[Please send any additional material to CommentsCollection@proton.me - many thanks]

Table of contents:

- Dating
- Marriage
- Children
- Jokes
- Extract from "The Menu: Life Without the Opposite Sex"
- Misc links/comments to add

(Section headings preceded by **** for ease of searching)

**** DATING:

- The 7 Things Blowing Up Modern Dating, John Howkins, June 2025. Modern dating is a minefield, reshaped by seven seismic cultural shifts that have upended traditional norms. First, the stigma against premarital sex and single parenthood has vanished, leading to casual hookups and fewer marriages, as societal pressures no longer enforce long-term commitment. Second, women’s economic independence has disrupted traditional sex roles, allowing them to prioritize careers over relationships, often delaying marriage and reducing the pool of “high-value” men, which frustrates both sexes. Third, dating apps like Tinder have turned romance into a transactional game, fostering superficial judgments and a paradox of choice that breeds indecision and ghosting. Fourth, pornography’s ubiquity has warped expectations, with men seeking partners who mirror unrealistic standards and women feeling inadequate, straining genuine intimacy. Fifth, the decline of social gatekeepers - parents, churches, or community standards — has removed accountability, enabling manipulative behaviors like “simping” or stringing partners along. Sixth, social media amplifies performative relationships, where curated online personas create pressure to conform to idealized images, often at the expense of authentic connection. Finally, a pervasive scarcity mindset drives desperate behavior, as both men and women fear missing out on “the one,” leading to rushed or toxic relationships. These seven factors - eroded stigmas, economic shifts, dating apps, pornography, absent gatekeepers, social media, and scarcity mindsets — have transformed dating into a chaotic landscape. While success stories persist, navigating this terrain requires sidestepping these pitfalls to foster meaningful connections in a world where traditional pathways to love have been redrawn. https://www.culturcidal.com/p/why-modern-dating-is-so-hard / https://archive.is/kzojt

- For men, dating is like paying for job interviews. Further, the analyses below indicate that the majority of women simply do not think the majority of men are attractive enough even to consider communicating with them in a dating context. Importantly, these findings cannot be attributed to men’s substantive qualities since rejections are primarily based on whether the woman likes the man’s profile pictures.

- Women exclude the majority of men from romantic consideration. Dating apps and social media have set women's demands unsustainably high. The “Female Delusion Calculator” ("FDC"), at https://igotstandardsbro.com, takes typical factors women require in a man and calculates the chances of actually finding someone like that. E.g. an a US white 30-year-old female may want a single white man, 30-35, at least 6 feet tall, not obese, making 100k/yr. That doesn't sound overly ambitious, but the FDC shows that (per US Census Bureau and NCHS data), the probability of a US male meeting her qualifications is 0.33%. Ladies, I hope you like cats!

- "All over the rich world, fewer people are hooking up and shacking up: social media, dating apps and political polarisation all play a part", The Economist, 6 November 2025, https://archive.is/20251109164340/https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/11/06/all-over-the-rich-world-fewer-people-are-hooking-up-and-shacking-up, "People have always been finicky when choosing a long-term mate, at least when sober. But social media and online dating have turbo-charged pickiness, allowing people to filter candidates not just for the sorts of things that have always been important (age, religion, ethnicity and education), but also for all sorts of other attributes, such as their political views or narcotic preferences, not to mention their height and weight... Reporting in the Wall Street Journal suggests that most women on Bumble, an online dating app, screen out all men who are less than six feet tall. That rules out about 85% of men at a stroke. To be sure, women have long tended to prefer taller men—but not to such an extreme... singlehood, which is already reshaping Western society, is likely to keep growing for some time to come, with all the consequences—good and bad—that it entails. At some point it will surely plateau, but it shows no signs of doing so yet."

- Scott Alexander's blog post "Hypergamy: Much More Than You Wanted To Know" explores the concept of hypergamy, the tendency for women to seek higher-status men. It differentiates between absolute and relative hypergamy, noting that while women are increasingly marrying men with lower educational levels, they still prefer partners with higher income. The analysis covers various aspects such as the influence of education, income, social class, and attractiveness on marriage patterns, and how these dynamics affect marriage stability and trends in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. The post concludes that educational hypergamy has reversed due to women's educational advancements, while income hypergamy remains significant. Astral Codex Ten, Hypergamy: Much More Than You Wanted To Know, 24 May 2023, https://archive.is/20240110121523/https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/hypergamy-much-more-than-you-wanted

- Dating in 2019 - The Harsh Truth, Alexandra Kaschuta, September 18, 2018, https://archive.is/20211202134641/https://alexkaschuta.com/writing/2018/9/18/dating-in-2018-the-harsh-truth. This candid essay dissects modern dating through the lens of evolutionary psychology, economic incentives, and cultural shifts, offering a sobering look at the app-driven romantic marketplace. The author explores how dating apps have made romantic connection easier but also more transactional and unequal, reinforcing primal instincts like female hypergamy and male preference for youth and beauty. A minority of high-status men dominate the dating pool, leaving most men and many high-achieving women unsatisfied. The piece critiques the cultural obsession with youth, the illusion of infinite romantic options, and the social consequences of delayed family formation. It contends that while technology has amplified freedom, it has also intensified loneliness, indecision, and inequality in dating. Ultimately, the author urges self-awareness and emotional honesty in navigating love’s new landscape, arguing that true connection requires intention, maturity, and the courage to commit—before time or biology closes the window.

- Online dating is now the norm. This favours men willing and able to invest vast amounts of time into sending an immense volume of messages (crudely but accurately described as an "any hole's a goal" approach to dating, mating and relating). Competition is brutal: apps are mainly populated by men, women ignore 95% of messages (as they have so much choice), and men older than 30 usually also get filtered out. Reviewing 10,000 women’s profiles may therefore lead to 1,000 ‘right swipes’, then perhaps 50 matches, each of which require carefully crafted messages. That may lead to substantive exchanges with, say, 10 women. Of those, you may get to meet 1 in person – if you’re lucky, and you’re not ghosted. At that point, usually either you're not physically attracted to them, or they're not physically attracted to you. Everything to that point has been a waste of time, effort and emotion. Dating is a time black hole and brutal to all but the perceived top 10% of men.

- "90% of swipes by women are for men over 6’0, which does not reflect the importance women place on height in the real world. …What we see with algorithmic online dating isn't a mechanism to assign the perfect match to each person of the opposite sex. Instead, we've created a machine where the top 20% of men mate with many different partners and the top 80% women try to get the top 20% of men to date and ultimately marry them (and not just have sex with them)." Arnold Kling, 24 Sep 23, https://archive.ph/MKrpq

- "Men swipe right on 60% of women, women swipe right on 4.5% of men. The bottom 80% of men are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men. A guy with average attractiveness can only expect to be liked by slightly less than 1% of females. This means one “like” for every 115 women that see his profile." Erik Torenberg, 23 Sep 23, https://archive.ph/Ps8pI

- “Most single men on dating apps struggle to even get “likes” from women. Only a tiny minority of men receive a preponderance of matches, and that this disparity was comparable in scale to the income inequality of South Africa under apartheid. In contrast, the match disparity among females was similar to the magnitude of economic inequality found in Western Europe.” Attraction Inequality and the Dating Economy, Quillette, 12 Mar 19, https://archive.is/EvIj5

- "Women Say 80% of Men Are “Below Average. Are women’s standards just too high? A study by dating app OkCupid found that women find 80% of men unattractive or 'below average.'", Medium, 9 Sep 22, https://archive.is/SvBrV /

- Sociologist Rob Henderson cited statistics from a study on Tinder finding that women “like the profiles of only four percent of the men they see on the app, whereas men swipe right or like 60 percent of the profiles” (see 33:30 minutes into the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6ZyQKiwMQw).

- 80 percent of men will only receive a reply to their first message one-third of the time, suggesting that a large proportion of matches do not translate into meaningful interactions with the opposite sex. OK Cupid: Your Looks and Your Inbox, 17 Nov 09, https://archive.ph/yse2

- "The top 10 percent of men receive nearly 60 percent of the “likes” — the comparable figure for women is 45 percent." These statistics show why it’s so hard to be an average man on dating apps, Quartz, 15 Aug 17, https://archive.ph/Ywg0S

- "If Hinge constituted a sovereign, it would reflect an average wealth (measured in “likes”) for women, but for men, it would be the eighth most unequal country on Earth." What's The Biggest Challenge Men Face On Dating Apps?, Hinge, 6 Aug 17, https://archive.ph/nYrMg

- "A study by Grøntvedt et al. (2020) on Tinder use found that 'for every 57 matches, there was just one meet-up,' meaning less than two percent of matches resulted in a face-to-face date." This is How Many Tinder Matches It Takes to Get an IRL Date, Dr Justin Lehmiller, 15 Mar 21, https://archive.ph/ke2QW

- Ghosting — abruptly ending a romantic relationship without explanation — has become a common tactic in online dating and leads to most men's experience being one of constant rejection. "What Is Ghosting?", Men's Health, 2 Sep 20, https://archive.ph/rla9j

- "Here’s what many men experience.
“I want a man who is ambitious and makes lots of money — who also spends lots of time with the family”
“I want a strong, dominant man — but one who is emotionally vulnerable and totally safe.”
“I want to be fully independent — but I also want a man who pays for everything and provides security.”
“I want spontaneous romance — but only when I’m in the mood and it fits my schedule.”
“I want to be desired as a sexual being — but I don’t want to be objectified or judged for how I present myself.”
“I want a high-status man — but I want him to treat me like we’re equals.”"
https://x.com/JeffYoungerShow/status/1937437207351943391

- Loneliness is escalating, especially among young adults, linked to decreasing social interaction and rising single-person households. While dating apps offer extensive access to potential partners, overcoming real-world social hurdles, they paradoxically exacerbate dissatisfaction. These apps, by emphasising visual appeal and an "Elo rating" system, foster superficiality and an endless "exploration" phase. This leads to users becoming overwhelmed by choice, continually seeking a "perfect" match, and perceiving relationships as commodified. This system disproportionately benefits a small, highly attractive minority, alienating most users and contributing to the very loneliness the apps aim to mitigate. "The Problem with Dating Apps", 3 June 2025, https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-problem-with-dating-apps / https://archive.is/HSVj2

- Initially popular for simplifying courtship, dating apps like Tinder quickly gained traction, with 30% of American adults using them by 2024, and usage surging during the pandemic. However, their appeal is waning, evidenced by declining downloads and active users since 2020, and significant drops in company market values. Users express disillusionment due to overwhelming options, a disproportionate gender ratio (e.g., 84% male on Tinder), and concerns about scams. Younger adults, in particular, find apps superficial and exhausting, increasingly seeking offline alternatives like social events and clubs. "Why people have fallen out of love with dating apps", The Economist, 8 August 2024, https://www.economist.com/business/2024/08/08/why-people-have-fallen-out-of-love-with-dating-apps / https://archive.is/20250328012759/https://www.economist.com/business/2024/08/08/why-people-have-fallen-out-of-love-with-dating-apps

- Many profiles are fake or long-since abandoned: "Cupid PLC…denied allegations of enticing clients to subscribe to their numerous dating sites through deceptive business practices." 28 Mar 13, https://archive.ph/jYlz2

- Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written extensively about how Facebook products disproportionately affect young girls’ mental health, as they use likes and friend requests as markers of social approval ("The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls", 21 Nov 21, The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls, https://archive.ph/5e7gv). Dating apps may be causing a similar phenomenon among young men as they search for the elusive Tinder match. Evidence in support of this idea comes from a study conducted by the University of Texas which found that Tinder users experience more mental health problems than non-users. (American Psychological Association, 4 Aug 16, https://archive.is/J1KON)

- A 2021 University of Toronto study discovered that social anxiety and depression increased as users spent more time on dating apps. "Associations Between Social Anxiety, Depression, and Use of Mobile Dating Applications", 11 Feb 21, https://archive.ph/PWkAD

- Pew Research: 45 percent of users say the overriding emotion they feel on dating apps is frustration. 5 Feb 20, https://archive.is/pSQ7k

- Dating app usage is linked to poorer mental health outcomes, particularly in younger users. An average-looking man searching for a long-term relationship is likely to experience a scarcity of matches, as a small minority of hyper-successful good-looking men attract the attention of most female users. Unfortunately, dating apps’ convenience, popularity, and addictiveness often leave dissatisfied users in a vicious cycle of deleting and redownloading. They should consider deleting them for good. "The Re-Download: Behind the vicious cycle of deleting and redownloading dating apps", 4 May 22, https://archive.is/sgUc4

- “As the polar ice caps melt and the earth churns through the Sixth Extinction, another unprecedented phenomenon is taking place, in the realm of sex. Hookup culture, which has been percolating for about a hundred years, has collided with dating apps, which have acted like a wayward meteor on the now dinosaur-like rituals of courtship. “We are in uncharted territory” when it comes to Tinder et al., says Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. “There have been two major transitions” in heterosexual mating “in the last four million years,” he says. “The first was around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, in the agricultural revolution, when we became less migratory and more settled,” leading to the establishment of marriage as a cultural contract. “And the second major transition is with the rise of the Internet.” Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”, 6 Aug 15, https://archive.is/KDUM5

