[Grishnakh]

I can't speak for him but I'm a bit over 40 and single again, and looking. What I'm seeing in the DC metro area is a ton of single women in my age range who are single and never married, and all of a sudden now they want to get married and have kids. (Some of them want kids, some don't.) So not "pushing 30", but "pushing 40". Other data I've seen shows that there's a big surplus of single women in both the NYC and DC metro areas. OTOH, in Seattle and the Bay Area, there's a big surplus of single men. (There's a smaller surplus in Portland.)

My problem is that I don't live quite in the DC area, I'm about an hour away from downtown DC. And what I'm finding is that the desirable single women all live right in downtown DC, and do not want to date a man who lives an hour away. Now, if there were a healthy market of compatible men, this attitude would be quite understandable. But we're talking about a bunch of women who are bitching that they can't find any decent men to date, but then I come along and I'm told, "you look great, but you're too far away!! Sorry, but give me a ring when you move closer."

So IMO, these women are extremely picky and unrealistic. If I find someone I really like and might want to marry, I would move to be closer to her, just like married couples routinely move long-distance because one of them got a new job. I've even stated this up-front, as I do not plan to stay in my current location long-term (I'm a software engineer like probably half the audience here, our jobs don't last that long and we move around a lot). So as far as I can tell, many of these women have done this to themselves by being way too picky and having overly high expectations. They think they're going to find a guy who looks like George Clooney or whatever, has a $250j/year career, and lives across the street from them.

[sean2]

Ha, same area here, but exploring the pushing 35 range.

From what I've seen, I don't think they actually expect to meet George Clooney. After living with their independence and high paying job, 100% of which they can spend on them-self, usually enabling tons of international travel. They don't actually want to settle down and put work into a relationship, but their friends and family constantly pester them to do so.

So they settle for appearing desperate to keep their friends and family happy, but keeping standards high so that either the sacrifices to have a relationship would be worth it to them or they don't get a relationship they didn't want anyway.

[Grishnakh]

I'm not sure about all that, but I will vouch for the tons of international travel bit. In fact, it's so bad I feel like a lot of these women are woefully ignorant about anything in the US that's outside of a few major cities, because they never go anywhere outside their city; any time they have a little vacation time they're flying to Argentina or Africa or something.

I disagree about them not wanting to actually be in a relationship, but I think what's happened is that they're so used to being single and free, and never having been in a serious relationship for that long, that they really have no idea how to do it, and it's probably a lost cause. They're now realizing they have to get started right now if they want to have natural kids, but they're not prepared to make the sacrifices you have to make in order to be in that kind of relationship.

[Grishnakh]

In addition to my last comment regarding these ~40yo women now wanting to have kids, what's even worse is that it seems a ton of them are getting themselves inseminated (artificially or otherwise, probably artificially for these high-income women so they can screen the genetics of the donor more accurately) and deciding to become single moms.

As someone who was raised by a single mom, it's a horrible experience, and prepares you for a life of never being able to be successful in an adult relationship, because you've never seen such a relationship except maybe on TV (which we all know is not reflective of reality at all).

I do not see a good future here for our society. I'm not a social conservative in most ways (I'm a big believer in poly relationships for instance), but what I'm seeing with the 30-45 women makes me very worried for the future of our society. Maybe the Millenials and Gen-Zers will do a better job than us stupid Gen-Xers; they seem to be much more open-minded and willing to try out different relationship styles, rather than not having relationships at all.

[sotojuan]

Might be related to how inflated the praise for higher degrees is. I mean, I know a JD or medical degree is no small feat, but it doesn't mean you're suddenly only good enough for the best of the best or are in some privileged genius tier (that goes for men and women).

[charlesdm]

Sadly, there are plenty of people in the world who are great at memorising but are actually horrible at applying their knowledge. While such degrees can be impressive achievements, it says very little about a person. I've met brilliant high school graduates and plain stupid people with phds. A lot of it depends on the person.