Posted on 08/25/2026 3:02:55 PM PDT by Angelino97
Have you found a girlfriend yet, young man? I ask because people are pairing off at the lowest rates in modern history.
While many argue over the causes, everyone—both left and right—agrees on the culprit: men. The internet is awash in articles positing some variation of the title “Where have all the good men gone?”
On the left, one of the most prominent works on this question is the New York Times’ essay “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back” by Rachel Drucker. Leftists never consider the mess that is the modern dating world—or their role in creating it—and how it might incentivize the “good men” to go their own way.
Consider the #MeToo movement. After watching baseless accusations destroy the lives of countless powerful men, modest guys stopped pursuing women. When the media, divorce courts, and prospective employers decided to #BelieveAllWomen, young males afflicted by nothing worse than shyness backed off, because they didn’t want to become the object of social ridicule or make women uncomfortable. Courtship died.
Certainly, there are bad men out there, but rather than consider them an outlier, the left has encouraged young women to take a negative view of men in general.
While many establishment conservatives frame the issue differently, they agree that the courtship crisis is men’s fault. Fox News darling Tomi Lahren, for example, insists that “the pickings are slim” for young women seeking quality masculine men who have their affairs in order.
Attributing blame to a failure of personal responsibility on the part of men is, however, only a half-truth. Men are leaving dating behind because they no longer believe it’s possible to achieve what their fathers and grandfathers did.
Social conservatives love to blame pornography, but they get cause and effect backward. Porn does not cause men to retreat from dating; modern dating causes men to retreat into porn.
After realizing they were playing a losing game, a good many men stopped dating. They made the calculation that porn was the best they were going to get. You can think that ignoble—I certainly do—but they’ve come by that conclusion honestly. Of course, the same can be said of all the other petty vices our young men use to while away their days—video games, online trolling, doomscrolling, anonymous posting on 4chan, et cetera.
The underemployed online drifter will not square up if he doesn’t think his life is going to materially improve as a result. He thinks that, regardless of his effort, he will likely never meet someone who loves him back. Even if he could, he will likely never have the means to provide for her, or own a house, or raise a family. While not commendable, it is understandable that he throws up his hands and decides he might as well take what pleasure he can.
So, young man, I don’t blame you for checking out. I really don’t. But why is this happening now?
Modernity has taken from men the roadmap to demonstrate excellence. Sexual egalitarianism has set men and women on the same social level. Indeed, as universities and corporations increasingly favor women in admissions and hiring, women may soon be looking down at men on the social hierarchy.
But women are not attracted to men below them or on equal footing; they prefer men above them, as Jordan Peterson has noted. As a result, when the average woman assesses the average man, she finds him to have neither greater earning potential nor higher status, and therefore she finds him lacking.
And yet, modernity happened; women have been liberated, and turning back the clock is neither feasible nor desirable. Women are not giving up the vote or leaving the workplace anytime soon.
So, what then? On a societal level, that’s a good question that better minds than mine have tried and failed to grapple with. Individually, however, there is something I can recommend to every young, unmarried man: Get up!
Sure, the “me too” movement threatens you; both conservatives and progressives blame you for everything; the economy isn’t what it was in the 1950s; all sorts of new obstacles stand in your way. But you can—and should—view these as obstacles to overcome. Sure, your modest income does not elevate you within the social hierarchy and provide the default path to marriage and family that your grandfather had, but you can—and should—make your own path.
You can demonstrate excellence in an art—call it a hobby, if you like. Women have always been drawn to great artists—painters, composers, musicians, sculptors, architects, and craftsmen. Of course, women gravitate to some arts more than others (I find swing dancing to have strong female appeal). Excellence within an art reveals an ability to order things well, which is a necessary quality of leadership—and women seek men who can lead.
A great many men will not “make it.” They will wither away into nothing and might as well have never existed. Will you be one of them? Young man, you know that won’t do.
