-
My favorite book in 1966.
In my recent post on the economics of the marriage market I quoted economist Betsey Stevenson, who explained the importance of dating as a part of socializing and maturing as well as shopping for a spouse:
Not all dating is about trying to find a spouse. There is a difference between what you might want in a date on a Saturday night when you’re 19 and what you might be looking for in someone to spend the rest of your life with.
I met my husband at 25, and he was my fourth boyfriend. I am certain that marriage to any of the first three would have been disastrous, though I am happy to say they all married and had families, and none have divorced. It was not that they were not suitable or good men, the problem is that we were not well matched enough to carry the ball for a lifetime. In my next post I will discuss what I learned from each of them, and why those relationships are in part responsible for my having been happily married for nearly 28 years to someone else.
Today, though, I thought I’d provide a history of dating. It’s an interesting topic, as it intersects with American immigration, wars, and the mainstreaming of college education. While much has changed in the last 125 years, much of it is for the better, and most of it was inevitable. And there’s a surprise – our grandmothers shed their knickers while dating too.
A Brief History of Dating
According to Kathleen Bogle, author of HOOKING UP: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, dating became the norm during the large waves of American immigration.
In earlier Western societies the process for most young middle and upper class people to find potential mates was heavily monitored by parents, their families, and their communities.
This was known as the calling era. Gentlemen with the honorable intention of marriage would come courting. This tradition is exemplified by portrayals in 19th century works of fiction, such as the works of Austen, Eliot, and Trollope. Currently you may see it portrayed in the television sensation Downton Abbey.
The practice required a comfortable sitting room in which to receive guests, as well as a population of gentlemen free to come calling during the day. Young women, whose education included learning to sing and play the piano, were often expected to provide the entertainment. In less wealthy populations men might “come a courtin’” on a Sunday, and perhaps be allowed a stroll or a chaperoned ride in the family buggy. Women had very limited say in who they might marry, and suitors were generally encouraged by the mother, who prioritized their daughter’s being well provided for financially. When marriages did happen, they were often between acquaintances or even virtual strangers.
The calling era did not work well for the lower and working classes. They did not have the means or leisure to provide for such forms of entertainment while observing the proprieties. In early 20th century America, large groups of young people immigrated and sought rooms in boarding houses, women’s hotels, or with relatives. With families no longer present to control the process, and receiving rooms in short supply, young people began to meet up in groups to socialize. Often dances and other activities were sponsored by churches and other community organizations.
Two people who took a liking to one another could only spend time together by pairing up at functions, and then by going out on a “date,” which often consisted of dancing, a movie, or sharing a meal. Often young dating couples did marry, but marriage was not an obligatory ending to the process of dating, and was not assumed.
College men were particularly interested in dating numerous women before committing to one for marriage. Bogle:
Courtship involves people of the opposite sex getting to know each other en route to marriage. Dating is not true courtship because the intent is not to marry. These relationships were prevalent in college because students, especially men, wanted to delay marriage until they graduated and were settled into careers.
Between the First and Second World Wars, dating became a source of status in the college environment, with a focus on acquiring the best possible mate as a marker. Willard Waller, a prominent early 20th century sociologist who studied courtship and coined the term “the Principle of Least Interest,” called this the “Campus Rating Complex.”
[Waller's study] of Penn State undergraduates detailed a “dating and rating” system based on very clear standards of popularity. Men’s popularity needed outward material signs: automobile, clothing, fraternity membership, money, etc. Women’s popularity depended on building and maintaining a reputation of popularity: be seen with popular men in the “right” places, turn down requests for dates made at the last minute and cultivate the impression that you are greatly in demand.
As one sociologist put it, “You had to rate in order to date, to date in order to rate. By successfully maintaining this cycle, you became popular. To stay popular, you competed. There was no end: popularity was a deceptive goal.”
According to Bogle, “Both men and women did not want to date someone who did not rank. Students went to great lengths to rank high on the dating scale. Women’s prestige on campus would decline once they were no longer a fresh face on campus, due to indiscretions, or if they were too readily available for dates.”
Now we know where “hard to get” and “flaking” originated – women were rewarded for it! After WWII, the man shortage appeared to spell doom:
In June 1945, New York Times Magazine predicted 750,000 women who wanted to marry would have to live alone. Around the same time Good Housekeeping captioned a photo of a bride and groom descending church steps with: “She got a man, but 6 to 8 million women won’t. We’re short 1 million bachelors!”
It was no longer possible for women to date large numbers of men at once. At the same time, the postwar boom made it possible for men to afford to marry sooner than they could in the previous era. The median age of marriage dropped, and the number of children per family increased. Over time, young people were encouraged to begin the dating process earlier.
One sociologist wrote in a July 1953 New York Times Magazine article that each boy and girl ideally should date 25 to 50 eligible marriage partners before making his or her final decision.
“Going steady” became a key feature of the new dating. Beth Bailey, author of From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century America, explains how it worked:
In earlier days going steady had been more like the old-fashioned ‘keeping steady company.’ It was a step along the path to marriage, even if many steady couples parted company before they reached the altar. By the early 1950s, going steady had acquired a totally different meaning. It was no longer the way a marriageable couple signaled their deepening intentions. Instead, going steady was something twelve-year-olds could do, and something most fifteen-year-olds did do. Few steady couples expected to marry each other, but for the duration of the relationship, acted as if they were married. Going steady had become a sort of play-marriage, a mimicry of actual marriage.
Going steady usually involved the gifting (or lending, to be precise) a token of the guy’s – a class ring, a letterman’s jacket, etc. The relationship might last anywhere from a few days to weeks or even years, much like relationships today. And 9 out of 10 people had premarital sex!
More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”
Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.
The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer’s analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.
…Finer said the likelihood of Americans having sex before marriage has remained stable since the 1950s, though people now wait longer to get married and thus are sexually active as singles for extensive periods.
The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.
Of course, the Sexual Revolution changed everything, though gradually. During the 70s when I was in college going steady was still the norm for most students. More than thirty years later, we find ourselves in the midst of this highly dysfunctional phase called hookup culture. The primary “innovation” of hookup culture is the reversal of the order of intimacy in dating. Physical intimacy now precedes emotional intimacy and is a prerequisite for further contact, though by no means a guarantee. Skip Burzumato, writing about the effect of current culture on young people:
[It] has caused cultural and relational vertigo — not knowing for certain which way is up or down, and not knowing in which direction to move. Do I date one person at a time or several people? How do I know when I’m going out with a person (meaning, dating them exclusively)? How do I talk to the other person about our relationship — in modern language? When do we have the DTR (defining the relationship) talk? And what about sex? What qualifies as sex anymore — only intercourse? How about oral sex — does that “count?” For many it’s utter confusion.
It is indeed. It’s not clear what the post-feminist paradigm will look like. There will be a correction of sorts, as so many young people are dissatisfied with the status quo. I think we’ll see a real bifurcation. Those who have rejected the hookup scene for the most part will return to more traditional forms of dating. I believe this is already happening post-graduation (though not on college campuses). Others will continue to pair off for brief flings and hookups, without fear of shame, for the most part. Some will move back and forth between the two groups, which means it will be extremely important for young people to filter for character and sexual history.
{ 345 comments… read them below or add one }
1 2 3 »
Happy to see a new thread up. The last one got pretty crazy.
Oh, and even though I promised myself I’d never do this….First!
“More than thirty years later, we find ourselves in the midst of this highly dysfunctional phase called hookup culture. The primary “innovation” of hookup culture is the reversal of the order of intimacy in dating. Physical intimacy now precedes emotional intimacy and is a prerequisite for further contact, though by no means a guarantee.”
When i broke contact off with the last girl and my coworkers saw me moping at my desk.. i half joking threw my hands up in the air and said
“F*CK this… i’ve had it all backwards.. ive been looking for good women to have relationships with INSTEAD OF having sex first and then bothering to see whether she’s worth having a relationship with.”
no word of a lie, they all got up and started clapping, with my mack daddy friend putting his hand on my shoulder and saying
“You finally understand young grasshopper.”
This is INDEED the world we live in now. My beta is perturbed. Time to throw it back in the trunk along with my gimp and enjoy being a little nihilistic for a while.
More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
Having had some honest conversations with older women–some in their late 80s now–I’m not surprised at this. I do think that those women tended to be older at first intercourse than today’s girls and to have had fewer partners, often marrying the first or second guy they had sex with, or not having sex until they were engaged.
Those born in the 40s would have been sexually active in the 60s. Is it soo surpprising that they’d have had pre-marital sex.
Interesting synopsis of the history of dating. The thing that jumps out at me off the top is how the post WWII boom changed the dynamics of dating in a way that heavily favored men for a long period of time. Killing off a decent chunk of marriage-age men in a war that both devastates the economic competition and lays the seeds for a massive economic boom will have even lame dudes looking good. I think in the same way many in the labor movement miss the old economy of the 50s, I think a lot of the guys around here miss the dating market of the 50s.
Also noted is how the legal and social environment mandating segregation not only helped out certain groups economically, but it also created an environment where there was much competition. When having outsiders go for the women you’re targeting literally be an act of suicide, and the supply of outsiders from other groups strictly legally regulated, it cuts down on the competition a bunch. I wonder if men realize that the environment of the 50s is never going to come back. This isn’t to say what’s going on is ideal, but we’re only going partway home.
