, as one approaches and passes 40, one's looks become less a matter of genetics and more a matter of the consequences of conscious choices along the way and so I got pickier on that axis as my pool of potential partners aged.

Women who are selecting for financial stability early on are way ahead of you if you truly consider a financially competent woman emasculating. Get over it.

Wow. What if you enjoy each others company immensely?

So yes, if I found out the receptionist was falling ever deeper into debt and/or wasn't doing something on her own to rise above the seemingly unstoppable ongoing wealth redistribution to the top 5%, I would not marry her. OTOH if I found out she was a diamond in the rough like I alluded to above, I wouldn't let her out of my sight.

Fights over money are marriage-killers. And to quote Faye Valentine: "Beautiful skin can only be maintained by tireless efforts which are ultimately totally futile." So what's in it for me in this case other than transient enjoyment followed by a lifetime of sorrow?

And get divorced a few years later once both of you realize that "enjoying each others company immensely" is not sufficient to have a successful marriage.

You may as well ask why he would not marry somebody he is not physically attracted to.

In modern life and in the US, we're much less aware of social class at all (or actively dislike the concept), and it's gotten (somewhat) decoupled from economic class. Someone who has become a lawyer or otherwise economically successful could be from any class and it's not unlikely they might choose to marry someone from a similar social class (with similar background) rather than someone with similar economic class.

Many do indirectly. They get together with someone for that, then something else develops (or nothing else develops but the only way to keep the fucks and giggles is to keep her happy by marrying her!).

No all marriages are built on both parties pleasing/challenging each other intellectually.

Which is the crux of it. Though I wouldn't say it's fair to consider it self-inflicted.

Even if a woman decided she was comfortable with the idea of dating a less-successful/educated man quite a few years younger than herself, few social circles would accept it without friction (far fewer than see any problem with the arrangement were genders reversed) and fewer (desirable) men are themselves comfortable with it.

So, sure, every 20-year-old woman is fairly well aware of these factors and ought to plan accordingly. But even if they shake the mentality at 30, while they can improve their pool, erasing the disadvantage entirely is simply not something that's under their control.

One thing that would help is if TV and other mass media stopped enforcing this stereotype so much - they always have the high-powered woman married to the high-powered man, and the high-powered man may be married to either a career woman or non-career woman, but you don't see the reverse. A few shows (Parenthood comes to mind) have gone against this trend.

A man in his 30s, dating women in their 20s will find more of them amenable to reproducing right away, and it's not much of a big deal to the man, if a prospective partner wants to delay that another 5-10 years.

A woman in her 30s, dating men in their 20s will find fewer of them amenable to reproducing right away, and there are significant, potentially deal-breaking costs to the woman associated with delaying another 5-10 years.

There are alternatives (adoption, surrogates, etc) and perhaps through some social normalization they'll further close the gap. But the social/financial/identity[1] costs of such arrangements are going to remain substantial for some time.

[1] that is, a person's (potentially strong) preference for traditional, biological children, due only their own pre-conceived notions of how they'd start their family. Women have definitely been known to 'settle' for a lesser mate to avoid challenging that preconception. And that willingness to settle is a profound disadvantage.

Should it be the role of software engineers to fix social injustice as well? Perhaps our designs should be subject to review by some committee to ensure they meet certain criteria, as would likely be the case with The television industry if you wanted to ensure compliance.

Notice this article is bemoaning the sad state of those unpaired women at the top, but makes no mention of the unpaired men at the bottom who are suffering just as much, if not more so.

> My wife is a corporate lawyer and gets a lot of flak for working long hours, especially from family. Nobody ever gives me flak for working long hours. Painting in broad brush strokes, men tend to find that when they get married, society reinforces their career ambitions. Women tend to find that when they get married, society chips away at their career ambitions. Other women, particularly other moms, are the worst about it.

The aforementioned author argues, more or less cogently, that popular feminism seems to have been all about erasing this imbalance by grading successful women by the same rubric as successful men. But this is the wrong idea, and it seems to establish this extremely misguided notion that the men had it right all along: fulfillment and happiness are only accomplished by working long hours for worse pay under terrible management. The men, the popular feminists seem to be arguing, really understood what life was about the whole time and only through truly egalitarian "feminism by the numbers", where men and women work the same number of hours and for the same salaries and in the same proportions in every industry can women be happy.

But, that author argues, is that it's a ruse. There's no reason to assume the men had it right, that being willing to sell your soul for the corporate machine is envious or desirable or worthwhile.

> "Other women ... are the worst about it."

Why is that bad? Why is it that women are the worst when espousing the idea that life isn't about career ambition? It's worth thinking about. Why is the unfair social pressure that your wife is urged to spend more time with her family, and not that you're urged to spend more time at work?

Maybe, the author argues, society and popular feminism is profoundly mistaken. Perhaps the real thing we should all be fighting for is a society in which people aren't asked to work long hours ever again. Where the balance between the home and the workplace is more equitable such that we don't have to make necessarily gender-biasing decisions like having to decide which family member will work longer and which one will stay home longer.

[1]: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because...

* - SLOW DOWN THERE. I'm a feminist.

Within this context, "opting out" means depending on a man for security, and telling women that "motherhood is more fulfilling than work" is encouraging them to be dependent. My wife sees it as rationalization--women trying to convince themselves that people do respect parenting because they should respect it.

Anecdote: when my wife had trouble finding a job initially in law school, a career counselor tried to comfort her by pointing out that at least I had a good job. To a person who yearns to be self-sufficient it wasn't comforting--it was devastating.

Yes, those are extremely different. There are very few ways in which an employment relationship is anything like a spousal relationship.

But that's not necessarily true; it's possible to imagine a scenario where you net out ahead by buying improved median productivity at the expense of reduced maximum individual productivity.

