Men afraid of commitment?

Off Topic
1061

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
The things mentioned in your first paragraph are not mutually exclusive. I think successful men in their 30s have a wide range of choices, and I think women who are successful have no motivation to accept anything less than what they want in a partner. Sex is easy to obtain. I think a successful male looking to settle down is looking for a woman who will focus on him and nurture and caretake the home and family. Successful women know that’s not likely to happen for them, and it’s weird when it does, anyway.

I remember one of my (gay male) social work professors telling us we’d all marry doctors. That’s not far off. My career is easily made secondary to someone else’s, and my nature matches it. Not so some of my friends, who are used to command roles. Are they cooking and cleaning for someone they can as easily live without? However, I do think the decline in available men for first marriages catches many successful women by surprise.

As for your second paragraph, I think men do the same thing, don’t they? “Overweight, self-centered slob seeks young, hot woman for ego boost and substandard sex.”
[/quote]

I think the two arguments are mutually exclusive. The argument in the article has two parts: (1) that these women chose careers and casual sex with alpha males over hearth and home in their 20s, (2) because of this, men overlooked in their 20s now have the advantage. Now, you can argue (1) + (3) and these women are still picky and thus have chosen a life of loneliness. But you can’t have (2) + (3), because that’s having it both ways; either women have decided to lower their standards or they haven’t. And the introductory evidence gives more weight to (3) than to (2). Now, you can argue that (2) and (3) aren’t mutually exclusive because there is some portion of women who will lower their standards, and these older men now find themselves able to date inside of their cohort and younger, but then you run afoul of (1), because (1) states that younger women are having sex with alpha males, not simply “older men.” So you’d have to explain that, well, there’s a portion of those younger women who are actually quite reasonable, and even though there weren’t enough of them to go around when these guys were in their 20s, there is somehow enough now that the men are older. And I’d want to see at least some sort of explanation for why and how this might be. As it is, the theory of the article is just incoherent.

I disagree that sex is easy for most men to obtain.

I completely agree that men do the same thing. My point wasn’t to single women out for bad behavior, but to say that if there is some sort of shift in attitude when women hit their 30s, I haven’t seen it.

1062

[quote]nephorm wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
The things mentioned in your first paragraph are not mutually exclusive. I think successful men in their 30s have a wide range of choices, and I think women who are successful have no motivation to accept anything less than what they want in a partner. Sex is easy to obtain. I think a successful male looking to settle down is looking for a woman who will focus on him and nurture and caretake the home and family. Successful women know that’s not likely to happen for them, and it’s weird when it does, anyway.

I remember one of my (gay male) social work professors telling us we’d all marry doctors. That’s not far off. My career is easily made secondary to someone else’s, and my nature matches it. Not so some of my friends, who are used to command roles. Are they cooking and cleaning for someone they can as easily live without? However, I do think the decline in available men for first marriages catches many successful women by surprise.

As for your second paragraph, I think men do the same thing, don’t they? “Overweight, self-centered slob seeks young, hot woman for ego boost and substandard sex.”
[/quote]

I think the two arguments are mutually exclusive. The argument in the article has two parts: (1) that these women chose careers and casual sex with alpha males over hearth and home in their 20s, (2) because of this, men overlooked in their 20s now have the advantage. Now, you can argue (1) + (3) and these women are still picky and thus have chosen a life of loneliness. But you can’t have (2) + (3), because that’s having it both ways; either women have decided to lower their standards or they haven’t. And the introductory evidence gives more weight to (3) than to (2). Now, you can argue that (2) and (3) aren’t mutually exclusive because there is some portion of women who will lower their standards, and these older men are now find themselves able to date inside of their cohort and younger, but then you run afoul of (1), because (1) states that younger women are having sex with alpha males, not simply “older men.” So you’d have to explain that, well, there’s a portion of those younger women who are actually quite reasonable, and even though there weren’t enough of them to go around when these guys were in their 20s, there is somehow enough now that they are older. And I’d want to see at least some sort of explanation for why and how this might be. As it is, the theory of the article is just incoherent.

I disagree that sex is easy for most men to obtain.

I completely agree that men do the same thing. My point wasn’t to single women out for bad behavior, but to say that if there is some sort of shift in attitude when women hit their 30s, I haven’t seen it.[/quote]

I meant that sex is easy for women to obtain regardless of age, reducing the motivation to attach to men they feel are inferior.

As for the rest, I have no idea. I would think if the women in their thirties decide to lower their standards it would be by going for men who are older still.

