That's because you must have "5. acquired more teeth"
Pulled from:
Gaining weight, miraculously only in my boobs and butt
Lightening and curling my hair
Plucking my eyebrows and waxing my mustache
Not getting any taller, or even better, shrinking (I wasn’t that tall, but I correctly surmised that boys preferred girls shorter than them, and I’d have the most options if I never grew above 5’2”)
Yeah a lot of the comments I saw were of men confusing a woman being MEAN simply for the sake of being mean and making a statement about what a POS she thinks the guy is, which is not good behavior and not a thing any smart woman would advocate for doing with a guy you actually like, with having a backbone and being DISAGREEABLE (that is, not simply agreeing to everything the guy wants and says) for the sake of… being a person with her own ideas and desires who isn’t on this planet to accommodate the man in question. THAT is the high value behavior in question here — not generalized meanness or unkindness.
I think the issue may be that a lot of RP men simply are… kinda dumb… but are ginned up on believing all men are by default smarter than all women and therefore not being able to tell how fucking stupid their arguments are and how poorly they understand the things they (struggle to) read.
RP and adjacent men love sharing the bell curve chart showing more men are geniuses than women but then neglect that that same chart shows that more men are also retards and that generally men and women are of equal intelligence so any two random individuals will likely both be toward the middle. And they somehow all think they fall in the far right tail of the ball curve toward genius level IQ despite all evidence to the contrary lol
I've seen this evidenced by a number of men I know getting married in their late 30s and when I asked them more or less why wait so long and was marriage something they always wanted the response is basically "idk I just never thought about it until I met my fiancée". I think there are lots of men kinda waiting to be told what to do in the dating/marriage/kids market and the women who they decide to marry are the women who tell them it's time to get married. Like you said, the endlessly compliant woman is going to end up this kind of guys forever girlfriend because neither of them are pushing for anything else!
I would say in all these discussions people (especially men) dont seem to realize that lovers are supposed to be fun to be around? What is so fun about agreeing about everything? When will you get to playfully rough-house intellectually and physically if you never have what I call "fake fights" about not-necessary things? I also love fake-jealousy for the same reason. My ex had this crush on a movie star(childhood crush) and ever since he told me I would fake jealousy about her anytime she was mentioned or a new movie of hers came out. It drove him wild with happiness and he said it made him feel very desired :)
A Sienfeld vs. AD argument is not high stakes, its just fun. Have men forgotten about fun? That's just sad.
And I of course agree with you about having a spine and having a life of your own instead of becoming a nun for one :) That is not just good for romance but for yourself. You lose respect for yourself if you become a nun for one and shun everyone on the planet for him.
I’m just shocked everyone has become so utilitarian about love and lovers. It’s all strategy and games. Meanwhile lovers of the past wrote poetry and movies and music - cause it was FUN! I don’t expect a man to write me poetry but goddamn it I expect him to be fun! Teasing and playing — this is fun! And once you grow up, no other relationship can give you this - not friends, not siblings, not parents. That’s why people crave love so intensely. I maybe rough -housed with my sibling but the last time that happened we were 5. And we were dead serious.
Adulthood is about doing the serious things from childhood - for fun(rough-housing was serious business as a kid). And doing the fun things from childhood - seriously(chores etc which we loved imitating our parents) People want to say mommy and daddy for fun - for the same reason. It’s teasing and fun and play. But now everything has to be explained away with a sex label. I was a little gobsmacked when a guy informed me that I am probably bdsm-adjacent cause I teased him with the word daddy(at the grocery store!!). 😭
My hypothesis is that it’s basically down to the apps, in the same way that twitter exposing everyone to each other’s takes and flattening them all makes its users more cynical about opinion formation
To be clear I also hate this and am seeking a return to the romantic!
I might agree with you there though I don’t know what app(Reddit?) is teaching people to be unromantic. Twitter - true. I see myself thinking so much differently- and openly after quitting.
But tinder and hinge etc dont have any discourse by themselves. People talk about what happens there I guess. And because there are so few women and too many men on these apps men assume that women hate them...its a bit scary how they have this warped sense of view of women as a whole based on the very small subset of women on the app.
I keep seeing people sharing some dating app statistic on twitter about how women go for the top 10% of men and then extrapolate that to all women all over the world.
I mean Spotify releases data on how people listen to music on their app but that is not how all people listen to music?? Its so weird to take data released by apps seriously as a benchmark for all of womanhood.
I think women should be firm and uncompromising on their values (faith, morals) and honest but flexible about more superficial preferences -- e.g. be forthcoming if she doesn't like hiking or anime or whatever but open to participating in those activities every so often if it makes her partner happy. I've had to work on exercising agency in both these areas.
Yes, agreed! I’ve gotten into stuff I wouldn’t have expected because of my husband. Of course, I still don’t apologize for liking Arrested Development (which he hates)
The advice I think is largely the same for men, I think, whether you're someone who's inclined to be too domineering or someone who dislikes that social role and either avoids or resents it (though naturally the emphasis will differ depending on whether firmness or flexibility is in deficit)
A big part of being alpha is being able to disagree without disagreeable. A woman who agrees with everything you say is boring. One who takes offense when your opinions who don’t accord with hers is impossible. It puts the man in the position of having to hide himself, and the likeliest reason for doing this is wanting to have sex with a woman you don’t really like.
This is a place where I think the aesthetics of an argument undercut its substance … the language of domination, hierarchy, and economics makes this common sense a lot harder to grasp than it otherwise should be (to be clear, this is a criticism of humans relating to romance, not you specifically)
Yes, when CHH is defining "alpha" to mean that someone has a healthy amount of confidence, or basically just to mean "not meek and desperate," it's not clear what work that term is actually doing. (And it's a stupid term anyway, related to stuff we were discussing on the other thread.)
