I wonder about this. It's a crazy commitment/years to deal with. I just look back to my own childhood/what my parents dealt with.
On the other hand part of me feels sad thinking I will be the "last me". Maybe get genome sequenced/publish books of my face and put it sealed in a landfill somewhere for preservation.
Actually rocks last a long time so probably a statue made with a rock.
It feels like having your heart outside of your body and it's running around recklessly.
Having children changed my outlook on the future quite a bit. First, I feel much more repsonsible and interested in the ecological future, because I intensely love people who will have to deal with the consequences in the future. Second, I hope I will be able to have a natural look into the problems of future generations, when I am old - there is a "strong bond into the future" for me. Third, while I don't feel it's a "future me" that I talk into sleep every evening, it feels like my human legacy. Considering my current reality, my children are probably the biggest impact I can have on the future.
BTW I guess all this is true regardless of genetic bonds.
As far as I know, it's less about how many and more about how they live. There is this myth of overpopulation (afaik this is well documented), in reality it's the egoism of the few rich countries who run the world down. And here I hope my children will participate in changing things.
Kids are very likely the most rewarding and enjoyable thing you can possibly do in your life. You just need to have a solid partnership with your significant other before having them.
Many of the points in the article are exactly the kinds of things you want to cultivate with your partner (e.g. self-awareness, good communication, etc) before having kids. If you have a good relationship with your partner, having kids is very manageable.
Our generation is too cynical on kids and it's to their own detriment.
Oh no, I'm not blaming kids at all. I'm blaming the biological need of sharing them with a completely independent adult that I thought was a solid partnership and now often decides to use them, in ways I never dared to imagine, to achieve the desired goals.
The fact that someone would write this on a blog give me the sense that he/she is over analysing this dating thing. Analysis works for accounting and engineering, it does not work for dating. So stop analysing and go have some fun in life.
It is true, however ignorance and analysis are not mutually exclusive. Just because one analyse it doesn't mean one can avoid being ignorant. Certain things are just not meant for analysis. Dating, Love fun are in those things for my personal experiences.
One can not travel a mile without travelling a mile.
The fact that you can run in circles does not mean therefor running produces nonresults and the only way to travel is to rely on the luck that you magically land where you want, even though that does happen to a few people.
Being knowingly ignorant is less ignorant than being unknowingly ignorant. Over systematization of dating creates illusory knowledge that impedes connection.
I've seen how the obsessive-analytic mindset fares in dating. I'll take bumbling along any day.
The advice not to over-analyse is itself an analasys and a piece of wisdom, which you and anyone you tell it to is better off for knowing. You have improved your and any readers life by becoming less ignorant. Your analasys is actually merely about optimization, specifically over-optimization or mis-directed optimization. And that is just one of the many thhings that are valuable to know, and which you can only know by thinking about it.
Maybe you're a thoughtless person and you only get it after years of unthinking miserable victimhood. Maybe you're a thoughtful person and this understanding occures to you on your own before you waste your life. Maybe you have the good fortune to have a parent that doesn't think ignorance is bliss and they imparted the wisdom to you. But one way or another, to have the understanding, you had to think about it, it had to be a tbought that existed in your head.
But you know who really does advocate for ignorance? Predators.
Yes, the article decries some systems. But it's still over-thinking and over-systematizing in it's own way.
People saying "don't overthink it" aren't advocating for ignorance. They are recognizing that over-systematizing and over-thinking is its own form of ignorance. It's a particularly seductive form of ignorance for engineers because we carry tacit assumptions about how systems can be broken down and analyzed. These assumptions are a bad fit for dating and many other non-technical domains such as people management.
In art classes beginners are often taught to "see like an artist." That is, in terms of shape, color and composition rather than objects and logical descriptions. It's not that the logical view is factually incorrect. It's that it emphasizes the wrong sort of knowledge.
>But you know who really does advocate for ignorance? Predators.
This and your "miserable victimhood" comment make me wonder if your views aren't being driven by some personal pain or trauma. If so then it might be worth unpacking your experiences with a therapist. Overthinking doesn't protect you from pain or abuse. It is the opposite if anything.
I listed 3 exam0les. Why aren't I equally as likely to be the thoughtful person who arrived at the understanding on their own, or the person fortunate enough to have a parent who gave sensible advice?
Do I now get to take my fair turn at attacking the person instead of their argument? For instance maybe your fondness for ignorance is consistent with being ignorant of the fact that abuse is a thing that actually happens, and that manipulation is how it happens, and relies on the victim being unaware of recognizable patterns and processes. You can become aware of a problem even if you've had the good luck or the good sense to have avoided suffering it yourself. For instance I don't have to be a female myself to at least try to guess at the plight of females in general in the world we all share.
"It might be worth unpacking your lack of empathy with a therapist."
Sometimes people are not aware of limits that even cursory research would have shown them. They then produce the impossible, because they didn’t know it was impossible.
Technical Example: I remember reading awhile back about a demoscene contributor who used to watch amazing 3d scenes and never understood they were not rendered in real time, so he worked at it until he figured out how to render 3d scenes as quickly as some of the other examples he had seen but his were real-time. He was so sure that others were doing it, he kept trying to optimize/improve until his were grossly better.
Dating Example: Lookup the first interview between David Letterman and Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec). They talk about how he’s married to Megan Mullally (from Will and Grace). He didn’t know who she was when he met her (she would have been quite famous at the time), and complimented her and asked her out. His ignorance of basic known things allowed a confidence to succeed at something ordinary that would otherwise intimidate a lot of men.
To be clear, I think it definitely helps to look into things, but ignorance can sometimes counter-balance doubt, which can grossly affect outcomes.
That is gambling which does produce the occasional miracle, but that is only a superior tactic in the aggregate. Sow 100 dandelion seeds so that 5 of them actually germinate somewhere.
To consider that the superior tactic you have to be willing to accept the failure rate and treat your one and only entire life as just one of those hapless shots in the dark.
Besides this is isn't a valid analogy anyway because we're only talking about self-awareness not engineering a partner.
And the comment you just wrote yourself, about self-inflicted limits, was an example of advice and learning, and every reader is better for having read it and become less ignorant about that.
Not being in need of this solution space, but interested in the massive dynamic shift from my time across the 70s and 80s.
I don't think modern dating is nice. I don't just think that's technophobic thinking, I think it's too introspective and risky.
Things were different when it was landline phone calls and note passing. We were less concerned to be helped by friends, it was normal. Nowadays there is a strong tendency to keep relationships private until ready.
The article was well written but I think it falls victim to bubble of anecdata in the dating and social media world online.
What I mean is the people online who are dating and talking about dating online are more likely to be experience the agony of Eros. Than those who are dating or in a relationship but not sharing about it online. Sort of like a signal to noise ratio that is highly squeued towards the love fails than love wins.
Love will never be solved, regardless of classical theories or modern day ones. Just go for it and don't think to much about the theoretical
We expect more from our partners than ever before—we want them to be our true love, our best friend, our coparenting partner, and the person we combine our finances with.
Curious what is their idea of 'before'. Unless they mean pre-industrial societies.
Quite a few of these are in fact cautionary tales or allegories. (Obsessive romantic) Love in many cultures was considered a sort of madness. Only the elite subset of society had time for romantic amusements in pre-industrial societies.
A lot of these issues (and preoccupations with romance) go out of the window when people are struggling to survive, as most did in pre-industrial societies.
The modern conception of true love is very modern. Nobles used to marry to accumulate property and fairy tales were little more than the glammed up version the hoi polloi consumed. Like the Kardashian thing, tabloids etc where the story is a fabrication.
I think what gets lost is that long term relationships have been more utilitarian than anyone likes to admit. Who doesn't love a love story, or want to feel the rush of first attraction?
The problem is that it isn't enough to build a life out of. You need a practical, working partnership to raise a family and app dating isn't geared to that goal. The apps give a monstrous illusion there might be something better on the next swipe, and it just isn't true.
Look, just saying that "true love, nuclear family" concept is definitely not a new trend. It was a baseline expectation in the society of your grand-grandparents even if reality couldn't match that quite often.
One probably have to go back to 17th century for this expectation to become entirely alien again. The times of arranged marriages and honor killings. However there hardly was a dating scene in modern sense to think of.
This sounds like what people in my culture have held forth as the ideal for "marriage" for centuries.
Sure, there were times before that where it was much more utilitarian, but anywhere you see talk of "two becoming one flesh" is at least as intense as what's mentioned in this quotation!
More like pre-agriculture. There is evidence of legally-recognized union between man and woman going back over 5000 years, right at the beginnings of both history and of law. And there is strong case for socially-recognized exclusivity of partners dating much further back, right up until the first seasonally-permanent settlements which to our knowledge coincide with agriculture.
I find the discussion of ghosting interesting. If I've gone on a bad date or two I don't specifically tell the other person I don't want to see them again unless they ask me. This allows for a lot more saving face if I run into them in the future (we can both pretend it just fell through the cracks) and is exactly how I want to be treated.
While I appreciate the honesty I do find it a little condescending when someone messages me "just so you know, I don't want to see you again" after a bad date. But some people consider not doing this to be the equivalent of going from daily messaging to total radio silence out of nowhere after dating for months.
Tbh ghosting isn't as bad as saying one thing and then making excuses to not go through it.
I've been on dates where I thought it went well, I got the "let's do this again", and then whenever I suggested "let's do it again on X day?" I get excuses.
If they don't want to that's fine, they don't even have to say no just don't reply! But the leading on is annoying...
That might also be a communication mismatch. I've seen this situation a few times: Woman says "let's do this [going shopping as friends] again" and then later they are surprised when the Man suggests "let's do this [going on a date as potential partners] again". The [] part is implied and never said, which is why the miscommunication happens.
It's pretty clear to see that such miscommunication rises from a person's responsibility to be honest.
"Let's do this again!" implies intent. If that intent does not actually exist, focus should be on such a lie and, by extension, the liar.
While such (mis)communication becomes cultural, that still doesn't make it effective.
Defending it is about wise as justifying the previously predominant signalling of women playing "hard to get" with someone they actually wanted to "get" them, and saying "no" while meaning "yes", yet being surprised at the subsequent rise in rape culture.
I think you might be interpreting this wrong. The "let's do this again" after the date is meaningless, that's just a social nicety no matter how the date went. When you ask them out and they give an excuse and no alternative I would interpret that as she didn't think the date went that well. Which leaves you with a couple of options:
If you also were ambivalent about the date you now have the option of just fading out while both parties save face.
If you really liked her and think you'll be a good match you can try and rescue the situation by suggesting a better date (better being some combination of more thoughtful, more expensive, or more personal). You're a little on the back foot but in my experience a lot of successful relationships start this way so you're by no means down and out.
Wouldn't it be preferable for the meaning of words to be reflected in the chosen combination of the words, themselves, instead of the (sub)culturally current, elusive content of the dog whistle tone behind them?
Anything else reeks of an Orwellian dystopia to me.
there are a number of factors involved -- but i reckon one factor to keep in mind is that some fraction of the population may become aggressive if rejected in person, so if you don't know your date well and have no idea how they might react, you might be more concerned about disengaging from the in-person situation safely than being completely open and up front about what you're thinking.
OTOH - my sad impression is that quite a few women, especially very young ones, have so many wired-in anxieties / fears / areas of passivity that they'd have a hard time saying "no" to a guy who's receiving Last Rites (and not just out of charity for the dying).
Hopefully, checking that is on the First Date Checklist in at least a few guy's guides... "#7 Verify that she can pleasantly but clearly say no to an oddball suggestion or few. If she actually answers 'yes' to skydiving, learning to read
Egyptian hieroglyphs, and baking a cake for your birthday - then she has some issues that you really don't want to be stuck with."
Charitably put, they're pretty good at communicating that they're pretty bad at communicating. Slight kudos for doing it quite early in the not-a-relationship. (And pencil in checkmarks by #2 and/or #3 in the article's "...ways these norms cause suffering" list.)
Or you could say they're using a different "rule book", or "language", or set of social conventions - which are great reasons to avoid someone.
I don't think what you describe in your first paragraph is what is generally meant by ghosting, it's more your second example. Lots of texting and communication for a number of weeks and then suddenly none.
>> I do find it a little condescending when someone messages me "just so you know, I don't want to see you again" after a bad date
I mean, it could be said in a nicer way. "I don't think we're a good match" or something similar is a lot more polite, for example. Most people take it well, in my experience (maybe because the feeling tends to be mutual).
I certainly appreciate it, and I think it can be done tactfully and respectfully. I think it's courteous to let someone know you aren't interested, just in case they are interested.
What you're doing doesn't sound like ghosting. Ghosting is cutting off contact without warning or regard for the psychological consequences.
It's very easy to not be a ghost, all you have to do is provide a kind resolution. If someone asks you out on another date but you don't want to see them again, you just say something like "I'm sorry, I've gotten really busy lately, if I do have the chance to get together, I'll reach out."
No further communication is necessary. You've given them a plausible excuse that doesn't shred their ego too much and indicated that you're not interested in continuing.
If you don't do this, some people will speculate that it was their fault, and beat themselves up. They may blame it on their weight, their looks, their personality, over time, it may erode their self esteem. So it's good etiquette to not be a ghost. Unfortunately millions of people don't care enough to bother.
This isn't that great. Plenty of people will be waiting to be "reached out" to. This is like "I'll call you" then they don't. Just be less of a weasel and tell people straight that you personally aren't that interested, which is no ones fault. If you think they'll take it badly give them some reassurance to cushion a hurt ego.
I agree that ghosting should be defined as actively not responding to someone who is trying to get in touch with you. But I would suggest that if someone is forcing the issue and asking to meet again, it’s better to respond with a polite version of “sorry, I am not romantically interested in you” than it is to say “maybe sometime”.
LOL the idea that "just so you know, I don't want to see you again" is the solution to ghosting is hilarious. That's someone being mean to you at a level about as damaging as ghosting. There is this magical thing called care that can be put into words to avoid either. "Just so you know, it was great to see you again, but there isn't anything romantic there for me. Sorry it took me X dates to get there. You're a cool person and I wish you all the best for your next date. I'm sure you'll blow the right person away when you meet them."
Ghosting is abruptly not responding to attempts at communication.
Men are in a decent privileged position where most women to most dates, culturally, wont initiate an attempt at communication. so its very easy for us to just never acknowledge the date because we never sent another text.
But thats not ghosting.
Ghosting is having a great date (or a benign one, or a bad one) and never getting a response again, or even blocked, or not even knowing if your date got home at all but not being in a position to even ask. As another person wrote, it doesn’t have any regard for the psychological consequences. Its more likely I would switch to Liam Neeson Taken mode to help a complete stranger than risk getting myself villified for trying to see if my unresponsive date made it home. The culture broke itself.
