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:


- For men, dating is like paying for job interviews.

- 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.

- 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

- "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

- 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%. I hope you like cats, ladies!

- "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

- Comment: The evidence herein/above suggests 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.

- 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

“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)


- 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/

(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

- ‘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.

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, www.astralcodexten.com/p/hypergamy-much-more-than-you-wanted

"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)



https://www.takimag.com/article/diversity-up-fertility-down

"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

https://www.sortalexout.com/writing/2018/9/18/dating-in-2018-the-harsh-truth


Dating
Status. Cardiff Met Uni study showing men with expensive flats/apartments more attractive: http://www.akademiai.com/doi/pdf/10.1556/JEP.12.2014.1.1
Don't do online dating: www.rolereboot.org/sex-and-relationships/details/2013-02-online-dating-sucks-for-men-because-of-women-like-me
Don't do online dating (2): http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2013/12/avoid-online-dating.html
Optimum SMP age: http://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/final-exam-navigating-the-smp/
Why Women Can't Find a Good Man - http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201203/why-women-cant-find-good-man
Why Are Men Frustrated With Dating? - http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201204/why-are-men-frustrated-dating
Size of the dating pool: http://1.2.3.11/bmi/imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dating_pools.pnghttp://xkcd.com/314/
Rubbish dating advice: http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2014/04/5-types-dating-advice-people-need-stop-giving/

Hook-up culture: www.hookingupsmart.com/2012/10/09/politics-and-feminism/the-abject-failure-of-sex-positive-feminism-a-case-study
Economic mate selection: http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2012/08/15/relationshipstrategies/loveonomics/
Male qualities: www.hookingupsmart.com/2012/11/07/relationshipstrategies/30-reasons-he-wasnt-right-for-you
Relative ages: http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2012/11/26/relationshipstrategies/why-you-should-date-an-older-guy and http://marriedmansexlife.com/2013/03/age-gaps-are-a-relationship-stress
SMV re. age: http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2013/10/15/relationshipstrategies/myth-plummeting-female-sexual-market-value/ and http://therationalmale.com/2013/10/25/smv-is-it-real/
www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/11143773/Why-are-men-so-obsessed-with-24-year-old-women.html
Necessity to look for a partner from the off: www.hookingupsmart.com/2012/12/07/hookinguprealities/aging-millennial-females-provide-a-cautionary-tale
Ideal dating timelines: http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/reader-mailbag-macropenis-edition/
Ageing: http://marriedmansexlife.com/2012/12/relative-vs-absolute-sex-rank-and-the-forty-year-old-wife
Don't be too keen: http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2013/01/01/relationshipstrategies/7-reasons-women-reject-eager-men

'Cosmo sex': www.alternet.org/dear-cosmo-magazine-thanks-almost-killing-my-marriage-your-awful-sex-advice
Friendzone: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201112/escape-the-friend-zone-friend-girlfriend-or-boyfriend
Women get to play out of their league: http://www.therulesrevisited.com/2011/08/women-get-to-play-out-of-their-league.html
Why you're single (male): http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-you-dont-have-wifegirlfriend.html
One obvious problem why you're single: http://laidnyc.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/the-one-obvious-problem/
Don't do favours for women: http://marriedmansexlife.com/2013/06/dragons-lair-princess-daphne-teaches-girl-game
Guys go for looks, girls go for status: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324162304578304052148043138.html
Porn's insidious effect on desire: http://marriedmansexlife.com/2013/08/high-fructose-porn-syrup/
Effect of beauty: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/10/a-first-rate-girl-the-problem-of-female-beauty.html
Constant dating cycle/never settling: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2013/01/a-million-first-dates/309195/
‘Throwaway’ attitude to dating: http://30datesblog.com/2013/12/04/single-tindertown-the-enigmatic-flaneur/

Fertility
Satire of fertility warnings: http://www.theonion.com/articles/teen-wastes-prime-childbearing-years-going-to-high,33891/
http://downsyndrome.about.com/od/diagnosingdownsyndrome/a/Matagechart.htm
Controversial article re. dating differential: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/society-and-culture/why-women-lose-the-dating-game-20120421-1xdn0.html
Age/residual value: http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/scientific-evidence-that-men-dig-barely-legal-chicks/
Babies mar relationships: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/families/article3777291.ece
Abnormalities increase with age: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/magazine/110861/how-older-parenthood-will-upend-american-society
Most of a woman's eggs gone by age 30: www.futurepundit.com/archives/006914.html
http://www.rolereboot.org/archives/details/2013-11-why-young-women-should-consider-single-motherhood
Infertility: http://thelandofif.blogspot.co.uk/
Sexist tropes re. age: http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2013/12/09/hookinguprealities/crackpot-misogyny/
Example of infertility in 36-yo, and unhappiness: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/13/having-a-baby-ready-easy-wrong-infertility

https://standpointmag.co.uk/features-november-2015-julie-bindel-money-cant-buy-you-love/

—-

ROF 'Biggie' / '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.”

—-

"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) 

"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) 

"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

"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) 

- "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

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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 fucking 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.


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**** 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.

“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.

"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
- 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. 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.

- 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?
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 dead lines. 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: It was our pleasure.
Ryan Bingham: 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.