Going back to the sex, I don’t know if I believe that men can’t get it easily; I think this is another instance of people choosing to do without rather than lower standards. I know a lot of women who will have sex with men indiscriminately if they bring even a reasonable amount of potential to the table (potential for a relationship, potential for an upward socioeconomic shift). I think many men would rather wait for someone they find genuinely desirable.

High standards are found on both sides of the aisle and at all ages. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, except in cases where it breeds bitterness for one reason or another.

1063

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:

You did, however, almost ruin women for me a few months back. On some thread, you mentioned something to the effect of “If I judge a woman by the same standard I judge a man by, his word, then yes woman are inferior to men.” (Again, something similar, I can’t remember your exact phrasing.)

That was a realization for me and it annoyed the FUCK out of me that it’s true. I got over it, though, and have just come to realize that, sure, women should say what they mean and mean what they say… but they don’t. So I can either be jaded about the fact that women don’t communicate the way I want them to, or I can realize this, take it for what it’s worth, and use it to my advantage.
[/quote]

Can you give examples of what you’re talking about? Is the dishonesty context-specific? Are you even talking about full-blown dishonesty, or are you talking about a lack of directness? I’m curious.[/quote]

Lack of directness. “I’m fine” (when really she’s not) sorta stuff. Full-blown dishonesty is not given a second chance.

David Dieda, in his book The Way of the Superior Man writes a “chapter” about it called “What She Wants Is Not What She Says” that explains it pretty well. (He talks about how females shit-test males all the time, too.) It’s a brilliant book.

According to the inside of the front cover, he’s also written It’s a Guy Thing: An Owners Manual for Women. If it’s anything like the one I read, it’s probably worth reading.

1064

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:

Just don’t become jaded about women like Orion. :P[/quote]

You do not become jaded because they reject you and you cant get laid.

You become jaded because you get laid and you know exactly why. [/quote]

I know plenty of jaded guys who are jaded because of the fact that they can’t get laid.

You did, however, almost ruin women for me a few months back. On some thread, you mentioned something to the effect of “If I judge a woman by the same standard I judge a man by, his word, then yes woman are inferior to men.” (Again, something similar, I can’t remember your exact phrasing.)

That was a realization for me and it annoyed the FUCK out of me that it’s true. I got over it, though, and have just come to realize that, sure, women should say what they mean and mean what they say… but they don’t. So I can either be jaded about the fact that women don’t communicate the way I want them to, or I can realize this, take it for what it’s worth, and use it to my advantage.

It cracks me up that you’re jaded about women because you’ve figured them out. So if you do X, Y, and Z every time to a woman, it gets you laid. Would you be jaded if you figured out that all you had to do to any dog was A, B, C to get it to behave in the manner you wanted? What if you figured out all you had to do was D, E, then F to get someone of an opposing viewpoint to come over to your side of the argument? What if you all you had to do is combine ingredient B, but not C, D, G, K, Y and a dash of Q in order to win the best chili in Austria award? Would you be jaded about that, too?

Figuring out a system to get what you want doesn’t seem like the recipe for being jaded, but that’s just me.[/quote]

First, you cannot forget that I was sold a whole bill of goods that all turned out to be shite.

Now what I was sold I cant have because however much a relationship may seem to be based in mutual love and respect I will always know that if my circumstances will change, her feelings will change.

What does remain is sex and female companionship and “the recipe” does indeed reduce her to little more than a trained dog in some way. It would not work would they not be so completely controlled by their emotions.

As for “different communication styles”. I would be cautious not to take that to far. There is oblique and there is manipulative, there is not telling everything and there is lying, there is innuendo and there is giving your word and breaking it.

Its not all about communication style, its also about character.

I expect at least some.

1065

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:

You did, however, almost ruin women for me a few months back. On some thread, you mentioned something to the effect of “If I judge a woman by the same standard I judge a man by, his word, then yes woman are inferior to men.” (Again, something similar, I can’t remember your exact phrasing.)

That was a realization for me and it annoyed the FUCK out of me that it’s true. I got over it, though, and have just come to realize that, sure, women should say what they mean and mean what they say… but they don’t. So I can either be jaded about the fact that women don’t communicate the way I want them to, or I can realize this, take it for what it’s worth, and use it to my advantage.
[/quote]

Can you give examples of what you’re talking about? Is the dishonesty context-specific? Are you even talking about full-blown dishonesty, or are you talking about a lack of directness? I’m curious.[/quote]

Lack of directness. “I’m fine” (when really she’s not) sorta stuff. Full-blown dishonesty is not given a second chance.

David Dieda, in his book The Way of the Superior Man writes a “chapter” about it called “What She Wants Is Not What She Says” that explains it pretty well. (He talks about how females shit-test males all the time, too.) It’s a brilliant book.