Think of it game-theoretically, assume a coordination problem that penalizes defectors (here, people who don't sacrifice their personal lives for improved productivity), and then bear in mind that some workers might be required to defect no matter what the rules of the game are.

The strategy you want obviously depends on your mix of natural cooperators vs. natural defectors.

Because this is not their life that they are talking about.

The efforts were largely successful (albeit not completely) but in the third wave* there has been a severe backlash against the ideology and the social pressures that it raised. That's what your are talking about in your comment. There's was a movement to say -- it's okay to want to be a homemaker, it's okay to wear clothes that make you feel sexy, it's okay to want men to hold the door for you.

I think it's swung too far the other direction. While it was originally "okay" there's a lot of voices out there saying, implicitly or explicitly, that it's "natural" to want to play all those traditional gender roles. That women who run companies, or nations, or work 80 hours a week are unnatural, ruining it for everyone else, or lying to themselves. That if you are a successful single women you nonetheless have a duty to the sisterhood to fight for mothers' issues because of your gender.

In other words, I think it's time for a backlash to the backlash.

*ignoring for the movement the race/class/international/gay aspects of third wave feminism

Some people want career success. Some people want to take care of a family. There are both genders in each group, but society only supports one gender in each. A feminist point is people of both genders should be supported in whichever endeavor fulfills them.

ps You are not a feminist.

It is surely an imbalance that needs correcting, but there is legitimate question as to how that imbalance is best corrected.

this may be how it looks on paper, but in reality the 'right wing' (hah) of feminism hijacks the agenda.

modern feminism is like the republican party of gender relations.

This means, when women are in their early twenties, they're use to being in relationships or hooking up with the most attractive men. Although I hate ratings, let's say men 8-10, are getting together with all the women 5-10. This can't work in the long run, because people partner up 1-1, so those 8-10 men end up married to 8-10 women. What happens with all these women 5-7? They spent their twenties with men 8-10, and now they're left with their equals, men 5-7, so they feel like they're settling, or stepping down. At the same time, men feel like they're dating up, because they never received attention from these women before. Meanwhile, they're equal, but prior history leaves this skewed perspective.

In short, average women in their twenties get attention from great guys. As people begin to settle down, average women are only left with average men, and they're left wondering where all the good men have gone.

This kind of societal screwed-up-ness is exactly what's predicted by those who say that you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage. People get in the habit of hooking up, which sets up unrealistic expectations on both sides. We're losing the ability to have real relationships. Remember that article about how people in Japan "aren't having sex anymore"? The HN comment consensus was, they are, they just don't have lasting relationships, because that's too hard.

People take the easy way out, even if it makes them unhappy later. If you can have sex without being married, that's easier than taking the time to develop a deep relationship, even if you're never really happy.

Of course, nothing will work if people don't have good character, which is really the problem. If people are getting married just to have sex, not because they're prepared to make the sacrifices required by living and working together, then things only get worse. We've instilled an entitlement mentality in lots of people, and we're reaping the results.

Anyway, if you wanted to know why premarital sex is considered immoral in most major religions (the big 3 monotheistic ones, anyway), you're watching it, live.

Young women generally will only date men her age or older. So for example a 22 yo woman would date men in the large pool between 22 and 30. Meanwhile the 22 yo man doesn't have much opportunity to date older or younger. However, when the woman hits 30, the situation has reversed and the 'marriageable' men in her pool are dating younger women.

Whether someone is a '5' or an '8' isn't necessarily an inherit characteristic and has a lot to do with their life circumstances.

And that population is mis-matched to anyone who is looking for a pair-bond, so they're irrelevant to an analysis of the problems of pair-bonding.

You mean as well say "not everyone is heterosexual/monogamous/etc". And of course they aren't.

But it's hardly useful to suggest successful women can just find happiness if they would simply "choose" to never marry, or pair with another successful woman, or enter a companionate relationship with a homosexual man, or join an already-married couple, or whatever else.

One, because only very few people can consciously change what type of relationship they desire. And, two, because the population amenable to such arrangements is so much smaller than the population at large, that it doesn't effectively increase their odds, even if they are open to such arrangements.

That is, from what I can tell, rayiner's point. As the world goes from one in which there were many college-educated men for every college-educated woman to an oversupply of college-educated women per college-educated man, that preference will become a self-inflicted (due to preference) disadvantage when it comes to dating. That seems to be rayiner's premise, and it seems to be true, unless preferences and habits evolve as the landscape evolves (which I think will be true).

While I agree, I would say that this mentality predates the 1960s in many ways. A woman's status has always been more strongly evaluated based on who she married than a man's. A man is often judged first by what he does, and secondly by his spouse, family, background, etc. A woman will usually be judged first by her relationships, especially her closest ones.

The reason the term "alpha female" isn't in the popular lexicon the same way as "alpha male" is probably because men will judge a woman based more on her attractiveness than on her place in some social hierarchy.

I'd be interested to know if these tendencies held more strongly for cultures where monogamy was not the nominal relationship form. They seem to me to be an evolutionary vestige in a lot of ways.

Just curious, do you end up hiring baby-sitters for the baby? My friends at this moment are going through this situation, and I see what happens very often is that baby-sitters are too expensive, not good enough, or a number of other things and eventually the woman ends up deciding it's time to put a halt on the career and accept herself as a 'housewife' of sorts. I'm curious to know how you and your wife managed through this.

That being said, I think it's penny-wise and pound-foolish to downshift your career merely because of the cost of childcare. Staying at home to take care of kids is a career death sentence. When your child is mostly independent in 11-12 years, you'll still have most of your career ahead of you, and your earning power will be greatly diminished. I think the stigma against people who choose to stay at home for a few years to take care of kids is ridiculous, but it almost guarantees that you'll be relegated to a second-tier type of position forever after.