Yeah, I'm stuck with the position that I am on the one hand really specific with my wording to a fault, and on the other hand think you just need to use the common parlance of the times if you want to constructively engage with the bad ideas linked to it, as I think this piece getting a lot of play among precisely the dudes who use this language & should hear this message demonstrates.
I'm skeptical about how persuadable those guys are, but hopefully I'm wrong. Even still, I think that using the terms gives the impression that the underlying philosophies of dominance/"alphas" is correct. What percentage will perceive the notion that CHH is redefining the term to mean something completely different?
I have a BS in economics, I’m very comfortable with arguments about people optimizing various metrics. Also, the women I loved between 17 and 24 vitiated many of my romantic ideals by rejecting me.
The most dissonant thing about my romantic/sexual development is as I became less idealistic (but higher value) my sexual opportunities expanded. I will never love anyone as intensely as I did at 18, nor will my ideals be as naive.
There is a place for romance and sacrifice, but you have to have value to play the game.
I think this far my conclusion has been that I simply need to search for someone who is on the same page with me as to ideals, but in any case the way this difference points to romance being a messy mix of ideals and compromise and other things, which is all a lot harder to gamify than most econ. Which isn’t to say it can’t be or shouldn’t be ever looked at in this way - I just think one has to come at it with a lot of humility on one hand and humanity on the other.
No thinking human being is going to share all your ideals. Which of yours are negotiable? There are also tradeoffs with attractiveness, intelligence, professional status, family wealth, etc. There’s also the question of whether they smell good.
I think the trick is to disagreeable for the right reasons. Be disagreeable because you need to in order to enforce your reasonable boundaries, avoid lying about your feelings, communicate your needs accurately, and live according to your values. Being disagreeable as a default setting even when it's not necessary or even helpful is how you become a jerk.
A while ago I read a quote by George Orwell about how most fictional utopia are concerned with "avoiding fuss." He was criticizing authors of utopia fiction for not thinking about how to make their utopia a great place to live, but rather thinking of ways to get rid of petty conflicts and annoyance. Utopias were defined by what bad things they lack, not by what good things they have.
The men who say they want submissive women are probably making a similar type of mental error. Instead of thinking of the things they like about women, they think of the things that annoy them. They define a perfect woman not by what great things they do, but rather by what annoying things they don't do.
I will say: I think you underrate how much men actually like "boss bitches." I have a somewhat bulldozer-like personality and back in my OKCupid days, I got hundreds of messages a week. I had to come up with a strategy to deal with men who wanted to buy me drinks in bars because there were way too many. Being a girl who knew exactly what I wanted and stating it bluntly pretty much always worked for me post-high school.
That said, it didn't work in high school because I was too intimidating. I heard from quite a few guys who had a crush on me in high school who said nothing because they were certain I'd turn them down.
Hard agree. Never had a single guy lose interest over this. They might just complain and moan about it, while chasing after it just the same lol. Men get frustrated-horny just like women, and people always want what they can't have even though they hate to admit it to themselves. The idea that men don't like challenges is literally ridiculous if you look at their real world behavior, despite the protestations of some who are tired and trying to lower the bar.
Okay it's pretty obvious to me what kind of submissive women men like by your descriptions, because I've seen this happen in my social circles.
The men wouldn't even imagine being iffy on marriage with those women because they are so innocent and so trusting and so traditional that they expect marriage, and it feels wrong to ever play with her expectations. Plus very early on in their relationship, she's probably introduced him to her family who are all extremely fawning over him and say things like "our daughter is very precious, please take care of her" and he feels so entrusted with the responsibility of her that he won't even imagine being selfish
If she expressed wanting to go to a museum and he said no, she'd say okay, but cry silent tears, and he'd see that and feel so horrible at denying her such a simple thing that he'd surprise her with prime tickets the very next day.
As for between seinfeld and arrested development, that will be their one cute disagreement and they'll cute-snipe at each other with back and forth references and he'll tell all his friends she's "really into comedy".
If he is mean to her, all her friends will pop out of the woodwork very very nice and ask him what's wrong, why is she crying so much and add "she told me not to bother you, but it was too much for me and I want to help".
My cousin's wife is like this. Or at least was until marriage. She talked in a baby voice. Had such innocent opinions about things. Felt bad for small things and cousin bent over backwards to accommodate her. Then they got married, and a year later, the baby voice has gone away and she controls him with grunts and looks, and she's more successful than he is though they started as interns in the same team. I have mad respect for her lol.
The low value woman you're talking about hides all traces of her own personality to be attractive to a man. The high value woman you're talking about breaks it off when she sees compromises to be made on her standards.
The secret third thing woman I'm talking about has strong preferences and those strong preferences come from her family, friends, religion, and deep feelings, so there are pressures to stick to those standards even if she doesn't want to. She isn't afraid to be vulnerable when her preferences are trod upon. She has no pretensions about being a strong woman or anything and is very comfortable being seen as a shy, fearful woman who couldn't fight her way out of a wet paper bag.
Men want to protect her and fulfill all her desires. He doesn't feel like his preferences are trod on with her even if they totally are, because at every stage he's choosing to disregard his own preferences to make her happy. She doesn't have to be antagonistic. She just cries and/or has very strong expectations. Doing what she asks for is presented as "doing the right thing" and he doesn't feel like the demands are unrealistic.
Royal family analogies: High value woman - Camilla. Low value woman who yet succeeded - Kate. Secret Third Thing woman - Diana. Girlboss woman - Wallis Simpson and Meghan Markle.
I think one thing that your comment highlights is that the most successful daters are polarizing. People think they're the hottest or they can't stand the type. As I said in my other comment, I have a bulldozer, forceful personality, and that was pretty popular, but the men who don't like it HATE me.
