You can’t just order up the perfect husband á la carte – I’ll take a little of this, a little of that, less of this and more of that. A guy is a package deal, as are we. Recognizing that isn’t settling. It’s maturity. The key is to focus on the qualities that lead to long-term romantic happiness.
Lori Gottlieb
This is the first post in the series The New Sociosexual Marketplace: A Reality Check For Women. Every woman 18 and over needs to understand what’s up. You can benefit by observing the hordes of attractive 40 year-old women that never found the guy. They made some mistakes. Read and learn.
Let me say right off that I really don’t care for the word Settling here. No one else does either, and Lori Gottlieb has been backpedaling like crazy in interviews to justify its use in the title. Of course, that one word propelled her to the front of the media queue, which creates sales, so it’s officially a brilliant piece of marketing. My problem with the term is that it implies making do with someone that you really don’t want. I would never advise any woman to “settle” for something that feels meh.
The real question women need to think about is why nearly all men strike them as meh. If almost every guy seems lacking, it’s fair to ask “What’s up with guys these days?” But it’s equally important to ask, “Is my list of requirements wacked?” Herein lies the key.
Women’s list of requirements is wacked.
When women talk about what they want in a man, they rarely describe character traits. They are much more likely to focus on external packaging. Of course, a pretty face and a nice jaw with just the right amount of 5 o’clock shadow will get you wet. But for 40+ years? That just isn’t going to cut it. If the brain and heart of that hot dude aren’t on a par with his face or his pecs, you are going to be miserable (and divorced) in a very short period of time, assuming you can even get his attention in the first place.
Ellen Rakieten and Anne Coyle have a book coming out called Undateable: 311 Things Guys Do That Guarantee They Won’t Be Dating or Having Sex. In a recent LA Times story Coyle, who is divorced, explains the reasoning behind “undateable” behavior with a story from her own recent dating life.
My friends set me up with this guy who came very highly recommended. We had fun together, we had the same political views. Everything was perfect, except he had this gross soul patch beneath his lower lip. I just couldn’t do it. … My friends said, ‘Well, maybe he can shave it off,’ and my response was, ‘Yes, but he can’t shave off the part of his brain that thought growing it was a good idea.’ That’s the real problem.
WTF?
Seriously, I’d like to smack this woman. What man has not had a facial hair faux pas? My own father had several, including a goofy “ship captain’s beard” that drove all of us crazy for a while. So embarrassing!
Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington, who created the compatibility matching system for the online dating site Perfectmatch.com, said these snap judgments function as a kind of protective mechanism. “People are nervous, they’re trying to figure out how to avoid pain and not waste their time, so they’re looking for cracks in the onstage performance,” she explained. I’m not buying that explanation. This isn’t about pain, this is about women being just plain MEAN.
A place where people can vent and share their disappointments is the blog Dealbreaker. Though both sexes post their no-no’s, most of the posts have been contributed by women.
Here’s a sampling of mortal sins:
- High school ring
- Bad dancer
- Crocs
- High-waisted jeans (with the commentary: “We’re looking at you POTUS,” which, I admit, was pretty funny)
- Novelty belt buckle
- Belt-clipped cellphone
- Pleated-front khakis
- Owning rollerblades
- Special dietary requirements
- Dislike of pizza
- Sitting on the same side of the booth
- Owning a denim couch
- Wanting to be the little spoon (actually, that is a little weird)
The list goes on and on. Lori Gottlieb also had a long list of dealbreakers in the 25 years she’s been dating. Now that she’s a reformed picky dater, she wants us to know that she regrets dissing guys for the following:
1. His height.
Let me say upfront that I’m 5’2″. With one-inch heels. And yet I always preferred to date guys who were taller than 5’9″ (and so I could kiss them while barefoot, shorter than 6’0″). Maybe if you spent an hour with Danny DeVito or Robert Reich, all of a sudden you would say, “You know what? This is somebody I could actually spend my life with” – even though the height is never going to be ideal. On the other hand, take somebody who’s unkind. There’s a 100 percent chance you won’t want to be with him.
2. His Match.com profile.
A Northwestern researcher who studies online dating told me that I shouldn’t get too specific about my search parameters in online dating because in his research, he found that “there was a lack of correlation between what people said they wanted on a questionnaire, and what they actually pick when they meet a real, live person.” Moreover, he added, don’t rule out a guy because you think you know what it means that he misspelled a word or likes Madonna. You have no idea who this person is until you meet him. An online profile, he said, “is like reading the ingredients on a box of food and trying to imagine what it would taste like.”
3. His occupation.
Yes, alpha males are sexy and charming. But they aren’t always the best partners for me, especially if they travel for work all the time, need to be the center of attention and don’t have the same ideas about how to run a household that I do. Many women are attracted to super-ambitious and charismatic guys who are leaders — but it’s hard to find a person who has that kind of personality and also makes time for you and is able to put you first when it counts.