We have turned sexual partners into an affluent commodity, thanks to apps. With a bit of paid boosting, you can show your profile to 1000+ potential partners and surely a few of them will have a favorable first impression. We've also successfully reframed being sexually promiscuous as not being limited by religion / social norms / the patriarchy. Plus we've all but eliminated potentially negative consequences with birth control. And our entire society celebrates a "hustle" and "fake it till you make it" culture.
The article's complains "men signal emotional seriousness that they don’t actually feel" which I'd say is "fake it till you make it" combined with very low investment due to oversupply of partners.
"you’ll likely be terrified the person you like will meet someone else they like more, or likes you but doesn’t like you enough to commit" also just means that there's a high level of competition, due to oversupply of partners.
And lastly, the article nicely points out that everyone wants a "quick fix", which is why you can buy tons of books and guides on how to behave, i.e. imitating the correct gestures, but very few people put in the effort to actually learn to become a good communicator.
But the article also has one huge oversight in my opinion: Pheromones and genetic compatibility. People can smell if their offspring will be healthy pretty quickly, but it's impossible to screen for this with apps. That's how people end up with so many dates where they should like the other person, but for some reason they don't. I believe this is also why some people ghost each other after the first intimate contact. "I didn't like his/her smell" is a common reason to stop dating, after all.
We as a society need to accept that not everything can be fixed and improved with self-help courses. Some people just won't match on a genetic level and there's little you can do to fix that.
No actually females can typically "smell" (for lack of a better word) out of the sweat of males if the immune system markers are different enough to protect potential offspring from getting the same sicknesses as mother or father.
"In several species, including rodents and fish, it has been shown that the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) influences mating preferences"
"This study thus supports the hypothesis that the MHC influences mate choice in some human populations."
nb you said "typically" but the study says "some", and doesn't comment on if it's typical for any larger groups. For myself, can't say 23AndMe has ever asked if I think my partner smells good.
Yes, with "females can typically smell" I meant that this is widely accepted as true in the animal kingdom.
For humans, the effect appears to be there, but we don't have any stronger evidence. Then again, this might be unpopular to research due to its social implications.
> Then again, this might be unpopular to research due to its social implications.
In the contrary I would suspect that being able to identify the specific chemical combinations that would make you hot would sell like crazy and there’s already snake oil on the market for this.
This is true, but hormonal birth control all but destroys the innate ability to do this correctly.
Most hormonal birth control functions by putting the body into a hormonal state that mimics pregnancy. If you're already carrying a baby, what you've evolved to look for in people to become close to during that time is actually people who are genetically more like you, rather than complementary. If for some reason you don't survive, your child will need a replacement for you, not a complement, especially if you conceived the child with someone complementary.
I don't have them to hand, but there have been several studies of this involving t-shirts worn for several days by different men and women smelling them and ranking them. If the women stop using birth control, their whole perception changes.
It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If your desire is specifically to have sex and not children, what you do to prevent children also makes you less likely to choose a partner who would produce children with you that would have the highest chances of survival.
It's small wonder that if you try to put that person into that role later, it's not going to go very well.
"Factorial ANOVA results showed that the group of nonpill users obtained higher scores on the PMI scale than the group of pill users (considering the fertile phase of the cycle)." where PMI = Partner's Masculinity Index
I can't follow what point you're trying to make here.
Is is that one possible way people have proposed that humans might react to pheromones probably only exists vestigially in humans?
Or by introducing us to the name of this organ, are you somehow under the impression you've debunked the idea that pheromones have any impact on human behavior at all?
>>>This is true, but hormonal birth control all but destroys the innate ability to do this correctly.
>>>If the women stop using birth control, their whole perception changes.
Very interesting, thanks. I've read similar conclusions pushed in manosphere/PUA circles for years, about how birth control has some major negative impacts on womens' behavior. My personal dating experience supports the pheromonal detection/selection abilities of women who are NOT on birth control as well. When multiple women from different countries/cultures/ethnicities all bury their faces in your chest, exclaim "I love your smell"....and ask to have your baby...something is going on beyond your good looks and ability to spit game.
But jokes aside, I can't find the study for it now but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that for long-term married women, smelling the sweat of their long-term partner can reduce anxiety. And from an evolutionary perspective, that would make sense: If your long-term partner is around, you're probably halfway safe.
If only you had left out the pheromones part I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. That's a lesson I should learn as well: do not pivot in the message, rather write a new one.
But I really do see it as a huge issue with apps. In the "old" dating world, people would smell each other when they agreed to meet on a date, meaning before they invested time and effort. In the "new" dating world, people spend effort chatting and setting up the date but then it can still fail due to mis-matched pheromones.
On the other hand, I just learned that with pill-based birth control the effect nowadays is weaker than it used to be. So maybe you're correct and my perception is just outdated.
Humans don’t have a functional vomeronasal organ to sense pheromones, only a nose. And hence no functional pheromone signaling. This is abjectly incorrect information.
EDIT: actually, they show that humans can somehow perceive MHC compatibility. So you might be correct in that I'm wrong on the delivery mechanism and pheromones aren't being used.
This article presents GWAS evidence for assortative mating, if anything – none for the existence of functional pheromone sensing in humans. Look up the work by Catherine DuLac and/or Lisa Stowers.
> i.e. imitating the correct gestures, but very few people put in the effort to actually learn to become a good communicator.
Reminds me of Celeste Headlee's comment: "There's no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention, if you are in fact paying attention."
EDIT: I guess the reversal the article is talking about is that you now need to learn how to pretend not to be an effective communicator, because it's not part of the current social norm.
>The article's complains "men signal emotional seriousness that they don’t actually feel"
I agree that dating apps and other modern technologies have changed the dating scene for the worse. However, this (feigning love when a man really just wants access to sex) has been a male dating strategy since time in memoriam. (and I'd certainly be open to the idea that this particular dating strategy is under a lot more pressure given the current dating environment. ie, that men are much more tempted to use this strategy than they would be otherwise.)
I guess this really isn't a strong disagreement with your point. (or really much of a disagreement at all.) But, I think it's important to point out that this is not some aberrant pattern which never previously existed, rather it may be a rational pattern in certain contexts, and all we've done is change the context in which people are operating.
'Modern Dating' is where corporations intermediate your interactions with the other sex... and its not working out well? Well, what a surprise!
People have lost all sense it seems to me - we have been trained to have technology do everything for us. This really means the corporations behind the tech are meant to do everything for us. Good god.
The mega-trend - IMO - in all this is a fostered neoteny (extended juvenile period) where our expectations are that someone should service our desires. Its such an irresponsible and weak position - it doesn't even register as a possibility to the younger generation that they should be able to sort things out on their own - benevolent tech companies should do it instead. Even a date is too much apparently.
Humanity is being softened into a warm puree.
PS
If corporations are involved in the dating business (which they are) think about it from their point of view. They do not actually want you to succeed! They want you to fail but keep using their services. The more you fail the better! The more unhappy you are the more you will spend in your date-death spiral.
Like we don't have a health industry but a managed illness industry, the dating industry would be better called a managed loneliness industry, cos loneliness and unhappiness opens the purse strings as you try to resolve your unhappiness with all the other crap corporations have to offer.
> The mega-trend - IMO - in all this is a fostered neoteny (extended juvenile period) where our expectations are that someone should service our desires. Its such an irresponsible and weak position - it doesn't even register as a possibility to the younger generation that they should be able to sort things out on their own - benevolent tech companies should do it instead. Even a date is too much apparently.
Sorry, I don't buy this. Even working in the tech field, buying a house with your salary is really tough. And it only goes downhill for other types of jobs. So this "fostered neoteny" is just young people not feeling financially secure to start a traditional family. You can't possibly sort out generational financial insecurity on your own.
That's why people don't buy a house, live with parents longer, live as nomads etc.
I don't share the pessimism around this - housing should be a commodity i can get at a touch of a button because it is easy to build (and i work remotely). There are interests preventing this though, so until then, anything goes
1. Apps or no, dating is still about interfacing with another person. It's hardly true that the dating app is "servicing our desires." It's not. It's just a window into another person.
2. "The more unhappy you are the more you will spend in your date-death spiral." Is this even a thing? I would imagine a very unhappy person would not date a lot. Or they would be settled into an unhappy relationship. Is it really true that dating has historically resulted in more happy relationships? I'd love to see evidence to this point because I know a lot of people whose parents were in unhappy relationships. That model, from my perspective, didn't have the best results.
Is it just me, or does this article really overthink way too much?
IMO, dating is ultimately not a subject that could be analyzed by logic. At least not on on the personal / self-help level (of course sociology / statistics still work).
Trying to find some kind of generally applicable "rules of the game" that would work for everyone (or even most) people seems somewhat "not even wrong".
It's simply trying to use the wrong tool in the wrong place.
A date an encounter of two individuals trying to assess and explore their compatibility. This "should" (at least in my opinion) always be subject to their own morals and ethics.
The question isn't "what do most people want / do", but "what would I / You want / do".
I found it interesting. Being an older person in a long term relationship with someone I met in high school, the online dating stuff seems much harder for a lot of reasons.
Firstly, meet someone when you are young they are more likely to be of a similar socio-economic group and share a lot of values by default.
Second (and I realise this is controversial) if you fall in love when you are young and stupid, the pair of you will become adults together and that shared experience will get you through shit that would turn your hair white.
I thought the article provided some insight into how you are supposed to replace the older model of dating when the tech side of things offers too much pressure to do things quickly i.e. assess and cast off, or move straight to sex in a week.
So to me it seemed like an assessment of things you should consider to slow things down, be honest with yourself and prospective partners. Not overthinking, properly thinking.
I totally understand your point… like you I married my high school sweetheart (I am 37 and to date I have being in one continuous monogamous relationship for 20 years). We did grow up together… changed together.
I am 30(ish) and have managed to avoid the online dating scene. I just met people doing the hobbies I like and traveling. I feel like now it's easier than ever to do that. COVID has made a lot more people travel (anecdotal data ofc) after they felt stuck for a while. And remote work means that you can travel while working.
You can go somewhere, meet someone, and then travel around together. If things stop going well, just stop traveling together. Stay at hostels, work at co-working spaces, look for 'expat groups' on Facebook (had to reactivate my Facebook account for this one). Get some hobbies and move to places that you can do them (live in a ski resort for a season or a surfer town and go snowboarding/surfing everyday). The person you meet will most likely be doing the same thing you're doing, so at least you have something in common (hobbies/traveling).
The best part is, even if you don't meet someone, you probably had fun doing stuff rather than sitting at home and swiping on tinder. The only downside is the environmental impact of traveling around :(.
This sounds like a huge amount of fun! Kudos to you, it seems a million times more enjoyable and memorable than what most other people are doing.
Do you get lonely though? After you and someone you’ve been hanging out with to your separate ways, how do you feel? And aside from romantic partners, what about friendships? Like what are you doing to maintain, and benefit from, relationships that you’ve had for years?
I tend to meet people pretty quickly, so I don't get lonely. Sometimes the opposite, there is too much social interaction and I need to hide to get some 'space' to do 'nothing'. I've been traveling with a women I met for the past 6 months though, so definitely not lonely then :).
> After you and someone you’ve been hanging out with to your separate ways, how do you feel?
You know when you finish/catch up to a TV show that you really like, and you want a next episode, but there isn't one? You kind of feel this emptiness inside you. It's kinda like that, but worse. But you know you'll find another show, so you just move on and then later on you just remember how awesome the show was even though it's over. Maybe I get too invested in TV shows and that analogy doesn't make sense to other people ;p.
> Like what are you doing to maintain, and benefit from, relationships that you’ve had for years?
I keep in touch with them and come back 'home' (UK) to see them. They are split up around the UK now, so I make an effort to go visit them. Depending on where I am, they might come visit me. I also have friends that I game with and chat on irc/mumble. I've also met a lot of 'online friends' (from playing quake3 back in the day) whilst traveling as well. Pretty cool to put a face/person to an online handle.
She is trying to game it with a person with whom she isn't a good match. It has nothing to do with communication and more about vibe and 98% of vibe is just sheer sexual attraction.
I always hate the "don't overthink it" comment that inevitably comes along with any advice on dating, eating, sleeping, etc. Yeah, if dating is going great for you, then no need to apply any thinking at all. But if something is not working then you'll need to think about it and the chorus of people saying "don't overthink it" are less than useless.
You know who really loves for you not to overthink things? Predators.
What awesome life advice that is.
There is a certain containing context within which you could validly say "don't overthink it", but that advice itself only comes as a result of thinking.
So what you actually do is you think ALL about it, and the result of that thinking shows you how and where to pay the most attention and demand the most data and exert the most control, and where not to, and how to tell the difference.
I can not imagine having a kid and advising them not to think too much about this topic.
"Whatever happens happens, it'll probably be ok somehow. This isn't a chemical emotional landmine waiting for every human to step on or anything. It's not like naivete in this area is the root cause of 100 different ways for you to hurt yourself, or hurt others, or be hurt by others. It's not like there multiple whole classes of violence called domestic abuse and crimes of passion or anything like that."
If I had a daughter who was neurotic and overthought things, and I wanted to help her avoid the harm that this can cause in this area, the talk would not be in praise of ignorance.
The talk would be about over-optimization and mis-optimization.
The fix is to be even less ignorant, to be aware of this natural pitfall, and to have an understanding about stepping back to see a wider view of something and get perspective, identify what actually matters, and avoid sabotaging the important goal (being happy) by optimizing for the wrong things (any number of details).
Not just you. I found it cringeworthy. Love is not rational. You're not going to be able to quantify your taste in music. I think social media has got many women holding men to a ridiculous standard. You're going to wait a long time if you're looking for some combination of Elon Musk and Justin Bieber.
I think the first paragraph of the article gives enough justification on why you would want to analyze this subject with logic:
> I’ve been in a relationship for a while, but before that I dated for several years and experienced it both as 1) really fun and 2) terrible psychological torment. Lately dating videos on TikTok, Rethinking Sex by Christine Emba, this post by Oliver Traldi, The Agony of Eros by Byung-Chul Han, and Why Love Hurts by Eva Illouz have made me think about why people seem to find the modern dating market so unsatisfying.
If dating is both "terrible psychological torment" and "so unsatisfying", which describes a situation that is worse than "really fun" is good, it might be a good idea to think about why. Maybe that's how dating has always been and will always be, maybe not and we can improve the situation. What's certain is that not thinking about it won't change anything, it is accepting the status quo. The author seems not okay with that.
Dating sites used to have a lot of compatibility questions - I think OK Cupid still does - and they were useful for filtering by values. But filtering by communication styles is much harder, and I don't think anyone has attempted it.
The core of the problem is that everyone is playing by different rules. You have no idea what the other person's rules are. And some people are very insistent that their rules are correct and absolute.
Worse, some rules are dysfunctional and more likely to produce bad outcomes.
