Posted on 10/20/2022 2:54:23 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The "In The Loop" series Love Life digs into how Americans are dealing with the changing landscape of modern dating. Nearly half of U.S. adults, and a majority of women, say that dating has become harder in the last 10 years or so in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center.
Anna Brown, a researcher who has written extensively about American experiences with dating and related issues for the Pew Research Center, gave Newsy some insight on the statistics.
"Men were more likely to say things like they had trouble approaching people, whereas women were more likely to give reasons, like it was just hard to find someone who was looking for the same type of relationship that they were or it was hard to find someone with kind of common interests," Brown said.
The most cited reasons behind the dating troubles included the challenge of finding someone who is looking for the same type of relationship: Whether it's casual romance or a serious courtship, 53% said this is a major reason. Other reasons included difficulty in approaching people at 46% and trouble finding someone who meets their expectations at 43%.
Those findings were based on data from 2019, and Brown's further research shows things seem to have only gotten worse during the pandemic.
While dating as a whole was regarded as hard by both single men and women, dating has been riskier for women in particular. Most women who identified as single and looking to date — 65% — said they experienced some form of harassment from their dates, such as being touched in a way that made them uncomfortable or rumors being spread about their sexual history.
Awareness surrounding these forms of harassment were heightened thanks to campaigns like the #MeToo movement, but 65% of Americans said that increased focus on sexual harassment and assault has made it harder for men to know how to interact with someone they're on a date with, begging the age-old question: Is chivalry dead?
"Women were far more likely than men to say that it's gotten harder because of risk, so that can be physical risk or emotional risk," Brown said. "Many people said that technology is the reason it's gotten harder. For online dating in particular, people tend to experience more severe forms of harassment."
Over the past decade, dating was already becoming more complicated in an increasingly digital America and the unique challenges that came with the rise of social media and dating apps. But singles have never been put to the test quite like they were during the pandemic.
Many popular dating apps reported a drop in the number of people actively dating, and those who did continue to date took things slower. Dating app data shows many used video calls and text messaging to get to know their match before meeting up.
Factors like a person's willingness to social distance and their COVID-19 vaccination status became a more prominent consideration for many looking for a potential partner, whether it was for the short term or the long run. As the pandemic's public health measures were politicized, it also trickled into dating, which was becoming more political in a post-Trump environment.
"We found that about half of people who have online dated in the last year say that it's been important to them to see someone's political beliefs on their online dating profile, and that is up considerably since 2019," Brown said. "We also found that most of that change was being driven by Democrats, and Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that it's important to them to see that kind of information on someone's profile."
RELATED STORY Reality Shows Are Getting More Real When It Comes To DatingReality Shows Are Getting More Real When It Comes To Dating As pandemic restrictions eased and much of the country received their vaccines, dating began picking up again. Many predicted 2021 would bring a lot of summer romance, with people across the nation trying to make up for lost time.
While that was certainly true for couples, with many ushering in a wedding boom after a year of putting off weddings, that rush of singles people expected to see was closer to a trickle.
After a lonely year of social distancing, many singles who were looking to date reported a desire to do so more purposefully, taking their time to pick partners. This trend was especially true for single Americans under 30, who don't want to risk taking a potentially meaningful connections for granted.
Some of these efforts took on new forms for the singles, with many swearing off dating apps and trying to meet people through friends or organically while out and about.
But others are going even further in their mission to find love, like with the live dating show called "UpDating." It aims to mix comedy with a vulnerable, yet very public search for love. The show is followed by thousands on TikTok, with some videos gaining more than a million likes.
I just got divorced this year, and I hit the scene. It was challenging, to say the least.
The worst part of it is my conservatism. It’s hard to find a woman, or girl, who isn’t a complete leftist loony. Unhinged, they are.
It’s funny though. I put up a fake female profile in a dating app to see what kind of guys I have to compete with. What I noticed is that they are ALL the same. Vandyke, baseball cap, wrap around sunglasses. Beer enthusiasts, all of them.
