Posted on 09/24/2017 3:31:11 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Spend a little time with single women in their early to mid-30s, and you'll be grateful you're not one of them. The relationship scene is even more dismal today than when I was their age. All the women want serious relationships that lead to marriage, but many of the men they meet do not. All too often a woman moves in with some guy, hoping they're on the road to somewhere. Two years later, he tells her he's not ready for marriage and kids just yet. Splat.
But wait. Hasn't online dating made the mating market easier? Yes – for men. If you really want to hear a woman rant, just utter the word Tinder.
Single women are more equal and empowered than ever before. They have unparalleled sexual, reproductive and economic autonomy. In many ways, they're doing much better than the men. (Just look at the lopsided university graduation rates, which are now around 60-40). And yet, large numbers of young women admit their private lives are a sad mess.
If you're a gender studies major, stop reading here. You're going to hate what I've got to say next. I don't like it much myself.
In a nutshell, over the past few decades, the traditional relationship exchange has broken down. It used to be that men and women each had something the other really needed. Men needed access to sex. Women needed access to resources. Men couldn't get steady access to sex unless they had resources to offer, so they worked hard for them. The partnership between men and women was a grand bargain that (usually) left both sides better off.
For men, sex was traditionally expensive. The price tag was a long-term commitment to provide for a woman (and children). But today, sex is cheap. And that changes everything.
This is the premise of a bracing new book, Cheap Sex, by American sociologist Mark Regnerus. Sex got cheap because of three technological developments: the advent of the Pill, which divorced fertility from sex; the onset of mass-produced, high-quality pornography; and the arrival of online dating sites, which make it easy for men to find willing sex partners.
Sexual liberation is a fabulous thing – in some ways. But it can also turn men into louts, because women don't expect much in return for access. Today, most men can have all the sex they want for very little cost – no fancy dinner required. The irony, as Mr. Regnerus writes, is that today's mating market is probably more dominated by men's interests than ever before.
When women complain that marriageable men (sober, steady good providers) are harder to find than ever, they may well be right. The marriage rate is falling steadily, especially among the lower middle class, while long-term stable marriage is increasingly a privilege reserved for the better off.
A lot of women seem to have their act together these days. But a lot of men don't. "I think the greatest, most astonishing fact that I am aware of in social science right now is that women have been able to hear the labour market screaming out 'You need more education'… and men have not," MIT economics professor Michael Greenstone says in Cheap Sex.
What might explain this puzzling fact? Men don't have to prove themselves as providers any more. They can get all the sex they want anyway – including online porn on demand that can make the real thing feel mildly disappointing. (Ask younger women about men and porn. You'll get an earful.)
Like it or not, women have always been the gatekeepers for sex – not because they don't like sex, too, but because (no matter what you learned in gender studies) men's sex drive is innately higher. This means it's up to us to make the rules. "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" my father used to say. It drove me crazy when he said that. Now, it's dawned on me that he was right.
Since the women's cartel collapsed, women's bargaining power has seriously eroded. That's why so many single women hate Tinder, which has further commodified sex for the benefit of men. Women are just another consumer good in the shop window.
It may take a village to raise a child. But it takes a village to raise a husband, too. And modern society has largely abdicated from the job. "Good husband material doesn't occur naturally, but is instead the product (in part) of socialization, development, and social control," Mr. Regnerus writes. "[I]n the domain of sex and relationships men will act as nobly as women collectively demand."
Time to get our act together, ladies. If we don't, they won't either.
Two years? Ladies, Ladies, Ladies. If ya’ll aren’t exclusive within 6 months (after a credit and background check and referrals from trusted people and a parent check on both sides) and aren’t planning a wedding around 9months for a marriage within 15 months, then pick up your purse and walk out the door and don’t look back, because it’s not going to get any better. If he’s serious, he’s coming after you to get you back with a wedding, and if he doesn’t, well, that’s your answer right there.
Life’s too short. And you’re too valuable.
Men. So cute and adorable.
I know, right?
“Okay, that didn’t make any sense. I need to get back to the slyly couched sexual innuendo theme. “
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Great idea.
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Bruce Jenner should def not marry. Imagine the butt babies. Or would that be spit babies. I'm gender confused.
I know, right?
Good advice.
Thank you, blueplum.
Make a list, ladies. What’s important to you?
Learn about his family and past. Meet his friends and family.
Do you have the same values? Do you laugh together?
Does he have a close relationship with his mother? His family?
Life is short, but it can seem far too long if you’re with the wrong person.
So, you’re saying that they are hunted to extinction?
I’m so sorry for your loss, and for your children’s kids of their mother. I believe it gets especially difficult to meet good people after the age of 50, but I hope you can find a good woman once again. I am a woman, and observe many bad men and women 50+, the good ones are out there but they’re hard to find. It just seems to reflect the breakdown in our society. So many sociopaths and narcissists out there these days. Praying that you find someone right just for you. You sound like a Godly man and deserve it.
Absolutely.
Women caused that problem long ago with the women’s lib movement.
...and once in while, they’re useful. :D
Marrying a woman in her 30s is a pointless thing to do. Her ability to have kids is quite limited, she probably slept with 30-50 guys by 35 and will be unable to bond.
JohnyBoy
Since May 11, 2017
This is a true fact. Without women, where would we get our sammicches? Am I right, ladies?
I am a very good man (in fallen, human terms).
I have never fornicated, I have never been drunk, and I was a true friend to many women. I sought a wife only among conservative, Christian women.
They loved my friendship, and they loved my ministry; they rejected my courtship.
Women want Bad Boys they can reform, or Success Objects they can exploit.
I was neither, and I have thus been alone. (By the bye, I was not a wimp. I took on the hierarchy alone more than once for hypocrisy or heresy. More than one woman lauded my courage.)
In their 30s, after rewarding the wrong men with their love and sex, they then want a better man like me to fix their excess emotional baggage and to father other men’s children.
I am not interested.
Yes, I admit I am bitter. I practiced what was preached in modern America’s churchianity, and was punished for it.
The institutionalized church does nothing to approbate virtuous men, nor to admonish foolish women.
But then, this is the same perverted entity that now calls homoeroticism compatible with Biblical Christianity.
The Frankfurt School now runs the organized church.
The real church is underground.
Don’t most men cook? Mine does.
I've heard it said that if women didn't have a certain body part, there'd be a bounty on 'em. I, myself, would never say such a deplorable, despicable thing.
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