Great post! I think this might be one of my favourites. I love the dating history stuff!
Question: out of the sources you used, are there any books in particular that you would recommend? I’d love to have something fun yet educational to add to my Kindle.
I’m having an insane week, but I just had to move the focus off that thread! I know I’m doing something wrong when Hellhound and Ghost come to call.
@Todd
Me too! I wondered why the marriage rate would go up if men had more options. True, marriage was more attractive then for legal reasons, but it’s well known that when men have the edge they tend to delay commitment – and that’s true in every culture and country. I wonder if it has to do with those old-fashioned values like honor, duty, country. Or maybe it’s because married men did better in careers?
@Emily
I am tempted to read the Beth Bailey book. I love the history too – I can remember listening eagerly to my mom’s stories of dating in the 50s. And even my grandmother’s stories from the 30s!
Hey HUS!
I’ve been lurking around here for a few months now, and since my summer holiday just started I felt it was time to leave a comment behind!
I’m nineteen years old and just finished my first year at university in England. I count myself very lucky that I found this wonderful website! It’s a true eye opener. I must say that having been at uni for a year now, I can relate to most of what the articles and commenters here are saying.
From what I’ve seen myself, yeah, guys and girls are hooking up all the time, and in 90% of these cases the girl hopes the hook up will end in a relationship. The guys are usually just fooling around, trying to get sex with any girl who looks reasonable (although for some their standards will significantly lower as the Friday night progresses…).
I’ve seen ONS ending in relationships and girls hooking up with the guy they are dating and truly fancy only to find out (when it’s too late) that he actually just wanted sex.
I’ve never had a boyfriend, and only ever kissed one guy once. I’d like to have a boyfriend, be with someone a truly care about, but what’s a girl to do?! I can really relate to this article.
I don’t really know what to do to be honest. Well, I know I’m not made for just hooking up with guys, that doesn’t appeal to me at all. So I should date guys first. But as all uni guys are very well aware of the hooking up culture themselves, they will expect me to quickly physically escalate with them, possibly before any emotional escalation, as this is expected from girls in this culture.
Thanks to you Susan Walsh (thank you, thank you, thank you!), I am aware that I should be the one to initiate emotional escalation etc. but I can’t help but feeling a little hopeless…I don’t think a lot of guys (especially my age!) will hang around for long when they realise I want to have established a proper (emotional) commitment before I’m escalating physically…Which is why I feel ‘dating around’ isn’t really gonna work.
Woops, sorry for the lengthy post! Summarizing has never been one of my strongest points…
@Susan
I think both of those are true. You had the largest military mobilization in the history of the country in terms of percentage of the population. Also, since men were more likely to have decent careers, taking that next step for the breadwinner’s wage paid a much bigger premium. Throw in on the flip side that marrying made more sense of a woman due to a lack of opportunity AND the income of even a mediocre man, and you have an environment ripe for marriage.
@Susan
You mean when society subsidized something they got more of it and when they hampered it they got less? We have less marriage now than post-WWII even though the sex ratios are more balanced.
Subsidies can be more than financial. In fact, I suspect other rewards are more effective for those above basic subsistence.
@J
This is the crucial point left out of all the reporting on the studies. It compares pre-marital sex of “steady couples with a high probability of marriage indulging” to “drunken co-eds hooking up” without context. “See, 9 out of 10 did it then too so what you’re doing is okay” is the message.
Hell, there is some evidence bundling in Puritan New England was a way to test sexual compatibility of a couple headed for marriage. Then again, the Puritans weren’t the prudes we portray them to be. There are recorded instanced of men being put in stocks for failing to have marital relations with their wives. Chew on that one for a while.
We’d be much better off seeing them as people who saw the importance of sex with out under or over emphasizing it. Instead we call them prudes and congratulate ourselves on our liberation.
@Herb
Well, the economy is a much different place now than it was then. Create a world where less-educated men can earn a middle class living again, and the incentives will change again. However, the days of a high school graduate doing well without a particular skill died out with the Carter administration.
@Todd
Yeah, people often underestimate how much of modern culture grew out of that.
Motorcycle clubs in the modern sense got their start with men coming back but being unable to give up the adrenaline rush. Given the war was their framework for the rush the clubs had military structures including leadership.
Much of modern gay male culture (although I get the impression this is changing and is less true of gay men in their 20s today than 20 years ago) owes a lot to the male bonding experience in the war. Gay men were more interested in continuing what they had experienced and brought similar structure to the bars.
In one of the most interesting intersections, gay biker clubs spawned at least a significant part of leather culture (a subset of the S&M world) in the US (how much is an argument I’ll leave to those who care).
Those are the ones I know, mainly through the last and as a consequence the first two. I suspect there are many more (there is some evidence swinging comes out of Navy and Air Force pilot communities).
Yeah, I’ve seen that 90% claim before and it has to be qualified that a great many of those encounters were among engaged couples and/or led to shotgun weddings.
It’s not really comparable to what we have now.
@Susan
Funny story.
I was reading your story and it wasn’t until about halfway through that I realized dating and hooking up were not meant to be synonymous.
@Carmen
I’m so glad you decided to leave a comment! Ah, you sound like so many young women do at 18 or 19. I’m not gonna lie – relationship-oriented guys are going to be in short supply during your uni years. Of course, some of the best guys are underappreciated – that’s definitely your best bet. All those guys you see hooking up? Don’t look at them. Look elsewhere, I promise you not everyone is into it. Otherwise, bide your time, have fun with your friends, and don’t go down that black hole of casual sex. The women in my focus groups who have been careful and are now out of college are finding themselves much better placed strategically than girls with more extensive sexual histories. And to my surprise, it isn’t even that their reputations are hurting them – they’ve moved away from college. The problem is them – they’re all messed up in the head re relationships, what guys want, why they’re attractive, etc. I really think casual sex does a number on most women.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy your summer break – we’ll be here so I hope you comment again.
But the lifetime number of sexual partners is still quite low for both sexes. I’ll see if I can dig up a comparison over time.
The National Marriage Project studied the birth and wedding records of the Pilgrims and concluded that 50% of couples then had premarital sex. Where they found the privacy I have no idea, but they managed.
That’s the real problem. The average age at first marriage during that period was 20 for males and 18 for females. Most didn’t have degrees but they could earn a living wage, and the woman could stay home. We’ve lost a lot of ground financially since then.
I don’t think it’s meant to be, but I was surprised to learn that 90% of women had premarital sex then. There is a sort of mythology that women used to have great self-control and be chaste for their husbands. I’m not sure about only engaged couples having sex. Since dating and going steady was already the norm in the 50s, I would think that many couples were having sex with people they wound up not marrying. When I got to high school in 1970, the couples were definitely having sex in the back seat, and there was nothing “revolutionary” about it. What do you think couples did while parking in the 50s?
That is funny. You are a man of your time!
Susan…”The National Marriage Project studied the birth and wedding records of the Pilgrims and concluded that 50% of couples then had premarital sex.”
I have no idea if this is really true or not, but I’ve read that in some church that had been around a long time, it was noticed that the names of certain members from way back when had the notation “CF” written by them in the records. At first it was believed that this was some high honor…turned out it meant “confirmed fornicator.”
@david foster
That’s funny – at least they didn’t have to wear it on their clothing like Hester Prynne!
@Susan
I’m happy to finally join the conversations! I’ve spent hours and hours reading the comments sections lol. It’s has definitely provided me with some useful insight! Brilliant idea really, to start a website like this, just what I and many other girls need.
Yeah, thankfully I’ve realised for years to avoid ‘hooking up guys’. I’ve been going to clubs and bars once/twice a week since I was sixteen (I’m from Holland where the legal drinking age is sixteen) and I think I’ve just been lucky to realise at a young age that casual is not for me
The guys will try, but they realise soon enough that it’s just not gonna happen!
Hmm, yes, I noticed relationship-oriented guys are in short supply.
My ‘problem’ though is that I’m not sure how to screen for these guys as I think there are 3 ‘types’ of guys at uni:
1) relationship-orientated guys (who wouldn’t go for casual sex at all…I’d say this is just a VERY small no. of guys)
2) guys just looking for casual sex
and (here comes the problem)
3)guys who would love to have a relationship (so you could say they are relationship-orientated), but only with the right girl. Until that girl comes along they will just go for casual sex. From what I’ve seen and heard from male friends most guys fall under this ‘category’. I’d estimate this is 75% of all guys at uni.
The reason I find this third category problematic is because if you fancy a guy like this and you’re not ‘the right girl’ for him, for the moment they’ll just pretend that you are and then dump you as soon as they’ve had what they were looking for. If you ARE the right girl, you’re lucky and it might be an actual relationship.
But of course the girl (me) will not know whether she’s the ‘right girl’ for this guy or not.
So the solution you suggest is waiting for sex until you’ve been dating for a while and commitment is made, right? But what if the guy you’re dating expects you to have sex with him before that? He will notice that other guys are hooking up (whether these are relationship-oriented guys or casual sex guys) and therefore to him, this expectation seems perfectly reasonable…
Should I just cross my fingers and hope he finds me special enough to wait for sex?