According to the inside of the front cover, he’s also written It’s a Guy Thing: An Owners Manual for Women. If it’s anything like the one I read, it’s probably worth reading. [/quote]

Yeah, being direct is hard for many of us. Conflict is stressful, and disappointing someone you care about is even worse. Which is why we tend to suppress stuff and then eventually blow.

I’ll take a look at the book. Thanks for mentioning it!

1066

[quote]nephorm wrote:
Anecdotally, looking through profiles of women on OKCupid, I was shocked at some of the requirements women who were in their late 20s and early 30s felt were perfectly reasonable. Obviously chubby women indicating, for instance, that they would not accept potential partners who were at all overweight. Requiring that men live in the city, because they didn’t want to have to wait for someone to drive to meet them. Just to mention a couple.[/quote]

Almost all women on OKCupid have an overblown sense of self worth. Female 5’s and 6’s will still be getting as much attention online as a female 9 or 10 will get in real life. This causes those 5’s and 6’s to feel like 9’s and 10’s and will then demand the guys they see to be closer to a 10 than a 5. It’s bullshit.

Em, I think you’re right about how men do this, but it’s for a different reason. It’s evolutionary advantageous for a guy to overestimate his worth when it comes to the fairer sex.

Lets take two scenarios:

Two guys who are both 5’s, one of whom feels that he’s a 10 (overestimating self worth, like you said) and the other who feels like a 1.

The male 5 who feels like a 10 will approach women of say, 7.5 and higher, to pass on his seed. The male 5 who feels like a 1 will approach women of say, 2.5 and lower, to pass on his seed. (This is if he even TRIES to pass on his seed at all.)

Which sounds evolutionary more advantageous to you? The male 5 who wants the best female genes for his offspring or the male 5 who chooses from the bottom of the barrel, if that at all?

1067

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
Almost all women on OKCupid have an overblown sense of self worth. Female 5’s and 6’s will still be getting as much attention online as a female 9 or 10 will get in real life. This causes those 5’s and 6’s to feel like 9’s and 10’s and will then demand the guys they see to be closer to a 10 than a 5. It’s bullshit.
[/quote]

It may be isolated to the strange dynamics of online dating. Hard for me to say.

[quote]
Two guys who are both 5’s, one of whom feels that he’s a 10 (overestimating self worth, like you said) and the other who feels like a 1.

The male 5 who feels like a 10 will approach women of say, 7.5 and higher, to pass on his seed. The male 5 who feels like a 1 will approach women of say, 2.5 and lower, to pass on his seed. (This is if he even TRIES to pass on his seed at all.)

Which sounds evolutionary more advantageous to you? The male 5 who wants the best female genes for his offspring or the male 5 who chooses from the bottom of the barrel, if that at all?[/quote]

It depends on whether the guy who thinks he is a 10 is successful. The scenario you’ve described favors the guy who thinks he’s a 1. Evolutionary success is not defined by how attractive your offspring are, but how long lived and widely spread your genes are. A strategy of finding the quickest, easiest ways to breed seems like the evolutionary winner. Keeping in mind, of course, that the evolutionary psychology take on things used to be that men had incentives to be indiscriminate and polygamous, whereas women had the incentive to be picky and monogamous.

You could argue that even a couple of wins with very attractive women would be a more successful long term strategy because those offspring would also be desirable. I don’t think that’s a given.

1068

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
Almost all women on OKCupid have an overblown sense of self worth. Female 5’s and 6’s will still be getting as much attention online as a female 9 or 10 will get in real life. This causes those 5’s and 6’s to feel like 9’s and 10’s and will then demand the guys they see to be closer to a 10 than a 5. It’s bullshit.
[/quote]

I should have added something to this - it isn’t bullshit. It’s economics. If you were a male 5 or 6 who found that in a certain venue you received lots of attention from the types of women you desire, would you be egalitarian about it and seriously consider offers from women you were less than enthusiastic about? Let’s even be conservative: if you were receiving tons of offers from women who were just average in your view, but nothing really distinguished any of them from the others, what would be your incentive to invest time or energy in any particular one of those women?

You can easily say that online dating is a bad deal for most men. I think that’s accurate. But I can’t fault anyone for exercising their options. I can blame them later, however, if they got greedy and then complained they got a raw deal.

1069

[quote]orion wrote:
First, you cannot forget that I was sold a whole bill of goods that all turned out to be shite.
[/quote]

Right, so you’re bitter and jaded because things should be the way you were told, but in reality, they’re not.

