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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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Continuing my theme in the previous comment of springboarding off the QC thread for discussion topics...

War of the sexes, but specifically regarding long term relationships and marriage.

What, in your opinion, should/does a desirable male partner bring to the table? What should/does a desirable female partner bring to the table?

The goal here is not specifically symmetry, if the desirableness is asymmetrical. For example, if you think a woman should desire a man with a stable job, but a man would be neutral or negative towards a woman with a stable job, then there's no need to include that on both lists.

To make the discussion more specific, less hypothetical: excluding amorphous concepts of "chemistry", what is the concrete package of measurable traits the opposite sex needs to offer for you to want to commit to a relationship with them? What is the package you are offering them in exchange? Do you feel this is a "good deal"?

(I'll answer for myself in a reply rather than answering within the question.)

The length of my reply may not communicate it, but I've been thinking about this question pretty much daily since 2017.

The answer is that if either a Man or Woman is looking at what the other can "bring to the table," the relationship is going to fail at some point. First, remember the passion-to-companionship cycle. At the outset, both parties generally want (and receive) fireworks. Somewhere pretty early on this gives way to a more "fun friends who have sex" situation. If it makes it two years (look around at your social circle and mark this as a milepost for breakups) then a lot of couples will get married if both parties are 28+. 7 Year itch within a marriage, 50/50 in America make it. Kids show up a lot of marriages are effectively dead but keep on going for the kids. Divorce late in high school or early college is most common for upper-middle class suburbanites.

The point of the above paragraph is that a romantic relationship and marriage that last 10,20,30 years changes so much that it is not possible for either party to meaningfully say "Yes, I'm in this for life" at the outset if the rubric is simply the "match score" for the other partner.

What's required is a personal commitment to the idea of a long-term relationship before you even meet the other person. And a recognition that the relationship will drastically change multiple times and require constant work. If that is the starting point, you've got a shot and then you can sort of grocery list for all of the matching attributes. If that is not your starting point, I think you can still have a decent enough romantic life, but you shouldn't think you're going to make it long term.

I don't blame this totally on the failing character of contemporary western folks. Most of marriage in human history (and, I would submit, the majority of it today worldwide) is basic economic survival and co-dependence. The idea of learning to love whichever person you ended up shaking up with to not starve to death is far more common the world over than "omg, this is how I met your mother" fairly tale stories. For a trip, read up on the emotional development of the arranged marriages of first generation Indian Couples in the U.S. from maybe the 1970s or so.

The idea of deep emotion, long-term pair bonding as the everything of marriage is a product of the massive growth in personal wealth the western world experienced after World War 2 and is also a good outcome of the mid-century feminist movement. It's just super, super rare. The bad outcome of this has been the destruction of the nuclear family since the 1960s. When the primary motivator is personal emotional satisfaction in a highly individualist society, the family is going to have a bad time absent some very strong microsocial pressures (i.e. high religiosity communities, or hyper invested "helicopter" parents who see the performance of their children as reflective of personal worth).

To conclude, however, I wouldn't call myself a marriage / long-term relationship cynic. In fact, I still think I want to get married (I just think the odds are low). I'm slightly optimistic that there's going to be some level of Gen-Z backlash to the crazy 4th wave feminism we see now and that may prompt new personal commitment to having a nuclear family and shedding some of the "but how do I maximize my own personal emotional state?" thinking. I am not Gen-Z, however, and their customs and ways are strange to me.

TLDR; It isn't about your partner, it's all about you.

What's required is a personal commitment to the idea of a long-term relationship before you even meet the other person. And a recognition that the relationship will drastically change multiple times and require constant work. If that is the starting point, you've got a shot and then you can sort of grocery list for all of the matching attributes. If that is not your starting point, I think you can still have a decent enough romantic life, but you shouldn't think you're going to make it long term.

I strongly agree with this.