- “Online Dating Sucks For Men Because Of Women Like Me – I tell all my single girlfriends to give online dating a try. Why not? I say, what’s the worst that could happen? You set up a profile, pick some cute photos, write something witty about the things that you love (Beyonce, Hillary Clinton, Battlestar Galactica), list some books you like, and then sit back, kick your feet up, and wait for the messages to roll in. Your inbox will fill with notes from 19-year-olds in the ‘burbs, 40-somethings who find your taste in music “refreshing,” addled idiots writing “id f@@k u,” and a handful of age-appropriate, nice-looking guys who can string some sentences together and like to cook. With those, you will send a few messages back and forth before he invites you for a drink. You will put on some mascara, plunge out into the snow, meet a stranger, and after an hour of slightly stilted conversation, he will grab the check. You will try to split it, but he will pay, and you will stand to re-wrap yourself against the frigid wind. You will part ways, and you will probably, almost certainly, begin again the next day with another “Hey there…” message from the next contender. – I tell all my single guy friends to watch out for online dating. It is a sad, soul-crushing place where good guys go to die a slow death by way of ignored messages and empty inboxes. You will peruse profiles and find a few women who aren’t posing in a bathroom with their stomachs exposed. You will look for things in common in their profile (they like Scrabble too!). You will send them a note, carefully crafted to show interest and attention to detail. The first seven will not respond. The next one will, but she spells “you” as “u” and you will let the conversation stall. Finally, one of the cool girls writes back, and you will banter a bit, swapping favorite restaurants or concert venues. You will ask her to meet up “in real life.” At the bar, you will chat nervously for an hour (she is not as pretty or as funny as you had hoped she’d be), and then you will be saddled with the $27 check even though she ate most of the sweet potato fries. She will offer to split, but you think she doesn’t mean it and you don’t want to be a jerk. You will march home to an empty inbox and the desire to spend another hour browsing and writing will start to fade. [...]" 22 Feb 13, https://archive.is/mgQd4

- "Men high on the Dark Triad (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism) use dating apps. They might make up 10-20% of users. They go on a rampage, sleeping with lots of women, playing games with them, leading them on, ghosting them, lying to them, etc. Dark Triad men are excellent impostors; they are good at mimicking desirable romantic qualities, and are thus able to procure lots of sex partners. The women they sleep with become disillusioned. These women begin to behave in psychopathic and narcissistic ways to protect themselves from emotional vulnerability and pain, and perhaps as a way to even the score with “men” as a category. They learn to avoid Dark Triad men and exploit normal men. These men become confused and upset, and begin to treat other women the same way to “get even.” In short, Dark Triad men mistreat women, who then mistreat ordinary men, who then mistreat ordinary women. Bad behavior drives out the good. A system tailor-made for psychopathic males (dating apps facilitate anonymity, superficiality, and deception) predictably gives rise to a defect-defect equilibrium. Eventually, you have a situation where everyone adopts Dark Triad strategies of emotional coldness, unfeeling callousness, and calculated duplicity to obtain sex and avoid getting hurt. Most normal people, especially normal women, want no part of this. So more and more are choosing to opt out." "Swiping and Dating Preferences: Gender divides in sex and relationships", 23 Jul 23, https://archive.is/XA91R

- "...where we are in that cycle in modern dating leaves a lot to be desired compared to past generations... things have gotten significantly tougher than they used to be. Mostly, it’s men complaining about this, but as you are about to see, women are impacted as well." The New Horrors of Modern Dating, John Hawkins, 5 Jan 24, https://archive.ph/d06ux

- “We’re the Perma-Singles […] Whether it’s not wanting to be tied down or an aversion to dating apps, a growing number of British men and women are remaining solo.” The Times, 25 Jan 24, https://archive.ph/eQNwK

- "Men have been becoming increasingly frustrated with modern dating for at least a couple of decades now. […] However intriguingly, there seem to be more and more signs that women are becoming less content with modern dating as well. […] As a general rule, the more similar people are, the easier it is for them to connect. People are more likely to marry a partner with similar interests and within their own race, religion, and ideology. As our society has fragmented in almost every way imaginable, it makes it harder for people to get together. A black, liberal atheist who loves Black Lives Matter, the NBA and rap is probably not going to end up in a long term relationship with a white, conservative, evangelical Christian who loves Civil War reenactments, NASCAR, and country music." John Hawkins, 5 Jun 24, https://archive.ph/0j1xT

- WSJ: American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage. Major demographic shifts have put men and women on divergent paths. That’s left more women resigned to being single. ‘The numbers aren’t netting out.’ A 2022 Pew survey of single adults showed only 34% of single women were looking for romance, compared with 54% of single men, down from 38% and 61% in 2019. Men were also more likely than women to say they were worried that nobody would want to date them. A rise in earning power and a decline in the social stigma for being single has allowed more women to be choosy. “They would rather be alone than with a man who holds them back”... The share of women ages 18 to 40 who are single—that is, neither married nor cohabitating with a partner—was 51.4% in 2023, according to an analysis of census data by the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, up from 41.8% in 2000. https://archive.is/20250728044349/https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/relationships/american-women-are-giving-up-on-marriage-54840971

- “It’s become increasingly clear to me how much more straightforward it was for my parents’ generation. They went from dating to being in a relationship… The problem, I think, is that dating apps have given us too much choice…" Vogue, 11 Jun 22, https://archive.ph/KVhYf

- Internet dating/app dating only exacerbates a trend towards an increasingly overt commoditisation of male-female relations: TikiTok/Instagram 'thirst traps', pornography sites, OnlyFans, Seeking Arrangements, etc. e.g.

(1) “If you’re an attractive girl living in Topeka, Kansas – someone in LA can DM you and have you fly out there for the weekend …whereas in the past no one knew you existed and you just got married to the local guy in Topeka and became a soccer mom and were none the wiser that there are guys out there that would have paid you in Chanel to go to Aspen. So now we are creating a world where at least for some spectrum of people, sex and relationships have been reduced to transactions. Women get the shoes and the Instagram experiences and men get to avoid commitment. But does this leave everyone happier in the long run?” The New Spectrum of Hookers,
https://archive.ph/b7bqs (later renamed to 'sex workers': https://archive.is/VZ9qc)

(2) “During a recent trip to the US, I had lunch with a young man from New York, who told me glumly that many of his peers had spent the summer swanning around Europe while he stayed put in America. They were all flaunting it on Instagram, of course, but none as aggressively as a clutch of young women in their early 20s, who had spent time in the most expensive spots: the Amalfi Coast, Porto Cervo, Capri… They were either still in college or freshly out of it. But the reason they, rather than the young man, were able to go yachting off Sardinia while sipping Dom Pérignon was because rich older men ­had hired them to come on a luxury holiday with them… My friend betrayed no sense of surprise at the arrangement; such things had, he explained, become totally normal in his age group.” Why women want sugar daddies, Zoe Strimpel, 21 Sep 21, https://archive.is/Mwlse

(3) “…by formalising the competitive picture of a “sexual marketplace”, OnlyFans contributes to this crowding-out of cooperative human intimacy by synthesising something a bit like it as a product for paying subscribers: an aspartame version of intimacy, sweet enough to hit the pleasure centre but of questionable long-term health benefit. Thus OnlyFans virtualises, and monetises, the complex and shifting field of desire, longing and human connection in a form perfect for the lockdown-era social landscape of atomisation, loneliness and unemployment.” The desperation behind OnlyFans, Mary Harrington, 3 Dec 20, https://archive.is/TOQph

- “Women are attracted to funny men, it is often said. This is not true. It only appears this way because women laugh at everything a very handsome man says. So this gives the very handsome men the idea that they are funny.” Norm Macdonald

- Mutatis mutandis for men, but worse (based on the above): “I’ve been dating for 20 years. Why am I still single? Sophia Money-Coutts, 37, has had endless dates and numerous relationships: the Teacher, the Explorer, the War Correspondent, the Comedian... Here’s what she’s learnt” I’ve been dating for 20 years. Why am I still single?, The Times, 21 Jan 23, https://archive.is/Ly5TS

- Inside the dating lives of 12 single men: how bad is it on the apps? Men from 27 to 70 give their very honest accounts of what it’s really like in the trenches of modern romance. https://archive.is/20250508072927/https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/sex-relationships/article/men-dating-nc8j3j7h6#selection-1361.0-1367.108

- ‘Why Modern Dating is Broken’, https://youtu.be/HdakU_fourM

- Women are far more demanding than men: Women rate 72% of men as below average in physical attractiveness. [...] Men like 51% of women they speak to during 8-minute-long speed dates. Women like 31% of men. [...] Women are eight times more likely to be bisexual than men. Source: https://dkras.substack.com/p/sex-differences-attractiveness-and / https://archive.ph/12xhK

- FT comment:

"What I find fascinating is how the dating apps are changing modern dating-dynamics, with implications for the already declining birth rates. Essentially, they're making women really picky. In short: a small number of male profiles monopolise most of the female likes and messages on the apps, while the majority of male profiles are rejected by the majority of women. For casual encounters, this is great for the lucky men who are very tall, attractive, not-bald and in good jobs - but in a monogamous society it will have significant consequences. Lots of women risk timing-out of fertility because as they enter their 30s, their appeal to the 'top' male profiles plummets, and yet throughout their 20s they'll have been completely inundated by likes and messages, creating super high standards. And then there will still be men who will happily mess them around for casual stuff, but with zero intention of marriage - why as a 'top' male profile would you marry a 34 year old if you wanted kids, if you could instead marry a 26/26 year old. It sounds harsh, but I'm seeing this happen in real-time - my good-looking male friends (30/31) are swamped with likes and attention of women in their mid 30s, but only go on dates with under 30s. My female friends complain of how awful men are and how no one wants to commit (i.e. they're being messed around by the top 5-10% of men who are leading them on with no intention of marriage). In a weird way they are sort of recreating what was the norm in primitive human societies for 10,000s of years - polygamous dynamics with a small number of men reproducing with most men falling short. A few bits of evidence - there's a lot more out there, a lot of it fairly informal analysis but all finding the same pattern:
- An OkCupid study found that women find 80% of men unattractive on dating apps (1)
- "Men tend to like a large proportion of the women they view but receive only a tiny fraction of matches in return—just 0.6 percent. Women use the opposite strategy. They are far more selective about who they like but have a much higher matching rate of about 10 percent." (2)
- "Out of 100 profile views, a male user likes 35 profiles and skips 65 while a female user likes only four and skips 96 profiles, according to an internal survey by dating app QuackQuack." (3)
1 - goodmenproject.com/featured-content/women-say-80-of-men-are-below-average/
2 - www.technologyreview.com/2016/07/15/158803/how-tinder-feedback-loop-forces-men-and-women-into-extreme-strategies/
3 - economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/the-math-behind-dating-apps-women-like-only-4-out-of-100-profiles-men-more-likely-to-swipe-right/articleshow/75736043.cms
Source: www.ft.com/content/2969249f-f54b-4697-b9b5-48ab7daeb7ac?commentID=c813ddeb-30b6-4a6a-989b-0591fd9f812b"

- Freddie de Boer’s Demographic Dating Market Doom Loop presents an argument that educational hypergamy is lowering marriage rates. He writes: "The fact that women are earning so many more degrees than men has social consequences . . . It will, I’m sure, shock you to learn that research done with dating app data (which has the advantage of being more honest than mere self-described preference) shows that women place dramatically more stock in a man’s education and income level than men do when searching for a woman partner [...] As more hard-charging women flood a given dating market, while the number of eligible men drags behind because of increasing advantages for women in school and the workplace, fewer and fewer women are likely to find themselves with a partner they consider marriageable [...] Career women are faced with a growing structural disadvantage of insufficient suitable partners, which is exacerbated as they age because of men’s continuing preference for younger women." Freddie deBoer, 5 May 2023, freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-demographic-dating-market-doom

- Studies of mate selection in dozens of countries around the world have found men and women report prioritizing different traits when it comes to choosing a mate, with both groups favoring attractive partners in general, but men tending to prefer women who are young while women tend to prefer men who are rich, well-educated, and ambitious: Cashdan, Elizabeth. "Women's mating strategies." Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews: Issues, News, and Reviews 5, no. 4 (1996): 134-143.

- "Desirable mates are always in short supply. Glamorous, interesting, attractive, socially skilled people are heavily courted and rapidly removed from the mating pool. Those who succeed in attracting the 9’s and 10’s tend to hold on to them, escalating the effort they allocate to mate guarding.7 Transitions between relationships are brief for the beautiful. In modern monogamous societies, for those left on the sidelines of the mating dance, mate shortages get more severe with each passing year." (from The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "Tremendous benefits flow to couples who remain committed. From this unique alliance come efficiencies that include complementary skills, a division of labor, and a sharing of resources, as well as mutual benefits such as a unified front against mutual enemies, a stable home environment for rearing children, and a more extended kin network. To reap these benefits, people must be able to retain the mates they have succeeded in attracting. People who fail to stay together incur severe costs. Bonds between extended kin are ripped apart. Essential resources are lost. Children may be exposed to potentially dangerous stepparents. Failure to keep a committed mate can mean wasting all the effort expended in the selection, attraction, courting, and commitment process. Men who fail to prevent the defection of their mate risk losing access to valuable childbearing capabilities and maternal investment. Women who fail to retain their mate risk losing the mate’s resources, protection, and paternal investment. Both sexes incur opportunity costs, the lost opportunities for exploring other mating prospects. Given the high rate of divorce in Western cultures, and the existence of divorce in all cultures, it is obvious that staying together is neither automatic nor inevitable." (from The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- The conundrum of having kids in highly developed vs more primitive societies is that in less advanced, more agrarian, countries kids are free labor, where in modern societies they are little more than expensive furniture.

