Don't overlook "You're single because of Culture War-driven gender alienation". There is a yawning political chasm between young men and women these days, and politics is increasingly a dealbreaker for many people.
I've thought a lot of the past dating roundups had good advice, but one based primarily on twitter discourse, as this one is, is very bad. Many of these takes reek of mental illness and should not be updated on IMO.
Location is definitely important. I wonder if one should optimize for better gender ratios or whether there is more to consider. I also wonder at what kind of gender ratio is the probability of success most fruitful. Can too much gender imbalance in your favour be detrimental?
Can too much gender imbalance in your favour be detrimental?
Detrimental to you, or to the society at large?
I think the Black community in USA has a similar situation: many men are in jail, which skews the gender ratio on the market; also black men are more likely than black women to date other races. (Information from internet, not sure how reliable it is.) Seems like a paradise for the black men. But the impact on the community is that there are many fatherless families, with all the dysfunction that typically results.
So yeah, the situation could simultaneously be good for you, and bad for the next generation.
If there’s several things this blog endorses, one of them would be going meta.
It’s time. The big picture awaits.
You’re Single Because You Live In The Wrong Place
The most important meta question is location, location, location.
This is the periodic reminder that dating dynamics are very different in different locations, and gender ratios are far more uneven than they appear because a lot of people pair off and aren’t in the pool.
If you are a man seeking to date women, New York City is the place to be.
I mention Fixed Income Guy to mock him, as in why are you spending a lot more money to hang out with 80% dudes and largely finance dudes at that? I mean, sure, if that’s what you want.
You’re Single Because You’re Not Okay Making Less Money Than She Does, You Fool
This viral clip (which is viral for a reason, it’s good fun, wait for it) is another endorsement of New York City being a great place to meet women, as you have a wide variety of great and largely successful women to explore. What doesn’t get mentioned in that clip as a key reason things are so great is that the gender ratio in NYC is highly favorable for men.
The interviewer asks about dating women who make more money than then the man, clearly trying to get the guy to say this is a problem, but he isn’t buying it, instead pointing out that successful women are more thoughtful and plan for the future, and it in no way bothers him at all. Right on, but this sidesteps the other half of problem. The man has to be okay with the fact that he earns less money (and often has less formal education or other status markers), which often men aren’t, and also the woman has to be okay with it too.
That’s the rub. As a man, you might (and should be) be actively all for it (this doesn’t make you less successful, it makes you more successful), but if she’s going to be bothered by it anyway, that’s also your problem. So the key is to figure out quickly if she will actually be fine with it or not.
You’re Single Because You Work Out The Wrong Amount
Being in shape is great. Having muscle can be a game changer. By far the worst plausible amount of exercise is none at all.
But don’t go nuts. For most people that is not a problem, but yes it is very possible to go too far. As a man, as I understand preferences in general, you don’t want to go near actual zero fat and you don’t want to look actively skinny.
For practical purposes, before beats after here. The before guy is already in ordinary, practical good shape. The after guy took things too far, and seems to know it except that he thinks it is good, which makes it worse.
Except one key special case?
You’re Single Because You Don’t Know You Are Hot
I mean, of course there are hot guys who don’t know they’re hot, even more so than there are hot women who don’t know they’re hot.
Being hot is in many ways a lot less valuable if you don’t know you are hot, because you don’t get the confidence and you don’t take advantage of opportunities or feel you’re good enough, but contra Misha I believe it is still very useful. There are even some advantages to not knowing, in that some of the behaviors that happen when someone knows they are hot are often effectively arrogant or entitled or demanding or selfish, none of which helps.
You’re Single Because Age Gap Discourse Is Crazy
This link is almost certainly bait, but things in some spaces have gotten so insane that you can’t be sure people aren’t talking about 28-31 as a problematic age gap. What?
I mean, at minimum it’s good bait, it worked.
I’ve also seen some other examples that look a lot less like bait but still involve obviously totally fine gaps in both directions. As in, I’ve heard talk in places where it definitely wasn’t bait of 24 and 27 being radically different numbers, and I don’t understand why.