The simpering, crying damsel in distress is also a type of girl that some men just eat up everything they're serving, but others loathe. When my husband was an assistant manager at a pizza place, there was a girl there who was pretty and did this cutesy thing you describe, and would often give away her tasks to men because she was lazy by whining to them. He couldn't fire her because the manager was one of the guys who ate up her shtick. My husband always gave her Friday and Saturday night shifts because he resented that he couldn't fire her for laziness.
So that kind of a person is extreme but folks like, say, my cousin's wife restrict it to certain situations. Like she'd never be demure about her work, or keeping her home beautiful.
And lots of people do it in other ways. And, honestly, that kind of behavior naturally shows up when you have strong convictions that are rooted in strong social relationships, but the person you love disagrees.
The more I think about this, the more it feels like the deciding factor is having a whole social setting that supports your behavior. The "simpering" girl probably is traditional and has a whole family and circle of friends that supports her and watches out for her, so by doing things right, you win all of their approval. The "high value" woman is doing fun things with fun people, and seems pulled together and stable, and you want to be part of that. The girlboss has a lot going on and is capable enough to take care of you as she does a lot of other things, and she probably expects you to function at a higher level, which is a challenge to live up to.
The "low value" woman (I don't see people that way tbh) has nothing for a potential date other than her time and attention, and you'll get that sufficiently from anyone you date. She's not going to spur you to grow and try new things either. It feels hard to have any fun with her unless your idea of fun is looking at a mirror.
When I read stories of vulnerable exploited women, they usually tend to be "low value" women, unfortunately. They are women who are described as "homely", fell through the cracks in school and got middling grades, didn't find a career that they enjoyed, and their family only does so much for them. They often have lost loved ones, grown up in a single-family home, possibly with too many children for the parent to take good care of. They literally have nothing going on, and want to find a partner who they hope will change their life. This makes them easy prey for men with the worst intentions, especially since no one is keeping track of them enough to rescue them, and they don't have strong enough relationships with their own nearest and dearest that they listen when they raise red flags about their partner. When I came across a journalist talking about the median woman targeted in a specific type of abuse, nothing made me want to help people achieve their full potential more than hearing about how these women desperate to find a partner got tricked into being in abusive relationships.
The unifying theme for men, I think, is pretty clear - it's a drag to be held to some sort of standard, which happens both when 1. a woman expects you to take initiative in a way that produces uncertainty and 2. a woman takes the initiative in ways that produce uncertainty. It really is more comfortable for everything to be done for you and for nothing to stand in the way of your preferences, and is difficult to try to live up to the expectations of others (whether proactively or responsively).*
I think there's a connection to the non-straight world's 'top shortage' and straight world low-key angst over relationship initiation... Doing things like asking people out or taking control in the bedroom are psychologically tougher than getting to be baby, so unsurprisingly most people would prefer others be the responsible party. In all these cases, failing the case of being the relationship equivalent of a pillow-princess, the play is usually to default to the submissive (that is, always supporting but at least not initiating) role.
Back in the straight world, this produces dysfunction when men feel barred by social and partner expectations from doing that, and become resentful, and/or women (AFAICT) are either taught to do this, or feel locked into doing this and so don't assert themselves when they naturally would - and either way subsequently not get what they want and become resentful.
I will say that focusing on friction, effort, responsibility, 'bitchiness' makes this all sound inherently stressful when it shouldn't be - "not wanting to do the work" is also "enjoying being shown affection," and "having to do the work" is also "showing affection," like I speculate in an ideal relationship this just sorta irons itself out by way of people indulging in both ways of finding pleasure in relating to another person.
Excising sub-takes from this general take for length lmao
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*Reading this back and realizing that the tone may not be clear - as I hope the rest of the comment indicates, I'm not actually of the opinion that asserting oneself or staying loyalty are lame lol, they're just *work*
I guess one sub take to make explicit - what I hypothesize is happening for men in today’s manosphere (incel-ish as opposed to your stereotypical PUA) is just resentment toward feeling forced to be relationship tops, without the understanding needed to voice that in a way other than “i am uncomfortable when we are not about me”
Instead of asking people for dating "advice" I think a better approach is to find people who are already happily in the type of relationship you want to have. If that's a marriage, ask them how they met their partner, what made their partner stand out to them as unique. This framing will get you closer to what sparked the attraction than a generic ask for advice. If a woman asks me what attracted me to my wife, she'll get a different and probably more interesting answer than she would if she just asked me for "advice", not because I'd be trying to mislead her, but because I'm not an expert in what other men are looking for.
The night I met my future wife we had a debate over which spreadsheet program was better: Lotus123 or Symphony (which combined Lotus123 with other programs). This was 1984, pre Excel domination. She was better at spreadsheets. So her Lotus123 call was the right one. We also had an undergraduate business school debate. I went to Wharton; she went to Babson. Forty years later, the pattern and the attraction still holds. Your essay made me think about that.
“Typically these relationships end, and the man will immediately marry the next woman they date.”
What’s your data for this claim? Why would a man who avoids commitment for years— with a woman who was, tautologically, compatible enough to hold his attention for years— quickly marry before gathering information on compatibility? Do such men tend to get a better age split or a more desirable woman after breaking up? That’s not implausible— male status tends to increase substantially between 24 and 32, but I’d really like some more detail.
Full disclosure, I want to write an essay length response to your “Men Who Sabotage Women’s Fertility.”. At a minimum, the word “sabotage” is hyperbole, Im not sure how far apart we are on your more empirical claims.
I'm the "next woman". My husband had been in a relationship with a woman for 3-4 years. She kept house for him, agreed with him on everything important, was incredibly fun. She did expect marriage but was in no hurry. She even worked in childcare, the ultimate bastion of feminine women. He realized before a milestone birthday that he didn't want this to be his life because he was stagnating and she wasn't helping him grow. He broke up with her.