Carmen,
Let’s talk serious for a second, shall we? I’ll talk to you as if I were a typical male college American.
Now, sex is awesome. But it’s not everything in life. So you can delay sex, if you are strongly convinced that the girl you are with is something special. I’ve done this. I am pretty sure other guys have done this. I mean, a girl you can spend the rest of your life with?
That’s weighty stuff. And stopping it over something like sex, wow…
But that girl has to be special. She has to have potential to be a life partner.
And did you read this article?
You don’t have that potential. Period. You are not special. You are not worth waiting for, because you have zero chance of being my life partner.
The only reason I would wait for you, is if I am really desperate to have sex, or all the other girls would make me wait too.
Now there are a lot of guys like that. We call them loser Betas. You probably aren’t going to be attracted to many of them.
And really, why should a guy feel special to be with you? You’re most likely going to leave him before college ends anyways, so you’re basically calling him a temporary boyfriend. Great. How in any way is that special?
Again, this is the reality you are dealing with. This is not how I would approach a relationship in college, but it is absolutely how I would approach any girl who intends to date me without intention of lifelong partnership: she is not worth waiting for.
Carmen, glad to have a new commenter!
My thoughts on your situation: You don’t have to give those guys all the power. So what if they don’t want to be your boyfriend? So what if they don’t find you special enough to be exclusive? So what if they’re too immature and only want to hook up? You don’t want them *anyway.*
Concentrate on being a special girl unto yourself. Personally, I improved myself and made myself “the prize,” and guys wanted to be with me and asked me to be their girlfriend, and they knew my conditions for doing anything physical which was love and a genuine emotional connection.
If the guy you’re “dating” expects sex before you’re ready, ditch him. There will be other guys. If he wants to hook up, let him do it with some other girl. You are not the type to follow “what everyone else is doing” anyway, so why get with a guy who is that much of a sheep and herd-follower? I know I wouldn’t even respect a guy like that. Get into the mentality of screening and filtering for that special guy, who isn’t like that.
Remember, we create some of our own luck.
“we find ourselves in the midst of this highly dysfunctional phase called hookup culture”
..and a concurrent escalation in the effort by men to avoid sluts for marriage.
Can both activities survive simultaneously for long?
Well Susan we don’t have too many metrics to go by.
However, we know that pre-birth control, teen pregnancy and OOW births in general were very rare. So there couldn’t have bee TOO much sex. We also know what the literature says about the time, and what people remember. It’s something I have sought to discuss with my elders all that often but on the rare occasions when it has come up they have all told me that they can’t believe how the SR changed everything and that in their day things simply were not like that.
Obviously the picture of total chastity is a myth (to the extent that anyone ever really believed it) but my guess is that this claim that everybody was doing it is just a counter-myth, the purpose of which is to justify the mess we have now. Whenever some societal marker gets really bad you can always count on intellectuals to rush in and say the past was no better and perhaps worse except back then everyone was a hypocrite and isn’t it better now that we are all honest about how degraded we are.
Oh, in terms of actual advice.
I have absolutely no idea. My gut reaction is to tell you to skip dating, it’s a waste of time. Concentrate on your studies and learn.
Oh dear, I’m 23 already. I only have a couple more years before I get to the point where I need to meet a wife!
Hi Carmen! I hope you stick around!
>> “… bide your time, have fun with your friends, and don’t go down that black hole of casual sex. ”
I agree with this advice. If a great guy comes along, then that’s awesome. But if not, don’t panic. And keep your clothes on until you’re 100% sure that you’re “the right girl”.
>> “Should I just cross my fingers and hope he finds me special enough to wait for sex?”
Exactly.
I found dating a lot more difficult when I was your age, but my university years were still possibly the best years of my life.
In the meantime, just focus on getting good grades and having fun with your friends.
Susan:The National Marriage Project studied the birth and wedding records of the Pilgrims and concluded that 50% of couples then had premarital sex. Where they found the privacy I have no idea, but they managed.”
Women were also allowed to sue their husbands if he didn’t put it out. The husbands, being bigger and stronger, didn’t have to sue their wives for sex (if you get what I’m saying.)
“Create a world where less-educated men can earn a middle class living again, and the incentives will change again.”
You mean like Germany or Norway?
Esco said:
“Obviously the picture of total chastity is a myth (to the extent that anyone ever really believed it) but my guess is that this claim that everybody was doing it is just a counter-myth, the purpose of which is to justify the mess we have now. ”
__________________________
No doubt. Grandma Phyllis’s 3 minutes of fun with the traveling Brylcreem salesman does not mean she thinks of sex like a handshake.
Carmen, I would suggest you do this:
When (if) you find a guy you really want, who you genuinely think is different & special, take some time to get to know him, share some music, books, films etc. Talk a bunch of times, find common ground. If he starts making a move, or things just start going that way anyway, clearly express to him that you find him very attractive, you definitely want to be with him & he is in your thoughts all the time, but that you need to take it slow, as this isn’t something you generally do.
I think most guys of the type you are looking for would be okay with that, at least for a little while, & in fact would quite probably hold you in higher esteem because of it, just as long as a) it’s true (& the rest of your behaviour bears this out) & b) they’re genuinely interested in you in the first place. Either way, it gives you a couple of weeks more time & space to observe him in a few different settings to see whether you feel right in committing to him, & gives him a deeper experience of you too.
For me the key point here you may not have heard before is the clear expression of your attraction interest in him (usually once he’s expressed his interest in you). By doing that you are building sexual attraction & bonding, rather than just playing with him at arms length, or stringing him along. That’s my two cents, anyway.
Then again, Beta-Guy’s take on this is highly relevant, too.
“The husbands, being bigger and stronger, didn’t have to sue their wives for sex (if you get what I’m saying.)”
That’s right, because all men are rapists (if I get what you’re saying.)
“this claim that everybody was doing it is just a counter-myth, the purpose of which is to justify the mess we have now. Whenever some societal marker gets really bad you can always count on intellectuals to rush in and say the past was no better and perhaps worse except back then everyone was a hypocrite and isn’t it better now that we are all honest about how degraded we are.”
Now, just who are these “intellectuals” and why would they bother to rush in and say anything? Who is on the defensive here?
That’s right, because all men are rapists (if I get what you’re saying.)
Thank you for calling onto this. Didn’t we had a lengthy conversation about how a healthy man doesn’t enjoy sex with unwilling women like less than a year ago?
And as a fan of both porn and romance novels there is a lot more rape fantasies scenarios on the romance side than on porn, and I mean romance is one of the few genres writing for and by women, take that in any way you want to.
@Carmen
The guys here will tell you that a guy who likes you and sees you as a potential gf will actually reward your taking it slow and wait. He will only do that if you have not already been slutty with other guys, and you haven’t. You will need to make that very clear.
It is true that sometimes guys wind up committing to girls they’ve been hooking up with just for sex, but as you pointed out earlier, those relationships are often just fancy FWBs. If you want the real deal – emotional intimacy – then you need to do your job as I outlined in the emotional escalation post, let him do his job at sexual escalation, and tell him that you cannot wait to go there but you need to know it’s for real. If he doesn’t respect that, he wasn’t in it for the right reasons.
It’s a filter that will catch most guys, unfortunately. Women get very frustrated when they filter appropriately and no one gets through.
But it’s better this way. You know that.
FWIW, you’re better off with older guys. At uni, the older the better. In fact, keep your eye out for cute graduate students.
Wow, ADBG, way to welcome the new female college student! Are you serious? This is rude, not to mention cynical. Don’t run asshole game here, it’s bad for biz.
Carmen, ignore everything he says, he’s just in a very bad mood lately.
@Escoff
Very true. And I agree that all of this needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
No he was 27. You’ve still got time!
@GudEnuf
I wonder if there were court cases where this happened. And I also wonder whether this mostly happened to gay men.
My grandma preferred the Fuller brush man.
My grandma preferred the Fuller brush man.
What happened to the good old Milkman? Sex and calcium….a winning combo! :p
My apologies to Susan and Carmen. It is not my intention to be rude. It is only my intention to paint the college smp as messed up.
The only winning move is not to play.
@Susan
“FWIW, you’re better off with older guys. At uni, the older the better. In fact, keep your eye out for cute graduate students.”
Hmm. Another revelation for me. My undergrad was not top-tier. It was an HBCU, and most HBCU’s do not have legitimate or well-populated graduate programs. Unfortunately for me “older” automatically meant non-college “locals” (bad news in Tallahassee, FL) or professors.
An aside: I tried really hard in graduate school to land a commitment, but the only guy who made it past the filter turned rotten (alpha) months into the relationship, got another woman pregnant, then married her. He’s reconnected and apologized to me recently, but what’s done is done. From that time (age 27) onward dating was all down hill. I still look very young at 35 (I always get confused for a college student), but some how it seems like age is counting against me anyway.
The college SMP is messed up, but I don’t buy your claim that 80% of the guys are unattractive to women. Most boyfriends on college campuses are indeed betas, so that’s a good strategy for Carmen. No need to assume she won’t like any of them!
BS. That’s the ultimate loss.
There’s no reward without risk.
