Harping on people to get married from up in the ivory tower fails to engage with reality of life in the dating trenches.
I’m really glad this article exists, but i wish it went bit further. Nobody of any gender should be pressured to participate in a sexual and romantic and legal entanglement. Conditions for dating are awful and misogyny is way too prevalent, but there is simply no world in which it is normal or fine to say “people need to be married for their own good and the good of their children”. How extremely regressive and gross. Single people are not responsible for the failings of the society they live in. If single people truly do have worse outcomes, then the solution is to change systems of financial oppression and create better social safety nets and offer more services, not tell people that they have to get into long term romantic relationships and create little nuclear families for socioeconomic reasons. We have already seen the outcomes of forcing people to get married and have babies or else. It wasn’t good back then, and it’s not going to help now either.
There have been scientific studies to determine if humans are monogamous or not … it was inconclusive … we like to think that we can or should be paired together for life and live happily ever after but in reality, most of us are not.
The majority of my friends get together for a few years and then divorce, separate or live together in a personal hell because they feel they have to.
I have friends in Quebec in Montreal that have been together for 50 years now. They never had children worked as artists and writers their whole lives and pretty much had a free life between themselves. They made an agreement with each other when they started living together that every five years, they would sit down and discuss if they wanted to continue their relationship. They’ve been doing that ever since.
I do that in a way with my wife every few years … we also don’t have kids … we just sit down and talk about whether or not we want to continue. It’s not done during a crisis, a falling out or when we’re angry or out of sorts … we try to have it when we’re clearly thinking of things but it’s not easy … it’s not an easy topic to discuss … which is also why it’s important to have. After 28 years, we still choose to be together.
The current assumptions and expectations that society has about monogamy and commitment are insane. The idea that one person should meet all of your social, relationship and sexual needs is insane. Especially for those people who consider being attracted / look at other people / looking at porn to someone else as cheating. Like you don’t stop feeling physical attraction or even get crushes if you are committed. You just don’t do anything that violate other peoples trust.
The queer communities take on monogamy and commitment that does have any assumptions is really the best method going forward. Not to mention the removal of gender expectations for house work etc. Its exactly like you described it. An on-going discussion about what your commitment means and what is and isn’t allowed. It priories the relationship over everything else.
I think one of the biggest issues everyone glosses over is … we change during our lifetimes.
We are not the same person in our 20s, our 30s, our 40s for all kinds of reasons … our work, our situations, events in our lives, trauma, biological changes, genetics or just psychological changes. Some people stay the same sexually and stay the same throughout their lives, whether its being straight, bi, gay or anything else … I know some people who changed over time from being straight, to bi, to gay or to just asexual … in one way to another. I’m sure everyone know people like this. It’s human nature, most people are not born a simple being that stays the same forever, we evolve and change sometimes because we want to, we have to and other times against our will and biology.
So to have an ever changing pair of people living together … we should not expect them to stay the same forever and want to be together indefinitely.
But the inverse is also true too … maybe the two 20 year olds accept one another but change when they’re 30 … and now the 30 year olds now accept each other at this age … and on and on.
Exactly. People and relationships should change and mature. We should also look at different measures of success. A couple of was married for 15 years and then got a divorce but don’t hate each other. That is a successful relationship but it didn’t last an entire lifetime
I’m single but I’m taking notes, this is good advice…
Always remember to talk through any assumptions or expectations up front. It will save lots of issues in the future
Yup, been with my partner for over a decade. Live together, not married, no kids. Originally there was some talk of marriage, but I’ve always said that there’s no reason to insert the state or the church into our relationship. There’s nothing stopping either of us from leaving the relationship if we’re not into it any more. It keeps us treating each other with respect, knowing that there’s no higher authority telling us we have to stay together until we spend thousands of dollars in paperwork and waiting periods.
That is a great point and I wish they went further on the better social safety nets. If you really want healthy children that should be the focus regardless of gender of the parent. I think its odd when people talk about how marriage is only for children or you need to be married to have children its gross and so old fashioined.
yeah like why can’t people just get married if they want to get married, or not get married if they don’t want to get married? has never made sense to me
Whenever I hear people talk about marriage rates and birth rates I get disgusted. Like we’re a bunch of animals in a zoo
I like the suggestion that we concern ourselvrs more with the quality of men’s internal lives, but I do worry we’re still objectifying men as ‘the problem’.
Seriously. We can’t just call men “the problem”. We have to address the problems men are having in their social lives and in dating. Men are not being given a fair shot to bring their best selves.
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It’ll stop once it stops being a problem. FTA:
He had recently read about a high school creative writing assignment in which boys and girls were asked to imagine a day from the perspective of the opposite sex. While girls wrote detailed essays showing they had already spent significant time thinking about the subject, many boys simply refused to do the exercise or did so resentfully.
I mean, we’re not just talking about the ability to communicate (which is important), but the basic ability to empathize. If men (in general) are unwilling to even consider the female point of view, is it any wonder why women have a difficult time dating? This isn’t happening in a vacuum; there are real reasons why this is happening.
Boys refusing to do an exercise about imagining a day as the other gender represents a social problem, not a men problem. High school boys who refuse to imagine themselves as someone else were taught to be resistant to that idea, and not only by men but society as a whole.
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Maybe we stop with top down one size fits all solutions to human interaction? The article is a good example of part of the problem, as it seems to exonerate one group while putting all the onus for change on the other. Mainly by it having essentially a single position from all them people that the author uses as sources and references and the narrow scope that they actually show.
Agreed. No one’s to blame but should work on fixing it
Think of the structural issues which have caused this to be the case. Blaming men for not achieving an externally defined target isn’t going to help anyone.
Hate the game, not the player.
You couldn’t be more in your own echo chamber. If other men are telling you woman also act the same way as some men and also have issues and you refuse to see another position or point of view you are the problem.
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I would hesitate to draw conclusions from something like that. Both me and a lot of the other men I know just flat out skipped basically every assignment like that if it didn’t give enough points to be worth the effort, from middle school up through college.
Beyond that, it just seems like a shitty assignment as a whole. Because either a) it’s done under an assumption that their day as the opposite sex would be spontaneous, and thus would have very few relevant differences from their normal days (and we can easily guess those differences) or b) it’s done under an assumption of having always been the opposite sex, in which case it would just be an exercise in the butterfly effect, since huge amounts of things would be different, to the point that any generic hypothetical day would work.
All this is to say, it’s a prime assignment for skipping
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You take one cherry-picked anecdote and then generalize that to the entire population. You are the problem.
Navigating interpersonal relationships in a time of evolving gender norms and expectations “requires a level of emotional sensitivity that I think some men probably just lack, or they don’t have the experience,” he added.
I like the quote above about this topic but it does still seem like men are the problem. The problem is that we as a society haven’t taught those skills and worse yet reinforce the opposite. We should be concerned with men’s internal lives and mold them to fit into modern society
A big part is diminishing religiosity. There is little point in getting married if you aren’t religious. Thanks to progress made by LGBT couples, most of the legal benefits of marriage are shared by domestic partnerships. Traditionalists on the left and the right make a big deal of this, but it is of negligible factual importance.
I don’t think most people who get married do it for religious reasons or even to start a family in the US anymore. People do it since they see it a formal a commitment and want to announce their love in public.
That only covers one angle, if people do it for religious reasons, not if they don’t do it because of religion. I’m not getting married, and the religious connotations of even a secular wedding is a significant chunk of why.
There’s also a million legal reasons to get married… If there weren’t, same sex marriage would probably have never made it to the Supreme Court. Everything from insurance coverage, employment benefits, credit rating, child custody, transfer of property following death, medical decisions, and a bunch of other very secular, very important benefits are conferred via legal marriage.
Is there any way to adapt this better for polyamorous people? I have poly friends that got around it by choosing a primary partner and marrying them, but that seems like a bad solution in the long term.
I don’t think that is going to be happening for a long time. It took decades for gays and lesbians. The marrying of a primary partner is the best solution so far.
I’m pretty sure it’s pretty clear that the slight increase in domestic partnerships over marriage does not shore up the declining marriage rates.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The most recent wave of commenters have tended to position themselves as iconoclasts speaking hard truths: Two-parent families often result in better outcomes for kids, writes Megan McArdle, in The Washington Post, but “for various reasons,” she goes on, this “is too often left unsaid” — even though policy wonks, and the pundits who trumpet their ideas, have been telling (straight) people to get married for the sake of their children for decades.
