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Comment by n72 | Hacker News Reader

'Tinder is not an app people seem to use to find "the one".'

I think this is both true and not true. A suspicion I have (and I'm sure there's got to be research on this) is that a lot of people interested in casual dating/hooking up on Tinder and/or in bars are unconsciously looking for a long term mate. In some ways this is a very effective strategy, since you're cycling through a large number of potential mates to find one who meets some kind of acceptability threshold. I read somewhere (sorry can't find the reference), that extroverted, high frequency daters ended up in happier long term relationships simply because they had more selection, which on the face of it seems to make sense.

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This is always what I tell my friends who have this "focus on work now, find someone and get married later" vision.

You definitely can find someone in your late 20s if you have little relationship experience. But you won't be able to make an informed choice and will miss a lot of red flags.

On the other hand, there's a better chance that you'll get to know the real person after 30. There's less influence from friends and family. The person's identity has usually smoothed out. And, they generally know themselves better - their motivations and goals, their likes and dislikes and principles. They're usually more confident in themselves and open about it. There's a better chance to 'get what you see'. I recommend to all of my friends to not look for a marriage partner until after 30.

Well, on the other hand, by that age you've probably both got pretty established patterns that are harder to break as part of your marriage. I don't think there's necessarily a "right" age to do it.

Studies show that the divorce rate among people who get married at 27+ is measurably lower than people who get married younger.

Wouldn't that also bias towards people who spent more time in a relationship before getting married? Personally, I would never get married with someone unless I dated them for at least 2 (preferably 3) years. I'm hoping that in itself will make it much less likely that I get divorced.

I just don't think it's a case where "studies show" is all that helpful. You're trying to get insight into a relationship with which you are intimately familiar by looking at aggregate data of people whose relationships are all over the map in various ways. It's like trying to figure out your risk of getting into an accident by looking at statistics for drivers in your age group without taking into account years of experience, propensity for speeding, and so on.

And that has nothing to do with the dating pool pre and post 30? All of my friends who are dating in their 30s complain about the typical dysfunctionally of the people they date.

Not true if you're a woman. The playing field shrinks as you get older, at least if you're looking for "good men."

There is a strange nearly perfect analogy with the dysfunctional problem of hiring "good programmers". Complete with expensive and time consuming rituals, unrealistic requirements vs the actual job, blind faith in technological silver bullets to improve the process, and elaborate psychological rationalization houses of cards all of which make little rational sense from an external viewpoint.

Some of the similarities are insane, like the laser like focus on demographic membership, first impressions, ageism, all the way down to stereotypical trivialities like wailing "there's no good ones left out there" despite obviously living in a sea full of fish.

I'm not sure if its baked into the cake because of something as simple and obvious as the rather extreme gender ratios in HR and Programming bleeding thru into the business processes, or both rituals come from the same larger culture so naturally human selection processes would be similar, or of there's a third more elaborate, probably more interesting, explanation.

> Some of the similarities are insane, like the laser like focus on demographic membership, first impressions, ageism

I don't think demographic membership and age are invalid criteria when trying to find someone to marry and raise children with. Different demographics have different cultures, and different cultures have different ideals of what is good and bad, how to raise children &c. Age is rather pertinent if one wishes to have children. Even if one wishes to marry and not have children, culture fit is pretty important (and age determines a heck of a lot about culture!).

> wailing "there's no good ones left out there" despite obviously living in a sea full of fish.

In both dating & hiring, the issue is not so much that there are no good options, but that sieving the wheat from the chaff is incredibly difficult. In both cases, so far as I can tell, it's an unsolved problem (or possibly it's solved but we don't like the solutions: I've not quite made up my mind).

Let's not kid ourselves, it shrinks for men too. As a 40 year old I thank my lucky stars that I'm out of the dating pool nowadays.

It doesn't shrink as much.

Mainly the result of societal pressure or expectations. Being a 33 year-old man, never married. That's "normal". If I were a woman, people would be asking me when I was going to get married and have kids (very much depends on area, but this is not at all uncommon). As a 33 year-old man, it's also not thought of as strange for me to date women in their early-to-mid 20s. The same is not true for women my age.

Then there's also just how people tend to rate attractiveness, which is something that really matters in a lot of these online dating systems. Men are generally viewed as (physically) attractive at higher ages than women are. A few wrinkles on a guy, some gray. That makes him "distinguished". You don't here people saying that about women as often.

The age range and feature-sets for what makes women attractive (again, this is emphasizing first impression attraction) are much narrower than for men.

I suspect that men are simply judged on a wider feature set than women. women prefer younger men if judging on aesthetics alone (full head of hair, abdominal definition, clear skin), but place a lower priority on attractiveness and will tolerate signals of aging in men if they are accompanied by signals of wealth/cultivation/accomplishment. Men who are unaccomplished/uninteresting and also older will experience 'pool shrinkage' at a similar rate to women.

"Being a 33 year-old man, never married. That's "normal". "

My experience was different. I was called a loser by more women than I could count because I wasn't ever married by then or had kids.

Where is that? I'm in the US for what it's worth and my particular experience is in the southeast.

Mostly in the SF Bay Area, of all places. I moved to north Texas and while it still happens, it happens way less often. But the Tinder landscape is definitely different.

Men's peak attractiveness is at 38. You aren't too far off it.

Only if you're lazy. If you improve yourself (gym, career, hobbies) your pool should only grow as a man into his 40s.

Not true if you're either sex. People who other people want to marry are getting removed from the pool.

People are also being added to the pool, probably at a faster rate since marriages are happening later and the human population is expanding.

The pool being larger has nothing to do with, for lack of a better term, marriageable people dwindling from the pool as time goes on. Sure you'll have more options overall at any point, that does not mean that you're not slowly losing options as people who are desirable life partners marry other people in the same position.

Thats kind of how things go. It's a penalty for not being serious early on.

Most nations are generally monogamous. The playing field is the same size for all hetero people.

I tried to focus on finding someone in my 20's and 30's and couldn't find anyone and now I'm in my 40's and I just give up. It's too time consuming etc. I've come to the realization that most likely there isn't anyone for me and my life would have been much better if I had focused completely work and not bothered with dating.

I mentioned it above, but have you looked into the MGTOW community? They feel the same way.

Thanks but I'm a woman.

Be prepared to pivot?

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