4. His age.
The thing about being picky is you have to know what to be picky about. Apparently, I wasn’t picky enough on the things that matter (shared values, reliability, “getting each other”) and was too picky on the things that don’t (his age). Many women end up dating guys with a chemistry of “9″ and a compatibility of “5.” The happiest couples, though, have both a chemistry and compatibility of “7.”
5. How he compares to “my type.”
One expert told me that when she first met her husband, she had no interest in him at all. He wasn’t her type. He didn’t fit her image of the kind of guy she imagined herself with. She was Ivy League-educated, and he was a potter. At first there were no sparks. Nada. But the more time she spent with him, the more she liked him. And then the sparks flew. They’ve been married for 20 years.
By the way, Gottlieb recently had her heart broken by a short, bald guy who wears a bow tie. She thought she wanted this:
But in the end she fell in love with, and was left by, this:
From an interview with Salon writer Sarah Hepola:
SH: I’m 35, and I’m single now, though I’ve had wonderful relationships. But I really didn’t date much in my 20s. I guess I was a bit of a workaholic, I traveled a lot, and I have to say that it never occurred to me that I was shopping for a guy. That idea of pickiness, I don’t think it ever occurred to me.
LG: I’ll bet, actually, there were guys who were interested in you but who you didn’t consider or even notice because they weren’t on your radar. And those are the guys I’m saying should be on our radar, especially in our 20s. I interviewed my cousins in their 20s — and these aren’t Angelina Jolie, either. But it’s a very vibrant social scene. They’re dating or going out all the time. I think it gives the illusion you are in that situation of endless supply, that this is always going to be the case. And so you don’t look as carefully at somebody, because why should you give somebody a second glance when you can look over here?
While this behavior is common to both genders, Schwartz thinks women are much pickier. “When I lecture on dating, I tell women to shorten their damn lists. They have a list of things they need, a list of things they don’t want. … One woman told me her deal breaker was that a guy didn’t floss. A guy’s list might have 10 things — and if the woman is good-looking enough, nine of them won’t matter.”
SH: One of the things I like about this book is that you’re puncturing this idea of “The One.” That’s a fantasy I see in literature and movies, and one I see reflected in conversations with my friends. Can you talk about why this idea is so powerful to us, this idea of “The One”?
LG: It’s such a lovely idea. I mean, who wouldn’t want to believe in that? But I like what Rabbi Wolpe said when I interviewed him, “This notion of soul mates is a nice one to believe in, but in truth, we could be happy with a lot of different people. It’s not that there’s one soul mate out there — it’s that our soul develops differently with each person.”
What I hope I’m doing with this book is saying, look, this isn’t just my uninformed opinion. This is what the country’s most respected researchers and scientists who study marriage and love say about what you should look for at any age, but especially when you’re younger and you might be dazzled by the wrong things.
SH: Are women pickier than men?
LG: When I asked men and women what they wanted in a partner, men were far more open-minded. They mostly talked about finding someone cute enough, kind, warm and interesting enough to talk to. Women got absurdly specific — he has to be successful but not a workaholic. He has to know how to order wine in a restaurant. He has to be stylish but not too into fashion in a feminine way.
SH: Do women overestimate their own desirability? Is that part of it?
LG: I think they do. I talked to a lot of experts about this sort of sense of entitlement that women of our generation grew up with. I’m all for girl power and all of that, but I think that a lot of us are “yes women” to each other. We say, “You should hold out for the better guy. Oh yes, absolutely, you deserve the best.” I think we do ourselves a disservice where we kind of inflate each other’s egos to the point of unreality.
SH: You write about women in their 20s having more power. What do you mean by that?
LG: Women in their 20s have the most power in that they’re at the top of the totem pole in the dating hierarchy. They’re the most desired age group biologically — in terms of childbearing ability, in terms of their appearance and also just in their attitude. When you’re in your late 20s, you feel very confident and very on top of the world, and you haven’t become jaded by being out there dating for 15 years. You think, Oh, even when I’m 38, someone will see how special and charming and lovely I am. And they might, but it’s going to be a lot easier when you are 28 if you give the really good guys that are available to you a chance. Because those guys are going to be married by the time you are 38.
According to Gottlieb, here’s what many single women do that we might want to reconsider:
1. We feel entitled.
2. We think we have unlimited options.
3. We’re judgmental.
4. We’re pickier than men.
5. We go for the alpha males.
6. We think, “I love me more.”
7. We think he needs to share every interest.
Finally, this is not just a problem in the U.S. Neil Hay is a 32-year-old former professional golfer-turned-financial consultant who lives on the outskirts of Edinburgh. About a year ago, he joined an online dating site.
It’s made me terribly cynical, not just about the way women are, but also about what on earth it is that they are looking for in a guy. Of course, we all have standards and preferences. There’s nothing wrong with that. But most of us are also realistic. I had been hoping to meet someone who was quite nice-looking, with a good personality, someone to go for dinner and to the cinema and have a decent conversation with. But I’m left feeling that this isn’t what women are looking for. They’re not interested in a regular, normal, decent guy. That’s not good enough for them. It’s game over before you’ve even had any chance to begin to get to know each other. It does dent your confidence. I’m left thinking either that there’s something wrong with me or that I’ll just never be whatever it is that these women are looking for.
