Opinion | Why Aren’t More People Getting Married? Ask Women What Dating Is Like.
Opinion | Why Aren’t More People Getting Married? Ask Women What Dating Is Like.
Harping on people to get married from up in the ivory tower fails to engage with reality of life in the dating trenches.
Harping on people to get married from up in the ivory tower fails to engage with reality of life in the dating trenches.
I like the suggestion that we concern ourselvrs more with the quality of men's internal lives, but I do worry we're still objectifying men as 'the problem'.
It'll stop once it stops being a problem. FTA:
He had recently read about a high school creative writing assignment in which boys and girls were asked to imagine a day from the perspective of the opposite sex. While girls wrote detailed essays showing they had already spent significant time thinking about the subject, many boys simply refused to do the exercise or did so resentfully.
I mean, we're not just talking about the ability to communicate (which is important), but the basic ability to empathize. If men (in general) are unwilling to even consider the female point of view, is it any wonder why women have a difficult time dating? This isn't happening in a vacuum; there are real reasons why this is happening.
Think of the structural issues which have caused this to be the case. Blaming men for not achieving an externally defined target isn't going to help anyone.
Hate the game, not the player.
You take one cherry-picked anecdote and then generalize that to the entire population. You are the problem.
Navigating interpersonal relationships in a time of evolving gender norms and expectations “requires a level of emotional sensitivity that I think some men probably just lack, or they don’t have the experience,” he added.
I like the quote above about this topic but it does still seem like men are the problem. The problem is that we as a society haven't taught those skills and worse yet reinforce the opposite. We should be concerned with men's internal lives and mold them to fit into modern society
A big part is diminishing religiosity. There is little point in getting married if you aren't religious. Thanks to progress made by LGBT couples, most of the legal benefits of marriage are shared by domestic partnerships. Traditionalists on the left and the right make a big deal of this, but it is of negligible factual importance.
I don't think most people who get married do it for religious reasons or even to start a family in the US anymore. People do it since they see it a formal a commitment and want to announce their love in public.
I'm pretty sure it's pretty clear that the slight increase in domestic partnerships over marriage does not shore up the declining marriage rates.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The most recent wave of commenters have tended to position themselves as iconoclasts speaking hard truths: Two-parent families often result in better outcomes for kids, writes Megan McArdle, in The Washington Post, but “for various reasons,” she goes on, this “is too often left unsaid” — even though policy wonks, and the pundits who trumpet their ideas, have been telling (straight) people to get married for the sake of their children for decades.
But harping on people to get married from high up in the ivory tower fails to engage with the reality on the ground that heterosexual women from many walks of life confront: that is, the state of men today.
Ms. Camino, for her part, has dabbled in dating since her partner left, but hasn’t yet met anyone who shares her values, someone who’s funny and — she hesitates to use the word “feminist” — but a man who won’t just roll his eyes and say something about being on her period whenever she voices an opinion.
The in-depth interviews, he said, “were even more dispiriting.” For a variety of reasons — mixed messages from the broader culture about toughness and vulnerability, the activity-oriented nature of male friendships — it seems that by the time men begin dating, they are relatively “limited in their ability and willingness to be fully emotionally present and available,” he said.
Navigating interpersonal relationships in a time of evolving gender norms and expectations “requires a level of emotional sensitivity that I think some men probably just lack, or they don’t have the experience,” he added.
The behaviors were ubiquitous enough that Ms. Inhorn compiled a sort of taxonomy of cads, such as the “Alpha males” who “want to be challenged by work, not by their partners” or the “Polyamorous men” who claim “that their multiple attachments to women are all ‘committed.’” Her breakdown — table 1.1 in the book — reads like a rigorous academic version of all the complaints you’ve ever heard from your single female friends.
The original article contains 1,877 words, the summary contains 335 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I feel like at least in Europe a lot of people see marriage as an outdated concept.
This comment section went from zero to one hundred real quick
It always does on mensliberation. Just got to get used to it and plan on it
There seems to be an assumption here that the lack of marriage rates is solely due to men being unsuitable. I'd like to see sources and data on that.
It takes two to tango, there are communities with higher marriage rates would be interesting research to see what factors differ amongst communities that impact marriage rates.
“Ask women what dating is like”. Good idea if you want a biased one sided opinion.
This article is vomit.
Biggest issue with the article. NO male voices, and it's repeating the same lines I have heard since the mid 00's.
Now I acknowledge that there hasn't been much movement on the dating front, but men are only half the problem, as they are only half the population.
They would change in a hurry as a group if they needed to, but men aren't a monolith and neither are women.
You want men to be better, be better yourself. The article is garbage by saying men need to step up while not talking to them about the issues they face in the dating world. ESPECIALLY if they aren't Hetronormative.
Ask a woman what dating is like. You, personally. I dare you.
Only issue is, clearly you won't listen to their answer.
There is a widespread, socially disruptive, and sometimes life threatening epidemic of unfuckable dudes.
There are challenges with expectations and entitlements on all sides, but the unfuckable dudes are not rising to meet the challenges.
What about all the unfuckable women? Again you look at everything one sided.
Both sexes need to get better. You’re saying that it’s all up to the men. In other words what you’re saying is women don’t have to be responsible for anything, they can act any way they want. A very entitled and selfish attitude.
Did you ever consider that this toxic mentality DRIVES AWAY the good men? Maybe good men want nothing to do with you because of your mentality. That leaves only the toxic men to put up with your bullshit, so that’s all you see.