The 7 Things Blowing Up Modern Dating
Not so long ago, I heard someone say that the dating market was so messed up in America that getting married 10–15 years ago was like catching the last chopper out of Vietnam before the US left.
Indeed, things have gotten really bad. In fact, that could be a whole article in and of itself, but since that’s not our primary focus, let’s just note a few quick stats. Among men under 30, sixty percent aren’t in a relationship, while sexual intimacy between genders is at a 30-year low. The national marriage rate is close to an all-time low, the average age people get married is an extremely high 30.5 for men and 28.1 for women, while the divorce rate (which fluctuates a lot depending on what stats you believe) seems to be somewhere between 40-58%.
What you’re seeing with those numbers is a completely broken system, although everyone doesn’t realize it because there are plenty of people from previous generations still married, and there are also SOME PEOPLE succeeding in the current system. Still, that’s not good enough. If 50% of people crashed their car every time they got on the freeway or chopped one of their hands off every time they used a lawnmower, it would be treated like a national crisis, not, “I didn’t crash my car or cut my hand off mowing the yard last week, so everything is fine.”
When people try to explain why things are so bad, they typically tend to put all the blame on either men or women, but that’s very simplistic. The truth is that a lot of things have changed in our society with both men and women that are playing into this crisis (and yes, “crisis” is the right word for it). Worse yet, unfortunately, most of them are not that easy to solve on a society-wide scale.
Still, if you want to know why modern dating has gotten so bad, this will explain it.
1) Online dating: Online dating seemed fun and useful when it started, but now that it’s dominating the way people meet each other, it has turned into a curse for many people:
It’s EXTREMELY looks-centric. It encourages people to rule out whole categories of potential matches based on things like income or height. Because most men tend to get very few positive replies, it drains their confidence and causes them to mass email women.
That leads to women getting an inflated sense of their value in the dating market (“Look how many guys are writing me!”) while simultaneously discouraging them from committing to going on dates because they always feel like they have so many other potential matches waiting.
Meanwhile, the highest value men get laid so much that the term, “Golden Penis Syndrome” has become a thing. They feel no pressure to commit to any one woman, while the women they sleep with get the false impression that they can land a better-looking man than they can probably realistically hold onto in a relationship.
On top of all of this, as online dating has increasingly become the way people meet, in-person communication skills have degraded significantly throughout the population. Most men don’t feel comfortable asking out a woman in a coffee shop or at the grocery store because they’ve been conditioned to think the appropriate place to do that is on a dating app. In other words, it feels like dating apps are simultaneously becoming the dominant way people meet each other and one of the biggest impediments to people forming new relationships.
2) The impermanence of marriage: Divorce has become so commonplace in America that it has started to become a serious impediment to marriage for a variety of reasons. If you’re a man, you know that divorce courts in America are HEAVILY biased against you, so do you risk losing HALF of everything you worked for by getting married? Even if you don’t lose “half,” every man reading this has heard lots of stories about men who were hit with ridiculously high child support payments that the mother of his children spent on herself, not the kids.
On the other hand, there are also an awful lot of women who’ve gotten married, gotten divorced, and suddenly they’re back in the dating market in their mid-to-late thirties with a kid or two in tow. Many men, quite understandably, are very reluctant to step into the minefield of being responsible for someone else’s kids. Where does that leave a lot of these women? Locked into being single moms long-term.
Furthermore, both men and women know that even if they believe that marriage is supposed to last a lifetime, there’s no guarantee their partner truly feels the same way. “For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part” sounds really good, especially to the romantics among us, but the actual societal standard far too many Americans adhere to today seems to be something closer to, “Until I get bored, have an opportunity to upgrade, or am just ready for a change.”
3) Obesity: To a large extent, dating is a numbers game. So, what happens if a big percentage of the population unwillingly checks out of the game?
Certainly, there are obese people who date and some people who look much better than others carrying a lot of extra weight, but almost nobody gets more attractive by adding an extra 50 pounds. Put another way, many obese people have trouble getting dates, and in the last 60+ years, their numbers have tripled. So, a lot of people that would otherwise be happily dating right now are left on the outside of the dating market looking in.
4) The death of stigma: There used to be a lot of societal stigmas around different things that led to people getting and staying together. For example, women who had sex outside of marriage, women who had kids out of wedlock, people who waited “too long” to get married, or people who got divorced were openly looked down upon by an awful lot of people.
A lot of people don’t like the idea of being judged and found wanting, but the flip side of these societal stigmas almost entirely going away is that couples are less likely to get together and stay together than they used to be, so those stigmas served an important purpose. If those stigmas were still a thing, a lot more Americans would be dating or married today.
