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I'm dragging up the gender, dating, and fertility discourse for one last rodeo.
The below analysis is a possible infohazard for young single males. It contains analysis done by LLMs, but I solemnly swear I drafted this through my own brainpower, using AI only for the analysis I was too lazy to do myself.
I'm following upon a comment I made about a year ago that pulled out some raw numbers on the quality of women in the U.S., and how this might impact the desire of men to actually develop themselves and find one of those women and settle down.
At the time I didn't bother doing the work to produce an actual estimate of how many women would match the basic crtieria, given that these are NOT independent variables. The though occurred to me that AIs are the perfect solution for exactly this type of laziness, and now have the capability to do this task without completely making up numbers.
So, based on my old post, I chose 9 particular criteria that I think would ‘fairly’ qualify a woman as ‘marriageable.':
Single and looking (of course).
Cishet, and thus not LGBT identified.
Not ‘obese.’
Not a mother already.
No ‘acute’ mental illness.
No STI.
Less than $50,000 in student loan debt.
5 or fewer sex partners (‘bodies’).
Under age 30.
And ask both ChatGPT and Grok to attempt to estimate the actual population of women in the U.S. that pass all these filters, accounting for how highly correlated each of the variables are.
Notable criteria I omitted:
Religious affiliation
Race
Political affiliation
Career
Drug use
Sex work/Onlyfans
I argue that a reasonable man would NOT want to ‘compromise’ on any of the original criteria, whereas the omitted ones are comparatively negotiable, or alternatively, are already captured in one of the original criteria.
Would you accept a woman who was carrying $50k in student loan debt into the relationship? I guess maybe if she was a doctor or lawyer or made enough money to justify it. Much higher than that and it starts to suggest financial recklessness.
5 as a body count is definitely an ‘arbitrary’ number, but again, you get much above that and it implies more bad decision-making. Ditto for being STI positive.
The age one is probably the most ‘unfair,’ but if having kids is a goal then this is pretty close to the ‘reasonable’ cutoff given the ticking fertility clock. Adjust upward if needed, I guess.
Here is the ChatGPT conversation. I used o3 in this case.
Here is Grok, specifically Grok 3.
In each case I used the “Deep Research” mode for the main query. I used identical prompts to start them off, they each seemingly did slightly different interpretations of the prompt. I was not using any fancy, complex prompt engineering to try and force it to think like a statistician or avoid hallucinations.
ChatGPT Gives this conclusion:
Grok comes to quite the similar conclusion:
Then I asked the truly cursed followup question: “how many men in the U.S. might be seeking these eligible women and thus how much competition is there for this population? How many are likely to ‘fail.’"
ChatGPT:
Emphasis Mine.
Grok:
Then the followup, when I tell it to extend the age range:
The error bars are pretty large on this one... the 9-out-of-10 number doesn't quite pass the smell test... but I think the point speaks for itself.
I don’t want to say that this is bleak, per se. I mean, 1 million or so women in the U.S. with some decent marriageable bonafides. That’s not a small pool! The problem stems from noticing that said women will have somewhere upwards of 5 men, possibly near 27 who will be competing for their affections, or more if they’re near the absolute peak of physical attractiveness.
Hence my increasing annoyance with the bog standard advice proffered to young males “become worthy and put in some effort and you will find a good woman” as it becomes increasingly divorced from the actual reality on the ground.
It’s not wrong. It is incomplete. Insufficient. If we increase the number of “worthy” men, that’s just intensifying the competition for the desirable women… while ALSO ensuring that more of those ‘worthy’ men will lose and go unfulfilled, DESPITE applying their efforts towards “worthiness.”
You CAN’T tell young men both “be better, improve, you have to DESERVE a good woman before you get one!” and then, when he improves:
“oh, you have to lower your standards, just because you thought you deserved a stable, chaste(ish), physically fit partner doesn’t mean you’re entitled to one, world ain’t fair.”
That dog won’t hunt.
Thems the numbers. I’m not making this up wholesale or whining about advice because I find it uncomfortable. No. The math is directly belying the platitudes. I’m too autistic NOT to notice.
So where am I going with this?
First, I’m hoping, praying someone can actually show me evidence that this is wrong. All of my personal experience, anecdotal observations, research, and my gut fucking instinct all points to this being an accurate model of reality. But I am fallible.
