Posted on 11/16/2013 5:37:57 AM PST by ClaytonP
One of the more common refrains in the “Where have all of the good men gone!” lament is men’s increasing unwillingness to court women the way women expect to be courted. This is almost always framed as either a great mystery or a case of weak men screwing up feminism (or both).
Examples of this concern abound, from Aunt Haley’s last three posts, to the divorced single mother who found out men weren’t willing to spend very much to court her, to the woman in Vox’s recent post lamenting that her 59 year old friend was only offered half a sandwich by a recent date. Commenter Tom H weighed in with the same concern the other day about his two 30ish career women daughters who struggle to find men who will date them without “pushing for sex”.
How did we get here?
To better understand why men are withdrawing from courtship we need to consider the roles men and women play in the process and how the sexual revolution has impacted the landscape. Men foot the searching costs in the marriage and sexual marketplace (MMP & SMP). This means bearing most of the risk of rejection and expending the bulk of the resources to facilitate the process of meeting and getting to know one another. As the ones who bear the costs of courtship, men have a strong incentive to minimize the number of women they court and the overall duration of time spent in the process. However, as the consumers of courtship, women have an incentive to draw the process out as long as possible and to receive courtship from as many men as possible.
Over the last few decades the expectation that men bear the bulk of the costs and risks of courtship has remained relatively constant, but the time period women expect to be courted has expanded dramatically.
As recently as 1980, the median age of marriage for women in the US was 22. By 2011 this was 26.5, but this signifigantly understates the nature of the change since it doesn’t account for the rapidly expanding group of 30 something women who haven’t been able to marry. A full 25% of all US White 30-34 year old women have yet to marry, and these aging would be brides are the loudest voices complaining about the lack of courtship.
The problem with women’s complaints about courtship is easier to understand if you consider the needs of the man. He needs to manage risk vs reward. When courting, there are two fundamental risks. These are the risk of wasting resources on the wrong women, and the risk of rejection harming the man’s reputation/MMV.
Risk of wasting resources on the wrong women.
There are three subcategories of resource risk:
Risk of rejection harming the man’s reputation/MMV.
This basic risk can in turn be broken down into two subcategories:
For the ladies reading who might be offended at this, I’ll frame it differently. Picture your ideal husband. Do you want him to propose to you after having been rejected by numerous other women? Of course not. You don’t want to feel like the consolation prize, and you don’t wan’t to marry a man whom other women are known to have rejected. In order to avoid this, the man you ultimately marry must be careful with how freely he expresses interest in women who aren’t signaling an interest in him.
On the question of wasting resources, do you want your future husband to divide his courtship resources between you and many other women? Or do you want all of his available courtship investment to be devoted solely to you?
What does a woman’s age have to do with courtship?
For a man who is managing the risks of courtship outlined above, the age of a woman is very important. The older a woman is, the more likely it is that she is very picky and/or not seriously looking for a husband. Older women also are less attractive from a courtship perspective because they have used up more of their most attractive/fertile years, and while their attractiveness for marriage has declined their expectations for courtship have only increased. In short, the older a woman gets the worse a bet she becomes (on average) when it comes to courting her.
There is another impact of women increasing the time period they expect courtship, and this is on men’s willingness to court younger women. Consider the 25% of current early thirties White women who still haven’t married; unless they are terminally unattractive an awful lot of courtship has almost certainly been wasted on them. They aren’t just bad bets for courtship today, but (in retrospect) they clearly were bad bets for courtship for the last 15 years. Even more telling, just shy of half of all late twenties White women have never married, which means five years ago 50% of early twenties White women were a complete and total waste of traditional courtship risk and resources. Given the direction of the trends over the last five years, the risk is even higher today.
Put simply, the extended delay of marriage by women has placed marriage minded men in a dilemma; older women are (generally speaking) known bad bets for courtship, but half of early twenties women are also poor bets for courtship. And this is before the man in question starts to consider which of the good bets for courtship (in general) would be a good bet for him personally to court.