So it's like an intelligence war where the only signalling is behavioural, there are huge gaps in the available information, and you don't know what stakes the other person is playing to, or their appetite for risk, or what constitutes a win for them, or if they're aware of any differences between what they believe they want and what their actions reveal.
Inevitably the information-free areas are filled by wishful thinking - encouraging that in partners is part of some peoples' strategy - or paranoia. Or possibly both.
Well, IMO if You apply Game Theory on Your dating life, You'll ultimately end up dating a Game Theorist.
I get that it's possible, You definitely can "game" the current dating scene, but the question I keep asking myself is "why do that".
Personally, I value curiosity. If I see someone trying to game /optimize their dating profiles, it's a huge turn off for me simply because it wipes out a lot of possibilities and unknowns. All of the sudden, the "oh, hey stranger who seems interesting for me because of X" turns into "oh, hey someone who optimized their profile for X".
PS Corollary to that goes "honesty". I find it almost impossible to be curious about someone who I know is either lying, or "presenting a way too curated version of truth".
By looking like you're not "gaming" your profile, you're gaming your profile. This is like saying you don't like people who care so much about how they look, yet you bathe, don't wear rags, etc. It's human nature to care about presentation and optimize for how we present ourselves.
Whether consciously or not, you're still playing the game if you're out dating. You're trying to get the best mate you possibly can while others are doing the same. You're not dating the ugliest, stupidest, most boring, low-status people you can find, even though that would be easiest. Welcome to the game.
Oh, I completely agree on the importance of the decision. I'm also not against using logic in general.
Where I disagree is that I don't think any of "my" dates could be generalized. Nor would I like my counterparts to do so.
Why and how we date and what do we expect from a relationship is (IMO) one of the deepest individual characteristics of ourselves.
I agree with the article author on that we should learn to ask these questions of ourselves and of others, but that's about it.
I don't think the answers (or even how do You get to them) can or should be in any way generalized. Some may get to express it through religion, some may use philosophy, or even logic. Most of those will probably run contrary to many others.
Meeting someone for a date is frustrating and exciting often at the same time and often for the same reason - that it's something completely new and (hopefully) unexpected.
If I look back on my own dating life, the dates / relationships I enjoyed most were those where the things we've shared were as varied as those where we differed. And the memorable part was usually the process of discovery, compromises, and learning to deal with each other.
I don't think any of this "can" be generalized in a self help post.
I cannot relate with the whole "dating" thing one bit. It's not just that I am old now. All I hear is "apps" and silly comments on "how we this and that".
I'd go as far as saying avoid people who spew things like "we" on the internet. It's crap. They don't know you, and you don't know them.
Go to bars. They're full of young people looking for love. Don't fall into this app dating thing. It's a trap. Why else would they be tripping over to promote it?
> Go to bars. They're full of young people looking for love.
Are they though? I mean When I meet people through apps I know exactly what they're looking for. But approaching people I've met in person for the first time leads to a whole spew of issues mostly due to me not knowing what they're looking for (as most people tend not to be communicative about that as the article describes).
Personally, I've never gone to a bar looking for love (and rarely ever even looking for sex). I just wanted to get drunk in a different atmosphere. Every relationship has come through either friends/acquaintances or random encounters + striking up a conversation.
> Go to bars. They're full of young people looking for love.
The issue with going to bars is that you meet the kind of people that go to bars looking for love. I don't go to bars looking for love, and I doubt I would have much in common with someone who does. The same thing applies to dating apps by the way, I've never used one and don't plan on using one.
I've met all my best friends by following my interests in a relatively social space. This ensures that I have something in common with the people I meet, and filters people to be people closer to me than people going to bars or using dating apps.
Interesting that at no point does anyone stop and think, “Gee, maybe tearing down every institution and social obligation in the name of individualist consumerism wasn’t a good idea? Perhaps our ancestors and their thousands of years old traditions concerning marriage and dating weren’t outdated idiots after all?”
Nope. The solution is always more dating apps, more self-help books, more targeted algorithms to find your perfect match and fulfill your individualist desires for pleasure and purpose. If you aren’t happy with your dating situation, it’s because you aren’t knowledgeable or hard-working enough.
Sure people stop and think. traditionalism does not have a lot of potential for commercial exploitation so you see more of the other. You can't stop it, but you can at least let people know that the whole romantic ecosystem from hollywood to PUAs is basically a marketing scam.
at some point one realizes that people like to make up dramatic situations in their own minds and then live in that reality, and that's a form of self-gratification. According to Brave New World, we should have gotten over this neo-religion of romance that hollywood preached.
This post gets it wrong already in the headline. At least if your happiness (instead of short-term satisfaction) is your objective, it's not about love but about love. Let me explain: the headline mentions "eros" for love, which is one of several (Greek) words for love, but focusing on physical erotics (lust). Nothing wrong with lust per se, but lust considered in isolation can be a selfish thing. Now "agape", another (Greek) word for love, focuses on the aspect of unselfish act of loving a person (the way that one loves a child, parent or friend, or a partner that is also a best friend), to want the other to be happy, to want all the best for them, even at the cost of substantial personal sacrifice.
As long as people treat "dating" as some an online shopping for erotic pleasure, a form of cattle market to get cheap sex, they will just keep browsing and comparing, and quickly get bored and move on. True love can only be found if it's not all about eros, but also agape, and to know someone well enough that the latter can grow takes considerable time, and a willingness to understand a person deeply.
Thank you for bringing this up. This is an important distinction. I'm totally with you until the sentence that includes "find their true love". This sounds like there is a very particular kind of love (the true kind) and perhaps also a particular person that is the true "love of your life", and both need to somehow be "found".
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but genuinely curious as to whether you have thought on this as well, as I find the first part of your post quite illuminating.
Eros did not just represent lust but also love. Agape is a context more limited to christianity, which kind of has anti-sexual overtone.
But there were many Erotes representing all kinds of desire and attraction
> Anteros ("Love Returned"),[1] Hedylogos ("Sweet-talk"), Hermaphroditus ("Hermaphrodite" or "Effeminate"), Himeros ("Impetuous Love" or "Pressing Desire"), Hymenaios ("Bridal-Hymn"), and Pothos ("Desire, Longing," especially for one who is absent)
Really there is Greek specific to Christian use? That's interesting.
I'll have to look into that. It makes sense that different groups used different worlds. There are English terms like sanctification that you don't hear outside Christian circles.
The word 'agape' existed before Christianity, and meant something broadly similar - some kind of love, not necessarily romantic or sexual.
It seems to me that the precise nuance varied a lot over time. For example, the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek in ~200 BC, uses it for all forms of love, including in the extremely saucy Song of Solomon [1]. The 20th Delphic maxim (~600 BC) is "Φιλίαν ἀγάπα", which means something like "desire friendship" [2]. In the Odyssey (~700 BC), Eurycleia describes Telemachus as "μοῦνος ἐὼν ἀγαπητός", meaning Odysseus's "only and beloved" son [3].
> [...] christianity, which kind of has anti-sexual overtone.
As a Christian, I wouldn't agree with this statement. Most denominations that I've experienced are very pro-sex. We see sex as a gift from God, intended to bond two (or, depending on the denomination, maybe more) people together. God is Love, we're taught, and sex is understood to be an expression of love.
Now, you might be right if you said Christianity was against certain types of sex. I'm not, and I think the sexual morality police are an overly loud portion of Christians. Most Christians I know are very open and accepting of people's sexuality. But there is certainly an abundance of Christians who feel it's our responsibility to tell people about the right and wrong applications of sex.
But "anti-sex" overall? Any such denomination would go extinct pretty quickly if their followers actually followed that.
I realize you didn’t talk explicitely of catholicism but at least in catholicism there is a strong control of sex: priests make vows of celibacy, sex is seen only as a means for reproduction, and there is literature on using exercise (if not worse) to put off sex. Lots of practices of christianity have masoquism undertones (original sin, some rituals). Of course this does not mean everyday christians share this interpretation, but historically I believe it correct to say the Catholic church is not pro-sex.
It’s important to realize that Catholicism as practiced by a given culture is influenced by prevailing beliefs.
The puritan(ical) genesis of the United States has resulted in a mostly Protestant practice of Catholicism in the U.S. (polls of US Catholics show that over half diverge with Catholic teachings).
Thanks for the source. I guess it is possible to understand the text as "pro-sex" if one limits it to the context of marriage only and not allowing any anticonceptive mechanism. Independently of my personal beliefs I would not qualify anything with those limitations as "pro-sex", since they limit substantially what sex is allowed.
> Let me explain: the headline mentions "eros" for love, which is one of several (Greek) words for love, but focusing on physical erotics (lust).
Did you read the article? I feel like you wrote your comment to demonstrate your grasp of Greek vocabulary, not because you had a meaningful response to the author of this post — a post which is quite nuanced and interesting and, I might add, not at all focused on lust.
Looks like the commoditization of love/dating apps and social media begins to show its ugly tail. Stories from my circle of friends/families:
- Girls obsessed over their physiques. Going skinny to the point it wrecked their hormones.
- People who are married just shy over 2-3 years are thinking on divorce, or have girlfriends/boyfriends.
- People having open relationships.
- Girls randomly make out in club with some random strangers they just met.
- Guys obsessed on having model-like girlfriends.
- Girls are doing nose/face/boob job more.
- Girls have Excel sheets that track potential guys according to some criterias (i.e, high paying jobs like law, medicine, graduated from an Ivy league, height, body type, etc)
An open relationship is an abusive relationship, even if on the surface it doesn't look like one. You cannot love a partner without fearing of losing them - there has to be some kind of an investment. If you let your partner be intimate sexually with other people then that is definitely bound to happen. And if that doesn't scare you, then you don't really care about him/her.
In most cases this is pretty much cuckoldry under a neutral or "hip" label, as women can get laid without effort and men have to work pretty hard for sex, so the woman has her fun with the myriad of choice she has on dating apps (she doesn't even have to pay for dinner), while the guy is barely getting any.
This is a wholly subjective, not to say toxic view of relationships as mutually codependent and cloistrated. It speaks more to your own personal issues than any universal problem with a given relationship style. No one is forced to adopt an open relationship. The idea that 'I don't like it, so you can't have it', is profoundly authoritarian. If it doesn't suit you, don't engage in it. Easy, you can thank our pluralistic tolerant society for having options.
Based on your comments here and what I’ve seen of polyamorous people’s online dating profiles I think I am more likely to respect a man in such a relationship style than I am to respect you.
Do you think this comment is helpful? If not do you think your own comments have been helpful? If your answers to those two questions are different do you know why they are different?
Eh, not all people look at their relationship in that specific "work for sex" way. Read up on "invisible labor" if you want to understand why women in particular could get offended by your perspective.
If you're looking for such a relationship, I'm sure you'll find a mate on those terms. But don't claim that this is the only way. And please accept that other people may prefer other setups.
> Eh, not all people look at their relationship in that specific "work for sex" way.
I'm not talking just about relationships, I'm talking about the asymmetric access men and women have to sex. This is an undeniable fact of life. If a man wants to get laid tonight, he will have to work hard, and his chances are not that high. That's why ~80% of the prostitutes are women... most women just don't need to pay for sex.
Yes that's an undeniable fact of life but that's not the only one informing men/women relationships, not even the main one. It seems though that is the only one you care about
Your point of view is so informed by your situation and has so little empathy that you don't even acknowledge the large portion of women that are not deemed to be fuckable by men and are derided for that, whether because of age, or body type or sometimes because they talk too loud
Relax, it's just culture. People who have open relationships tend not to talk about it. Some because they don't like getting lectured on cultural inventions like monogamy. Others because they don't want to get advances from sex-mercenaries.
So you may just not know what your friends are up to, because why would they tell you of all people? If you allowed a bit of nuance, you could learn surprising things about humans.
"You cannot love a partner without fearing of losing them"
Maybe you are mistaking your love for someone with your fear of being alone ?
Open relationships, and poly relationships even more, are difficult for many reasons I can't bother to detail here. There is of course a certain inequality in the access to sex that you are pointing out even though you are leaving out many other very important parameters in your example. But there is also a great inequality on how people are able to decouple intimacy/sex with a strong bond with someone, which can make someone suffer even if he or she did not think it would, leaving behind a mess of hurt feelings.
But believe it or not, different people experience feelings for people differently and just calling them cold robots is just an easy way for you negate their existence, as some believed lesbians could not exist, they had to be frustrated heterosexual that had not met the right man.
Anyways your vision of the whole thing seems to be pretty much informed by your resentment (They are not even paying for dinner!) and it is not that hard to find someone to have sex with you as a man. Having some emotional intelligence, basic social skills, not having a definite vision of what gender roles are, and in general not being an asshole will help a lot, adding to that women are for cultural reasons less sensitive than men to attractiveness.
What's funny with incels is that they complain they can't get laid but what they mean in general is that can't have sex with the most attractive women and make fun of less attractive women, in doing so revealing that what they are after is the social status of being validated by them and not to get to share a moment of pleasure and intimacy with someone else.
> Maybe you are mistaking your love for someone with your fear of being alone ?
No. Loving your sister and loving your wife are two different forms of love. You are equating them both.
> Open relationships, and poly relationships even more, are difficult for many reasons I can't bother to detail here.
I don't think they are possible without exploitation, period. There are plenty of horror stories online about these types of relationships, and rarely an honest appraisal.
> Anyways your vision of the whole thing seems to be pretty much informed by your resentment (They are not even paying for dinner!) and it is not that hard to find someone to have sex with you as a man.
It's informed by the fact that one side of the relationship usually has access to relationships without putting it any work (the woman), while the other part needs to put a lot of work. This obvious asymmetry makes this arrangement quite unfair to the man.
> Having some emotional intelligence, basic social skills, not having a definite vision of what gender roles are, and in general not being an asshole will help a lot, adding to that women are for cultural reasons less sensitive than men to attractiveness.
None of that helps much in a sexual market with strong competition (like where I live). Tinder barely works for most men here. You, like all leftists tend to make everything a cultural choice, so that you can go ahead and simply rewrite the rules as you see fit... I don't buy it, especially not for gender roles which have strong biological components.
> What's funny with incels is that they complain they can't get laid but what they mean in general is that can't have sex with the most attractive women and make fun of less attractive women
I don't care about incels - heck, I don't even know what they are. Men and women have different parameters for sexual attraction. Men are attracted primarily to youth and beauty and women are attracted to dominance and social status (this is not because of cultural reasons, as you claim). I wouldn't want to settle for an unattractive woman just like a woman wouldn't want to settle for a submissive man.
This presumes the game is entirely a competition to see who gets more sex. Poly and open relationships can have other advantages. For instance, a lot of men are effectively in a second relationship with their work, which often destroys monogamous relationships due to loneliness on the part of the ignored partner. Divorced parents often have a special relationship with their children, with a connection that is fed by lots of alone time with their kids.