I know there are a lot of single women who say things like they’re too independent, too feisty, too confident or too successful for men. Or they claim that men are intimidated by strong, intelligent and independent women. But this is simply not the case. I think they just tell themselves this. It’s a way of rationalising things. It’s as if it’s easier for them to believe their own myths than to face reality – that they are completely ordinary.
There is a definite wackness happening. Ladies, please. Return to Earth, where the pull of the moon regulates your menstrual cycle, which, by the way, has an expiration date.
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{ 48 comments… read them below or add one }
There are a few things that I disagree with here.
1. His online profile. It's one thing to have a few words misspelled (I'm dyslexic myself) and “looking for someone smart. who can carry on an inteligent conversation. i hunt alot.” I deleted his email to me because- if he's this sloppy in the beginning, when you need to be making a good impression, how bad will it be later on?
That being said- when online, I look for somebody who is also Christian because that shapes my world view. They also need to be single, monogamist and want to have kids, and know how to use a spell check built into a browser- or state in their profile a valid reason why they struggle. (My friends would add somebody who is willing for me to wait to decide to have sex with them, who is smart, emotionally strong, and make me laugh.)
And because I know what ST:TNG, BSG, D20, and SCA mean, I have a very wide variety of guys who want to get to know me. Yes, I actively go after beta males- advice given to me by the cad in my life. The odds are good when the goods are well… slightly out of step with 'normality'.
2. Age- I look less at that and what stage he is in life. Does he want kids? Is he in a place where he can settle down? Do we have a common frame of reference? I'm 36- I look at ages 30 to 43.
Well, Nisie, your requirements sound very reasonable to me. You're seeking a man who shares your values and goals in life. You're not saying NO DIETARY RESTRICTIONS OR ALLERGIES!
It really is about what is most important in making a life. I think I can live with a guy who sits on the same side of the booth, or leaves his hat on at the table, or wears a goofy favorite t-shirt, if he is good and kind and makes me laugh. Attraction can grow from those three things alone!
I've always told people to look for shared values rather than shared interests–what's the point of both of you loving golf if he doesn't believe in fidelity while you do? I'm also a firm believer that your partner must be on the same page as you are in terms of financial responsibility–far too many people overlook this in the excitement of a new relationship, but it's one of the top issues that can derail a couple. These have always been my non-negotiables.
That said, I married a man who's only 5'4″, but since I'm just a shade under 5'2″ it wasn't a big deal to me anyway. What mattered more to me was his attitude in life–he was an optimist, hardly said anything negative about people, and didn't feel any entitlement just because he was born into a pretty well-off family. If anything, he felt he needed to make his own mark in the world and not just live off his father's money, so he eschews the usual trappings of status. He hates flashy cars (as long as it gets me from point A to point B, the air-conditioning and the radio works, that's fine, he'd always say), doesn't wear an expensive watch, doesn't like designer clothes, and we've had to fight over the fact that he still keeps his ratty college t-shirts around. But he's a very hard worker, a wonderful father, and a very good provider.
In short, he wasn't a flashy alpha, but his values are solid, he's very down to earth, he makes me laugh, he respects me a lot and still sends me roses on special occasions. And these are the things that truly matter in the long run.
Susan, I swear it pisses me off sometimes that you hit the nail on the head so often. I like being contrary, and you make it so damn difficult!
I've pretty much decided that online dating is most beneficial to the people running the sites. With the inherent pickiness (and sense of entitlement) that most desirable women have, the more info you put on a profile, the more reasons you're giving women not to talk to you in the first place. In my experiments with online dating, I've found that the best profiles I've made were the most generic — the ones that offered little or no information of any substance.
There are lots of elements of Game that are designed to crack through women's initial tendency towards over-filtering. So from the male side of things, encouraging men to learn game is one way to help solve this problem for women.
But there's more to it. Maybe it's because of the hookup culture, but women are very weird about hanging out with a guy they're not initially into. Over the years, I've had lots of female friends that would just come over, watch tv, chat, and hang out… no funny business. But in the last several years, I've noticed a lot more resistance and reluctance, even when I know a girl well, the first time I say, “Hey, I'm bored and wanting to watch some tv or something. You want to just hang out at my house for a while?” Apparently that line is now synonymous with “Would you like to get drunk and suck my dick?”
One of my guesses is that a lot of girls in their 20s will look at a guy that doesn't have everything on the list, and they're afraid that if they spend any time with him, they might like him. And if they date him, they won't be as high on the social ladder as their girlfriend who's dating the sports star. So they won't even hang out.
That seems silly to me.
First off, use of the word 'Settling' in the context of potential relationships could only be used by the most self-centered subset of society. As you say, relationships are not 'ala carte' where one party gets to pick and choose amongst traits.
Relationships – ones that last – are about commitment come hell or high water. If you go into it with any other expectation then you are doomed to failure.
