I…worked on this story for years..and…he just…he posted it on Psychology Today.
This screenshot has been bouncing around Twitter today, highlighting a column by couples therapist Greg Matos that attempts to explain just where men and women stand in the dating marketplace today. And though he couches his insights in highly euphemistic ways, I think he’s got the basics right: straight men are doing poorly in the dating world, especially online, because straight women are getting more and more fed up with their bullshit.
He begins by looking at dating apps — which many in the manosphere think have destroyed dating because all the endless flattery women allegedly get on these apps has made them spoiled and only interested in dating the hottest Chads. None of which is true.
The real issue for men on dating apps is a basic mathematical one: there are more of them than there are women.
“[U]pwards of 62% of users are men,” Matos writes, “and many women are overwhelmed with how many options they have.”
That’s one way of putting it, I guess, albeit a somewhat misleading one. Women aren’t overcome by too many good options on dating apps; they’re wading through a fast flowing river of dick pics and crude, generic come-ons from guys who are likely to react with rage if they’re turned down directly.
Take it away, Incel Pickup Lines Twitter account, which collects and posts screenshots of failed come-ons online (and which you should all follow).
Even serious Marxist scholars can have trouble talking to the ladies.
But that actually leads us pretty neatly to Matos’ next observation.
With so many options, it’s not surprising that women are increasingly selective. I do a live TikTok show (@abetterloveproject) and speak with hundreds of audience members every week; I hear recurring dating themes from women between the ages of 25 and 45: They prefer men who are emotionally available, good communicators, and share similar values.
Again, he’s being just a teensy bit euphemistic here. By “good communications” he means “guys that don’t say these things.”
And that leads to Matos’ next point: If guys want to beat the odds and actually meet a live woman who would like to date them, they’re going to have to make some real changes in how they think about and act around women. As Matos puts it, euphemistically as always, guys have serious dating “skill deficits” they need to clear up.
For men, this means a relationship skills gap that, if not addressed, will likely lead to fewer dating opportunities, less patience for poor communication skills, and longer periods of being single. …
Level up your mental health game. That means getting into some individual therapy to address your skills gap. It means valuing your own internal world and respecting your ideas enough to communicate them effectively. It means seeing intimacy, romance, and emotional connection as worthy of your time and effort.
Well, at least some guys are already trying just a little bit harder not to be the world’s most grotesque creeps.
I mean, at least this guy apologized for the “mistake” he’s 100% guaranteed to repeat with another woman, and another, and another.
And this guy? At least he’s asking. AT LEAST HE’S ASKING.
Baby steps, baby steps.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
The first one is the most unreasonable to me. I mean, maybe I’d ignore the message or just reply “My name’s [X],” because I have made that kind of mistake with work emails, forwarding a previous message to another client but forgetting to change the name (and one person got annoyed by that). So I have some sympathy for the initial error.
But that irrational rant in reply? “You’re not pretty enough to correct me”??? That’s fair game for mockery. Plus, the anger in it… I’m glad that woman doesn’t have to be physically near the other person, because that kind of response raises all sort of red flags.
Or maybe the one where someone’s essentially going, “Oh, you’re east Asian, you remind me of anime.” Like, do these people think they’re talking to game characters? YOU ARE INTERACTING WITH PEOPLE, DUDES.
I think the problem for guys like me (other than, well, just not being hot enough to compete in a medium that works almost entirely on photos) is that even if I had great relationship skills and met the standards of women there’s no good way to communicate that through a profile that can’t be copied by any other random guy.
So, dating is no longer to be an option for anyone who can’t afford to spend several hundred dollars a week on a therapist?
That’s going to be, like, over 70% of the population in the developed world these days, plus everyone else.
At least it will solve the overpopulation problem I suppose …
62% ? GlobalWebIndex is quite optimistic, or maybe they had selected very specific dating apps.
I do not know about other countries, but in France, dating apps are often plagued by what we called “Brouteurs” (they often call themselves like that, to note), who are professional romance scammers (by professional, i mean that they consider this activity as their job, not that they are particularly skilled).