I was the opposite. I had some pretty hard times just as we started dating and he had to make himself useful. I was very clear I expected marriage soon from the beginning. I pushed for him to take more risks professionally and had higher expectations. We had a whirlwind romance and married very quickly. The ex understably was quite pissed and sent some mildly unhinged messages when she saw his Facebook profile pic had changed. I have nothing against her, and hope she finds someone who likes her for who she is.
It definitely happens. There's a fine line between giving someone space to be themselves and enabling them to stay stuck in a rut. It depends on what the man thinks is realistic for him. I suppose if my husband had thought "this is the best I can get", he'd have proposed to her and lived happily ever after with not having to do chores or childcare. But he realized if he has to make a decision that might change his life, he wanted to change it in a different way than the path he was on. He changed literally everything about his life to find a life he was happier seeing himself in long term.
Child care work is low wage and women who do that for money are rarely that smart.
Starter girlfriends are definitely a thing. Seeing that someone would do chores for him may have given him the confidence to seek someone higher status.
Making yourself useful to a potentially high value woman who has fallen upon hard times is, if nothing else, exciting. It’s also likely you’ll sink or swim fairly quickly. If the woman is high value and you are high value, she’ll get back on her feet quickly enough. If not, you get some thrills and broaden your sexual experience. It’s mostly upside.
She was a fancy nanny who was going to college to upskill and making very fine rent with the childcare work. It was a risk to break up tbh because it's really hard for men on dating apps. Raising your standards doesn't help much when the only strategy that works is to swipe right blindly and hope someone swipes right on you and you get like one match a month if that. At that point dating is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you'll get. It's hard to see people in terms of value when you barely get matches, and if you're getting a lot of matches, you don't end up scarcity minded enough to see people in terms of value. I don't think people looking for a genuine connection see dating that way. That seems the preserve of people who are dating experts in theory more than in practice.
I am not a dating expert in practice!! No person’s life experience can make them an expert unless they also gather data about others.
Are there any good studies supporting the thesis “men who are 27-35 and break up with long term girlfriends tend to marry the first woman they date after breaking up and usually do so in about a year.”
My intuition is there is a significant population of dudes who just don’t want to be tied down, something like 40% of men aren’t sure they want children or affirmatively don’t want them.
I also think few men are trying to “sabotage” fertility. Most men who don’t commit just want to stay in a comfortable relationship and enjoy the fruits without having kids.
Also, I don’t think men gain much by marrying early. In a slightly more patriarchal but hardly barbaric society, Victorian England, military officers tended to marry around 40, after they had proven their value. Lower middle class kids like Jellico and illegitimate gentry men like Beatty got monied wives 20 years younger by delaying marriage until they were 40ish and were Captains with favorable prospects of becoming admirals. Why marry before you have proven your worth? Why not play the field?
Lying about planning to propose is distasteful. Yet badgering a man into proposing who might do better by delaying marriage is also distasteful. Saying you aren’t sure you want children when you know you do is outright false, arguably as bad as adultery. It puts the whole relationship on a false basis.
I do think dating etiquette should emphasize transparency about marriage and fertility preferences. The alternative is worse.
I write historical fiction, and was reading a book on Victorian England. Apparently, just the layers of clothes made it impossible to have casual sex. You had to 1) get invited to a house party 2) find a woman who was available to "play the field" with 3) find a place in the stately house where you wouldn't be disturbed by dozens of houseguests or dozens of servants 4) convince her that all that undressing was worth it. 5) people weren't bathing regularly, so you'd have to deal with the smell. 6) actually do it.
Strongly doubt the soldiers were staying single to play the field. It seems more likely that they were posted in India or Malaya or Burma where women didn't want to go because heat, humidity, bugs, and hence were single. The British army cantonments had brothels full of trafficked women though. I strongly doubt "playing the field" with these poor women who had no choice rendered anyone a better person. If anything, they died early or were disabled from syphilis.
Maybe the ones who made it back and didn't have their dick falling off from an STI were considered being of upright character.
When you think of all the Victorian women who were literally forced into prostitution or who lived destitute lives, it is clear that any military officer who wanted the marry could. There was always some woman on the ragged edge of spinsterhood who would marry an officer. The question was how long to hold out in order to ascend the value scale. They played the game hard then. Also, there were plenty of tarts at any port of extended call. Maybe the sub lieutenants struggled, but proven officers were by definition marriageable.
Also. aristocrats often married young. They had the luxury of proving value mainly through birth, no need to wait!
To answer that question . . Yes! Most men would be in a more desirable position re: finances, status and often confidence at 31 than 21. But in the meantime, they like the comfort and confidence brought by having someone to come home too in the interim, even if they don't find that person to be "the one" or fall out of love with them over time. That's not the entire story but I think it's a good chunk of it.
Tbh nobody can afford trad shit in this economy. I need my fiancée to be able to bully the boomers at her work into compliance and raises just as she needs me to be able to dress down clients when they feebly attempt to renegotiate.
First, the guys claiming that men want meek women are engaged in some form of bullshitting. Either they know better but are saying that shit because they are committed to misogyny as an ideology and want all women to behave that way, or else they have absolutely no experience with women and are just making shit up.
Second, the notion of "alphas" is and always has been silly. When you use the term "alpha" to refer to someone with a healthy amount of confidence, or even to mean "not meek," you're kind of stripping the term of any meaning. Maybe that's the goal? It's a dumb phrase and always has been. It doesn't even apply to pack animals the way people thought!
When your opponent's main argument is "You're just incredibly hot," you know you have the upper hand.
Many such cases!