5) There’s just less need for a permanent relationship: Can a man get laid without being in a long-term relationship? If the answer isn’t “yes,” then he can still look at porn. Can women get their sexual itches scratched without being in a long-term relationship or their friends finding out about it? Yes, easily. Dinner followed by some “Netflix and chill” action is one quick stop on Tinder away.
Do men need to have a woman at home to keep their place clean and food cooked? No. Between cleaning services, dishwashers, microwaves, garbage disposals, Uber Eats, and the ever-present restaurants that are everywhere except the deepest parts of the sticks, a man can get by fine without a woman taking care of the house. If a woman has a child out of wedlock, can she support herself and a kid without a man? Yes. Either she can pay for it via a job or get welfare.
In other words, we live in a society where a lot of us WANT TO BE IN A RELATIONSHIP, but don’t NEED TO BE IN A RELATIONSHIP.
6) Men and women aren’t as good at being partners as they used to be: As our society has become softer, more intolerant of hardship and life has generally become more customized to our wants and needs, it has created a society full of people that are considerably more self-centered than previous generations of Americans. This works fine (mostly) if you’re single, but not as well if you’re in a serious relationship.
Any serious relationship is going to require you to frequently take someone else’s needs into consideration and sometimes PUT THEM FIRST. You may have to go places because they like it, do things because it benefits them, and sacrifice some of your money, free time, and attention to make THEM HAPPY, instead of yourself.
You don’t even want to make your man a sandwich? Why would a man put up with you? You want a stay-at-home tradwife? Then, you’re going to have to work enough to make the money that makes it possible for her to stay home.
If you’re not ready to make some sacrifices for the other person, you’re not ready to be in a relationship, and the truth is, a lot of Americans have become too coddled to put someone else first, even some of the time.
7) Broken expectations: There used to be a MAD TV skit about a dating service called “Lowered Expectations”:
Quite frankly, an awful lot of Americans could use that because social media has given them an extremely skewed view of the world.
For example, what is a beautiful woman? On social media, a beautiful woman is often someone with great genetics, who spends an inordinate amount of time in the gym and working on makeup and clothes. Then, she wears cutesy outfits and filters her videos and pictures. Often, the whole purpose of this for these women is to entice male simps into giving them attention or money.
Meanwhile, what men are women constantly exposed to online? The absolute tip of the spear. The billionaires, celebrities, professional athletes, and Instagram models. This gives them the impression that men like that are everywhere, when in actuality, they might go years or even DECADES without meeting a man like that. I thought about that when I saw this video from a woman who said she hasn’t seen an attractive man in two years:
Does this make her a bad person? No, but it will probably make her an unhappy person, and there are millions, maybe even tens of millions of Americans in the same boat, looking for needles in a haystack because social media has falsely convinced them that the haystacks are teeming with needles.
My wife and I are on the tail end of the baby boomers. We met in high school and married while we were in college. We have been married 41 years. We had realistic expectations about marriage.
We are Christian, so we took the vows seriously. We have had some extremely bad times where divorce seemed like the only way out. We did not because we considered our marriage a team endeavor. We had to figure it out.
When we went to college, we did the pay as you go plan. We worked our way through. We worked 20 hours a week during the school year and full time in the summer. We learned to live frugally. It took two extra years to graduate because we paid as we went. We graduated debt free though.
We have learned over the years to ignore the little things that annoy us about each other. We can push each other's buttons because we know each other so well, but we chose to not to and at other times not to take the bait if one pushes the buttons of the other. People have off days and Grace goes a long way to smooth the way.
You are spot on when you say being in a relationship requires you to put the needs of the other person ahead of yours. You negotiate compromises and at times just do what the other wants. I just returned from a shopping trip with my wife. I hate shopping. I went with her because she wanted me to come with her. When she said she wanted to spend some time browsing the sewing section (she loves to sew, especially now that she is retired), I did not complain. She knows I would rather do most anything else than push the cart following her as she spends a long time looking but not buying. We she asked me if I was getting bored, I said of course not, I am enjoying spending time with you. That is the truth, I get enjoyment seeing her do something she enjoys. She has spent hours with me looking through the home improvement stores for what I need for the next project on our house. She is happy that I am fixing things that are important to her but does not care to know the details. She is happy when I installed or fixed something to her liking. I find it relaxing to do these things. It is my hobby.
Being high school teachers, we knew the importance of having a parent at home to supervise the time after school. This is the time that kids with no supervision get into trouble. We were also the home where his friends often came to after school to hang out. They loved getting help with homework and getting fed.
