Relationship advice from a paralell universe

[sqbr]

An utterly terrible article: Why women lose the dating game

This sort of article feels like it comes from some bizarre parallel universe where everyone is a douchebag who sees all romantic and sexual relationships as a cold, objective calculus of income + attractiveness + status. (Also everyone is straight and binary gendered. Obviously)

Partners of the same approximate value are interchangeable, and the aim is to capture the highest valued partner you can. Once a man gets married he is forced to support his wife forever. But what all men actually want is an endless stream of meaningless sex with high valued women. Marriage appears to be a strictly unemotional transaction: status and children for the woman, a guaranteed supply of sex for the man. To be an unmarried woman past a certain age is to be of shamefully low status and doomed to misery.

The other main difference between men and women is that women's attractiveness steadily drops from the day they turn 23 or so, while men's attractiveness falls much more slowly, so that their overall value tends to increase through their 30s with their income.

And you know what? In such a world it does make sense for women to marry the first decent prospect around their age who comes along, holding onto him as their value decreases and his increases.

But thankfully the world I live in is nothing like this whatsoever.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I'm glad I saw the name "Bettina Arndt" on the article and didn't read it!

[sqbr]

She really is terrible isn't she?

[untonuggan]

Thank you for an amusing summary that gives me insight into a bizarre world that some people appear to exist in while saving my sanity from having to read about it directly.

There are some days I thank my lucky stars for being queer, because this kind of calculus just isn't in my world at all. Which is not to say that it is in the world for all heterosexual people, just apparently some of them and this way I don't end up trying to date someone with completely bizarre expectations of their self-worth.

[sqbr]

*coughs* *points out that some of us queer people are in relationships with members of the opposite sex*

Luckily my husband is not like that at all, which is one reason I married him :)

[untonuggan]

Totally good point - I am bi although I prefer the word queer, so that was definitely a foot in mouth moment for me.

Go your husband. ^_^

[sqbr]

Totally understandable, the language around these topics tends to be treacherously ambiguous.

[celamity]

The universe according to Sex and the City. I'm glad I don't live in it.

[sqbr]

Me too!

[tree]

women: just like cars. they start depreciating in value as soon as you buy them.

[sqbr]

Exactly!

[deird1]

Uch. Thanks for snarking - I couldn't have dealt with that article without it.

[stephbg]

Good lord. Well, that certainly explains why divorce rates are so high.

[sqbr]

And yet the fact that men can just divorce their depreciated wives for younger hotter women seems to entirely invalidate the argument, even if you accept it's horrible premise.

[bunny_m]

I am likewise glad to not live in a world that resembles the one above at all.

What a miserable, soulless place it seems. *shudder*

[sqbr]

I know! It's like the people who argue that we have to discourage gay marriage because otherwise noone would ever want to get into the horrible drudgery of m/f marriage. The fact that some people actually ENJOY THE COMPANY of their partners is apparently utterly alien.