That's because you must have "5. acquired more teeth"
Pulled from:
Gaining weight, miraculously only in my boobs and butt
Lightening and curling my hair
Plucking my eyebrows and waxing my mustache
Not getting any taller, or even better, shrinking (I wasn’t that tall, but I correctly surmised that boys preferred girls shorter than them, and I’d have the most options if I never grew above 5’2”)
Acquiring more teeth
Wearing makeup
Yeah a lot of the comments I saw were of men confusing a woman being MEAN simply for the sake of being mean and making a statement about what a POS she thinks the guy is, which is not good behavior and not a thing any smart woman would advocate for doing with a guy you actually like, with having a backbone and being DISAGREEABLE (that is, not simply agreeing to everything the guy wants and says) for the sake of… being a person with her own ideas and desires who isn’t on this planet to accommodate the man in question. THAT is the high value behavior in question here — not generalized meanness or unkindness.
I think the issue may be that a lot of RP men simply are… kinda dumb… but are ginned up on believing all men are by default smarter than all women and therefore not being able to tell how fucking stupid their arguments are and how poorly they understand the things they (struggle to) read.
RP and adjacent men love sharing the bell curve chart showing more men are geniuses than women but then neglect that that same chart shows that more men are also retards and that generally men and women are of equal intelligence so any two random individuals will likely both be toward the middle. And they somehow all think they fall in the far right tail of the ball curve toward genius level IQ despite all evidence to the contrary lol
I've seen this evidenced by a number of men I know getting married in their late 30s and when I asked them more or less why wait so long and was marriage something they always wanted the response is basically "idk I just never thought about it until I met my fiancée". I think there are lots of men kinda waiting to be told what to do in the dating/marriage/kids market and the women who they decide to marry are the women who tell them it's time to get married. Like you said, the endlessly compliant woman is going to end up this kind of guys forever girlfriend because neither of them are pushing for anything else!
I would say in all these discussions people (especially men) dont seem to realize that lovers are supposed to be fun to be around? What is so fun about agreeing about everything? When will you get to playfully rough-house intellectually and physically if you never have what I call "fake fights" about not-necessary things? I also love fake-jealousy for the same reason. My ex had this crush on a movie star(childhood crush) and ever since he told me I would fake jealousy about her anytime she was mentioned or a new movie of hers came out. It drove him wild with happiness and he said it made him feel very desired :)
A Sienfeld vs. AD argument is not high stakes, its just fun. Have men forgotten about fun? That's just sad.
And I of course agree with you about having a spine and having a life of your own instead of becoming a nun for one :) That is not just good for romance but for yourself. You lose respect for yourself if you become a nun for one and shun everyone on the planet for him.
I think the reframe of the conversation away from expectations and toward enjoyment is one of underrated importance
I’m just shocked everyone has become so utilitarian about love and lovers. It’s all strategy and games. Meanwhile lovers of the past wrote poetry and movies and music - cause it was FUN! I don’t expect a man to write me poetry but goddamn it I expect him to be fun! Teasing and playing — this is fun! And once you grow up, no other relationship can give you this - not friends, not siblings, not parents. That’s why people crave love so intensely. I maybe rough -housed with my sibling but the last time that happened we were 5. And we were dead serious.
Adulthood is about doing the serious things from childhood - for fun(rough-housing was serious business as a kid). And doing the fun things from childhood - seriously(chores etc which we loved imitating our parents) People want to say mommy and daddy for fun - for the same reason. It’s teasing and fun and play. But now everything has to be explained away with a sex label. I was a little gobsmacked when a guy informed me that I am probably bdsm-adjacent cause I teased him with the word daddy(at the grocery store!!). 😭
My hypothesis is that it’s basically down to the apps, in the same way that twitter exposing everyone to each other’s takes and flattening them all makes its users more cynical about opinion formation
To be clear I also hate this and am seeking a return to the romantic!
I might agree with you there though I don’t know what app(Reddit?) is teaching people to be unromantic. Twitter - true. I see myself thinking so much differently- and openly after quitting.
Oh I meant tinder/hinge/bumble/etc etc! I'm too deep in that discourse recently that I forgot other sites came on apps lmao.
Yeah, I really undid a lot of my judgmental-ness just by like, no longer responding to every take by "how would I best counter this on twitter" lol
But tinder and hinge etc dont have any discourse by themselves. People talk about what happens there I guess. And because there are so few women and too many men on these apps men assume that women hate them...its a bit scary how they have this warped sense of view of women as a whole based on the very small subset of women on the app.
I keep seeing people sharing some dating app statistic on twitter about how women go for the top 10% of men and then extrapolate that to all women all over the world.
I mean Spotify releases data on how people listen to music on their app but that is not how all people listen to music?? Its so weird to take data released by apps seriously as a benchmark for all of womanhood.
I think women should be firm and uncompromising on their values (faith, morals) and honest but flexible about more superficial preferences -- e.g. be forthcoming if she doesn't like hiking or anime or whatever but open to participating in those activities every so often if it makes her partner happy. I've had to work on exercising agency in both these areas.
Yes, agreed! I’ve gotten into stuff I wouldn’t have expected because of my husband. Of course, I still don’t apologize for liking Arrested Development (which he hates)
Arrested Development is top tier though so he's objectively wrong there XD
That depends. Are we counting seasons 4 and 5?
The advice I think is largely the same for men, I think, whether you're someone who's inclined to be too domineering or someone who dislikes that social role and either avoids or resents it (though naturally the emphasis will differ depending on whether firmness or flexibility is in deficit)
Yes!
Yeah haha I just wasn't thinking about men when I wrote this my bad 😅
A big part of being alpha is being able to disagree without disagreeable. A woman who agrees with everything you say is boring. One who takes offense when your opinions who don’t accord with hers is impossible. It puts the man in the position of having to hide himself, and the likeliest reason for doing this is wanting to have sex with a woman you don’t really like.
This is a place where I think the aesthetics of an argument undercut its substance … the language of domination, hierarchy, and economics makes this common sense a lot harder to grasp than it otherwise should be (to be clear, this is a criticism of humans relating to romance, not you specifically)
Yes, when CHH is defining "alpha" to mean that someone has a healthy amount of confidence, or basically just to mean "not meek and desperate," it's not clear what work that term is actually doing. (And it's a stupid term anyway, related to stuff we were discussing on the other thread.)