Poly relationships also open up effectively a new kind of family dynamic, in which metamours have a deep relationship that may not be sexual but allow a lot of trust and reliance.
Finally, even if it really were about who gets more sex, men become much more attractive relative to women in middle age. The silver fox effect is real... sex is also a lot easier for men with lots of social status, which can also come with age.
So you are saying monogamy exists primarily because of jealousy and fear?
I wonder who would enter a relationship build on these foundations?
Can you explain why you think "loosing your partner" is bound to happen when they have sex with other people?
What about them falling in love with a co-worker (no sex required), dying from a car accident one day etc.?
How do you assume these things are less likely than when sex enters the picture?
Your emphasis on sex and what meaning it carries in relationships (particularly successful ones) seems to be be completely disproportionate to reality.
People in open relationships tend to give more assurance to each other.
Jealousy always exists. I can be jealous because my partner goes to her "girls night" and I don't get to spend time with her.
Why would I be more or less jealous than if she had a date that night that involved sex?
Once you think about this for a bit you realize that the choice/reasons for jealousy are mostly arbitrary/cultural and can be overcome. Like any bad habit.
As for access to sex: there are options for men to balance the sheet. Just take up some sort of social dancing; tango, swing, salsa etc. Or sport. Climbing gyms are playgrounds for singles.
And these options also open the door for "having sex with a stranger/recent aquaintance tonight".
> So you are saying monogamy exists primarily because of jealousy and fear?
Monogamy exists because of a strong bond between two people. Sex is part of that bond. If you "love" another person, then obviously you would fear of losing them, and so would they. A bit of jealousy is healthy in a relationship, and there should be certain boundaries set (so called "red lines").
> Can you explain why you think "loosing your partner" is bound to happen when they have sex with other people?
The fact that I have to explain this is already outrageous.
> Jealousy always exists. I can be jealous because my partner goes to her "girls night" and I don't get to spend time with her.
There's jealousy and there's her actually fcking a stranger. My gf should know that going for a "girl's night out" to some night club is not OK, just as it would not be OK for me to do the same thing. I have personally hooked up girls who were on trips abroad while they had a bf waiting at home... if your gf insists on going on such a trip, she's for the streets.
> Once you think about this for a bit you realize that the choice/reasons for jealousy are mostly arbitrary/cultural and can be overcome. Like any bad habit.
You can't just erase culture like that. Culture is not born out of thin air, it is partly based on our psychology. Biology -> Psychology -> Sociology. If you don't mind other men fcking your gf, then you are clearly in the minority of men, and that's OK, there's a minority for everything. But don't go around claiming that mate guarding is just purely cultural (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_guarding_in_humans).
> As for access to sex: there are options for men to balance the sheet. Just take up some sort of social dancing; tango, swing, salsa etc. Or sport. Climbing gyms are playgrounds for singles.
It's not even close. Believe you me. Maybe it is where you live, but where I live the competition is so fierce that these places are just sausage fests.
Making out with strangers is a fast way to get sick with something. Same with open relationships. You’re getting exposed to every germ, virus, STD, etc. that they have.
Plus traditionally when you have a partner it’s like a form of property. An open relationship is like sharing your house or car with everyone but probably even worse.
You are probably getting downvoted because of people objecting to framing human relationships as owning property. I want to point out to the downvoters that this post did not endorse this, but simply claimed it's traditionally so, which I think can be argued successfully. That I think it's part of the fucked up way "traditional values" make us think about people with agency is independent of that
TLDR; <sarcasm>
Extrapolating both your points you should thus only have one partner for life. And never leave the house (just use delivery apps/wear an ABC suit when opening the door of your house to receive deliveries).
</sarcasm>
The first objection you listed contains all the reasons to use protection. In general.
I live in Berlin. A city where open/poly relationships are perfectly normal and common.
The bday party I went to last Saturday spanned an age group of 20-50. Mostly hetero people. Of the ten people (give or take one, I just counted in my head) I spoke to, four were in open relationships
This came up because my partner was there too and we introduced our significant other to other people as "this is my primary partner, ...".
You use protection, you regularly get tested for STDs (free in Germany with public health insurance).
I never caught anything in 20 years of this lifestyle nor do I know of any cases in my circle of poly/open relationship friends.
The second objection sums up pretty nicely why you should run for your life from what you call "traditional" relationship models/their assumed requirements.
My partner, who's an anthropologist, mentioned that genetic evidence for monogamy only exists for the last 10k years. And it's spotty.
People who believe this is normal or "traditional" (a term that requires context to carry any meaning) just need to brush up on the facts on this topic.
Also one may argue that what we call "monogamy" is (and always was) a lie.
Just look at statistics of cheating and divorce rates when economic/social pressure is removed.
Monogamy is as "natural" as being Christian or Muslim is "natural" when you are born in a country where this is the resp. prevalent religion.
I had lived in Berlin for over 7 years and the only rare sex I had was with the girlfriend which I had brought there with me. For me there was no perspective of any sexual relationship with even remotely attractive woman. Dating apps hadn't resulted even with a single real life meeting. So I guess your example is anegdotal as is mine.
I don't quite follow. Were you in a monogamous relationship for seven years? Then this is expected/a choice you made. Berlin as a background doesn't matter.
If not, how many years were you single in Berlin?
Why was there no perspective?
What exactly did you try?
Berliners are a weird group culturally. This is the same bunch of people that went on an anti-Semitic and racist bender and massacred millions of people across Europe. I don’t think they are a good example of how life should be lived. Weird/crazy people being weird. Everything is acceptable to Berliners.
I can't find that funny.
I have Jewish ancestry and never met my grandfather because of those criminals.
I assume you are joking because comparing Berlin 2022 with Berlin during the third reich can only either be a joke or an absence of basic understanding of European history between now and then so flabbergasting that it borders on imbecility.
The criminals which had widespread support across Berlin and Germany. It was also only a couple generations ago.
I’m also of Jewish heritage and multiple members of my extended family were wiped out.
Like I said, Germans and Berliners particularly seem very tolerant of all sorts of extremist ideas. I count “open relationships” as one of them.
It’s like who cares about why things are traditionally the way they are, let’s throw out the old ideas and try new crazy ones. Whether it’s reinventing relationships or sexuality or murdering millions of people. Anything goes.
I think you've missed an important thing in your comment.
In order to kill a jew you need a jew. So in order for a berliner to be killing one, the rest of the berliners had to have been nice enough that a jew was present. Unlike say Belgium [1]. Not to say killing a jew is a good thing (it's not) but areas like Poland ended up with a relatively higher concentration because they were more tolerant than western societies.
2. Not everybody thinks that's a good idea. Making out with strangers in a club is definitely trashy. It's the kind of thing that deceives everybody's expectations, also those of the bystanders, and can lead to a problematic outcome. You might want to say that that shouldn't happen in your particular ideal of society, but it does.
Meeting strangers to 'make out' with or 'hook up' with is literally the point of a club. It's been going on ever since humans had festivals and dances. Lets case conservatively 8 - 12k years. What you consider 'trashy' is completely culturally determined, and in this case amusingly bourgeois.
This post is part of a wider trend toward sex negativity. It's not predicated on any major social change - in fact young people are having sex later on average, having fewer sexual partners, and people of all ages are reporting less casual sex (at least in the US). But rather on reactionary moralising.
Murder, another completely culturally determined taboo. The (presumed, I might add) fact that something is cultural doesn't change its value. And using bourgeois as dismissive is so 1970s.
Your use of language is a cultural concept, too - let's not ignore how your dismissal here is about as valid as if you chose to not use words to express this concept. Having rights is a matter of personal agency, regardless of society's "collective" agency. It is a distinction between cultural and personal control over the individual.
You might consider either trying to stop using words altogether, or else maybe recognize that an individual's agency, their "rights", are indeed relevant to the conversation about culture.
Language --most likely-- is a natural concept: animals have developed it, too. It builds culture. It's more natural than the taboo on murder, the concept mentioned earlier in the thread.
> let's not ignore how your dismissal here
My point in the thread was against using "culturally determined" as a way to dismiss an argument. I'll repeat my stance: the fact that something is culturally determined or socially shaped does not alter its meaning or value.
The unintended irony of those who throw around "bourgeois" in this context is amusing. Historically, the classes that discounted sexual mores have been the poor and the wealthy and powerful elite. The latter already have long standing social mechanisms for maintaining their social position, and the former are under economic pressures that undermine moral and ethical considerations.
It is basically the middle classes that definitively require stable families. So unless OP is manor born -- the working classes do not have leisure time to spend time on HN -- OP is likely a product of a petite-bourgois family who has not really understood the vital necessity of sexual mores for their class.
I know what you’re going for with ‘culturally determined’ but it’s just so unconvincing. When I was 20, I was part of the culture that went to clubs. Now I’m part of the culture that thinks it’s trashy as all hell, and a fleeting millisecond of’fun’ that isn’t really even that fun.
Honestly this entire list was happening 20 years ago as well, although the Excel sheets were paper notebooks instead. Young people are going to experiment and make rash decisions that they regret later. That is just a part of growing up and has very little to do with social media or dating apps.
Do you really think dating used to be easy? I fail to see how "dating apps and social media" is the direct cause of the problems you mention, or that any of those problems are new to society.
Easier, perhaps, for finding initial dates, but harder for finding committed love.
Although not explicit, there is an undertone in the article implying an ultimate goal of persistence & stability - i.e., marriage.
Dating was definitely easier 20 years ago and I am saying this from the perspective of a guy that discovered that I was so big of an idiot in my early twenties and still had it very easy.
Ok, this is getting really tangential, but AppleWorks was released in 1984, and Excel in 1987, way before 14k modems and the web browser (both around 1994). I think spreadsheets with girls or guys have been around for longer than many here seem to think...
This seems rather biased towards women, men are just as likely to make out with strangers in the club. And while men are not getting surgery to enlarge their boobs, they do get hair implants and steroids/SARMs are more prevalent than ever. I think the constant barrage of certain images on social media cause both men and women to be ever more insecure about the way they look.
Compare the rates: what is regular behavior for women is almost an exception for men. I don't know personally anybody with a hair implant or using steroids and while a statistics with a sample size of 1 is not relevant, I think it tells something.
not gonna lie, as far as i can tell every single one of these things has predated social media and online dating. the cycles are just faster and the ratios shifting, but it's roughly all the same stuff just happening faster and with more people involved.
Most women are now in worse shape than the generations before them were at the same age. They may be obsessed with their physiques but mostly because this is a major failing point and obesity epidemic is real.
I believed I had heard differently, that obesity was on the increase globally, not just in the US or the West or rich countries. The first hit from Google:
> In most of the Asian countries the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased many folds in the past few decades and the magnitude varies between countries [6–15]. South East Asia and Western Pacific region are currently facing an epidemic of diseases associated with obesity such as diabetes and CVD [5, 6].
> Girls obsessed over their physiques. Going skinny to the point it wrecked their hormones.
Afaik, this does not have that much with dating/fitness. It is more to do with own body image expectations for their own sake - plus perfectionism, anxiety, growing in environment where fatness is mocked and fearing it, stuff like that.
> - Girls randomly make out in club with some random strangers they just met.
By stats I have seen, teenagers now start having sex later and are less likely to exhibit risky sexual behavior that those in the past (say 90ties). So while it definitely exists, it was not something that went up, but down instead.
> - Girls obsessed over their physiques. Going skinny to the point it wrecked their hormones.
This is a tale much older than social media or the internet. At this point we have bred for this predisposition. We’ll probably be better of acknowledging that.
Everything else you wrote is not new either.
US divorce rates hit an all time high in 1981 and has basically plateau’d. The divorce rate is skewed higher because of people in their teens and twenties (but still a bad, uninsurable, bet even if it was down to 10% or 5% for some populations). What can you possibly ascribe to social media?
Making out with random people for fun and/or attention is not new. This is the most peculiar post.
Social media is reflecting and perpetuating existing culture at best, if thats what you can come up with.
We have enough other reasons to vilify social media than ascribing ongoing and preexisting realities (that even happened actually more frequently beforehand!) to it
The author clearly didn't studied the matter and she's speaking from personal and enviroment-she-can-perceive point of view, no offense with this part. After reading the entire post, I can see she's biased with her own perception on the matter. Reading other articles, who are also biased just make it worse.
When you look at the data, you realize the dating world for men is close to doom. Only a small fraction of men will traspass genes and most women compete for the top 20% men. The rest of the men are invisible. 1/3 of americans males, from 18 to 30 are virgins and it's climbing. Less marriages, more divorces initiated by women, and the list of stats goes on.
Also, among all the sexual dynamics that benefit women, you have the services, which are done in order to milk the men who aren't attractive (not only good looking) for women. These men sustain Tinder economy, for example, as all the algorithms are made just to milk men money just to land some opportunity of attractions.
Anyone interested should start reading papers, studies, and it will be surprised instead watching TikToks, tweets, etc.
> These men sustain Tinder economy, for example, as all the algorithms are made just to milk men money just to land some opportunity of attractions.
This goes even lower and darker. As a man pays for gold, platinium and gains infinite swipes, one discovers it's mostly profiles of scams, outright asking for money, proposals of findom, some women or fake profiles toying with you purely for their entertainment. A man doesn't even get sex for the money.
Why otherwise would I insert coins into this bloody app? What makes women think that a mere using of dating app entitles them to find a partner for "serious relationship"? Paying for it makes me slightly frustrated or even entitled, yes.
I keep hearing this reference on how most (80%?) of women compete for the 20% of men, it just doesn’t make sense to me. It can only be true in a narrow sense… i.e. on a specific dating app 20% of men get messaged by 80% of women (that’s where the figure comes from IIRC?).
But looking at the larger picture of how relationships are formed, there is no way for it to work this way. And if it were true, it would be just as bad for women—as most of them would stay single! These 20% of men might have an easier time on the apps, and casual hookups might be simpler, but they can’t be in relationships with 80% of women. And a committed partnership of two people keeps being the long term vision for most in the dating game.
And people still have relationships. From the US numbers I could find, the bracket with the most singles is males 18-29, at 51%, which is a lot, but not exactly ‘close to doom’.
EDT: This 80/20 figure initially came from an OKCupid study, and it’s about perceived attractiveness. In this study, 80% of men are perceived as of less than average attractiveness. However, that did not necessarily stop them from getting messaged. https://archive.ph/ZJymw#selection-600.0-633.275
> It can only be true in a narrow sense… i.e. on a specific dating app 20% of men get messaged by 80% of women (that’s where the figure comes from IIRC?).
The apps are not a "narrow sense". It's how most people meet each other these days.
Hot take: men don’t want promiscuous women as long-term partners, fundamentally people desire long-term partners, and the commoditization of sex contributes to weak relationships and broken families.
Then you define "want" in a very narrow sense, and there definitely is no evidence to show that it's "social condtioniting", nor that it's a desire shared by (nearly) all men.