Of course, they do that both for women and men, as anybody can be in a sentimental state of weakness, but mainly they aim men (they say men are easier to scam, because of “pride” : “unknown hot woman falling for me so quickly ? Of course, it is because i am that good !”, and so on, you got the idea…) meaning “woman” false profiles tend to be more numerous than “man” ones.
Other than this point, the analysis seems ok. Maybe it misses a bit the fact that with hyperconnectivity and thus “visibility”, the standards of appearance likely have increased too.
The Kroger cashier with the florid language and the anger management issue must really, really want to lose his job.
@surplus, I think there’s a difference between saying “literally everyone who ever wants to date needs to have done therapy” and saying that you can’t assume that a romantic partner is going to be willing to do the work for you [please see here decades of pop culture examples of women “changing” men].
As a therapist, I have worked with men who have really struggled with mentalization (that other people have thoughts/feelings), and especially with the idea that women have inner lives. It is a very reasonable thing to explore in a therapy relationship where you have defined boundaries, not so much for a lady from a dating site to have to put up with months hoping he’ll figure out she’s a person too.
<i>So, dating is no longer to be an option for anyone who can’t afford to spend several hundred dollars a week on a therapist?</i>
If you have a decent job, your employer-provided health insurance is likely to cover a good bit of that expense.
And if you don’t have a decent job, that in itself would disqualify you in most available women’s eyes anyway.
The last comment is kinda funny and sad: the guy sent someone a naked pic of himself and got totally burned for it, but he’s eagerly begging for a chance to make the same mistake again. When dating advisors tell men to “be vulnerable,” I’m pretty sure that’s not what they meant.
I went looking for archaeology software; to see if I could make a ‘dating app’ joke.
Turns out there’s loads. They don’t show that in the movies.
“How did you know which was the real Holy Grail Dr Jones?”
“I pointed my iPhone at it.”
Do these people actually think the intel pickup lines will work? Or do they just like being jerks. Surely, no one could be that clueless about how much of a creep they are.
I made great use of dating sites back in the day, long-enough ago that the apps weren’t really a thing yet. For a guy who is a bit awkward socially, and who writes much more eloquently than he speaks (though not nearly so well as many of the posters here write), that was a much better way to meet potential romantic partners than I had previously come across.
It’s not as if meeting folks on a dating site is particularly difficult. If one can manage
1) don’t be an entitled jerk
2) don’t take rejection personally
3) don’t have unrealistic expectations
it should not be difficult to meet people on a dating site/app.
Of course, the unwillingness to do any of these things is generally what defines incel-types, so I am guessing they have the same trouble there they have in most areas of their lives. I know maladaptive behaviors can be hard to kickb but these guys go to such efforts to maintain theirs, and hurt so many people in the process, that it is difficult to muster any sympathy for them.
@Surplus:
If a person is so lacking in communication skills that they come off like the incels in the screenshots of this post, then yes. Dating will only be accessible to that person after they have been able to make some progress in therapy. The recommendation of therapy is explicitly given to men, not because men are the only ones who need therapy to be able to successfully date, but rather because people who are that blatantly gross/disrespectful are more likely to be men.
And whether or not someone is financially well off enough to date depends quite a bit on what dating involves for them. If you are working a minimum wage job it is unlikely you’ll have success dating in circles where weekend getaways to other countries are common. But you would likely do much better among people who consider a picnic or walk in the park a nice date. Your financial situation matters only in that you need to be able to participate fully in the activities that make up dating for you and prospective partners.
Communicating and treating one another respectfully is part of dating. If you need to pay for therapy to be able to fully participate in that aspect of dating, then yes, therapy is a requirement to successfully date.
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast has been out for 31 years. Any guy who thinks he’s going to get the girl by acting like Gaston (or LeFou) at this point is just being willfully ignorant.