Yeah, I'm stuck with the position that I am on the one hand really specific with my wording to a fault, and on the other hand think you just need to use the common parlance of the times if you want to constructively engage with the bad ideas linked to it, as I think this piece getting a lot of play among precisely the dudes who use this language & should hear this message demonstrates.
I'm skeptical about how persuadable those guys are, but hopefully I'm wrong. Even still, I think that using the terms gives the impression that the underlying philosophies of dominance/"alphas" is correct. What percentage will perceive the notion that CHH is redefining the term to mean something completely different?
To be sure, a very small percentage, given the vast number who seem not to have read the article at all.
I have a BS in economics, I’m very comfortable with arguments about people optimizing various metrics. Also, the women I loved between 17 and 24 vitiated many of my romantic ideals by rejecting me.
The most dissonant thing about my romantic/sexual development is as I became less idealistic (but higher value) my sexual opportunities expanded. I will never love anyone as intensely as I did at 18, nor will my ideals be as naive.
There is a place for romance and sacrifice, but you have to have value to play the game.
I think this far my conclusion has been that I simply need to search for someone who is on the same page with me as to ideals, but in any case the way this difference points to romance being a messy mix of ideals and compromise and other things, which is all a lot harder to gamify than most econ. Which isn’t to say it can’t be or shouldn’t be ever looked at in this way - I just think one has to come at it with a lot of humility on one hand and humanity on the other.
No thinking human being is going to share all your ideals. Which of yours are negotiable? There are also tradeoffs with attractiveness, intelligence, professional status, family wealth, etc. There’s also the question of whether they smell good.
I think the trick is to disagreeable for the right reasons. Be disagreeable because you need to in order to enforce your reasonable boundaries, avoid lying about your feelings, communicate your needs accurately, and live according to your values. Being disagreeable as a default setting even when it's not necessary or even helpful is how you become a jerk.
A while ago I read a quote by George Orwell about how most fictional utopia are concerned with "avoiding fuss." He was criticizing authors of utopia fiction for not thinking about how to make their utopia a great place to live, but rather thinking of ways to get rid of petty conflicts and annoyance. Utopias were defined by what bad things they lack, not by what good things they have.
The men who say they want submissive women are probably making a similar type of mental error. Instead of thinking of the things they like about women, they think of the things that annoy them. They define a perfect woman not by what great things they do, but rather by what annoying things they don't do.
I will say: I think you underrate how much men actually like "boss bitches." I have a somewhat bulldozer-like personality and back in my OKCupid days, I got hundreds of messages a week. I had to come up with a strategy to deal with men who wanted to buy me drinks in bars because there were way too many. Being a girl who knew exactly what I wanted and stating it bluntly pretty much always worked for me post-high school.
That said, it didn't work in high school because I was too intimidating. I heard from quite a few guys who had a crush on me in high school who said nothing because they were certain I'd turn them down.
Hard agree. Never had a single guy lose interest over this. They might just complain and moan about it, while chasing after it just the same lol. Men get frustrated-horny just like women, and people always want what they can't have even though they hate to admit it to themselves. The idea that men don't like challenges is literally ridiculous if you look at their real world behavior, despite the protestations of some who are tired and trying to lower the bar.
Okay it's pretty obvious to me what kind of submissive women men like by your descriptions, because I've seen this happen in my social circles.
The men wouldn't even imagine being iffy on marriage with those women because they are so innocent and so trusting and so traditional that they expect marriage, and it feels wrong to ever play with her expectations. Plus very early on in their relationship, she's probably introduced him to her family who are all extremely fawning over him and say things like "our daughter is very precious, please take care of her" and he feels so entrusted with the responsibility of her that he won't even imagine being selfish
If she expressed wanting to go to a museum and he said no, she'd say okay, but cry silent tears, and he'd see that and feel so horrible at denying her such a simple thing that he'd surprise her with prime tickets the very next day.
As for between seinfeld and arrested development, that will be their one cute disagreement and they'll cute-snipe at each other with back and forth references and he'll tell all his friends she's "really into comedy".
If he is mean to her, all her friends will pop out of the woodwork very very nice and ask him what's wrong, why is she crying so much and add "she told me not to bother you, but it was too much for me and I want to help".
My cousin's wife is like this. Or at least was until marriage. She talked in a baby voice. Had such innocent opinions about things. Felt bad for small things and cousin bent over backwards to accommodate her. Then they got married, and a year later, the baby voice has gone away and she controls him with grunts and looks, and she's more successful than he is though they started as interns in the same team. I have mad respect for her lol.
The low value woman you're talking about hides all traces of her own personality to be attractive to a man. The high value woman you're talking about breaks it off when she sees compromises to be made on her standards.
The secret third thing woman I'm talking about has strong preferences and those strong preferences come from her family, friends, religion, and deep feelings, so there are pressures to stick to those standards even if she doesn't want to. She isn't afraid to be vulnerable when her preferences are trod upon. She has no pretensions about being a strong woman or anything and is very comfortable being seen as a shy, fearful woman who couldn't fight her way out of a wet paper bag.
Men want to protect her and fulfill all her desires. He doesn't feel like his preferences are trod on with her even if they totally are, because at every stage he's choosing to disregard his own preferences to make her happy. She doesn't have to be antagonistic. She just cries and/or has very strong expectations. Doing what she asks for is presented as "doing the right thing" and he doesn't feel like the demands are unrealistic.
Royal family analogies: High value woman - Camilla. Low value woman who yet succeeded - Kate. Secret Third Thing woman - Diana. Girlboss woman - Wallis Simpson and Meghan Markle.