If I’m wrong I want to know!
I’m also not particularly worried about ME in general. I am in a good position to find a good woman, even though I’m sick of all the numerous frustrations and inanities one has to endure to do so. I get annoyed when someone, even in good faith, tries to suggest that my complaints are more mental than real. I can see the numbers, I've been in the trenches for years, this is a true phenomena, the competition is heavy, the prizes are... lacking.
And finally and most importantly, I genuinely feel the only way we keep the Ferris Wheel of organized civilization turning is if average women are willing to marry average men, and stay married, and help raise kids. I’m all for pushing the ‘average’ quality up, as long as actual relationships are forming.
Objectively, that is not happening. And so I’m worried because if society breaks down... well, I live here and I don't like what that implies for me, either.
(Yes, AGI is possibly/probably going to make this all a moot point before it all really collapses)
My wife certainly would not fit your criteria and we have been happily together for almost 15 years, married for a substantial portion of that, and have a bunch of kids.
My wife started significantly more liberal than me, but is now radically more conservative than I am, she was vehemently anti-religion, and is now an extremely devout Catholic who prays the rosary multiple times a day, wants endless deep conversations about religious philosophy, and would happily go to church with me every day if we could handle it with the number of kids we have.
I'm going to be blunt: a lot of the men I talk to about dating are just weak losers. Stop being a weak loser. Women want a man who is going to take care of them, and in a sense "tame" them. Look at every single female erotica story and it's some version of "strong willed man tames crazy rebellious woman" (often wrapped in: strong man sees the thing in rebellious woman that nobody else saw and they tame each other, but she still wants him to remain strong and only tamed towards her).
I see a lot of men who whine and complain that they don't want a "project", or a woman that isn't already the perfect match for them. Well...okay, man, but the entire world is made mostly by men who like the idea of a "project" in basically every facet of their entire lives, so maybe your status as single is a feature of evolution.
The only thing I agree with on your criteria is: STDs/sex work. That is a dealbreaker.
Yes, I didn't include the political affiliation criteria because that's one of the most malleable traits for women.
On the other hand, a full on seventy motherflipping percent of unmarried women vote democrat.
40% of women aged 18-29 identify as VERY LIBERAL or Liberal.
Have you not heard about the recent, RADICAL political polarization among young women?
These women ALSO largely refuse to date conservative/Republican men.
So men don't HAVE to filter these women out, these women are filtering THEMSELVES out. And they go on social media and aggressively police other women on this issue.
Whoops.
(btw this wasn't the case 15 years ago when you got married, so I humbly suggest your advice is based on a qualitatively different scenario)
Its all well and good to say "it worked out for me."
But the situation has gotten drastically worse. Not acknowledging this is a huge oversight.
And here it is.
"Men, be better."
Okay.
But now the best men get to sleep around with their pick of women and never have to commit.
The rest of the men have to compete for a smaller pool of women, because you can't even suggest that maybe we should make the pool of good women larger.
The relationships are not forming at all.
AT WHAT POINT do you start suggesting that we put pressure on women to lower their standards a bit and settle down earlier?
Why is it so impossible to be better? And why don't you simply date lower status women, and then elevate their status?
Because the odds are much higher that they divorce you and take your wealth and lower YOUR status.
Downside risk is serious, upside benefits are usually small.
McKenzie Bezos and Melinda Gates became billionaires... by divorcing billionaires.
What man would want that particular risk AFTER he went to the trouble of accumulating the wealth in order to be able to get the woman in the first place.
A woman would have to be worth that risk.
The absurdity of the situation is that men are told to accumulate more skills, wealth, and VALUE, for women who are less valuable and more likely to defect from the marriage, and thus to take much of the value the man worked so hard to acquire.
And literally EVERY SINGLE LEGAL CHANGE IN THE PAST 50+ YEARS HAS FAVORED WOMEN'S ABILITY TO DEFECT.
Why is it so impossible to suggest that women should settle earlier?
The stats are showing that:
Conclusion: MEN SHOULD IMPROVE THEMSELVES.
Hilarious.
It ain't working. the women ain't happy, the men are lonely, when do we admit that current advice is insufficient?
Oh for hell's sake. McKenzie Bezos helped Jeff when he was establishing Amazon and she was in the steady job earning the money while he chased his dream. Then the marriage ended because HE, not she, fell for the next door slapper* and blew up his marriage (apparently they are finally getting married because she just threw a huge hen party recently).