On September 11th, 2001, at 13 years old, I was told numerous times by numerous people I trust that my Dad was coming home from work that day. He didn’t. I still believe the world to be a beautiful place.

I personally think you choose to be jaded.

I get what you’re saying, but I think this goes both ways. Sure, we see women divorcing men because said guy lost his job or whatever other circumstance change, but there are plenty of women who WILL stay by their man when shit hits the fan, it’s just rare.

If you were in a relationship and HER circumstances change (for the worse, since that’s what we assumed for the male), are your feelings for her not going to change? Lets say she gains 40lbs and she stops sucking dick. Of course you are going to want to divorce her for someone else.

(And yes, we can acknowledge the fact that if either of those two scenarios happened with a married couple, everything points in favor of the wife. But that should leave you bitter about
marriage, not women/relationships, I would think.)

The most beautifully written book can be reduced to chapters, and then sentences, then words, then letters. Does that mean Shakespeares work and the letter F deserve the same amount of praise?

I would claim most guys are controlled by their hormones, for the record. It’s just the ones who become slaves to their hormones that suck. Just like how women are controlled by their emotions, it’s the ones who become slaves to them that suck. I personally know women who actually think logically and rationally and reasonably. I also personally know guys who are slaves to their emotions, too.

[quote]
As for “different communication styles”. I would be cautious not to take that to far. There is oblique and there is manipulative, there is not telling everything and there is lying, there is innuendo and there is giving your word and breaking it.

Its not all about communication style, its also about character.

I expect at least some. [/quote]

I agree with this completely.

1070

[quote]nephorm wrote:

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
Almost all women on OKCupid have an overblown sense of self worth. Female 5’s and 6’s will still be getting as much attention online as a female 9 or 10 will get in real life. This causes those 5’s and 6’s to feel like 9’s and 10’s and will then demand the guys they see to be closer to a 10 than a 5. It’s bullshit.
[/quote]

It may be isolated to the strange dynamics of online dating. Hard for me to say.

[quote]
Two guys who are both 5’s, one of whom feels that he’s a 10 (overestimating self worth, like you said) and the other who feels like a 1.

The male 5 who feels like a 10 will approach women of say, 7.5 and higher, to pass on his seed. The male 5 who feels like a 1 will approach women of say, 2.5 and lower, to pass on his seed. (This is if he even TRIES to pass on his seed at all.)

Which sounds evolutionary more advantageous to you? The male 5 who wants the best female genes for his offspring or the male 5 who chooses from the bottom of the barrel, if that at all?[/quote]

It depends on whether the guy who thinks he is a 10 is successful. The scenario you’ve described favors the guy who thinks he’s a 1. Evolutionary success is not defined by how attractive your offspring are, but how long lived and widely spread your genes are. A strategy of finding the quickest, easiest ways to breed seems like the evolutionary winner. Keeping in mind, of course, that the evolutionary psychology take on things used to be that men had incentives to be indiscriminate and polygamous, whereas women had the incentive to be picky and monogamous.

You could argue that even a couple of wins with very attractive women would be a more successful long term strategy because those offspring would also be desirable. I don’t think that’s a given.[/quote]

These are all great points which makes me think I think I worded my point poorly. It would be more advantageous, evolution-wise, for a guy to think he has a chance with a girl when he really doesn’t than it would be for a guy to think he does not have a chance with a girl when he really does.

(This assuming that “thinking he has a chance” results in him propositioning the woman for sex and “thinking he has no chance” results in him not propositioning the woman for sex.)

1071

rrjc, I’m so sorry about your father.

100% of the (2) men I’ve loved as an adult have been unfaithful. I make an effort to remember that there was more to both relationships than that, and that I’m very lucky in general in that I’m bright and non-hideous and am self-supporting. Should I choose to look at in terms of cosmic justice, I can content myself that they both seem to regret the loss of me, but mostly I’m sad that we all got hurt so badly and in so many different ways.

Still, since there’s nothing I can do about the past, my choice now is to either focus on that or on the future. I also get to choose hope or despair, trust or bitterness.

“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.” – Franz Kafka

1072

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
Still, since there’s nothing I can do about the past, my choice now is to either focus on that or on the future. I also get to choose hope or despair, trust or bitterness.
[/quote]

This is soooooo good.

Orion, do you have anything to say about this? I only ask, because IIRC, there was a thread not too long ago that I commented on one of your posts that it seemed to want to control things you cannot. (EDIT: Only asking to see if there are common denominators in these sorts of things. I’m a psych major, lol.)