@Pseudonym Write a sincere introduction to who you are and who you would like to be. Don’t worry about other guys copying it — people who respond will be checking the truthiness of your profile in chat and on early dates. Remember that you don’t have to attract everyone, just the right two or three.
@ Alan
As an archaeologist major. That made my day
@surplustorequirements
“
So what do you suggest?
I have seen this shared in so many online spaces and had two immediate thoughts.
1) We all know this already. It’s why so many men on social media platforms are invested in single-shaming women. It’s a way of pressuring women into settling for bad partnerships.
2) Going by the way so many men, (most?) are reacting to the article I don’t see anything changing. The general reaction appears to be”
“you want somebody considerate, kind and compassionate, supportive, emotionally intelligent and who shares your values?! Woah – SO PICKY! I just want to contribute my wallet and penis.”
@Alan
Ok I feel daft as that joke went completely over my head. I don’t get it!
DOOOOOUCHE BAAAGS.
(A thing which is also useless and harmful to women.)
Mr. XN has been a big anime fan since before a lot of these boys were born, and has never felt the need to go all weeaboo on actual women.
(weeaboo is in spell check!)
@Kat: I do hope she reported him to the store manager and corporate, but I perfectly understand if she just DGAF and didn’t want to waste any more time on that loser.
@Alan: Thank you for that! I will install one if/when I ever get a phone with more storage, but just reading about them was great. I heard your dialogue in the voice of the guy who said, “Top. Men.” and Harrison Ford at his driest and snarkiest.
@Raging Bee:
Yes, that’s why the people with access are 30% of the developed world instead of only 1%.
@surplus to requirements
As you have taken issue with the point about therapy I am genuinely interested as to what you would suggest?
Given that “dating will no longer be an option” for those who fail to address these relationship skills gaps.
@ steph
Sorry, meant to respond to you before.
It was just a silly joke based on the fact that there are now various apps available to archaeologists that make some of their tasks a little easier. And just tied in with the ‘He chose…poorly’ scene in that Indiana Jones film. The idea being that now you could just use an app to make the choice for you.
I’m in town all week; try the veal.
(Obviously, don’t try the veal)
Honestly,, this stuff existed before the internet. It just wasn’t documented like it is now online. Women have endured this crap before. It is why we don’t say no to guys. We give them fake numbers or indeterminate answers. But I think there are more socially awkward guys that spent their entire lives on the internet/video games, and are now convinced that women are just like porn scenes or anime hentai. The talk in video games is another indicator of this. and has been for a while.
I don’t know… I think the kind of guys from the examples have pretty much almost nothing to do with the points Matos is trying to make. I mean sure, they do seem to need psychological help – but to a far bigger extent than the one he’s proposing. These people don’t just have problems finding a relationship…
When I think back to the time I tried online dating or think of friends who have trouble finding a partner (male ones) I do see that he makes good, but in my opinion a little faulty points. I thankfully never had an encounter like the ones shown here (just one dick pick unfortunately) but I got completely overwhelmed by messages. Being selective is a sheer necessity cause who has the time to answer dozens of “Hey, wanna chat?” requests. I simply don’t have the energy to communicate with several different men at the same time.
And when I look at my friends the “valuing their own internal world” – too much – is kinda the problem. The ideas they have about relationships and about the kind of women they want contradict each other, which makes them unrealistic. Communicating those things “efficiently” won’t really solve their dilemma. And at least with one guy I’m pretty certain that he fully knows he’s what’s the problem. But blaming women is just so much easier and distracts from his own faulty mindset.
Although I think women have the same problems – the difference is that they’re far more encouraged to question themselves and change.
@ Three cats in a trenchcoat
Could I trouble you to expand on that a little further? Is this like ‘a theory of mind’ thing?
What I’m basically wondering is, we see a lot of posts here from incels and their ilk, where the main takeaway is that they don’t see women as anything more than effectively chadtropic automatons. I’d been working on the assumption that that was just dehumanising thing. That they of course didn’t believe what they said; they were being deliberately provocative.
But are there people who may genuinely think that?