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Comment by bluefirebrand | Hacker News Reader

> Well, forecasts says 45% of women 20-44 will be single 2030

From my (cis white mid-30s) male perspective, if this winds up being true then it will be because they choose to be single

They will lament that they cannot find any good men, but they will be overlooking "good enough" men in thier lives, I guarantee

I see this with all of my wife's friends all the time. They are all single and they have insane expectations for what they want out of a man

It's a mix of funny and sad because they often will tell her how she's lucky to have found such a great guy, but I wouldn't check even half of their dating requirements

And of course men have high standards too. But despite how gender norms have changed, it remains the case that men pursue women and women choose who they date. So it's on men to meet women's standards but also on women to have realistic, reasonable standards. I see women with unreasonable standards all the time.

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Price is set at the margin with fewer females dating the remaining set the price. I think the core part of the problem is that women do not seem to know the actual distribution of men and what should be the expected likelihood of desired attributes. This is most obvious when they sincerely pick attributes which they believe to be the median range but are in fact only in the >90% of men. I think this is the predominant reason why fewer women are at the price setting margin.

There is little attention paid to the negative consequences of this overestimation - possibly because few people pay attention to older women who have paid those consequences and older women have no incentive to inform younger women as quite often they are still in competition with them. Trying to educate young women that they really should realistic about their prospects is not going to be popular. In general men appear to already have an accurate estimate of the distribution of attributes. I think the proportion of the difference is demonstrated by the attributes that men and women covet and the difficulty in achieving those attributes. For example losing weight is far easier than growing taler.

Women have no obligation to date or pair up. Why is it a problem if a lot of women's standards are too high for the majority of men and they decide to not date? It's well within their right to be single.

It's well within their right to be single, but don't complain if you want to be in a relationship and "can't find a good man"

Men aren't obligated to meet some unreasonable set of standards either

For this stuff to work, people need to meet each other in the middle somewhere

It’s not about obligation, it’s about loneliness. That was the start of this whole thread. Women with unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for their own loneliness.

I don’t think it’s entirely their fault though, as others in the thread seem to imply. The rise in expectations seems to closely match the rise of mass (and later social) media. Simply put, women and girls are exposed to all kinds of images and stories about attractive and high status men. Along with that we have dating apps that seem to reinforce this illusion of abundance. So then we should not be surprised at all that it’s so common for women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects.

> Women with unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for their own loneliness.

Replace that with 'solitude' and the article pretty much explains why that is a non-issue. Women deciding they are better off alone is not a problem. Accusing them of being unhappy and then purporting to explain why is pretty weird.

If there are psychological issues with people being lonely, coming to the conclusion that they should date more and if they can't it's "women's fault" is kinda flabbergasting. The social fabric isn't made of romantic pairs, and that's definitely not women's collective responsibility.

I’m not accusing anyone of being unhappy. I am believing people when they say they are unhappy.

Furthermore I said specifically that it’s not women’s fault.

> it’s so common for women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects

You kinda did.

> I am believing people when they say they are unhappy.

Who are these unhappy women that need to lower their standards to be happy? I see two different problems: people seem to be lonely because the social fabric is being corroded away; and some people seem to think that the issue is somehow related with too many single women.

Please don’t quote me out of context. The full quote is:

So then we should not be surprised at all that it’s so common for women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects.

I was talking about the mechanisms for why women would have an unrealistic picture of their prospects. Much has been written about the unrealistic expectations of men which have been driven by mass media. It’s only fair to talk about the other side of the issue which has been largely ignored, by comparison.

But it’s not only the issue of expectations for dating. Young girls especially have been taught to have unrealistic expectations for their own appearance which has been driven by a ruthless set of social media algorithms that foster unhealthy comparisons (with celebrity influencers) across the entire internet.

Anyway, if you want to see what should be more realistic expectations, look at pictures of families from a hundred years ago or more. What will you see? Plain and ordinary people living simple lives. Nowadays people are taught to look at such lifestyles with revulsion. Instead, they live their lonely consumerist lifestyles in their tiny apartments.

You asked who all these lonely women are? They’re the friends of that guy’s wife from earlier in the thread. There are countless more women in the same situation.

