Students that pursue a bachelors degree in the U.S. traditionally spend four years in high school (graduating at ~18) and four years in university (~22). They often hold part-time jobs and internships, but only start accumulating “real” experience after finishing their education.
This means trading eight years of your life — years where you have minimal debt so far, the most freedom from life obligations you’ll have until retirement, and the near-peak of your youth and health — to a system in exchange for two pieces of paper. In the process, many make very few original and/or valuable contributions.[1] Those diplomas are important keys to accessing traditional middle-class life, but note the opportunity cost here,... (read 2217 more words →)
This is a much more elegant way of making the criticism I was vaguely gesturing at in my comment. It's not an objectively bad post, but I agree it feels something like unwelcoming
It seems to me unlikely that women don't care at all about making their partners happy, and I'd argue that the google search is approximately the same level of evidence as the existence of the "female dating coach" in the original post.
You're definitely right on housework not being the same thing as investing in a relationship. That was my bad.
It feels like women do an equal amount of the work in emotional support / close connection / engagement / etc realms (at least once already in a relationship), but a cursory search on JSTOR hasn't turned up anything useful as far as proof, and I guess it's possible that I've just been very lucky in relationships so far.
So everyone has approximately the same optimal strategy for creating a healthy & stable long-term partnership. But in the process of finding partners, women optimize more for attractiveness, because physical attractiveness matters more as a selection criteria for men, whereas women traditionally are looking more for traits like success and commitment. Is this more correct? I feel like that does address my objection above.
[Edit: from the following quote: "Women who are excellent lovers, girlfriends, and wives presumably pick up these skills in private [...] there is almost a universal pact to prevent any of this from becoming part of mainstream culture." This quote makes it look like you really did mean that... (read more)
I read Putanumonit somewhat frequently and and generally enjoy your writing, so I was surprised how much this essay made me automatically bristle.
As one generic critique: I disagree with the "Standing There Looking Hot is not a Love Language" section, exemplified this quote:
There is almost no advice for a girl on how to actively contribute to a relationship, or that it’s even a goal.
This seems very obviously incorrect. Googling "how to make boyfriend happy" brings up a lot of articles about showing trust, making romantic gestures, giving compliments, doing extra chores, etc. There are also the perennial arguments about how most women do more housework and childwork. It's possible I'm misunderstanding the... (read more)