Unfortunately, we have a generation of women who have been weaned on the likes of Oprah and Dr. Phil – who probably would be better served idolizing Jerry Springer. when they come uncorked, they behave like a ten year old who just had mud splashed on her favorite dolly. And then all hell breaks loose . . .
As far as the on-line dating world goes – that is like the world's biggest barroom. It is hard to tell whether the deviant guys out there ruin it for us 'regular men' with their obnoxious behavior (and I'm not surprised why women shy away considering some of the stories I've heard) or whether women are just so full of themselves that if you don't fit their 'checklist' don't apply. Don't get me wrong, I've met some very nice gal's on-line (in fact the one I've been seeing the last couple years I met that way), but the majority I would say are as much gamers as are the men.
The key is shared values and goals, the problem is when individuals become to self-centered on themselves that the values/goals become secondary to the 'I wants/I needs' of one.
A note to my girls:
AT married a guy who's 5'4″ and she thinks he's HOT. And it doesn't surprise me in the least. In relationship terms, she won the lottery. Think about it.
By the way, I totally agree with you about interests, but I would even go a step further. It's great if everyone loves to golf, or hike or whatever, it's fun to share an interest. But it's also great if you each have interests of your own. I'm not talking about Caribbean cruises here, but rather intellectual curiosity or tinkering with something, or an artistic pursuit. It's good to be independent. It makes both of you more interesting to each other.
Haha, Hamby, that's high praise, thanks. You know, after nearly 300 posts, I have still never written about online dating, perhaps b/c I never tried it. I need to remedy that, it's a very popular strategy for meeting people, which indicates how much people really want to meet someone. The question is, of course, are you going for shared interests and values or “has to work in finance?” For far too many women, it's the latter, or something like it.
You want to just hang out at my house for a while?” Apparently that line is now synonymous with “Would you like to get drunk and suck my dick?”
Haha, that is definitely a problem. I do hear a lot from women that they want guy friends, but guys are so oriented towards sex that they're always trying to get in there, even if they're not interested in a relationship. In fact, a lot of women feel really hurt when guys morph the friendship into something more, then dump them. For their trouble and risk, the women lose a friend. And they wonder why the guy didn't care enough about them as a friend to avoid introducing sex in the first place.
It goes back to When Harry Met Sally. Most women have had this experience. Personally, I never had a single male friend where sexual tension did not become an issue (introduced by him). This generation hangs out much more in groups, but one-on-one is still tricky.
3dshooter, you raise a good point about popular culture. It's not just the over the top emphasis on self-esteem in child-rearing. We are actually surrounded by girl power messages. Oprah is appealing and sympathetic, but she's not exactly a great role model for relationships. Marriage is hard, and there have been weeks at a time when I didn't find my husband attractive IN THE LEAST. It's just not going to be one long swoon.
I did have one non-negotiable on my own mental “checklist,” and that was humor. I knew I needed a man with a great (and similar) sense of humor. Laughter is the key to surviving just about every downturn in life.
As for the dealbreakers…rollerblades? Don't those count as a form of exercise? I guess only young people can wear rollerblades. If you've hit 30 you must wear 70s, roller rink style skates, haha! I give up really.
How about the dietary restrictions? Let's rule out anyone who is lactose intolerant, allergic to nuts, or eggs. Vegetarian? Forget it. Don't eat shellfish or pork? Don't bother. Now we've reduced the pool of contenders by a HUGE amount.
I do think you need to get more stuff here about online dating. I think it feeds both sides sense of pickiness (but mostly women's) because it's a veritable “all you can eat buffet” of humanity. Why should I spend time getting to know guy A when guys B, C, D, and E are just waiting for me to respond to their email?
But the more you get into online dating, you realize, that like most all-you-can-eat buffets, the quality of the offerings is pretty spotty. You can waste a lot of time sampling a lot of lesser quality stuff.
It's interesting, you liken it to an all-you-can-eat buffet, and 3dshooter above calls it the world's biggest barroom. Neither of which sound very appealing! I guess it's a process of wading through all the junk to find the quality.
There's independent and there's INDEPENDENT.
The former being the type where you don't need to be with the person 24/7, but accept that a marriage or LTR brings a large measure of interdependence and the idea that the whole is larger than the sum of its parts.
The latter is the type that makes a LTR into a contest of who can squeeze the most advantage out it. In that case, there's really no need for a LTR…you don't really need the other person.
There has to be a balance of shared interests and independent interests. I like the fact, that for our shared interests, my wife is the first person on my list to do certain things with. And at the same time, we both understand we each have things that the other doesn't care to partake much in (video-games or shopping, for example).
I'm not so sure the lists of requirements that these women have are real requirements. I think, perhaps, the list is more of a tool used to rationalize their tendancy toward hypergamy in general. No man, even the most desirable, is going to meet all these stated requirements, and if they met the one they were truly hot for, they would drop the list in a second. But the list gives them something to point to when they reject lots of men who, objectively, should be their equal in terms of mate value.
Absolutely! Independent in lower case, please. Otherwise, as you say, what's the point of being in a LTR?