I found a woman (a real woman, army vet, physicist, successful with no tattoos, 3 great kids and not much baggage.) She’s also 10 years older than I am. She tells me that in her dating life the men are always angry. If she didn’t respond to their online messages within an hour they would start to insult her. Insecure.
So as I see it both men and women are insecure. As ALWAYS women have the ability to pick and choose and because of that become more and more picky. Men basically get “stuck with” whoever responds to their advances.
Not true with 100% of the cases, but true enough
Interesting. As Thelma Ritter said in a 1951 movie, if a person has four pints of blood and can stand long enough to say, “I do,” then he can get married. Also, my lady friend got a divorce, asked a psychologist how to meet me, and was told to buy a dog. Then she went to coffee shops, sat at the sidewalk tables with her dog, and learned that only ladies stop to talk about dog. Also, best place for young people to meet future spouses is big band dances.
How do they know they're women?
Next week we should be up and running come to cupidpureblood.com for all your dating needs👍
Rodney Dangerfield said, (paraphrasing)
‘My wife and I vacation separately. We sleep in different rooms and take our meals at different times. We’re doing everything we can to keep our marriage strong.’
Theres still no upsides to dealing with modern women. Men do not even want to take the risks to even find out if she is a “unicorn”.
The simple of a man that approaches a woman, that she is not attracted to, can result in jail time a loss of job and prestige.
It’s not worth the effort, in most cases.
Saying hi should not be a social death sentence.
The whole dating universe writ large is a massive pool of losers...both sexes. (Allowance made for outliers.)
Well said.
I think this tendency has a biological basis to it. She wants to be available to the man she is attracted to. Spending time with a man she is not attracted to hurts her ability to find a man she thinks is on her level, because the men she might want sees that she is not available to them.
Your wife may be a very nice person, but I can almost assure you that she was doing the same thing with men that she was not attracted to.
I don’t even think that women are aware of what they do when they do this and I can’t criticize them for doing it, if this tendency has a biological basis for doing it.
** People will just drop a potential mate, if they don’t tick off all the boxes, thinking that eventually they’ll find someone that does.**
My sis (now 70) took her time. About the time she was turned 35, my dad said to her: “If you’re looking for the perfect man, there are none. And I love you dearly, but you’re not the perfect woman.”
She met an imperfect guy at 38, and married him a year later. It worked out well, they are still together and happy.
I was very particular, only bending on wealth. I didn’t care if the chick was poor. My wife met all my specs marvelously. (and was not rich or poor, imo)
A woman who has been dating for >10 years is OF COURSE having a much tougher time than when she was ten years younger.
44 yrs last August for my lady and I. She’s still the best!
Women are hypergamous by nature, always comparing what they have to what they feel they could get.
She may have felt that those times were temporary due to past performance, and or that perhaps she felt at those times she couldn’t do better than you, and or there weren’t really too many better men around where you were.
I don’t take the position that a woman will turn on you, if you are treating them well. It’s been my observation that they will go the extra mile to keep a relationship, but will give up on it and seek another one if the one she has is with a non-responsive male. Once a woman gives up on her man, there is usually no way to repair that with her.
However, it’s been my observation that you won’t get close to her unless she is attracted to you. She won’t give you the time of day unless she thinks you are on her level.
Even at 19, they can be doing it because she would have been doing it in high school. To be clear, since I believe that it’s biologically based, she’s not doing it to be mean but to keep a pathway clear for somebody that she does want.
Dwayne Johnson had a funny bit about Kevin Hart in high school. Imitating Keven Hart, Johnson goes, “Hey girl, hows it going girl?”
The girl has Hart on ignore.
Then Johnson says, “Oh, she didn’t see me. Maybe we will catch up later.”
It was funny, but there is a lot of truth to that.
“Saying hi should not be a social death sentence.“
I’m guessing that what these women consider “harassment” would not have even remotely been considered harassment by earlier generations.
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