- "Standards of beauty are not arbitrary but rather embody reliable cues to reproductive value. Advertisers have no special interest in inculcating a particular set of beauty standards; they do want to use whatever sells products. Advertisers perch a clear-skinned, regular-featured young woman on the hood of the latest-model car, or gather several attractive young women to stare fondly at a man drinking a brand-name beer, because these images exploit men’s evolved psychological mechanisms and therefore sell cars and beer, not because advertisers want to promulgate a single standard of beauty." (from The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- In the MeToo-era, it is unacceptable for men to approach women who they work with or have any professional connection with. In busy professions however, this comprises the overwhelming majority of women we ever meet. Douglas Murray warns of this: "I think everybody is in agreement about what the rules are when it comes to heterosexual relations, which is that a man must be able to make one pass once in his life – although never at a colleague – and the recipient of the pass must be his helpmeet for life. Male approaches towards women now constitute a one-throw-once rule, with the one throw being a bulls-eye first time. Anything else opens up the man to accusations of sexual assault for the remaining decades of his life." https://archive.is/20240509052209/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-my-friend-kevin-spacey/

- Diversity Up, Fertility Down? Steve Sailer July 10, 2024, https://www.takimag.com/article/diversity-up-fertility-down. This article explores the provocative hypothesis that increasing racial diversity in the United States may be contributing to the nation’s declining fertility rate. Drawing on a recent preprint by finance professors Umit G. Gurun and David H. Solomon, the article highlights statistical findings suggesting a robust inverse correlation between local racial diversity and birth rates, controlling for other explanatory variables. The authors posit that diversity reduces opportunities for homophily—individuals’ tendency to partner within their own racial group—thus increasing the “search costs” of finding a suitable mate and delaying or deterring family formation. In highly diverse environments, this may lead to lower marriage and fertility rates. The article also revisits Robert Putnam’s controversial findings on how diversity undermines social trust and community cohesion, further compounding demographic effects by increasing social isolation. While the theory is not presented as a universal explanation—acknowledging, for instance, South Korea’s declining fertility despite low diversity—it is positioned as a potentially significant factor in the American context. Gurun and Solomon’s statistical model explains up to 89% of the post-2006 U.S. fertility decline through rising racial diversity, challenging mainstream narratives that treat diversity as an unqualified societal good.

- "All of you at your genetic, biological, and visceral level want to have women. All of you want to bang a ton of women. Most of you want to get married. And most of you want to have children. But women are not under your control. And today's modern women have (as a group) made the very clear choice they do not want you as much as you want them. This is a devastating existential and psychological blow, but it was not under your control. And therefore if you use stoicism to understand that, not only can you forgive yourself for something that was never your fault to begin with, but you can move on in life to enjoy it for what you can." The Menu, Aaron Clarey

- Middle Age Love (A Comedy Song by Riki Lindhome), Riki Lindhome sings a comedy song about the perils of intimacy as you get older. Middle Age Love is complicated... 30 Aug 2024, https://youtu.be/F3gUy40Stzg

- Manipulated luxury-apartment ownership enhances opposite-sex attraction in females but not males. A male photographed in a high-status setting (luxury apartment) was rated significantly more attractive by female participants than the same male in a neutral setting, despite identical appearance. No such effect was found for female targets rated by men. These findings support the role of contextual, status-related cues—especially in men—as influential factors in perceived attractiveness. https://archive.is/20240415030851/https://akjournals.com/view/journals/1126/12/1/article-p1.xml

- Avoid online "dating" (2013), https://archive.is/jDEu0. Online dating yields dismal response rates for most men — often under 4% — offering little feedback or confidence-building. In contrast, real-world approaches improve skills and success over time.

- USA Today (2014): Hollywood female stars paid way less after 34, https://archive.is/20150104061323/http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/01/30/hollywood-women-pay-salary-men/5050433. Female movie stars peak in earnings at age 34, then decline, while male stars peak at 51 and rise steadily. The disparity reflects Hollywood’s youth bias toward women.

- Why Women Can't Find a Good Man, Psychology Today (original 2012), https://archive.is/20240812224648/https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201203/why-women-cant-find-a-good-man. Modern dating frustrates many women due to a double bind between biological attraction and social expectations. Traits women find sexually appealing — dominance, ambition, status — often clash with qualities desirable in long-term partners, like agreeableness and emotional support. This mismatch leads many to oscillate between “nice guys” (safe but unexciting) and “jerks” (exciting but unreliable). The article explores strategies women use to navigate this dilemma, including leading in relationships, cautious partner selection, mixed-mating, and balanced role-sharing.

- Why Are Men Frustrated With Dating? Psychology Today (2012), https://archive.is/e0Kog. Modern men face a dating double-bind: if they follow social norms and act as compliant, supportive “nice guys,” they’re often overlooked romantically. Yet if they embrace biologically attractive traits—dominance, confidence, ambition—they risk being labelled as “jerks” and dismissed for long-term relationships. As social and biological expectations diverge, men increasingly report frustration and low incentive to date or commit. Strategies range from adopting dominant traits, choosing partners carefully, and maintaining high standards, to opting out entirely (e.g. MGTOW). Until norms shift, men must navigate dating through self-awareness, adaptability, and personal fulfilment.

- Why women lose the dating game (Sydney Morning Herald, 2012), https://archive.is/20241211194425/https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/why-women-lose-the-dating-game-20120421-1xdn0.html. Bettina Arndt’s article explores how the dating landscape has shifted to favour men, especially high-status men in their 30s. Many professional women delay settling down until after building careers, only to find that the most desirable men are either already taken or dating younger women. Men who were overlooked in their 20s often gain confidence and desirability in their 30s, creating a mismatch: high-achieving women seek equally successful partners, but the pool is limited and increasingly selective. Data show many men prefer younger partners, and some women regret rejecting good matches in their youth. Meanwhile, men enjoy greater choice and less urgency, creating a “buyer’s market.” "Today's unmarried twentysomething women have given men an ultimatum: I'll marry when I'm ready, take it or leave it. This is, of course, their right. But ultimatums are a risky thing, because there is always a possibility the other side will decide to leave it. In the next decade we will witness the end result of this game of marriage chicken." ...[This] is already in play for hordes of unmarried professional women - the well-coiffed lawyers, bankers and other success stories. Many thought they could put off marriage and families until their 30s, having devoted their 20s to education, establishing careers and playing the field. But was their decade of dating a strategic mistake? "Women labour under the impression they can have it all. They can have the career, this carefree lifestyle and then, at the snap of their fingers, because they are so fabulous, find a man. But if they wait until their 30s they're competing with women who are much younger and in various ways more attractive." Some women eventually settle, often with divorced men, but many find themselves caught between high expectations and dwindling options. The article critiques unrealistic romantic ideals and highlights the consequences of delaying serious relationships, urging women to re-evaluate expectations before time and choices run out.

- Size of the dating pool (2007): http://xkcd.com/314. This cartoon humorously reassures anxious singles that ageing doesn’t necessarily diminish dating prospects. While many fear the dating pool shrinks with age, the comic argues it actually broadens, as socially acceptable age ranges widen — especially under the “half-your-age-plus-seven” rule. A character supports this with data analysis, suggesting the number of potential partners grows until middle age. However, the punchline offers a self-aware twist: statistical optimism means little for those spending weekends making graphs instead of socialising. The underlying message is twofold — first, that fears about running out of time may be overstated, and second, that real-world dating success involves more than numbers; personal engagement, timing, and mutual connection still matter more than theoretical pools or projections. An extremely geeky statistical analysis of the assertions made in the cartoon is here: https://flothesof.github.io/xkcd-dating-pools.html

- Five Types of Dating Advice People Need To Stop Giving (2014), https://archive.is/oziRv. Article critiques five common but harmful pieces of dating advice: “just be yourself,” negging, arbitrary rules, rigid relationship timelines, and power games like withholding interest. It argues these tips often encourage dishonesty, manipulation, and emotional immaturity, rather than promoting genuine connection, mutual respect, and personal growth in modern relationships.

- The Abject Failure of Sex-Positive Feminism: A Case Study (2012), https://archive.ph/guYnd. Susan Walsh critiques sex-positive feminism through the evolving personal narrative of Tracy Clark Flory, a prominent sex blogger. Initially a vocal advocate for casual sex as empowering, Flory later admitted that her experiences — though varied and adventurous — often left her emotionally unfulfilled and sexually unsatisfied. Walsh argues that Flory’s public embrace of hookup culture masked deeper insecurities and a need for validation, and ultimately resulted in regret and fatigue. Despite defending her choices politically, Flory’s writing increasingly reveals disappointment with the emotional emptiness of no-strings sex. Walsh sees this as a tacit admission of failure: a personal and ideological retreat from a lifestyle once heralded as liberating.

- Loveonomics (2012), https://archive.ph/wip/Esp94. Susan Walsh’s Loveonomics applies economic theory to dating and marriage, framing partner selection as an “optimal stopping” problem. Drawing on economists like Gary Becker and Tim Harcourt, she explains that love, like labour markets, involves trade-offs and diminishing returns over time. As women age, their pool of desirable partners shrinks, especially given biological limits like fertility. Walsh references the “Marriage Problem,” which suggests women reject the first 36.8% of suitors, then accept the next one who exceeds all prior candidates. While seemingly clinical, this model encourages realism over romantic idealism and warns against delaying commitment under the illusion of endless options.

- Why You Should Date an Older Guy (2012), https://archive.ph/Ey8uB. Susan Walsh argues that dating men 5–10 years older can offer women in their 20s distinct advantages: older men are often more emotionally mature, financially stable, and relationship-minded. While younger men may still prioritise casual flings, many older men are seriously seeking long-term partners. Female peak fertility and male peak attractiveness tend to align in the late 20s, making this a strategic match. Downsides include declining male libido and fertility-related genetic risks with much older fathers, but these are minimal within a decade gap. Walsh encourages young women to include older men in their dating “portfolio,” provided they vet for commitment.

- Age Gaps are a Relationship Stress (2013), Athol Kay, https://archive.is/6f1sf. Kay argues that while small age gaps (0–5 years, typically with the man older) can benefit relationship dynamics — adding a natural leadership dynamic — larger age gaps introduce long-term stress. Older partners must continually remain competitive with their younger partner’s age cohort to maintain attraction. For older men, declining health, libido, or financial setbacks can destabilise attraction over time. For older women, risks emerge if a younger male partner “levels up” in confidence or social value, potentially outgrowing the relationship. Large age gaps can work, but only if both partners enter with clear-eyed awareness and sustained effort.

- The Myth of Plummeting Female Sexual Market Value (2013), https://archive.is/DsWxI. Susan Walsh argues that it is a myth that women’s sexual market value plummets after age 20, asserting that it’s a red-pill fantasy rooted in male insecurity. Fertility — and thus attractiveness — declines gradually from age 27, not 16.5. A statistician also refutes exaggerated male SMV peaks, noting that market competition lowers men’s actual value. Fear-mongering graphs distort reality. Women don’t "expire" at 30, and men aren't guaranteed peak desirability at 36.

- Aging Millennial Females Provide a Cautionary Tale (2012), https://archive.is/3p4oO. Susan Walsh’s article cautions Millennial women against prioritising career over relationships, warning that many find themselves unexpectedly single in their 30s. Despite educational and professional success, many women delayed serious dating, assuming a desirable partner would eventually appear. However, their high expectations — often for equally successful men — combined with a passive approach to dating, have left them struggling in a male-favourable market, especially as men prefer younger partners. Walsh encourages women to be strategic: date with intention, prioritise relationships in their 20s, and reject the myth of endless time. She also argues that most professional women eventually want to step back from work to raise children, and offers practical advice for planning a career accordingly — such as living below one's means, choosing a high-earning spouse, and recognising that time out of the workforce will come at a cost. Ultimately, she urges women to stop “performing” endlessly and instead take control of their romantic futures.

- Why Are So Many Professional Millennial Women Unable To Find Dateable Men? (Forbes, 2012), https://archive.is/20140830161317/http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2012/12/05/why-are-so-many-professional-millennial-women-unable-to-find-dateable-men. Larissa Faw explores why many successful Millennial women struggle to find “dateable” men, despite fulfilling their personal and professional goals. These women prioritised education and careers, assuming romance would fall into place later. However, they now face a dating mismatch: their expectations for ambitious, well-educated partners often exceed what the market offers, especially as women increasingly outpace men in income and qualifications. Despite this, many remain passive about dating, waiting for ideal partners through social circles rather than actively searching. Compounding the issue is the stigma around women pursuing relationships with the same energy as careers—ambition in love is often seen as desperation. Some experts suggest adjusting priorities to value compatibility and supportiveness over status. Others caution against settling for less. Ultimately, Millennial women are caught in a paradox: empowered yet disillusioned, selective yet underwhelmed by the available pool, uncertain whether to compromise or hold out for love on their own terms.

- Seven Reasons Women Reject Eager Men (2013), https://archive.ph/frgIX. Women reject overly eager men because early emotional intensity can signal desperation, low standards, or insincerity. Early affection can seem desperate, impulsive, or insincere. Gradual emotional investment signals confidence, selectivity, and reliability—traits many women find more attractive and trustworthy. Women prefer to earn a man’s affection gradually, valuing restraint, selectiveness, and emotional maturity.

- Women Get to Play Out of Their League (2011), https://archive.is/PSTa2. Because women often have casual sexual access to more attractive men, they may overestimate their long-term romantic prospects. This mismatch can lead to unrealistic marriage expectations, delayed commitment, and eventual dissatisfaction when settling for partners closer to their own desirability level.

- Why you don't have a wife/girlfriend (2013), https://archive.is/OEdqw. You may lack a wife or girlfriend because you're too passive, overestimate your attractiveness, or come across as desperate. Pursuing women far out of your league or trying to "rescue" unsuitable partners sets you up for failure. Instead, be realistic, decisive, and confident. Stop waiting for perfection or fearing rejection — relationships, like life, require risk and action. Accept your circumstances, adjust your expectations, and engage deliberately rather than hoping things will just happen.

- The One Obvious Problem (2014), https://archive.is/1iDmt. "...for the vast majority of people having trouble with the opposite sex, there is ONE OBVIOUS PROBLEM that is holding them back. This problem is obvious to any person who knows them and takes an objective look at the situation. For girls its usually: you’re fat, you’re a slut, you refuse to settle, or you’re a bitch. For guys: you’re fat, you don’t do anything interesting, you don’t meet new people, you’re a total pushover."