Another thing about shared interests — in my experience, one person will have a desire to try something new. Biking, for example. The other person thinks, eh, but he wants to so I'll go along. If she said no, she's signaling to him that his interests don't matter to her. She'd rather not spend time with him and prefers to do her own thing. If she says, what the hell, I'll try it, she may well find that she likes it quite a bit, and then they share that experience, and the good feelings that come from it.
Most people need some alone time, but in general, togetherness is the way to go when possible. And compromise is always needed.
Passer By, I agree with this. Neil Hay, the guy at the end makes it clear just from his brief CV that he is successful – he should be a catch. But the women have an unrealistic notion of their own value. They sit around and complain that there are no good guys around. They go on an endless series of first dates they find disappointing. I'm not sure why none of them wouldn't just figure it out already – hmmmm, I wonder if there's something wrong with me? It seems as if they're delusional.
Also, it's interesting that you mention hypergamy. I wondered how these 40 yo women did spend their 20s. I don't think it's addressed in terms of having wasted lots of time on cads, but they must have been screening out a lot of good men from the start.
(I'm now banging my head against the table.)
I'd really go 10 years older, just my personal opinion. So 30-46. I think age gets less relevant as you get older, and I personally although I just turned 25, am open to dating guys as old as 35. Actually, I should ask: does anyone feel like that's too much of an age difference for any particular reason? 10 years? What about 15 years?
This is true–a love of reading was the first thing my husband and I found that we had in common. Then he found out how much of a foodie I was, and was game to try out stuff he never did before, and now he says I was the one who taught him how to love spicy cuisine.
So our shared interests nowadays are books, food (I cook very well, he eats very well–it works out) and travel. He adores Herpa planes, while I'm into fashion, so while I get him these planes as gifts on special occasions and he suffered through watching “Valentino: The Last Emperor” with me, these are interests that we call our own which the other tries to support nonetheless. So yes, as ENY would say, independence with small caps.
To those women looking for a husband, you must also consider that men have become wary of divorce in the US. If a married man loses his job, he doesn't have to worry about going to prison. A divorced, unemployed man who can not pay child support may end up in prison (see Bradley Amendment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Amendment).
I can understand how that would scare a good number of “nice guys” away from anything serious. The term “Peter Pan Syndrome” has been bandied about to explain this non-committal behavior but I think it's just a pragmatic response to the unfriendly divorce laws.
This must be considered in a women's calculus for finding a suitable mate… maybe he's in hiding. Don't be too hard on yourselves if you turn 40 and are still single. It might not be entirely your fault.
Welcome, Pete, and thanks for that link on the Bradley Amendment. I encourage everyone not familiar with it to read it – it's an excellent summary of what's up, including several egregious cases of unintended consequences that irrationally penalized men.
One has to assume that unfriendly divorce laws do discourage men in some measure. Currently, 78% of men in their 20s say they want to marry, and many of them are not even aware of such laws, having had no personal experience with them. Still, that's a decrease in the number of marriageable men. There are other probable causes as well. Children of divorce are more skeptical of marriage, for example.
I've written about the Peter Pan problem, which is real, and also hard to understand in terms of causality. I believe that the American school system is generally hostile to boys, for example. Divorce may also play a role here.
You make a good point re guys in hiding, though. Lori Gottlieb turned down dates with lots of guys who didn't meet her standards. But we really can't say whether any of them would have been interested in marrying her.
I've seen women go for guys far less attractive than themselves, on the assumption that the guy would be delighted to land such a great girl, only to see the guy jump at the chance to act like a cad. When being a Player is the highest status a man can achieve, it may or may not be the fault of women in aggregate, but it's certainly not the fault of any single woman.
Susan,
Your point about men in their 20s not being aware of laws such as the Bradley Amendment is probably accurate. Can't say how much of a deterrent that law is for them. I was thinking of the 30-40 year old crowd. Women apparently want to marry in that age bracket, but the men have caught up on their reading by then.
I went into my marriage, eyes wide open. It's a *huge* gamble but I *really* wanted children. I thought about the consequences if things don't work out and decided that for me, it's worth the risk. If I lose my kids, at least maybe they'll see their old man when they turn 18. My brother in law doesn't get to see his kids at all… ex wife won't let him even tho the courts say he can. He's very bitter about it all and won't discuss it with his family anymore.
My wife's father bent over backwards to see his grandchildren. He is an amazing diplomat. We all got to see the nephews and nieces last summer for the first time in years. They are good kids but miss their dad very much.
What's sad is this is common today. Not good times…
That is such a sad story! Why doesn't your brother haul her ass back into court? Surely she can be disciplined for failing to live up to the agreement?
I'm glad you took the risk to be a father. Your children will be/are so lucky to have a father who wanted them so much. I hope you have a great outcome, and while your brother's situation is all too common, it is still a small percentage of men who cannot see their own children.
Surprisingly enough, there are usually no real mechanisms for men to enforce custody settlements if they are not the ones with custody.