In real life, often achieving 'ambitious career sucess goal Omega' happens at the cost of your family and other non-working life.

Maybe it shouldn't be so, but life isn't fair, and often your job/research/band/political career/book/whatever will be better off (at least until burnout) if in your actions you put it above your family/social life/hobbies/friends/happiness. And if it in the end kills you by a heart attack, suicide or drug abuse, well, it doesn't affect the achievement as long as it happens after that.

My observation is that there are X% women who would (in practice) choose an ambitious goal at abovementioned cost and intentionally stick with that decision, and Y% of men who would do so; and that the Y% rate is much bigger than X%. It corelates well with a variety of facts, like the gender differences in profession choice, known gender differences in risk-taking (and risk-misevaluation), gender differences in crime rates (again, being ambitious while fscking up your life), etc.

My hypothesis (with no idea on how to verify or reject it) is that the observed difference is not purely social, but built-in - it's clear how it (if it exists) could be caused by gene regulation, and there are evolutionary psychology arguments on why such a difference could be useful for early homo sapiens. I'd like to see if it's true or not.

55 men, 45 women 80% of the men are in stable relationships 80% x 55 men = 44 men 44 men with 44 out of 45 women leaves 1 woman remaining, 11 men remaining, for an even worse ratio of 11 free men to 1 woman.

Or did I follow you wrong?

55 women & 45 men graduate. 15 of those women lasso 15 of those men within 5 years. That leaves 40 women to 30 men. 5 years later another 10 pair off. Now you have 30/20. The more pairs you make, the worse the ratio.

Credentials are an imperfect, but reasonable, proxy for career trajectory; if you have two big groups of people, and one has a lot more degrees than the other, you'd expect that group to be more successful over the course of their careers.

If I was to make a ball-park guess, fewer people sue each other here, so there are fewer lawyers and the career path stays prestigious.

Graduating from a top 5 law program, clerking for a Supreme Court justice, being a partner or on partner-track in a top firm, teaching at a top university - this represents the 1% among the legal profession, and very high status.

Being an "average" lawyer from an "average" tier law program means average status, unless you break out from that and do something exceptional or entrepreneurial.

I suspect the people who end up not getting what they want tend to be the ones who don't put in the effort, especially taking the emotional risks in attracting others, initiating relationships, and making the relationships work the way they want.

Many men and many women put in this effort. Many men and many women also don't put in this effort. I suspect the former group has much more success than the latter group in the long run whether male or female, though I suspect they face a lot more rejection and emotional pain in the short run. I suspect the latter group faces less short-term pain and rejection, but is lucky to get what they want from relationships if they ever do.

The emotional challenges of making yourself vulnerable are harder for most than pursuing a career or hobbies so many men and women go the emotionally easier route of working hard at their jobs. In my experience, along with overcoming those challenges comes tremendous emotional growth.

(Btw, I disagree with the zero-sum mentality of winners and losers because people can have more than one deep, meaningful relationship and relationship come in many forms, but adopted it for consistency with the article).

Suppose there's "messaging" disconnect? Women in this generation (and last's) have increasingly been conditioned and taught by their parents and various peers and mediums to be independent, pursue careers, and become all they can be. What has changed with how men are raised? Maybe they're still getting the same traditional message and lessons that they are meant to be the head of household, to provide, to find a woman who will bear their children (and not a whole lot else)? Then it would make sense that men and women will have almost diametrically opposed POV's and not find common ground?

Women who dated in their 20s and want to marry in their 30s are resentful of men who now want to date. Meanwhile, men who were unable to find love in their 20s now want to date in their 30s. They grew resentful when they couldn't find love, much as 30-something women now do. I see a lot of symmetry here.

However, when resentful women say "these men are assholes", that is taken at face value: it's obvious that these men are indeed assholes, and that these women are being wronged. On the other hand, resentful men are called misogynists and brutes, and what they really think ("these women are sluts") is considered unfit for print.

It seems hypocritical, and I don't think it's conducive to improving things.

Of course it's unfit for print. Those men are looking to date around, aren't they? They're looking to slut it up, so they've got no right whatsoever to look down on someone for doing or having done the same damn thing.

Reverse Disclosure: I'm engaged and have been "off the market" for so long I've stopped giving a damn.

I'm honestly puzzled at how someone could fail to see the symmetry even after it has been laid out for them. The double standard must have been hammered really deeply into your psyche.

However, I completely disregard what "respectable newspapers" or magazines print in their Trends or Culture sections, because frankly I stopped regarding them as anything except daily reflections of the collective mind of the wannabe-intellectual population who can think precisely one layer deep into things and no more. "Respectable newspapers" are not where you think original thoughts, they're where you keep score in the public ideological battle between existing thoughts.

Admittedly, I've known some very, very smart journalists, but almost uniformly their format and their funding sources keep them from conveying anything very deep or appreciate of reality's subtleties to the public. Cheap, meme-dense pap it is, then!

i'm guessing the proportion of people who make good decisions (kids given money, women given attractiveness at an early age) are the exact same.

It sounds like you didn't make it through the article, because you didn't manage to capture the central model it discussed. (I can't say I blame you.) Nevertheless, the central model isn't about winners vs losers: it's two functions: sexual-market-value over time by gender, and what people want over time by gender, and how each gender selfishly maximizes in a way that leaves older women out in the cold. Really, it's just a re-hash of the ancient maxim that "women grow old; men grow distinguished".

I thought this was funny:

Naomi explains: "He's 36 years old and is definitely someone who falls into the alpha-male category: excellent job in finance, PhD, high income, six feet two, sporty and very handsome. And he's an utter sweetheart."