- Dragon’s Lair: Princess Daphne Teaches Girl Game (2013), https://archive.is/sn4bp. Men are biologically wired to be heroes for women — “White Knights” — but modern society no longer rewards this with romantic or sexual reciprocation. The old “rescue and receive” dynamic has broken down, leaving men giving time, money, and protection without return. The advice: stop White Knighting unless a woman reciprocates meaningfully - don't do favours for modern women. However, within a committed relationship, that dynamic can thrive — men enjoy protecting and providing when women show appreciation. A playful, feminine response like “squeal and clap” reactivates this instinct, reinforcing a positive feedback loop of masculine effort and female admiration.

- WSJ: The Rules of Attraction - Science illuminates the differences between the sexes (2013). https://archive.is/20160317120211/http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324162304578304052148043138. Research supports classic evolutionary psychology: attractive men tend to seek sexual variety, while attractive women favour commitment. Her data shows men and women behave differently when they have more mate options, revealing innate sex-based preferences. Another study challenges the “trophy wife” stereotype, finding most couples match in attractiveness and status rather than trade beauty for wealth. However, changing gender norms and rising female status — especially due to feminism — have strained dating dynamics, reduced male availability, and diminished romantic satisfaction for many modern women and men.

- Gray Lady Dumps Darwin: Feminism is the new creationism (2013), https://archive.is/20201213183626/https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323596204578241691461160054. "Men incline toward promiscuity, women toward hypergamy. Why would the New York Times, which scoffs at creationism, publish such an intellectually slipshod attack on evolution? Because evolutionary psychology contradicts the feminist dogma that the sexes are created equal, that all differences between men and women (or at least those differences that represent male dominance or superiority) are pure products of cultural conditioning. Feminism is the new creationism. The left loves to scoff at people who believe that Genesis is literally true, but these days feminist beliefs are a lot more influential."

- “A First-Rate Girl”: The Problem of Female Beauty (New Yorker, 2013), https://archive.is/20241230214511/https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-first-rate-girl-the-problem-of-female-beauty. Adelle Waldman explores how men’s obsession with female beauty — often unconscious and status-driven — shapes romantic dynamics in life and literature. Novels often gloss over the power and burden of beauty, portraying attractive women as effortlessly lovable. Yet, as authors like Richard Yates and Jonathan Franzen show, beauty can distort male desire, fuel insecurity, and trap both sexes in unfulfilling relationships. Men aren’t merely passive admirers of beauty — they act upon it in ways that affect women’s lives profoundly, yet society mocks women for caring about appearance while excusing male shallowness as "natural."

- High Fructose Porn Syrup (2013), https://archive.is/ODRSF. Most men find that even modest consumption of pornography subtly diminishes emotional connection and physical intimacy within a committed relationship. While initially perceived as a harmless indulgence or outlet, over time reduce desires for one's partner, weakens sexual energy, and sfoster a more detached approach to intimacy. Men report feeling more present, confident, and affectionate after removing porn from their lives, experiencing stronger arousal and emotional closeness. Like overly processed food, the hyper-stimulation of online porn can crowd out natural, nourishing experiences. Reducing or eliminating it often restores relational vitality.

- A Million First Dates: How online romance is threatening monogamy (2013), https://archive.is/20190411080549/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/a-million-first-dates/309195. Online dating has transformed how people approach relationships, offering endless romantic options at their fingertips. Jacob, a once commitment-seeking man, found himself increasingly detached from long-term partnership after discovering the ease of meeting attractive new partners online. His story reflects a broader societal shift: as dating apps grow more efficient and widespread, commitment becomes less essential. Easy access to alternatives raises expectations, lowers tolerance for imperfection, and undermines monogamy. While users gain confidence and avoid settling, they may also struggle to invest deeply in any one relationship. Psychologists warn that constant comparison and abundance can erode satisfaction, reduce emotional investment, and foster instability. Executives in the online dating industry acknowledge this, with some predicting that the future will bring better, but shorter-lived, relationships. The ease of connecting in the digital age may be making love more attainable — yet paradoxically, more elusive.

TinderTown (2013), https://archive.is/Z5nxc. Tinder and global connectivity have turned modern dating in cities like London into a fast-paced, disposable marketplace. With endless choice comes paralysis: many attractive, successful singles keep swiping, always seeking better. Formerly fulfilling village-style romance is replaced by fleeting encounters, leaving some emotionally adrift despite abundant opportunity. The dream match might be next door — yet many still keep looking.

- What Is Down Syndrome? https://www.verywellhealth.com/down-syndrome-7105041 / https://archive.is/DIvXy. "Risk factors for Down syndrome include: Advanced age of the parents, especially females age 35 and older at the time of conception. It's important to understand that if the genetic parents are in an at-risk age, a surrogate who is below the at risk age does not reduce the risk."

- "Scientific Evidence That Men Dig Barely Legal Chicks" (2013). Recent evolutionary psychology research suggests that men are often most physically attracted to women in their late teens to early twenties. This is thought to be linked not to immediate fertility, but to perceived long-term reproductive potential. The preference may reflect an evolved bias favouring signs of youth and health, which historically indicated a higher chance of successful offspring over time. These findings aim to explain certain broad patterns in human attraction, though social norms and ethics rightly shape how such preferences are acted upon in civilised society. Commentary: https://archive.is/3bA6b, Underlying source: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=5uVUwCE3Vm4C&lpg=PA113&pg=PA116

- Babies mar relationships (The Times, 2013), https://archive.is/GlLbs. A study by OnePlusOne, Sleep, Sex and Sacrifice, found that nearly two-thirds of new parents experience relationship concerns that did not exist before their child’s birth. Surveying 1,403 parents, the report revealed that 23% had separated from the other parent of their first child, with many breakups occurring during pregnancy or before the child turned three. Common stressors included sleep deprivation (38%), increased arguments (20%), feeling less close (29%), and a loss of couple identity (25%). The report urges early intervention and recommends training health and family workers to identify emerging relationship difficulties.

- How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society: The scary consequences of the grayest generation (2012), https://archive.is/20240101183411/https://newrepublic.com/article/110861/how-older-parenthood-will-upend-american-society. Judith Shulevitz’s article explores how delayed parenthood is reshaping society, medicine, and family life. While older parents often provide children with greater stability and resources, they also face increased fertility challenges and higher risks of developmental disorders in their offspring, including autism and schizophrenia. Both maternal and paternal age contribute to these risks, with men passing on more genetic mutations as they age. Fertility treatments, while helpful, may also carry unexamined dangers. This generational shift has broader social consequences. Parents who delay childbirth may have fewer children, contributing to global population decline and economic strain as ageing populations outpace younger workers. Children may lose parents earlier in life, impacting their emotional and financial stability. Meanwhile, ageing grandparents provide less familial support. To counter these trends, Shulevitz suggests changes to family policy, such as better childcare support, parental leave, and workplace reforms. Without these, society risks compounding the difficulties already faced by the “older parent generation.”

- Most Eggs Gone For Women By Age 30: By age 30 only 12% of a woman's eggs still remain (2010), https://archive.is/TJ63K. A joint study by the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh found that women have only 12% of their ovarian reserve left by age 30 and just 3% by age 40, making natural pregnancy increasingly unlikely. The research also found no evidence that women can regenerate eggs, contradicting some stem cell theories. Most women over 40 who conceive — especially with twins — likely use donor eggs. While future technologies may one day allow egg creation and genetic enhancement via stem cells, such advances remain speculative. For now, female fertility declines sharply with age, limiting reproductive options without medical intervention. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20100410062357/http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2010/Title,46684,en.html

- I thought having a baby when I was 'ready' would be easy. I was wrong. (Guardian, 2015), https://archive.is/hRN7k. The author, Monica Fike, describes her painful struggle with infertility after delaying motherhood, wrongly assuming conception would be easy when she was “ready.” Despite trying yoga, meditation, Clomid, and fertility treatments, she feels betrayed by her body and increasingly isolated. Her longing for a child is met with monthly heartbreak and emotional turmoil.

- Money Can’t Buy Us Love: Profiting From Loneliness (2015), https://archive.is/20210818185803/https://standpointmag.co.uk/features-november-2015-julie-bindel-money-cant-buy-you-love. Julie Bindel's article critiques the growing industry profiting from loneliness and the search for love. From expensive seminars and dating coaches to “mail-order brides” and surrogate babies, love and companionship are increasingly commercialised. She argues this commodification exploits vulnerable people, particularly women, and reinforces inequality. Emotional needs have become profit opportunities, but such services often offer little true connection. Ultimately, Bindel questions whether real intimacy can be bought—and warns against mistaking commerce for love.


—-
Comment on 'Roll on Friday" website by user originally named 'Biggie', later renamed 'la persona importante' (source: https://www.rollonfriday.com/discussion/matrimonial-english-law-q-just-bants-no-suing-if-youre-wrong / https://archive.is/iK9Bn)

“Men only get married to women because they are weak, are pressured to do so by the woman for her financial protection, and have a naive Disney view of love and marriage.
It is very common for women around 30 to all of a sudden want to settle down with any half-decent man so before her ovaries stop functioning. During their 20s, women are generally quite cavalier about the whole thing and are more concerned with Instagramming their food and weekend trips.
In their 30s, their focus shifts to taking endless photos of grim 2-3 bed suburban first homes, pictures of porches, photos at the bottom of the stairs, and of course the bald, ugly offspring. Which will grow up as the parents enter their 40s and 50s to gradually resent them more and more eventually deciding on sporadic contact once every month or two.
The men and women then often divorce between 40-55. The women rented the men for their semen and financial resources, the continuation of this arrangement is still largely dependent on financial circumstances. If she becomes more successful, the man loses his job, she gets some inheritance and generally if there is no financial upside to persisting, there's a good chance the marriage ends.
In the event it survives the ages between 40-60, both parties usually have aged significantly faster than their single counterparts, or those who have remained single for a significant period. People who were otherwise good looking in their 20s, have been bloated, overweight, and ugly for the rest of their shortened lives.
Love is generally nothing more than a bunch of hormones and your brain's reaction to certain chemicals. Sex, money, close contact with someone who is regarded as temporarily attractive provides it. Withdrawal symptoms follow after breakup just like taking any other drug.”
—-

Questionable, and most certainly not politically correct sources - most of which have now been censored (links are to archives):
https://archive.is/20210818081153/https://socionist.blogspot.com/2011/11/male-attractiveness-over-time.html
https://archive.is/20161106141410/https://therationalmale.com/2013/10/25/smv-is-it-real/
https://archive.is/20180814095559/https://heartiste.wordpress.com/dating-market-value-test-for-men/
https://archive.is/20180814094421/https://heartiste.wordpress.com/dating-market-value-test-for-women/
https://archive.is/20161020205130/https://therationalmale.com/2013/09/19/the-curse-of-potential/
https://archive.is/20230302230505/https://therationalmale.com/2013/10/20/sex-lies-and-statistics/
https://archive.is/20170208192721/https://therationalmale.com/2012/06/12/smv-in-girl-world/ and https://youtu.be/watch?v=H-gfxjAaZg0
https://archive.is/20160423113312/https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/the-difference-between-men-and-women-in-two-charts/
https://archive.is/20250117221633/https://therationalmale.com/2012/06/04/final-exam-navigating-the-smp/
https://archive.is/20241211194425/https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/why-women-lose-the-dating-game-20120421-1xdn0.html
Deeply cynical relationship timeline: https://archive.ph/I26uE
Chateau Heartiste archives: https://archive.is/offset=40/heartiste.wordpress.com
"Hoeflation is real. Men are working 10X harder than their grandfathers for women who are 20X worse than their grandmothers." https://x.com/menlearnthis/status/1848779063051083821
Hoeflation: https://www.google.com/search?q=hoeflation

- "More women than men complain that their spouse fails to channel the money they do earn to them, especially noting their failure to buy them gifts. By the fifth year of marriage, roughly one-third of married women voice this complaint; in contrast, only 10 percent of husbands express similar complaints. Conflict between the sexes corresponds remarkably well with the initial gender-linked preferences in a mate. Women select mates in part for their economic resources and, once married, complain more than men that those resources are not forthcoming or abundant enough." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "A common grievance of married men, far more than of married women, is that their spouse takes up too much of their time and energy. Thirty-six percent of married men, in contrast with only 7 percent of married women, express irritation that their spouse demands too much of their time. Twenty-nine percent of married men, but only 8 percent of married women, complain that their mates demand too much attention." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "Husbands with Much Higher Incomes Than Their Wives Have a Lower Chance of Divorce: The negative effect of a husband’s higher income relative to a wife’s income on the chances of divorce has not changed since the 1990s. The traditional male breadwinner family is still very much a reality in the U.S., and those couples where the wife has a higher income than the husband still have a greater chance of divorce than couples where the husband has a substantially higher income. This is not only true in the United States. In highly egalitarian Sweden, a higher share of income earned by the wife creates an increased risk of divorce, per one study, and another study found that even an unexpected windfall (winning the lottery) leads to a greater chance of divorce for female winners and a lower chance of divorce for male winners. These results suggest that the spouse who provides the most financially in the marriage matters differently to husbands versus wives, and they are consistent with the claim that women still value the financial prospects of a spouse more than men do." https://ifstudies.org/blog/husbands-with-much-higher-incomes-than-their-wives-have-a-lower-chance-of-divorce- / https://archive.ph/ZDcmH

- "Regardless of increases in women’s employment and gender egalitarianism in recent years in France, when the woman earns more than the man, the couple is more likely to split up, and the risk of breakup increases the more money she earns. The data on couple dissolution indicate that women still prefer a partner who can credibly support, or assist in supporting, a family. The reasons for this are likely due to sex differences in long term mate preferences that are deeply rooted in human nature, as research in evolutionary psychology has argued, and somewhat impervious to changing societal contexts and gender role expectations." https://ifstudies.org/blog/french-couples-are-more-likely-to-split-when-she-earns-more- / https://archive.ph/G91ez

- https://babylonbee.com/news/wife-finally-decides-on-restaurant-and-oh-no-the-heat-death-of-the-universe-happened-and-there-are-no-more-restaurants / https://archive.is/FfkkV