I think one thing that your comment highlights is that the most successful daters are polarizing. People think they're the hottest or they can't stand the type. As I said in my other comment, I have a bulldozer, forceful personality, and that was pretty popular, but the men who don't like it HATE me.
The simpering, crying damsel in distress is also a type of girl that some men just eat up everything they're serving, but others loathe. When my husband was an assistant manager at a pizza place, there was a girl there who was pretty and did this cutesy thing you describe, and would often give away her tasks to men because she was lazy by whining to them. He couldn't fire her because the manager was one of the guys who ate up her shtick. My husband always gave her Friday and Saturday night shifts because he resented that he couldn't fire her for laziness.
So that kind of a person is extreme but folks like, say, my cousin's wife restrict it to certain situations. Like she'd never be demure about her work, or keeping her home beautiful.
And lots of people do it in other ways. And, honestly, that kind of behavior naturally shows up when you have strong convictions that are rooted in strong social relationships, but the person you love disagrees.
The more I think about this, the more it feels like the deciding factor is having a whole social setting that supports your behavior. The "simpering" girl probably is traditional and has a whole family and circle of friends that supports her and watches out for her, so by doing things right, you win all of their approval. The "high value" woman is doing fun things with fun people, and seems pulled together and stable, and you want to be part of that. The girlboss has a lot going on and is capable enough to take care of you as she does a lot of other things, and she probably expects you to function at a higher level, which is a challenge to live up to.
The "low value" woman (I don't see people that way tbh) has nothing for a potential date other than her time and attention, and you'll get that sufficiently from anyone you date. She's not going to spur you to grow and try new things either. It feels hard to have any fun with her unless your idea of fun is looking at a mirror.
When I read stories of vulnerable exploited women, they usually tend to be "low value" women, unfortunately. They are women who are described as "homely", fell through the cracks in school and got middling grades, didn't find a career that they enjoyed, and their family only does so much for them. They often have lost loved ones, grown up in a single-family home, possibly with too many children for the parent to take good care of. They literally have nothing going on, and want to find a partner who they hope will change their life. This makes them easy prey for men with the worst intentions, especially since no one is keeping track of them enough to rescue them, and they don't have strong enough relationships with their own nearest and dearest that they listen when they raise red flags about their partner. When I came across a journalist talking about the median woman targeted in a specific type of abuse, nothing made me want to help people achieve their full potential more than hearing about how these women desperate to find a partner got tricked into being in abusive relationships.
The unifying theme for men, I think, is pretty clear - it's a drag to be held to some sort of standard, which happens both when 1. a woman expects you to take initiative in a way that produces uncertainty and 2. a woman takes the initiative in ways that produce uncertainty. It really is more comfortable for everything to be done for you and for nothing to stand in the way of your preferences, and is difficult to try to live up to the expectations of others (whether proactively or responsively).*
I think there's a connection to the non-straight world's 'top shortage' and straight world low-key angst over relationship initiation... Doing things like asking people out or taking control in the bedroom are psychologically tougher than getting to be baby, so unsurprisingly most people would prefer others be the responsible party. In all these cases, failing the case of being the relationship equivalent of a pillow-princess, the play is usually to default to the submissive (that is, always supporting but at least not initiating) role.
Back in the straight world, this produces dysfunction when men feel barred by social and partner expectations from doing that, and become resentful, and/or women (AFAICT) are either taught to do this, or feel locked into doing this and so don't assert themselves when they naturally would - and either way subsequently not get what they want and become resentful.
I will say that focusing on friction, effort, responsibility, 'bitchiness' makes this all sound inherently stressful when it shouldn't be - "not wanting to do the work" is also "enjoying being shown affection," and "having to do the work" is also "showing affection," like I speculate in an ideal relationship this just sorta irons itself out by way of people indulging in both ways of finding pleasure in relating to another person.
Excising sub-takes from this general take for length lmao
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*Reading this back and realizing that the tone may not be clear - as I hope the rest of the comment indicates, I'm not actually of the opinion that asserting oneself or staying loyalty are lame lol, they're just *work*
I guess one sub take to make explicit - what I hypothesize is happening for men in today’s manosphere (incel-ish as opposed to your stereotypical PUA) is just resentment toward feeling forced to be relationship tops, without the understanding needed to voice that in a way other than “i am uncomfortable when we are not about me”
Instead of asking people for dating "advice" I think a better approach is to find people who are already happily in the type of relationship you want to have. If that's a marriage, ask them how they met their partner, what made their partner stand out to them as unique. This framing will get you closer to what sparked the attraction than a generic ask for advice. If a woman asks me what attracted me to my wife, she'll get a different and probably more interesting answer than she would if she just asked me for "advice", not because I'd be trying to mislead her, but because I'm not an expert in what other men are looking for.
The night I met my future wife we had a debate over which spreadsheet program was better: Lotus123 or Symphony (which combined Lotus123 with other programs). This was 1984, pre Excel domination. She was better at spreadsheets. So her Lotus123 call was the right one. We also had an undergraduate business school debate. I went to Wharton; she went to Babson. Forty years later, the pattern and the attraction still holds. Your essay made me think about that.
“Typically these relationships end, and the man will immediately marry the next woman they date.”
What’s your data for this claim? Why would a man who avoids commitment for years— with a woman who was, tautologically, compatible enough to hold his attention for years— quickly marry before gathering information on compatibility? Do such men tend to get a better age split or a more desirable woman after breaking up? That’s not implausible— male status tends to increase substantially between 24 and 32, but I’d really like some more detail.
Full disclosure, I want to write an essay length response to your “Men Who Sabotage Women’s Fertility.”. At a minimum, the word “sabotage” is hyperbole, Im not sure how far apart we are on your more empirical claims.