Just clueless. That guy, if he even exists and isn't already married, has the resources to date a nice girl in her late-20s. Again, it's a symptom of the problem. Many women waited for the perfect situation and never found it. And even if they found their white whale we all know how that story ends.

Or several.

Well, sure, effort is important. But there are also many "hard-coded" factors outside one's control. For example, I'm 5'9", which makes me average in that category. To make up for it, I need to dress extra nice and be athletic/muscular. Whereas someone who is, say, 6'2" will be attractive to women solely on the virtue of being tall.

Lol no. As a 6'2" man with social anxiety, being tall is not some magical doorway to getting the ladies.

Effort is more important, grooming is more important, being able to hold a conversation is more important, etc.

edit: I'm not saying height isn't an advantage. I'm saying that there are MANY other factors which matter MUCH more than just height.

One of them is 6'2", the other is 4'10". Which one is going to have an easier time?

Hight is an advantage.

Same thing if he's not well groomed, same thing if he's out of shape. Same thing good career vs unemployed.

And these are all things that can be improved if you work at it.

Height is an advantage, but it's not the most important one.

This is wrong reasoning. You may just well say: if someone can hold a conversation but is 3'10'' he is going to fail hence height is more important. Let me improve it for you: Some minimal level is necessary in all respects: height, holding a conversation, not being awkward, not being disgusting. Once you have that various factors counts at various degrees - height is one of the most important ones (if not the most important one). Status is a contender but guess what: height helps with achieving that too (as it does with acquiring wealth as well). Also you can work on improving almost anything (holding a conversation, money, athletism) but you can't improve your height. It's huge inherent advantage, nothing comes close.

Although I hate projecting people onto the 0-10 spectrum, I'll do it here for illustrative purposes.

With women, I have a great deal of difficulty attracting anyone: it's less that I match with numerical ones and twos than not matching with anyone at all. Not no one--and those I do succeed with are typically even middling on the spectrum--but it's a massive crapshoot.

With men, I can go out to a bar on any night of the week and bring home someone in the top half and usually an eight or nine. Sure, that's meaningless shit, but converting those into relationships isn't difficult at all (or at least no more difficult than anyone in the gay community has converting hookups to relationships).

The difference is incredibly striking, and anyone who says height isn't a factor in women dating is so wrong that it's incomprehensible that they've ever bothered to even talk to a woman about how she feels about height in dating partners.

It also shows the shortcomings (no pun intended...) of the 0-10 rating model: there's neither generic Man nor generic Woman. Your rating to women you're more than two or three inches taller than (could be 0, could be 10) is almost entirely independent of your rating to women you're two or three inches shorter than (0).

Its not 100% with 100% of women, but by putting in effort, i.e. learning how to talk to women, dressing well, and being friendly and social with other people... any guy can vastly improve their dating situation.

I don't agree that it's "truly doesn't matter". Yeah you won't be a rockstar popular guy if you are fat or have bad social anxiety but your position and prospects would be even worse if you were short as well.

>Exactly. The most successful lothario in my university class was a short guy who went to the gym 5 days a week, had exceptional grooming and was extremely confident/comfortable around women. Height is a very small factor in these things.

It really puts me on tilt reading things like that. Yes, height is not the only factor, yes it's still possible to achieve great things without it, yes you can be attractive/popular without it. Yet it's still very important factor which puts you at great advantage in both dating and career game. Just because there are some shorter guys who "outperformed" taller guys doesn't mean it disproves the height=advantage theorem.

Now, being the most important still doesn't mean it's 80% or even 50% if you try to measure those things as there many other factors (and sucking on many fronts will reduce the biggest of inherent advantages) but its huge.

You said it's not the most important factor but then when challenged you offered logical fallacy as an argument which makes probability that you never really thought about it or experienced it quite high. It's difficult to assess from within the bubble so what about reading posts of people who experienced it here, at other places on the Internet or looking at the studies which were done ?

/rant

Not to mention fringe benefits of being short. Relatively, EVERYTHING IS BIGGER. This idea alone makes me want to try being smaller for a day. Fitting on beds, fitting in airplanes, all food portions are bigger, cars are more spacious.

Also, you'll live longer statistically.

This could not be further from truth.

I'd argue that women in their prime dating age don't have to put in that much effort, they just have to show up. A woman has to make herself available, and men will pursue her. The article is about the women who wanted others things (career, etc) first and thought the advantage they enjoy while they are younger would last forever, but too late they discover how fleeting this dating advantage is.

> You don't hear about 25 year old men marrying successful 30 something women because the lady is successful and charming. Not to say it doesn't happen, but its certainly rare.

This isn't because there aren't 25 year old men who are willing and able to marry these successful women, it is the woman who is making the decision.

My anecdotal experience would be people that have had the most trouble are those that actually seem to be trying.

I think when dating changes from having fun to a search for the perfect mate the qualifications for application become impractically high. The only people that meet expectations then are the top few percent of men (who are extremely in demand) and sleazy liars.

Your advice is worse than useless for the average dateless loser, who will never succeed no matter how much "effort" they put in. But this way you don't have to feel bad for them--it's their own fault they'll die alone, because they didn't _work_ hard enough.

I hope some day you actually learn what it's like to fail through attributes outside of your control, and have everyone blame you for it anyway.

It's a good thing to look at relationships and coupling as a "game" because too often we treat finding our partner as a "fairy tale" story where it's just a matter of "meeting the right person". That myth does a disservice to everyone: both the couples who find someone but then need to work on the relationship, and the people who have unrealistic expectations and end up alone.

Also, even if it doesn't inform individual choices, it's useful for looking at things in terms of broad demographic trends. If the article is right, it means there's a potential demographic shift coming of fewer children, fewer people with supporting family structure, etc. Understanding the dynamics behind that can be important for planning a society's future.

Maybe it's because i don't understand dating as a competitive activity and my social interactions are very limited that i don't understand where are decisions to make (a.k.a, how people "play")

Yes, this seems to be the case.

And I don't say that to put you down - I actually used to be the same way. As a highly analytical person working in the engineering field, I used to approach dating as a rational activity. You know, you meet someone, and if the two of you are compatible then you start a relationship. Or at least that's how I thought things should work.

As I got older though, I realized things could not be further from the truth. Dating is an activity that is driven by two things: biological imperative of the two genders (that are different) and the emotions that are governed by those imperatives.

Once I understood that - i.e. once I accepted the politically incorrect fact that we are mammals first and foremost - everything started making a lot more sense.

Now, the way you guide your own dating life, should, presumably, be done in a way that is good for you and not harmful to others, but this is more of a Golden Rule thing rather than a game theory thing.

Don't get fixated with the 'game' word which has a loaded meaning outside of game theory, it's just a math term here.

Then why are there vast asymmetries along gender lines in virtually all aspects of dating? Look at OkTrends (http://blog.okcupid.com), or Dan Ariely's posts on the subject (http://danariely.com/tag/dating/), or this post from a woman http://www.alternet.org/why-online-dating-sucks-men) which indicates high dating success for women putting in low effort. Are men and women just putting in different amounts of effort? The question is then, why is that the case? And that case arises from historical gender roles. It is a gender thing.

Your "many people ..." statements are platitudes that are true no matter what follows ("Many people are smart; many people are dumb."), and do nothing to support what you "suspect."

"Men put more work up front -- making the first move, taking the women out and showing them a good time, etc. Women put more work once the relationship gets going (i.e. after much sex has been had). They put up with their guy's frustrating habits and work to advance the relationship forward."

Now, this is a description of the MAJORITY of interactions, not all, of course.

And of course there's this: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

I hate the political correctness that is popular today. Essentially, men and boys are punching bags to the feminist activists and attitudes like yours aren't helping.

And yes, I do mean sex. But not just sex. I'm a man who likes to cook and bake, for instance, and I'm good enough at it that my friends and family routinely enjoy the results. What kind of stupidly over-gendered society expects that I should throw away a good hobby because it's "women's work"?!

Relationships are not trades. The husband does not trade "his" household chores for "her" sex. The wife does not trade "her" cooking for "his" income. What the hell is wrong with people who think this way?!

Men are attracted to women based largely on factors that are more immediately apparent -- such as physical appearance. Women get more attracted the more they invest into a relationship. This follows from biological differences - see that article.

Also it is truism that, as a man, you care more than JUST physical appearance in a woman. And you, personally, might even not care about looks at all -- though you'd be quite rare in that case.

I am talking about the overall majority of men and women and what makes them attracted and at what time. There have been studies done on this and it's pretty clear: women's biological appearance plays a larger role for men to be sexually attracted, than a man's biological appearance. (I say biological because obviously if you consider clothes, cars, cologne, hairstyle etc. to be part of the equation then those factors matter, but they can be manipulated and are related more to lifestyle than biology.)

Men are more visually stimulated. It's a fact that's been shown over and over. I did not say men are JUST interested in that. I said that in most societies, men put more work up front -- witness how many men devote countless hours to learning pickup techniques and tricks, or getting a great car, or working their ass off to have money to take women out. Meanwhile, women start putting in more effort than the guy once they have invested in the relationship, and it's probably due to the nesting instinct / biological clock. They put a lot of biological investment into having kids, more than men. And so forth.

I am not "attacking men". You are being knee-jerk reactionary.

I am not sure where you are getting this from. I just want to point out that existing data about who iniatiates divorces and break-ups would seem to contradict what you're saying.

    According to a study published in the American Law and 
    Economics Review, women have filed slightly more than 
    two-thirds of divorce cases in the United States.[80] 
    There is some variation among states, and the numbers 
    have also varied over time, with about 60% of filings 
    by women in most of the 19th century, and over 70% by 
    women in some states just after no-fault divorce was 
    introduced, according to the paper. Evidence is given
    that among college-educated couples, the percentage of
    divorces initiated by women is approximately 90%.

Women have a lot more invested in sex and children than men do. And therefore, they are looking to have a stable situation to have a family more than men are.

Why would you say that? Again, it appears to be biased against men.

Childbirth and the pain

Nursing, lack of sleep for years

Rearing

Out of the above four, three are done exclusively by women, and demand a lot of effort and some risks.

It can be incredibly rewarding to have a child... but also very costly. The man can just leave. The pregnant woman can't.

Biased against men? Please.

What you are talking about is "sunk cost."

So, in a given relationship, the man or the woman could value the children more.

In a given relationship, the man or the woman could value sex more.

It's not true that all men care less about (i.e., value less) their children, which is what you said, though I don't believe you meant it. That's why I said your statement was biased against men.

I don't see how the generalization "women are more invested in sex" in either your interpretation of that phrase, or mine, would be correct.

What? Nursing doesn't last that long, and 'lack of sleep' is part of rearing and not forced on the woman.

>The man can just leave. The pregnant woman can't.

She can give the child up for adoption just as easily as the man can leave the relationship. And rearing is the vast majority of the effort.

Yes women have to do more, but the difference is not nearly as much as you're arguing.

Is it your argument that women having a stronger attachment to a newborn is a bias against them? Because I was only trying to argue that there was less bias than EGreg said. If she decides she wants the baby then it doesn't seem like a negative to me.