- "In contemporary America, women who make more money than their husbands tend to leave them. One study found that the divorce rate among American couples in which the woman earns more than her husband is 50 percent higher than among couples in which the husband earns more than his wife. Men whose wives’ careers blossom sometimes express resentment. In a study on the causes of divorce among women, one woman noted that her husband “hated that I earned more than he did; it made him feel less than a man.” Women also resent husbands who lack ambition. Another woman noted: “I worked full-time, while he worked part-time and drank full-time; eventually, I realized I wanted more help getting where I’m going.” Women eject men who do not fulfill their preference for a mate who provides resources, especially when they can earn more." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "Men who do use coercion to get sex exhibit a distinct set of characteristics. They tend to be hostile toward women, to endorse the myth that women secretly want to be raped, and to show a personality profile marked by impulsiveness, hostility, low agreeableness, low empathy, and hypermasculinity, combined with a high degree of sexual promiscuity." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "Lack of Economic Support A man’s ability and willingness to provide a woman with resources are central to his mate value, central to her selection of him as a partner, central to the tactics that men use to attract mates, and central to the tactics that men use to retain mates. In evolutionary terms, a man’s failure to provide resources to his wife and her children should therefore have been a major gender-linked cause of breakups. Men who are unable or unwilling to supply these resources fail to fulfill a key criterion on which women initially select them. Provisioning failure by men is a cause of divorce worldwide. In the cross-cultural study on conjugal dissolution, twenty societies cited inadequate economic support as a cause of divorce, four cited inadequate housing, three cited inadequate food, and four cited inadequate clothing. All these causes were ascribed solely and exclusively to men. In no society did a woman’s failure to provide resources constitute grounds for divorce. The seriousness of a man’s lack of economic provision is illustrated by the report of a woman in her late twenties who participated in a study of marital separation: My husband lost a series of jobs and was very depressed. He just couldn’t keep a job. He had a job for a couple of years, and that ended, and then he had another for a year, and that ended, and then he had another. And then he was really depressed, and he saw a social worker, but it didn’t seem to be helping. And he was sleeping a lot. And I think one day I just came to the end of the line with his sleeping. I think I went out one night and came back and he hadn’t even been able to get out of bed to put the children to bed. I left them watching television and there they were when I came back. The next day I asked him to leave. Very forcefully." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "One of the most prominent changes within marriage over time occurs in the realm of sex. Among newlywed couples, with each passing year men increasingly complain that their wives withhold sex. Although only 14 percent of men complain that their newlywed brides have refused to have sex during the first year of marriage, 43 percent express this feeling four years later. Women’s complaints that their husbands refuse to have sex with them increase from 4 percent in the first year to 18 percent in the fifth year. Both men and women increasingly charge their partner with refusing sex, although more than twice as many men as women voice this complaint. One indication of the lower sexual involvement of married people over time is the decline in the frequency of intercourse. When married women are less than nineteen years old, intercourse occurs roughly eleven or twelve times per month. By age thirty, this frequency drops to nine times per month, and by age forty-two to six times per month, or half the frequency of married women half their age. Past age fifty, the average frequency of intercourse among married couples drops to once a week. These results may reflect a lessened interest by women, by men, or most likely by both." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "It may be a cliché that men marry women increasingly younger as they age and remarry, but in this case the stereotype is verified by the statistics. These remarriage patterns are not quirks of North American countries but rather emerge in every country for which there is adequate information. In one study of forty-seven countries, age affected women’s chances of remarriage more than men’s. For the ages of twenty-five to twenty-nine, the differences in remarriage by sex were slight, because young women maintain high desirability at those ages as potential mates. By the ages of fifty to fifty-four, however, the sexes diverge dramatically in their remarriage rates. In that age bracket in Egypt, for example, four times as many men as women remarry; in Ecuador, nine times as many men as women remarry; and in Tunisia, nineteen times as many men as women remarry. The mating crisis is especially pronounced among educated women. Every year more women than men become college-educated. The disparity is already prevalent across North America and Europe, and the trend is beginning to spread across the world more widely. At the University of Texas at Austin where I teach, the 2016 student body consisted of 54 percent women to 46 percent men. This imbalance may not seem large at first blush. But if you do the math correctly, it translates into a hefty 17 percent more women than men in the local mating pool." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "The existence of large numbers of men who are unable to attract a mate may also increase sexual aggression and rape. Violence often becomes the strategy of people who lack resources that would otherwise elicit voluntary compliance with their wishes. Rape is sometimes perpetrated by marginal men who lack the status and resources that women seek in long-term mates. Furthermore, the likelihood of war is apparently higher in societies with a high ratio of males than in societies with a low ratio of males, supporting the theory that competition among males intensifies at times of a surplus of males." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "Today we are confronted with novel sexual circumstances not encountered by any of our ancestors, including reliable contraception, fertility drugs, artificial insemination, cyber sex, online dating apps, breast implants, tummy tucks, sperm banks, and the capacity to genetically engineer “designer babies.” Our ability to control the consequences of our mating behavior is unprecedented in human evolutionary history and matched by no other species on earth. But we confront these modern novelties with an ancient set of mating strategies that worked in ancestral times and in places that are irretrievably lost. Our mating mechanisms are the living fossils that reveal who we are and where we came from. We are the first species in the known history of three and a half billion years of life on earth with the capacity to control our own destiny. The prospect of designing our destiny remains excellent to the degree that we comprehend our evolutionary past. Only by examining the complex repertoire of human sexual strategies can we know where we came from. Only by understanding why these human strategies have evolved can we control where we are going." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "Desirable mates are always in short supply. Glamorous, interesting, attractive, socially skilled people are heavily courted and rapidly removed from the mating pool. Those who succeed in attracting the 9’s and 10’s tend to hold on to them, escalating the effort they allocate to mate guarding. Transitions between relationships are brief for the beautiful. In modern monogamous societies, for those left on the sidelines of the mating dance, mate shortages get more severe with each passing year." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- [H]uman males have faced a unique set of adaptive problems and so have evolved a unique sexual psychology. They prefer youth because of the centrality of marriage in human mating. Their desires are designed to gauge a woman’s future reproductive potential, not just the chance of immediate impregnation. They place a premium on physical appearance because of the wealth of reliable cues it provides to the reproductive potential of a potential mate. Men worldwide want physically attractive, young, and sexually loyal wives who will remain faithful to them over the long run. These preferences cannot be attributed to Western culture, to capitalism, to white Anglo-Saxon bigotry, to the media, or to incessant brainwashing by advertisers. They are universal across cultures and are absent in none. They are deeply ingrained psychological adaptations that drive our mating decisions, just as our evolved taste preferences drive our decisions on food consumption." (from "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David M. Buss)

- "My entire adult life, I’ve wrestled with the too-often-asked question posed by men [...] and kind old ladies alike: Why are you alone? I’ve been Girl with Impossibly High Standards, Girl Who Puts Career First, Girl Who Self-Sabotages Out of Fear, Girl Who Needs to Love Herself First, and Girl Who Gets in Her Own Way, Girl with Unresolved Questions About Sexuality, Girl with Unhealthy Trauma-Based Defenses. I’ve lived and shed every rom-com protagonist’s problems. [...] I went through high school without a boyfriend; college without a boyfriend or girlfriend; my twenties without cohabitation or postbreakup Ben & Jerry’s; no sloppy one-night stands at a bar in Williamsburg or a club on the Lower East Side turned into anything more. As years go by, narrative after narrative evades me; the possible storylines and adventures dwindle, and little gasps of optimism deflate, and deflate, and deflate."
Confessions Of A Perpetually Single Woman, Morgan Parker, Elle, 3 June 2022, https://archive.ph/fG4qe

- After a certain point, dating is no longer worth it anyway:

> "Mothers aged 23 to 32 ‘least likely to have babies with congenital disorders’, Ten-year window is ideal age for giving birth, say scientists behind study of 2.8m" The Telegraph, 27 Jun 23, https://archive.ph/LsqaC

> “Dating over 50: can we ever make peace with losing our looks? After a man she wanted said he wasn’t attracted to her, author Iona Italia, 53, considers what beauty really means.” The Times, 15 Apr 23, https://archive.ph/3q2hr

- Articles for and against 'Seeking arrangements' and similar sites:
Pro: "Why women want sugar daddies: Today's feminists, when dating, are coldly mercenary", 21 Sep 21, Zoe Strimpel, https://archive.ph/1eh39
Anti: "The bitter taste of Sugar Babe sites: There's nothing sweet about older men exploiting young women", Julie Bindel, 19 May 23, https://archive.ph/TkcQA

—-

A therapist’s take on why dating apps such as Hinge are sometimes extremely problematic:

1. Gatekeeping the top 1-7% (this is just a guess; the algorithm knows everyone’s rank) of people on the app and putting them in hot people jail (only to be accessed by either paying for tokens or through a weekly token) pedestals these people in a concerning way.

2. The top 10% of men in any given location are dating the top 90% of women on the apps. (“Players” can play play play like never before — the app world is their playground.) This misleads many women into thinking that they can partner with one of them in the long-term; they simply have to match with the right top 10% man. The odds aren’t rigged in their favor however; there’s false hope involved here.

3. The bottom 90% of men are f*cking furious about being rejected and neglected by women. (While this probably occurs for various reasons, the apps likely exacerbated this growing dynamic through their algorithms). This is where we see a lot of the rise of misogynistic incel culture and attempts to control women.

4. Your dating app data is NOT yours. As of 7/1/24, Hinge has new Terms and Conditions. This excerpt should disturb EVERYONE on the app: “By creating an account, you grant to Hinge a worldwide, perpetual, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free right and license to host, store, use, copy, display, reproduce, adapt, edit, publish, translate, modify, reformat, incorporate into other works, advertise, distribute and otherwise make available to the general public Your Content, including any information you authorize us to access from Facebook or other third-party sources (if applicable), in whole or in part,—…and in any way and in any format or medium currently known or developed in the future.”

5. Online dating combined the Paradox of Choice with gamified app culture which is a recipe for disaster. The Paradox of Choice leads many people to freeze and not choose a partner and/or to become serial daters with maximizer tendencies who prefer to keep their options open.


- "What unrestricted internet access did to Gen Z’s love life: A cautionary tale", FT, 6 August 2025, https://archive.is/h0QWG. Gen Z is experiencing a “romantic recession”, with record numbers of young adults abstaining from relationships, intimacy, and even dating. Elaine Moore explores how high living costs, political polarisation, and post-pandemic social habits play a role, but ultimately blames the internet’s unfiltered influence. Exposure to extreme content has left many disenchanted, with AI companions increasingly replacing human relationships. From abstinence to flirtatious chatbots, the shift marks a dramatic cultural reversal from previous generations. As governments belatedly impose online age checks, the damage may be done: Gen Z's digital upbringing has reshaped intimacy, possibly for good.

—-




**** MARRIAGE:


"In one word, marriage is “stupid.” It is simply no longer an acceptable proposition. The legal, financial, emotional, and psychological risks are just too great, and the chances of marriage being successful (meaning happily married till death do you part) is about 14%. It would be one thing if you had a 14% chance of choosing your favorite flavored ice cream, where failure merely meant you got strawberry instead of your preferred chocolate. But this is a life-destroying, mentally-debilitating, financial-crippling decision if you get it wrong. And people get it wrong 86% of the time." The Menu by Aaron Clarey

"I am old enough now to observe peers in their middle years, including some disappointed and hurt ones… The surprise of middle age, and the terror of it, is how much of a person’s fate can boil down to one misjudgement… If you marry badly — or marry at all, when it isn’t for you — don’t assume the damage is recoverable… life is path-dependent: each mistake narrows the next round of choices. A big one, or just an early one, can foreclose all hope of the life you wanted… A person’s life at 40…is skewed by a disproportionately important few [decisions]: sometimes professional, often romantic. Get these wrong, and the scope for retrieving the situation is, if not zero, then overblown by a culture that struggles to impart bad news… Looking around at the distress and regret of some peers, I feel sympathy, but also amazement at the casualness with which people entered into big life choices." Janan Ganesh, FT, 13 April 2024, https://archive.ph/IoyjR

"It has become, for many of us, ever harder to know what the point of marriage might be. The drawbacks are evident and well charted. Marriage is a state-sanctioned legal construct, fundamentally linked to matters of property, progeny and pension entitlements – a construct which aims to restrict and control how two people might feel towards one another over fifty or more years. It places a cold, unhelpful, expensive and entirely emotionally alien frame around what is always going to be a private matter of the heart. We don’t need a marriage certificate to show affection and admiration. And indeed, forcing commitment only increases the danger of eventual inauthenticity and dishonesty. If love doesn’t work out, being married simply makes it much harder to disentangle two lives and prolongs the agony of a dysfunctional union. Love either works or it doesn’t – and marriage doesn’t help matters one iota either way. It is completely reasonable to suppose that the mature, modern and logical move is to sidestep marriage entirely, along with the obvious nonsense of a wedding. It would be hopeless to try to defend marriage on the grounds of its convenience. It is clearly cumbersome, expensive and risky, as well as arguably at junctures wholly archaic. But that is the point. The whole rationale of marriage is to function as a prison that it is very hard and very embarrassing for two people to get out of. The essence of marriage is to tie our hands, to frustrate our wills, to put high and costly obstacles in the way of splitting up and sometimes to force two unhappy people to stay in each other’s company for longer than either of them would wish." Alain de Botton, The School of Life: An Emotional Education.

"Your choice of wife is the biggest decision of your life. Who you marry will shape your life forever in ways you can’t yet imagine. Also, for men, the ugly truth is the way marriage law and family court currently work, getting married puts you in a very vulnerable position. Your trust in the character of your wife and your ability to maintain her positive interest in you, amount to your best and perhaps only, defense against some very nasty outcomes. Unless you are completely confident in your choice of wife and ability to maintain your relationship, I advise you not to get married at all." The Married Man Primer 2011, Athol Kay

“Getting married is serious business. Ideally when you get married, it’s the one marriage you have your whole life. That being the case, you’re marrying a woman not just for what she is, but also for who she will be, decades from now.” Kay, supra.

“Marriage is at its heart, a sexual relationship. Without the sex it's just a legally binding friendship, which is a needlessly complicated way of having a friend. The basic agreement of being married is to meet each other’s sexual needs and not to run round getting them met anywhere else. Both affairs and sexless marriages break that relationship agreement.” Kay, supra.

- The career boost of marrying well - Emotionally competent partners are valuable to workers and bosses alike, FT, 15 June 2025: "...I was reading When The Going Was Good, the recent memoir by former Vanity Fair magazine editor Graydon Carter. It ends with a list of life advice that includes what Carter thinks are the essential ingredients to look for in a mate, namely someone who is Fisk: funny, interesting, smart and kind." https://archive.is/20250618170903/https://www.ft.com/content/e808e11b-fc0f-478b-9a98-82e56065a93b

“A 2017 study published in the British Journal of Medicine, surveying 11,500 British adults, found that 15% of men and 34% of women reported a lack of interest in sex. Among women in particular, being in a relationship for longer than one year, or living with a partner, was statistically associated with a drop in sexual interest. This result has been replicated in other studies. Overall, the data show that relationship duration negatively predicts women’s sexual desire, while male desire tends to remain relatively steady.” bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/9/e016942

“…his home life had long since settled into a sexless kiss hello, followed by a perfunctory recitation of the minutiae of the day, followed by the sounds of the television in the next room, followed by sleep. He and his wife had become strangers, bound mostly by past and progeny, acquaintances who continued to share the same space merely out of habit, the result of some long-ago momentum that itself was slowly dying, as, he supposed, were they.” Inside Out, Barry Eisler.

“The overwhelming emotions and experience of being in love are for the evolutionary purpose of bonding two people to increase the likelihood they will procreate and maintain an environment in which the resulting offspring survive.” quillette.com/2019/05/03/sex-love-and-knowing-the-difference

"It doesn’t take much imagination to see sex as a transaction in which consent is traded for affection, kindness, co-parental devotion, or even cold, hard cash. Most relationships involve plenty of give-and-take in which consent, affection and hard workflow both ways. Our evolved needs for sex, love and affection take on an economic flavour, emotional goods traded on an unseen mating market… Married women, older women and wealthy women benefit when prudish norms keep the young, beautiful and less well-heeled from leveraging their sex-appeal. But a high price of sex also makes the sexual bargain more lucrative for those women at the peak of their youthful beauty." theconversation.com/selling-sex-in-music-videos-and-video-music-awards-47842

"When a man asks a woman to marry him, and bestows on her a diamond ring, what does he get in return? A promise that at some mutually-agreed date they will begin a life of cohabitation, cooperation, and, perhaps, reproduction. But, as many a fiancé has no doubt asked himself, why does he lay out two months’ wages for a ring, whereas his fiancée does not? If they mutually wish to marry their fortunes together, then what renders the engagement so one-sided? The blunt answer is that her sexuality has a value that his lacks… Gary Becker won the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize for extending economic analysis to, among other things, human social living and sexual relationships. Becker, and the economists who followed, demonstrated that people exchanged sex for goods, labour, protection, loyalty, property, and even cash. Individuals compete within mating markets and “prices” are shaped by supply and demand." quillette.com/2022/02/17/diamonds-arent-forever-and-neither-is-your-love

“…time has very different effects on men and women. As the years pass and women lose their physical attraction, men are typically rising in income and occupational status. It is usually easier for a middle-aged man to abandon his wife and make a second marriage with a younger “trophy wife” than for a woman to remarry equally as advantageously. Since a woman has often invested years of her life in creating a home and family, the marriage contract is one way of trying to assure her that this investment will not be in vain.” Thomas Sowell, Controversial Essays.

“I just don’t see the point of it unless you’ve got kids, when the world is set up to make it easier for you if you’re married, legally. The idea of being with only one person for ever is…I don’t know…I’m not sure that’s natural or achievable. If you look back at why marriage was set up, it was economic or it was social status. It was a contract. Now women are more economically independent, marriage is purely about love.” “[But] how long does love last? Can it really last a lifetime? People expect for ever and when it doesn’t work out they’re somehow surprised.”… When I was in my twenties I was right in the middle of all this stuff,” she says, looking straight at me. “But you must remember the magic dust of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The love potion that descends. You fall in love with a donkey and the veil lifts and it’s just a donkey. It’s extraordinary.” Ruth Wilson interview, Sunday Times, 27 Feb 22, https://archive.ph/LwbFq

"A clear-eyed account of what lifelong commitment to another entails, even in ostensibly happy marriages: “You’ll still wake up every morning wondering why you signed on to drag this wretched, snoring heap of meat with you everywhere you go until the day you die”. She concludes that anyone embarking on lifelong cohabitation is “a true masochist. The reason I wrote the book in the first place is in our culture we love to tell stories about falling in love. There are a lot less stories and books and movies about actually making a relationship work over the long haul. I kept picking up books about marriage and then throwing them across the room. They just felt so false. It’s not immoral to tell your story the way you want to tell it, but it feels merciless to the culture at large to offer these carefully curated glimpses of people’s lives, which you see so often on Instagram and Twitter, where everything is serene and lovely and calm and loving. It seems as if what makes you feel empowered in this f***ed-up world is creating an illusion for others. If we ever learn about a miserable marriage, it’s almost always post-facto, once the divorce has come through. “We pretend marriage is a binary system, either you’re happy or unhappy…marriage is a funny thing. It’s insane and completely deluded to set out to try to stay with the same person until you’re dead" - Heather Havrilesky on hating her husband and her tell-all memoir, “Foreverland”, The Times, 28 Feb 22, https://archive.ph/98MX7

"When you consider all of the variables that we want satisfied in our choice of partner, it isn’t any wonder that there are so many dissatisfied men and women. Just think about the number of areas that are important to you in choosing a partner. My areas of importance are intelligence, manners, kindness, emotional maturity, the ability to empathize, a good listener, financial solvency (or at least reasonably good with money), over five foot eight tall, excellent personal and dental hygiene, and good dress sense. That’s what I want before I even snog someone! What if you meet some guy and he ticks all the boxes but there is absolutely no sexual chemistry between you? Or, alternatively, if there are areas in which you are very compatible and others where you don’t overlap at all? What is the statistical likelihood of meeting someone who is available and ticks all the boxes on your list, including wild sexual chemistry, and whose boxes you tick? My God, we’ve no chance, have we?" Misc., 2022.

"Never before have our expectations of marriage taken on such epic proportions. We still want everything the traditional family was meant to provide—security, children, property, and respectability—but now we also want our partner to love us, to desire us, to be interested in us. We should be best friends, trusted confidants, and passionate lovers to boot. The human imagination has conjured up a new Olympus: that love will remain unconditional, intimacy enthralling, and sex oh-so-exciting, for the long haul, with one person. And the long haul keeps getting longer." Esther Perel, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. https://www.amazon.co.uk/State-Affairs-Rethinking-Infidelity-anyone-ebook/dp/B074L6T99M

"I recently went for a drink with a friend who is married, in her forties, with two children. While talking to her about the dilemma of being a thirtysomething baby-agnostic woman—when to do it, who to do it with, whether to do it on one’s own, whether it’s something that’s even possible, whether it’s something you even want—she said, very plainly: “You do know children ruin your life, Dolly? And that I don’t know any married couples who are happy?” This is something I hear more and more from women who are married with children. They tell me that they miss their old life, that a life with children is governed by duty and responsibility and fear. They feel like they’ve lost touch with themselves. They tell me there is no room for any pleasure any more. And yet, when I ask them whether they’d reverse the existence of their beloved child if they could, they all say exactly the same: they absolutely wouldn’t. But if there had been an opportunity to experience parenthood before their baby existed, if there were a way to do a free three-month trial before committing to the 18-year contract, they would have tried it. And they probably wouldn’t have chosen to have a baby afterwards." Dear Dolly, I'm 32 and love being single, The Times, 29 Jan 23, archive.ph/sL2GN

Male/female interest in sex: quillette.com/2018/10/14/keeping-it-casual

Most men are only attracted to young women: www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-prefer-naturally-beautiful-women-without-makeup

"For Women, Aging Is Like a Horror Film", archive.ph/9s5zg

Example appalling divorce behaviour: www.rollonfriday.com/discussion/if-you-were-getting-divorced-and-wanted-really-fook-over-other-party

"Letters of Note" re. marriage. E.g. "I am permanently damaged by the break-up of marriage. Those wounds will never heal. Kurt Vonnegut, Letter to his daughter, 29 Apr 77", archive.ph/4rdXF

“A diary of divorce”, The Spectator, 29 Dec 22, archive.ph/k3cPb

"Mating markets and bargaining hands: Mate preferences for attractiveness and resources in two national U.S. studies": www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915005462

- Damage/costs of divorce:

www.profgalloway.com/divorce

"The Scandal of Costs in Financial Remedy Proceedings in English Family Law", 13 October 2022: https://financialremediesjournal.com/content/the-scandal-of-costs-in-financial-remedy-proceedings-in-english-family-law.9ff96c940ec346df8fdabe6ca45f672e.htm / https://archive.ph/eqW3y

- E.g.:
www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2022/27.html (£650k)
www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2022/53.html (£1.67m)
www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2021/88.html (£2.3m)
www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2020/41.html (£600k, Judge: 'It is scarcely credible that at the end of it all, they emerge with about £5,000 each of liquid assets, having incurred nearly £600,000 of costs, but such is the reality.')

- Crazy ex-wife organises her assisted suicide, then for her husband to be ruined by social media influencers: www.thefp.com/p/a-wifes-revenge-from-beyond-the-grave

- ‘In a world full of massive innovation, there seems to be a limited prototype about what happiness in life is. My biggest liberation, or emancipation, has been to realise that… You just create it! It’s up to you.’ Times interview with actor Andrew Scott, 2 June 2019, archive.ph/kvznF

- The "I regret having children" Facebook group: www.facebook.com/IRegretHavingChildren

- "Having a kid feels like financial suicide as more parents take on debt to pay for childcare", Sky News, 19 Feb 24, archive.is/8b0YP

- Reddit - what’s the worst part of having a child: www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/10iqvtp/whats_the_worst_part_of_having_a_child/

- Ricky Gervais's reasons for no kids: overpopulation, needy, worry. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFJT4Ibz_Mk

- Day in the life of a childless woman, twitter.com/thedailyshow/status/1624076223700926464

www.thefp.com/p/does-divorce-make-you-hotter (see links within)

Married misery has replaced the romcom, The Times, 21 Aug 22, archive.ph/R8gSx

“I am considering an affair to escape the pain of my marriage”, 12 Sep 22, archive.ph/isMMF

"Quilt on Fire by Christie Watson review — the truth about the menopause", The Times, 15 Jun 22, archive.ph/nK9Mu

"I’m sharing the empty nest with a middle-aged adolescent…the happy retirement I imagined we’d enjoy together seems unlikely", Telegraph, 20 Apr 24, archive.ph/V72S4

Why don’t men pursue women any more?: youtube.com/shorts/pnNRFQqcW9I

"10 lessons in love from divorce lawyers": www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/aug/03/how-to-make-a-relationship-work-10-lessons-in-love-from-divorce-lawyers / archive.ph/PAACH

** Pro-marriage articles:

1. betonit.substack.com/p/shes-the-one / archive.ph/QEvic - "What do I look for in a person I'm going to marry? How do I know if she is the one?"

2. www.robkhenderson.com/p/how-to-choose-a-romantic-partner / archive.ph/UWKnD - "Many men devote monumental effort to educational attainment, career striving, and occupational success. It would be wise to expend no less effort on identifying a compatible partner."

3. The Generation Of Girls Who Stopped Dreaming About Marriage. Evie, 29 Dec 25, https://eviemagazine.substack.com/p/the-generation-of-girls-who-stopped / https://archive.is/3SBM9. Young women today are far less likely to aspire to marriage than previous generations, with Pew data showing teenage girls now less enthusiastic than boys. Once viewed as a source of security and fulfillment, marriage is increasingly perceived as a risk—marked by high divorce rates, financial vulnerability, and emotional burnout. Women's growing independence, combined with many men's emotional immaturity and reluctance to assume responsibility, has eroded faith in partnership. Yet beneath the cynicism, the desire for devotion persists, calling for renewed male effort and cultural reverence for marriage as a sacred sanctuary.

4. Normative marriage has *group* beneficial effects, incl. decreased violence, increased savings and child investment and economic productivity. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2011.0290

** MISC

- Most people meet by their late 20s: the best go first.

- Even once secured, relationships are often hard work and have a poor ROI.

- Historically, marriage was only needed by men for sex, and women for money.

- For men, attraction is fleeting, so transitory impulses are untrustworthy. Ask men what % of women on Facebook they were attracted to 10 years ago they still find attractive now the latter have aged. Then project that forward…

- As men age, the Venn diagram of “Women who are age-appropriate” and “Women to whom we are attracted” is two separate circles growing ever further apart.

- Marriage deliverables are primarily: sex, children, and long-term companionship. For those who don’t want children and are skeptical of the predictive validity of their ability to assess lifelong compatibility, sex is both (a) overrated; and (b) if necessary, available transactionally with far less investment or risk.

- Limerence ('romantic love') is a hormonal imbalance evolved to enable the propagation of the species by encouraging procreation and pair bonding while infants are vulnerable. It passes.

- In long term relationships, once both partner novelty and evolutionary procreative urges are exhausted, female sexual interest collapses. Most married women would prefer more sleep to more sex.

- Men, however, lose interest in specific women, rather than sex per se. The "Coolidge effect" is the phenomenon whereby males exhibit renewed sexual interest whenever a new female is introduced to have sex with, even after cessation of sex with prior but still available sexual partners. Billy Bob Thornton (Angelina Jolie's ex) described this phenomenon thus: "Sometimes with the model, the actress or the sexiest person in the world, it may literally be like f*cking the couch."