It is also worth noting that it isn’t just in delaying marriage that women are extending the period of expected courtship. Women are also driving our divorce revolution, and even with a track record of being the worst possible courtship risk (the kind who marries and then gets unhaaaapy) they still expect to be courted all over again.
The logical adjustment by men.
There are only two logical ways men can respond to women’s extension of courtship. The first logical choice is to recognize that these women are debasing marriage, and decide to “court” for sex and not marriage. For most late teens and early twenties women, this is the only form of courtship which makes sense. This is true in even higher percentages for women in their late twenties or higher. For women looking to soak up courtship in today’s hookup culture there is another serious problem; when courting for sex it is in a man’s best interest to greatly limit the amount of resources he spends before getting sex from a woman. This allows him to cast a wide net while keeping his expenditures down. Ironically, as we have learned from Game a man’s chances of receiving sex from a woman are actually higher when practicing the skittles method of courtship (crass site warning).
But while “courting” for sex is a logical choice, it is not a moral choice, and we still do see men courting for marriage. For these men, having a fairly low age cutoff makes a great deal of sense. A woman in her late twenties who claims to be serious about traditional marriage is far less believable and attractive than a woman who indicates the same thing in her late teens or early twenties. Admittedly few women in their early twenties are believably signaling an interest in marrying soon, but this is a plus when trying to minimize spreading courtship resources around too freely. There are of course a number of other markers a man should consider when determining if a woman is a good bet for marriage, which will narrow the field down further. Making things worse for women looking to soak up “traditional” courtship, the logical strategy for traditional courtship isn’t that different than the strategy for men courting for sex; logically speaking, traditional men should keep courtship expenditure to a minimum until a woman has indicated a fairly strong interest in marrying him. Given the large numbers of women not actually interested in marrying at any given time and the opportunity cost of focusing on a non serious candidate, traditional men will do best to greatly limit their courtship efforts and expenditure until around the time of an engagement, and if they are smart they will also insist on keeping the length of the engagement as short as logistically possible.
He should have only spent $40 per date. And when he took her to dinner she could have anything she wanted while he had the Caeser salad and a glass of water.
Spot on. My wife and I met each other while in high school. She was my date on my Senior Prom, I was her date for her Junior and Senior prom. We dated on and off for six years before marrying. I was 23, she was 22.
Twenty-seven years later we have two fantastic sons who are the joys of our lives and are planning our early retirement together.
I was very fortunate to meet her when I did. In many ways we "grew up together" and share the same views on marriage, politics, finances and life. (Note: I cannot emphasize how important agreeing on FINANCES is!)
Many of our friends are married, divorced, married again, divorced again and in some cases getting ready to tie the not a third time. My friends often ask me what makes our marriage successful. My answer is simple: Marriage is the art of compromise. If one goes into it thinking they'll always get what they want out of it, they're destined to fail. Marriage is less about the individual and more about the other person.
Yes it's important that we (men) are happy in our marriages. What many men fail to figure out is that the way to be happy is to keep your wife happy. Find what "pushes her buttons" in a good way and keep pushing them. For my wife it's always the little things that make a big difference to her. I'll empty out the dishwasher and put dishes away. I'll clear the table after dinner. I always open doors for her and when we go out for dinner (just the two of us) the cellphone stays in the car. She has my absolute undivided attention the entire time.
Been that way for 27 years.
This Young Woman Scored $1,200 A Month In Fancy Dinners Using Match.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/confessions-how-she-made-1200-a-month-using-matchcom-2011-11
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/woman-dates-free-dinner-match-15112192
(video at link)
A very good reason why men should not spend more than $40 on a date.
My wife has said for years that there's nothing sexier than a man doing the dishes.
Again, the trick is for both of you to do unsolicited things for one another without expectation of quid pro quo. You do things out of love, not as some kind of barter transaction.
Several good songs on this subject:
Fat Women in Trailers;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3YwBmNLc
Tell Her Lies and Feed her Candy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_B0DTSD7IY
Put Another Log on the Fire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wO_6wMRS7A
Dang! That is some good music!