In theory, remedies exist, but the practical application of these theories is that when you ask people about them, they ignore you; police won't enforce orders, judges will decline orders through multiple procedural delays, etc.
So, actually, short of committing a crime, no, there might not be much recourse.
The “Peter Pan” syndrome has a significant amount to do with the law. Even if men are unaware of the exact nature of the laws (most are), there are so many older men who were taken for a ride in divorce that very few men are ignorant enough that they believe marriage is a no-risk proposition.
There is a very real downside to marriage for men at this point. Or, in geek speak, if we evaluate both the probability of success and the payoffs from success and failure, unless you consider being married to have an extremely high payoff in the case of success, marriage has a negative expected value for many men.
To wit, I have several friends in their late 20s and 30s, who are all very successful (laywers, one doctor, several wall streeters) who are perfectly happy to have a long-term relationship with a woman, but who will not get married under any circumstances.
The laws above and the fact that a majority of their wealth can be expropriated in a divorce explain why. I suggest this phenomenon is more dangerous than people currently realize, and will play out more dramatically with the current group in the 20-40 range as more and more men opt out of marriage who, 50 years ago, would have been married.
I don't know the full story. He definitely can fight this in court but his lawyer said it might only temporarily fix the situation and he'll have to do it again, and again… etc. Lots of money.
His dad is upset that he's not fighting for the kids, they had a blowout and now the rule is no one is allowed to talk about it. Kind of a mess.
As for how many men have to deal with this… maybe you're right. I don't have the stats, but I do know men don't get to see their kids all that often even if the wife wants them to see him. Not a lot of guys want to go through that.
Anyway… the point I was trying to make is that divorce is playing a role in today's dating market (duh!) and is probably thinning the pool of men willing to marry. I don't think it's just women being picky.
Hey, Reinholt. I didn't know a lot of what you are saying a few months ago, but I have been going up the learning curve on this and I agree, it's very alarming.
I have one question. When men decide to never marry:
1. Have they decided they don't want children? Pete above states that is the only real reason he did marry. I wonder about men's desire to procreate. Or are they counting on having children in a LTR without marriage?
2. What about prenups? Is there any sort of custody prenup available? Because that might be worth considering as well. Covering all bases as much as possible.
3. Or are these men just more interested in staying single, enjoying sexual variety, a la George Clooney?
4. Are they concerned that they will lose the woman of their choice b/c of their philosophy about marriage? Or are they impervious to falling in love?
Yes, I agree. In fact, research shows that college kids with divorced parents are considerably more likely to engage in, or even prefer, casual sex. They are wary of relationships. Most of them have witnessed considerable unpleasantness between their parents, even in the most well-intentioned splits.
I suspect that we could learn a lot about culture if we were more willing to look at it through the lens of divorce, including its impact on children. With the divorce rate at 50%, though, it's not PC – too threatening to too many folks.
On point 2: there are no child support pre-nups. Any agreements on that front are null, as the judge needs to “put the children's interests first”.
So with a prenup a divorced guy could avoid alimony (only if he is in the right jurisdiction) but not child support. And even then, imagine the mind games the woman could play with the child(ren) if the guy is not paying alimony. Stuff such as “we can't afford so and so because daddy is cheap” year after year.
On point 1. It's a mess, actually. I feel that if I want kids (and think I do, eventually) I may have to either emigrate or hire a woman to have them for me while keeping custody.
On points 3 and 4. A little bit of both. Marriage is not the solution to my needs for companionship and sex, so I try to get those things in other ways. Falling in love can happen, but that doesn't mean I'll get married.
About losing women, that can happen. I let them go and hope them the best. That does not mean I am impervious to falling in love. I know that I have fallen in love in the past and will do so again in the future.
Technically, Susan, that is more than one question! However, I'm still happy to answer, with the caveat that some of this is theory on my part (the legal background is not, however, though relevant only to the US; I do not claim to know anything about laws elsewhere):
1 – From what I have seen, most want children if they can have one in the context of an LTR. Some have decided they do not want children, while others do want children and either intend to adopt or (given that most of my friends are middle to upper class in terms of wealth) more frequently will intend to use a surrogate through a place like India if they can't get a child in an LTR. Most are not intending to do this until they have more time to parent, as several are in the major wealth accumulation stage of the career climb right now.
2 – Pre-nups can potentially cover a lot of things, but what they cover varies on a state by state basis. In general, the following may never be specified: child support, child custody, and/or visitation. You are always at the whim of the court regarding that. In some states, you may prohibit alimony, but not in all. Much of the problem with pre-nups is that, even when drafted properly and executed properly, you are legally prohibited from speaking to some of the biggest risk factors in marriage for men. This renders the document somewhat useless.
3 – I have other friends who clearly fall into the sleeping around group, but they never really intended to get married in the first place for the most part. More so, they are actually in the minority. The majority of my friends who are anti-marriage do desire to get married, if there were a fair, balanced, reasonable system to get married in. Their issue is that this situation does not exist; either they enter into a marriage where they can get screwed over at will, or they don't get married.
They are choosing the latter option.