**** CHILDREN:

- Child rearing has been described as, "Like running a nursery with someone you used to date".

- I have neither the time nor desire to take on an 18+ year-long project as, inter alia, investor, security guard, chef and chauffeur. Children require an enormous investment of time, effort and money, with mixed rewards and high risks. Worst case, they are disabled or ill. Best case, they are delightful, but time & money black holes. E.g. toddlers & teenagers can be a nightmare. It’s a poor ROI.

- I changed career to become a lawyer for freedom and independence. Kids sabotage that.

- A statistically significant % of parents, including several friends, regret having children. I would likely be in that group.

- Divorce with children can be catastrophic, so breeding increases existing relationship risks.

- I have over 2,800 unread Kindle books, and will likely die before reading them all. Children would only exacerbate the challenge.

- I want to regain a sub 3-hour marathon time, requiring focus and time. Children would again be a distraction.

- I have many professional goals I would like to pursue. While I won’t achieve all of them (if I did, I wasn’t being ambitious enough), children would again be a distraction.

- Objective studies (Kahneman, 2004, Gilbert, 2006, Powdthavee, 2009) evidence that parents are “less happy” – but posit in consolation that some are “more satisfied”. Money, peace & quiet, and independence satisfy me. Perhaps I’m shallow.

- Alain de Botton, The School of Life: An Emotional Education: "Resilience. The wise have a solid sense of what they can survive. They know just how much can go wrong and things will still be – just about – liveable. The unwise person draws the boundaries of their contentment far too far out, so that it encompasses, and depends upon, fame, money, personal relationships, popularity, health … The wise person sees the advantages of all of these, but also knows that they may – before too long, at a time of fate’s choosing – have to draw the borders right back and find contentment within a more confined space." Implied task: draw 'the boundaries of one's contentment' narrowly.

- Chasing women is an irrational evolutionary hangover: “...over many human generations, men who underestimated the threat of disease from casual sex outnumbered those who were duly cautious about their chances of getting infected. Natural selection plays the numbers game. And overall, more men would have survived impulsive sexual decisions than not, thereby replicating their genes. So those old jokes about “thinking with the wrong head” do, in fact, accurately reflect the crude, stereotypically impassioned male, but there’s evolutionary logic to such idiocy. Many of us alive today, men and women, are the descendants of males whose heedless passions effectively short-circuited their long-term reasoning abilities.” Bering, Jesse. Perv. Random House, 2013.

- There are more important things in life than obsessively pursuing sex: “I’m struck by how, except when you’re young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.” What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami and Philip Gabriel

- Movie aphorisms:
“If it flies, floats or [fornicates], don’t buy it, rent it”
"The cheapest woman is the one you pay for"



**** JOKES

- The only winning move is not to play. (Originally from the 1983 film, "War Games", but women and nuclear weapons have surprising similarities)

- A bachelor is a guy who hasn’t made the same mistake once.

- There are three rings in a relationship: the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the sufferRING.

- Marriage is like a tornado: at the beginning, there is lots of blowing and sucking, then you lose your house.

- Save time getting married: just find someone you don’t like, then buy them a house.

- Do you know why divorce is so expensive? Because it's worth it.

- I bought my daughter the new ‘Divorced Barbie’ doll. It came in a huge box with Ken's house, Ken's car, Ken's boat, Ken's furniture, Ken's sports gear and half of Ken’s pension.

- Marriage is like being in prison: except your cellmate doesn’t want to have sex with you.

- How do you stop a woman sleeping with you? Marry her.

- If you put a pound into a jar every time you have sex before marriage, then take a pound out every time you have sex afterwards, you will never run out of money in the jar.

- I got whiplash from the zeitgeist shift from Fifty Shades of Grey to Me, Too. (I found this SNL skit from October 2013 (i.e. before the Great Awokening, and when SNL was still funny), which explained the rule: "Be attractive, don't be unattractive", Sexual Harassment and You - Saturday Night Live, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxuUkYiaUc8. As a comment under the video also acerbically notes: "If Christian Grey were poor, 50 Shades of Grey would be a crime thriller not a romance.")

Q. When did you notice your wife was dead?
A. Well, the sex was the same, but the dishes had started to pile up.

Q: Why do they call it PMS?
A: Because mad cow disease was already taken

I like my women like I like my whisky:
Aged 18 years, and mixed with coke.

Q: How do you get your wife to scream during sex?
A: Telephone her and tell her all about it!

Q: What do a swimming pool and a wife have in common?
A: They are both very expensive to maintain for the amount of time actually spent in them.

- A man asked a woman to marry him. She said no. He lived happily ever after.
(...including having eight hours of sleep every night, keeping in superb physical shape, scuba diving and indulging his other hobbies every weekend, reading books extensively, travelling spontaneously, and never having to feign interest in child rearing, home decor, women's fashion or other domestic trivia. Upon retirement he became an angel investor — focusing exclusively on businesses operated by single women in their early 20s.)



**** Extract from "The Menu: Life Without the Opposite Sex"

I found the following description illuminating, if also depressing. It’s from The Menu: Life Without the Opposite Sex, by Aaron Clarey, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Menu-Life-Without-Opposite-Sex-ebook/dp/B09X963THL

"The Economics of Needs vs. Wants

For most of human existence, need was the glue that incentivized and kept men and women together. Women needed men to provide food, shelter, and protection. And though men technically could survive without women, the sex drive god or nature gave them essentially made men need women as well. Certainly so if men wished to pass on their genetics.

But now that men and women no longer need each other, all that remains is what we want or desire. And wants/desires are a lot more luxurious, and therefore expensive, than needs.
For example, women don't need a man to make $100,000 a year. $50,000 is enough to support a family. But with their own careers or government paying out that much anyway, the man who makes $50,000 is moot. Women can and often do demand a man make $100,000.

Another example is height. A girl who is 5'2'' doesn't need a man who is 6'0"+. A 5'8" man would perfectly suffice. But with women no longer needing a man, they can luxuriously insist they date one of the 14.5 % of men who are 6 foot tall or taller.
And in the olden days plumbers, truck drivers, and electricians were certainly admirable professions, and ones that would also prove useful around the house. But in not needing men, women can pursue men with more prestigious careers because why not? They don't have to settle for a mechanic because there is no need to. They will hold out for the investment banker.
Men can also be lofty with their demands of women as well.

No man needs a size 2 woman to be his wife. The vast majority of women are simply not that size. But using porn as a substitute, he can imagine he has not just one, but an infinite harem of women that fit into that microscopically small percentage, with double D boobs to boot!

Similarly, no man really needs a loving, doting woman to be nice to him. He can get that once again digitally through sites like Only Fans or in the real world via escorts, “the girlfriend experience,” or using any one of a number of “sugar baby sites.”

And a man can insist his future wife cook, clean, do all the household chores, do the taxes, renew the insurance, and drive the kids everywhere while working a full-time job because inconvenient as all those are, modern day appliances and technology made it possible for him to do all those things as a bachelor.
Therefore, when it comes down to it, most men and women are willing to provide what the other needs, but refuses (or simply can’t) deliver what the other wants. And thus we find ourselves at this great impasse where we are effectively not all that interested in each other.

The Most Important Question

The problem is this mismatch between what men and women want does not undo 2 million years of human evolution. And so, while our delusional 2022 tastes make it so we're really not interested in what the opposite sex is offering, our 2 million years of human genetic hard-wiring compels us to still find a way. And thus why I find so many men and women at my consultancy's doorstep asking two questions. One naively hopeful, the other depressingly tragic.

One, “How do I find a guy/girl?”

and

Two, “If I can't find someone, what do I do?”

The first question can be answered rather simply and resolutely for many of you.

"You won't."

You simply won't find another person and your dating experiences will corroborate that. Give up hope. Stop ruining your life with expectations that will never translate into reality. Stop wasting precious hours of your life “swiping” on apps. Stop torturing yourself.



**** New material to add

https://archive.is/20250403121636/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/03/regret-having-children-chappell-roan-london-childcare/


Lines from "Up in the Air”:

(Video here: https://youtu.be/DsVUFXVx2pQ?start=42)
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney): [on the docks in Miami] You know that moment when you look into somebody's eyes and you can feel them staring into your soul and the whole world goes quiet just for a second?
[Pause...]
Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick): Yes.
Ryan Bingham: [shrugs] Right. Well, I don't.
Natalie Keener: you're an asshole.
[...]
(Video here: https://youtu.be/Dw6VE8jjP-0)
Alex Goran: [referring to Natalie's boyfriend, in Miami] What a weasly prick.
Natalie Keener: Yeah, but what does that make me? Someone who falls for a prick.
Alex Goran: [sitting next to Ryan] We all fall for the pricks. Pricks are spontaneous, they're unpredictable and they're fun. And then we're surprised when they turn out to be pricks.
[...]
Natalie Keener: [sitting across from Ryan and Alex in Miami] I thought I'd be engaged by now. I thought by 23, I'd be married, maybe have a kid, corner office by day, entertaining at night. I was supposed to be driving a Grand Cherokee by now.
Alex Goran: Well, life can underwhelm you that way.
Natalie Keener: Where did you think you'd be by err...?
Alex Goran: It doesn't work that way. At a certain point, you stop with the deadlines. It can be a little counter productive.
Natalie Keener: I don't want to say anything that is anti-feminist. I really appreciate everything that your generation did for me.
Alex Goran [dryly]: It was our pleasure.
Ryan Bingham [wryly]: Well done.
Natalie Keener: Sometimes it feels like, no matter how much success I have, it's not gonna matter until I find the right guy. I could have made it work, he really fit the bill, you know. White collar, 6'1, college grad, loves dogs, likes funny movies, brown hair, kind eyes, works in finance but is outdoorsy. I always imagined he'd have a single syllable name like Matt or John or Dave. In a perfect world, he drives a 4 runner and the only thing he loves more than me is his golden lab. And a nice smile. What about you?
Alex Goran: You know, honestly by the time you're 34, all the physical requirements just go out the window. You secretly pray that he'll be taller than you, not an asshole would be nice just someone who enjoys my company, comes from a good family. You don't think about that when you're younger. Someone who wants kids, likes kids. Healthy enough to play with his kids. Please let him earn more money than I do, you might not understand that now but believe me, you will one day otherwise that's a recipe for disaster. And hopefully, some hair on his head. I mean, that's not even a deal breaker these days. A nice smile. Yea, a nice smile just might do it.
Natalie Keener: Wow. That was depressing.


*** Revealed preferences:

Revealed preferences is an economic theory exposing that individuals' choices and actions reveal their true preferences, rather than their stated intentions. By observing behaviour, such as investment decisions, economists infer priorities and values, assuming rational decision-making consistent with utility maximisation. It contrasts with relying on self-reported or hypothetical preferences.

>>> Data sources for men's revealed preferences in dating/mating/relating:

1. Hollywood lead actresses.
2. Fashion catwalk models.
3. Internet dating sites/apps.
4. Free pornography sites.
5. OnlyFans.
6. Escort sites.

>>> Men's revealed preferences in dating-mating-relating :

1. Young. [1]
2. Slim.
3. Pretty.
4. Long hair.
5. Large breasts.
6. White skin.
7. No tattoos.
8. No kids. [2]
9. No mental illness.
10. No left-wing politics (same as 9, really).
11. Goes like a belt-fed wombat.

[1] Youth:

See the graph of Leonardo Di Caprio's girlfriends: https://bit.ly/LeoAge25 - Leo is hardly the first middle-aged man to date much younger women, nor is he the first to do so in a continuous pattern. He’s simply the only one that’s been graphed. Rich and famous men from Harrison Ford to Jerry Seinfeld to Donald Trump to Mick Jaggar to Johnny Depp have carried out flings, dated, and even married women decades their junior. More middle-aged men would do it if they were rich enough to be able to do so.

[2] No kids:

Men tend not to want to date single mothers, because (and these are generalisations, but generalisations are generally true, hence the name):

1. Single motherhood is often a red flag per se, indicating poor judgement. [a]
2. They don’t have time to look after themselves, e.g. keeping themselves in shape.
3. They don’t have time for you: either their kids are their focus (in which case they’re an awful romantic partner), or you’re their focus (in which case they’re awful mothers).
4. Kids are hard work, even one’s own kids.
5. Other people’s kids are even worse, as there’s no biological cosh both shackling you to them, and anesthetising you to how annoying they are.
6. There’s always a ghost at the feast, in the form of the previous partner. If he was amazing (e.g. a war hero), you’ll be compared adversely to him; if he was a deadbeat, he’ll be a source of tension at the very least.
7. If you get attached to the kids you have no access rights, so you risk being hurt.
Usually, staying single is preferable to dating a single mother.

[a] See https://youtu.be/oShn46ay1UI - which illustrates some women's propensity to both be attracted to exciting "bad boys" rather than reliable men - and *to act on that attraction*. This is a red flag.



*** New links/comments to add:

https://www.reddit.com/r/itsthatbad/comments/1iz01e7/a_female_journalist_accidentally_explains_why/




Relationship prospects reduce with age

Relationship prospects reduce with age, because (a) age increases divergence: the older people are, the less likely they are to share common life experiences; and (b) men generally find younger women [exponentially] more desirable than older women.

The vividness and potency of romantic relationships, often perceived to peak in youth, reflect a complex interplay of biological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors. Romantic intensity in early adulthood is frequently attributed to the novelty of initial romantic experiences. Early relationships, being novel, tend to generate strong emotional memories and heightened hormonal responses involving dopamine, oxytocin, and adrenaline, which collectively amplify the experience of romantic love (or limerence).

