I think it’s understandable too; but for most people it’s not productive of happiness. Everyone has bad experiences in every area of life; the ones who dump the chip on the shoulder and go out and try again often wind up content, while others stew in their unhappy juice.
I don’t believe that anything in life is a ‘zero sum’ game. This notion that we are all somehow in competition with one another for everything is one of the main things making the world miserable.
And I honestly don’t see a whole lot of difference between this and any other blaming of society or ‘others’ for failure or disappointment.
(Historically, there were a lot of Black people who made fortunes and achieved happiness, despite the fact that White society did everything it could to block them from achievement. If they had said, “there’s no hope, there’s no use, it’s all stacked against me” they would never have achieved. This is true in every aspect of life, and too many people place judgment before faith when they’ve had a bad experience and fear another.)
If he or she wants, a person can turn away from what seems to be, and just go after what they want with a positive attitude. Those people will do better and be happier than the ones who persist in believing so profoundly in the power and immutability of ‘circumstances’.
I think pairing off men and women in marriage is a zero sum game. You can’t increase the supply. I’ll illustrate by using polygamy. Pretend we lived in a culture where you could have up to four wives. Each time a man took a wife beyond the number one, he would be making it impossible for another man to get married. There would simply be an imbalance in the number of single men to single women in such a society.
I think there is an imbalance in the number of safe women for middle aged guys to marry. Ask any single man 35+ how many quality women are out there to marry. I think you will get one of two replies most often. 1) Not that many. 2) Why would I want to get married?