If we reframe this into societal terms, so that this doesn't get dragged into a "not all men want that" argument, why is it that most modern societies had/has rigid, monogamous family units? There are stereotypes for both promiscuous men and women, and clearly there's some degree of promiscuity in both genders. But the (vast?) majority of societies also adopted monogamous family units for most social classes. If men and women are promiscuous by nature, which forces led to the family unit in modern societies? Or perhaps that's just an illusion? How common was it to have a paramour anyway?
obviously nonmonogamous communities did not survive so what we see may be survivor bias. Nowadays however it IS becoming possible for nonmonogamous socieites to survive due to our superior technology. Hopefully there will be better studies out there than my office-chair evopsych.
Why would that be the goal? Men who have a partner still have the option to pursue sex outside of a relationship. Many simply pay for that type of sexual relationship with no "struggles" you speak of.
This is really not polyamory or non-monogamy in the way you’re framing it. Paying for sex outside of your marriage isn’t really non-monogamy in my book - it’s just sad.
The original argument is that monogamy is in place because men cannot get sex elsewhere. That is obviously not true. The point being that men also desire faithful long-term companionship. The ones who want casual sex or multiple partners still obtain that even in our monogamy-by-law society.
Ah... On the "men...want..." part, are you interested in what actual individual human men really want? Or just in a very simplistic, macho stereotype - which few men are likely to voice disagreement with, when it is repeatedly and forcefully voiced, in the context of a society where men often face harsh punishments (social and/or physical) for having non-conformist feeling on subjects like sex. And generally worse if they actually try to voice those feelings.
> men don’t want promiscuous women as long-term partners
Men don't think in those terms. Promiscuous means quicker (and easier) to filter.
> fundamentally people desire long-term partners
Why? Because 2 people are stronger than one and as you get older, you start to be painfully aware of that. If you can find a best friend who shares your short term goals, long term goals, life standards (like cleanliness, similar views on drug use, gambling, etc) AND is also interested in you sexually, you probably have a good long term partner.
I skipped all this being religious. I knew my wife for years. Over a year we started to hit it off and got to know each other as good friends. I asked her out and proposed one week later. Four months later we were married.
It's old fashioned but our emotional and physical involvement was proportional to our level of commitment at every stage.
It won't be the way most people want to go but it seems to have saved much of the heart ache modern dating appears to cause.
Just one data point from someone that did it a little different.
The vast majority of married couples I know never used any dating app or even went dating at all. They mostly came together by chance. I don't think this is unusual and almost none of them are religious at all aside from keeping some traditions (mostly u-boat Christians that surface once a year to Christmas).
There seem to be huge socioeconomic differences here though and some groups tend to dating apps far more than others. An exception of people in public or media personalities who also deviate here the most.
So long as both partner's actual wants and feelings aren't too far off script (which sadly can be difficult, dangerous, or impossible to voice in many religious contexts), that is a vastly more efficient system.
In many ways, I see the huge, oft-miserable mess that we have now as a reaction to the too-often simplistic and callous imposition of that old religious system.
Similar experience, opposite conclusions. There is a reason religious areas (in the U.S.) have higher divorce rates.
Turned out my first wife didn't want intimacy of any sort. She wanted marriage but not a relationship beyond the superficial.
10 years later and about >40k in therapy and I divorced her after she admitted she just was never that "attached" to me.
I would never advocate a person getting married before sex. Sex is only some life altering emotional thing because of it's scarcity and how people have been inculcated to believe a common animalistic imperative has cosmic spiritual significance.
Happily married now to someone with a similar story, they did everything right and their partner just didn't want to be with someone of the opposite sex any longer.
It takes two to tango but it only takes one person to pick up their ball and go home.
Advice to any kids I ever had would be, have casual sex and relationships until you've developed a better understanding of other people (and also yourself), no marriage until after proof your potential partner is capable of holistic intimacy.
Modern, online dating is horrible for all men and we have the statistics that proves it. While every girl has a smörgåsbord of guys, most men have a ghost town as an inbox even if they have an easy time IRL.
Sometimes I wish I lived my life before the internet, where friday nights people would go out dancing because there was nothing to do at home. Today, you could go clubbing but I firmly believe it's not the same thing. When you go out socializing most people pick up their smartphones anyway.
I hate social media, it's the worst part of the modern society.
Maybe that's why Zuck is pushing the metaverse. Since people can't be glued off their screens, create a party inside their screens and remake their friday night through faithful facsimiles to force them to party again like it's the 70s.
I loved this article but I can't like it without an account.
> The real thing people should be actively looking for is strong emotional connection, as in: to what degree can I share who I am with this person, do they get it, how interested are they in who I am, my feelings and thoughts, can we accommodate each other’s preferences, are we good at talking.
I am in an hopefully now lifelong relationship, that almost failed at some point, but what brought us back together is this. So very true. We just "got" each other, from pretty early on, and although it can be crafted through years, it's just a bliss when it's spontaneous. And finding that level of connection (of course strengthened through the years together) again looks impossible.
Tldr: Be honest and self-aware to suffer less in relationships. This is good advice.
I would add that romantic relationships are one place where you can benefit from displaying some self-interest and diminishing your charitable instincts. Forgiveness is for enemies, not lovers.
I wish Eva Illouz had less success. She is mostly a philosopher, that is someone who says what's goes through her head, and a not a social scientist. I think her idea of the commoditization of love has a lot of success because it seems obvious to our moral oriented minds but the "commodization of {some aspect of life} in the modern society is a commonplace of lazy social analysis, and she is far from alone doing that, and by far not the worst.
Marital strategies have always existed, they just adapt to the economic system they are in. So far so good, but she claims it is the source of modern emotional misery and that people before knew how to love. That is I believe totally wrong, maybe they were more romantic types but they still exist today and that is besides the point when studying marital relationships. People did not know how to love better, they had less options, but their strategies varied. Far more interesting is I believe, in "post-indutrialized" societies, the effects on human psychology on the internalization of gender roles that are the remains of an older economic organization clashing with the fact that they are not economically enforced anymore.
Sadly, "commoditization" has become a meaningless word thrown around by those who claim intellectual descent from Marx, with a meaning something like "corruption".
Marx used the term (well, "commodification") with a very specific sociological and economic meaning, where some object with a natural "use value" (you can wear a coat to keep warm) is assigned a somewhat artificial "exchange value" (you can sell a coat for money) by the operation of our economic system. I can't for the life of me see how that applies to any of the usual complaints about love in the 21st century.
Well that echoes my complaint about a big chunk of the left throwing the word "capitalism" around not being really interested in what capitalism is, how it works or having a very moralistic view of what it think it is ("the reign of money", allright, what is money ?)
One of the few whom I think is pretty clear about what he thinks it is and is able to explain it in its historical context is Vivek Chibber.
> Sadly, "commoditization" has become a meaningless word
I've never heard this much less entertained the idea, since it makes sense in these contexts. Commoditization still means treating a thing (which can include a relationship) like it has an inherent relative value that can be traded for other things of relative value. Commodity (a raw material that has a market value) + ization (the conversion of).
> You learn about shared interests, job, which college they went to, their friend group.
This is the prime mistake I see my friends make. As a guy, there are pretty much only two things that will seriously and negatively affect your dating life: being short or boring.
Talking about your college, job, and friends is usually boring. In fact, even funny stories from these contexts are often boring for your dates to hear because they don't know the people involved (yet) and don't care about them.
This is how you, as a dude, end up with
> you can be very attractive and therefore have a wide range of people interested in you but not have the social skills/psychological acuity to translate initial interest into a successful relationship
Initial dates are primarily entertainment. Which is why they used to involve going to the cinema, a good meal, etc. You can go for a coffee, drinks, walk but come in with enough material to carry a conversation for these 1-4 hours.
Kinda but not really. First, you can reuse and even steal material heavily. Second, you can rely on props, whatever happens around. Third, you don't need to be that good: you're competing with six other boring dudes she went out with and her uncle, not Tim Dillon.
Finally, after a while she will pick up and start talking herself. Then you can bounce off that, tease, make fun. This is the best anyway since anything about her is by default interesting.
When I was in my early 20's this was a challenge for me, but I worked at it. Now, I am 40 and it is effortless. There is something to be said for having some well crafted stories, but I think that's a lesser part of it. The bigger thing is being able to LISTEN so you can find common ground and build rapport.
Getting into the sales side in my career was the first time I began to realize how important this was. But nothing changed me like working for a political campaign. I did a large amount of door-to-door, street canvasing and phone banking. I had thousands and thousands of conversations. It was hard, but could be really satisfying if you could turn an initially unpleasant interaction into one where you both walked away smiling.
I would highly recommend this type of volunteer work to help a cause you're passionate about. It was a great experience for me and it helped me develop so many different social skills.
>>>There is something to be said for having some well crafted stories, but I think that's a lesser part of it. The bigger thing is being able to LISTEN so you can find common ground and build rapport.
^This, so much this. Especially learn enough about the woman from what she communicates to cue up the most appropriate of your inventory of stories.
A lot of comments here missing the point of the article. People are quick to blame apps for dating pain. Reading the article, very few of the author's points are caused by the app-ification of dating. It is easy to blame "the corporations" for social issues. Let's get specific about what is happening.
The article does offer good insight, which I'll highlight here:
1. The root of many dating issues is a lack of communication:
> When I was in my late teens or early 20s I would sometimes be in the early stages of dating someone and feel like there was a glass wall between us, I just didn’t really get them, I didn’t know what they wanted from me, and it was so hard for me to have any clarity about who they really are.
2. Most people in their decision-making around relationships are reacting to social pressure rather than following their self-awareness. As an example:
> Most people turn to frameworks: either I’m religious, so I’ll wait until marriage, or I don’t think sex is sacred, so I guess I’m open to casual sex
3. In modern dating people tend to have more options, and this magnifies the need for (1) open communication and (2) honest introspection.
I do think apps have something to do with it. Not saying they're evil, but I do think they contribute to the objectification of people. Maybe more importantly, I think they shift the focus in relationships to initial appearances, and onto the evaluation of the other person rather than ones self. I think a lot of this is subtle and not limited to dating.
A lot that's too much for me to put in an HN comment from my phone. A lot gets lost in treating dating similarly to how you'd buy a pair of headphones, and it has consequences. Figuring out what exactly is lost is hard, and addressing it would help a lot of people.
Yes, and your point makes of the OP article's take on "the list" of requirements for a partner. A lot of people do get trapped into an unduly logical mode of thinking about prospective partners. I could see that dating on apps would encourage this way of thinking. I strongly agree with the article's take:
> For ex: someone might say, what I want is a guy who’s athletic, has a stable job, wants to have children, good relationship with his family, is funny and emotionally aware. I don’t think lists like that are helpful, because you’re probably subconsciously filtering based on those qualities anyway. The real thing people should be actively looking for is strong emotional connection, as in: to what degree can I share who I am with this person, do they get it, how interested are they in who I am, my feelings and thoughts, can we accommodate each other’s preferences, are we good at talking.
I'm fascinated by the dating app world, because it's a part of the culture I missed out on, as someone who has been in the same relationship since before the iPhone. But the way the author describes it is almost exactly the same as what being single was like 15+ years ago. I didn't have apps for doing intros, so there was more friction for that, but other than that, it doesn't seem like much has changed. From many of my friends, it sounds like navigating the electronic correspondence is as frustrating as trying to make spontaneous physical world connections, especially if your goal and/or the goal of the people you're corresponding with is to find potential relationship partners.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 327 ms ] threadOn the other hand part of me feels sad thinking I will be the "last me". Maybe get genome sequenced/publish books of my face and put it sealed in a landfill somewhere for preservation.
Actually rocks last a long time so probably a statue made with a rock.
Having children changed my outlook on the future quite a bit. First, I feel much more repsonsible and interested in the ecological future, because I intensely love people who will have to deal with the consequences in the future. Second, I hope I will be able to have a natural look into the problems of future generations, when I am old - there is a "strong bond into the future" for me. Third, while I don't feel it's a "future me" that I talk into sleep every evening, it feels like my human legacy. Considering my current reality, my children are probably the biggest impact I can have on the future.
BTW I guess all this is true regardless of genetic bonds.
Many of the points in the article are exactly the kinds of things you want to cultivate with your partner (e.g. self-awareness, good communication, etc) before having kids. If you have a good relationship with your partner, having kids is very manageable.
Our generation is too cynical on kids and it's to their own detriment.
One can not travel a mile without travelling a mile.
The fact that you can run in circles does not mean therefor running produces nonresults and the only way to travel is to rely on the luck that you magically land where you want, even though that does happen to a few people.
I've seen how the obsessive-analytic mindset fares in dating. I'll take bumbling along any day.
The advice not to over-analyse is itself an analasys and a piece of wisdom, which you and anyone you tell it to is better off for knowing. You have improved your and any readers life by becoming less ignorant. Your analasys is actually merely about optimization, specifically over-optimization or mis-directed optimization. And that is just one of the many thhings that are valuable to know, and which you can only know by thinking about it.
Maybe you're a thoughtless person and you only get it after years of unthinking miserable victimhood. Maybe you're a thoughtful person and this understanding occures to you on your own before you waste your life. Maybe you have the good fortune to have a parent that doesn't think ignorance is bliss and they imparted the wisdom to you. But one way or another, to have the understanding, you had to think about it, it had to be a tbought that existed in your head.
But you know who really does advocate for ignorance? Predators.
People saying "don't overthink it" aren't advocating for ignorance. They are recognizing that over-systematizing and over-thinking is its own form of ignorance. It's a particularly seductive form of ignorance for engineers because we carry tacit assumptions about how systems can be broken down and analyzed. These assumptions are a bad fit for dating and many other non-technical domains such as people management.
In art classes beginners are often taught to "see like an artist." That is, in terms of shape, color and composition rather than objects and logical descriptions. It's not that the logical view is factually incorrect. It's that it emphasizes the wrong sort of knowledge.
>But you know who really does advocate for ignorance? Predators.
This and your "miserable victimhood" comment make me wonder if your views aren't being driven by some personal pain or trauma. If so then it might be worth unpacking your experiences with a therapist. Overthinking doesn't protect you from pain or abuse. It is the opposite if anything.
Do I now get to take my fair turn at attacking the person instead of their argument? For instance maybe your fondness for ignorance is consistent with being ignorant of the fact that abuse is a thing that actually happens, and that manipulation is how it happens, and relies on the victim being unaware of recognizable patterns and processes. You can become aware of a problem even if you've had the good luck or the good sense to have avoided suffering it yourself. For instance I don't have to be a female myself to at least try to guess at the plight of females in general in the world we all share.
"It might be worth unpacking your lack of empathy with a therapist."
Anything you believe that have loose variables with irreproducible outcome is false belief.