But harping on people to get married from high up in the ivory tower fails to engage with the reality on the ground that heterosexual women from many walks of life confront: that is, the state of men today.
Ms. Camino, for her part, has dabbled in dating since her partner left, but hasn’t yet met anyone who shares her values, someone who’s funny and — she hesitates to use the word “feminist” — but a man who won’t just roll his eyes and say something about being on her period whenever she voices an opinion.
The in-depth interviews, he said, “were even more dispiriting.” For a variety of reasons — mixed messages from the broader culture about toughness and vulnerability, the activity-oriented nature of male friendships — it seems that by the time men begin dating, they are relatively “limited in their ability and willingness to be fully emotionally present and available,” he said.
Navigating interpersonal relationships in a time of evolving gender norms and expectations “requires a level of emotional sensitivity that I think some men probably just lack, or they don’t have the experience,” he added.
The behaviors were ubiquitous enough that Ms. Inhorn compiled a sort of taxonomy of cads, such as the “Alpha males” who “want to be challenged by work, not by their partners” or the “Polyamorous men” who claim “that their multiple attachments to women are all ‘committed.’” Her breakdown — table 1.1 in the book — reads like a rigorous academic version of all the complaints you’ve ever heard from your single female friends.
The original article contains 1,877 words, the summary contains 335 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I feel like at least in Europe a lot of people see marriage as an outdated concept.
This comment section went from zero to one hundred real quick
It always does on mensliberation. Just got to get used to it and plan on it
There seems to be an assumption here that the lack of marriage rates is solely due to men being unsuitable. I’d like to see sources and data on that.
It takes two to tango, there are communities with higher marriage rates would be interesting research to see what factors differ amongst communities that impact marriage rates.
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“Ask women what dating is like”. Good idea if you want a biased one sided opinion.
This article is vomit.
Biggest issue with the article. NO male voices, and it’s repeating the same lines I have heard since the mid 00’s.
Now I acknowledge that there hasn’t been much movement on the dating front, but men are only half the problem, as they are only half the population.
They would change in a hurry as a group if they needed to, but men aren’t a monolith and neither are women.
You want men to be better, be better yourself. The article is garbage by saying men need to step up while not talking to them about the issues they face in the dating world. ESPECIALLY if they aren’t Hetronormative.
So, men are only a problem because…women are the problem?
Wow.
Fuck’s sake, worry about yourself. You want better? Deserve it. Or not, and settle for less. Whatever.
An article that wonders why people aren’t getting married says they went out and only asked one side what the problem was. 🤔
Doesn’t even seem balanced…
Edit: as a romance favourable aroace, the dating world was a nightmare, even if you do everything “right”. Which is why I no longer look to find companionship.
Do better or not, there are garbage people in all genders and the prevailing “men bad” when it comes to dating is just as toxic as what the men are doing.
The article also doesn’t suggest any possible solutions.
Ask a woman what dating is like. You, personally. I dare you.
Only issue is, clearly you won’t listen to their answer.
Well, considering dating takes at least 2 people (depending on how you live your life, and yes non-monagamy and polyamory are vaild), asking only one group is incredibly biased.
You… missed the point of the article completely.
Please explain how this isn’t a bigoted point of view
Ms. Kearney, for example, acknowledges that improving men’s economic position, especially men without college degrees, is an important step toward making them more attractive partners.
Odd take. You do realize that a relationship is about TWO people right? It’s not all about you. Shocker right?
Yes and one of those ppl is statistically more likely to kill the other. How are u so dense u don’t get his point.
Yes a relationship is 2 people. That’s not relevant here. If one person is shit why do both people need to “work on things”
News flash… They don’t.
So your argument is that men as a whole aren’t dateable because an extreme minority of them are unhinged and go on school shootings? Huh?
You hate men. We get it.
No. Most men are undateable because theyre in a constant state of arrested development and our society rewards brash pomposity.
But women aren’t undateable. They are all perfect
👍
I’m a man u fucking doughnut for brains.
Self hate is a thing that exists.
And all you can muster up is hate and insults.
This is why you’re not taken seriously. In other words you’ve shown how completely irrational you are. No point trying to have a rational conversation with someone so completely out of line and irrational.