Dating Apps Are Bad For Mental Health
Well, maybe. Via Rolf Degen there is a meta-study.
The obvious question is whether this is a causal relationship, or whether it is primarily selection effects. You are on the dating apps for a reason.
My guess is that dating apps are in important ways bad for mental health versus having better ways to find dates, and that sufficiently bad outcomes in terms of ability to find dates or find worthwhile dates is indeed worse for short term reported mental health than not trying. Whereas those who are successful get off the apps or never needed them in the first place.
What is the alternative? If the other choice is ‘do not try’ then for the median user the dating app is probably trading short term pain for chance of long term gain. If the other choice is ‘have uncomfortable real life interactions and make things happen’ and the app is blocking that instead of supplementing or leading into that, then the alternative is plausibly strictly better.
Certainly we could make app variations that are better for mental health controlling for outcomes, and also that give people better outcomes. Solving for the equilibrium, to get people to actually use those apps, is the difficult part, since people will value convenience and ease of use and low cost and avoiding trivial inconveniences dramatically more than they should, and if enough especially women effectively insist on the swiping experience it’s hard to escape from that.
You’re Single Because You Listened To E-Girl Advice
I think this is importantly wrong for both e-girls and also VCs?
If she could be an E-Girl or she could date, what makes you think she would choose to date? What makes you think she isn’t also dating?
Similarly, if you could be a VC or a startup founder, it’s not that suspicious that you would choose VC. At this point in my life I would definitely prefer VC over founder. I don’t want to go through founder mode again. I am totally prepared to eat my words if I end up doing it anyway, and if I’m in then I’m in, but I don’t want to be in.
You’re Single Because You Didn’t Hire Blaine Anderson
Division of labor, like dudes and also women, rocks. Matchmakers should be much more of a thing than they are. There is a profound market failure, a failure of the services to be good versions of themselves, or both.
I cannot in any way vouch for the effectiveness of Blaine Anderson’s matchmaking service. I can however vouch for her Twitter feed having consistently insightful and fun things to say. Her price range is ‘usually less than $50k’ and in exchange she goes out and sources to fit your particular criteria (which she will sometimes push back on).
You can also sign up (for free) to be a woman she reached out to for matches, on first principles being on these lists seems to be a good time investment?
There’s a lot of self-promotion, no question, but there are hard-to-fake signals that she is the real version of the thing in various ways, facing reality as it is, looking at the data and actually trying to get good results.
Also this one makes a good case:
One thing that blows my mind is she tells stories where the guy will say ‘get me a date with this specific micro-famous woman’ and she (at least sometimes) goes out and makes that happen. The guys asking this look damn good on paper, which no doubt is a lot of why this can sometimes work, but still, hot damn.
You’re Single Because You Think Zizek Mocked Date Me Docs
That’s a funny post, and does an excellent job of mocking those who would make fun of date me docs and other actually intentional stances. Such magnificent flailing.
And thus, you have failed to look at the Date Me doc of Olga Yakimenko.
You’re Still Single Because You Don’t Appreciate Relationships
Here, in addition to the intended lede, we have at least 40% of respondents having been in a relationship for fully 8 years.
If anything these results seem potentially ‘too good,’ implying that couples are breaking up over this more than they probably should over the longer term.
One must also note that this is an Aella survey, so some of these relationships will be poly or open, but even accounting for that this says a lot. Selection effects are a lot of this, but that’s part of the point.
Perhaps you especially don’t appreciate marriage.
Raffi Grinberg writes that marriage is sexy, both figuratively that married couples are happier and make more money and have more kids and die less often and all that, and also that they have more sex (even if you only count with each other). And that the lifetime divorce rate is actually only 30% not 50%, average age of marriage is 29 and average first child is 28, despite the implicit cultural message that those numbers are in the 30s.