This is just utter nonsense. Every other post you make is a surreptitious push to reinforce a state in the mating market that is advantageous to women. Men really don’t care about “emotional depth” in a relationship. Men don’t want to “date”. Men hate dating. The only thing that we want out of serial dating and relationships is sex. That’s it. Nobody cares about finding themselves, exploring their sexuality or turning compatibilty into some mystical alchemical process. Those are hamster pellets. What men care about is fidelity, period. If we can’t count on that the rest is irrelevant, and living that lifestyle necessarily degrades your suitability for marriage in most men’s eyes. Your grandma’s sluttiness doesn’t automatically give you license to be the same. Only weak men think their women are wiser for all the extra dicks they’ve serviced.
Then again, the Puritans weren’t the prudes we portray them to be. There are recorded instanced of men being put in stocks for failing to have marital relations with their wives. Chew on that one for a while.
Hah! I knew that. Did we see the same program on the Smithsonian Channel this week?
There is a sort of mythology that women used to have great self-control and be chaste for their husbands.
And considering that people married young, it would have been easier to hold off till marriage than it is today.
@modernguy
“This is just utter nonsense. Every other post you make is a surreptitious push to reinforce a state in the mating market that is advantageous to women. Men really don’t care about “emotional depth” in a relationship. Men don’t want to “date”. Men hate dating. The only thing that we want out of serial dating and relationships is sex.”
I don’t quite understand your objection. What is Susan posting that is bad for men? Is seeking emotional depth disadvantageous to men?
However, we know that pre-birth control, teen pregnancy and OOW births in general were very rare.
But many first babies were big, heallthy and “premature.”
@ Susan
“The college SMP is messed up, but I don’t buy your claim that 80% of the guys are unattractive to women. Most boyfriends on college campuses are indeed betas, so that’s a good strategy for Carmen. No need to assume she won’t like any of them!”
I don’t think it’s the case that she will never like any of them, but I am going to assume she is going to instant-DQ most of them, and various other factors involving lack of IOIs, lack of logistics, lack of male aggressiveness and game, etc, will take care of almost all the rest of them.
I do wish Carmen all the best, but if I could go back to my college self now, it wouldn’t be to date more women: it would be, you are eventually going to find a place where the SMP is not so screwed up, and it doesn’t matter you’re not having a lot of success right now.
But this is the only, only, only, only time in your life you are going to be able to learn like mad and gather new skills with the full support of college staff.
So go focus on learning.
@ SayWhat
“BS. That’s the ultimate loss.
There’s no reward without risk.”
I absolutely agree, but what my finance classes impressed upon me was making sure the risks you take are INTELLIGENT risks. And my economics classes impressed upon making sure to value my labor and only apply it to tasks worthy of my time: there is a huge opportunity cost here.
So my advice to Carmen is to TRY not to worry too much about boys. When she graduates university and is a few years out, she will be in a better SMP that is more in sync with her interests. I absolutely cannot promise her that she will find a good guy, but her chances are higher than she thinks, and delaying affection really isn’t that bad.
She should instead devote her time to higher value-added activities with permanent payoffs. That would be her studies.
Hah! I knew that. Did we see the same program on the Smithsonian Channel this week?
There is an Smithsonian Channel!!!!??? Maybe cable TV is not a waste of money after all.
It squicks me out to speculate on my grandparents’ sex lives. But you know, I’d bet good money that my N maternal grandmother was seriously racy for that era.
She talked constantly of her suitors and how we’d be lucky to hold a candle to her, how cute she was, how she danced every dance and never lacked a partner. Even when I was in my teens, she would stand both of us in front of the mirror and point my faults and her superiorities. Even in her 70s and working 80 hours a week, she would flirt shamelessly for tips. Then crow about how attractive she was, counting her money triumphantly, preening.
Besides that, she had a weird false piety and yet, saw sex in EVERYTHING. She was constantly suspecting of me being too immodest, at 13! You’re just going to have to believe me when I say this was not the case! (This is getting way too gross already.)
To top it off, she married my maternal grandfather, king of the alphas, and bragged about his pick-up lines to her that involved old movie stars. I think my mom rebelled by becoming the most wholesome person possible, to avoid my grandmother’s sordid ways.
OK, I’m going to stop. Right. Now!
Good Grief!
My own assessment is that men want four things out of a relationship. Affirmation, Ass, Affection, and Aid.
In that order. Men want affirmation of their status more than anything else. Respect from their wives/girlfriends. The respect of their fellow men. Kindly note that an attractive woman delivers on this point – a man who commands her affections must be respectable.
Sex is high on the list, but I’d rate it at #2, with Affection a close third.
I know there are grown men who regard women purely as self-propelled sex toys, but it seems pretty shallow to me. Sad. Depressing.
(slightly off-topic)..Susan, you and Bastiat have mentioned possible scary parallels with Weimar. I just put up a review of Hans Fallada’s 1936 novel WOLF AMONG WOLVES, which is set in 1923, in the middle of the Weimar hyperinflation. The book does an excellent job of giving the feeling of what it must have been like living in the middle of that situation, plus it is very good character development and storytelling. Also some interesting angles on gender relations.
@Susan
Yes, they happened in your backyard even.
@J
Nope, my jumping off point was a WSJ opinion piece circa 1992. I researched more after that. Plus, I lack cable.
@J and Escoffier re: OOW births and healthy premature babies
This was my point about long term couples heading for marriage indulging as opposed to hookups. Even now without hookups I suspect low N people are having more pre-marital sex. It might be with the same person but over a longer period. It is also more open. The later probably has raised the typical persons N by marriage by 1-3.
@Susan
Bundling. There are arguments that this and similar customs were a way to allowed controlled “test sex” for couples. I don’t know that there is proof and the official line is in the Wikipedia article: intimacy without sexual intercourse. Of course, depending on what counts as what a lot of the premarital sex could be something other than intercourse.
Actually, could that explain similar pre-marital sex rates without lots of OOW births: sure, Mom had sex with three guys, two she blew and Dad, who himself got knobbers from three other women?
@Mike M.
I’ll agree on the desires, but I think the order is variable between men and even with the same man across time. I know Affection and Aid score much higher at 45 than Affirmation and Ass, but that was not always the case.
In fact, the transition from Affirmation and Ass being 1/2 to Affection/Aid being 1/2 might be a sign of the ability to pick an effective life partner.
I cosign Mike M’s statement at 58
I don’t want a warm fuckdoll (although i do want a warm breathing woman that likes to fuck.. big difference)
But i have to have a connection with a woman that is beyond the physical. I actually have to like her if i want to please her. If she’s a bitch, attitude, narcissist, crazy or toxic, it’s not worth my while even just to score the booty call. I want to retain my dignity (and remain disease free to boot)
His order is pretty accurate. I think most guys lose out on the aid part. Once they show weakness and wish/require the woman to stand by him, a lot of women loose the tingle and start to look elsewhere. This is the crux.
Behind every strong man there is a stronger woman. My ex didn’t want to prop me up through the ‘for better or worse’ part. That’s what stung the most.
@M3
I hear that. One of the biggest problems of modern American (Western?) women is that want commitment but aren’t big on giving it.
If more women understood the value of aid, especially now that we’re marrying at 30, they’d be more successful. The gf drove from work (after complaining she couldn’t get it off to sit in the waiting room while I got cathed and in the room while I slept after) and spent the night, insisted on carrying things because I wasn’t allowed to lift more than 5# with my right arm (they can do the heart cath through the arm instead of the leg now which speeds recovery), and insisted on taking me to her place because I live in a third floor walk-up and she didn’t want me doing that for a few days (tonight is my first night home).
Any bitch can blow me and swallow. But a woman who will take care of me is gold (too many I know would bitch about having to change Saturday plans because I wasn’t up to dancing or something).
Hi Susan!
Interesting piece you made here! Looks like someone did their homework! This is a refreshing topic, i never thought there is a fine line between dating and courtship. I thought they are synonymous or at least complement each other. In my own perspective though, dating is sort of compatibility test for me. Like what is said in this article of yours, dating is a way to get to know each other. Almost always, men would expect to get more than a kiss if the first date goes well. Which i think is great, but i think it would be meaningful if you take time getting to know each other before getting into any physical involvement. Believe or not though there are men that are careful with women’s feelings.
@M3
“His order is pretty accurate. I think most guys lose out on the aid part. Once they show weakness and wish/require the woman to stand by him, a lot of women loose the tingle and start to look elsewhere. This is the crux.”
In addition to loss of “tingle,” I think another factor that might come into play is when women feel a bit resentful if they think they are giving too much without getting anything equivalent in return.
It seems to me that few people ever learn the art of giving. Many people only agree with “give-get.” Giving is not the same as exchange, it’s just giving. When you give, you have to make a deal with yourself…that you will give so that you can thoroughly enjoy pleasing someone or helping them out, etc. You have to decide whether you can give and feel perfectly okay if you get “nothing” (equivalent) in exchange. You are probably actually getting plenty back, but that should just be appreciated fully in and of itself.
This is a philosophy that my dad instilled in me.
People tend to truly give pretty easily to children and pets, but less often to lovers, friends, relatives, elders, and strangers.
