Can Relationships Survive the Modern World?

“Never before have our expectations of marriage taken on such epic proportions. We still want everything the traditional family was meant to provide—security, children, property, and respectability—but now we also want our partner to love us, to desire us, to be interested in us. We should be best friends, trusted confidants, and passionate lovers to boot. The human imagination has conjured up a new Olympus: that love will remain unconditional, intimacy enthralling, and sex oh-so-exciting, for the long haul, with one person. And the long haul keeps getting longer.” -- The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity by Esther Perel

A while back, I was talking to one of my friends about the pluses and minuses of a relationship. You know, that tension between, “I’ve found my person, awesome,” and “I’ve found my person, oh sh*t!” Because there are huge pluses and minuses to being in a relationship or to being single.

However, things USED TO BE definitely tilted in favor of having a relationship.

We could go on and on with the reasons at different points in history. Being single after 30, having sex outside of marriage, and having kids out of wedlock used to be heavily stigmatized. For most of history, most women’s fondest dream was being a stay-at-home mom. The divorce rate used to be extremely low. Women didn’t work as much as guys, and many of them felt like they NEEDED a man to help pay the bills. Housework also used to be orders of magnitude more difficult before washers, dryers, microwaves, vacuum cleaners, etc, so many men felt like they NEEDED a woman at home to take care of their kids and maintain the house.

We can go on and on with this, but you get the idea. That brings us to an article called, “‘Men seem to make life for women worse’: single US women share the woes of dating in 2025.”

First of all, WHAT A TITLE.

However, guess what? It’s fairly reflective of what women were saying in the article. On the surface, this is an article about women’s dating problems, but there’s something deeper going on, and it has implications for both sexes. These excerpts should give you the gist of it:

Many of the responses were surprisingly similar. The most frequently listed qualities women said they were looking for in a partner were kindness and emotional intelligence, mental and physical health, shared values, ambition and being “hardworking”, financial stability, masculinity and maturity, and a willingness to commit to an equal, monogamous relationship as well as, in many cases, having a family.

One of the phrases respondents used the most was that they were looking for a partner capable of “adding to” or “enhancing” their life – as in, someone who was entirely self-sufficient and capable of adding romance, children or a unique intellectual connection to their lives. A large number of women complained about past suitors who had been “lacking effort” or “unable to keep up”.

...“I’m looking for a man who … has goals and ambition, is intelligent, trustworthy, a provider, supportive, considerate, kind, assertive, masculine, honest, faithful, intentional, has a healthy self-esteem and a sense of humour, loves to go out, and likes fitness. These basic qualities are hard to find these days,” she said.

Although many women said they found being single “lonely”, they also typically said that they would not consider anyone who did not tick these or similar boxes.

Katie, 37, a biotechnology product manager from Wisconsin, said she had felt unable to look for a new partner since her last breakup in 2021.

A partner should ideally have “a robust social life, a focus on holistic health, compassionate and forthright communication skills, and functional independence”, she said.

“I’m happy to compromise on things. The bar is extremely low, and yet it’s rarely cleared.”

Hundreds reported struggling to find a partner with shared values, political views and interests, and a similar education level, with many pointing to a deepening mismatch between men and women in these areas.

Danielle, 29, a public relations professional from Tennessee, said her future partner would need to be “kind, thoughtful, emotionally available, considerate, reliable, and responsible”, but also “college educated”.

To begin with, there are unspoken rules that go beyond what was listed there. Of course, the woman must find the man attractive. He must also make as much as she does, be as educated as her and be her height or taller. In a world where women didn’t typically go to college or have jobs, those marks used to not be very hard to hit. However, today, more women go to college than men, and although men do make more than women on average, never-married single women make roughly 92 to 95% of what unmarried single men make. So, if you’re comparing apples to apples, the difference between what men and women get paid gets fairly small, which means there will be a lot of men disqualified right off the bat for not making enough.