4 – In most cases, these guys realize that the may very well be giving up women of their choice because of the marriage philosophy. They are not happy about that, necessarily, but perceive the other option as potentially much worse.
Having witnessed several of them either leave girlfriends or have girlfriends leave them over the unwillingness to get hitched, I can say that at least a decent number of them are sticking to their guns. The bottom line:
The downside risk of marriage is so great that the upside payoff does not outweigh the potential ruin, unless you really, really want to get married.
Thus, if we think of men as falling into three broad bands (this is a generalization, obviously): anti-marriage, strongly pro-marriage, and weakly pro-marriage, you are having the third band flip from being married in the past to being unmarried in the present thanks to the current legal situation.
This greatly reduces both the number of stable homes in which children can be raised, and the number of men available for women to get married to. Compounding this problem is the fact that most of the married men we know are miserable, and the single ones are much happier… unless you really have the hots for marriage, it seems like an increasingly poor deal for men.
OK, I hear your concerns, I get it. However, how about a woman who is really good, who loves you unconditionally, who proves her character and her worth over time? Could you not trust any woman, ever?
I do believe there are many women who would make wonderful life companions, mothers and wives. I am one, myself
Can you not imagine trusting a woman completely to not screw you over in this way?
Plausible, but doesn't that set the bar extremely high for a woman as well?
If we are talking about reasons that men won't commit, the fact that they have to limit themselves to the top 1% of women to protect themselves seems to indicate that there are a lot of women who won't be getting married.
And even if you do, if a woman truly loved you, why would she ask you to make such a Faustian bargain with the law, especially when it can be changed after the fact by the state?
I don't disagree there are exceptions, but that's the nature of the problem! They are exceptions, and thus, you can't assume that such a solution would work for the majority of the people. I mean, not all guns are loaded, but I'm sure not going to pick them up and point them at my head to test.
It's similar to the lemon car buying problem in game theory. The issue is not that all cars are lemons, but that when enough of them are lemons and you don't have a way to detect, with certainty, which ones are lemons before buying, you refuse to buy.
Same problem for women. Sure there are some good ones, but you don't know for sure which they are until after the fact, and because the consequence of being wrong is so great, the smart move is to not play the game. You cannot ignore such perverse incentives; it seriously distorts marriage, even if you are cognizant of it and try to avoid it.
All this makes sense, the idea of the weakly pro-marriage group flipping to unmarried is especially effective.
One quibble though: research shows pretty clearly that married men rate their level of happiness consistently higher than unmarried men. They're also healthier, both physically and mentally.
Of course it does; there are huge sampling problems to doing that.
If you want to find the expected value of marriage, you have to ask all men who got married, not only those who got married and stayed married!
That's like asking only small business owners who are still in business after five years about their level of happiness with the initial decision to start a business.
It's not a representative or complete sample.
Huh… the second part of my post went missing, so this is the second half of what should have been above:
Thus, the problem with asking only married men about their happiness is that you have only polled two out of the three groups of men:
Men who are married and happy.
Men who are married and unhappy (and, in the future, will likely end up divorced).
Men who are now divorced (most of whom are unhappy, if you look at statistics like happiness surveys and the suicide rate among divorced men).
Once you include that third group correctly, the “average happiness” delivered by getting married drops precipitously.
Well, there you go. That sounds fairly obvious, but you'd never look at it that way reading in the MSM.
I concur entirely.
One of the things I believe is that, with proper legal reform, some of the issues that men and women face in the dating market would be ameliorated to a significant extent.
“Fair” marriage would reward the wise and punish the foolish, which I have no problem with.
The issue is that, right now, most of the MSM is asleep on the issue while men, especially younger men who have seen the extreme trauma of divorces repeatedly play out under our new legal system, continue to opt out of marriage in ever greater numbers.
On that note, keep up the good work with the blog, also, Susan. Raising awareness about reasonable behavior is always a good thing on that front.
Enjoy.
“Can you not imagine trusting a woman completely to not screw you over in this way?”
Let's put it this way: I don't trust my ability to identify beforehand which woman will be trustworthy once she gets married, has kids and a few years pass.
The evidence of the radical changes that women go through after marriage and kids is too great for me to ignore and pretend like I will know enough to make an informed decision.
Unluckily, such a scenario cannot really be simulated by being in a long-term relationship involving harmless cohabitation for me to draw a valid conclusion.
This is an interesting subject. From personal experience, the older I got (and the more “Game” thought I absorbed), the more marriage became a more of a bum deal. Now, eventually, I did marry, but it took a long while to find someone I felt was worth taking the risk for.
I wonder how common this is? Even the happily married guys in my social sphere seem to quietly counsel their nephews to wait, and not marry for a while. While not necessarily recommending they act as cads, they are subtly encouraging the younger guys to “shop around”. Again, not sure how common this is, but if it occurs within the solidly married group, I wonder how typical it is in the world at large.