I think in that case she's entitled to every penny of the divorce settlement. I'm not familiar with Melinda Gates' case but again that seems to be Bill not being able to keep it in his pants. The men in these examples are the cheating liars, not the women. Pick a different scare story than "oh no, if you wreck your marriage to the woman who raised your kids and was there in the early years before you became rich and famous because you chased a blow-up Barbie doll, you might even have to pay a fair share of alimony! clearly women are all only gold diggers!".
*This is what she considered appropriate to wear to a presidential inauguration. But go ahead, tell me how poor Jeff was taken advantage of by his rapacious wife.
I don’t see why a woman should have any right to a man’s earnings after termination of the marriage. Being a good companion and a good parent is easy. Making money is hard. If one parent stayed at home while the other worked, if there’s a divorce, the idle parent should owe compensation for the time they twiddled their thumbs and watched teletubbies on the other’s dime: they’ve had their fun, it’s their turn to work now.
I smell a stuffy prudishness in your condemnation these men: are you familiar with the modern concept of no-fault divorce? No one gives a shit who fucked who, and even less how the paramour dressed.
Right to spousal support started because, in the ideal world of "women do not work outside the home", once divorced a woman had little to no chance of income of her own. If you threw her out for a newer model, it was considered only fair to save her from ending up on the streets until she got a job or married again.
"The idle parent" shows your lack of comprehension of how a household works.
Funny, I thought the entire point of the rant about women was that men very much would give a shit if their wife fucked another man, and if she dressed like a slut. Or if she left her nice hardworking ordinary guy husband for a bad boy who looked cool but was trashy.
McKenzie was not at fault in the divorce, Jeff was: he broke up the marriage not because they had grown apart or because she was a bad wife and mother, but because he went through a midlife crisis and fell for a trashy vamp whose only assets are the plastic tits she constantly flashes.
Yeah but the game has changed on both fronts. Incomes are more equitable between genders, and whilst domestic duties are still difficult the average Divorcee isn't an Irish Catholic Mother of 14 that needs to wash and darn the socks by hand. I think there's a potential middleground between the two approaches in which it is possible to acknowledge marriage as a partnership, whilst still feeling that divorce settlements far, far, far beyond the amount it'd take to literally retire and have a comfortable rest of life are a bit outlandish.
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God forbid any woman would find herself in financial difficulty and would have to earn a living, like any man ever.
Single guys spend maybe 2 hours a week on household chores. When they move in with a woman the weekly dose per household goes to 16 hours, without any kids. Most of the housework done by women is busywork, deadweight loss. They tidy and clean in circles, and if that’s not enough waste, they remodel. They brush the slabs outside, where people walk, and want the roof power-washed, where no one ever goes.
We’re not all the same, with the same rants, you know. I accept that adults can fuck who they want, as our legislation says, and I want that rule applied fairly.
You seem to have a great deal of hostility towards another woman, based on her appearance. I’ll put it down as a data point in favour of slut-shaming being mostly intrasexual competition.
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In the case of McKenzie Bezos, she was functionally his business partner at the founding of Amazon and it simply hadn't been structured that way because they were married. This seems like a reasonable thing for the courts to decide in the event of divorce.
More to your point, being a good wife and mother is not, actually, easy. It isn't a super g-loaded task but housewives should be recognized for their valuable role and marital property in the event of a divorce seems fair. Neither Gates nor Bezos are poor after their divorces(which, again, were easily avoidable by those men).
She put a few stamps on early orders, that must entitle her to half the future earnings of the man who created and worked all his life as CEO of that company. I think not.
We live in a time where every wife feels like an “equal-value partner” in their husband’s business, and the laws we made agree with them. But they are not.
I understand it's always the man's fault and he always has to pay. If he cheats, well he got what he deserved. If she cheats, he failed to nurture a woman's love, he didn't treat her right, and you wouldn't want to slut shame a woman anyway, and besides, she 'contributed' to the marriage, so here's the bill again.
At every level of society, at every age, women get more than they put in. Starting at university, where they have been 56/44 for decades despite working far less, through marriage, divorce, and pensions, where they live longer after having contributed less. And the more we hand over to them, the more oppressed they feel.
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