As Shakespeare says through Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, “The world must be peopled.” You have a duty to civilization to get up. No, actually, don’t do it for civilization. That puts the cart before the horse. Civilization is the byproduct of men who get up and achieve. Do you aspire to be such a man? Then screw what people think, screw your feelings, your ego, your pride.
Make your own path, pursue excellence, and—for goodness’ sake—go talk to her!
Your advice boils down to: "Be a member of the top 10%!"
But what are the other 90% of all men supposed to do?
Regards,
There, fixed it for you!
Regards,
True! Modern women don't want to bother selecting for a young man with "good prospects" or "potential," and then work together with him to build a life!
Modern women want to wait at the finish line and ensnare the winners.
Regards,
Notice the article conveniently avoids the real problem, “Have you found a boyfriend yet, young woman?”
He should do more than study just a broad. He should study lots of broads.
Regards,
What was his wife doing in Poland?
The more I hear about Poland, I think you might be smart to send your kid there. They’ve had enough of the global woke nonsense, and illegals invading the country.
Of course, those kinds of things are only as good as the people and party in power. Same as here, i.e., the next election could result in reversal of everything positive.
I don't see the problem! The "girl-boss" woman should be able to provide all of that!
Regards,
“The way they talk about women, why do they think any normal woman would want anything to do with them???”
Perhaps this forum is the outlet for the rest of their otherwise undistinguished lives. Beating women makes some men feel powerful.
Conservative men tend to be more honest, and willing to speak uncomfortable truths.
Regards,
” that tells us something about the quality of those idealized unions of yesteryear.” Yes I agree but not the way you intended. Did you even consider the input received from the mother? The negative thought about the father and the feminist views of the mother when the father was blindly at work providing foe the family?
Being under six feet does not stop a man from standing tall; it’s values that does that. Cheers, SS!
Let’s see...I got out of the Army, now about 24 and with GI Bill, went back to college to learn comp sci in CA. 6’2” but drove an old car, did not have much money, and was about 5 years older than the college girls there at the University. Got no interest, even when in the dorm...American white girls viewed me as too old.
Graduated, got an entry level computer prgmming job, so not high pay. But got promotions. Wanted a serious, wife-potential girl friend. Went to church singles groups, video dating, aerobics (no dates from the ladies but developed a liking for aerobics), bar hopping, etc. Nothing.
Shared a house with a tall, blond, body builder who was a used car salesman and a charming talker who had girls chase him (he also had a hot sports car). Dude had everything but any depth to his personality. Character was as shallow as a kiddie wading pool, but did he ever score the chicks.
I would have been glad to have any of his cast-offs. But no, I was a computer nerd. Chicks wanted the exciting guys.
After about 11 years of getting nowhere except with some interest from women (I’m mid-30’s by now), except a real fattie, one nice but with an laundry list of medical issues and one scammer, got nowhere.
Finally, via a Chinese coworker’s Mom’s friend, I got a pen pal in China. Young Chinese farm girl in a tiny rice farming village out in the sticks.
Went there, met, married. Brought her back (visa’s were faster then). I no Chinese. She no English. She about 20 years younger. Marriage was a blooming success. About 36 years now into a great marriage, two great kids, helped the rest of her family come to here. All of them hard workers and successful and good citizens.
Worked out very good.
Same with us. We had literally nothing when we got married. We had to cancel the wedding reception hall because I had lost my job. Reception was in the church basement.
We built our lives together and the kids were part of the building process.
One of ours is getting married in a couple weeks. He’s far more financially stable and our future DIL is a great girl. Very well rounded and not a gold digger at all.
It was the ideal in the movies. It was not portrayed as "standard," as something a girl had a "right to expect."
In the old days, a young girl (17-22) in small-town America had about 30 to 50 men in her immediate vicinity. They were the ones "on her radar" - the guys she had grown up with in the neighborhood, gone to church with, the ones who were two or three years ahead of her by the time of high school graduation, about whom she could share info with her girlfriends, whom her girlfriends could "vet" - and about whom she could obtain approval from her girlfriends. This is an important process known as "pre-selection." It was a transparent, "high-information" environment / market.