Those false belief are decisive when built properly, and you need them for functioning, but never ever rely on them for more than that.
Technical Example: I remember reading awhile back about a demoscene contributor who used to watch amazing 3d scenes and never understood they were not rendered in real time, so he worked at it until he figured out how to render 3d scenes as quickly as some of the other examples he had seen but his were real-time. He was so sure that others were doing it, he kept trying to optimize/improve until his were grossly better.
Dating Example: Lookup the first interview between David Letterman and Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec). They talk about how he’s married to Megan Mullally (from Will and Grace). He didn’t know who she was when he met her (she would have been quite famous at the time), and complimented her and asked her out. His ignorance of basic known things allowed a confidence to succeed at something ordinary that would otherwise intimidate a lot of men.
To be clear, I think it definitely helps to look into things, but ignorance can sometimes counter-balance doubt, which can grossly affect outcomes.
To consider that the superior tactic you have to be willing to accept the failure rate and treat your one and only entire life as just one of those hapless shots in the dark.
Besides this is isn't a valid analogy anyway because we're only talking about self-awareness not engineering a partner.
And the comment you just wrote yourself, about self-inflicted limits, was an example of advice and learning, and every reader is better for having read it and become less ignorant about that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
I don't think modern dating is nice. I don't just think that's technophobic thinking, I think it's too introspective and risky.
Things were different when it was landline phone calls and note passing. We were less concerned to be helped by friends, it was normal. Nowadays there is a strong tendency to keep relationships private until ready.
"Warts and all" is hard through a lens.
What I mean is the people online who are dating and talking about dating online are more likely to be experience the agony of Eros. Than those who are dating or in a relationship but not sharing about it online. Sort of like a signal to noise ratio that is highly squeued towards the love fails than love wins.
Love will never be solved, regardless of classical theories or modern day ones. Just go for it and don't think to much about the theoretical
Curious what is their idea of 'before'. Unless they mean pre-industrial societies.
A lot of these issues (and preoccupations with romance) go out of the window when people are struggling to survive, as most did in pre-industrial societies.
I think what gets lost is that long term relationships have been more utilitarian than anyone likes to admit. Who doesn't love a love story, or want to feel the rush of first attraction?
The problem is that it isn't enough to build a life out of. You need a practical, working partnership to raise a family and app dating isn't geared to that goal. The apps give a monstrous illusion there might be something better on the next swipe, and it just isn't true.
One probably have to go back to 17th century for this expectation to become entirely alien again. The times of arranged marriages and honor killings. However there hardly was a dating scene in modern sense to think of.
Sure, there were times before that where it was much more utilitarian, but anywhere you see talk of "two becoming one flesh" is at least as intense as what's mentioned in this quotation!
While I appreciate the honesty I do find it a little condescending when someone messages me "just so you know, I don't want to see you again" after a bad date. But some people consider not doing this to be the equivalent of going from daily messaging to total radio silence out of nowhere after dating for months.
I've been on dates where I thought it went well, I got the "let's do this again", and then whenever I suggested "let's do it again on X day?" I get excuses.
If they don't want to that's fine, they don't even have to say no just don't reply! But the leading on is annoying...
If you also were ambivalent about the date you now have the option of just fading out while both parties save face.
If you really liked her and think you'll be a good match you can try and rescue the situation by suggesting a better date (better being some combination of more thoughtful, more expensive, or more personal). You're a little on the back foot but in my experience a lot of successful relationships start this way so you're by no means down and out.
If someone is perpetually unavailable, they're perpetually unavailable.
Of course it's clearer if the other person says "I just don't think we're a good match", but actionable ambiguity is much more common.
OTOH - my sad impression is that quite a few women, especially very young ones, have so many wired-in anxieties / fears / areas of passivity that they'd have a hard time saying "no" to a guy who's receiving Last Rites (and not just out of charity for the dying).
Hopefully, checking that is on the First Date Checklist in at least a few guy's guides... "#7 Verify that she can pleasantly but clearly say no to an oddball suggestion or few. If she actually answers 'yes' to skydiving, learning to read Egyptian hieroglyphs, and baking a cake for your birthday - then she has some issues that you really don't want to be stuck with."
Or you could say they're using a different "rule book", or "language", or set of social conventions - which are great reasons to avoid someone.
I mean, it could be said in a nicer way. "I don't think we're a good match" or something similar is a lot more polite, for example. Most people take it well, in my experience (maybe because the feeling tends to be mutual).
It's very easy to not be a ghost, all you have to do is provide a kind resolution. If someone asks you out on another date but you don't want to see them again, you just say something like "I'm sorry, I've gotten really busy lately, if I do have the chance to get together, I'll reach out."
No further communication is necessary. You've given them a plausible excuse that doesn't shred their ego too much and indicated that you're not interested in continuing.
If you don't do this, some people will speculate that it was their fault, and beat themselves up. They may blame it on their weight, their looks, their personality, over time, it may erode their self esteem. So it's good etiquette to not be a ghost. Unfortunately millions of people don't care enough to bother.
Men are in a decent privileged position where most women to most dates, culturally, wont initiate an attempt at communication. so its very easy for us to just never acknowledge the date because we never sent another text.
But thats not ghosting.
Ghosting is having a great date (or a benign one, or a bad one) and never getting a response again, or even blocked, or not even knowing if your date got home at all but not being in a position to even ask. As another person wrote, it doesn’t have any regard for the psychological consequences. Its more likely I would switch to Liam Neeson Taken mode to help a complete stranger than risk getting myself villified for trying to see if my unresponsive date made it home. The culture broke itself.
We have turned sexual partners into an affluent commodity, thanks to apps. With a bit of paid boosting, you can show your profile to 1000+ potential partners and surely a few of them will have a favorable first impression. We've also successfully reframed being sexually promiscuous as not being limited by religion / social norms / the patriarchy. Plus we've all but eliminated potentially negative consequences with birth control. And our entire society celebrates a "hustle" and "fake it till you make it" culture.
The article's complains "men signal emotional seriousness that they don’t actually feel" which I'd say is "fake it till you make it" combined with very low investment due to oversupply of partners.
"you’ll likely be terrified the person you like will meet someone else they like more, or likes you but doesn’t like you enough to commit" also just means that there's a high level of competition, due to oversupply of partners.
And lastly, the article nicely points out that everyone wants a "quick fix", which is why you can buy tons of books and guides on how to behave, i.e. imitating the correct gestures, but very few people put in the effort to actually learn to become a good communicator.
But the article also has one huge oversight in my opinion: Pheromones and genetic compatibility. People can smell if their offspring will be healthy pretty quickly, but it's impossible to screen for this with apps. That's how people end up with so many dates where they should like the other person, but for some reason they don't. I believe this is also why some people ghost each other after the first intimate contact. "I didn't like his/her smell" is a common reason to stop dating, after all.
We as a society need to accept that not everything can be fixed and improved with self-help courses. Some people just won't match on a genetic level and there's little you can do to fix that.
That's so interesting, it's not BO right or some bad perfume/cologne.
"In several species, including rodents and fish, it has been shown that the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) influences mating preferences"
"This study thus supports the hypothesis that the MHC influences mate choice in some human populations."
https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Unless you meant female animals.
For humans, the effect appears to be there, but we don't have any stronger evidence. Then again, this might be unpopular to research due to its social implications.
In the contrary I would suspect that being able to identify the specific chemical combinations that would make you hot would sell like crazy and there’s already snake oil on the market for this.
And the stuff we use to mask this effect - called perfume - is indeed pretty popular ;)
Most hormonal birth control functions by putting the body into a hormonal state that mimics pregnancy. If you're already carrying a baby, what you've evolved to look for in people to become close to during that time is actually people who are genetically more like you, rather than complementary. If for some reason you don't survive, your child will need a replacement for you, not a complement, especially if you conceived the child with someone complementary.
I don't have them to hand, but there have been several studies of this involving t-shirts worn for several days by different men and women smelling them and ranking them. If the women stop using birth control, their whole perception changes.
It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If your desire is specifically to have sex and not children, what you do to prevent children also makes you less likely to choose a partner who would produce children with you that would have the highest chances of survival.
It's small wonder that if you try to put that person into that role later, it's not going to go very well.
"Factorial ANOVA results showed that the group of nonpill users obtained higher scores on the PMI scale than the group of pill users (considering the fertile phase of the cycle)." where PMI = Partner's Masculinity Index
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17436...
In short, pill birth control reduced the desirability of features considered traditionally masculine.
Is is that one possible way people have proposed that humans might react to pheromones probably only exists vestigially in humans?
Or by introducing us to the name of this organ, are you somehow under the impression you've debunked the idea that pheromones have any impact on human behavior at all?
>>>If the women stop using birth control, their whole perception changes.
Very interesting, thanks. I've read similar conclusions pushed in manosphere/PUA circles for years, about how birth control has some major negative impacts on womens' behavior. My personal dating experience supports the pheromonal detection/selection abilities of women who are NOT on birth control as well. When multiple women from different countries/cultures/ethnicities all bury their faces in your chest, exclaim "I love your smell"....and ask to have your baby...something is going on beyond your good looks and ability to spit game.
"The Walk showcases how AXE can transform an everyday walk into an amazing journey of attraction."
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-new-axe-effect-...
But jokes aside, I can't find the study for it now but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that for long-term married women, smelling the sweat of their long-term partner can reduce anxiety. And from an evolutionary perspective, that would make sense: If your long-term partner is around, you're probably halfway safe.
> And from an evolutionary perspective, that would make sense: If your long-term partner is around, you're probably halfway safe.
Well, evolutionary, it kinda depends on who he is etc etc. Evolutionary, relationships were not guaranteed to be nice and cosy romantic.
On the other hand, I just learned that with pill-based birth control the effect nowadays is weaker than it used to be. So maybe you're correct and my perception is just outdated.
EDIT: actually, they show that humans can somehow perceive MHC compatibility. So you might be correct in that I'm wrong on the delivery mechanism and pheromones aren't being used.
Reminds me of Celeste Headlee's comment: "There's no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention, if you are in fact paying attention."
EDIT: I guess the reversal the article is talking about is that you now need to learn how to pretend not to be an effective communicator, because it's not part of the current social norm.
I agree that dating apps and other modern technologies have changed the dating scene for the worse. However, this (feigning love when a man really just wants access to sex) has been a male dating strategy since time in memoriam. (and I'd certainly be open to the idea that this particular dating strategy is under a lot more pressure given the current dating environment. ie, that men are much more tempted to use this strategy than they would be otherwise.)
I guess this really isn't a strong disagreement with your point. (or really much of a disagreement at all.) But, I think it's important to point out that this is not some aberrant pattern which never previously existed, rather it may be a rational pattern in certain contexts, and all we've done is change the context in which people are operating.
People have lost all sense it seems to me - we have been trained to have technology do everything for us. This really means the corporations behind the tech are meant to do everything for us. Good god.
The mega-trend - IMO - in all this is a fostered neoteny (extended juvenile period) where our expectations are that someone should service our desires. Its such an irresponsible and weak position - it doesn't even register as a possibility to the younger generation that they should be able to sort things out on their own - benevolent tech companies should do it instead. Even a date is too much apparently.
Humanity is being softened into a warm puree.
PS
If corporations are involved in the dating business (which they are) think about it from their point of view. They do not actually want you to succeed! They want you to fail but keep using their services. The more you fail the better! The more unhappy you are the more you will spend in your date-death spiral.
Like we don't have a health industry but a managed illness industry, the dating industry would be better called a managed loneliness industry, cos loneliness and unhappiness opens the purse strings as you try to resolve your unhappiness with all the other crap corporations have to offer.
This seems to be the overwhelming sentiment when this topic comes up here, but I had to wonder: how much are you people relying on Tinder et al. ?
Sorry, I don't buy this. Even working in the tech field, buying a house with your salary is really tough. And it only goes downhill for other types of jobs. So this "fostered neoteny" is just young people not feeling financially secure to start a traditional family. You can't possibly sort out generational financial insecurity on your own.
I don't share the pessimism around this - housing should be a commodity i can get at a touch of a button because it is easy to build (and i work remotely). There are interests preventing this though, so until then, anything goes
1. Apps or no, dating is still about interfacing with another person. It's hardly true that the dating app is "servicing our desires." It's not. It's just a window into another person.
2. "The more unhappy you are the more you will spend in your date-death spiral." Is this even a thing? I would imagine a very unhappy person would not date a lot. Or they would be settled into an unhappy relationship. Is it really true that dating has historically resulted in more happy relationships? I'd love to see evidence to this point because I know a lot of people whose parents were in unhappy relationships. That model, from my perspective, didn't have the best results.
IMO, dating is ultimately not a subject that could be analyzed by logic. At least not on on the personal / self-help level (of course sociology / statistics still work).
Trying to find some kind of generally applicable "rules of the game" that would work for everyone (or even most) people seems somewhat "not even wrong".
It's simply trying to use the wrong tool in the wrong place.
A date an encounter of two individuals trying to assess and explore their compatibility. This "should" (at least in my opinion) always be subject to their own morals and ethics.
The question isn't "what do most people want / do", but "what would I / You want / do".
Firstly, meet someone when you are young they are more likely to be of a similar socio-economic group and share a lot of values by default.
Second (and I realise this is controversial) if you fall in love when you are young and stupid, the pair of you will become adults together and that shared experience will get you through shit that would turn your hair white.
I thought the article provided some insight into how you are supposed to replace the older model of dating when the tech side of things offers too much pressure to do things quickly i.e. assess and cast off, or move straight to sex in a week.
So to me it seemed like an assessment of things you should consider to slow things down, be honest with yourself and prospective partners. Not overthinking, properly thinking.
You can go somewhere, meet someone, and then travel around together. If things stop going well, just stop traveling together. Stay at hostels, work at co-working spaces, look for 'expat groups' on Facebook (had to reactivate my Facebook account for this one). Get some hobbies and move to places that you can do them (live in a ski resort for a season or a surfer town and go snowboarding/surfing everyday). The person you meet will most likely be doing the same thing you're doing, so at least you have something in common (hobbies/traveling).
The best part is, even if you don't meet someone, you probably had fun doing stuff rather than sitting at home and swiping on tinder. The only downside is the environmental impact of traveling around :(.
Do you get lonely though? After you and someone you’ve been hanging out with to your separate ways, how do you feel? And aside from romantic partners, what about friendships? Like what are you doing to maintain, and benefit from, relationships that you’ve had for years?
I tend to meet people pretty quickly, so I don't get lonely. Sometimes the opposite, there is too much social interaction and I need to hide to get some 'space' to do 'nothing'. I've been traveling with a women I met for the past 6 months though, so definitely not lonely then :).
> After you and someone you’ve been hanging out with to your separate ways, how do you feel?