However, beyond novelty alone, evolutionary biology strongly informs patterns of romantic attraction. Evolutionary psychology suggests romantic and sexual preferences, particularly in men, closely align with fertility signals, reflected in consistent male attraction towards younger women. Empirical data from dating behaviours across various cultures substantiate that men of all ages typically favour partners in their early twenties, aligning closely with peak female fertility and reproductive potential.

Furthermore, socio-cultural dynamics also significantly shape romantic connections. Younger individuals often share similar life experiences, social contexts, and developmental milestones, fostering deeper emotional bonds. As individuals age, life trajectories increasingly diverge, reducing commonality and mutual understanding between potential partners, thereby diminishing opportunities for intensely vivid romantic attachments later in life.

Romantic experiences represent an interaction between innate biological imperatives and external social contexts, both of which evolve with individuals' lifespans. Consequently, youthful romances benefit from novelty, emotional intensity, and fertility-related biological imperatives, but romance in later life is both far less likely, and - even if it does occur - unlikely to be anywhere near as intense.



Women rank importance as follows:
1. Money
2. Wealth (Yes, it's different. Money is cash flow. Wealth is assets.)
3. Looks
4. Family
5. Money for vacation (Because Bali > bonding.)
6. Social status
7. Personality
8. Instagram potential
9. Ambition
10. Inheritable Wealth
11. Emotional intelligence (So you know when to shut up and validate.)
12. Shared hobbies
13. Pets
14. Fashion sense
15. Wokeness (Whatever the current vibe demands.)
16. How you look in couple selfies
WSJ comment, https://www.openweb.com/share/2xPfTPqdjCw2WuqbOXHVIWmX0Br



Men Need Romantic Relationships More Than Women Do: Men rely heavily on their romantic relationships—but at what cost? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/closer-encounters/202501/men-need-romantic-relationships-more-than-women / https://archive.is/20250219175319/https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/closer-encounters/202501/men-need-romantic-relationships-more-than-women

https://archive.is/20230406220330/https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-first-lesson-of-marriage-101-there-are-no-soul-mates/283712/

- Assortative mating (AM) describes individuals with similar traits mating more often than by chance, a phenomenon overwhelmingly positive in humans. This study presents the largest meta-analysis of AM across 22 human traits, revealing correlations from r=.08 to r=.58. Social attitude, substance use, and cognitive traits showed the strongest correlations. Personality, disorder, and biometrical traits also exhibited positive, significant, albeit smaller, correlations. High heterogeneity between studies suggests potential differences in phenotypic measurement or variations in AM across cultures or time. Understanding AM is crucial as it influences genetic and environmental trait variation, can increase disorder prevalence, and may bias genetic study estimates. "A comprehensive meta-analysis of human assortative mating in 22 complex traits", https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.19.484997v1.full

Rudyard Lynch, Why young men are checking out of work, dating and life, 4 June 2025, https://youtu.be/DD6t6fUDtqo

——-

Douglas Murray warned several years ago that we have pathologised certain sorts of objectively reasonable behaviour. I recommend his book, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, published in September 2019 (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Madness-Crowds-Gender-Identity-BESTSELLER-ebook/dp/B07SLLRFDY). Rather than dragging out quotes from my Kindle, I found an article referring to it.

Murray suggests, with palpable irony, that the modern workplace operates under a new, risible rule for romantic pursuits: a man gets one, and only one, opportunity to ask a woman out for a drink, and this single attempt must achieve a 100 per cent success rate. This satirical observation highlights a fundamental shift in workplace dynamics, moving from the post-1975 period, where the reallocation of female labour into mixed-sex roles led to colleagues meeting their spouses at work, to the post-#MeToo era, where such interactions are now viewed through a lens of extreme caution:

"…every man has the opportunity to pursue only one woman in their work life. That that woman could be asked out for coffee or a drink on only one occasion. And that this sole shot must have an absolute, 100 per cent accuracy rating on the one occasion on which it is deployed.
Is this a sensible, orderly, or indeed humane way to arrange relations between the sexes?
Of course, most of those in the room laugh at the very suggestion. Because it is laughable. And it is risible.
And it is also the law of the modern workplace."
(Emphases added)

https://archive.is/2021.11.26-065339/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7438981/DOUGLAS-MURRAY-exposes-contradictions-MeToo-movement-controversial-new-book.html

Saturday Night Live (SNL) also usefully parodied the issue in a video entitled “Sexual harassment and you”, here: https://youtu.be/PxuUkYiaUc8. The core phenomenon being satirised is women often portray romantic advances as harassment when made by unattractive men, but as welcome attention when made by attractive men - even when the behaviour is identical. SNL exaggerated this to absurdity to expose the subjectivity and perceived hypocrisy in how sexual harassment is judged: not by the conduct, but by the attractiveness of the perpetrator.

——

A new “Husband Store” has opened in Oxford Circus (incongruously between yet more ‘US candy stores’), where women can go to choose a husband from among increasingly desirable options spread across six floors.

The only rule is that as you go up, you cannot return to a previous floor.

The Husband Store
• Floor 1: These men have jobs.
The woman thinks, “That’s nice,” but wonders what else is available and goes up.
• Floor 2: These men have jobs and love kids.
“Better,” she says, and continues.
• Floor 3: These men have jobs, love kids, and are very good-looking.
Impressive - but hypergamy wins, so she keeps going.
• Floor 4: These men have jobs, love kids, are very good-looking, and help with housework.
“Wow,” she thinks, but keeps going - because, why not be even more demanding?
• Floor 5: These men have jobs, love kids, are very good-looking, help with housework, and are romantically attentive.
She’s tempted, but she has just one more floor.
• Floor 6: “You are visitor 53,498,231 to this floor. There are no men here. This floor exists solely to prove that many women are impossible to please. Thank you for visiting the Husband Store”.

Across the street, a Wife Store opens, with similar rules.

The Wife Store
• Floor 1: These women are attractive.
The man immediately grabs one and exits the store.
• Floors 2–6: No one has ever visited these floors.

On a more serious note, please see here where there is a compilation of analysis about Internet dating, marriage, divorce rates (and costs, including links to court judgments!), etc: https://controlc.com/b3843b5a

———

I am appalled. You are implying that this is women’s fault. This long after the 1960s, you should know the rules. Everything is always men's fault. Here are the key rules:

• Men should desire a Strong Independent Career-Focused Girl Boss Who 'Don't Need No Man [1]' ("SICFGBWDNNM"). Helpfully, men don't have much choice now: the media-propagated archetypes for women are SICFGBWDNNMs and OnlyFans 'models', with little between.

• Further, men must wait until said SICFGBWDNNMs have enjoyed spending their most attractive years in their late teens, 20s and early 30s, building their careers and wealth, and enjoying both the attention of, and servicing from, scores of temporary 'bad boys' and 'exciting men' on dating apps.

• While the SICFGBWDNNMs are enjoying their 20s and early 30s, the bottom 90% men on dating apps et al are given a stiff ignoring, and must accept being single.

• Then, when said SICFGBWDNNMs are in their 40s, that is when men are obliged to 'man up', commit their time, effort, independence, and wealth, and marry a now-panicking SICFGBWDNNM who has a great career, but is desperately lonely and keeps hearing a loud 'tick tock' sound from her ovaries. (See Ryan Long, https://youtu.be/JPceYu6Dfz8)

• Any men who do not do this are immature and it's their fault for being single. They've let women down, they've let society down, but most of all they've let themselves down.

• Do better, men.

Glad we sorted that out.

Footnotes:

[1] except as a sperm donor and then ATM [2] in quick succession, in their late 30s/early 40s.

[2] The sperm donor and ATM don’t need to be the same man. Typically, the sperm donor is an exciting ‘bad boy’ who generates butterflies and fireworks, but doesn’t have other attributes like, e.g. a job. The ATM is the lucky, lucky man who gets to raise the former’s children. There is an hilarious/terrifying video about women’s propensity to prefer bad boys over long term stability here: https://youtu.be/rgC1Q51OUVs - humanity is doomed! 😂

——

Futurama did this as the theme of an episode. I asked a robot (ChatGPT) when that was aired, and it said:
The sketch you’re thinking of appears in the Season 3, Episode 15 of Futurama, titled “I Dated a Robot.” This episode originally aired on May 13, 2001 .

In it, Fry downloads the personality of Lucy Liu into a robot and begins dating it. The rest of the crew—concerned by the implications—shows him a parody “Don’t Date Robots!” public information film, warning that human–robot relationships could lead to societal collapse . That’s the exact moment your question refers to.

Atwo minute clip of the sketch I was thinking of is here, and it’s quite funny: https://youtu.be/JPQJBgWwg3o

As the top comment under that video says: “This aged disturbingly well” 😂

---------

"He seems to dissolve into the workday and come back spent. Whether they’re driving to a restaurant or taking turns in the shower in the morning, the complaints and discontents of their marriage have reached a granular level that surprises her with its mundane primacy: He never recaps the toothpaste; he never lets her know his schedule, then acts surprised when she is not available or is miffed when there’s nothing for him to eat. They bother her in a deep, distant way, as if they are coming from far, far away. Marriages are mysteries to everyone, she supposes, most of all to the people in them, if they are not paying attention." (Janice Y. K. Lee, The Expatriates)

-----

If you're a single man and you're not enjoying dating in the US, look into other countries where you may have more to gain for your money, energy, attention, and time – for any kind of relationship.
Here's most of Jana Hocking's article, which inadvertently explains why single men should get their passports. I'll add links to my posts (mostly) to either support or counter Jana, who's Australian, but writing on American, British, and Canadian dating culture as well.
Short version – according to her, the "mating crisis" across these countries isn't a crisis at all. It's single women enjoying "freedom, funds, and flings."
https://www.reddit.com/r/itsthatbad/comments/1iz01e7/a_female_journalist_accidentally_explains_why/

----------------
The scientific case for marriage, Spectator, November 2025, https://archive.is/20251127145404/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-scientific-case-for-marriage/
Marriage and monogamy are both stabilising measures developed by culture in support of the behaviours prescribed by evolution. The human family is the best social structure that evolution could contrive for raising children. What happens when we mess with this structure and the institution of marriage that supports it? The answer, not to be overdramatic, is extinction, or at least a road that leads directly there...

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Sterile Polygamy: The mating system we accidentally built, 6 Jan 26. Modern Western societies have unintentionally created a new mating system: sterile polygamy. It combines polygamy's sexual inequality—where top men access multiple partners—with fertility rates resembling celibate religious orders. The Pill, women's workforce entry, destigmatized divorce, and dating apps dismantled traditional incentives tying sex to marriage and reproduction. High-status men now enjoy serial access without commitment, while most men face rejection, and women delay childbearing until fertility declines sharply. Sexlessness has surged (especially among young men), dating app matches are extremely skewed, and fertility has collapsed across developed nations—driven primarily by delayed or absent marriage, not smaller desired family sizes. Unlike historical polygamy, which sustained high birth rates, this system produces few children. Unlike ancient Rome's elite childlessness (offset by lower-class reproduction), today's fertility crash is universal. Monogamy once required strong cultural enforcement (e.g., by the medieval Church). Its erosion, accelerated by technology, yields the worst of both worlds: polygamous inequality without fertility. Societies that fail to reproduce cease to exist. The future belongs to groups that still form families—likely the religiously traditional and unassimilated.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/sterile-polygamy
https://archive.is/cyVaE

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"Murray Hill Guy" on X conducted a 72-hour Hinge experiment as "Madison," an attractive female profile in NYC. Day 1: 1,500+ likes, hundreds of messages and roses, highlighting women's overload vs. men's scarcity. Day 2: Fatter (AI) version still garnered 500 likes on a similar app. Day 3: Version in a burka on a Jewish app yielded similar results. Conclusion: Dating apps create imbalance for engagement, not relationships, leading to burnout. Advice: Seek real-life connections through activities.
https://x.com/MurrayHillGuy1/status/2019532884084728299
https://archive.is/20260215024538/https://x.com/MurrayHillGuy1/status/2019532884084728299

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"A study published in 2002 by researchers at Maastricht University found that marriages with larger age gaps are associated with higher life satisfaction for both spouses. Researchers at Britain’s Office for National Statistics also found no strong link between age differences and divorce among couples in England and Wales. American evidence points the same way. Data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention show that couples with larger age gaps last even longer than those with smaller ones. Using a sample of nearly 5,000 long-term, live-in relationships, The Economist estimates that a five-year difference in age is associated with staying together an extra six weeks."
https://archive.is/20260215111820/https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/01/29/age-gaps-in-relationships-are-not-as-bad-as-you-think

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Within marriages husbands typically tend to be older and higher educated than their wife. This paper tries to explain this by analyzing whether age and education differences between spouses have an effect on happiness. Two alternative hypotheses are tested on the relation between age and education gaps between partners and life satisfaction. It is found that a positive age gap between husband and wife increases both male and female life satisfaction, while female life satisfaction increases if the education gap is smaller.

Groot, W., Van Den Brink, H.M. Age and Education Differences in Marriages and their Effects on Life Satisfaction. Journal of Happiness Studies 3, 153–165 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019673927286

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https://www.culturcidal.com/p/what-men-want-to-say-to-women-but
https://archive.is/gpROG

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Economist - Need a bit of dating help? The caveman’s guide to romance: Two new books offer insights on intimacy and relationships. Two new books, "Bonded by Evolution" by Paul Eastwick and "The Intimate Animal" by Justin Garcia, explore modern intimacy crises through evolutionary lenses. Humanity faces loneliness amid a mismatch between ancient brains and contemporary dating, transformed by agriculture and the internet. Dating apps offer vast choices but foster superficial filters, harassment, and wasted time, often misinterpreting evolutionary psychology to justify misogyny. Authors advise thrilling first dates like zip-lining, quick transitions to in-person meetings, fewer but deeper interactions, and building real-world networks. Optimistically, they stress that kindness trumps resources, and defeatism is unfounded: cultivate connections where you are.
https://archive.is/20260216103211/https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/02/12/need-a-bit-of-dating-help-the-cavemans-guide-to-romance