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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)
I knew a girl in high school that self identified as bisexual. She was in a long term relationship with a guy.
Then in college in the dorms there was a very similar woman. Same exact personality and interests. For some reason also felt the need to inform people she meets that she is bisexual. Also in a long term relationship with a man. This is before social media, so it wasn't internet brainrot.
There's some portion of women that are hypothetically bisexual. Or we could frame it negatively and say they are performatively pretending to be "queer" as stolen valor from actual LGB people. Refusing to admit that they are regular straight people; "cishet".
That does not prevent them from pairing up with men. I found those two women annoying. I suppose I'd find a modern "demisexual" "pansexual" woman who got her identity from tumblr similarly annoying. But that shouldn't be a universal filter. Any man who can resist rolling his eyes while she recites her "actually it is a spectrum" speech can live a productive hetero life with her.
As for age: men's age preferences are well known The cowards at okcupid deleted their blog post that chart was taken from. If there is indeed such a desperate shortage of high quality 20-something women willing to date, then date women in their lower to mid 30s. Up to mid 30s they can have kids no problem.
How does a woman make it to her 30s without landing in a stable, committed relationship?
Especially if she was inundated with options in her 20's.
Doesn't this suggest there's some factor that makes her less suited for such a relationship?
Is your advice to young men here "actively pursue bisexual/queer women and hope this one isn't sincere?"
Add on the correlation between mental illness and LGBT identification.
One large point I've found is that this was NOT a major issue that men had to negotiate even 15, 20 years ago, let alone 50.
So we're still in a world where the sexual marketplace is far more difficult than it was previously, which has ripple effects on actual relationships, and the approach men have to take to them.
Still a bit crazy to me that the advice boils down to "men need to become better AND keep lowering their standards until they find someone who meets them."
Almost nobody out there saying "Women need to lower standards and pick a partner earlier."
Just seems asymetrical.
Quite easily. I'll let you in on an insight most men haven't realized yet.
You know how you often hear women complain "Where are all the good men?" and then totally a catch yet perenially single nerdy guy complain "Uhhh, we're right here, you just ignore us!"
The equivalent women exist. The equivalents to men who have hobbies and friend groups that don't intersect with the people they probably should be matching with. Dating's "dark matter", the women we all imagine probably exist yet no one can find. The problem is that men expect that the equivalent for women is within the same hobbies, that the match for lonely nerdy guys into anime should be lonely nerdy girls into anime. But nerdy girls into anime are rarely lonely. But I found them. I found the elusive missing good women.
The equivalents are nerdy bookish/library girls. There are a lot of women who spend their time in libraries, reading high or low brow stuff. Recently I had to do some work for a client that works in the library space, and I quickly realized that 90% of the employees there were quiet, nerdy (and no, certainly not unattractive) girls. I had to deal with pretty much all of the employees and most of them seemed shy and unaccustomed to dealing with a "normie" guy like me.
Had I made this discovery in my bachelor days, it probably would have completely changed how I approach dating.
I'd also add an alternative mundane answer:
By being unserious about relationships in general. In a society where extended adolescence and delayed adulthood are the norm it's not even out of the ordinary.
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