Best of luck to you.
There is a widespread, socially disruptive, and sometimes life threatening epidemic of unfuckable dudes.
There are challenges with expectations and entitlements on all sides, but the unfuckable dudes are not rising to meet the challenges.
What about all the unfuckable women? Again you look at everything one sided.
Both sexes need to get better. You’re saying that it’s all up to the men. In other words what you’re saying is women don’t have to be responsible for anything, they can act any way they want. A very entitled and selfish attitude.
Did you ever consider that this toxic mentality DRIVES AWAY the good men? Maybe good men want nothing to do with you because of your mentality. That leaves only the toxic men to put up with your bullshit, so that’s all you see.
They aren’t shooting up night clubs, marauding through cities, or lashing out violently out of sexual frustration and a lack of purpose.
Men are doing those things. Look, I get that ‘both sides’ impulse, but unfuckable women don’t pose an existential risk to society, and to be honest, women have to be pretty far gone to qualify as unfuckable.
Angry women aren’t as violent or dangerous as angry men, and the social validation most men are cultured to seek through income, physical prowess, and social success is not as accessible as it once was.
When I was little I noticed that all the father’s were just absent. It seemed to me then that the role of ‘dad’ had been demoted to a placeholder and was existentially diminished in terms of meaning and value. This has a deleterious effect on the sense of purpose of many young men, myself included, but it doesn’t have to define us.
Women are seizing an opportunity for their own self actualization from the oppressive society we live in to find purpose and meaning. Maybe some more men need to do the same.
Yikes. You have deep issues.
The thing is no one is arguing that men don’t suck. Plenty of men out there are garbage.
What you’re glossing over is the fact that women have lots of issues as well. There is no shortage of psycho women with deep issues.
Go talk to a “good” man and get their perspective on dating. You’ll get a different picture and you’ll see women are chock full of their own issues. It’s just a different flavor.
The problem is you’ll never do that because you hate men and have no interest in a genuine conversation. Instead it’s all “woe is me, all men suck”.
If you can’t find a good man, it’s not that they don’t exist, but rather you don’t attract them. Maybe work on your attitude and you won’t come off as toxic with tons of baggage and maybe then they will give you a shot.
I like to think that I am a good man, and I know my girlfriend is a good woman.
I know that I wasn’t really ready for the seriousness of relationship some of my ex’s wanted with me and I had to grow up, but I also remember frustrations with some of them not being mature and self reliant enough to be a reliable partner.
I am very fortunate to be on good terms and friendly with many of my previous partners, and I’m lucky to have been in love several times in my life. I know I am a better person because of the love I have shared and that which has been shared with me.
I’ve seen shitty groups of women do things I thought only happened in strawman arguments, like protest a college club of minority men sharing legal and social resources relevant to their community because ‘mens rights is anti feminist’ or other nonsense. I have also seen men joke about vaginal credit card and bitch about their own odious unfuckablity in the same breath.
People can be shitty, that doesn’t mean you need to make assumptions about them. If you give most people a chance, they will tell you who they are.
The TLDR is that not every one sucks and some times you need to give people a chance.
No disagreement there, but I am not seeing how this aligns with the discussion we are having.
At the end of the day not everyone sucks. Putting all of the blame on one sex is disingenuous. Both men and women can be fucked up. There are plenty of good men struggling to find good women. There are plenty of good women struggling to find good men. The world is chock full of assholes for both sexes.
It works both ways but you’re only looking in one direction. Based on everything you said in your last post it sounds a lot like you agree with me, you just don’t want to admit it.
What about unfuckable women? Do men ever feel threatened by them to the point of feari g for their lives???
You pretend this is one sided but it is literally not the same for women dating as it is for men.
To believe otherwise is incredibly ignorant.
The vast majority of men never consider physical violence against them in a relationship.
The good men arent afraid to admit that men in general need to do a lot better job of respecting women.
You claim: "In other words what you’re saying is women don’t have to be responsible for anything, they can act any way they want. "
No one is saying this. You assumed this. Your assumption is simply incorrect.
This is the definition of a strawman. You’re fitting an argument the other person never made.
This is the definition of a strawman. You’re fitting an argument the other person never made.
Except this thread is chock full of you all doing this exact thing.
Listen, nothing will change that there are shitty men out there. Nothing will change that there are also shitty women out there. If you can’t find a decent guy it isn’t because they don’t exist, it’s because YOU aren’t attracting them. This is a YOU problem.
Only it isnt and you’re projecting cuz UK you’re completely wrong.
Projecting? More like you’re deflecting.
You’re the hateful one here. You’re the angry one. You need a nap.
Oh really what did I say that is hateful? You’re still projecting 100% or you just can’t read haha.
Or women could just lower their standards if they don’t think anyone is good enough for them. That’s basically what men have been told for ages, that women don’t need to go about changing themselves to meet the standards of men. Surely the same operates in reverse, no? If women don’t like their prospects, they can either lower their bar or stay single since men don’t need to change themselves to please women?
The standard doesn’t necessarily apply in reverse if you look at how the work is split between male and female partners in hetero relationships - it’s often skewed that the woman does a lot more emotional work, household work, and childcare, on top of also having full time jobs. I think you’re right though, if men aren’t meeting women’s standards, then women should either be content to be single, hook up with other women (for those who would prefer), or reexamine how important romantic relationships are for them.
if men aren’t meeting women’s standards, then women should either be content to be single, hook up with other women, or reexamine how important romantic relationships are for them.
I take issue with the part that is bold and italisied. Not sure what you are saying, but it seems like a gross misunderstanding how people work.
Obviously that part only applies to people who are bisexual/pansexual/gay. I’m not saying that hetero women should just become gay >.< Though I realize it sounds like that, it isn’t what I meant.
The bar is already on the floor yet some men limbo below that.
And there are women who still choose those men.
I mean, the point of the article is the women who are struggling to find suitable partners. The attitude that woman should just lower their standards (and yet again just accept higher workloads and lower efforts from their partners) is pretty antifeminist. The problem here isn’t that they have unattainable standards, it’s that a lot of men aren’t putting in effort to meet those basic standards, for whatever reason.
Well, maybe they are looking in the wrong place. Or they just have unobtainable standards.
The article treats it like a onesided issue, which when you are dealing with people, it’s not. There isn’t an easy way of dealing with this issue and the ‘men bad’ vibe this article gives off isn’t adding to the solution. It doesn’t offer solutions, suggestions or even a second viewpoint.
I know you think that youre some kind of archetype of “a normal man”, but your anecdotal experience isnt really valid on the macro scale.
Actually being aroace makes me anything but normal, but go on about my lived experience…
The problem here isn’t that they have unattainable standards, it’s that a lot of men aren’t putting in effort to meet those basic standards, for whatever reason.
Are men obligated to meet those standards if they have no interest in doing so? Men don’t just exist for the sake of giving women someone to date, after all. And while the article was (I hesitate to say intentionally) vague about specifics, one thing it mentioned multiple times was holding a college degree. It’s hardly what I’d call “basic standards”, considering it takes a huge amount of time, and a fair deal of money to achieve. Of all the men I’ve talked with, myself included, that “standard” doesn’t seem to be prevalent, with the closest thing being “I guess it would be cool”.
At what point does the principle of “if everywhere you go smells like shit” start applying to these women who date but seem to never find a man that meet their standards? It only seems reasonable if nobody meets the standards, that the standards may be a major part of the issue.
And I don’t mean to say that women should just settle for men they don’t like, but “just stay single” is always an option, one men are told repeatedly whenever they struggle with relationships.
You have some good points I hadn’t considered before, so thank you for that. It’s definitely something I’ll have to think about more. It’s also worth mentioning that the difference between women who couldn’t find a suitable male partner vs men who couldn’t find a suitable female partner also really isn’t very much - “nearly half” vs “one third”, which was something I also wasn’t really considering when I made my comments. Ultimately it seems like a complicated issue that isn’t going to be fixed with one simple solution
Ultimately it seems like a complicated issue that isn’t going to be fixed with one simple solution
Now this I agree with wholeheartedly. My primary issue with the article is that it takes a grievance mindset rather than a problem solving one. It just reads like the women’s equivalent of some incel rant, in the sense that it externalizes the issue such that it’s always someone else’s responsibility to do something about, which doesn’t help solve anything.
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