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Why do a lot of women not like acknowledging the practical aspects of dating? By this I mean that women appear to be put off by me simply discussing:
Of course I'm not discussing these topic with women I'm trying to actually date, I'm not that autistic. But if you're trying to actually find a partner to settle down and have kids with, how do you not take all of these into account? Not only does it reek of impracticality, but on an even deeper level, it appears that any attempt to practically model the dating world at all produces a negative female reaction.
(Maybe it's because some of these women don't ever intend on having kids and therefore don't ever have to be realistic about dating.)
A lot of women would discuss some of these if put using different terms.
Also, it doesn't just produce a negative female reaction. It produces a negative reaction in a lot of humans because you are signalling a lot of things by discussing these:
You are probably also opening wounds and triggering insecurity about where they would stand in "SMV" or whatever. A lot of people find the Darwinian nature of early dating bad.
I think as humans a lot of us have an ideal of (unrealistic) somewhat unconditional care and of being loved for things we influence, for our deeds and words. Entire religions are founded on this. A big part of later-stage dating and relationships is about trust, kindness, reciprocity and related things.
The manosphere gets some regrettable aspects of dating and early relationship formation right but there is actual evidence that being a decent person is pretty important for actually having quality long-term relationships. If you are signalling early that you instrumentalise and commoditise people that is a pretty negative signal and will rightfully put people off. Not everyone would be of course, package this stuff in the right language and I'm sure you could discuss it with some women.
I honestly get put off when people enthusiastically talk about having a zero-sum mindset about these things even if I think they have a point. It's just a signal that this person is probably not very kind. And why would you want to talk about this enthusiastically and with a partner? It's honestly inherently quite an awkward topic.
Good points. How exactly is one to discuss the dating market in the abstract without "commoditising", "instrumentalising", or "dehumanising" anyone?
Well with my most recent partner, once we got to know each other pretty well, we naturally talked about our personal history with the local dating scene and how that informed our perspectives on dating. We discussed the various causal factors that might've led each of us to have such very different experiences despite nominally participating in the exact same arena. I mean, it's really fascinating stuff, is it not? Wouldn't you want to know about your partner's past lived experiences and what sort of future lived experiences they are expecting themselves to have? And yes, she was somewhere on the spectrum too.
But maybe I should've made this clearer -- I'm talking about talking about this with platonic friends, not women I'm trying to actively hit on. Platonic male friends, at least the bunch I have, have no problem whatsoever talking about what they've needed to do to get to where they are as an attractive mate, or about female fertility and how that informs their family planning and mate selection strategies. Not in those specific terms, but definitely about those specific topics.
I think you have to either be talking to a pretty high decoupler or approach this stuff in a sensitive and safe way. One reliable, evidence-backed thing is that women score about 0.5 SD or similar higher on neuroticism (OCEAN trait) than men - meaning the average woman has a bit of a more sensitive trigger for threats. Someone talking about this stuff can both trigger insecurities (bad for higher neuroticism) and also, as mentioned, make you look like someone who generally has a bit of zero-sum mindset.
Also female dating is and has never been grounded in cultivation of resources and positive traits. I find a lot of women get this wrong and are surprised in a kind of female nice-guy-ism, like I read about a female doctor that expected to be a hot commodity but was then surprised most men cared about looks, agreeableness, etc. over her career and that all her hard work didn't make her good prospect. So it might be hard for women to empathise with what this means to be a man (a common trope for men is that non-parental love is always conditional). As a man this stuff sounds like acknowledgment of a tough (shared) reality, as a woman you might sound like someone who sees things as being an eternal competition and who can't care/love unconditionally which looks bad even for a platonic friend.
In my experience the most professionally qualified females either had overbearing bossbitch energy which is kinda self-explanatory, or the other side of the spectrum where I ran into a bunch of women who'd just never really dated until mid-late twenties at all due to focusing on their professional/academic pathway. And you've never seen a slower-moving, awkwarder scrum than dating apps with a woman who treats it as a HR exercise and is disposed to bolt back into the KDrama bunker at the slightest vibe anything is even slightly off. Also generally incapable of giving the right signals to guys due to their lack of experience so their 'flirty withdrawal' attempts just read as 'fuck off and die'.
I'm not even saying this purely out of experience of dating these woman. My now-wife's friends and siblings trend alarmingly in that direction, and I've seen this common social thread from multiple angles now consequentially.
After a certain age you also get adverse selection (on both sexes). Can concur with the bossbitch thing. Some women try hard to cultivate disagreeability which while maybe adaptive in their careers make her a pretty bad partner (especially if paired with being neurotic, which women are on average more than men). For men this kind of works (though only to a point, I'm not fully aligned with the manosphere people here) but for women it's generally quite off-putting.
Also as a higher earner myself I always felt like having a high earning partner raises expectations rather than providing any security. Some people would call me insecure for thinking this but I've not yet met a woman who contradicts this idea (I'm sure they are out there but most women want to be provided for).
I have heard this anecdotally and from statistics, but I’ve seen cases where it works out.
Like myself! My partner is likely to outearn me over our lifetimes. Neither of us have an issue with that so far, I cook better than she does.
I also know of such an anecdotal story. She did express a wish at some point that he would make more money eventually, so it's not like she didn't feel this at all. But she seems to have made peace with that by the time they got married.
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