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
All those things you mention; hair, make up, nails are used in the normal course of being a woman. When you go to work, wherever, you spend money to look good. This is a daily ritual for women. It has nothing to do with courtship or dating.
Only in the dating and courtship arenas does is the man supposed to pay the entire tab.
Admit it, you get off easy when it comes to the romance game. You just have to show up, sit there and receive the bennies.
Although I disagree with Tom Leykis on many of his opinions he basically says it’s time for men to get take their testicles back and be the man.
Leykis 101 rules of dating
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Leykis%20101
http://blowmeuptom.com/leykis101/
“And man’s best friend is a dog.
Put your dog and your girlfriend/wife in the trunk of your car. Come back an hour later. Who’s happy to see you...?”
:) - you are killing me - Coffee up my nose - too funny
Where is/was your son looking for women to date? I know dozens of girls/women up to early-30s (friends of my daughter) who don’t have a child and who’ve never had an abortion.
Exactly correct.
I'd read an article somewhere online in the last few weeks titled something along the lines "Man finds out marriage is not for him." The author of the article penned it from the perspective of what he expected to get out of marriage. As he discovered, his marriage wasn't about "him" it was about loving the other person in the marriage enough to want to see them happy.
At the end of the day, isn't that really what it's all about - loving the other person enough to want to see them happy and doing all we can to make that so?
Surely there are examples of unrequited love too, and those types of one-way relationships where a husband or wife gives all while the other does nothing but take. Those relationships are destined to fail.
But a man who loves his wife like Christ loves his church? That's going to be a blessed marriage.
There is no mystery as to why there is a breakdown of marriage and family in this country.
Patton,
You seriously need help, acting like a doormat and emotional tampon for any woman is the quickest way to the “friend zone” you’ll ever see. Would suggest that you stop doing what is sure to kill any attraction a woman may have for you and start acting like a man instead of a personal servant. You have probably gotten a lot of bad advice (probably from women who are the last ones you want to ask about that kind of thing) on how to court a woman. Forget all that you’ve been taught by your mother, the people in church and most every media outlet as they are all so very WRONG. Go to the web page this article came from and start learning, follow the links and it will open your eyes.
I am never lonely. I spent much of my life either married or dating, but never alone. I’ve been lonlier when I lived with someone.
_________________________________________
Exactly - - That’s what I meant - same here. Internet doesn’t translate too well.
You may be making two invalid assumptions: (1) that women themselves really know what they want, and (2) that they would honestly tell you.
Go visit the "skittles" link in the article.
The average woman has little use for "nice guys". Despite anything she says, she's biologically hard-wired to look for somebody who will protect and provide for her and her kids. A "nice guy" who can be pushed around by her, is of far less value than the SOB who will not accept being pushed around by anybody. The most-valued guy is the one who lots of women want (the "alpha male"), and the alpha male generally has the attitude of "if you don't treat me nicely, I can immediately replace you with another woman"
No, that is the standard for women out and about because they go through the cost and bother for courtship reasons.
The time savings of being a man is worth far more than a few dinners and movie tickets.
Mine is even shorter; “Don’t” :)
Like I said-once you figure out the game and that they are genetically nuts, It makes life easier.
No matter how wonderful she may be, the chaos is coming. No logic, no warning. Don’t try to make sense of it, no one ever will. It is simply a force of nature that cannot be changed.
I would think that just telling your story probably gets women interested in you........
If you want commitment, and after six months she isn't talking about the future, then it's time to move on. If, after a year, you are not both sure enough to be willing to set a date, then it's time to move on.
I have two 35 year-old plus sons, neither of whom are married or in a serious relationship, who have both explained this phenomenon to me, although not as eloquently as this article has.
Even my own blissful 40 year marriage has seemingly had no influence on their thinking.
But the more I see of today’s materialistic, high-maintenance women, the more I agree with their assessment that most women today aren’t worth the trouble.
You sound like a nice guy. But dating and courtship are not marriage. You should hold back your heart until a woman makes a commitment. And if she doesn’t make a commitment in, say, 18 months, move on. Do not fall totally in love until after marriage. It’s like business. Do not work on spec.
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