I'm the "next woman". My husband had been in a relationship with a woman for 3-4 years. She kept house for him, agreed with him on everything important, was incredibly fun. She did expect marriage but was in no hurry. She even worked in childcare, the ultimate bastion of feminine women. He realized before a milestone birthday that he didn't want this to be his life because he was stagnating and she wasn't helping him grow. He broke up with her.
I was the opposite. I had some pretty hard times just as we started dating and he had to make himself useful. I was very clear I expected marriage soon from the beginning. I pushed for him to take more risks professionally and had higher expectations. We had a whirlwind romance and married very quickly. The ex understably was quite pissed and sent some mildly unhinged messages when she saw his Facebook profile pic had changed. I have nothing against her, and hope she finds someone who likes her for who she is.
It definitely happens. There's a fine line between giving someone space to be themselves and enabling them to stay stuck in a rut. It depends on what the man thinks is realistic for him. I suppose if my husband had thought "this is the best I can get", he'd have proposed to her and lived happily ever after with not having to do chores or childcare. But he realized if he has to make a decision that might change his life, he wanted to change it in a different way than the path he was on. He changed literally everything about his life to find a life he was happier seeing himself in long term.
I can imagine this happens quite often.
Child care work is low wage and women who do that for money are rarely that smart.
Starter girlfriends are definitely a thing. Seeing that someone would do chores for him may have given him the confidence to seek someone higher status.
Making yourself useful to a potentially high value woman who has fallen upon hard times is, if nothing else, exciting. It’s also likely you’ll sink or swim fairly quickly. If the woman is high value and you are high value, she’ll get back on her feet quickly enough. If not, you get some thrills and broaden your sexual experience. It’s mostly upside.
She was a fancy nanny who was going to college to upskill and making very fine rent with the childcare work. It was a risk to break up tbh because it's really hard for men on dating apps. Raising your standards doesn't help much when the only strategy that works is to swipe right blindly and hope someone swipes right on you and you get like one match a month if that. At that point dating is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you'll get. It's hard to see people in terms of value when you barely get matches, and if you're getting a lot of matches, you don't end up scarcity minded enough to see people in terms of value. I don't think people looking for a genuine connection see dating that way. That seems the preserve of people who are dating experts in theory more than in practice.
I am not a dating expert in practice!! No person’s life experience can make them an expert unless they also gather data about others.
Are there any good studies supporting the thesis “men who are 27-35 and break up with long term girlfriends tend to marry the first woman they date after breaking up and usually do so in about a year.”
My intuition is there is a significant population of dudes who just don’t want to be tied down, something like 40% of men aren’t sure they want children or affirmatively don’t want them.
I also think few men are trying to “sabotage” fertility. Most men who don’t commit just want to stay in a comfortable relationship and enjoy the fruits without having kids.
Also, I don’t think men gain much by marrying early. In a slightly more patriarchal but hardly barbaric society, Victorian England, military officers tended to marry around 40, after they had proven their value. Lower middle class kids like Jellico and illegitimate gentry men like Beatty got monied wives 20 years younger by delaying marriage until they were 40ish and were Captains with favorable prospects of becoming admirals. Why marry before you have proven your worth? Why not play the field?
Lying about planning to propose is distasteful. Yet badgering a man into proposing who might do better by delaying marriage is also distasteful. Saying you aren’t sure you want children when you know you do is outright false, arguably as bad as adultery. It puts the whole relationship on a false basis.
I do think dating etiquette should emphasize transparency about marriage and fertility preferences. The alternative is worse.
I write historical fiction, and was reading a book on Victorian England. Apparently, just the layers of clothes made it impossible to have casual sex. You had to 1) get invited to a house party 2) find a woman who was available to "play the field" with 3) find a place in the stately house where you wouldn't be disturbed by dozens of houseguests or dozens of servants 4) convince her that all that undressing was worth it. 5) people weren't bathing regularly, so you'd have to deal with the smell. 6) actually do it.
Strongly doubt the soldiers were staying single to play the field. It seems more likely that they were posted in India or Malaya or Burma where women didn't want to go because heat, humidity, bugs, and hence were single. The British army cantonments had brothels full of trafficked women though. I strongly doubt "playing the field" with these poor women who had no choice rendered anyone a better person. If anything, they died early or were disabled from syphilis.
Maybe the ones who made it back and didn't have their dick falling off from an STI were considered being of upright character.
When you think of all the Victorian women who were literally forced into prostitution or who lived destitute lives, it is clear that any military officer who wanted the marry could. There was always some woman on the ragged edge of spinsterhood who would marry an officer. The question was how long to hold out in order to ascend the value scale. They played the game hard then. Also, there were plenty of tarts at any port of extended call. Maybe the sub lieutenants struggled, but proven officers were by definition marriageable.
Also. aristocrats often married young. They had the luxury of proving value mainly through birth, no need to wait!
To answer that question . . Yes! Most men would be in a more desirable position re: finances, status and often confidence at 31 than 21. But in the meantime, they like the comfort and confidence brought by having someone to come home too in the interim, even if they don't find that person to be "the one" or fall out of love with them over time. That's not the entire story but I think it's a good chunk of it.
This article reminds me of the book Why Men Love Bitches by Sherry Argov — humans are an interesting complex bunch
Tbh nobody can afford trad shit in this economy. I need my fiancée to be able to bully the boomers at her work into compliance and raises just as she needs me to be able to dress down clients when they feebly attempt to renegotiate.
A few comments.
First, the guys claiming that men want meek women are engaged in some form of bullshitting. Either they know better but are saying that shit because they are committed to misogyny as an ideology and want all women to behave that way, or else they have absolutely no experience with women and are just making shit up.
Second, the notion of "alphas" is and always has been silly. When you use the term "alpha" to refer to someone with a healthy amount of confidence, or even to mean "not meek," you're kind of stripping the term of any meaning. Maybe that's the goal? It's a dumb phrase and always has been. It doesn't even apply to pack animals the way people thought!