All of these factors eased vetting and favored assortative mating (9s became engaged with 9s; 8s with 8s; etc.).
When a 20-year-old woman "set her sights" on a, say, 23-year-old man - she already had easy access to all the information she needed to make an informed decision. In the small-town America of the 1950s, a 23-year-old man's destiny was already set for life, and apparent to all: Bachelor #1 was a gas station attendant, the son of a ne'er-do-well; he would be, at best, a gas station attendant for the rest of his life. He had just come back from college with a degree in economics, and is now working as a bank officer; he would, in all likelihood, gradually move up the hierarchy and be a vice-president of the bank in his late 30s; but is he reliable? Well, ask his pastor! Or ask your father, who is the president of the local Kiwanis Club, and who knows his father. Probably no need to ask your father, young lady: He's already explained to you that the father is three months in arrears with his club membership dues, has a drinking problem, and that his son seems to have inherited that drinking problem.
Today's dating market is, in contrast, far less transparent. It is a low-information market - but one flooded with candidates from even three thousand miles away (via the dating apps). And even if she doesn't seriously entertain engaging in a serious relationship with someone who lives three thousand miles away - in her Reptile Brain (limbic system), she will still grade any local candidate based on the guy living on the opposite coast. (Men are more realistic in this respect: We may drool after the pin-up model - but we know very well that we'll never have her, and will be perfectly content to marry the Plain Jane from our local dating pool, because we are willing to accept a girl who fulfills 75% of our Wish List.) As a result: Assortative mating goes out the window, and you wind up with the top 80% of all women seriously thinking that they could ensnare the top 20% of all men. (They delude themselves into thinking that, "I was able to sleep with him = I can get him to marry me.")
By the time she reaches her late-20s, and has a double-digit notch-count, her pair-bonding synapses have been burnt out (men aren't troubled by that phenomenon: Your typical 16-old-boy has already, in his mind, slept with hundreds of women - and yet can still pair-bond quite nicely, thank you!).
Regards,
Once external factors that constrained women's behavior were removed or bypassed, women, with the political and social freedoms men gave them, showed their true nature which involves hypergamy and monkey-branching. Technology allowed them to reach further for such hypergamy and monkey-branching than her grandmother could in a small town.
American men gave women political and social freedom such as never seen before in human history. Women could do anything. An inordinate number of them chose degeneracy, whoring, Socialism, single-motherhood, children with multiple fathers, and showing their naked bodies on the internet.
Research shows that men do get their bonding receptors burned out as well, but once they become bonded it can heal. It just takes time. I don’t know if a woman can go through the same healing or level of healing if she finally finds a husband.
It seems that women create the ideal man from composites of whom she has slept with and she compare potential mates with this composite. That’s why she thinks she is settling when she marries.
Dunno. He met her there, brought her back here, married her and by now, she’s a US Citizen, or should be. As I recall, she has a Master’s Degree, so he probably met her a few years after she finished her studies.
The two most important words in your post.
1) "Work": Building a marriage, a family, a life is not easy. It's truly WORK. There are always problems of all sorts; they must be overcome. That requires dedication, self-sacrifice, delayed gratification, doing right when doing wrong would seem easier.
2) "Together": Both husband and wife must do the work. They must do the work in harmony with each other ... even when harmony seems hard to find. They must work with agreed-upon purpose, toward agreed-upon goals. They must work as partners in an enterprise that's bigger than either of them. There is no longer "you" and "me"; there is "US".
To present XXI Century (and much of XX Century) 'first-world' popular culture, these two concepts are anathema ...
True! Modern women don't want to bother selecting for a young man with "good prospects" or "potential," and then work together with him to build a life!
False! Modern women settle for men who are good providers. And even then, only when they're in their 30s.
Modern women spend their 20s partying, traveling, and enjoying bad boys, rich or poor.
Then when they're in their 30s and unmarried, modern women begin worrying about their biological clock, and are ready to settle with a Beta Provider. Who they will quietly resent for not being their first choice.
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