@A Definite Beta Guy and Susan
Beta Guy, please don’t apologize, I don’t think you were rude, I think you sincerely want me to realize how messed up the college smp is. So I’d rather thank you
I do think you misunderstand me though, because I haven’t been clear about what I want. I’m not looking for a temporary boyfriend, just for funs, who I can dump as soon as someone ‘better’ comes along. I’ve never had that mindset because I know a relationship like that wouldn’t satisfy me – if I get involved with anyone, I will give it my all and take it seriously. I’m not looking for a ‘fancy FWB’ relationship. Actually, if I’d have a choice, I’d meet my future husband yesterday.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the chances of me marrying my first boyfriend are nihil, I’m not living under that illusion. But I am looking for someone who could potentially be a lifelong partner. I’d even say I only want to have sex with a guy who I see as a potential future husband/father. If I happen to marry that person, that’d be amazing, if not, well, at least I didn’t waste time on pointless FWB relationships.
So, now that you know I would date a guy with the intention of a lifelong partnership, do you still suggest me to entirely skip dating and ‘not to play’?
Regardless of your answer though, I do already focus on learning and I take my course seriously, like you suggested. Luckily my parents have always told me to just have fun with friends and that I’ll meet the right guy when I’m older, so my focus has always been on my study, my friends and trying to improve myself (as in, I’m into yoga, meditation, healthy eating, sports, improving my appearance and relationships with people; life skills and personal development – I didn’t end up at HUS by accident). I realize I’m not gonna live forever so I’m trying to make the most of it.
I don’t desperately stroll around bars looking for any guy that will do as a boyfriend. I’m not worried about guys, I understand that I don’t NEED a boyfriend. I’m the only person who can make me happy. It’s just that one day I would like to have a loving husband and a family. So atm, I’m just trying to figure out what I can do NOW to have that life in the future.
“It’s a filter that will catch most guys, unfortunately. Women get very frustrated when they filter appropriately and no one gets through.”
I can understand this frustrates women, I guess it hardly frustrates me because I’ve always been very picky on guys. Or rather, my friends call me picky, but now I think I’ve just been screening guys harsher than most girls do, so yeah, that catches most of them. I’ve always realized I’m not compatible with most guys (partly because I’m not up for casual sex/ casual relationships) –I guess you could say I’m looking for my ‘soulmate’.
And like you suggest Susan, I’d prefer a guy at least 4/5 years older than me. Luckily my uni has quite a few graduate students
“I don’t think it’s the case that she will never like any of them, but I am going to assume she is going to instant-DQ most of them, and various other factors involving lack of IOIs, lack of logistics, lack of male aggressiveness and game, etc., will take care of almost all the rest of them.”
Sorry, I don’t understand this part. What is ‘instant-DQ’?
@Hope
I’m ENFJ, sometimes I tend to be more introverted, and I can relate to a lot of what you’re saying.
I love your blog! I always find our comments here valuable, had to say that first of all.
I think it’s in my nature to always try and improve things, including myself, so I have been concentrating on this – I’m trying to figure out how to be a great ‘prize’.
Yeah, you’re right, I try to focus on screening for a special guy and just let the hooking up guys pass. I’m a firm believer in creating (most) of your own luck!
@Emily
“I found dating a lot more difficult when I was your age, but my university years were still possibly the best years of my life.
In the meantime, just focus on getting good grades and having fun with your friends. ”
Good to know dating might become easier one day! Oh yeah, I don’t doubt for a second that you had an amazing time at uni even though dating was difficult. There’s so much more to life! Like I already said in my comment to A Definite Beta Guy, I’m focusing on good grades and having fun with friends, and I must say, this year has been absolutely fantastic!!
@ Byron
Thanks a lot for your comment, it’s great advice!
I was thinking something along the lines of this, giving it all some time and taking it slow, but then I tend to get skeptical about whether guys will accept this ‘slowness’. But – like you say – the type of guy I’m looking for will probably be ok with that, and if not, he’s probably not the right guy for me anyway!
I’ve been reading relationship/’game’ blogs aimed at guys and ‘taking the red pill’ for a few months, trying to understand things from a guy’s perspective better. Now I realize that your advice of clearly expressing my genuine attraction interest in him is very important to a guy. I wouldn’t want to mess up my chances with a guy by making him think I’m stringing him along!
I agree with you that Beta Guy’s take on this is relevant. Susan might think he’s cynical, but what I’ve seen of the college smp myself, he makes some really good points.
A few quibbles:
- The idea that most of the changes were “for the better” and “inevitable.” This line is often trotted out by people who want to justify the anti-male bias in family courts, as well as the idea that men must respect women even when women treat them callously with no justification (Women, of course, have no obligation to respect men.) I know you’re better than this, Susan.
- Women born in the 1940s would have been sexually active in the 1960s, so they’re not saying anything new. If the study said that women born in the 1910s or 1920s were less chaste, then common knowledge would be uprooted.
Let’s see if this blockquote stuff works or not…
The answer depends on what you mean by “more options”. If it means “being able to pump & dump random sluts for years and then decide to choose a marriage-worthy woman”, that wasn’t really on the table for average men 60 years ago anywhere. If it means “having more marriage-worthy women tho select from because sexual competition between men decreased due to wartime losses”, that isn’t really true either because the wartime losses of the USA as a proportion of the male population were minuscule in WW2. Compare that to the Soviet Union, where losses were so heavy women made up 55% of the total population even it the late ’50s.
When men have the edge, they don’t delay commitment, they commit – if a) they can find a worthy woman b) the benefits of marriage outweigh the costs and risks, in comparison to bachelorhood. Both a) and b) were available in the situation we’re discussing. Add to this that American men’s earning power increased massively after 1945, which was a huge boost to their mating value relative to women – which wasn’t bad to begin with – and voilá, the marriage rate increased.
Marriage-minded men delay commitment when a) their sexual mating value is lower than women’s b) they observe their sexual mating value will rise compared to women’s as they age. This is the case today, but it wasn’t the case 60 years ago in the USA, or anywhere else for that matter, because female hypergamy was regulated and assortative mating was the norm.
Well that would be a pretty high return on your investment of zero!
Modernguy, you sound like a real catch.
How a post about the history of dating with no editorial content might be construed as misandrist is a puzzle. I think you need to pluck that chubby rodent out of your own eye.
@J
Good point. 60 years ago women menstruated at 13 and married at 18. Five year wait, and 90% didn’t make it. Today women menstruate at 11 and marry at 26 (28 for the college educated).
@J
Haha seriously. I can actually remember conversations among the moms having coffee, doing the math about so and so, and chortling in the realization of that exact thing happening.
@ADBG
Cosign that. I think your advice to Carmen is excellent. And I’ve been at this just long enough to witness girls who were pretty miserable about boys in college come out and find a whole new world of good guys looking to date. The good guys were there all along, but after college the barriers to visibility seem to come down somehow. On the other hand, it’s harder to meet people in general.
@Jackie
Your grandmother sounds like a real piece of work! One thing that people don’t realize is that the flappers were very promiscuous. They did a lot of bed hopping. I think that was just the privileged class though.
I don’t mean to pick on Mike, but this is the second comment that is completely focused on getting rather than giving.
@david foster
Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out! You sure do read a lot
“They did a lot of bed hopping. I think that was just the privileged class though.”
Like the male members of the harem today who are bestowed privilege only because women “consent” to have their bodies thrown into a cauldron from which they can never recover despite desperate claims to the contrary
See, I go to sleep, and a reasonable comment thread breaks out.
@Herb, you got it nailed with regard to the military and modern sex culture. As someone who was in the swing world, I can confirm a higher-than-average number of military folk, and I know about all the other connections. Good catch.
@RWC, Strike Rattlers Strike!
In all seriousness, being someone who went to a “majority” college with a brother that went to a HBCU, the dating dynamics are a lot different. While I do think there is some mythology about sex ratios at HBCUs, there is a definite sex inbalance in favor of the men. Throw in the fact that these places tend to have weaker grad school programs and aren’t in the toniest of areas, and you have a lot fewer older men with their heads around then a typical “majority” college. (FYI: A majority college is, generally speaking, any American university or 4 year college that isn’t a historical black college or university (a HBCU) or a Tribal college.)
@Comments 58 & 62, you’re so right about affirmation and loyalty being the biggest things for a guy. That’s something I wish women would comprehend. What is also true is that it takes a guy a while to get that through his head (though you also don’t want a guy on that program at, say, 16 either). Any guy who thinks sex is the most important part of a relationship isn’t read for commitment, period. If you’re a girl looking for a relationship, and the guy you’re thinking of committing to think sex is the biggest thing in a relationship, move on. Get your girls, your fattening snacks of choice and your favorite pro-woman anthems, but roll out.
This isn’t to say sex isn’t important to mature men either. It definitely is. A mature guy will also look for the bigger picture as well, and if giving up a bit on sex means a better tomorrow for him, well he can have sex tomorrow.
Somehow, I have a hard time believing that guys did not want to date that gorgeous, sweet, though quiet, girl.
- beautiful face
- tight ass
- perky tits
- sweet demeanor
- seems intelligent
Nope! Not good enough. If she ain’t hanging with the right crowd, I am not touching it.
Yes, that is where it came from. It came from the 0.1 percent, 90 years ago. No wonder all of my friends sip brandy as they kick off their docksiders.
