Harping on people to get married from up in the ivory tower fails to engage with reality of life in the dating trenches.

  • The problem here isn’t that they have unattainable standards, it’s that a lot of men aren’t putting in effort to meet those basic standards, for whatever reason.

    Are men obligated to meet those standards if they have no interest in doing so? Men don’t just exist for the sake of giving women someone to date, after all. And while the article was (I hesitate to say intentionally) vague about specifics, one thing it mentioned multiple times was holding a college degree. It’s hardly what I’d call “basic standards”, considering it takes a huge amount of time, and a fair deal of money to achieve. Of all the men I’ve talked with, myself included, that “standard” doesn’t seem to be prevalent, with the closest thing being “I guess it would be cool”.

    At what point does the principle of “if everywhere you go smells like shit” start applying to these women who date but seem to never find a man that meet their standards? It only seems reasonable if nobody meets the standards, that the standards may be a major part of the issue.

    And I don’t mean to say that women should just settle for men they don’t like, but “just stay single” is always an option, one men are told repeatedly whenever they struggle with relationships.

    • MonsterHighStan
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      fedilink
      21 year ago

      You have some good points I hadn’t considered before, so thank you for that. It’s definitely something I’ll have to think about more. It’s also worth mentioning that the difference between women who couldn’t find a suitable male partner vs men who couldn’t find a suitable female partner also really isn’t very much - “nearly half” vs “one third”, which was something I also wasn’t really considering when I made my comments. Ultimately it seems like a complicated issue that isn’t going to be fixed with one simple solution

      • Ultimately it seems like a complicated issue that isn’t going to be fixed with one simple solution

        Now this I agree with wholeheartedly. My primary issue with the article is that it takes a grievance mindset rather than a problem solving one. It just reads like the women’s equivalent of some incel rant, in the sense that it externalizes the issue such that it’s always someone else’s responsibility to do something about, which doesn’t help solve anything.