One of the rather bleak theories that has come out of the Red Pill / men's rights movements is that women develop this sense of entitlement because:
1. Attractive / high value men are happy to sleep with less attractive women they wouldn't consider as 'relationship material'.
2. Women are generally more sexually liberated so there's an increasing chance they will have had several of these encounters, and therefore believe they are entitled to men of the same level (also known as becoming an 'alpha widow').
Like most of these theories it's pretty depressing to contemplate, but I'm yet to see a convincing refutation of it.
The most depressing outcome of it is that a man will eventually marry a woman who ranks him at the bottom 50% of the people she had a romantic relationship with.
I can not tell who is going to be the most miserable in such relationship. My guess is the woman, who will not be able to understand how "she settled like that, since she could do so much better". In the best case scenario, the man will be oblivious of the fact, so probably he will be unaffected.
Absolutely, it's a horrible thing to contemplate. As a single man who is not very successful with women, I'm equally afraid of this outcome as I am of being alone forever. Perhaps even more.
I would love to find a way of coming to terms with this that doesn't involve adopting the full red pill attitude of "never get married, all women are like that" etc
On the positive side, this probably means that the average man will marry a woman in the top50% of the romantic relationships he has had in the past. So you can focus on that thought. :)
Of course, this is possible because the average man will have far fewer relationships than the average woman. So in the end the numbers for this imaginary couple will look like:
For the man: He will marry then number 2 mate out of a total of 5.
For the woman: She will marry the number 10 mate out of a total of 15.
Obviously the numbers are totally made up, but you get the point.
So be positive! When you will settle, your mate will probably exceed your expectations.
It’s interesting that girls start at the top and get rejected down to their compromise level. Men start at the bottom and rise up to catch the falling girls. I am not sure either is better off or worse. Also you can look at other things... rank people on ability to cook, sing, solve puzzles, money, humor, cleanliness, optimism, generosity. Also even if you are hung up on number of or looks of mates, you can lower your standards, pay for it...
Best is to find your own self esteem. Whoever gets your company and attention is lucky, because you chose to give it to them and no one else...
It’s just you in the Boltzmann brain... no one else means anything. Also the universe is big, really big. And the block universe is here all at once. You can’t really change anything... we don’t know anything. What were we talking about again ?
Even though it would get terrible press and PR, a "no surprises" dating site where height and weight and photo are verified would go a long way to solving some of these problems. This way people can swim in their lanes, without wasting other people's time.
The phrase "swim in their lanes" riles me in this context. While a photo and some basic personal data would help, dating is not an activity where social cooperation between competing parties is needed to ensure a better outcome. And there's no pool attendant either. It's not up to you to decide who gets to date whom.
> dating is not an activity where social cooperation between competing parties is needed to ensure a better outcome
I'm not sure if I agree. From the perspective of the dating site you'd be right, the longer people are unable to find the kind of relationship that they want, the better it is for their business. However, from the point of view of the people looking for dates, if people are shown little to no profiles where it's highly unlikely that a relationship will happen, and shown mostly profiles where matches are likely, regardless of their stated preferences, and thus response rates and relationship likelihood rises, that seems like it can be a better outcome to me.
It's not about that, it's about the phrasing "swim in your lane". That means imposing social rules, and belittling people who behave differently. Taken in extremis, it can be interpreted as: ugly should only date ugly.
No, you're misinterpreting it, maybe even projecting your own insecurities. Nobody said you have to date fit / thin people - just that people shouldn't lie / pretend about it. You have a fetish on fatties? Set the weight filter up high. This is clearly superior to the current model, where it's easy for people to lie about weight/age/height/income/...
The real criticism of this model is completely different, and much deeper. People don't actually know what they want and who would make them happy, and they often conform / default to social conventions in their public preferences - e.g. maybe you want to filter out 10+ older men because you don't want to go on dates with "creepy" dudes, or you want to filter out fat women because you don't want your friends to judge you - even though in reality, you might actually be happier with those matches, or, more likely, those attributes are often orthogonal to your actual happiness.
Wouldn’t help, the same numbers breakdown would occur, people would still be unhappy as a consequence, it would just be more up front. Well, it’s the world people want, hope they like it.
1. Attractive / high value men are happy to sleep with less attractive women they wouldn't consider as 'relationship material'.
2. Women are generally more sexually liberated so there's an increasing chance they will have had several of these encounters, and therefore believe they are entitled to men of the same level (also known as becoming an 'alpha widow').
Like most of these theories it's pretty depressing to contemplate, but I'm yet to see a convincing refutation of it.