You know when you finish/catch up to a TV show that you really like, and you want a next episode, but there isn't one? You kind of feel this emptiness inside you. It's kinda like that, but worse. But you know you'll find another show, so you just move on and then later on you just remember how awesome the show was even though it's over. Maybe I get too invested in TV shows and that analogy doesn't make sense to other people ;p.
> Like what are you doing to maintain, and benefit from, relationships that you’ve had for years?
I keep in touch with them and come back 'home' (UK) to see them. They are split up around the UK now, so I make an effort to go visit them. Depending on where I am, they might come visit me. I also have friends that I game with and chat on irc/mumble. I've also met a lot of 'online friends' (from playing quake3 back in the day) whilst traveling as well. Pretty cool to put a face/person to an online handle.
She is trying to game it with a person with whom she isn't a good match. It has nothing to do with communication and more about vibe and 98% of vibe is just sheer sexual attraction.
What awesome life advice that is.
There is a certain containing context within which you could validly say "don't overthink it", but that advice itself only comes as a result of thinking.
So what you actually do is you think ALL about it, and the result of that thinking shows you how and where to pay the most attention and demand the most data and exert the most control, and where not to, and how to tell the difference.
I can not imagine having a kid and advising them not to think too much about this topic.
"Whatever happens happens, it'll probably be ok somehow. This isn't a chemical emotional landmine waiting for every human to step on or anything. It's not like naivete in this area is the root cause of 100 different ways for you to hurt yourself, or hurt others, or be hurt by others. It's not like there multiple whole classes of violence called domestic abuse and crimes of passion or anything like that."
If I had a daughter who was neurotic and overthought things, and I wanted to help her avoid the harm that this can cause in this area, the talk would not be in praise of ignorance.
The talk would be about over-optimization and mis-optimization.
The fix is to be even less ignorant, to be aware of this natural pitfall, and to have an understanding about stepping back to see a wider view of something and get perspective, identify what actually matters, and avoid sabotaging the important goal (being happy) by optimizing for the wrong things (any number of details).
> I’ve been in a relationship for a while, but before that I dated for several years and experienced it both as 1) really fun and 2) terrible psychological torment. Lately dating videos on TikTok, Rethinking Sex by Christine Emba, this post by Oliver Traldi, The Agony of Eros by Byung-Chul Han, and Why Love Hurts by Eva Illouz have made me think about why people seem to find the modern dating market so unsatisfying.
If dating is both "terrible psychological torment" and "so unsatisfying", which describes a situation that is worse than "really fun" is good, it might be a good idea to think about why. Maybe that's how dating has always been and will always be, maybe not and we can improve the situation. What's certain is that not thinking about it won't change anything, it is accepting the status quo. The author seems not okay with that.
Is "dating" unsatisfying, or have "my / my friends dates" been unsatisfying?
IMO You can either write about Your dating life (or lives of some limited group of people), or a general sociological / psychological / ethical study.
I don't think You can or should mix those two together.
It has turned into a Game Theory kind of problem.
Dating sites used to have a lot of compatibility questions - I think OK Cupid still does - and they were useful for filtering by values. But filtering by communication styles is much harder, and I don't think anyone has attempted it.
The core of the problem is that everyone is playing by different rules. You have no idea what the other person's rules are. And some people are very insistent that their rules are correct and absolute.
Worse, some rules are dysfunctional and more likely to produce bad outcomes.
So it's like an intelligence war where the only signalling is behavioural, there are huge gaps in the available information, and you don't know what stakes the other person is playing to, or their appetite for risk, or what constitutes a win for them, or if they're aware of any differences between what they believe they want and what their actions reveal.
Inevitably the information-free areas are filled by wishful thinking - encouraging that in partners is part of some peoples' strategy - or paranoia. Or possibly both.
No wonder it's incredibly difficult.
I get that it's possible, You definitely can "game" the current dating scene, but the question I keep asking myself is "why do that".
Personally, I value curiosity. If I see someone trying to game /optimize their dating profiles, it's a huge turn off for me simply because it wipes out a lot of possibilities and unknowns. All of the sudden, the "oh, hey stranger who seems interesting for me because of X" turns into "oh, hey someone who optimized their profile for X".
PS Corollary to that goes "honesty". I find it almost impossible to be curious about someone who I know is either lying, or "presenting a way too curated version of truth".
Whether consciously or not, you're still playing the game if you're out dating. You're trying to get the best mate you possibly can while others are doing the same. You're not dating the ugliest, stupidest, most boring, low-status people you can find, even though that would be easiest. Welcome to the game.
Why couldn't dating be analyzed by logic? If you want a lasting relationship shouldn't you try to think about it, not just feel your way through it?
Where I disagree is that I don't think any of "my" dates could be generalized. Nor would I like my counterparts to do so.
Why and how we date and what do we expect from a relationship is (IMO) one of the deepest individual characteristics of ourselves.
I agree with the article author on that we should learn to ask these questions of ourselves and of others, but that's about it.
I don't think the answers (or even how do You get to them) can or should be in any way generalized. Some may get to express it through religion, some may use philosophy, or even logic. Most of those will probably run contrary to many others.
Meeting someone for a date is frustrating and exciting often at the same time and often for the same reason - that it's something completely new and (hopefully) unexpected.
If I look back on my own dating life, the dates / relationships I enjoyed most were those where the things we've shared were as varied as those where we differed. And the memorable part was usually the process of discovery, compromises, and learning to deal with each other.
I don't think any of this "can" be generalized in a self help post.
I'd go as far as saying avoid people who spew things like "we" on the internet. It's crap. They don't know you, and you don't know them.
Go to bars. They're full of young people looking for love. Don't fall into this app dating thing. It's a trap. Why else would they be tripping over to promote it?
Are they though? I mean When I meet people through apps I know exactly what they're looking for. But approaching people I've met in person for the first time leads to a whole spew of issues mostly due to me not knowing what they're looking for (as most people tend not to be communicative about that as the article describes).
Surprisingly this may still be true (I thought people didn't drink as much these days) but it's significantly less common than apps for couples now.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1908630116
Also not very popular for lesbians.
https://www.graphext.com/post/how-couples-meet-and-stay-toge...
The issue with going to bars is that you meet the kind of people that go to bars looking for love. I don't go to bars looking for love, and I doubt I would have much in common with someone who does. The same thing applies to dating apps by the way, I've never used one and don't plan on using one.
I've met all my best friends by following my interests in a relatively social space. This ensures that I have something in common with the people I meet, and filters people to be people closer to me than people going to bars or using dating apps.
Swinger bars it's still around, but partly because they're less of a sausage fest due to the crazy door fees for men...
Nope. The solution is always more dating apps, more self-help books, more targeted algorithms to find your perfect match and fulfill your individualist desires for pleasure and purpose. If you aren’t happy with your dating situation, it’s because you aren’t knowledgeable or hard-working enough.
As long as people treat "dating" as some an online shopping for erotic pleasure, a form of cattle market to get cheap sex, they will just keep browsing and comparing, and quickly get bored and move on. True love can only be found if it's not all about eros, but also agape, and to know someone well enough that the latter can grow takes considerable time, and a willingness to understand a person deeply.
Related post (not mine): 4 types of "love": https://fromerostoagape.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/eros-romant...
I wish all readers of this post that they find their true love if they haven't done so yet.
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but genuinely curious as to whether you have thought on this as well, as I find the first part of your post quite illuminating.
But there were many Erotes representing all kinds of desire and attraction
> Anteros ("Love Returned"),[1] Hedylogos ("Sweet-talk"), Hermaphroditus ("Hermaphrodite" or "Effeminate"), Himeros ("Impetuous Love" or "Pressing Desire"), Hymenaios ("Bridal-Hymn"), and Pothos ("Desire, Longing," especially for one who is absent)
I'll have to look into that. It makes sense that different groups used different worlds. There are English terms like sanctification that you don't hear outside Christian circles.
It seems to me that the precise nuance varied a lot over time. For example, the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek in ~200 BC, uses it for all forms of love, including in the extremely saucy Song of Solomon [1]. The 20th Delphic maxim (~600 BC) is "Φιλίαν ἀγάπα", which means something like "desire friendship" [2]. In the Odyssey (~700 BC), Eurycleia describes Telemachus as "μοῦνος ἐὼν ἀγαπητός", meaning Odysseus's "only and beloved" son [3].
[1] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tomhobson/2018/04/how-did-agap...
[2] https://www.hellenion.org/essays-on-hellenic-polytheism/delp...
[3] https://www.loebclassics.com/view/homer-odyssey/1919/pb_LCL1...
I was fortunate to have a teacher in High School who explained this to the class. He was my Physics teacher.
As a Christian, I wouldn't agree with this statement. Most denominations that I've experienced are very pro-sex. We see sex as a gift from God, intended to bond two (or, depending on the denomination, maybe more) people together. God is Love, we're taught, and sex is understood to be an expression of love.
Now, you might be right if you said Christianity was against certain types of sex. I'm not, and I think the sexual morality police are an overly loud portion of Christians. Most Christians I know are very open and accepting of people's sexuality. But there is certainly an abundance of Christians who feel it's our responsibility to tell people about the right and wrong applications of sex.
But "anti-sex" overall? Any such denomination would go extinct pretty quickly if their followers actually followed that.
Case in point: the Shakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers)
The puritan(ical) genesis of the United States has resulted in a mostly Protestant practice of Catholicism in the U.S. (polls of US Catholics show that over half diverge with Catholic teachings).
Catholicism in my experience is very pro-sex, and many teachings are dedicated to it: https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/docume...
Did you read the article? I feel like you wrote your comment to demonstrate your grasp of Greek vocabulary, not because you had a meaningful response to the author of this post — a post which is quite nuanced and interesting and, I might add, not at all focused on lust.
- Girls obsessed over their physiques. Going skinny to the point it wrecked their hormones.
- People who are married just shy over 2-3 years are thinking on divorce, or have girlfriends/boyfriends.
- People having open relationships.
- Girls randomly make out in club with some random strangers they just met.
- Guys obsessed on having model-like girlfriends.
- Girls are doing nose/face/boob job more.
- Girls have Excel sheets that track potential guys according to some criterias (i.e, high paying jobs like law, medicine, graduated from an Ivy league, height, body type, etc)
Or maybe its just my circles are messed up lol.
In most cases this is pretty much cuckoldry under a neutral or "hip" label, as women can get laid without effort and men have to work pretty hard for sex, so the woman has her fun with the myriad of choice she has on dating apps (she doesn't even have to pay for dinner), while the guy is barely getting any.
Do you think this comment is helpful? If not do you think your own comments have been helpful? If your answers to those two questions are different do you know why they are different?
If you're looking for such a relationship, I'm sure you'll find a mate on those terms. But don't claim that this is the only way. And please accept that other people may prefer other setups.
I'm not talking just about relationships, I'm talking about the asymmetric access men and women have to sex. This is an undeniable fact of life. If a man wants to get laid tonight, he will have to work hard, and his chances are not that high. That's why ~80% of the prostitutes are women... most women just don't need to pay for sex.
Your point of view is so informed by your situation and has so little empathy that you don't even acknowledge the large portion of women that are not deemed to be fuckable by men and are derided for that, whether because of age, or body type or sometimes because they talk too loud
So you may just not know what your friends are up to, because why would they tell you of all people? If you allowed a bit of nuance, you could learn surprising things about humans.
Maybe you are mistaking your love for someone with your fear of being alone ?
Open relationships, and poly relationships even more, are difficult for many reasons I can't bother to detail here. There is of course a certain inequality in the access to sex that you are pointing out even though you are leaving out many other very important parameters in your example. But there is also a great inequality on how people are able to decouple intimacy/sex with a strong bond with someone, which can make someone suffer even if he or she did not think it would, leaving behind a mess of hurt feelings. But believe it or not, different people experience feelings for people differently and just calling them cold robots is just an easy way for you negate their existence, as some believed lesbians could not exist, they had to be frustrated heterosexual that had not met the right man.
Anyways your vision of the whole thing seems to be pretty much informed by your resentment (They are not even paying for dinner!) and it is not that hard to find someone to have sex with you as a man. Having some emotional intelligence, basic social skills, not having a definite vision of what gender roles are, and in general not being an asshole will help a lot, adding to that women are for cultural reasons less sensitive than men to attractiveness. What's funny with incels is that they complain they can't get laid but what they mean in general is that can't have sex with the most attractive women and make fun of less attractive women, in doing so revealing that what they are after is the social status of being validated by them and not to get to share a moment of pleasure and intimacy with someone else.
No. Loving your sister and loving your wife are two different forms of love. You are equating them both.
> Open relationships, and poly relationships even more, are difficult for many reasons I can't bother to detail here.
I don't think they are possible without exploitation, period. There are plenty of horror stories online about these types of relationships, and rarely an honest appraisal.
> Anyways your vision of the whole thing seems to be pretty much informed by your resentment (They are not even paying for dinner!) and it is not that hard to find someone to have sex with you as a man.
It's informed by the fact that one side of the relationship usually has access to relationships without putting it any work (the woman), while the other part needs to put a lot of work. This obvious asymmetry makes this arrangement quite unfair to the man.
> Having some emotional intelligence, basic social skills, not having a definite vision of what gender roles are, and in general not being an asshole will help a lot, adding to that women are for cultural reasons less sensitive than men to attractiveness.
None of that helps much in a sexual market with strong competition (like where I live). Tinder barely works for most men here. You, like all leftists tend to make everything a cultural choice, so that you can go ahead and simply rewrite the rules as you see fit... I don't buy it, especially not for gender roles which have strong biological components.
> What's funny with incels is that they complain they can't get laid but what they mean in general is that can't have sex with the most attractive women and make fun of less attractive women
I don't care about incels - heck, I don't even know what they are. Men and women have different parameters for sexual attraction. Men are attracted primarily to youth and beauty and women are attracted to dominance and social status (this is not because of cultural reasons, as you claim). I wouldn't want to settle for an unattractive woman just like a woman wouldn't want to settle for a submissive man.
By the way, if you manage to find it, consider reading https://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Rule-Theory-Dominance/dp/0812.... Read the first review.
Poly relationships also open up effectively a new kind of family dynamic, in which metamours have a deep relationship that may not be sexual but allow a lot of trust and reliance.
Finally, even if it really were about who gets more sex, men become much more attractive relative to women in middle age. The silver fox effect is real... sex is also a lot easier for men with lots of social status, which can also come with age.
I wonder who would enter a relationship build on these foundations?
Can you explain why you think "loosing your partner" is bound to happen when they have sex with other people?
What about them falling in love with a co-worker (no sex required), dying from a car accident one day etc.?
How do you assume these things are less likely than when sex enters the picture?
Your emphasis on sex and what meaning it carries in relationships (particularly successful ones) seems to be be completely disproportionate to reality.
People in open relationships tend to give more assurance to each other.
Jealousy always exists. I can be jealous because my partner goes to her "girls night" and I don't get to spend time with her.