Susan, screaming from the mountain top that people were having sex before marriage in the 1950s does not say that much. Most people who care to think about these things, and not color their vision, understand that Beaver Cleaver did not marry a virgin.
Now, if those people from mid-sized and small towns had racked up a high number of partners and diseases before marriage, now, that would be something interesting.
@Herb
It’s funny, young people often do a sort of bundling today. It’s very common for girls and guys to share beds without having sex, or even without doing anything. They often hang out very late, and then all crash wherever they can find a spot. Getting a spot in a real bed is a coup, but usually they really just sleep, or maybe cuddle and spoon. It’s very common. It’s also a common reason for couples to fight – one of them “bundles” with someone else, saying “It didn’t mean anything!” and the other gets upset about how it looks and whether some kind of hooking up really occurred.
Re the Pilgrims, the premarital sex rate is extrapolated from the number of births that occurred less than nine months after the wedding.
I think that was just the privileged class though.
Only the privileged class could afford to be flappers.
And only the attractive could afford to flatten their breasts, cut their hair short and wear clothes that did not accentuate their feminine form.
Those attractive girls could “afford” to break down social norms. They were simply showing off their wealth while being progressive.
@Ramble, my grandmother was a flapper, believe it or not, and she grew up poor as hell. (And yes, I mean my grandmother. My father’s parents had him when they were far along in years, and my dad did likewise with me.) On the flip side, it also helps that she was on the Lower East Side as a child. Take it for what it’s worth.
Susan 76
Don’t mistake the list for a get rather than give, instead view it as what is desired in return for the giving of the female needs. I discussed it here:
http://whoism3.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/if-you-view-male-sexual-needs-vs-female-relationship-needs-a-barter-system/
The image is an oversimplification and tongue in cheek but the drift is clear. Men really don’t ask all that much in terms of what they want compared to what’s expected of them.
It isn’t about taking and giving nothing in return. I’m a really giving guy (in every way possible
), as every Beta, even reformed Beta’s can attest to. It’s just that we like to see a return on our investment of giving towards the female imperative of relationship needs.
I hope that clears it up.
“Men really don’t care about “emotional depth” in a relationship. Men don’t want to “date”. Men hate dating.”
A Clarica adviser is in order.
PUA’s and Players’ DONT care about emotional depth, only pumping and dumping.
Most men DO care about emotional depth in a relationship. They actually want to care about the person they’re with and can’t do that if there is no connection.
Having said that, sex is the higher part of the agenda when it comes to the initial attraction stage. And as we’ve all learned here, if you’re not head over heels with someone sexually speaking, all the emotional depth in the world won’t save it.
As to why dating is so tedious. Men are driven to want sex by nature, but the social acumen for learning about someone before that happens means you may have to listen to a lot of gibberish you have no interest in in order to placate it. Unless the girl is really good and up to date with current world events, shows ability to introspect and is great as having philosophical debates, then dating is a horrendous bore of dancing around egg shells while listening to her ramble about pop culture BS, inane girl gossip and talking about her shopping trips, just in hopes of getting sexual access.
Game teaches guys to bypass that chore and go straight for the sex, which a lot of women seem to give up quite easily, leading men to forgo bothering to try and connect emotionally.
At least thats my take on it. I could be wrong. I’m not a psychologist. I only play one on TV.
Royale w. Cheese 64
You’ve obviously never been with a Beta guy have you
@CrisisEraDynamo
Wow. It’s getting really hard just to write a fun, chatty post around here without being attacked for misandry.
Here’s what I meant by “for the better”:
Courtship is no longer relegated strictly to the wealthy.
Both men and women have the opportunity to make a “love match” rather than a quasi-arranged marriage based primarily on financial considerations.
Both men and women have the opportunity to date, i.e. shop around, for a mate who is truly compatible and likely to go the distance in an era when people are not legally compelled to remain married.
Here’s what I meant by inevitable:
America is a nation of immigrants. Huge waves of new people arriving in the early 20th century, often separated from close family, meant that new modes of courtship were required. Churches and community groups took on the role of in loco parentis. Literally – they monitored the sexual activity of young women, and women running boarding houses also kept a close watch.
Two world wars led to great changes in the American economy, and reduced the number of marriageable men. From a demographic/economic standpoint, change was inevitable and did occur.
The Sexual Revolution has gradually led to the SMP we have today. You know how I feel about that.
Would you like to take this opportunity to apologize for accusing me unjustly?
Or, marriage really was more attractive for legal reasons.
Susan, as you know, and sometimes celebrate, most young men don’t actually want to play the field. They DO want to experience the bounty, but they don’t want to actually put in the work to get their game really tight.
However, meeting some sweetheart and spending a lot of your free time with her sounds like a good deal to a lot of guys.
You are the king of your castle with the girl next door by your side, life is good.
On the flip side, it also helps that she was on the Lower East Side as a child.
Right, I don’t think too many girls from Topeka were flappers.
And, Todd, if she was as poor as hell, how did she afford to spend time at those clubs?
Or, was she middle class for the day, but poor by today’s standards.
In fact read my last type (see link below) and if you want to avoid some of the crassness of the subject and see the point i was trying to make.. scroll down to the WHAT’S IN A CHORE? part midway through. You’ll see what i’m driving at.
Giving is great and done without expectation of being owed. But if done too many times with no effort being returned, then you are being used.
Reciprocation is not the same as being owed. Owed means you expect something of exact equal value in return for what you gave. Reciprocation means someone is showing you they appreciate what you have done and show it in a gesture great or small, where even a minor gesture may carry a greater value to the giver than what he/she gave in the first place.
eg.
You re-shingle the entire roof (5 hours, in the heat, sunburnt, dirty smelly, cuts, scrapes)
She makes me a cold drink, wipes the dirt off my face, cuddles with me on the couch and thanks me for being the strong manly Holmes on Homes man and doing an amazing job.
Make a da sense?
@Ramble, without putting too much of my family history out there, my grandmother’s family caught the business end of the 1918 Flu Epidemic, and my grandmother ran with a…less than legitimate crowd in her teenaged years. They were a different kind of businessmen, if you get my drift.
@ Susan
Thanks for explaining. I apologize.
@ Susan
I didn’t mean to come off so harsh; it’s just that I thought you were praising the modern SMP as some sort of ultimate achievement. I do agree with you on the “desirable” portions.
Seems like a good time for new commenters, so I’ll jump in!
I’ve been reading for a LONG time, and I’ve been moved to comment before, but often the comment threads grow to miles long and become heated and unwieldy before I get a chance. Given that I rarely have time to really sit down and carefully read the thread (most of my browsing is done surreptitously during stolen moments throughout my workday), it can be hard to keep up. Still, these comment threads are often of equal importance/entertainment value to me as the original posts.
I’ve long suspected – given stories told to me by older family members and friends – that the previous generations were nowhere near as chaste as we’ve often assumed (hoped?) they were. I can’t decide if that’s really comforting to confirm or not – I do occasionally enjoy getting caught up in fantasy and longing for a simpler time I never got to participate in. But at least the cultural rules of engagement were definitely more in line with my values (and those espoused here) back then than they are now.
I’m 27 and female, single (for years now), living in a very big city and struggling with an increasingly disgusting sexual/romantic marketplace. Sometimes it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, especially when I read the sort of almost-hopeless advice dished out to girls many years younger than I am. Still, HUS has largely been a port in the storm (except on rare-ish occasions when the comment threads become particularly depressing) and much of the advice given has been pricelessly helpful so far.
Scoot, welcome aboard.
Watch out for assholes.
Different window. If your last post is right, there has been a brain drain, squandering of potential, neuroticism uptick, millions of violent crimes committed because of that change. Since there are advanced civilizations still practicing the archaic family-involved marriage, the changes were not inevitable.
That it would seem better at all, I’d lay at the siren call appeal of free will; making it possible for women to say that things are better, while acknowledging that they’re, at the same time, less happy than their grandmothers were, and, at the same time, dissatisfied with the overall dating environment. Better = freer, no matter.
That said, environments change people, not ideas. The pill, television, two-worker families, drugs, and economic expansion made the present. We had the same genes and drives 50, 100, 1000 years ago,
Scoot, welcome aboard.
Don’t worry — I don’t bite.
Susan I recall from (I think it was) one of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s social histories that flappers were not promiscuous by our standards, that is they weren’t having a lot of sex. However, they were considered promiscuous by the standards of the ’20s because they were having more sex than pre-WWI girls. But mostly it was because the flappers were much more willing to make out with guys even when marriage was not a clear prospect. That alone caused their parents a lot of heartburn.
“Both men and women have the opportunity to date, i.e. shop around, for a mate who is truly compatible and likely to go the distance in an era when people are not legally compelled to remain married.”
You hit the nail on the head, here. I have tried to express this idea, especially on websites like Boundless, a webzine for Christian singles that strongly pushes early marriage. True compatibility has never been more important. It was much less important when divorce was rare. Back when most people remained married no matter what, it was less costly to make a mistake, to marry before you were really wise and discerning. Now it is not outside forces holding marriages together, it is the actual strength of the marriage. It needs to be a really really good match in every way.
Why bother dating and looking for marriage?