Edit: Oh, I'm a dumbass. I didn't make it clear that the 'giving up the child' was only in response to the pregnancy scenario. That's because once both parents are raising the kid, after a breakup both or either of them would continue raising it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce#Sex_and_divorce

Myth busted

Specifically, women being more likely to initiate divorce has nothing whatsoever to do with what the parent is saying. The reason behind that statistic is that women are no longer as dependent on men and therefore have more freedom to end the marriage if they aren't happy with it.

Marriage is a losing deal for men. It's no wonder we have "MGTOW"s, but no "WGTOW"s.

Women have a lot more invested in sex and children than men do. And therefore, they are looking to have a stable situation to have a family more than men are. That situation was typically marriage, but now with the state being able to take care of the children so much of the time (public school, various welfare programs etc.) there are lot more single mothers. I think single motherhood is highly correlated to the amount of governmental assistance in a neighborhood. To the extent that there is single motherhood in an area, you may be right -- women may be much less willing to make a relationship work.

As an aside, I am not sure we think that's healthy or desirable. Children born into two-parent households have been shown to do far better on average than children born into single parent households.

http://www.carlsonschool.umn.edu/assets/71503.pdf

Take a closer look at it. The use of "many" does not imply a platitude - 35.22% of the time it's a kinder way of saying "most," and 63.09% of the time we don't have a precise percentage, neither of which negates the validity or importance of the observation.

Second, where does gender lie—is it a physical characteristic, a social characteristic, a cultural one? I'm physically male but don't really identify myself with any gender. It's not at all clear which direction the identity/behavior causality moves, and most likely it's both ways.

Third, I don't think much positive can come from drawing conclusions that restrict people's capabilities—in this case, ascribing broad behavior to what women and men want. It's an inaccurate viewpoint of the world and only helps you if the viewpoint happens to be a blind spot of yours, i.e. if you're a woman who does believe she won't have an issue finding a male in her thirties or a male who believes he won't be able to find a woman. In this case, of course it will make brilliant sense to you and help you, but not everyone has this problem. I certainly don't; I'm 22 and (hopefully) looking at marriage.

In other words, I don't think examining the cause will necessarily help us in any way but to change it, and binding poor or undesirable to an unalterable part of people will only retard change.

Yes. Your genitals, height, the shape of your pelvis, the amount of various hormones in your system and the ratio of white/grey matter in your brain are primarily determined by whether you have one X chromosome or two. This is what gender is. All other definitions are pseudo science.

In order to evaluate heterosexual relationships, we should evaluate the groups involved. It is not unethical to do so. This doesn't mean we ignore individuals, which would be unethical, those things are logically not related.

2. "Sexologist John Money introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role in 1955." References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

3. John Money is a charlatan and a child abuser: References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money

The tendency to put many aspects of life in binary terms when many aspects of life are decidedly not binary, but merely bimodal complicates things terribly.

And if you're looking at general statistical trends (i.e., any statments in form 'what women want'), then you're talking about approximations/averages up to the first significant digit, and you can easily be accurate to that degree with simplifying by clearly false assumptions as two clear genders and everyone being heterosexual. And it still is worthwhile to make such analysis, since it can provide insight about why/how large trends occur.

The problem is that not everybody takes this premise for granted!

I've been dumped over the hazy prospect of something better more than once. AFAIK, those exes are still searching. But, I'm 31 now, and really happy as a husband to a wonderful wife.

Dating is severely overrated. The best thing you can do is get in and get out without becoming cynical from it. Long-term relationships are satisfying in a way that dating can never compare to.

I like your world...let's live there instead.

:(

(I'm taking responsibility for the last part, but being in a different environment might help too.)

One of the most interesting things I found when discussing this topic with people of my parents and grandparents generation who dealt with this is that the first question for the parents or representatives of the female were always "How much money does he make?" and for the male were always "How pretty is she?". To this day, matchmaking services essentially ask the same questions.

Dating is supposed to be about everything else other than these two factors, but is it really?

the other thing, I think alot of these things gloss over what really constitutes 'winning',

with the divorce rate being what it is, simply having a wedding ceremony is a crappy accounting of victory

A store has just opened in New York City that offered free husbands. When women go to choose a husband, they have to follow the instructions at the entrance:

“You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are 6 floors to choose from. You may choose any item from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but you CANNOT go back down except to exit the building!

So, a woman goes to the store to find a husband. On the 1st floor the sign on the door reads: Floor 1 - These men Have Jobs. The 2nd floor sign reads: Floor 2 - These men Have Jobs and Love Kids. The 3rd floor sign reads: Floor 3 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids and are extremely Good Looking.

“Wow,” she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going. She goes to the 4th floor and sign reads: Floor 4 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Good Looking and Help With Housework. “Oh, mercy me!” she exclaims. “I can hardly stand it!” Still, she goes to the 5th floor and sign reads: Floor 5 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Gorgeous, help with Housework and Have a Strong Romantic Streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the 6th floor and the Sign reads: Floor 6 - You are visitor 71,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that you are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.

To avoid gender bias charges, the store’s owner opened a Wife Store just across the street.

The 1st first floor has wives that love sex. The 2nd floor has wives that love sex and have money. The 3rd through 6th floors have never been visited...

(http://www.city-data.com/forum/relationships/276172-joke-hus...)

Don't get me wrong, I made some SERIOUS mistakes of my own, and had some important problems to work through. She has her side of the story too, and neither of us could tell a simple story.

But money and earning was a huge problem, even when I was making two or three standard deviations more than the US average. And it was a shock to me to see how many people supposedly rejected the rat-race values, and knew my relationship with my kids, yet couldn't be bothered to call to see how I was doing. People say they want dads who focus on their kids, but I haven't noticed much effort to support those guys in the tight spots. At least not when Mom declares the guy a loser.