And yet he says Hollywood is sending us the opposite message. To which I’d say, sometimes, but I wouldn’t oversell this. Yes, in the How I Met Your Mother episode he talks about Barney keeps making fun of Marshall for being married, but the show clearly thinks that Marshall marrying Lily is sexy and awesome and great for both of them throughout and that Barney is ultimately wrong, and also the whole show is Ted trying to meet his wife and mother of his children.
You’re Not Single And Haven’t Been For a While
Here’s another backdoor ‘are you in a relationship’ poll, 78% of monogamous heterosexual men reported having a partner for longer than a year.
On the question itself, it’s not actually possible, since you’ll know and you can’t be sure you won’t tell them, and you’ll almost certainly act differently even if they never suspect or figure it out. One could even say ‘the only way to have 100% certainty they’ll never find out is if they’re dead, so absolutely not.’
Literal ‘any woman you wanted’ with zero risk of discovery is a stupidly tempting offer. If you treat this in the spirit it was presumably intended, instead, and everyone was being fully honest including with themselves and fully understood what was on offer (as in literally whoever you’d most want), presumably the ratio would be a lot higher.
Unless, of course, the way you know your partner will never find out is that your partner (or you and the woman you’d have the affair with) would be dead, in which case yeah bad deal, but that’s presumably not this meant. mnnn oo
How do we know this? Well, one big data point is this next poll.
You Are Still Single As Evidenced By Would
Um, guys, are almost none of you in a monogamous relationship? And even if you are single there’s also the issue of risking the friendship. What are you all thinking?
Only 14% of men attracted to women answering this didn’t have at least one female friend they would have a one night stand with? Presumably many of the others don’t have the right female friend. Which means substantially more than 86% of them are not, for the most important practical purpose, in a monogamous relationship?
Remember that other poll from Aella above, that showed at least 40% of people were in 8+ year relationships? And the one from Alice that 78% of herero men were in a 1+ year nominally monogamous relationship? Rut roh.
Then on top of that, a majority are willing to do this with a majority of their female friends, not only that one they have that crush on.
It doesn’t mean these people don’t think they’re in relationships. As we’ve seen, they very much do think this. They might even be right. But don’t tempt them.
You’re Single Because You Lack Motivation
Paper reminds us there is a 34 points gap (+34 versus +0) in net happiness for married versus unmarried people, with cohabitation only worth 10 points, and analyzes how this premium varies (slightly) by demographics.
As the paper readily admits this tells us essentially nothing about what makes someone happy, because the whole thing is unfixibly confounded to hell. Happier, healthier and more successful people have an easier time getting married, and being unhappy leads to divorce. Both effects are epic in size.
We do know the overall situation over a 50+ year time horizon is not good news, because while marrieds are slightly happier, the unmarrieds are somewhat less happy and more importantly are a larger percent of the population.
Beyond that, I don’t know what to do with all these graphs or how to cash it out in useful advice. One might say ‘be the type of person who gets married,’ perhaps.
You’re Single Because Of Robin Hanson
As usual, never stop Robin Hansoning.
This has to be true, because math.
It’s less true than it appears, because the relations of ‘main characters’ feel special to them the same as everyone else’s feel special. You could totally make a romantic comedy based on what I experienced, and you could also totally have me as a background character in someone else’s romantic comedy, although probably I’d be in a different genre entirely.
To you, it will feel more like that of the special main characters, except that you don’t need to have a false crisis in the third act.
You’re Single Because You Did This Instead Of Going To Therapy
Don’t be whoever Casy Means is being here. Or do, it’s not like it did that much harm, as long as you don’t expect any of it to do anything.
The Lighter Side
We wish everyone involved the best.
Try harder.
A new app lets you pay to crash someone’s wedding and be a legit guest, cost is about $100-$150 per guest. This seems low, given the cost to have a wedding worth crashing, and given you get a full meal, plus buffet and open bar, a unique experience and a reasonable amount of opportunity.
What Jacob learned about sex at the rationalist bloggers’ conference, essentially that with zero integrity you get fuckbois and pickup artists, and when you do the opposite and get sufficiently high integrity and optimize for trust and honesty way above normal levels you get something magical and suddenly many good things are possible.
Here’s another fun bit: