Dalrock, a manosphere traditionalist with a great love of charts and statistics and other accoutrements of SCIENCE, has managed to figure out a way to stretch “don’t be so picky, ladies, or you’ll get old and ugly and no man will ever want you” out to 1500 words.
Here are a few of them:
Men foot the searching costs in the marriage and sexual marketplace (MMP & SMP). This means bearing most of the risk of rejection and expending the bulk of the resources to facilitate the process of meeting and getting to know one another.
Oh dear. We’re off to a very unpromising start here.
As the ones who bear the costs of courtship, men have a strong incentive to minimize the number of women they court and the overall duration of time spent in the process. However, as the consumers of courtship, women have an incentive to draw the process out as long as possible and to receive courtship from as many men as possible.
Here’s some surveillance footage of an average American woman being courted by several men.
But now — get this — the ladies are waiting longer to marry!
Just think about what this does to the dude navigating the marriage market hoping to “maximize his Pareto efficiency,” if you know what I mean and I think you do.
He needs to manage risk vs reward. When courting, there are two fundamental risks. These are the risk of wasting resources on the wrong women, and the risk of rejection harming the man’s reputation/MMV.
So watch out, ladies, because if you wait too long, guys are going to decide you’re not much of a bargain!
For a man who is managing the risks of courtship outlined above, the age of a woman is very important. The older a woman is, the more likely it is that she is very picky and/or not seriously looking for a husband.
Exactly! Because women never change their mind because they’re, you know, in a different stage of their life or anything.
Older women also are less attractive from a courtship perspective because they have used up more of their most attractive/fertile years, and while their attractiveness for marriage has declined their expectations for courtship have only increased.
This reminds me of that famous joke, you know, where that woman approaches Winston Churchill at a party and says, “Sir, you are drunk.”
And he replies: “And you, Bessie, have used up your most attractive/fertile years. But I shall be sober in the morning, and you will still have used up your most attractive/fertile years.”
That Churchill, what a card!
Consider the 25% of current early thirties White women who still haven’t married; unless they are terminally unattractive an awful lot of courtship has almost certainly been wasted on them.
Are there really a lot of guys who look back on the women they dated in their twenties and think, “boy, I wasted a lot of courtship on those gals! I mean, I wasted nearly 14 courtship on Jessa alone!” (Also, who knew that the women are always the ones to blame when heterosexual couples in their twenties break up?)
They aren’t just bad bets for courtship today, but (in retrospect) they clearly were bad bets for courtship for the last 15 years. …
Put simply, the extended delay of marriage by women has placed marriage minded men in a dilemma; older women are (generally speaking) known bad bets for courtship, but half of early twenties women are also poor bets for courtship.
Well, you could always marry a dude.
There are only two logical ways men can respond to women’s extension of courtship.
Wait, really? Please, please, please, let one of the ways be “marry a dude.”
The first logical choice is to recognize that these women are debasing marriage, and decide to “court” for sex and not marriage.
Damn. Anyway, sexual relationships are fine, but you are aware that there are other kinds of relationships — sorry, “courting” — besides sex and marriage, right?
Ok, we still have one more. Marry a dude. Marry a dude. Marry a dude.
But while “courting” for sex is a logical choice, it is not a moral choice, and we still do see men courting for marriage. For these men, having a fairly low age cutoff makes a great deal of sense.
That’s your, er, “solution?” Marry a teenager? Or a woman at most in her early twenties?
As Dalrock knows, but doesn’t want to believe, those who marry when they’re very young are much more likely to divorce than those who marry when they’re older. For evidence, see this chart, which I found elsewhere on Dalrock’s own blog:
But hope springs eternal for modern misogynistic manospherian marriage market minded men (MMMMMMM).
Excuse the bad grammar in the first paragraph 🙁
Feminism attacked courtship? When? Where? I must have slept through that one.
And what the hell is wrong with dating just to date? It’s part of growing up and finding out who you are and what you want out of life and other people. One of whom may, with luck, become a partner. What’s so terrible about that? Do you think that women should just be married off ASAP, preferably before they are mentally as well as physically mature? Because, y’know, that’s not the way it works.
And “do it only to marry, or don’t date” isn’t a viable solution either.
Gawd, I pity the women who end up with the likes of you. You sound like a piss-poor choice, all around.
@WWTH ” Feminists can’t secularize the US because it came presecularized.”
Our feminist friends Katie are doing so retroactively, now they’re to thank for separation of church and state.
Were the founding fathers actually Katie wearing a series of clever disguises? There must have been many wacky sitcomesque hijinks trying to be a variety of men in the same room during the constitutional conventions. But she pulled it off! Way to go Katie!
George Washingkatie. John Quincekatie Adams. Thomkatieas Jefferson. Yes.
The faces of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial are actually cleverly designed to slide off during operation “makeup removal”, revealing the faces of katie. It’s going to be fabulous!
If IBB is talking about modern Christian courtship a la Josh Harris and I Kissed Dating Goodbye, where people don’t date until they’re ready to find a partner and fathers have the final say on who a girl is allowed to meet and ultimately marry – then yeah, I’ve seen some feminist criticism of that. Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism has done some good posts about how courtship works and how she thinks it fails young people. Link here (courtship links are halfway down the page).
Funny enough, there are some evangelical thinkers who’ve come to the same conclusion. Parent-guided courtship was supposed to be a way to build lasting marriages, but it hasn’t always worked out that way. Now there are a few people who’re advocating dating like people of the Greatest Generation knew. There’s still a big focus on chastity, but there’s also a lot more freedom to meet and choose. It still seems pretty idealized, but it’s miles better than basically letting parents pick your spouse.
misha,
God said unto Eve that her desire shall be for her husband and he shall rule over her.
Yes Misha. She must obey her husband. I know to feminists, this sounds like someone scratching their nails down a chalkboard, but if you want to avoid divorce and want to have a lifelong marriage to that man, then of course she must submit.
Before all of you fly off the handle here, let me give you all the most important red pill you have ever gotten and ask you all to eat that red pill with one question, the most important question anyone has ever asked a feminist regarding marriage and the patriarchy: if you are NOT willing to obey your husband in all things, NOT willing to submit to his every desire, NOT willing to do absolutely everything he tells you to do, then why oh why would you ever be willing to marry him?
I have six years of evidence to the contrary so far. Many other posters here have decades more.
Why would he ever be willing to marry me–or any other woman–if he isn’t willing to do those things, if they’re necessary prerequisites to a good marriage?
Hahahahaha!
Both my sets of grandparents were happily married more than 60 years. In both sets, my grandmother was the more dominant half of the couple. Both were Christian too. My paternal grandparents conservative catholic and my maternal grandparents liberal mainline protestants. But today I learned that the only way for marriages to not end in divorce is if the wife is completely subservient to the husband.
Who’s going to break to our poor pathetic troll that some marriages have two wives or two husbands?
That was a curse, dumbass. Now run along and toil in a thorny field.
Sparky,
That is an important question and the answer to it ties into katz’s question….
Because you don’t want a democracy. YOU (as a woman) want to RULE over HIM. That is what you are saying, YOU rule.
In a Democracy, everyone gets a vote. So you are married to your husband. He wants to buy one house and you want to buy another house. You both get a vote. Who wins? He wants the family to attend one church and you want to attend another church. You both get a vote. Who wins? His parents are getting old (as are yours) and they can’t care for themselves. He wants to buy a bigger house with an in-law apartment and you want to put them in assisted living. You both get a vote. Who wins? Your daughter is going to college and you are paying for much of it. She wants to study international relations because its fun and easy and your husband says it is STEM or she needs to go to Community College for the first two years. You think an IR degree (and all the student loans going with it) is just fine. You both get a vote. Who wins?
See the problem with democracy in marriage? It doesn’t work, not in reality. Ultimately there is ONE PERSON making all the most important decisions. And for those who refuse to answer that question I asked (as Katz just refused to answer it by simply reframing it) I already have my answer as to who you think is in authority in your marriage.
Wh… aaah.. aaaaaaaaaaaa!
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tim-and-eric-mind-blown.gif
I see it! I see it, innocentbystanderbos *gasp* ton! Jesus tap-dancing christ, I see the light!
Wait wait, hang on…
Nope, never mind.
Why would a woman want to marry a man if she does not want to obey and submit in all things? Because she loves him, and love =/= submission.
Am I redpilled yet?
In a marriage, there should not be decision “winners”. Both people should work together, looking to serve, edify, and cherish the other person. Talk about it like grownups. Pray together. Figure out an outcome that is beneficial for the people involved.
My parents have been married for more than 30 years, and have made some really, really hard decisions, and neither one of them has pulled a trump card on the other.
It’s not democracy; it’s teamwork.
kirby,
Thank you for answering. Yours is the answer I expected, straight-forward and no reframing the way Katz did.
If she doesn’t want to submit, then NO, she does NOT love him and she should NOT marry him. Find a man she is willing to submit to. And if she never finds a man worthy of obeying in ALL THINGS, then she should never marry. Ever.
Men want their wives to submit. If they can’t get that (and in our society, they increasingly can’t because feminism went screwed everything all up), then a smart Christian man will do as Paul says and will be MGTOW.
You are getting there. 🙂
Apparently compromise doesn’t exist in troll’s mind?
First off, if your approach to a marriage is treating it like a series of battles with winners and losers, you may not be cut out for marriage. A relationship is not meant to be adversarial; it’s meant to be constructive. Spouses will disagree; when they do, they will try to talk things out and come to an agreement. If they can’t agree, then they will compromise.
You’ve listed four different, potentially difficult decisions. And yet for some reason you think that every single one must be decided by either one person or the other, completely ignoring that perhaps a couple will go one way and a couple will go the other. Why is this such a difficult concept for you to grasp?
Well, first off, why is this idea so much less legitimate than YOU (as a man) wanting to RULE over HER? (Right, right, bible blah).
Second off, this is as facetious as saying that atheists must worship Satan or themselves if they don’t worship God, because everyone must worship someone.
Nnnnnnnnnope.
There is a none-of-the-above option here. You can have a marriage without a ruler. And if you can’t understand why there would be a marriage at all without having someone in charge, then I refer you again to my previous statement; you are probably not cut out for marriage.
“Thou shalt not look at an issue from another angle.” -The Book of Stupid Complementarianism
So you see all human relationships as a rigid heirarchy of master and slave? The only possible solution if two people want incompatible things is that one dominates the other and the other submits?
In the world I live in, among intelligent adults, we NEGOTIATE and COMPROMISE and RESPECT EACH OTHER. If he likes one house and I like another, we might decide to keep looking until we find one we both like. Or one of us might decide that this is more important to the other partner and we want to make him or her happy, so we give up what we want in this instance. Or we might decide to buy one house but remodel or change it in some way to make it more appealing to the other party.
If it’s our daughter going to college, three of us get input given that she’s the one who’s doing the work and earning the degree and shaping her own future life. Honestly, I think this is a weird example for that very reason, who tries to control their adult kid’s college major to this degree? But OK, in the hypothetical: The parents will listen to her and then confer with each other respectfully — maybe one of us can convince the other that our reasoning is better, and we’ll go that route. Or maybe there’s another option here, like letting her go a year undeclared before there’s a final decision, or she does international relations but she needs to choose more marketable minor, or she needs to live at home and get a job if the amount of the tuition we provide is that much of an issue.
Who wins? Both of us. Because it isn’t a zero sum game with a winner and a loser. My husband and I aren’t enemies and we don’t need to fight each other. If either of us loses, we both do. And in good democracies, parties with opposing views need to work together to reach acceptable solutions, it’s not just a tyranny of the majority because there are checks and balances. Human societies aren’t just a ladder of tyrants and vassals.
@innocentbystanderboston:
I disagree. Do you want to convince me otherwise, giving me that convincing argument redpill that will bring me to your side? If so, try something other than insisting on a definition of “love” that I do not buy into.
Come to think of it, in your ideal relationship does the husband love his wife? If so, doesn’t that mean he must submit to her in all things? If not, why is love defined differently for husband and wife? If your answer is “the bible,” then sorry buster, but that isn’t going to convince me of anything.
False. Proof; me. Not my kink.
I’m pretty sure decision-making in my parents long and happy marriage never came down to who wins because my parents weren’t silly enough to use combative and competitive rhetoric with one another and instead sat down to discus pros and cons like…
… two well informed adults who were thinking of what would be best for them and then future me and sibling.
When they disagreed, they decided who actually knew the best in that situation. Houses was usually dad, because engineer. Grandpa’s living situation? Mom, because nurse (even though Grandpa is dad’s dad.
Although, they haven’t ever really had to come down to fiat of who knows best, because they’ve been pretty good at compromise. That thing, you know, where one person doesn’t have to make all the executive decisions?
Not going to reply to the biblical stuff, because I’ve already said my piece there.
Oh no, Kirby, you’ve reframed the question! You just lost all your red-pill points.
Come to think of it, by that definition, no parents love their children, ever.
I’m pretty sure the only man who is perfect, and therefore safe to obey in all things, is Jesus. That’s pretty basic, credal stuff, isn’t it? So in other words, by your statement I should never get married, because all human beings—including husbands—are fallible folk.
Like I said before, I am a Christian. I have read, and gladly accept, Ephesians 5. It neither says nor means what you’re claiming it does.
Lost a parenthesis after dad’s dad.
Proofreading: I should do it more!