We have seen the toll social media has had on the past couple of generations. Our students have no interpersonal skills. They cannot talk face to face with their teachers, friends, or even parents. It has to be through email or text. It is against our biology as humans have evolved to be social creatures and we do best when we can interact directly than through social media.
I am a biology teacher, so I do teach about sex and reproduction. I have many students who come to me with questions related to sex or the functioning of their bodies. The majority of my students cannot talk to their parents about the basics of changes brought on by puberty.
Twenty years ago, easily half of my students were sexually active. Every year I would have a couple of girls get pregnant. I have not had a pregnant student since times of COVID.
The questions I get now are often on how do I know if I am straight, gay, or bi.
Decades of research has been forgotten; puberty is the stage of sexual development. It is a process that takes years. We have to learn how to be intimate with another human. At the end, well over 90% of people are sexually attracted to the opposite sex. This is the result of evolution promoting procreation to ensure survival of humans. Evolution has promoted heterosexuality because that is how future generations are created.
Social media has greatly skewed the natural development of sexuality. Porn is easily available through the Internet.
Today's teens grow up with an unrealistic expectation about intimate relationships. Every intimate encounter is supposed to last a couple of hours, result in multiple, mind blowing orgasms for the female and the male is supposed to last 2 hours so he can more than satisfy his partner before he orgasms. They are also bombarded with the message that in order to be inclusive and cool, you need to be sexual with people of all genders and orientations. Not doing so means you are judging them as a person.
Finally, sex is focused on all the pleasure one can receive with little consideration for the pleasure and needs of the partner. So, if someone is not meeting my so-called needs or exceptions, it is time to find someone else. If I get bored, it is time to find someone else. I have to always have new experiences to be truly sexually satisfied.
So we have a couple of generations that have no interpersonal skills, are self-centered and believe their needs are more important than everyone elses, and believe they are missing out if they are not engaging in sex with lots of different people. This does not promote stable relationships that are required to raise children in a household with both of their parents. Studies have shown overwhelming that children do best being raised in a household that have both their mother and father.
Males and females are different. It does not mean one is better than the other. Hormones play a major role in the thinking of each gender. But we are willing to throw out over 100 years of solid biological research for the fantasy that men and women are not different and women can have everything.
When I grew up, the double standard was an issue. Rather than promoting less promiscuity among men, society promoted women becoming more promiscuous
Of course this has resulted in the large surge of STD's. The only safe sex to be protected from STD's is within a completely monogomous relationship. My wife and I both laugh that because of health issues do to aging, we have to get yearly lab work to monitor our health. Every year the doctor includes tests for HIV and other STD's. It really is a waste of energy. We are a boring, not with it, couple. We have only been intimate with each other and have no plans to change that. We may be boring to some, but we have a strong relationship that has weathered extremely difficult times and emerged even stronger. And sex is still on the menu.
The problem is ubiquitous and in all industrialized countries.
Even low obesity Japan and South Korea are having the same problem. My oldest son married, and my youngest son has a live-in girlfriend and likely will be married to her. Both of the girls are overweight... not obese. My sons are not, but the point is that I think that might not be as big of an issue in the dating game.
I think all these other things you list are contributors but that come down to one truth.
For the entirety of human evolution females primarily provided the role of family and child raising, and males the provider. In a very short time we have upended that. The disruption of traditional female and male roles in life has caused a lot of relationship confusion. The dating game is already a complex and tentative endeavor for most people, and with all this gender role confusion it become even more complex.
And frankly, I blame a lot of this on the feminist movement because it has brainwashed too many women to think that they can have it all, but yet they really don't even know or admit to what they really want and are not honest or rational about the trade-offs required.
A career woman wanting a husband that will support her career, be willing to stay at home to raise the kids and do the housework, but she also drifts toward a lack of respect for him and is less sexually attracted to him because he is not a provider (warrior). And the changes to the economy where fewer men are in a good economic position to be a provider.
Reading the popular novels by Sarah Maas where the warrior hero is a female that is both feminine and masculine (magic is included of course to supplement her lack of physical strength) but the males she and other females are attracted to are 6' 4" tall, well-hung, muscular warrior protectors of her and she is prone to bad decisions from common emotional regulation struggles that they, the males, are completely tolerant of. And of course, she wants to get married and settle down with children after she safes the world from the dark forces attempting to dominate.
That is the unrealistic fantasy that these career women chase. Males are really no different except by comparison to what has happened to females in industrialized countries.