Now, on top of that, per the article, women are also looking for men that…

* Are kind

* Have emotional intelligence

* Are mentally healthy

* Are physically healthy

* Have shared values

* Are ambitious

* Are hardworking

* Are financially stable

* Are masculine

* Are mature

* Are willing to commit to an equal relationship

* Want to have a family

* Are intelligent

* Are trustworthy

* Are providers

* Are supportive

* Are assertive

* Are romantic

* Provide a unique intellectual connection

* Are honest

* Are faithful

* Are intentional

* Have a healthy level of self-esteem

* Have a sense of humor

* Love to go out

* Like fitness

* Are compassionate

* Have forthright communication skills

* Are focused on holistic health

* Have functional independence

* Have the right interests

* Have the right political values

* Are thoughtful

* Are emotionally available

* Are considerate

* Are reliable

* Are responsible

These *** 37 THINGS *** are described as “basic qualities” and an extremely low bar to clear.

In one sense, that’s very true. Some of these, like “shared values” and being “faithful,” are practically essentials for a healthy relationship. Others, like good communication skills, being kind, and being reliable, are also extremely important.

On the other hand, there was only one perfect man on Earth. He was crucified more than 2,000 years ago, and you’re not going to find Him on Tinder. If you want to know what percentage of not just men, but of human beings, universally check ALL of these boxes, it has to be less than 1% of the population.

Now, if we’re being perfectly honest, women’s expectations are far more out of whack than men’s are (read why that is here). That being said, men have issues on this front, too. It just shows up in a different way. When men are content being single or, alternatively, have just given up on dating, they just stop putting in the effort. What does that look like? Well, it looks like this excerpt from ChatGPT:

Now, many men would tell you that women have gotten so picky that there’s no point in making an effort. Women would probably disagree with that, and we’d end up in a “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” scenario.

Rather than do that, let’s go back to another couple of key quotes from the article:

One of the phrases respondents used the most was that they were looking for a partner capable of “adding to” or “enhancing” their life…. Although many women said they found being single “lonely”, they also typically said that they would not consider anyone who did not tick these or similar boxes.

In other words, what we’re really talking about here is the fact that in many people’s eyes, a relationship has gone from a necessity to have a happy life, to a “nice to have.”

Why is that? Well, despite all the complaints you hear, life has gotten pretty comfortable here in America for single people.

Even lower-middle-class people can afford their own space in much of the country. Women can read romance novels, and men can watch pornography as a poor substitute for being with the opposite sex. Need a ride somewhere? Uber can take you. Need something at the store? Amazon will ship directly to your house. Need the yard done, a repair, or the house cleaned? Hire someone to do it. If you start to get bored, streaming, television, podcasts, 100-million-dollar movies, social media, and games will hold your attention. Set the temperature where YOU want it. Eat what YOU want to eat. Decorate your space like YOU like it. Spend your money on what YOU want. Heck, even if you don’t have a relationship, thanks to online dating, you may still even get laid every so often (or as much as you want if you’re female).

In other words, for a lot of Americans, being single has become very COMFORTABLE and PLEASANT. On top of that, being single means you don’t have to compromise with another human being in your living space, split your resources with them, or worry about them tearing your life to pieces one day by asking for a divorce.

So, if that’s how you feel, what do you do?

If you’re a man, maybe you just don’t bother putting in the considerable effort it takes to land a girlfriend. If you’re a woman, you hold out for a rich, charming, male model who’s so amazing you’d practically be a fool to say, “no,” if he wanted you.

Granted, you could look at this as just millions of sad people who will never find true love, never make their own families, and never have the life they dreamed of when they were young. Of course, it’s worse than that because, as relationships crumble, fewer and fewer people will have babies. Over time, especially as that accelerates because of sex robots and AI, it can actually threaten the continued existence of the human race:

You may notice that once you get outside the developing world, almost everywhere that’s even somewhat prosperous has a population that isn’t making the 2.1 kids per couple needed to replace them. We’ve been worrying about nukes, malevolent AI looking to kill us, and deadly plagues ending the human race one day, but maybe modern life will lead to us being coddled and catered to so much that we will no longer even be willing to put in the effort needed to breed.

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