Again. No representation of personal perfection is made or intended. I had a lot to work on in the marriage, found more in the divorce, still finding more yet. Yay.

I hope this doesn't come across bitter. I think there is a lot of confusion in the discussions of gender roles and career and child raising, and I think a lack of candor is part of that. So it is important to notice that a great deal of the values declared, are declared for the nobility of the declaration and don't prove to mean much. A good many people are smarter / wiser / more careful than I was, and don't take those declarations at face value, and so find themselves making better decisions and on firmer foundations. But it is impossible to really talk to most of those people about their attitudes, because they all know that some of their opinions could bring a lot of flak. Why pay that price to be candid? Especially when, let's face it, many of these conversations are begun with an intended conclusion in mind.

From what I've seen, personally, we need a LOT more honesty in our discussions of gender roles and careers and child raising. And a LOT of that has to come from people on the "progressive" side of the discussion.

For what it's worth, I really recommend everybody take the time to read through some of the "manosphere" stuff, for this reason. It has people speaking honestly due to it being a counterculture thing where it's already read that the current dominant culture rejects the ideas wholesale.

You probably won't agree with all of it; you may not agree with any of it. I'm not endorsing it the content. But I will endorse it as the sort of thought-provoking thing that anybody who thinks of themselves as an intellectual (as opposed to merely posing as one) ought to expose themselves to, and chew through. There's some thought-provoking stuff in there. Even if you disagree with it, if you consider yourself an intellectual you ought to be able to muster a higher, more refined level of disagreement than merely slapping a "misogynist" label on it.

Doing the right thing as a parent often goes un-celebrated, un-thanked, and most certainly un-paid. This is one of the great failures of our society, and the main reason there are so many fatherless children out there.

If two people are going to make another person, then at the very least they need to continually communicate what their roles are in raising that person and, maybe more importantly, support and encourage one another in those roles - BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO.

Just bc I don't want to toot my own horn: I am not saying the marriage didn't fail bc I over-emphasized being Dad. I am saying that what I did do as Dad, didn't get the respect I thought it might.

Also: I didn't do parent for the respect, and I could have fixed a lot of mistakes without being less of a Dad.

Whereas even 30 years ago this certainly wasn't the case. My father was a good dad but certainly didn't clean anything other than the garage. He didn't bathe any of us kids or tuck us in. He sure as hell didn't buy groceries. What he did do it kept the yard clean, the roof clear, the garden growing, the cars running, and coached baseball.

I think too many dads these days are too busy being mom #2. And women think that's what they want but in reality it emasculates their husband in their eyes.

That said, we were making enough, if we budgeted. And she wouldn't, and we fought about it a lot.

don't beat yourself up over this.

We all make mistakes but I want to fix what I can.

This formal meeting where both sides are constantly analyzing their partners and odds, i.e., dates, inevitably leads to this paradigm. It is just like job interviews, you can't possibly get to know deepily each candidate, so you have to create artificials proxies that will help you to chose wisely. And this proxies are wrong most of the times.

But when finding a partner you can possibly have time to meet another person more deeply. Actually, you do that all the time, at work, at your neighborhood, with friends and friends of friends. But that is not longer a possibility if you have spent all your life not interest at all in people surrounding you, waiting for the time when you will chose a person from a shelf to marry you.

Tl;dr: I don't think is much about successfull women high expectations, but about women didn't have much interest at all in another humans and now think of a partner as a product. And they don't get how this 'product' has a mind of its own now.

Maybe this is the fallout of mass consumerism, and a lifetime of being told that you can have it all. Dating sites pander to this too, by implicitly advertising love as just a mere SQL query away:

SELECT * FROM candidates WHERE gender = 'm' AND salary > 150000 AND height > 72

SELECT * FROM candidates WHERE gender = 'f' AND age < 27 AND looks > 9.8

I've always thought a dating site that was less search-y and more experiential (aka requires time to actually meet people) could be a profitable niche. You meet people first, then get access to look at their profiles.

As for expectations, I love what my pastor said: "you probably don't deserve the person you think you deserve."

Yeah. How many of the people in the article talked (and some of the talk on this page) makes my skin crawl.

First my qualifications to talk on this: I have absolutely none. I somehow managed to stumble into love, got married at 22, and over 20 years later still going strong (with a few rough patches and a lot of work put in along the way.) The only thing I can boast to be being extremely fortunate. I was an over-weight, socially inept nerd at 22 (these days, I am a little less socially inept, maybe.) So I've never really had to seriously 'compete' in the dating 'game'.

I was trying to find the right word to describe how most of the people in this article and discussions viewed finding another human being to spend the rest of their lives with and create more human beings with and couldn't find the word. When I showed the article to my wife she nailed it straight away: mercenary.

Dehumanising would be another word I will use, too.

The women who attended that lecture in hopes of capturing the interest of an alpha-male creep me out the same way as when I read articles about pick-up artists and how they think about preying on a woman's insecurities to get laid. It's all about accomplishments and not relationships. Dehumanising.

Was it Ovid who said, "If you want to be loved, be loveable."? Perhaps becoming loveable may entail cultivating interests that don't just involve computer games, or learning how to "dress metro" as some have advised. But I bet developing an attitude of treating people with some basic dignity and compassion will go a long towards being loveable and attracting someone you want to live the rest of your life, rather then categorising everyone on a scale of one to ten or as opportunities to exploit.

Before people say "why don't men do the same?" here is why: http://jobs.economist.com/article/when-women-dare-to-outearn...

"For the couples themselves, the dynamic may be a problem. As long as the woman earns less, her income does not cause trouble in the marriage. Once she earns more, however, marriage difficulties jump and divorce rates increase. Interestingly, it does not seem to matter whether she earns only slightly more, or substantially more—an indication that it is not female income per se, but the mere fact of earning more, that causes trouble."