Even before I understood the basic unfairness of our laws around divorce and custody, I would still have urged my son to wait until his late 20s to marry. If nothing else, waiting until both parties are mature helps suppress the divorce rate. I hate to become cynical and urge my son not to marry at all (I will want grandchildren!) but I see the wisdom of making that decision very, very carefully.
In the world at large, I have the impression it's not something that generally is on the radar screen before people have been out in the world for a while, either seeing their friends get screwed over or receiving guidance of the sort you describe as they approach their mid to late 20s.
Ideally, the maturity argument would seem to be a good one for delaying marriage. However, these days, it seems like it's become an excuse to prolong adolescence into one's 30's. So, in fact, no maturation occurs, and sometimes a regression, since you get used to that level of narcissism.
If any of the young women I did my beta-pining over in college had reciprocated, I probably would have found myself married close to a decade earlier. I might have been less mature, but probably would have done what generations past have done when confronted with a big life change: adapt and accept things. These days, that way of thinking seems to be discouraged.
Of course, now that I'm on the other side, I too would counsel to wait, particularly for the guys.
ENY, it's interesting you should mention narcissism. I'm working on a piece that delves into the skyrocketing rates of narcissism in women, who used to represent only 25% of the cases. They're closing the gap quickly.
In general, though, my generation is responsible for raising narcissists. That's what we get for handing out trophies that say PARTICIPANT.
BTW, I recall that you said a woman you liked in grad school came sniffing around later on, but you'd already met your wife. I'm so glad you didn't give her the time of day!
Part of the narcissism, I think, is related to the Post WWII affluence. A lot of people no longer have a connection to real hardship (i.e. depression era relatives and the like).
As for the woman in question, it's an interesting case. She had wanted to focus on her studies and career (and not dating). Which was true, since I never saw her dating anyone else, for that matter. When she reappeared much later, I did a little digging through mutual friends. She had put career first and foremost, but had realized that the career wasn't the end all without someone to share it with.
And yes, I politely mentioned that my girlfriend was going to be moving to the area permanently. I felt a little bad for her, actually, because she had been ill-served by the “career now, relationship much later” feminism.
I certainly hope it isn’t an issue. I am 34 myself. One of my friends in 36 and he tells me not to try for younger women. However, I think he only says that because he looks old for his age and has let himself go and knows that he is probably incapable of ever attracting a woman in her mid-20s. I personally would go maybe as young as 24, although I would prefer late 20s because a lot of young women seem to be very self-absorbed.
For gods sake men, don’t be settled for and DON’T let it be a women with such an attitude and history. Challenge yourselves. Do better.
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“The number 30 reads like an expiration date for unmarried women,” says Gauvain. Not only are your baby-making years racing by, but you’re leaving behind your 20s — a decade of experimentation, one-night stands, and making mistakes
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http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/relationship-issues/married-wrong-husband
Abbot, the women discussed in that article are the ones that really give men second thoughts about marriage.
That woman probably never loved the man she married at any point leading up to the marriage or afterward and yet she married him anyway and had children. I suspect she’ll live a lonely existence for the rest of her life and will never be satisfied with anyone. It would have been nice if the author of that article had followed up with her a year after the divorce to see her love life was going at that point.
It would have been nice if the author of that article had followed up with her a year after the divorce to see her love life was going at that point.
Yeah right, that will happen. I wanted to visit Egypt but it seems that is filled on unmarried women that are fullfilling their lives with whatever they can use, because they can’t relate on a normal, loving way to 49% of the population of the world. And the few older women that speak up are quickly silenced by the roar of young women praising that they love their lives and this women are not speaking for the majority. So indeed it would be nice of people actually researched all this post-divorced women. It would be probably very eye opener.
I wonder what percentage of women (or men) are simply too selfish to ever be satisfied with marriage. The woman in the article was 38 when her marriage ends and was 33 when she got married and presumably had dated her ex-husband for some time before marriage. Maybe she remembered having the power to get the men she wanted when she was in her 20s, but I suspect that if her ideas about marriage were so unrealistic, then her idea of what type of men she can get to commit to her now despite being in her late 30s are also similarly unrealistic.
I’m an average guy who has given up on dating.
I’ve been complimented on the way that I treat women in general, and especially the woman I’m with, but I keep getting The Three Speeches.
You’ve heard them, and perhaps given them – the You’re a Nice Guy, But Not for Me speech, the There’s Someone Out There for You, But It’s Not Me speech, and the one that feels like an acid dipped knife being twisted in the wound, the I Love You, But Not That Way speech.
All I ever wanted out of life was a partner who I could share the journey with, but it’s just not meant to be…
I agree with the author.
Too many women are too picky.
I’ve been complimented on the way that I treat women in general, and especially the woman that I’m with, but I still end up getting The Three Speeches.
They are the “you’re a nice guy, but not for me” speech, followed by the “there’s someone out there for you, but it’s not me” speech, and the one that feels like an acid dipped knife being slowly twisted in the wound, the “I love you, but not that way” speech.
That’s why I’ve given up on dating.
I may never win at the game of love, but I’ll never lose again, because I choose not to play.
Being lonely and alone is better than having my heart repeatedly broken.
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