There's so much strawmen here I don't want to take it apart because it feels so pointless. A lot of people being single has zero to do with anything else. People don't need to be in romantic relationships to be happy and certainly no one is wrong to have the standards they have for partners. It's their prerogative to decide whom to date and the whole narrative that there's a societal problem related to women not wanting to date the average guy is just disgusting.

> Women with unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for their own loneliness.

I find this similar to blaming fat people for obesity and diabetes. We evolved with food being scarce. We're not at all equipped to deal with junk food that's engineered to be addictive and the adverts for McDonald's and other junk everywhere on our lives.

Do you know how many animals are monogamous? Basically no mammals. This is something seen mostly in birds. And even out of monogamous birds only a fraction of them mate for life (which is what people typically mean when they say monogamous). Go and read about bonobos, chimpanzees and gorillas to learn about primate mating behaviour without any of the human bullshit.

What we see now is a kind of confused state. Societies have been mostly set up around families, although that's changed more recently with government welfare etc. Harems are still very much taboo in the West, but increasing inequality and centralisation of wealth can only mean one thing. Media (not just social media but that too) creates vastly unrealistic expectations for everyone, basically putting everyone together on the "world stage". Like junk food, our primate mating instincts aren't equipped to deal with any of this.

One thing I find funny when men blame women specifically for this is they never admit that they also want to mate with as many women as possible, preferably a different one every day. It's always implied that women are ruining monogamy but men would just be happy with one partner. Bull fucking shit. Truth is if any man had the opportunity to form a harem it would be taken in as heartbeat. It's really fucking lame to try to analyse other people before even analysing one's self.

> Do you know how many animals are monogamous? Basically no mammals

How many mammals have babies that require basically continuous care for years before they can be remotely self sufficient? Basically no mammals. This is something seen only in humans. So let's show a bit of care before drawing conclusions based on that.

> How many mammals have babies that require basically continuous care for years before they can be remotely self sufficient?

All great apes. I'm not drawing conclusion based on other animals, anyway. I'm looking at humans. It's just interesting to note we're not alone amongst mammals when it comes to polygamy.

We have to blame fat people for their actions. Pretending they are not responsible for their own choice is a really bad road to go down. These are adults, and we need to treat them as such. The victim mentality really has to stop, its nonesense beyond repair!

So would you convince a recovering alcoholic to drink then blame them when they do it?

I wouldn't convince a recovering alcoholic to drink, because I am neither the food industry nor an a-hole. However, I insist on blaming them if they do, because thats their body and their decision. We can talk about legislation, like, finally, treating alcohol like the drug it is, and stop pretending it is some sort of exception. But I insist on people being responsible for their own choices. I don't want to life in a world where adults are treated like children.

My point was the skewed perception can lead to suboptimal decision making for women who don’t want to be single. It’s a non issue for women who do want to be single.

Sure, but women have the "biological clock", and many of them realize they have set their expectations too high when the clock is actually running out, which then turns into a disaster/depression for them. Men don't care when they start a family. If women miss the window, and thats also why the statistic was looking at women between 20-44, they are basically done with the dream of having a child. And yeah, I am fully on your side, voluntary singles should just be left alone and allowed to be happy. However, the "I am happy as a single" is more like a coping mechanism then a real stance, at least several stories confirm that...

Physical attributes are easy to recognize, so if these weigh heavily in your expectations, you can more rapidly estimate the distribution. Being able to do this quickly also means you can break out populations to make more accurate estimates of your current environment; i.e. while the media bombards us with beautiful celebrities, you can maintain an independent estimation of your actual dating pool.

Social attributes take more time. You need to spend time with someone to understand where they are, and you would need to spend time with a lot of people to understand the distribution. You can try to use heuristics, like being in a relationship with someone you believe has similar expectations, but as noted those aren't actually very accurate.

I might take another track here as well and add a bit of blame on the overuse of perfumes and deodorant. I think they block actual pheromone sensing intrinsic to us which make said standards have more of a bearing than they should.

> but I wouldn't check even half of their dating requirements

I’ll bite. What do you think is on that list of dating requirements?

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