I doubt that is changing anytime soon.

Maybe the advice should be that men should get counseling or something if they're so insecure that they divorce their breadwinner.

It's not just kind intent, it's the world as it is. I wouldn't want my friend's marriage and family to be a martyr to the cause so I gave her the best advice I could with the knowledge and experience I had at hand.

Marriage comes from a time when women were unable to earn a living on their own, and we still hold up many of those ideals, even in our modern equal-oppurtunity society. Perhaps when a woman clearly demonstrates she is equally capable of being the breadwinner, the couple are freed to be more open to making relationship decisions on the basis of the relationship alone without feeling the obligations of marriage?

There are many situations in which divorce is the only choice but it is dangerous to imply that it is right thing to do more often than not because we are now supposedly more enlightened.

If you don't have kids though, go for it.

I remember reading about a man who was sent to prison for not paying child support and alimony. He was wealthy before the 2008 crash, but afterwards was un/underemployed and simply COULDN'T pay the almost $100,000 required by the state.

I have found no cases where women deal with this kind of discrimination in the courtroom while there is a staggering amount of cases where men are completely destroyed financially and left seeing the most important people in their life for a few hours every couple of weeks simply because they are men.

> After divorce, a man is 12 times more likely than his ex to commit suicide in society today.

do you have a reliable source for that?

> I have found no cases where women deal with this kind of discrimination in the courtroom

You haven't looked.

The premise was that couples with high-earning females no longer feel the pressure to stay together just because of the marriage, and therefore evaluate their relationship on the merits of the relationship alone, as if the marriage never existed.

I guess you could argue that any relationship divide is a bad thing, but if you never have a relationship with someone, how can you determine if you mesh together? Sometimes you don't.

Ideally, it wouldn't be. In practice, I doubt many people enjoy it.

Reality doesn't care about moral opinions of how reality should be - if you observe in practice that choosing to having a career sometimes carries an unfair consequence, then taking that risk into account helps your decisionmaking, and ignoring the consequence because it's unfair would hurt only yourself.

My wife is the chief of family medicine at a small hospital; not surprisingly she makes more than I do. One way that we've sidestepped the issue is how our incomes come in. She has a steady job, I play the startup lottery. You can't directly compare the incomes.

Women want men they can rely on to be conquerors. Lazy, jobless guys do not fit that bill. Startup guys who are making shit happen do. Even if you're not making as much money as her in this case but you are the most awesome person everyone knows and everyone respects you, she will automatically fall in line.

But wait for your first startup to fail spectacularly due to your own mistakes. That will be the true test.

No one says not to work, just that if you make it your life, prepare to feel like you're too good for that guy.

Consider the number of guys who go through their twenties and don't have any luck--perhaps even having good female friends who are close but never take that additional step into a proper relationship because there are hotter guys around.

Now, go through a decade of this, and suddenly you "get your shit together", and now things are easier (really, perhaps, the girls are just better adjusted in their expectations), and how are you to treat these people?

People who looked on for a decade while you suffered? Why not treat them like pieces of meat--that's how you were treated, after all.

And if you do treat them decently and settle down, you basically know that you are likely missing out on a whole chunk of life experience.

It's a horrible and toxic cycle.

It seems like we get to keep having this as a societal norm, or we get to complain about manchildren and not settling down--we do not get to do both.

EDIT: This is clearly not the case for everyone; there are many, many different life experiences out there. That said, for a certain set, I would wager this is fairly close to what they'll/they've gone through.

...making those assumptions, I'm trying hard not feel just a little smug when realizing I'm one of those approaching-middle-aged men who's suddenly a lot more attractive (effectively) than ten years ago.

I don't sleep around rampantly, and never have, but I am with a 20-something woman (and part of that first paragraph I wrote comes in because I didn't pick her to settle down or because she's a 10, nor is that why she's with me). The description of relationships in that age range did make me think a bit.

I'm trying not to feel smug because that's a terrible reaction: It's the same way you'd expect a hot 20-something girl to feel knowing she can get any guy she wants, at least temporarily. And feeling smug about this ignores the fact that, whether women who do fit this profile were jerks in their younger years or not, they're now more mature, more experienced, and facing prospects that just aren't pleasant and make the rest of their lives -- which they've worked hard for -- a lot more uncertain than they had reason to expect before. Regardless of how carelessly or inconsiderately you spent the romantic pursuits your younger years, if this is the problem you face, I can manage at least some sympathy.

That said... I still can't shake the doubts I expressed at the start. I obviously haven't seen the data or anything, but it's hard to look at this and say "yep, I have no doubt their methods are good and their conclusions are representative."

All the crap women put us through most men read this article and cheer.

How can you expect women to select without testing us?

And attractive young girls are men's equivalent of the rich handsome finance studs.

If we're going to allow men to be selected for we also have to allow women to be selected for.

In the spirit of honest natural selection leaving your sagging wife and marrying your young secretary is good for humanity as a whole.

No, a woman's test is her chastity. Nobody but the most desperate beta is marrying and having kids with the town bicycle, no matter how good she looks or how young she is.

LOOKS ARE WHY WOMEN WEAR MAKEUP and mini skirts. If chastity were their test they would be doing exactly the opposite.

You're not getting turned on by porn because the woman is 'chaste'. You're getting turned on becuase she is HOT.

Looks, indicate fertility and health, and are widely know through out all of biology and the animal kingdom to be used by males to select fit mates no matter slutty and how many litters of animals the female has had. It indicates genetic fitness.

For men success is the test. It indicates accumulation of resources and ability to survive.

Plus, sex is a powerful primitive desire and no (matter what they tell you) they're all "bicycles" as you describe it, just like you would LIKE to be.