Haven’t you heard.. marrying yourself is all the rage!!!!
http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/shine-on/nadine-schweigert-marries-herself-self-marriage-becoming-international-204650564.html
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
Just a question for the ladies here: why is being “friends with benefits” with a hot alpha male-type (I’m talking about a genuine, psychologically-stable friend you can occasionally have sex with, not a ONS artist) generally considered a poor alternative to an LTR and attendant “deep emotional intimacy” with a potential husband (who I will ruthlessly assume has lower objective SMV than the alpha f-buddy does)?
Given that you know—in advance—that the probability of remaining with that soulmate person post-campus is very low, does this not create a greater risk of eventual emotional trauma? It’s like buying a puppy knowing that it is going to die in about 3 years.
Is it the fairy tale principle of it all, the idea that this *could* be The One even if it almost certainly will not turn out that way…?
Julie…”Back when most people remained married no matter what, it was less costly to make a mistake”
I think that’s only partly true. If you made a *minor* mistake, then yes, the social pressure to stay together would force you to work things out rather than splitting, and usually these situations probably worked out satisfactorily. But if you made a *major* mistake, and married someone really bad for you (or just plain really bad), then you were totally screwed, and not in the good way.
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
When you spend your free time focusing on the slums of Calcutta, suicide can seem like a reasonable option.
When you spend your free time helping your neighbor, and friend, lay down pavers for his new patio, before you spend the night drinking, you think, “Damn, I hope this town gets more and more people like us.”
Be careful about what you focus your attention on.
The one can help create wealth (of all kinds) and energize the willing, the other can simply get you depressed.
@Hollenhund at 7:04 am (sorry, I can’t see comment numbers)
Thank you, that was an informative and helpful comment.
Carmen, you sound like you have your head screwed on straight, well done. I’d just like to say that the first category is not as slim as you think — there are a huge number of men in there. Truth is, this category is going to be full of substandard guys, as well as diamonds in the rough who just need a decent girl to get them over the hump. If you meet a lot of people from this category and quickly say “Sorry, this won’t work out” when it’s obvious, I am quite sure you will find a decent man.
You will see me posting here that men should always aim in the third category (accept casual, while looking for a girlfriend). You could fish in this pond too, but I think it’s quite honorable and admirable if you decide not to.
@Ramble
Screaming? From a mountaintop? I think you are confused. I was not intending to say anything meaningful about premarital sex in the 50s and what that implies for today. I just thought it was an interesting tidbit, and that’s the way I presented it.
If there is any meaning in it, I think it’s to remind us that when we look back with nostalgia, we wear rose colored glasses.
I don’t buy that we are wearing rose colored glasses about the past. The mere fact, if it is a fact, that pre-marital sex was common in the ’50s does not ipso facto make the ’50s bad or no better than what we have now. The context in which that sex was taking place is hugely important.
Beyond that, I really don’t believe the numbers.
@M3
Totally fair, I understand completely.
Ramble 105
hehe. no worries, i don’t take myself too seriously. your point about bigger probs in the world is well taken.
i just like helping spread internet memes is all
Screaming? From a mountaintop? I think you are confused.
Susan, I was simply exaggerating. I was responding to your exclamation point.
It’s true that some think that girls, back in the 50′s, were all virgins on their wedding day, but, as far as I can tell, few who think much about these things are under that impression.
But, as Escoffier noted, it was unlikely that they had numbers that were all that high.
And, as Escoffier has already commented, I am not sure how many (of those that actually think about these things) looks back with rose colored glasses.
I am sure that there is some tint to those back looking glasses, but not that much.
Susan,
Your dichotomy of old time courtship practices between upper class ‘calling’ and urban immigrants with no parlor ignores the fact that 125 years ago most Americans, whether of immigrant or ‘native’ stock lived on farms. Rural communities tended to have social occasions, dances, socials, husking bees, whatever, that were in large part intended to get geographically isolated single young into closer proximity with one another, so they could meet and court.
From the modern perspective, it seems as if family and community ‘control’ of courtship was the main feature of old time courtship customs,
but those customs also aided and supported individual efforts at courtship.
Today, there is much less social control of courtship, but individuals are expected to find someone pretty much on their own with little support from the community at large.
@CrisisEraDynamo
It’s OK. I confess I’m feeling a bit beleaguered by debate the last couple of days, my fuse is shorter than usual. Also, I’ve written nearly 600 posts – I think my position on the dubious achievement of this SMP is pretty clear. So I guess I’m asking for the benefit of the doubt.
Bastiat Blogger, there are women who go the f-buddy route with the “hot” alpha. If you are asking why the women who post here do not want to do that, there would be a myriad of personal, cultural and background reasons, which may be different for each woman. I cannot speak for them, but I can speak for myself.
Personally, there is an instinctual reaction against being “used” as a “cum dumpster” or just a sex object for a guy. It is degrading and pathetic, and I treat myself with far more respect than that. I take care of my body, eat right, abstain from drugs and alcohol, and exercise regularly. A f-buddy arrangement is nothing more than to be the human equivalent of a “real doll” for some guy. I also have a deep aversion to risk, including STDs, and those risks increase exponentially with casual, uncommitted sexual activities.
Also, female sexuality is much more complicated than mere hypergamy with regard to SMV. I can objectively see that a “hot” guy has high mass appeal, but he migtht have zero appeal to me. In fact the relationship is often inverse. I have unconventional wiring and am attractted to the niche guys whom other girls find nerdy. Conversely, the more preselection / popularity a guy appears to have, the less likely I am able to feel personal attraction.
I require a deep emotional connection before I can feel the tingles for a guy, which could be a quirk of being an NF on the MBTI. The “hot” alpha is about as sexy to me as a brick wall. I feel nothing. I can count only a handful of times that a guy has made me “tingle.” Most of those times were during deep emotional conversations, or physical escalation only after such a connection has been established.
In other words, I’m a “beta” female prone to oneitis and falling deeply in love with “beta” males. Only in my world, “betas” are the real alphas.
@Scoot
Thank you so much for introducing yourself. I appreciate your kind words and I’m glad you find HUS helpful. It’s true that the comment threads can get discouraging, but remember – it’s no holds barred here, pretty much. Everyone is speaking the absolute harsh truth. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but there is much to be learned, and some great insights from the opposite sex. I think it’s very important to be informed, and the worse the environment, the more important it is. Most people don’t want to face it – if you can, that knowledge will give you a competitive edge.
I hope you’ll comment again!
Ramble – “Be careful about what you focus your attention on.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that this is exactly why I’ve felt a little bipolar lately. As much as I’m very happy with my own life at the moment, it seems like much of the world around me is turning to shit. Some of that is true because of where I live and who my neighbors are, and some of that is my focus on the worst stuff happening around me. I have to make the effort to step back and look at all the good stuff happening too, or I start losing my sanity. The problem is, around here there isn’t much “good” happening while the “bad” just keeps on coming.
But hey! The city has started to tear down abandoned buildings so they don’t crumble onto someone’s head! I just hope that doesn’t start pushing the “unsavory” types toward our little quiet section of the world. The recent vandalism around us seems to indicate it is…
RE: #113.
Exactly. And this was not merely present in rural or lower SES communities. In pretty much all communities, unmarried men and women had ample opportunity to see each other in social settings (never alone). It was not simply a matter of a woman waiting around at home for men to drop by. She could also see him in church, at dinners, at dances, on various outings, etc.
Also, unless literature totally misrepresents the way things really were, it was quite common for women to have male friends whom they had no interest in marrying and vice versa. It only became a problem when the men’s behavior started to get overly flirtacious and then he declined to propose (assuming she wanted him to). Such men would indeed be considered cads. That’s why the young people were always watched. The adults could keep track of which men behaved honorably and which did not.
@Escoffier
Interesting – I thought they were quite sexy as in having affairs casually.
Susan, according that source, the concept of “making out”–necking and petting short of sex–became widespread in the ’20s. Or, if not widespread, at least no longer exclusively practised by girls everyone would have considered a total slut. The parents were scandalized by it but the kids didn’t care.
@Julie
If I’m not mistaken this is your first comment? Welcome to you too.
One of the reasons we have so much divorce is that people, especially women, have very high expectations of what marriage can deliver. Women actually express in surveys that they expect to “grow as a person through my marriage.” That’s asking an awful lot of the institution, and the husband. We are living the curse of the “soulmate” marriage. On the other hand, 100 years ago, young women were often married off to 40 yo guys with a respectable business. Young guys without a lot of capital were at a distinct disadvantage.
I think there’s a “just right” balance – women and men screen carefully for character and compatibility, then commit for the long haul. Take the vow seriously that you are not going anywhere, and stick it out.
Bestiat (103),
>> “Is it the fairy tale principle of it all, the idea that this *could* be The One even if it almost certainly will not turn out that way…?”
It’s partly that. It’s also because, even if it doesn’t lead to marriage, a relationship is (or at least should be!) waaaaaaaaay different from a FWB situation.
In a FWB situation, even if the guy likes you as a friend and is willing to sleep with you, there’s obviously *some* reason why he isn’t willing to make you his girlfriend. Most likely explanation: for whatever reason, he doesn’t think you’re good enough. And despite what Sex and the City tries to tell you, a girl will pretty much ALWAYS end up “catching feelings”. At least in a relationship these feelings will usually be reciprocated.