Why would I be more or less jealous than if she had a date that night that involved sex?
Once you think about this for a bit you realize that the choice/reasons for jealousy are mostly arbitrary/cultural and can be overcome. Like any bad habit.
As for access to sex: there are options for men to balance the sheet. Just take up some sort of social dancing; tango, swing, salsa etc. Or sport. Climbing gyms are playgrounds for singles.
And these options also open the door for "having sex with a stranger/recent aquaintance tonight".
If that is so important to you.
Monogamy exists because of a strong bond between two people. Sex is part of that bond. If you "love" another person, then obviously you would fear of losing them, and so would they. A bit of jealousy is healthy in a relationship, and there should be certain boundaries set (so called "red lines").
> Can you explain why you think "loosing your partner" is bound to happen when they have sex with other people?
The fact that I have to explain this is already outrageous.
> Jealousy always exists. I can be jealous because my partner goes to her "girls night" and I don't get to spend time with her.
There's jealousy and there's her actually fcking a stranger. My gf should know that going for a "girl's night out" to some night club is not OK, just as it would not be OK for me to do the same thing. I have personally hooked up girls who were on trips abroad while they had a bf waiting at home... if your gf insists on going on such a trip, she's for the streets.
> Once you think about this for a bit you realize that the choice/reasons for jealousy are mostly arbitrary/cultural and can be overcome. Like any bad habit.
You can't just erase culture like that. Culture is not born out of thin air, it is partly based on our psychology. Biology -> Psychology -> Sociology. If you don't mind other men fcking your gf, then you are clearly in the minority of men, and that's OK, there's a minority for everything. But don't go around claiming that mate guarding is just purely cultural (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_guarding_in_humans).
> As for access to sex: there are options for men to balance the sheet. Just take up some sort of social dancing; tango, swing, salsa etc. Or sport. Climbing gyms are playgrounds for singles.
It's not even close. Believe you me. Maybe it is where you live, but where I live the competition is so fierce that these places are just sausage fests.
Plus traditionally when you have a partner it’s like a form of property. An open relationship is like sharing your house or car with everyone but probably even worse.
The first objection you listed contains all the reasons to use protection. In general.
I live in Berlin. A city where open/poly relationships are perfectly normal and common.
The bday party I went to last Saturday spanned an age group of 20-50. Mostly hetero people. Of the ten people (give or take one, I just counted in my head) I spoke to, four were in open relationships
This came up because my partner was there too and we introduced our significant other to other people as "this is my primary partner, ...".
You use protection, you regularly get tested for STDs (free in Germany with public health insurance). I never caught anything in 20 years of this lifestyle nor do I know of any cases in my circle of poly/open relationship friends.
The second objection sums up pretty nicely why you should run for your life from what you call "traditional" relationship models/their assumed requirements.
My partner, who's an anthropologist, mentioned that genetic evidence for monogamy only exists for the last 10k years. And it's spotty.
People who believe this is normal or "traditional" (a term that requires context to carry any meaning) just need to brush up on the facts on this topic.
Also one may argue that what we call "monogamy" is (and always was) a lie.
Just look at statistics of cheating and divorce rates when economic/social pressure is removed.
Monogamy is as "natural" as being Christian or Muslim is "natural" when you are born in a country where this is the resp. prevalent religion.
If not, how many years were you single in Berlin?
Why was there no perspective? What exactly did you try?
I assume you are joking because comparing Berlin 2022 with Berlin during the third reich can only either be a joke or an absence of basic understanding of European history between now and then so flabbergasting that it borders on imbecility.
I’m also of Jewish heritage and multiple members of my extended family were wiped out.
Like I said, Germans and Berliners particularly seem very tolerant of all sorts of extremist ideas. I count “open relationships” as one of them.
It’s like who cares about why things are traditionally the way they are, let’s throw out the old ideas and try new crazy ones. Whether it’s reinventing relationships or sexuality or murdering millions of people. Anything goes.
Not the other way around.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep32472
In order to kill a jew you need a jew. So in order for a berliner to be killing one, the rest of the berliners had to have been nice enough that a jew was present. Unlike say Belgium [1]. Not to say killing a jew is a good thing (it's not) but areas like Poland ended up with a relatively higher concentration because they were more tolerant than western societies.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Belgium...
2. Not everybody thinks that's a good idea. Making out with strangers in a club is definitely trashy. It's the kind of thing that deceives everybody's expectations, also those of the bystanders, and can lead to a problematic outcome. You might want to say that that shouldn't happen in your particular ideal of society, but it does.
This post is part of a wider trend toward sex negativity. It's not predicated on any major social change - in fact young people are having sex later on average, having fewer sexual partners, and people of all ages are reporting less casual sex (at least in the US). But rather on reactionary moralising.
Murder, another completely culturally determined taboo. The (presumed, I might add) fact that something is cultural doesn't change its value. And using bourgeois as dismissive is so 1970s.
> let's not ignore how your dismissal here
My point in the thread was against using "culturally determined" as a way to dismiss an argument. I'll repeat my stance: the fact that something is culturally determined or socially shaped does not alter its meaning or value.
It is basically the middle classes that definitively require stable families. So unless OP is manor born -- the working classes do not have leisure time to spend time on HN -- OP is likely a product of a petite-bourgois family who has not really understood the vital necessity of sexual mores for their class.
I think young people find ways to do the same things in each successive generation, given that generation’s tools.
Asian countries (rich and poor) still don't suffer from obesity.
> In most of the Asian countries the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased many folds in the past few decades and the magnitude varies between countries [6–15]. South East Asia and Western Pacific region are currently facing an epidemic of diseases associated with obesity such as diabetes and CVD [5, 6].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939400/#:~:tex....
ETA: actually, that was the second hit
Afaik, this does not have that much with dating/fitness. It is more to do with own body image expectations for their own sake - plus perfectionism, anxiety, growing in environment where fatness is mocked and fearing it, stuff like that.
> - Girls randomly make out in club with some random strangers they just met.
By stats I have seen, teenagers now start having sex later and are less likely to exhibit risky sexual behavior that those in the past (say 90ties). So while it definitely exists, it was not something that went up, but down instead.
This is a tale much older than social media or the internet. At this point we have bred for this predisposition. We’ll probably be better of acknowledging that.
Everything else you wrote is not new either.
US divorce rates hit an all time high in 1981 and has basically plateau’d. The divorce rate is skewed higher because of people in their teens and twenties (but still a bad, uninsurable, bet even if it was down to 10% or 5% for some populations). What can you possibly ascribe to social media?
Making out with random people for fun and/or attention is not new. This is the most peculiar post.
Social media is reflecting and perpetuating existing culture at best, if thats what you can come up with.
We have enough other reasons to vilify social media than ascribing ongoing and preexisting realities (that even happened actually more frequently beforehand!) to it
- People having open relationships.
- Girls randomly make out in club with some random strangers they just met.
When you look at the data, you realize the dating world for men is close to doom. Only a small fraction of men will traspass genes and most women compete for the top 20% men. The rest of the men are invisible. 1/3 of americans males, from 18 to 30 are virgins and it's climbing. Less marriages, more divorces initiated by women, and the list of stats goes on.
Also, among all the sexual dynamics that benefit women, you have the services, which are done in order to milk the men who aren't attractive (not only good looking) for women. These men sustain Tinder economy, for example, as all the algorithms are made just to milk men money just to land some opportunity of attractions.
Anyone interested should start reading papers, studies, and it will be surprised instead watching TikToks, tweets, etc.
This goes even lower and darker. As a man pays for gold, platinium and gains infinite swipes, one discovers it's mostly profiles of scams, outright asking for money, proposals of findom, some women or fake profiles toying with you purely for their entertainment. A man doesn't even get sex for the money.
What makes you think paying for Tinder gold entitles you to sex?
But looking at the larger picture of how relationships are formed, there is no way for it to work this way. And if it were true, it would be just as bad for women—as most of them would stay single! These 20% of men might have an easier time on the apps, and casual hookups might be simpler, but they can’t be in relationships with 80% of women. And a committed partnership of two people keeps being the long term vision for most in the dating game.
And people still have relationships. From the US numbers I could find, the bracket with the most singles is males 18-29, at 51%, which is a lot, but not exactly ‘close to doom’.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profi...
EDT: This 80/20 figure initially came from an OKCupid study, and it’s about perceived attractiveness. In this study, 80% of men are perceived as of less than average attractiveness. However, that did not necessarily stop them from getting messaged. https://archive.ph/ZJymw#selection-600.0-633.275
The apps are not a "narrow sense". It's how most people meet each other these days.
Genghis Khan had 6 long-term wives. Most likely, the women were forced to be monogamous, while he obviously wasn't.
Don't some behaviors like that also happen amongst other mammals or other animals in general?
2) Most men are not capable of being promiscuous, even if they want to be
Also, part of the allure of promiscuity is being able to attract/seduce multiple women. Paying for sex eliminates that.
Men don't think in those terms. Promiscuous means quicker (and easier) to filter.
> fundamentally people desire long-term partners
Why? Because 2 people are stronger than one and as you get older, you start to be painfully aware of that. If you can find a best friend who shares your short term goals, long term goals, life standards (like cleanliness, similar views on drug use, gambling, etc) AND is also interested in you sexually, you probably have a good long term partner.
It's old fashioned but our emotional and physical involvement was proportional to our level of commitment at every stage.
It won't be the way most people want to go but it seems to have saved much of the heart ache modern dating appears to cause.
Just one data point from someone that did it a little different.
There seem to be huge socioeconomic differences here though and some groups tend to dating apps far more than others. An exception of people in public or media personalities who also deviate here the most.
In many ways, I see the huge, oft-miserable mess that we have now as a reaction to the too-often simplistic and callous imposition of that old religious system.
Turned out my first wife didn't want intimacy of any sort. She wanted marriage but not a relationship beyond the superficial.
10 years later and about >40k in therapy and I divorced her after she admitted she just was never that "attached" to me.
I would never advocate a person getting married before sex. Sex is only some life altering emotional thing because of it's scarcity and how people have been inculcated to believe a common animalistic imperative has cosmic spiritual significance.
Happily married now to someone with a similar story, they did everything right and their partner just didn't want to be with someone of the opposite sex any longer.
It takes two to tango but it only takes one person to pick up their ball and go home.
Advice to any kids I ever had would be, have casual sex and relationships until you've developed a better understanding of other people (and also yourself), no marriage until after proof your potential partner is capable of holistic intimacy.
Sometimes I wish I lived my life before the internet, where friday nights people would go out dancing because there was nothing to do at home. Today, you could go clubbing but I firmly believe it's not the same thing. When you go out socializing most people pick up their smartphones anyway.
I hate social media, it's the worst part of the modern society.
> The real thing people should be actively looking for is strong emotional connection, as in: to what degree can I share who I am with this person, do they get it, how interested are they in who I am, my feelings and thoughts, can we accommodate each other’s preferences, are we good at talking.
I am in an hopefully now lifelong relationship, that almost failed at some point, but what brought us back together is this. So very true. We just "got" each other, from pretty early on, and although it can be crafted through years, it's just a bliss when it's spontaneous. And finding that level of connection (of course strengthened through the years together) again looks impossible.
(And if they stalk my account, I love you :) )
I would add that romantic relationships are one place where you can benefit from displaying some self-interest and diminishing your charitable instincts. Forgiveness is for enemies, not lovers.
Marx used the term (well, "commodification") with a very specific sociological and economic meaning, where some object with a natural "use value" (you can wear a coat to keep warm) is assigned a somewhat artificial "exchange value" (you can sell a coat for money) by the operation of our economic system. I can't for the life of me see how that applies to any of the usual complaints about love in the 21st century.
One of the few whom I think is pretty clear about what he thinks it is and is able to explain it in its historical context is Vivek Chibber.
I've never heard this much less entertained the idea, since it makes sense in these contexts. Commoditization still means treating a thing (which can include a relationship) like it has an inherent relative value that can be traded for other things of relative value. Commodity (a raw material that has a market value) + ization (the conversion of).
Did this come up in the article at all? Or are you just projecting your own thoughts onto it? I didn't see this idea when I was reading
This is the prime mistake I see my friends make. As a guy, there are pretty much only two things that will seriously and negatively affect your dating life: being short or boring.
Talking about your college, job, and friends is usually boring. In fact, even funny stories from these contexts are often boring for your dates to hear because they don't know the people involved (yet) and don't care about them.
This is how you, as a dude, end up with
> you can be very attractive and therefore have a wide range of people interested in you but not have the social skills/psychological acuity to translate initial interest into a successful relationship
Initial dates are primarily entertainment. Which is why they used to involve going to the cinema, a good meal, etc. You can go for a coffee, drinks, walk but come in with enough material to carry a conversation for these 1-4 hours.
Wow you need a whole multi-part Netflix special just to go on a first date.
Finally, after a while she will pick up and start talking herself. Then you can bounce off that, tease, make fun. This is the best anyway since anything about her is by default interesting.
I’ve clearly got no idea how people are dating these days…
Getting into the sales side in my career was the first time I began to realize how important this was. But nothing changed me like working for a political campaign. I did a large amount of door-to-door, street canvasing and phone banking. I had thousands and thousands of conversations. It was hard, but could be really satisfying if you could turn an initially unpleasant interaction into one where you both walked away smiling.
I would highly recommend this type of volunteer work to help a cause you're passionate about. It was a great experience for me and it helped me develop so many different social skills.
^This, so much this. Especially learn enough about the woman from what she communicates to cue up the most appropriate of your inventory of stories.
The article does offer good insight, which I'll highlight here:
1. The root of many dating issues is a lack of communication:
> When I was in my late teens or early 20s I would sometimes be in the early stages of dating someone and feel like there was a glass wall between us, I just didn’t really get them, I didn’t know what they wanted from me, and it was so hard for me to have any clarity about who they really are.
2. Most people in their decision-making around relationships are reacting to social pressure rather than following their self-awareness. As an example:
> Most people turn to frameworks: either I’m religious, so I’ll wait until marriage, or I don’t think sex is sacred, so I guess I’m open to casual sex
3. In modern dating people tend to have more options, and this magnifies the need for (1) open communication and (2) honest introspection.
A lot that's too much for me to put in an HN comment from my phone. A lot gets lost in treating dating similarly to how you'd buy a pair of headphones, and it has consequences. Figuring out what exactly is lost is hard, and addressing it would help a lot of people.
> For ex: someone might say, what I want is a guy who’s athletic, has a stable job, wants to have children, good relationship with his family, is funny and emotionally aware. I don’t think lists like that are helpful, because you’re probably subconsciously filtering based on those qualities anyway. The real thing people should be actively looking for is strong emotional connection, as in: to what degree can I share who I am with this person, do they get it, how interested are they in who I am, my feelings and thoughts, can we accommodate each other’s preferences, are we good at talking.