(And thanks, Em. As unlucky I was to be put in that situation, many others have far worse situations to deal with, so I can’t complain too much.) :slight_smile:

1073

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
These are all great points which makes me think I think I worded my point poorly. It would be more advantageous, evolution-wise, for a guy to think he has a chance with a girl when he really doesn’t than it would be for a guy to think he does not have a chance with a girl when he really does.

(This assuming that “thinking he has a chance” results in him propositioning the woman for sex and “thinking he has no chance” results in him not propositioning the woman for sex.)[/quote]

You still have to look at it statistically. The question is whether the pessimistic strategy gives better or worse results over the long term compared to the optimistic strategy. Since either strategy, as you’re putting it forward, reduces the pool of potential breeding partners, it is a wash at best.

Honestly, I don’t like using evolution as an argument for any particular human behavior, and I really dislike it being used to justify bad behavior. You aren’t using it in the latter sense, but that’s what I see a lot. Human beings have so many layers of culture and artifice that it is hard to figure out what psychological features are innate versus learned, much less what complex social strategies we might have plausibly evolved, or in response to what particular evolutionary pressures. When human beings were still evolving mating behaviors were quite different from what we have now. You would’ve known fewer people, you would’ve had fewer ideas about what was considered attractive or unattractive, there were fewer adornments available, mating choices had different social constraints, etc.

Go ahead and look into anthropology (not evolutionary psychology) to assemble some sort of narrative of love and sex in early homo sapiens; I just don’t think that it will provide a clear evolutionary explanation. I suppose it can be useful to say things like “human beings evolved in relatively small groups compared to the social breadth we have access to today; as such, I have to recognize that my fear of rejection is based upon an outdated model of social interaction and cannot be trusted.” Or you could say something like “I grew up with a small group of peers who took social cues from one another, and therefore learned to fear rejection as a precursor to being ostracized; that social situation no longer obtains, the risk is no longer so great, and I must adjust my behavior accordingly.” Focusing on learned behavior seems more flexible to me, rather than on evolved, fixed behavior.

And to return to your point more specifically, you were positing an evolutionary advantage for the male to overreach in standards that doesn’t exist for the female; why not? If all else is equal, why wouldn’t she try to hold out for the best possible genes she could get? After all, a pregnancy represents a couple orders of magnitude more investment for the woman than for the man.

1074

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
Conflict is stressful, and disappointing someone you care about is even worse. Which is why we tend to suppress stuff and then eventually blow.
[/quote]
No man appreciates this lol. Search your feelings; you know it to be true. That’s okay though; at least you seem to possess uncanny loyalty. That trumps most faults imo.

1076

I know we are all psychoanalyzing your dilemma Emily.

Have you ever taken a Myers-Briggs personality test? Tends to be a pretty good test and thing to know about, like knowing about other people’s personalities mesh with your own. Sometimes it helps to make sense of why people act the way they do. The Myers & Briggs Foundation - MBTI® Basics

Big time investment taking the test and getting to identify other personality types. A real test will cost you money unless you went to a college or Uni that takes care of their Alumni, but it’s a good resource to have and something nice to reach for when people don’t make sense.

1078

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:
I know we are all psychoanalyzing your dilemma Emily.

Have you ever taken a Myers-Briggs personality test? Tends to be a pretty good test and thing to know about, like knowing about other people’s personalities mesh with your own. Sometimes it helps to make sense of why people act the way they do. http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/

Big time investment taking the test and getting to identify other personality types. A real test will cost you money unless you went to a college or Uni that takes care of their Alumni, but it’s a good resource to have and something nice to reach for when people don’t make sense. [/quote]

Oh boy.[/quote]

Haha, yeah I know. Two hurdles, actually getting a lady to take advice by an internet dude.

Part two is getting people to buy into the idea that the schema we tend to tall into is accurate. This test is used all over the place, many business grad schools have classes which have this as a requirement which helps students get one another during class projects and such.

During such projects aspects of people’s personalities come about, like high dominance, and sure enough the people who’s personalities are highly dominant are the ones who jump in, try to take control of projects before they know what the projects even entail. I have a female sibling who’s high dominance is kinda famous, to the point other students tell her, her D is showing lol. Anyhow, yeah it’s a more technical or scholastic way to consider people.

I like just trying to consider it as another tool to use when making sense of crazy people.

1079

He’s saying “oh boy” because I have a master’s degree in people and their relationships (clinical social work), Severiano. I have done the MB.

But you’re right in your underlying point, which is that I have to figure out how to manage my traits in connection with the traits of the men I attract and am attracted to. It all works beautifully for me in other areas of life, I seem to have it figured out, just this one area is confusing.

Okay, I have to go do HR things at the new job. Yay.

1080

How much relevance and credibility do you all attribute to the Myers-Briggs test?