A healthy relationship has more love and respect. I know there are a lot of girls who get turned off by these things (hence the existence of Dark Game), but for me those are absolute requirements.
@Bastiat
The FWB with the hot alpha is a guaranteed one-way ticket to a broken heart. Of course, lots of women will do it anyway. But women focused on marrying and having a family are not seeking SMV alone, they’re seeking MMV. And any kind of FWB wastes precious time – one that careens into “putting out” emotionally as well can easily eat up a couple of years, psychologically speaking.
@david foster
You make a good point. Before divorce people stayed in very, very unhappy marriages and made each other miserable until they died. They endured cheating, abuse, a spouse’s substance abuse, irresponsible financial ruin, etc. I think that miserable marriages were very common. Both of my sets of grandparents were very unhappy together.
Susan…”100 years ago, young women were often married off to 40 yo guys with a respectable business. Young guys without a lot of capital were at a distinct disadvantage.”
Indeed, it was common for men to live in boarding houses for quite a few years. Since few were happy with total celibacy, prostitution was a part of this ecosystem.
@OTC
+1, this is a great comment.
Hope, every time you post I’m reminded of how appropriate your alias is from a guy’s perspective. Your husband is a lucky dude…
Regarding the question of whether a woman would be better off having a no-strings attached college relationship with a hot alpha than an emotionally-deep relationship with a beta…given that neither is likely to be permanent…I’d argued that gaining experience with emotionally-deep relationships is valuable, even when they don’t last and even if the ending is painful.
The above assumes a reasonable level of emotional strength/resilience…probably *not* true for those with especially fragile self-esteem.
Re rose coloured glasses, I think we tend to romanticize bygone eras. I know I do. Watching Mad Men (I’m exactly the same age as Sally Draper) is like a fun trip back in time for me, and I remember mostly the great parts. In reality, my childhood was about as great as Sally’s. Tons of TV, movies and musicals romanticize the 50s – Happy Days, Grease, American Graffiti. We think of Ozzie and Harriet, not some guy in a wife beater slapping his wife around because his beer is warm. Both are caricatures.
The best example of this I’ve seen was a show on PBS a few years ago. They took an English family and put them into a “real” Victorian life for a few months. They lived in a nice house, and had one servant, I think. Monday was laundry day, and after one day the wife’s hands were bloody from the lye. I remember the challenge of washing out the period rags as well.
“any kind of FWB wastes precious time – one that careens into “putting out” emotionally as well can easily eat up a couple of years,”
And throw in the wretch felt by your fiance [victim?] upon bumping into “old flames” and you got a real winning strategy…
You guys! Read Hope’s comment @115. (Hope, you are awesome!) It’s absolute gold.
So many guys think we are helpless before “alphas” that we will sacrifice a great guy with a truly good heart, for the potential to be some low-life’s receptacle for a few moments. THIS IS NOT TRUE.
It’s actually incredibly insulting as well. Please believe us when we say we know ourselves and what we want. Especially when our words and actions have been absolutely congruent.
@Abbot
And “fiancee” as well!
(Wish I knew how to do a diacritic mark!)
@Susan
You do understand, that these books and studies are from an America that no longer exists – and only apply to that era.
Today is different; those old morals read like horsebuggy etiquette to today’s youth. It’s like talking about the excitement of Three Dog Night or Todd Rundgren LP Albums coming out.
@Anonymous Dog
To be clear, I didn’t write the dating history – I’m using the research of others in this post. Links are embedded.
You make a good point about people living on farms. I found this chart:
And of course you’re right about families helping out – that happened even in the cities among established families. In fact, blind dates set up by family members, friends of the family, even clergymen, were very common even when I was growing up.
@Susan
“The best example of this I’ve seen was a show on PBS a few years ago. They took an English family and put them into a “real” Victorian life for a few months. They lived in a nice house, and had one servant, I think. Monday was laundry day, and after one day the wife’s hands were bloody from the lye. I remember the challenge of washing out the period rags as well.”
Did you read “Girl With a Pearl Earring”? The same thing happened. They had 8+ children besides– laundry was basically a FT job.
The really good PBS one is the reality show in the cabin. I can’t remember the name, but it should have been “Who Want To Be Laura Ingalls Wilder?”
Those pioneers were TOUGH.
Of course. It’s a history. Just an interesting look back on the evolution of dating. I have found that one of the things my focus groups love to do is hear my stories about dating in another era. They find a lot of it hilarious, and of course they wish some aspects of it were still present today.
I wonder what percentage of men and women today would say they are happy with their mating situations, relative to past decades.
Tons of movies also show how racist and anti-gay and anti-Semitic and sexist they were.
STELLA!!!!!!!!!
Yes, people cared a great deal about good people marrying good people, and then having those good people live near them.
Weirdos.
@ Bastiat Blogger
I’ll toss in my two cents for this.
I’ve come across quite a good deal of genuine alpha males. These men made women’s heads turn practically faster than the speed of light. These men were very attractive overall, and I’m sure that they did get offers for FWBs from women.
The problem is that the good majority of women on this blog don’t want to settle for being some guy’s FWB. The idea of a FWB is just very unsavory to me. I’d rather just be alone than to have to accept crumbs of a man.
There’s also the component of difficulty in keeping sex and emotions completely separate. I wouldn’t trust myself to have a continuous sexual relationship with a man without catching feelings. Catching feelings for a FWB kind of defeats the purpose.
Travis, thank you. I feel incredibly lucky to be with my husband.
Susan, I think the tendency to romanticize is a trait that got us humans through all those tough times. There are many men and women still toiling like that today, in many places of the world. On the whole they feel quite happy and fulfilled, sometimes more so than those of us with “first world problems.”
@Ramble
“…not some guy in a wife beater slapping his wife around because his beer is warm.
STELLA!!!!!!!!!”
Ramble, that’s hilarious!
Interesting. Another development was “parking.” Probably as a result of the booming economy after WWII when people headed to the burbs and there was a car in every driveway.
A wise woman said to me when I first started blogging:
In the end it’s always the women who get fucked.
We can’t do it with no emo.
Take any research the Guttmacher Institute does with a grain of salt. They were set up as the propaganda arm of Planned Parenthood by the former Planned Parenthood director back in the sixties. I think they are legally spun off as a separate non-profit now, but even recent research of theirs I have investigated I found highly dubious.
In my limited opinion from the cursory investigation and reading of their studies I think the Guttmacher Institute took a page out of Kinsey’s book and publishes manipulated and unrealistic statistics as fact in order to push their political, social, and financial agenda. I have read at least one study of theirs when all the newspaper articles about the study are at complete odds with the underlying data actually published in the report.
For example in that MSNBC article they claim that they interred the data from a CDC report, but a quick perusal’s of the CDC’s website shows an 85% premarital sex rate today. (And those studys oversample blacks and hispanics.)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/abc_list_p.htm#premarital
I would take time to go through the CDC NSFG data if people really care but a 90% premarital intercourse rate in the 1950s does not pass the smell test if premarital intercourse rates are at all time highs of 85% (even that is dubious) now.
Although I don’t think I’ve read any of Finer’s papers I don’t trust anything the Guttmacher Institute publishes because several other times I’ve looked into their research and it has been misleading.
“I’d rather just be alone than to have to accept crumbs of a man”
So true!
Bravo, Jackie! When men say to me (and they do constantly), “Watch what a woman does, not what she says.” I think, great, because my actions are congruent with my stated preferences.
@Jackie
I loved Girl With a Pearl Earring! Even better when they made a movie and cast His Firthness.
Re: Rose colored glasses, the show you mean was called “The 1900 House.”
Certainly by the standards of our day, their creature comforts were pathetic. But let’s try to stick as close as possible to apples-apples comparisions. The UK in 1900 was not a consumer society they way the UK of 2012 is. So, by one metric, life is “better” for people today if better is defined as more comfortable. I remember getting all nostalgic about some past era once and a friend of mine said, “Yeah, well, imagine going to the dentist back then.” Touche.
However the UK of 1900 was a great power, really the world’s only superpower, controlled directly or indirectly 40% of the world’s landmass, was the richest society in the world, strongest navy, the pound was the global reserve currency, etc. Look at the poor blighters now. You can’t say it’s been all uphill. Materially they probably bottomed out in the post-war austerity years, and they’ve improved since but culturally, they seem not yet to have found the bottom. Their cultural markers today are almost across the board worse than ours.
Anyway the real comparison is of one SMP to another. You may say that the SMP of 1900 England was horribly restrictive but the illegtimacy rate of Victorian Britain was less than 3%. There was basically no divorce. If a man wanted a wife, his biggest obstacle to getting one was whether he could afford her, not whether he could find someone who would have him and remain faithful.
Similarly, whatever its faults, the SMP of the American 1950s is far superior to what we have now. The aforementioned intellectuals always want to make the argument about “progress” as if the wish to curb the excesses of our time means you want blacks at the back of the bus and women treated as property.
But no. Surely history has shown that it is possible to improve certain things without screwing up everything else. Also, there is no linear progress. You can progress in one are and regress in another. Societies can fall as well as rise. Etc.
Haha, touche! When I was growing up my mother used to call me Blanche DuBois.
1 2 3 »