I think the author is confusing the probability of a “stable marriage” with the probability of a relationship.
What this says is you’d expect cheating to go up. As Chris Rock says, “you’re only as faithful as your options.”
FWIW, I have found online dating way harder than dating someone I met through friends/work/school. YMMV but my theory is having access to that many more people leads one (including myself) to sometimes think there's someone more attractive/interesting out there instead of giving what's available to them a strong chance.
I have two good friends who have been serial daters for years and they have Seinfeldian reasons as to why they didn't fit with someone. It made me think my God, "if everyone had your standards, literally no one would have a long term relationship." Interestingly, when I saw them date mutual friends back in Uni, the relationships were the longest they've had their entire lives.
I'm convinced that a lot of stable marriages from people I know around me wouldn't have happened if they had tried first meeting online instead of happenstance in IRL situations, because person A wasn't the typical ethnicity that marries person B, or person A is much older than person B and wouldn't have fit in the filter, or person A isn't particularly photogenic, etc.
I'm not trying to paint online dating as a bad thing as there are quite a number of success stories.
I come from a strong family culture (dozens of cousins, off-spring, good communication, >95% stable long-lasting marriages, etc.), and we were taught that there is no perfect match. Love isn’t a feeling, it is an act of the will for the good of the other.
Ergo, it’s your job to make the relationship work.
Millennials without robust world-views haven’t yet figured out that the ‘fear of missing out’ is devastating to their pursuit of happiness.
Basically, dating in our modern world of few meaningful social connections is a vicious cycle for women. Men rate attractiveness on a normal distribution, women rate attractiveness on a pareto distribution. (ie. 80% of men are "meh" or worse to women.)
I've seen this in action in my personal and professional lives. Smart, attractive women end up implementing (knowinginly or unknowningly) a complex rules engine for screening an endless pool of available men. (Male criteria for engaging a woman online is very low.) When you are a 29 year old female only considering seriously dating attractive jewish/catholic/athiest, asian/black/hispanic/irish/white/etc men 6'1" or taller in professional jobs (generally speaking or a specific gig) who have attribute X, Y, or Z, you're screwed.
Men will usually stop filtering earlier. They still get into awful relationships, but they don't filter out 80% of the population.
Here's a comment where I opine on this from a previous thread on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22407388
"Bowling Alone" captured part of the phenomena 20 years ago. That hasn't changed. Even things like little leagues and soccer clubs for kids are declining in many ways and much more commercial activities than they were in the past. Even worship has changed -- high growth religious services are scaled-up entertainment and child care focused vs. community.
Personally, I don't buy into the notion that people have changed. People are people. I think the environment has changed and people are playing interacting with it based on the funnel they get sucked into.
The online dating services are listing real estate agents -- their interest is in a higher number of conversions per customer. They will optimize for that metric over time.
Is this based on the OkCupid blog? My speculation is what men on average look for (appearance) is easily communicated via online dating, but this is less so than women. I'd be interested to see what the same chart would look for people known in person, rather than just online.
> I've seen this in action in my personal and professional lives. Smart, attractive women end up implementing (knowinginly or unknowningly) a complex rules engine for screening an endless pool of available men. (Male criteria for engaging a woman online is very low.) When you are a 29 year old female only considering seriously dating attractive jewish/catholic/athiest, asian/black/hispanic/irish/white/etc men 6'1" or taller in professional jobs (generally speaking or a specific gig) who have attribute X, Y, or Z, you're screwed.
There's data showing that women care more about "dating up" in education/social class, which has negatively impacts college educated women and men without a college education. This is due to the widening gap in college degree attainment in the US between men and women[0]. The book "It's Not You, It's Biology" does a good job of going into this.
[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-...
They just use looks as a massive first filter.
And people from certain backgrounds also use that background as a major filter.
Anyway, what happens is that women are invested less in the beginning, but as the relationship progresses it switches. The woman gets more attracted than the man, and starts putting up with more than him to keep her investment.
Baumeister and Tice did some daring studies:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2013...
Although this is all assuming people date to get married.
Tongue firmly in cheek, I bet a not insignificant number of people get married to stop dating.
TLDR: do the women have a similar advantage if they are the reachers?
Do you mean what would happen if the distributions were switched but men still make the first move? I could change up the script and run it again if that's what you mean!